‘This is our best friend, Alexander. He has come to save us. The assassins have changed their plans, and will be here to-night. A special train has been got ready, and if you can leave the Palace in disguise, all will be well.’ The ascendency of a powerful intellect in the moment of danger made itself felt. Alexander looked about him, half-dazed, as the poor youth well might be, by the ghastly imminence of the peril. ‘What disguise can I wear?’ he demanded, in a choked voice. ‘Change clothes with your valet,’ the Queen replied, with feminine quickness. ‘This gentleman affirms that he is one of the conspirators.’ ‘Constantine! Impossible! I do not believe it.’ Draga wrung her hands. ‘I cannot save him. He is obstinate!’ she sobbed. The sob conquered the stubborn narrow mind which would have resisted all argument. Alexander darted into his dressing-room, from which the valet was just trying to escape. Seizing the man by the throat, Alexander dealt him a blow on the temple which deprived him of his senses. I had followed his Majesty, and I now stripped the valet while the King hastily undressed. While the King was assuming the disguise thus provided for him, I carried the insensible man into the bedroom, and placed him between the royal sheets. At this moment the white face of Anna Petrovitch appeared in the doorway beyond. ‘They are coming! I see them outside in the courtyard.’ ‘Quick, quick!’ burst from the lips of Queen Draga, whose self-possession seemed almost unnatural. And she pushed her husband towards the door of his own dressing-room. ‘This way?’ he exclaimed, his mind unable to keep pace with hers. ‘Yes. You are Constantine. You are in the plot, remember. You must let them in to kill your master, who is asleep.’ I shuddered. My suspicion--for it was hardly more--was going to be fatal to the valet. ‘Go with him,’ Queen Draga added, turning to me. ‘I am safe. I need neither protection nor guidance. He needs both. I adjure you, Andrea!’ Swept away by the torrent of her impetuosity, I followed Alexander to the dressing-room. Draga herself came to the door, and closed it softly after us. We were just in time to meet a party of a dozen soldiers, headed by Colonel Masileff himself. Stepping past the young King, who was shaking like a leaf, I whispered in Masileff’s ear-- ‘Be quiet, or you will awake him. He is lying on the bed, drunk.’ The soldiers filed in past us, not one casting so much as a glance at our faces, shrouded by the darkness. The moment the last man had stepped across the threshold of the dressing-room, I took Alexander by the arm and drew, or rather dragged, him out into the corridor, and down the great staircase of the Palace. We passed out unquestioned. It did not occur to one of the men whom we found outside that Masileff could have missed his prey.