Presently one of them found the switch and instantly the room was flooded with light, which revealed to the American a dozen Luthanian troopers headed by the murderous Maenck.

Barney looked anxiously aloft.  Would Joseph never lower that rope!  Within the room the men were searching.  He could hear Maenck directing them.  Only a thin portiere screened him from their view.  It was but a matter of seconds before they would investigate the window through which Maenck knew the king had found ingress.

Yes!  It had come.

“Look to the window,” commanded Maenck.  “He may have gone as he came.”

Two of the soldiers crossed the room toward the casement.  From above Joseph was lowering the rope; but it was too late.  The men would be at the window before he could clamber out of their reach.

“Hoist away!” he whispered to Joseph.  “Quick now, my man, and make your escape with the Princess von der Tann.  It is the king’s command.”

Already the soldiers were at the window.  At the sound of his voice they tore aside the draperies; at the same instant the pseudo-king turned and leaped out into the blackness of the night.

There were exclamations of surprise and rage from the soldiers—­a woman’s scream.  Then from far below came a dull splash as the body of Bernard Custer struck the surface of the moat.

Maenck, leaning from the window, heard the scream and the splash, and jumped to the conclusion that both the king and the princess had attempted to make their escape in this harebrained way.  Immediately all the resources at his command were put to the task of searching the moat and the adjacent woods.

He was sure that one or both of the prisoners would be stunned by impact with the surface of the water, and then drowned before they regained consciousness, but he did not know Bernard Custer, nor the facility and almost uncanny ease with which that young man could negotiate a high dive into shallow water.

Nor did he know that upon the floor above him one Joseph was hastening along a dark corridor toward a secret panel in another apartment, and that with him was the Princess Emma bound for liberty and safety far from the frowning walls of Blentz.

As Barney’s head emerged above the surface of the moat he shook it vigorously to free his eyes from water, and then struck out for the further bank.

Long before his pursuers had reached the courtyard and alarmed the watch at the barbican, the American had crawled out upon dry land and hastened across the broad clearing to the patch of stunted trees that grew lower down upon the steep hillside before the castle.

He shrank from the thought of leaving Blentz without knowing positively that Joseph had made good the escape of himself and the princess, but he finally argued that even if they had been retaken, he could serve her best by hastening to her father and fetching the only succor that might prevail against the strength of Blentz—­armed men in sufficient force to storm the ancient fortress.