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Show iling 1 ommy I By GEORGE A. BIRMINGHAM j jjj Copyright by riclbs-Mrrrill Co. W. N. U. Service ! 1 no breakfast might have fainted through sheer astonishment, "A king," I said, "(loud gracious! But Ik? can't possibly have suggested suggest-ed your being a king. King of what? Where?" "I iocs seem a bit of a facer just at first, doesn't It, Uncle Hill? Hut the way to look tit all these things Is this: Why not? Before you turn it dciwn you ought to say to yourself, Why not? That's what I've been saying say-ing to myself ever since Uncle Ned sprang It on me." "Well," I said, "when you put It that way I can see I dare say you'd make a fairly good king of some very small country. Hut I still find it very dillicult to believe that your Uncle Ned really proposed it. Did he mention men-tion the name of the country?" "He did; but It's slipped out of my head for the minute. It was the same place where my great aunt Elizabeth went with that mucker of hers one hundred and fifty years ago." "I.yst ria," I said. "Hut well, of course your Uncle Edmund knows better bet-ter than I do, hut I have an Impression Impres-sion that Lystria isn't an Independent stale any more." I was right about that. I looked the matter up after Norheys left me. Lystria, once an Independent kingdom, king-dom, was incorporated into the Republic Re-public of Megalia by the Treaty of Trianon. Megalia is one of those new republics which make the map of Europe very confusing to people like me who knew it before the war. No doubt the Lystrians deserved to lose their Independence. The late king, Wladislaws VI, backed the wrong side in the war' and like all who did that, lost his throne. ' "Lystria is the spot Uncle Ned mentioned," men-tioned," said Norheys. "Potty little one-horse place; but of course a fel-i II I DCcP-LAID SCHEMES To in in y No r r- y , ;i n T r I h rn -r.i i , 1 n vi'M l. - .J in ( ;. rn ut (i tniirK h ui. J u ii' n t h' y v. : 1 1 1. tr.vit a i.ii kt;.t on Koinr, Ton.ii!' rait ovt-r lo Ki lin lo :M"'N1 hi.H 'a:it-1' aMiri In v-:-. I in -it I. Tommy wan a rnuii-t-:,t hoijl, mo wlifil a K 1 1 r. 1 ' 1 1 1 : i 1 1 with .i n 1 m I i i li ;i i n L a -Ii ;(l-,r. him in his h !1 ut.'l ;. ili-f him Vour lordship,'" To mi my Miii It c(l hi .t hrl;;nt IMmIi :y f-M. Hut when t ho M-afl wai I r r.- M-, 1 1 ri th f; a it ami ion, as hu i.DU'i'il Tommy io it taMt;, Tommy m-a fly col ia ps'-d. "Who am I '!" Tom my awkorl h I m mi- I f. "in 1 L a h-rman jest ; jim I (i I'l-atn i ii c;, or li;tvfi I a dun-Me dun-Me '.'" 1 In L Ih:I'oI It- had tiiiw; to answer his own questions, in; was d-i p I ii siicn a im-sh of i n t ri u, no as - v n his I ri h i nuiK'i "a tiun never dreamed of. A liLtM later a very pretty d.'i nee r t h re w him a note w Ii t li said: "h hak to Loudon and marry Viola. Temple." Tommy was InlriKUed to know who Viola Temple was. hut. the lovely little (lamer held lirsL claim on his attention. So ho stay.-d, thereby eiea 1 1 y com pi ieat i n the a 1 ready i'o m pi icat ed coin plica i ions. "( ieo , o A. I ;i r m in ; ha m" Is rea 1 iy an Irish pl ea eh e r Ve ry KrVfi't'iiil .lame:! Owen J lannay, canon of St. J 'a trick's cathedral, UiiMin so you may bo tjurt; he's portrayed "Kiuj;" Toiiiiny" to the 1 i !'e mid made him the lo vab lo hero of a did I h t fii 1 romance in a Keltiny of liht comedy. Part L London CHAPTER I I hud fiuishod broakfast nnd was reudini; the Irish news In the Morning Morn-ing I'ust. It gave me some pleasure to read the Irish news in the Morning Morn-ing I'ost in the early part of 192::. The Keiiuhlicuns or the Free Staters hud burned my house in County Clare, nnd I liked being told that such people peo-ple come to a bad end. The Morning Morn-ing I'ost told me that every day with emphasis. Lord Norheys wulke 1 in und greeted greet-ed me. "Good morning," Uncle Hill. Hud a good night? Sleep sound and all that? Chewed up a satisfactory breakfast? What I always say is, if a fellow sleeps and eats 'no's tit for anything." I am not Norheys' uncle, and my name is not Hill, or even William; but I have known him ever since lie was born, and I suppose he has a right to stick to the nickname which he first gave me when he was a child lu the nursery. His father, the eighth marquis, was my best friend. lie and I and Kdmond Troyte, the younger brother, were at Winchester together, togeth-er, and afterward at Oxford. I was godfather to the present marquis. "Thanks," I said. "I got throu'h