The latter paused a moment for breath, then groped carefully for the knife in the dark. His hand had closed on the handle when Varden called to him.
"I've managed the other one," he said. "Let's make a clean get-away while we've got the chance. Discretion is the better part of valour, particularly when you've fixed up the lesser part of it."
Glancing around, Fenton was rather astonished to find that, with the exception of the recumbent figures of the two would-be assassins, they had the street to themselves. The prince and Anna Petrowa had disappeared. Before he had a chance to express his surprise at this circumstance, Varden linked arms with him, and led the way at a brisk pace from the scene of the encounter. Turning the first corner, they espied a motor-car, the huddled figure of its driver silhouetted against the sombre, grey-black sky. Varden spoke one sharp word in Ironian, and opened the door. They slipped into the seats, and the car glided noiselessly away.
"Well," said Fenton when they had settled back comfortably, "where did the others go?"
"The prince's safety was, of course, the first consideration," explained Varden. "Then, of course, he couldn't risk being seen had anyone been attracted by the noise. If it were known that Prince Peter had been mixed up in an affair of this kind, awkward questions would be asked. Accordingly he waited until he saw that we were able to handle the pair, and then he quietly got away, taking Anna with him. It was extremely important that she should not be seen. By this time they've got safely to the other side of the town."
CHAPTER VI
THE KING'S COMMAND
The Princess Olga rose late the next morning. It is a popular myth that persons of royal blood live an entirely different kind of life from the rest of humanity. The universal conception of the life of royalty does not go much beyond gilded carriages, stately balls and glittering banquets. That a princess is liable to relax, to quarrel, to pout, to wheedle, to preen before mirrors, to enjoy the stray bits of gossip that a confidential maid may retail, to read forbidden novels on the sly, in fact to behave the same as any girl of the same age, is a view-point that few have really accepted.
There may have been princesses who lived the prim, stately kind of life that is popularly ascribed to them, and did not allow themselves to be affected by the emotions and weaknesses of common folk, but certainly Olga was not numbered among them. Olga was a princess on the fairly numerous occasions when appearances in state were necessary, but the rest of the time she was just a wholesome, vivacious girl—a girl who liked to ride and play tennis, to wear French clothes and read English novels and to bully everyone in the establishment, from her father down. She was certainly the most unconventional of princesses.
It was well after eleven when a ray of sunshine, finding its way through the heavy damask curtains, had the temerity to seek out the spot where Olga's head nestled snugly in the pillows. Her eyes fluttered and opened. She sat up a little grudgingly, shook back her tangled curls, and rubbed firm knuckles into unwilling eyes—just a pretty, sleepy-headed girl after all.