re and be caught like a fascinated rabbit,' said
the king in conclusion. 'We must shift those bombs.'

'Risk it,' said Pestovitch. 'Leave them alone.'

'No,' said the king. 'Shift them near the frontier. Then while they
watch us here--they will always watch us here now--we can buy an
aeroplane abroad, and pick them up....'

The king was in a feverish, irritable mood all that evening, but he made
his plans nevertheless with infinite cunning. They must get the bombs
away; there must be a couple of atomic hay lorries, the bombs could be
hidden under the hay.... Pestovitch went and came, instructing trusty
servants, planning and replanning.... The king and the ex-king talked
very pleasantly of a number of subjects. All the while at the back
of King Ferdinand Charles's mind fretted the mystery of his vanished
aeroplane. There came no news of its capture, and no news of its
success. At any moment all that power at the back of his visitor might
crumble away and vanish....

It was past midnight, when the king, in a cloak and slouch hat
that might equally have served a small farmer, or any respectable
middle-class man, slipped out from an inconspicuous service gate on the
eastward side of his palace into the thickly wooded gardens that sloped
in a series of terraces down to the town. Pestovitch and his guard-valet
Peter, both wrapped about in a similar disguise, came out among the
laurels that bordered the pathway and joined him. It was a clear, warm
night, but the stars seemed unusually little and remote because of the
aeroplanes, each trailing a searchlight, that drove hither and thither
across the blue. One great beam seemed to rest on the king for a moment
as he came out of the palace; then instantly and reassuringly it had
swept away. But while they were still in the palace gardens another
found them and looked at them.

'They see us,' cried the king.

'They make nothing of us,' said Pestovitch.

The king glanced up and met a calm, round eye of light, that seemed to
wink at him and vanish, leaving him blinded....

The three men went on their way. Near the little gate in the garden
railings that Pestovitch had caused to be unlocked, the king paused
under the shadow of an flex and looked back at the place. It was
very high and narrow, a twentieth-century rendering of mediaevalism,
mediaevalism in steel and bronze and sham stone and opaque glass.
Against the sky it splashed a confusion of pinnacles. High up in the
ea