rge force of men at that particular
point.

Prince Robin was safe for the night.

CHAPTER XVIII

TRUXTON ON PARADE

Count Marlanx was a soldier. He knew how to take defeat and to bide his
time; he knew how to behave in the hour of victory and in the moment of
rout. The miscarriage of a detail here and there in this vast,
comprehensive plan of action did not in the least sense discourage him.
It was no light blow to his calculations, of course, when the designs of
an organisation separate and distinct from his own failed in their
purpose. It was part of his plan to hold the misguided Reds responsible
for the lamentable death of Prince Robin. The people were to be given
swift, uncontrovertible proof that he had no hand in the unforeseen
transactions of the anarchists, who, he would make it appear, had by
curious coincidence elected to kill the Prince almost at the very hour
when he planned to seize the city as a conqueror.

His own connection with the operations of the mysterious Committee of
Ten was never to be known to the world. He would see to that.

At nine o'clock on Sunday morning a small group of people gathered in
the square: a meeting was soon in progress. A goods-box stood over
against the very spot on which Olga Platanova died. An old man began
haranguing the constantly growing crowd, made up largely of those whose
curiosity surpassed discreetness. In the group might have been seen
every member of the Committee of Ten, besides a full representation of
those who up to now had secretly affiliated with the Party of Equals. A
red flag waved above the little, excited group of fanatics, close to
the goods-box rostrum. One member of the Committee was absent from this,
their first public espousal of the cause. Later on we are to discover
who this man was. Two women in bright red waists were crying
encouragement to the old man on the box, whose opening sentences were no
less than an unchanted requiem for the dead martyr, Olga Platanova.

In the midst of his harangue, the hand of William Spantz was arrested in
one of its most emphatic gestures. A look of wonder and uncertainty came
into his face as he gazed, transfixed, over the heads of his hearers in
the direction of the Tower.

Peter Brutus was approaching, at the head of a group of aliens, all
armed and marching in ominously good order. Something in the face of
Peter Brutus sent a chill of apprehension into the very soul of the old
armourer.

And