“Sir,” the messenger said, “do you think I’d better? These are important people.”
“I pay you, don’t I?” he said angrily. “You’ll take the message all right.”
The messenger, aware of his own innocence, of his status as a go-between—he had not even read the first note—allowed himself to be coaxed by the promise of more money. He watched as the crazy fellow before him quickly scribbled a second note.
Sir, evidently you did not trust my first communication to you. I appreciate that we are strangers to each other and that my advances are unorthodox, but I assure you that my business is real. Please advise my messenger when we may meet.
But when the messenger returned, again he had brought no answer.
He decided to go himself, and the next morning, dressed in the finest of the clothes remaining to him but conscious that his work on the docks had thickened his chest and arms so that the garments no longer hung loosely on him, he followed the messenger’s complicated directions and appeared before the duke’s estate. He went up to an old stone sentry box that stood beside the locked gate.
“Yes, sir?” a voice said within the dark box.
He peered inside but could not see the man who had spoken. “I’m to see the duke,” he said finally, apparently to the low sloping eaves of the box.
“Have you an appointment, sir?”
He thought for a moment of lying, but realized that the fellow would probably ask his name and then call the house to check.
“I’ve sent messages.”
“Oh, so you’re the one,” the voice said as a large, florid man stepped quickly from the recesses of the box. “Persistent, ain’t you? Where’s the little fellow?”
“I’ve come myself.”
“His Grace thought you might show up today. It’s the police for you, boy-o!”
“Give this message to the duke. He’ll see me.” He handed the man a note he had written that morning.
Sir, I have twice sent communications petitioning for a meeting between us, and twice my messenger has been rebuffed. I am not at all sure you have seen my notes. Until I have some definite word from your Grace that you do not wish to meet with me, I’m afraid I must continue to harass you in this way. Today I have come myself and await an answer by your front gate.”
“No more messages, lad. No more messages.”
“All right,” he shouted. “That’s enough.” He produced the medallion from beneath his shirt. “Now you go in there immediately and take this message to the duke. If he doesn’t want to see me, let him write the word ‘No’ on the back of my note.”
The gateman hesitated and looked closely at the man before him. He hadn’t really noticed the clothes before; they were peculiar, foreign like, but he could tell they were expensive. And that badge he’d flashed. He reached his hand toward the folded note and took it quietly.
“Wait here, please,” he said. “I’ll find his Grace.”
The gateman retreated into the sentry box, opened a door at its rear, flooding it with light, and emerged on the other side of the gate. Turning, he carefully closed the door and locked it from the outside. Instantly the box was black again. He watched the gateman mount a motorcycle with a wide sidecar attached to it and ride off in the direction of the main house.
He was elated. The day was bright and very clear; the air, for all the hard, sharp sunlight, was cool and smelled of the sea wide and clear and deep behind him. It was good to be in the handsome clothes again. His shoes, carefully polished that morning, glowed richly through a thin layer of dust from the road, but this came off easily as he buffed each shoe against a silken sock. Adjusting his clothing, he noticed that the medallion still hung outside his jacket. It was rich and golden against the brown background of the jacket, and for a moment he considered allowing it to remain there, exposed, mounted handsomely, a rich trophy of his identity. He was pleased that it had lost none of its power and remembered the other times it had served as his calling card, instantly melting the recalcitrance and resistance with which people chose to oppose him.
If the duke were to see him, he thought, he would come directly to the point. It would be good to have it all over with. This was a good country; he would not begin again in another.
A man went by him pushing a bicycle. He nodded warmly at the fellow and watched, amused, as the cyclist finally managed a shy reply to his greeting.
He returned his gaze to the house, one wing of which he could see through the tall leafy trees which guarded it. He stood very still, conscious again of the dead weight of the medallion, which he had carefully replaced inside his shirt, as one slips valuables inside an envelope.
