The valet swore that he did not know. In the morning no one was allowed to enter the room except himself; he had come half an hour ago to open the windows and then had seen nothing: "The only explanation, sir, is that some one must have stolen into the park and flung it through the window...." This doubtless was the only explanation, but it was an explanation that irritated the emperor greatly. It was not the first time that the emperor had found such notices in the intimacy of his writing-room. The result was the sudden arrest of servants, of soldiers belonging to the various guards in the Imperial; but arrests and enquiries had brought nothing to light and therefore made an all the more painful impression. The guards of the palaces, the guards at the gilt railings of the park, where this merged into the Elizabeth Parks--the public gardens of the capital--were already increased; the secret police, the emperor's own police, even kept a sharp watch on the guards themselves. The Emperor Oscar looked fixedly at the valet; for a moment the thought rose in him to have the man himself examined, but he at once realized the absurdity of any such suspicion: the man had been his personal servant for years and years, was entirely devoted to him and stood answering Oscar's long stare with calm, respectful eyes, evidently pondering the mystery of the strange riddle. "Burn that thing," commanded the emperor, "and don't talk about it." Subsequently Oscar had a long interview with the head of his secret police, with whom he had lately had every reason to be satisfied: secret printing-presses of anarchist papers, which were continually being distributed, had been ferreted out; a plot to wreck the imperial train on its way from Castel Xaveria, the summer-palace in Xara, to Lipara had been frustrated; suspicion of being connected with anarchist committees had fallen upon a clerk in one of the government-offices and even upon a young officer and it was proved that the suspicion was correct in both cases. Quite recently the police had discovered a workshop in which men were taught how to manufacture dynamite-bombs and infernal machines. But who the insolent miscreants were who succeeded in flinging their threatening letters into the emperor's own room: this they had not been able to discover. For a whole week the windows had been watched from the park and all that time nothing had been seen; it was now a couple of days since that secret watch had been given up. The head of the secret police felt convinced that the culprits were lurking in the Imperial itself and acquainted with the emperor's private habits. Sudden visits were paid to the rooms of any servants at the Imperial of whom there was the least doubt; and, when a groom was found to be in possession of an anarchist leaflet containing words of insult directed against the emperor, the man was banished to one of the convict sections of the eastern quick-silver-mines.