"It was about him that I came to speak," said the General, walking into the middle of the room.
"You have taken him, of course," said the King. "I told you to employ four men."
"I followed your Majesty's advice," said Meyer. "I was wrong. I should have followed Herr Saunders'. He advised, if I remember rightly, a battalion of Guards and a squadron of Dragoons."
"Do you mean to say," demanded the King, with some warmth, "that four armed men were incapable of dealing with one priest?"
"So it appears," returned Meyer calmly. "They say there was some sort of a rescue. That, of course, may be a lie to excuse their failure. Any way, one of them is suffering from a broken thigh, the result of a fall from a window. Another has a dislocated jaw. Two others,—who pursued our friend down the Sichelgasse—were foolish enough to follow him along the banks of the Niederkessel. Fortunately they could both swim."
The King turned with a gesture of impatient weariness to Saunders.
"What do you say?" he demanded.
"Yes, what do you say?" said Meyer, putting up his eyeglass and fixing his glance on the Englishman.
Saunders shrugged his shoulders.
"Oh, I say, that there evidently must have been some sort of a rescue."