In a moment he heard the guttural approach of the motorcycle and saw it emerge from the trees as the driveway curved into the gate by which he stood. He could see that someone sat in the sidecar, but annoyed that he should be seen staring through the bars like a curious child, he turned his back and looked out over the sea, tapping his foot like a busy man waiting for a door to open. He heard the motor stop and the gateman address the man in the sidecar. “He’s right there, sir. I’ll get him for you.” It was probably the duke, then, whom the gateman had brought.
He turned casually, feigning surprise as the guard approached him from the other side of the gate. “I’ve brought someone to see you, sir,” the man announced.
He looked past the gateman to the motorcycle and was surprised to see that it had been parked behind thick, high bushes about fifteen feet from him and to the side of the driveway. The motorcycle’s front end canted around the bush, its large headlamp and wide handlebars incongruously resembling a quizzical animal looking out at him. If the man in the sidecar did not stand up it would be impossible to see him. “Is it the duke?” he asked the gateman, who by this time had disappeared too, retreating inside the sentry box. He remained at the gate, trying to see through the dappled shadows of the trees and the deceptive openings in the bushes. At last a voice, queerly muffled, addressed him. “Yes?” it said.
“Good morning,” he said, his eyes fixed on the motorcycle’s front tire.
“All that’s all right,” the voice said. “What do you want here?”
He heard a low laugh from inside the sentry box. He regarded it angrily for a moment and then looked back in the direction of the motorcycle. The leaves, stirred by a low wind, twinkled brightly. “Are you the duke, sir? My business is with the duke.”
“Oh,” the voice said, “your business again. We’ve heard a precious lot about your business lately. You write a rude, anarchist’s prose, do you know that? And you’ve a good deal to learn about the art of the ultimatum.” The man made a clicking sound with his tongue.
“You’re here,” he said slyly.
The man in the sidecar laughed, and the sound was echoed by a low chuckle from the sentry box. He walked to the box quickly and peered into the blackness. The gateman disparaged him with the same clicking sounds the man in the sidecar had made. “Here now. Here now. You’ve no business with me.”
He went back to the gate and placed his hands, wide apart, on two of the iron bars. “Please,” he said gently, “could you stand up a moment? I must be sure you’re the duke.”
“Oh, so that’s it. You are an anarchist. Probably want to get a shot at me. Let me warn you, the gateman is armed. Now, what is it you want?”
He hesitated.
“All right. All right. I’m the duke. Isn’t that right, gateman?”
“That’s right, sir,” said the gateman sepulchrally inside the dark sentry box.
“There. You see? Now go ahead with your business. I’ve got business too, you know.”
It was ridiculous. If they chose to play with him he would be helpless. They would not care enough about his claims even to reject them. This was no disinterested duke on a yacht. Sick at heart, he thought wearily of the man who wanted to have his face on postage stamps.
“What is it, please?” the man in the sidecar said.
A
ll he could do was to tell his story and hope it was the duke to whom he was talking. “Very well,” he said. “I can only assume that so wise a man as the duke would not send a servant to hear business as urgent as my own.” Again the gateman laughed, though this time the sound was muffled, as though he had put his wrist in his mouth.
It would be best to begin quickly, he thought. Addressing himself to the concealed man, he told him first of the medallion, then of Khardov’s oblique hints, and finally of his own great expectations. Spoken aloud, it did not sound like very good evidence even to himself, but the man in the sidecar did not interrupt him and he hoped that he had struck some responsive chord. He finished by adding that he was satisfied that he had no legitimate claims in any of the other countries he had visited; it seemed to him that this added somehow to the force of his claim in this country. “There’s one other thing,” he said. “You see, there’s a strong resemblance between myself and the duke.” He waited for some response from the man in the sidecar. Finally there was a long, loud laugh. He stood in terrible confusion as the laughter of the man in the sidecar mingled with the laughter of the gateman. Soon both were laughing and coughing uncontrollably.
He turned to go. As he walked off, the laughter stopped and a voice called out clearly behind him. “No, no. Don’t go. Let’s have a look at you.” He turned around. The man had stepped from the sidecar and come out into the open. He had a full beard.
