Free The Prince Commands: Being Sundry Adventures of Michael Karl, Sometime Crown Prince & Pretender to the Thrown of Morvania by Andre Norton Page B

the safest place for it. He held it in his hand and looked around, if he could carry it with him—His boots! It wouldn't be the first time he had concealed something in the tops of his boots. He still had on Heinrich's too large ones which made it all the better. Michael Karl tucked the green envelope into the top of his riding boot.
    He was still wearing the green breeches and tunic which had been given him in the Crown Inn. None of Ericson's clothes would fit him, and in these he could better keep up the fiction of being some sort of a secretary chauffeur.
    The American was not there for lunch but that was nothing unusual, he didn't eat more than half of his meals at the house. Michael Karl tasted the spicy dishes with some satisfaction. He was growing to like Morvanian cooking so well that Ericson had laughingly warned him about his waistline.
    Feeling well fed, drowsy, and very much at peace with the world Michael Karl limped back to the library. He was safe from all but unexpected interruptions until four when Jan would bustle in with the afternoon tea, and Ericson would lounge in to pour himself the cup he never drank and sit telling Michael Karl interesting things about his day's work until his tea cooled and he ordered it taken away in disgust. In all the time Michael Karl had been there he had never seen the American drink his tea.
    The list of the week's letters had been made, neatly copied and laid on Ericson's desk for his attention, and Michael Karl felt free to return to his language studies. He had a method all his own for the learning of irregular verbs which he was using this afternoon. One said the verb over three or four times looking at the book and then the book was put aside. Fixing his eyes firmly on the opposite wall, Michael Karl would try to picture the word spelled out letter by letter on its polished surface.
    “I-a-g—g—What does come next?” Michael Karl sternly repressed the desire to look in the book and began again. “I-A-G—” But again it refused to form under his eyes. Perhaps that corner in the panel made too much of a shadow and so distracted his attention. Why that was queer, none of the other panels had that odd shadowed corner in them.
    He laid down his book and crossed the room. The shadow in the panel provoked his curiosity. Why, part of the wall was sticking out! With his finger nails he caught and tugged at the edge. Something gave way and the whole panel swung out noiselessly like a door.
    It must be the secret passage of which Ericson had told him. Without thinking he boldly clambered through. On a shell beside the door lay a flashlight. Then Ericson or some one in the house used the passage and used it often enough to leave the light there.
    Michael Karl remembered things which had puzzled him, Ericson's intimate knowledge of the palace and its inhabitants for instance. He hesitated—would it be exactly playing the game to follow the passage and learn its secret? If Ericson had wanted him to know about it wouldn't he have told him?
    And then he thought of the Cross. What better way of returning it unseen than to use the secret passage? He examined the inner fastening of the panel so that he would be sure to get it open again and picked up the torch. As the panel clicked shut behind him he felt a little tingle of excitement run up his back. He was off adventuring again.
    The passage ran straight for a couple of yards and then ended in a flight of narrow stone steps. Michael Karl eyed them doubtfully, his feet were apt even now to protest when tried too much. But the excitement of adventure made him try it.
    The air in the passage was chill but fresh and there was none of the dank sliminess which Michael Karl had always associated with underground passages. He must be inside the mountain itself, climbing the distance between the Pala Horn and the Palace Fortress.
    The stairs were bisected suddenly by a deep landing. There was the outline of a door on the right wall and in