Chapter V

"Jaro!" she cried, a note of fright in her voice. She jerked up, swung her bare legs off the bed onto the floor. "What do you want? How did you get here?" Those amazing green eyes flicked past him, discovered Joan. She wasn't too frightened to raise her eyebrows.

"There are a few questions I'd like to ask," he replied coolly. "Just who is behind this revolution?"

There was the faintest hesitancy in her reply. "Hodes. Who did you think?"

He looked skeptical, waited.

She said, "You don't believe me? When I talked with you, I exaggerated perhaps. But there is very much money involved, very much indeed. Should the Mercurians be successful, they would take possession of the Latonka Trust, the plantations, and the mines. The Earthmen would be dispossessed. Naturally, they are very anxious to frustrate the revolution."

"But the Mercurians are in the right," Joan burst out. She had been swelling up like a toad in the effort to contain herself. "Albert Peet and his kind, stole everything in the first place. They deserve to be kicked out. Mercury has a right to self-government."

The Red Witch shrugged. "I'm not curious about the ethics. I'm paid by the Earthmen, not the Mercurians. Are you with us or against us, Jaro?"

He ignored her question, asked, "Are you being held by Karfial Hodes?"

She nodded.

"Why?"

She exhibited surprise. "Karfial Hodes knows that I am the principal agent of the counter revolutionaries. But if he thinks that by eliminating me he can block the forces opposing him, he's overestimating my importance."

"Eliminating?" said Jaro mildly. "Are you in any danger?"

She shrugged again. "The Mercurians aren't butchers. They merely hold me until the revolution begins."

Jaro said: "Where does Karfial Hodes keep himself?"

She shook her head.

"That little pianist, the gunman, how did he escape?"

"Stanley, you mean Stanley. Did he get away?" she asked him eagerly.

He nodded.

Her eyes narrowed; she bit her lip.

"That's all you want to tell me?" he said.

The look of fright reappeared in her green eyes. "What do you mean, Jaro?"

He said nothing.

"You know as much as I do," she assured him. "You believe me now, don't you, Jaro." Her voice was eager.

"No," he replied calmly.

"What are you going to do?" she whispered.

"Who are the others in this with you?"

"I can't tell you." She bit her lip, looked more frightened than ever.

"Who are the others?" he repeated mildly.

The red-headed singer leaped to her feet. Her figure was full, strikingly beautiful. She was well aware of her appeal. "Jaro," she cried, "I can't tell you. It would be as much as my life is worth. Not until I know what side you're on."

* * * * *

Jaro regarded her calmly. At length he said, "You'll excuse us if we lock you in the dressing room?"

"But Jaro," she said; "aren't you going to take me with you?"

He shook his head.

"You're going to leave me here?" she repeated. She couldn't keep the relief out of her voice.

He laughed, said, "I'm afraid so."

A great weight seemed lifted from the red-headed singer's mind. With a resumption of her old bravado, she shrugged, walked into the dressing room. Her hips moved from side to side. Jaro shut the door, pushed the bed in front of it.

"The hussy!" said Joan.

Jaro wasn't sure but he thought he detected a feline note in her tone. He led the way back into the passage, closed the exit.

Joan clutched his hand again. "That woman!"

"Attractive, isn't she?" he said with a chuckle. "Ouch!" he said. "That wasn't very lady-like."

"What wasn't?" asked Joan sweetly. "I didn't do anything."

"Well, someone kicked me," he replied.

"You don't think I'd do a thing like that? Do you?"

"Yes," he said. He inched ahead along the lightless passage.

"Jaro."

There was no reply.

"Jaro!" cried the girl in panic. "Where are you? Wait for me, Jaro. I'll never kick you again."

"Is that a promise?" he asked from the darkness right at her ear.

"Eeek!" she gasped. "Yes, it's a promise, though I regret it already."

He chuckled, said, "Give me your hand," led her forward.

They had gone only a few yards, when his foot struck an obstacle. "Careful," he warned. "Here's a stair." They crept up to the next level. The familiar alcoves began again along the right hand wall. He tried the first one. It revealed a rectangular tank of water some ten by twenty feet. The walls were a mosaic of hand painted tile depicting Nemi, the rain god, descending to Mercury in a shower, Nemi searching for his bride, Nemi at the nuptial feast. The fourth wall was the one through which they were looking; and they couldn't see its decoration. From the realism of the ancient artist and the sequence of events, Jaro decided it was just as well they couldn't.

"Whew," he said, "what a bathroom!"

