"'Tis easy to see thou art a soldier, old hobbler," he called to me, and ran and planted himself in my path, and peered up in my face.
"Why's that, clown?" I asked in an old man's voice.
"Because thou canst not help shouldering arms," he cried, humping up his own shoulder in ridicule of mine; and at the silly jest the crowd round burst into roars of loud Court laughter, with cries of "How excellent!" "What wit!" "Who is this great jester?" and a hundred other notes of praise of his wonderful clowning.
I passed on, not ill pleased to have been mistaken for an old man, and I made my way slowly round the grand rooms, looking for the men I had to meet, and wondering why the King was still at large. I kept turning to look back at the place where I had met him, and when at length I saw that he had gone I judged that this meant he had left to change his costume, and that the occasion of that change would be seized for the purposes of the plot. And just as I noticed that a voice which I recognized as the Baron Heckscher's fell on my ear.
"It is long past the hour. Something may have happened."
"I have suspected him from the first. It spells treachery," said another.
It was Herr Kummell.
I had reached the far end of the suite of rooms, and at the back of me was a deep alcove or small ante-room, at the mouth of which the two men were standing, some others being farther inside. I guessed they were speaking of me, and I stood concealed by one of the pillars which supported the domed roof, and kept my back to them, listening with all my ears.
"I do not wish to think that," answered the baron in a tone of assumed reluctance. "But what you have told me is very extraordinary."
"He has purposely put her out of our reach. You will never find her. I am for letting matters pass. If he were here I would tell him to his face what I think."