He was silent for a few minutes, evidently in deep reflection.

“I thank you,” he said at last, “and I give you one warning in partial return for yours.  There is a law which can be used against the members of a secret society with terrible effect.  Not only are they exposed to death if detected, but those who strike them are legally exempt from punishment.  I will care that that law shall not menace you long.  Whilst it remains guard yourselves; I am powerless to break it.”

As I quitted the Palace, Ergimo joined me and mounted my carriage.  Seizing a moment when none were within sight or hearing, he said—­

“Astona was found two hours ago dead, as an enemy or a traitor dies.  She was seen to fall from the roof of her house, and none was near her when she fell.  But Davilo has already been arrested as her murderer, on the ground that he was heard before sunrise this morning to say that she must die.”

“Who heard that must have heard more.  Let this news be quickly known to whom it concerns.”

I checked the carriage instantly, and turned into a road that conducted us in ten minutes to a public telegraph office.

“Come with me,” I said, “quickly.  As an officer of the Campta your presence may ensure the delivery of letters which might otherwise be stopped.”

He seized the hint at once, and as we approached a vacant desk he said to the nearest officer, “In the Campta’s name;” a form which ensured that the most audacious and curious spy, backed by the highest authority save that invoked, dared neither stop nor search into a message so warranted.  Before I left the desk every Chief of the Zinta at his several post had received, through that strange symbolic language of which I have already given samples, from me advice of what had occurred and from Esmo warning to meet at an appointed place and time.

The day at whose close we should meet was that of Davilo’s trial.  I mingled with the crowd around the Court doors, a crowd manifesting bitter hostility to the prisoner and to the Order, of whose secrets a revelation was eagerly expected.  Easily forcing my way through the mass, I felt on a sudden a touch, a sign; and turning my eyes saw a face I had surely never looked on before.  Yet the sign could only have been given by a colleague.  That which followed implied the presence of the Signet itself.

“I told you,” whispered a voice I knew well, “how completely we can change even countenance at will.”

It was so; but though acquainted with the process, I had never believed that the change could be so absolute.  By help of my strength and height, still more perhaps by the subtle influence of his own powerful will acting none the less imperiously on minds unconscious of its influence, Esmo made his way with me into the Court.