Joan put her eye to the peep hole. Jaro gaped in amazement. From a circular hole in the ceiling poured a curtain of rain. The shaft, he realized, must lead straight up through the different levels and through the roof. A raised dais with a rim around it received the rain in the center of the room. The surface of the dais he saw, was composed of a springy wire mesh through which the water drained into some subterranean channel.

"The bed of Nemi," said Joan. "That's where the queen must sleep on her wedding night. Nemi is supposed to visit her in the rain."

"What a clammy way to spend your wedding night," Jaro said, putting his eye back to the aperture. The appointments of the chamber were magnificent. It glowed with a rosy, pulsating light. The floor was carpeted with a shaggy white rug; a divan large enough to hold at least six people rested against the left hand wall. Around the walls ran murals depicting the exploits of Nemi: Nemi touching the red egalet which burst into flower, Nemi squeezing the juice from a cluster of Latonka grapes.

The next room proved to be an ordinary sleeping chamber, obviously the bedroom of the queen for the remainder of the year. Jaro saw a beautiful Mercurian girl packing clothes and trinkets into a chest. The green band about her ankle marked her as a temple priestess. She was singing a lilting, happy refrain in the odd language of Mercury as she went about her work.

Joan put her eye to the hole.

"That's the ex-queen," she informed him. "She's getting ready to move to the apartments of the temple priestess."

"She doesn't seem unhappy at her approaching bereavement," said Jaro.

Joan sniffed. "Not likely."

"I'm going in to talk to her," said Jaro.

"Are you crazy?" cried Joan in alarm. She tugged at him arm, but he was already pulling back the secret entrance.

* * * * *

The queen had her back to them. Jaro closed the entrance, coughed discreetly. The girl spun around, her hand to her mouth.

"How should I address her?" He whispered over his shoulder.

"I don't think you need bother with formalities," observed Joan in a bitter voice, "not after your entrance."

The queen said, "You are an Earthman."

Jaro said, "Yes, your majesty."

"Majesty?" echoed the Mercurian girl. Her eyes were golden, oblique, curious, her hair a fine graven ebony. She had long, black lashes, bright red lips. Her skirt and jacket were green. "I don't quite understand. I am not very familiar with your language."

Jaro grinned. "I suppose our entrance was not exactly orthodox but the fact is that we are escaped prisoners." The queen raised her fine black brows.

"How did you get here?" Her voice had an odd foreign flavor. Jaro couldn't put his finger on it, but it was there. He said, "That is unimportant. We are searching for Karfial Hodes. I know of no one more apt to be informed of his whereabouts than you."

"And what is it that you want with Karfial Hodes?"

Jaro had the impression that she was stalling, listening expectantly. He said, "Where is Hodes?"

Before she could answer, the doors on either side burst open. A dozen priests of Nemi burst into the room. Jaro caught a triumphant smile on the queen's face, then he kicked the closest Mercurian on the knee. The priest screamed, doubled to the floor. He lifted a second bodily, hurled him into the press, bowling over several others. A priest lit on his back. He flipped him over his shoulder. He rammed an elbow into someone's eye, smashed his fist against a mouth. He kicked another priest on the knee. He got hold of one of the fellows by a leg, whirled him around like a club. He caught a glimpse of the queen, her expression registering frightened dismay. She was stabbing a button on the table, obviously the means by which she had summoned her defenders. A whole horde of priests crowded into the room.

Behind him Joan screamed. "Jaro," she cried. "Help!"

Jaro laid the poor fellow he had been using as a bludgeon on the floor.

"All right," he said. "I surrender." Everyone, especially the priests, appeared relieved.

"Take them before Karfial Hodes," directed the queen. Her yellow eyes regarded the gaunt Earthman with amazement, tinged with respect. The priests laid hold of him gingerly, urged him toward the door. He stood head and shoulders above the Mercurians.

He looked at Joan quizzically, said: "All roads lead to Rome."

"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?"

Jaro straightened, said, "One of Albert Peet's renegade whites."

"Ugh! And to think I worked for that man."

But Jaro wasn't listening. He had gone behind the desk. "This is how they got him," he said, excitement in his voice. It was, Joan sensed, the excitement of the man hunter when he grows hot on the trail of his quarry. There was a cold and ruthless edge to his voice which she had not heard before, and for the first time she found herself a little afraid of this strange man about whom she really knew so little. Hesitantly she edged after him.

Behind the desk, she saw a panel gaping ajar in the stone wall. It was the same kind of panel which gave admittance to the secret passages on the lower levels. Jaro was nowhere in sight.

"In here," he called, and Joan thought of the baying of wolves running strong on a hot scent. She bit her lip, slipped into the blackness after him.

"Jaro, where are you?"

