‘Then they answered and said before the king, “That Daniel who is of the children of the captivity of Judah, does not regard you, O king, nor the interdict that you have signed, but makes his petition three times a day.” Then the king, when he heard these words, was extremely displeased, and set his heart on delivering Daniel, and he worked hard at rescuing him until the going down of the sun.'
Note their methods. They drew attention to the fact that he was a foreigner, that he was deliberately and provocatively taking no notice of the king, and that he was presumptuously breaking the decree, and doing it regularly.
But the king was not deceived. He now realised what these men had been doing, and that they were succeeding through his own folly. He was angry with himself and angry with them. He had not really been bothered about being the only mediator. As far as he was concerned it had just been a formality, a gesture. So he set about seeing what he could do to remedy the situation.
He probably consulted with lawyers to examine the wording carefully to discover if there was any way by which he could remedy the situation. They no doubt studied the decree diligently. But it had been worded to meet up with such an eventuality. After struggling for the remainder of the day they could find no way round it. It may well be that it was meanwhile the lawyers who were able to tell him something of Daniel's past history and suggest that perhaps his God could look after him.