The Grand Duke Louis meanwhile, waiting in great anxiety, had received
the message which had come by the wireless mast. The words were in code,
and being translated they read: "France, Italy, Spain, Portugal will
recognize. Strike." The signature was "Jt.," which Delgado knew for
Jusseret. The Duke had been greatly excited. He paced the room in a
nervous tremor. It was arranged that a small steamer, which had stood a
short distance offshore since yesterday to relay the wireless message
and make it doubly sure, should pick the Duke up as soon as Lapas
signaled by a triple dip of the flag that the fortress had been
destroyed. The steamer was then to rush the Grand Duke around the cape
to Puntal, bringing him in as though he had come from Spain. Those
conspirators who were in the capital, strengthened by those who would
declare for Louis, with Karyl dead and no other heir existent, would
proclaim him King. Lapas would see that the royal salute was fired as
the steamer entered the harbor, and the Countess would either meet him
and explain all the details or would speak with him by Marconi if she
had left the town.
Louis spent the forenoon in an agony of anxiety and impatience. All
afternoon he watched through binoculars the white and blue and green
flag on the rock above him. He was waiting for the triple dip that
should tell him the fortress had been scattered in débris and with it
the government. Evidently the King was late going to the arsenal.
He had imagined it would be earlier. The hours dragged interminably.
Louis walked the stone buttress where the flag which he had raised in
signal to Lapas flapped and whipped against its staff. At last his
binoculars, fixed on the rock, caught the dip of the colors there. With
a great sigh of relief the Duke watched to see them rise and dip, rise
and dip again. The flag came down the length of the pole--and did not go
up.
Panic seized the Pretender. There was no way of talking with the ridge
three thousand feet above. It was a climb of an hour and a half by the
pass. Evidently there had been a miscarriage. In the prearranged code of
flag signals the only provision for the drooping of the colors on the
hill was in the event that it should be wished to stop the explosion.
That would be only in the event of refusal by the governments to
recognize; the governments had not refused! Possibly Lapas had turned
traitor!
There had also been some unexplained delay seaward. The little steamer,
which should have remained near by, was a speck on the horizon, and
without her there was no possibility of escape. Wildly Louis, the
Dreamer, hurried to his improvised Marconi station and called the ship.
Finally toward evening came a response and with it a message from
somewhere out at sea, relayed from ship to ship around the peninsula.