"The Episode of the Exiled Monarch", a.k.a. The Diverting Episode of the Exiled Monarch, is a short story by P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill, which first appeared in the United Kingdom in the August 1914 issue of the Strand, and in the United States in the September 1916 Pictorial Review. It was published in book form in the collection A Man of Means in 1991.
It is the fifth of six stories to feature Roland Bleke, a young man for whom financial success is always a mixed blessing.
Plot summary
A new dance craze, the caoutchouc, has hit town, and Roland Bleke quickly falls for the potent charms of its principal proponent, Maraquita. Finally meeting her, however, he soon realises that he has bitten off more than he can chew. She drags him to her house, which he finds filled with the former aristocracy of Paranoya, a small country reeling from a recent revolution. Bleke discovers that he is expected to fund the liberation of the country from it oppressors.
Plans for a bloody counter-revolution commence, and Bleke finds himself threatened by advocates of the new regime. Maraquita suggests they scupper the enemy by writing a will leaving all Bleke's money to her cause. Bleke finds himself beset with mysterious messages bearing only the word "Beware". Soon, he is brought before the exiled King himself, who reveals that he has no desire to be restored to power and is much happier in exile in England.
Baffled at how to talk his new friends out of their plans, he avoids them for a few days; when he finally visits once more, he finds the mood very different. Bombito, Maraquita's largest and most threatening co-conspirator, takes him aside and reveals all. There has been a political change in Paranoya, and Bombito himself has been made president, negating the need for a revolution. Maraquita, Bombito's wife, will be returning home with him forthwith. A relieved Bleke shakes the man's hand.