“You will breathe no word of this passage, Major Gaydon,” said he.  “The house was built a century ago when Rome was more troubled than it is to-day, but the passage was never more useful than now.  Men from England, whose names it would astonish you to know, have trodden these steps on a secret visit to the King.  Ah!” From the wall before their faces a great slab of the size of a door sank noiselessly down and disclosed a wooden panel.  The panel slid aside.  Edgar and Gaydon stepped into a little cabinet lighted by a single window.  The room was empty.  Gaydon took a peep out of the window and saw the Tiber eddying beneath.  Edgar went to a corner and touched a spring.  The stone slab rose from its grooves; the panel slid back across it; at the same moment the door of the room was opened, and the Chevalier stepped across the threshold.

Gaydon could no longer even pretend to doubt who had walked with Whittington to the Caprara Palace the night before.  It was none of his business, however, he assured himself.  If his King dwelt with emphasis upon the dangers of the enterprise, it was not his business to remark upon it or to be thereby disheartened.  The King said very graciously that he would hold the major and his friends in no less esteem if by any misfortune they came back empty-handed.  That was most kind of him, but it was none of Gaydon’s business.  The King was ill at ease and looked as though he had not slept a wink the livelong night.  Well, swollen eyes and a patched pallid face disfigure all men at times, and in any case they were none of Gaydon’s business.

He rode out of Rome that afternoon as the light was failing.  He rode at a quick trot, and did not notice at the corner of a street a big stalwart man who sauntered along swinging his stick by the tassel with a vacant look of idleness upon the passers-by.  He stopped and directed the same vacant look at Gaydon.

But he was thinking curiously, “Will he tell Charles Wogan?”

The stalwart man was Harry Whittington.

Gaydon, however, never breathed a word about the Caprara Palace when he handed the passport to Charles Wogan at Schlestadt.  Wogan was sitting propped up with pillows in a chair, and he asked Gaydon many questions of the news at Rome, and how the King bore himself.

“The King was not in the best of spirits,” said Gaydon.

“With this,” cried Wogan, flourishing the passport, “we’ll find a means to hearten him.”

Gaydon filled a pipe and lighted it.

“Will you tell me, Wogan,” he asked,—­“I am by nature curious,—­was it the King who proposed this enterprise to you, or was it you who proposed it to the King?”

The question had an extraordinary effect.  Wogan was startled out of his chair.