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Updated: June 15, 2025
Maenck took a step toward Barney and Butzow, when old Prince von der Tann interposed his giant frame with grim resolve. "Hold!" He spoke in a low, stern voice that brought the cowardly Maenck to a sudden halt. The men of Tann had pressed eagerly forward until they stood, with bared swords, a solid rank of fighting men in grim semicircle behind their chief.
Within the room the men were searching. He could hear Maenck directing them. Only a thin portiere screened him from their view. It was but a matter of seconds before they would investigate the window through which Maenck knew the king had found ingress. Yes! It had come. "Look to the window," commanded Maenck. "He may have gone as he came."
Maenck and Coblich had seen the king's break for liberty, and the latter maneuvered to get himself between Butzow and the open gate that he might follow after the fleeing monarch.
"Take the king to his apartments, Stein," he commanded curtly, "and you, Lieutenant Butzow, accompany them with a guard, nor leave until you see that he is safely confined. You may return here afterward for my further instructions. In the meantime I wish to examine the king's mistress." For a moment tense silence reigned in the apartment after Maenck had delivered his wanton insult.
Barney had, as far as possible, kept his face averted from Maenck since they had entered the lighted castle. He hoped to escape recognition, for he knew that if his identity were guessed it might go hard with the princess. As for himself, it might go even harder, but of that he gave scarcely a thought the safety of the princess was paramount.
In this instance he was not even a man in the estimation of Barney Custer. Maenck took a step toward the prisoner a menacing step, for his hand had gone to his sword. Barney met him with a level look from between narrowed lids. Maenck hesitated, for he was a great coward.
"You would not dare thus to humiliate a Von der Tann?" "I am very sorry," said the officer, "but I am a soldier, and soldiers must obey their superiors. My orders are strict. You may be thankful," he added, "that it was not Maenck who discovered you." At the mention of the name the girl shuddered.
"After you escaped the entire personnel of the garrison here was changed, even the old servants to a man were withdrawn and others substituted. You will have difficulty in again escaping, for those who aided you before are no longer here." "There is no man in the castle of Blentz who has ever seen the king?" asked Barney. "None who has seen him before tonight," replied Maenck.
Quick, your majesty," and without waiting to see if he were followed the lieutenant raced for the door of the apartment. Close behind him came the American and the seventeen. It took but a moment to reach the stairway down which the rescuers tumbled pell-mell. Maenck was giving his commands to the firing squad with fiendish deliberation and delay.
He crossed over toward her and would have laid a rough hand upon her arm. The girl sprang away from him, running to the opposite side of the library table at which she had been reading. Maenck started to pursue her, when she seized a heavy, copper bowl that stood upon the table and hurled it full in his face.
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