the night fairly well and the coffee was quite hot at breakfast." "I thought I'd inquire," said Norheys, Nor-heys, "because what I've got to tell you may give you a bit of a shock. And what I always say is this: unless a fellow is pretty well braced up it's better to let a shock stand over for a day or two." "I feel as fit this morning," I said, "as I'm ever likely to; so unless your news is really desperate It's about Miss Temple, I suppose." Miss Temple Viola Temple of the advertisement hordings and the picture pic-ture papers is a very beautiful lady with a spotless reputation. At that time all London was enthusiastic about her dancing. Norheys was more enthusiastic than any one else. I hoped he did not mean to marry her, but was very much afraid he did. "Viola doesn't come in at all so far," saiil Norheys. "Though of course she may later on. No fellow can possibly tell who'll come into what, can he? You might be in it yourself, Uncle II ill, before we're actually ac-tually through it." "That," 1 said, "is extra reason for telling me what it is." "It's a new stunt of Uncle Ned's." His uncle Ned this time a real un-ch un-ch is Lord Kdmond Troyte, son of the seventh marquis, uncle of the r.:!U h marquis of Norheys, one of our ablest, quite our most sincerely pa-fiotie pa-fiotie statesman, at present minister lor I'.alkan affairs. Whatever the "siuat" was, it must surely he safe a;:d decorous if Lord Kdmund invented invent-ed it. So I thought ; but I was wrong. I might have remembered that there is a queer vein of udveniurousnoss cad daring in the Troyte family. '! hero was a Lord Aifred who made himself a sort of Arab sheik eariy in I lie Kighteentli century. liefore him there was an Hli.ahetlian Lord IM-uand IM-uand who came back from the Span-.si. Span-.si. Main with a shipftil of gold plate. There was a Lady Klizabeth Troyte r ho married l'rince Doris of Lystria In 1 Til2, and, after a brilliant military .areer, had her head cut off by the Turks, who were playing about in Ly-ftar Ly-ftar ut that time. There were others. Anil that kind of thing, if it is in the blood, is very hard to eradicate. "Uncle Ned," said Norheys. "wants me to be n king." Norheys was perfectly right to Inquire In-quire about my healih liefore he made an announcement like that. A man who Lad slept badly or who bad had "I haven't," said Norheys. "At least I hadn't until yesterday. What sort of a bird is he?" I found It a little difficult to give a clear account of Procopius Cable, Nobody knows where he came from. His Christian name sounds Greek, nnd I have heard it said that he was originally orig-inally a Levantine Jew. I could not call him a captain of industry, for lie does not manufacture, nor drive other people to manufacture, anything. I suppose ho might be described as a financier. I said so to Norheys. "Any tiling to do with oil?" he asked. "Not that I know of," I said, "but he may. It wouldn't surprise me to hear that Cable had something to do with anything in the world if there's money to be made out of It." "I mentioned it," said Norheys, "because "be-cause Uncle Ned said something about oil in Lystria. I can't say I much like the Idea of living in a place that stinks of paraffin, nasty stuff, always getting into your food and dripping about. However, Uncle Ned says the good old British empire wants oil, and if it does I'm all for its having as. much as it can get. That's what I always say to a fellow who starts talking about the empire: The proper prop-er thing is to let the British empire get what it wants with the least possible pos-sible fuss, whether it's oil, or rubber, or whatever the thing may be. Uncle Un-cle Ned seemed to think that in this case it was oil." "Is there oil In Lystria? I never heard of it." "That fellow Cable seems to have said so," said Norheys, "and I rather gather mind you, I'm not saying this as a certain, sure thing. My general impression is that if I was king of Lystria, Uncle Ned and the Jolly old empire would collar the oil? See?" I began to see. CHAPTER II I took the first chance I got of having a chat with Kdmond Troyte. He was perfectly frank with me and told me all about the scheme for making his nephew king of Lystria. He began with the political part of the plan. The Lystrians are, so he said, an intensely patriotic people, and they very much dislike being merged in the Republic of Megalia. In fact, Edmund admitted this to me, the framers of the Treaty of Trianon made a mistake, a bad mistake, in