"Oh dear," said Joan. "I'm not fitted for this kind of a life. I'm
a secretary, a darned good secretary. I don't know how I ever got
involved in this mess."
From the queen's apartment they emerged into a broad passage. A
concourse of Mercurians moved in streams all about them. They flung
eager questions at their guards, chattered, laughed. The flutes, too,
were audible once more: thin treble pipings, like the pipes of Pan,
Jaro thought.
"How long does the Festival last?" he asked Joan.
"What?" she said. "Oh. Roughly a week. It's half over now."
They came to the end of the corridor, mounted a broad staircase. Jaro
sensed that they were still deep in the bowels of Mercury. At length,
they were halted before a massive door. A priest stood at the entrance.
There was an exchange of words between their captors and the solitary
guard. Satisfied, the priest stood aside, flung open the door. Jaro and
Joan were motioned inside. The portal clanged shut behind them.
"Caught again," said Joan. "I'll never feel at home now unless I'm
behind bars."
Jaro chuckled. "This isn't a jail," he pointed out. "The cells are
below us. I think we are about to see Karfial Hodes at last."
* * * * *
The room in which Jaro and Joan found themselves was a large, bare,
vaulted hall. At the far end, Jaro saw an imposing door. He advanced
curiously toward it.
"Are we just supposed to wait?" asked Joan. "How does Karfial Hodes
know we're here?"
"He's probably been notified by visoscreen," he assured her. He pushed
experimentally at the massive door. It moved easily beneath his touch.
"Hey!" he said. "It's not locked." His voice echoed hollowly in the
vaulted antichamber.
"Are we going in?" asked Joan weakly. "As if I didn't know already."
Jaro gave the door a push. It swung wide.
"Look!" cried Joan. "My god, look!"
He saw a magnificent room, the floor of polished marble. A row of
fluted columns ran down each side. There was a desk, a modern desk,
strangely out of place in the antique setting, opposite the door
through which they had entered. Across its polished surface a man
sprawled limply, just as if he had fallen forward from his chair in
sleep.
With a bound Jaro sprang across the room, felt the man's withered wrist
for any signs of pulse. He was a very old man, he saw, and he was quite
dead.
"Karfial Hodes!" murmured Joan in a low frightened voice. "I saw him
once in a street procession. Is he dead, Jaro?"
Jaro nodded. From the back of the old man's neck, he plucked a tiny
metallic splinter. "They got him with a poisoned dart gun. He's still
warm. It couldn't have happened but a minute before."
"Oh, Jaro, and he was such a nice old man. Who could have done it?"