The fashionable Carleton was unfamiliar territory to the inquisitive mariners, but they strolled boldly through the corridors until they fetched up in front of a desk presided over by an immaculate clerk with a languid manner, who coldly regarded them, and appeared indifferent to their wants. After waiting for several minutes for some recognition, Captain Michael O'Shea sweetly remarked:
"Will ye answer a civil question, or will I climb over the counter and jolt you wide awake?"
The languid person looked attentively at the resolute features and masterful eye of the speaker, and hastily responded:
"Beg pardon—beg pardon—what can I do for you, sir?"
"Tell me if a king is stopping in this hotel of yours, and does he have a minister of finance called Baron Strothers?"
"Ah, you mean his majesty, King Osmond of Trinadaro." And the clerk delivered these resounding syllables with unction. "Yes, he is a guest of the hotel."
"He is a real one—do you get that?" soberly whispered O'Shea to his comrade before he again addressed the clerk:
"We wish to see him on important business. We will write our names on a card."
"Baron Strothers receives such callers as are personally unknown to his majesty," the clerk explained.
"We don't wish to see the young man," said O'Shea.
"My orders are to send all cards and messages to him."
The two visitors drew apart from the desk, and put their heads together.
"The minister of finance will not let us get within a cable's length of his boss if he thinks we are seafaring men," whispered O'Shea.
"The swindler may have took notice of us in the Jolly Mermaid," growled Johnny Kent. "We might send up a card, and make headway as far as this Strothers person. Then I could knock him down, and sit on his head while you rummaged the royal apartments and found the king."
"Your methods might strike these hotel people as violent, Johnny. You're a good man at sea, but I would not call ye a diplomat. Anyhow, we will take a chance on running the blockade that this crooked minister of finance has established to prevent honest men from talking to his employer."
Returning to the desk, O'Shea picked up a pen, and wrote on a blank card:
Promptly in answer to this message came word that Baron Strothers would see the gentlemen. A hotel attendant conducted them to a suite of rooms on the second floor which must have cost the royal treasury a pretty penny. At the threshold of a sort of anteroom they were met by the brisk, self-possessed young man, who gazed sharply at the sturdy, sunburned strangers, hesitated a trifle, and invited them to enter. Offering them cigars, he bade them be seated, and again scrutinized them, as if striving to recall where he might have seen them before.
Captain O'Shea, at his ease in any company or circumstances, and particularly now when he held the whip hand, asked at once:
"Are we to have the pleasure of paying our respects to his majesty?"
"You Americans are so jolly informal," smiled the minister of finance. "This sort of thing is done only by special appointment. An audience is arranged beforehand if I consider it worth while."
"But this king of yours takes a special interest in ships and sailors," suggested O'Shea. "And we have information that he will find useful."
Baron Frederick Martin Strothers changed color just a trifle, and his manner was perceptibly uneasy as he explained:
"I am awfully sorry, but he is not in at present. He will be disappointed, I'm sure. You are shipmasters or something of the sort, I take it."
"You guess right," was the dry comment of O'Shea. "I have heard that you are fond of talking to seafaring men yourself."
The shot went home. The young man moved in his chair, and looked painfully uncomfortable. Nervously twisting a cigar in his fingers, he replied:
"Ah, yes, now I know! You must have seen me at the East India Docks."
"There or thereabouts; but no matter," said O'Shea. "His majesty is not in, you say. And when will he be in the hotel again?"
"Not for several hours, I fancy. He went out with the minister of foreign affairs to keep an important appointment. Will you state your business to me? That is the customary procedure, you know."
Johnny Kent was for denouncing the young man to his face in a vocabulary well stored with brimstone; but O'Shea nudged him, and smoothly made answer:
"It would please us better to see the king himself. We will come again, or we can look for him on his way in and out of the hotel."
The young man could not dissemble signs of impatience to be rid of these pertinacious intruders.