“Here—at our Court. We have decided to retain you in our service and we count upon your fidelity and the exercise of your uttermost skill.”
Kearns bowed. The ancestor of the distinguished Baron Gold and the numerous other great men who had been wont to invoke his services in the olden time had adopted a tone of supplication rather than of patronage. However, he accepted the change as part and parcel of the new order of things and Mr. Thomas Kearns was a man to adapt himself to any and all existing circumstances.
“Listen, then,” said the King. “For some time past our peace has been disturbed—nay, the safety of our very person threatened—from some unknown source which all the energy of our Secret Service has been unable to discover. We look to you to discover that source—to run to earth these arch-enemies of our peace and safety.”
“Will you furnish me with further details, Sire?”
“It was some months ago,” continued the King, “when we awoke one morning to find a paper on the table beside our bed. It is needless to recount what this paper contained. Suffice that it held demands and threats. You will realize the importance of this happening, for he who had the power to deposit that paper had also the power to have inflicted more material injury.”
Kearns bowed his assent.
“Our sleeping apartment,” resumed the King, “is some fifty feet from the ground. There are sentinels on the roof of the palace and in the grounds below. The sentinels were trebled and other precautions taken and yet again this occurrence came to pass.”
“Another document,” questioned Kearns, “of the same character, deposited under the same circumstances?”
“Precisely,” said the King, and a perceptible shiver passed over him; “but yet stranger things were to happen. Extraordinary precautions were now taken. The surroundings of the room were filled with sentinels, men were posted in the corridors, an officer of the guard stationed in the antechamber. At our side slept our faithful mastiff, Victor—a noble brute, of great sagacity and strength. The doors leading into our apartment were sealed from the inside by our own hand, so that no movement of these doors could be made without disturbing these seals. Were these not precautions enough?”
“The value of a precaution is best tested by its efficacy, Sire,” replied Kearns cautiously.