The entrance of Loristan produced its usual effect. The agent's clerk lifted his hat, and the policeman stood straight and made salute. Neither of them realized that the tall man's clothes were worn and threadbare. They felt only that a personage was before them, and that it was not possible to question his air of absolute and serene authority. He laid his hand on Marco's shoulder and held it there as he spoke. When Marco looked up at him and felt the closeness of his touch, it seemed as if it were an embrace-- as if he had caught him to his breast.
“My boy knew nothing of these people,'' he said. “That I can guarantee. He had seen neither of them before. His entering the house was the result of no boyish trick. He has been shut up in this place for nearly twenty-four hours and has had no food. Imust take him home. This is my address.'' He handed the young man a card.
Then they went home together, and all the way to Philibert Place Loristan's firm hand held closely to his boy's shoulder as if he could not endure to let him go. But on the way they said very little.
“Father,'' Marco said, rather hoarsely, when they first got away from the house in the terrace, “I can't talk well in the street.
For one thing, I am so glad to be with you again. It seemed as if--it might turn out badly.''
“Beloved one,'' Loristan said the words in their own Samavian, “until you are fed and at rest, you shall not talk at all.''
Afterward, when he was himself again and was allowed to tell his strange story, Marco found that both his father and Lazarus had at once had suspicions when he had not returned. They knew no ordinary event could have kept him. They were sure that he must have been detained against his will, and they were also sure that, if he had been so detained, it could only have been for reasons they could guess at.
“This was the card that she gave me,'' Marco said, and he handed it to Loristan. “She said you would remember the name.''
Loristan looked at the lettering with an ironic half-smile.
“I never heard it before,'' he replied. “She would not send me a name I knew. Probably I have never seen either of them. But Iknow the work they do. They are spies of the Maranovitch, and suspect that I know something of the Lost Prince. They believed they could terrify you into saying things which would be a clue.
Men and women of their class will use desperate means to gain their end.''
“Might they--have left me as they threatened?'' Marco asked him.
“They would scarcely have dared, I think. Too great a hue and cry would have been raised by the discovery of such a crime. Too many detectives would have been set at work to track them.''
But the look in his father's eyes as he spoke, and the pressure of the hand he stretched out to touch him, made Marco's heart thrill. He had won a new love and trust from his father. When they sat together and talked that night, they were closer to each other's souls than they had ever been before.
They sat in the firelight, Marco upon the worn hearth-rug, and they talked about Samavia--about the war and its heart-rending struggles, and about how they might end.
“Do you think that some time we might be exiles no longer?'' the boy said wistfully. “Do you think we might go there together --and see it--you and I, Father?''
There was a silence for a while. Loristan looked into the sinking bed of red coal.
“For years--for years I have made for my soul that image,'' he said slowly. “When I think of my friend on the side of the Himalayan Mountains, I say, `The Thought which Thought the World may give us that also!' ''
