"Burroughs, Edgar Rice - The Mad King" - читать интересную книгу автора (Burroughs Edgar Rice)

your permission, I shall go at once and dispatch troops to
search the forest for Leopold. Captain Maenck will command
them."

"Good, Coblich! Maenck is a most intelligent and loyal
officer. We must reward him well. A baronetcy, at least, if
he handles this matter well," said Peter. "It might not be a
bad plan to hint at as much to him, Coblich."

And so it happened that shortly thereafter Captain Ernst
Maenck, in command of a troop of the Royal Horse Guards
of Lutha, set out toward the Old Forest, which lies beyond
the mountains that are visible upon the other side of the
plain stretching out before Lustadt. At the same time other
troopers rode in many directions along the highways and
byways of Lutha, tacking placards upon trees and fence posts
and beside the doors of every little rural post office.

The placard told of the escape of the mad king, offering
a large reward for his safe return to Blentz.

It was the last paragraph especially which caused a young
man, the following day in the little hamlet of Tafelberg, to
whistle as he carefully read it over.

"I am glad that I am not the mad king of Lutha," he said
as he paid the storekeeper for the gasoline he had just pur-
chased and stepped into the gray roadster for whose greedy
maw it was destined.

"Why, mein Herr?" asked the man.

"This notice practically gives immunity to whoever shoots
down the king," replied the traveler. "Worse still, it gives
such an account of the maniacal ferocity of the fugitive as
to warrant anyone in shooting him on sight."

As the young man spoke the storekeeper had examined
his face closely for the first time. A shrewd look came into
the man's ordinarily stolid countenance. He leaned forward
quite close to the other's ear.

"We of Lutha," he whispered, "love our 'mad king'--no
reward could be offered that would tempt us to betray him.
Even in self-protection we would not kill him, we of the
mountains who remember him as a boy and loved his father
and his grandfather, before him.

"But there are the scum of the low country in the army
these days, who would do anything for money, and it is