The duke came up to the gate and stood there looking at him. “Well, well,” he said finally. “There is a resemblance. Not as striking as all that, of course, but we’ll see, we’ll see. Let’s have a look at that medallion.”
He waited to see if it was a trick.
“Come on, come on,” the duke urged.
He walked back to the gate and again took the medallion from beneath his shirt. He did not remove it, but standing very close to the gate and turning the medallion sideways, handed it through the bars to the duke. The duke held it in his palm, studying it, turning it over to look at its back. Finally he let it go and the medallion swung back, clanging against the bars. He slipped it back inside his clothes and buttoned his shirt wordlessly, finally adjusting his tie.
“This is marvelous,” the duke said. “A pretender. Why, we haven’t had a pretender in the family for over two hundred years. I wonder if we still know how to deal with them. We used to be very good, you know, very efficient in a crude sort of way. Stabbings, hangings, forest ambushes, that sort of thing. That will all have changed by now, of course, but we’ll work something out. A pretender. I’m delighted, sir.” The duke thrust his hand between the gateposts. He hesitated, then shook the outstretched hand. “Well, now,” the duke said, “come inside. Gateman. We’ve much to talk about. This Khardov is quite a man.”
He got into the sidecar with the duke and was driven by the gateman back to the main house, the duke talking animatedly to him all the way.
“Let’s see now,” the duke said when they were sitting together in the book-walled study, “you’ll have to decide whose son you are. Have you thought much about that? Rupert’s? Edward’s? Eleanor’s? My own, perhaps, had not an unfortunate hunting accident disqualified me from kingmaking. It’s a delicate point in your scheme. You see, it would not have been worthwhile for anyone outside the immediate family to have done you in. A prince’s boy, that would be the very thing. Earls have more children, of course, but standing so far down in the line of succession, they’re rarely in anyone’s way. We’re all quite comfortable with earls, really. They make splendid, non-competitive cousins.”
“I was wrong to come,” he said. “I’m sorry to have troubled you.”
“Not at all. I perfectly understand. You want to be a king. Or a prince. Or even a duke, eh? I know. It’s very important. Blood is the one absolute left us.”
“Please,” he said.
“The World’s Last Pretender. That’s quite a title in itself. The one man so thoroughly detached from the way things are that he still aspires to a way of life which everyone else long ago dismissed as legitimately desirable. That’s refreshing. Why, it’s more—it’s flattering. Thank you. Thank you very much.”
“All right,” he said. “I’m sorry to have troubled you.”
He returned to the docks. It was not clear to him why he felt as he did but he was surprised to realize that he was not angry. He felt only weariness and a wish to be done with things. He had banked all these years neither on evidence, nor on manufacturing a case, nor on logic; blood itself was his case, the medallion its only sign. Nothing else had mattered. He had banked on recognition, had trusted in a consummation which would come about simply because there were no alternatives. His physiognomy was his scarlet pimpernel, his strawberry of quality on rosy backside. If there were to be resistance he would no longer put forward his claims. It was strange, but in all this time the duke’s laughter had been the only valid argument against those claims. Had he been what he thought he was, there would have been no laughter; there would have been only the meeting of eyes, the swift joy of reclamation.
That evening a man asked to see him. He went wearily to the foreman’s office, and as he stepped into the dim room he made out the forms of several men sitting around a cold and ancient stove. They spoke to each other in low tones. Seeing him, one looked up.
“Come over here, fellow, would you? There’s a man,” he said.
“Yes?” he asked.
“What’s the story?” another said quietly. “You got anything on the duke?”
“What’s that?”
“We’ve heard,” someone else said.
“Let’s have a look at that badge. How about it?”
“Who are you men?” he asked.
“Journalists.”
“Reporters, fellow. Now what’s it all about? You’ve got claims against the Crown? What’s there to it?”
