Butzow drew alongside the American.
“What can it mean?” asked Barney. “That fellow is a trooper, but I cannot make out his uniform.”
“Wait here,” said Butzow, and slipping from his horse he crept closer to the man, hugging the dense shadows close to the trees.
Barney reined in nearer the low wall. From his saddle he could see the grounds beyond through the branches of a tree. As he looked his attention was suddenly riveted upon a sight that sent his heart into his throat.
Three men were dragging a struggling, half-naked figure down the gravel walk from the sanatorium toward the gate. One kept a hand clapped across the mouth of the prisoner, who struck and fought his assailants with all the frenzy of despair.
Barney leaped from his saddle and ran headlong after Butzow. The lieutenant had reached the gate but an instant ahead of him when the trooper, turning suddenly at some slight sound of the officer’s foot upon the ground, detected the man creeping upon him. In an instant the fellow had whipped out a revolver, and raising it fired point-blank at Butzow’s chest; but in the same instant a figure shot out of the shadows beside him, and with the report of the revolver a heavy fist caught the trooper on the side of the chin, crumpling him to the ground as if he were dead.
The blow had been in time to deflect the muzzle of the firearm, and the bullet whistled harmlessly past the lieutenant.
“Your majesty!” exclaimed Butzow excitedly. “Go back. He might have killed you.”
Barney leaped to the other’s side and grasping him by the shoulders wheeled him about so that he faced the gate.
“There, Butzow,” he cried, “there is your king, and from the looks of it he never needed a loyal subject more than he does this moment. Come!” Without waiting to see if the other followed him, Barney Custer leaped through the gate full in the faces of the astonished trio that was dragging Leopold of Lutha from his sanctuary.