“If any harm has come to that boy,” vowed Buck fiercely, “I swear that I’ll leave no stone unturned until I find out the guilty parties and punish them!”
Bob bit his lip gloomily.
“We’re all hoping for the best, of course,” said he, “and really I believe that Ned can take care of himself all right.”
“A knife in the back—a blow from a dark doorway as he passed—any of a score of possibilities here,” muttered Buck.
Alan shuddered and made a desperate effort to change the conversation.
“What are we going to do to frustrate this plot on the Emperor’s life!” he asked. “If we do anything on that, it must be pretty soon, because time is flying, and I recall that Ned overheard them say at that other table that the meeting hour had been set for eleven o’clock.”
“That’s right,” chorused the other boys. “We mustn’t let our anxiety for Ned permit us to neglect the other thing. How shall we go about it?”
They missed their chum’s ready foresight in planning a course of action then, but, on the whole, did succeed in mapping out a pretty fair course of procedure. It was Bob Russell’s idea. He said:
“Ned stated that some of the servants in the chateau had been bribed into sympathy with the conspirators and will admit them secretly into the house. The man with the big black beard and he of the twisted mouth were to slip into the sleeping Emperor’s bedchamber through a window reached by a ladder against the wall. The Emperor was to be strangled.
“Now what I suggest is that we use the Ocean Flyer to get there. Landing some distance away so as not to be heard from the chateau, we can then lie in wait hidden by the lawn shrubbery until the miscreants arrive. We can then pounce upon them and nip the murder right in the bud.”