Summary
Chicago’s electric night spills blood and pride across terrazzo tiles; Dick Mason—fists clenched like ivory mallets—defends a nameless girl from a senator’s groping son, and the scandal ricochets through yellow press ink. Banishment arrives disguised as opportunity: a steam-ticket to Kaunas, where Mason père owns a rust-flecked herd and a crumbling empire of horn and hoof. On the Atlantic swell, fate performs its sleight-of-hand—the girl becomes Princess Alexia, traveling incognita beneath a veil of governess wool. Salt-spray and moonlit snubs kindle something fiercer than lust: a duel of glances across first-class lacquer, her silence a sabre, his persistence a drumbeat. Lithuania greets them with birch-forest gloom and vodka that burns like absinthe memory. Count Vortsky—minister, plotter, collector of porcelain reputations—covets the concession because it borders a rail spur he can mortgage for rifles. In marbled halls smelling of bear-fat candles, he offers Mason gold enough to gild every church dome between Vilnius and the Black Sea; Mason stalls, insisting on the princess’s counsel. The count’s smile is a scalpel. Revolution erupts in umber dawn: Cossack boots drum the cobbles, bells clang like cracked hearts, and the cattle—panicked ghosts—gore militiamen in the cathedral square. Mason, flanked by two Chicago stevedores who smuggle Tommy-guns inside violin cases, storms the arsenal, turning the coup into a carnival of ricochets and flaming hay carts. Alexia, silk hem soaked in gutter water, crowns him with her own circlet of bullets. When the smoke coils away, the concession is no longer a deed but a dowry; the Yankee, grinning through soot, claims both princess and prairie of the mind.
Synopsis
Dick Mason is arrested for defending a girl's honor in a Chicago restaurant brawl, and his father sends him to Lithuania where his family owns a share in a cattle concession. By chance, the girl from the restaurant is also bound for the Balkans. While on board, Dick undertakes to renew his acquaintance with this attractive foreigner, but encounters considerable resistance. In Lithuania, Dick meets with Count Vortsky, the Minister of Finance, who presses him to sell his cattle concession, hoping to clinch a coup attempt he is planning with the Bulgarian Ambassador. Somewhat suspicious, Dick agrees to announce his decision only in the presence of Princess Alexia, who turns out to be the girl from the restaurant. When she advises him not to sell, the love-bitten Dick refuses the count. The count nevertheless instigates a revolution, but with the help of his Chicago assistants, Dick squelches the uprising and wins the princess' heart.
