THE WORLD SET FREE
his moustache with short, nervous tugs whenever his restless mind troubled him, and now this motion was becoming so incessant that it irked Pestovitch beyond the limits of endurance.
"I will go," said the minister, "and see what the trouble is with the wireless. They give us nothing, good or bad."
Left to himself, the king could worry his moustache without stint; he leant his elbows forward on the balcony and gave both of his long white hands to the work, so that he looked like a pale dog gnawing a bone. Suppose they caught his men, what should he do? Suppose they caught his men?
The clocks in the light gold-capped belfries of the town below presently intimated the half-hour after midday.
Of course, he and Pestovitch had thought it out. Even if they had caught those men, they were pledged to secrecy. . . . Probably they would be killed in the catching. . . . One could deny anyhow, deny and deny.
And then he became aware of half a dozen little shining specks very high in the blue. . . .
Pestovitch came out to him presently. "The government messages, sire, have all dropped into cipher," he said. "I have set a man———"
192
