Gaydon jumped up from his chair.

“But upon my word there is a cupboard,” he cried, and crossing to a corner of the room he opened a door and looked in.  Wogan laughed again as though Gaydon’s examination of the cupboard was a very good joke.

“There will be nobody in it,” he cried.  “Gaydon will never feel a hand gripping the life out of his throat because he forgot to search a cupboard.”

The cupboard was empty, as it happened.  But Gaydon had left the door of the street open when he went out to meet Wogan; there had been time and to spare for any man to creep upstairs and hide himself had there been a man in Schlestadt that night minded to hear.  Gaydon returned to his chair.

“We are to draw the biggest prize in all Europe,” said Wogan.

“There!” cried O’Toole.  “Will you be pleased to remember when next I have an idea that I was right?”

“But not for ourselves,” added Wogan.

O’Toole’s face fell.

“Oh, we are to hand it on to a third party,” said he.

“Yes.”

“Well, after all, that’s quite of a piece with our luck.”

“Who is the third party?” asked Misset.

“The King.”

Misset started up from his chair and leaned forward, his hands upon the arms.

“The King,” said O’Toole; “to be sure, that makes a difference.”

Gaydon asked quietly, “And what is the prize?”

“The Princess Clementina,” said Wogan.  “We are to rescue her from her prison in Innspruck.”

Even Gaydon was startled.

“We four!” he exclaimed.

“We four!” repeated Misset, staring at Wogan.  His mouth was open; his eyes started from his head; he stammered in his speech.  “We four against a nation, against half Europe!”

O’Toole simply crossed to a corner of the room, picked up his sword and buckled it to his waist.

“I am ready,” said he.

Wogan turned round in his chair and smiled.

“I know that,” said he.  “So are we all—­all ready; is not that so, my friends?  We four are ready.”  And he looked to Misset and to Gaydon.  “Here’s an exploit, if we but carry it through, which even antiquity will be at pains to match!  It’s more than an exploit, for it has the sanctity of a crusade.  On the one side there’s tyranny, oppression, injustice, the one woman who most deserves a crown robbed of it.  And on the other—­”

“There’s the King,” said Gaydon; and the three brief words seemed somehow to quench and sober Wogan.

“Yes,” said he; “there’s the King, and we four to serve him in his need.  We are few, but in that lies our one hope.  They will never look for four men, but for many.  Four men travelling to the shrine of Loretto with the Pope’s passport may well stay at Innspruck and escape a close attention.”

“I am ready,” O’Toole repeated.

“But we shall not start to-night.  There’s the passport to be got, a plan to be arranged.”