For a moment Myles stood rooted to the spot; then, tearing his feet free, he rushed to his fallen enemy and plucked out the dagger. From the wound there gushed bright cerise-colored blood, foamy with white bubbles. Myles turned the body over, and listened at the right side of the chest. Not a sound. Then, the Prince’s chest collapsed, with a sigh, a little more blood welled out of the mouth, and all was still once more.
Prince Yuri, the most highly developed specimen of Cupian manhood—but a renegade, traitor, rejected wooer of the Princess Lilla, pretender to the throne of Cupia—Prince Yuri was dead!
And such an ignominious death for one of his high spirit to die! Stabbed in the back by a woman.
Cabot rose and faced her, the jeweled dagger still in his hand. “Who are you?” he asked. “And why did you do it?”
“I am Okapa,” she replied in a strained voice—“Okapa from the mountain village of Pronth. Do you remember how in the Second War of Liberation you found Luno Castle deserted and a slain infant lying on the royal bier?”
“Can I ever forget it?” he answered, his mind going back into the past. “Naturally I thought it was my baby son, whom I had never seen. Therefore I fought all the harder against the usurper Yuri until I drove him and his ant allies southward, rejoined Lilla in Kuana, and learned that little Kew was safe, and that the dead child was but an orphan baby whom Lilla had substituted for our own baby for fear of just such an outcome.”
“It was no orphan!” Okapa shrieked. “It was mine—mine! The dead child was mine! Yuri stabbed my child and now I have stabbed him with the selfsame dagger. Yuri killed my baby, and I have slain him, and now I must die myself for killing a king.”
So saying, her anger spent, she flung herself upon the couch and wept silently, as is the habit of Cupians.
Just then the Princess Lilla in a black gown swept into the room.
“They told me the king wished to see me here,” she said. “Where is the king?”
She stopped abruptly as she saw the body on the floor. Then her eyes rose until they rested on Myles Cabot. With a glad cry she rushed toward his outstretched arms.
But a peremptory shout of “Hands up!” from the doorway caused her to halt. She was between Myles and the door. He still held the jeweled dagger in his hand. Stepping quickly to one side, he cast it straight at Tobo who stood by the entrance, a rifle in his hands; and before the Cupian soldier could raise his weapon to fire, the missile had penetrated his heart. Down he went with a crash.