"Oh, get up," said the King, who felt a special aversion to such a display of abasement. "Recover your wits, man, and tell me what you want!"
"I ask protection, your Majesty," murmured the desperate Sobieski. "My life is in danger. I came here to see Monsieur Poluski; but they told me he was not at home. I have been turned out of my situation; so I have nowhere to go. If I am found wandering in the streets to-night, I shall be killed."
"At any rate, you seem to be thoroughly frightened," cried Alec with a reassuring smile. "Take charge of him," he said to the pandur, "and have him sent to my bureau in five minutes!"
The bureau in question was that apartment on the first floor overlooking the courtyard, in which Alec had preferred his claim to the throne of Kosnovia to the perplexed President of the embryo Republic. It was there, too, that Felix Poluski had spoken those plain words to Prince Michael Delgrado, and its situation was so convenient for the King's daily comings and goings that he had utilized it temporarily as an office and private audience chamber.
At the top of the stairs he happened to catch sight of Pauline, Joan's staid looking maid. Though he obtained only a casual glimpse of her, he fancied that she was distressed about something, and it occurred to him after he was in the room and the door was closed that perhaps she wished to give him a message. Bosko, the taciturn Albanian whom he had now definitely appointed as his confidential attendant, was standing near the table with a bundle of documents that demanded the King's signature.
Realizing that the Frenchwoman would meet Bosko in a minute or two when he went out with the signed papers, and could then make known her wish to speak to the King if such was her intention, Alec bent over the table and began to peruse several departmental decrees hurriedly. He made it a rule never to append his name to any State paper without mastering its contents, and one of the palace guards brought in Sobieski before Alec had concluded his self imposed task. As it happened, the various items were mere formalities, and when he wrote "Alexis R." for the last time, Bosko and the soldier left the room, and the frightened little Pole found himself alone with the King.
"Now," said Alec kindly, "tell me what you want and why you are so afraid?"
Sobieski at once plunged into a rambling statement. He spoke the Kosnovian language with the fluent inaccuracy of his class; but Alec's alert ears had no difficulty in following his meaning. His story was that several customers of the café had denounced him to the proprietor as a spy in the King's service, while some of them went so far as to charge him with responsibility for the deaths of those thirty-one heroes of the Seventh Regiment whose bodies had been found on the stairs and first floor landing of the hotel. His master had no option but to discharge him, and Sobieski felt that he had good reason to fear that his life was in danger. Alec pooh-poohed the notion; but the timid little waiter was so woebegone that the King pitied him.
"Tell me exactly what you did on the day of the revolt," he said. "You came here, I understand. How was it that no one listened to you?"
"Oh, they did, your Majesty," protested Sobieski. "Your Majesty's own father brought me into the hall and kept me there nearly five minutes. He did not believe a word I said, and was very angry with me for bringing such an alarming story to the palace. At last, by good fortune, Monsieur Nesimir appeared; but even then I should have been taken away in custody if Monsieur Poluski had not caused me to be released."