"This must be how they got him," he said from the darkness beside her. "When that gunman--the little one who was abducted along with the Red Witch, you remember--when he escaped he must have stumbled on these passages, I suppose that was the important information he had for Albert Peet."

"They couldn't have gone very far," suggested Joan.

"No," said Jaro. "Not very far, I hope." He closed the panel. At once the darkness gathered about them, pressed in on them from every side. It was so dark that the girl could bring her hand right up to her face without being able to distinguish a thing.

* * * * *

A ray of light jumped from the panel as Jaro extracted the plug, applied his eye to the aperture. He could see the back of the dead Mercurian leader crumpled across the desk and beyond him the open door into the vaulted antichamber.

As he looked, a Mercurian, the priest who had been on guard at the entrance, appeared in the doorway. Other Mercurians were staring over the priest's shoulder. Consternation was written large across their usually impassive features.

"Sehr Karfial Hodes!" the priest cried, and then uttered a string of Mercurian words quite unintelligible to the listening Jaro.

Suddenly, it seemed to dawn on the priest that there had been foul play. He ran across the floor, turned up his dead leader's face. The benign, peaceful, half smile on the old Mercurian's lips seemed to belie his tragic murder. Jaro put back the plug.

"We're in for it," he said grimly. "The Mercurians must believe that we murdered Karfial Hodes."

"What will they do?" the girl asked in a small voice.

"I don't imagine they'll pin any medals on us," he replied dryly.

"Why did they have to kill Karfial Hodes?" There was a puzzled, tragic note in the girl's voice. "He was such a harmless old man."

"Albert Peet can answer that question," Jaro said quietly. "In fact, he can answer a lot of questions that I intend to ask him. But where can I hide you?"

"Hide me!" ejaculated Joan. "If you get three feet away I'll scream. I don't know why I should feel safer when you're here--I've been shot at, abducted and jailed since I met you--but I do."

For a moment Jaro hesitated, then he fumbled for her wrist in the dark, found it. "Come on," he said. "We'll see where this passage leads."

They crept ahead, encountered a stair, descended thirty-two steps. Again they felt their way along a passage, went down a second flight of steps.

"If this keeps up we'll come out on the under side of Mercury," he said. "Ouch!" There was a dull thud.

"What was that?" cried Joan.

"Me. I cracked my skull on this confounded ceiling." He paused. "Joan, we must be on the same level as my cell." He got down on hands and knees, crawled along the passage, running his fingers across the stones.

"Ah!" he said. His questing fingers had discovered a hole close to the floor.

"Where are you?" Joan cried.

"Here."

She moved up cautiously until she bumped into him. "Whatever are you after, groveling on the floor?" she asked greatly relieved.

"I've a hunch," he replied. "Wait here!"

He wormed his way into the hole, found it blocked by the stone. Delicately, he ran his fingers over its surface seeking its mechanism. A catch? There it was. He released it, hauled. The stone slid towards him. Backing out of the hole, he drew the block after him. Joan stifled a scream as he bumped into her.

With the block clear of the wall, he wriggled back into the hole. If possible the Stygian blackness was thicker than ever. There should be a cell on the other side of the wall. He lay still, listened. The silence was as absolute as the dark. He wormed his way ahead. With a shock he felt his fingers come in contact with bare flesh. A hand flicked across his face, clutched his throat with a grip of iron.

Jaro wrenched backward, tried to call out, but that unrelenting grip on his throat held like a vise, choked off his words. His antagonist never uttered a sound. Silently, blindly they fought in the four foot square cell.

Jaro got his hands on his antagonist's wrists, wrenched. His lungs were on fire, he thought wildly that no sensation was as agonizing as not being able to draw a breath. The man had succeeded in getting both hands on his throat. Jaro drew up his legs, kicked. His feet struck flesh, the iron fingers were torn from his throat. Blessed air poured into his lungs.

Dimly, he realized that Joan was calling his name from the passage. Then she screamed.

A man's voice beside him said: "Jaro! My God! Is that you, Jaro?"

"Yes," panted Jaro, recognizing Landovitch, the T.I.S. agent. "I was looking for you. There's a hole here some place." His fingers were wildly running across the cold stones. "Joan's outside in the passage. Something's happened."

Again the girl screamed.

"Here it is," said Jaro with relief, dived through. Once clear of the walls, he stood up, cracked his head on the low ceiling.

"Joan!" he said. He could hear Landovitch grunting and puffing, trying to squeeze his big frame through the narrow aperture. The girl did not answer.

"Joan!" he called louder. His voice came back to him hollowly in the pitch black corridor. "Joan!"

There was no answer. The girl was gone.