‘You will sign that,’ said the ex-king.

‘Why?’

‘To show that we aren’t in any way hostile to you.’

Pestovitch nodded ‘yes’ to his master.

‘And then, you see,’ said the ex-king in that easy way of his, ’we’ll have a lot of men here, borrow help from your police, and run through all your things.  And then everything will be over.  Meanwhile, if I may be your guest....’  When presently Pestovitch was alone with the king again, he found him in a state of jangling emotions.  His spirit was tossing like a wind-whipped sea.  One moment he was exalted and full of contempt for ‘that ass’ and his search; the next he was down in a pit of dread.  ‘They will find them, Pestovitch, and then he’ll hang us.’

‘Hang us?’

The king put his long nose into his councillor’s face.  ’That grinning brute wants to hang us,’ he said.  ’And hang us he will, if we give him a shadow of a chance.’

‘But all their Modern State Civilisation!’

’Do you think there’s any pity in that crew of Godless, Vivisecting Prigs?’ cried this last king of romance.  ’Do you think, Pestovitch, they understand anything of a high ambition or a splendid dream?  Do you think that our gallant and sublime adventure has any appeal to them?  Here am I, the last and greatest and most romantic of the Caesars, and do you think they will miss the chance of hanging me like a dog if they can, killing me like a rat in a hole?  And that renegade!  He who was once an anointed king! . . .

‘I hate that sort of eye that laughs and keeps hard,’ said the king.

‘I won’t sit still here and be caught like a fascinated rabbit,’ said the king in conclusion.  ‘We must shift those bombs.’

‘Risk it,’ said Pestovitch.  ‘Leave them alone.’

‘No,’ said the king.  ’Shift them near the frontier.  Then while they watch us here—­they will always watch us here now—­we can buy an aeroplane abroad, and pick them up....’

The king was in a feverish, irritable mood all that evening, but he made his plans nevertheless with infinite cunning.  They must get the bombs away; there must be a couple of atomic hay lorries, the bombs could be hidden under the hay....  Pestovitch went and came, instructing trusty servants, planning and replanning....  The king and the ex-king talked very pleasantly of a number of subjects.  All the while at the back of King Ferdinand Charles’s mind fretted the mystery of his vanished aeroplane.  There came no news of its capture, and no news of its success.  At any moment all that power at the back of his visitor might crumble away and vanish....