depriving Lystria of its independence. "They are 3 people," said Troyte, "with a strong feeling in favor of monarchy. They don't like the republican re-publican form of government. The aristocracy doesn't like it. The Church doesn't like it, and in Lystria the Church counts for a lot. Whatever the patriarch says the people say after aft-er him. The patriarch's name is Menelaus." He went on to tell me that the Lystrians Lys-trians would like to have their old king hack. "But that's impossible. The Entente En-tente pewers wouldn't stand it. Besides, Be-sides, that fellow Wladislaws is a bad one. He treated his wife badly, she was an Englishwoman. As a matter of fact, she was a distant cousin of my own." Any king who treats a relative of Troyte's badly deserves to lose his throne. I saw at once that Wladislaws Wladis-laws Lad irretrievably lost his. 'Th(. Patriarch Menelaus and the Lysti'Un aristocracy," said Troyte, "know perfectly well that they can't have Wladislaws back. So, some time ago, they asked fo an Englishman The only condition they made was that he should marry the ex-king's daughter. Of course we turned the proposal down at once and no more was heard of it." "You seem to have turned It up again," I said. "Now, why?" Tnat, it appeared, is where Procopius Proco-pius Cable came in. He had found out that the Lystrian mountains were full of oil. He tried to get a concession conces-sion for the development of the oil licids. The Megalian government hesitated hes-itated and wrangled and procrastinated procrastinat-ed until Cable got tired of trying to deal with them. They had not money fnough to develop the place themselves. them-selves. They had not the knowledge or enterprise or energy to do it even if they had the money. And they would not let Cable do it. So lie started working up patriotic feeling iu Lystria, or rather financing it, for it did not need working up. He got into touch with the patriarch and he got into touch with the aristocracy through a certain Count Istvan Cas-imir. Cas-imir. He gave them all the money they wanted. According to Cable's account everything was ready for $ revolution. All that was wanted wai a king whom the Entente powers would recognize. The Megalian republic re-public would be quite helpless if England Eng-land or any other great power recognized recog-nized the new king of Lystria. Mywordl What next? With such clever and influential schemers at work, anything Is possible. II 0 (TO BB CONTINUED.) I Had Finished Breakfast and Vas Reading the Irish News in the Morning Morn-ing Post. ; low can't expect to . step into a first-rate first-rate job when lie first goes into the king line of life." "But," I said, "if you really are to be a king" As li is godfather I felt it my duty to speak seriously to Norheys about his future. I lia.il thought of quite a nije thing to say, but lie interrupted me. "Uncle Ned wants me to," he said. "It isn't a thing 1 have thought of going in for till on my own; but when Uncle Ned has set his hf art on it well, no fellow with any ense of decency de-cency wants to start a family quarrel quar-rel by going against his relations, unless un-less he absolutely has to. I've been thinking tilings over since Uncle Ned spoke to me. My idea is that a king's duty is to make as few laws as possible, pos-sible, and to stop other fellows making mak-ing them if he can. What I always say is this: Most fellows are all right if you leave them alone and don't go trying to make them do things they don't want to. Of course if they take to batting each other on the head, then you've got to send a policeman to stop them. But otherwise Well, my idea of kings and presidents and people like that is that they've far too good an opinion of themselves. They always think they know what's best and want the other fellow to do it. Whereas the other fellow knows really real-ly just as well as they do. And my idea is: Let him. So long as It doesn't annoy anybody else much, let him." Norheys' political principles struck me as sound. I felt that, if ever he became king of Lystria, I should like to go and live there. Taxes otiL'ht to he light; for the greater part of our national income seems to go in paying pay-ing otlicials to compel people to do things they don't want to. There would be no expenditure of that sort in Lystria under Norheys. "There's another ftdlow in this stunt," he said, "besides Uncle Ned. Ever hear of any one called Cable?" "I've henrd of Procopius Cuble," I said. "Everybody has." |