“ ‘DOCKER WOULD BE KING,’ ” a man said, reading an imaginary headline. “ ‘IMMIGRANT CARGO HANDLER SAYS HE’S NATION’S RIGHTFUL MAJESTY!’ ”
“ ‘PRETENDER HAS MEDALLION WHICH TRACES LINEAGE TO ANCIENT DAYS OF KINGDOM.’ ”
“‘ “AMAZING RESEMBLANCE TO DUKE” SAYS DUKE’S OWN GATEMAN.’ ”
“ ‘DOCKMAN DEFIES DUKE.’ ”
“ ‘DOCKMAN DEFIES DUKE, DARES DUKE TO DUEL!’ ”
“ ‘MAKE-BELIEVE MONARCH.’ ”
“ ‘CARGO CON MAN CLAIMS KINGDOM!’ ”
“ ‘KHARDOV CREATES KINGDOM FOR CARGO KING.’ ”
“ ‘WHO IS KHARDOV?’ ”
“What is this?” he asked again. “How do you know about me?”
“Are you going all the way with this, mister, or did you just want some quick publicity?”
“Who are your backers?”
“Any influence with the people?”
Suddenly a bulb exploded in his face. It pierced the room with a bright, blue-white light, and he thrust his hands to his eyes defensively.
“Not used to having your picture taken, right, fellow?”
“The gateman said he keeps that medallion inside his shirt.”
“Let’s have a look at it, mister.”
“No. Get out of here. Please.”
“Come on, a shot of the medallion.”
“It’ll be good for your campaign.”
“There’s no campaign,” he said. “Please. There’s no campaign.”
“Come on now, one shot and we’ll get out of here.”
“Grab his arms, someone.”
“Come on. The shirt, the shirt. I’ve got him.”
There were half a dozen pairs of hands on him. They closed about his mouth, his eyes. Someone held him by his throat. He felt hard fingers jabbing at his chest. Someone was trying to unbutton his shirt.
“Rip it off,” somebody said. “We can’t hold him all night.”
He heard the anguished ripping of material like a quick, low scream. He struggled with somebody’s hands, forcing his own hands toward his chest, trying to protect his medalli
on. His fingers closed around a loose button on his shirt. It came off convulsively and he felt it, something alien, in his hand. “Please,” he screamed. “Please.” There was another sudden brightness flaring in the darkness and he struck out at the reporters. Strangely saddened, conscious of a peculiar loss, he dropped the button.
“I could use a few more shots but you’d better let him go.”
“ ‘PRESS PUMMELS PRETENDER PRINCE,’ ” a man said, giggling nervously.
“ ‘MONARCH’S MEDAL MEDDLED!’ ”
Then, suddenly, he was free. They let him go and he stumbled backward, clumsily slumping into a chair. Someone took another photograph. Dazed, he thought of heat lightning on a summer night.
The photographers gathered in front of him in a half circle. On their knees they aimed their cameras at him as he sat, stunned and dulled, in the chair. One man, stooping slightly and holding his camera balanced carefully before him, backed away from him slowly. A final explosion of light filled the room. It was as though they had been striking matches under his eyes. “That’s it,” one called. “Let’s get out of here.” He could not see them clearly. They moved, blocks of greater and lesser darknesses, like huge, dimly seen, milky chunks of ice retreating slowly in some northern ocean.
“Wait,” he called, not sure they were still in the room, “I have no claims.” There was no answer. “I have no claims,” he shouted. They had not heard him. They would print their story and their pictures and he would appear, tattered and brawling, in their papers, like one deranged, his claims distorted, insisted upon. He would never be able to explain that it was all a harmless hunch that he had acted upon but once. He rubbed his eyes. Gradually he was conscious of the medallion which hung exposed, obscenely visible through the torn shirt, like the phallus of a careless old man.
For three days he lay on the cot in his work clothes, sick in his shabby room. He knew he was feverish. The medallion felt cold against his skin, and once he took it off. He removed the chain from his neck and wrapped it about the medallion; it was very heavy in his hand. He would have liked to throw it away, but at the last minute he found that he could not do it. He had had it too long—all his life. Even its shape, he thought. His very heart must have taken its shape by now. He thought of his heart, shield-shaped beneath his rib cage. He put the chain back around his throat, and again the medallion lay against his skin, a dead weight, useless and cold.
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