CHAPTER III
THE JAGUAR
In all an Englishman’s wonder and impatience at so intolerable a system of surveillance, I made my way back to the palace.
The dance was in full swing again. In the crowd I could not for the moment see any one of my three friends. The King was on a daïs chatting in animated fashion to a group standing round him. His daughter, the Princess Casilde, presently came out of the throng of dancers, and sat beside him, joining laughingly in the conversation. I saw the great cavalry swell, the Master of the Horse, Von Orsova, waltzing with a plain-looking girl, and was just wondering what sort of a soldier’s heart beat beneath that glorious tunic, when Von Lindheim came up.
“Lindheim,” I said, “a queer thing happened after you fellows left me just now.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, looking grave, though he tried to smile.
“I was passing through the wood by the chapel when a fellow accosted me, and——”
He stopped me. “Hush, for Heaven’s sake. Here! Come in here and tell me. How do you like the new decoration?” he went on in a louder tone, with a wave of the hand towards the ceiling and walls; “this is only the second time the Saal has been used since the scaffolding came down. It was closed all the spring.”
His extraordinary change of tone and subject led me for a moment to wonder whether he had not been paying too assiduous court to the Royal champagne: then I concluded that it was a blind. Talking on commonplace subjects, we sauntered across the adjoining music-saal, thence to a deserted room, one of the great suite of state apartments.
“Now,” he said, lowering his voice and speaking anxiously, “tell me what happened.”