Heartily anathematizing his chief, who was gratefully expressing his interest in chowder, Mr. Poynter stared perversely at his cuff.

“I wonder,” he reflected uneasily, “just what he wants and how in thunder he knew!”

The Baron, gracefully adapting himself to woodland exigencies, supplied the answer.

“Dr. Wingate,” he boomed, “is at the Sherrill farm.  Themar officiously fancied he could fly and had a most distressing fall yesterday from the smaller biplane.”  His deep, compelling eyes lingered upon Philip’s face.  “Dr. Wingate spoke some of an unlucky young man marooned in a forest with a knife wound in his shoulder—­described him—­and behold!—­my missing secretary is found after considerable bewilderment and uneasiness on my part.  Wingate will stop here later.”

Philip civilly expressed regret that he had not thought to dispatch Johnny to the Sherrill farm with a message.

“It is nothing!” shrugged Tregar smoothly.

“One forgets under less mitigating causes.”  And, having begged the details of Philip’s adventure, he listened with careful attention.

“It is exceedingly mysterious,” he rumbled, after a frowning interval of thought.  “But surely one must feel much gratitude to you, Miss Westfall.  A night in the storm without attention and we have complications.”

Over his coffee, which he sipped clear with the appreciation of an epicure, the Baron, in his suave, inscrutable way, grew reminiscent.  He talked well, selecting, discarding, weighing his words with the fastidious precision of a jeweler setting precious stones.  Subtly the talk drifted to Houdania.

There was a mad king—­Rodobald—­upon the throne.  Doubtless the Baron’s hostess had heard?  No?  Ah!  So must the baffling twist of a man’s brain complicate the destiny of a kingdom.  And Rodobald was hale at sixty-five and mad as the hare of March.  There had been much talk of it.  Singular, was it not?

Followed a sparkling anecdote or so of court life and shrugging reference to the jealous principality of Galituria that lay beyond in the valley.  To Galiturians the madness of King Rodobald was an exquisite jest.

Philip grew restless.

“Confound him!” he mused resentfully.  “One would think I had deliberately contrived to linger here merely to give him a graceful opportunity to accomplish his infernal errand himself.  Thank Heaven this lets me out!” He glanced furtively at Diane.  The girl’s interest was wholesomely without constraint.

“Great guns!” decided Philip fretfully.  “I doubt if she’s ever heard of his toy kingdom before and yet he’s probing her interest with every atom of skill he can command.”  Puzzled and annoyed he fell quiet.

“It is somewhat inaccessible—­my country,” Tregar was saying smoothly.  “One climbs the shaggy mountain by a winding road.  You have climbed it perhaps—­touring?”