"I have forgotten some important business at Bock." "Not boar hunting again ?" she said poutingly.
"No, I'm hunting a red dear," I said with that playful subtlety which would make her take it as a personal compliment, though I was only thinking of that impostor, and longing to get at him, as I bowed and withdrew.
In another hour I was before Black Michael's castle at Bock.

These are lightning changes, I know--and the sovereignty of Trulyruralania WAS somewhat itinerant--but when a kingdom and a beautiful Princess are at stake, what are you to do?
Fritz had begged me to take him along, but I arranged that he should come later, and go up unostentatiously in the lift.

I was going by way of the moat.

I was to succor the King, but I fear my real object was to get at Rupert of Glasgow.
I had noticed the day before that a large outside drain pipe, decreed by the Bock County Council, ran from the moat to the third floor of the donjon keep.

I surmised that the King was imprisoned on that floor.
Examining the pipe closely, I saw that it was really a pneumatic dispatch tube, for secretly conveying letters and dispatches from the castle through the moat beyond the castle walls.