The team tired first.  It was its waning speed that wearied him at last.  The mania that owned him could not tolerate the anticlimax of declining effort, so his mood changed.  He became morose—­indifferent.  He reined in, tossed the reins to an attendant and began to walk toward the tunnel entrance, clothed as he was in nothing but the practise loin-cloth of a gladiator.

A dozen senators implored him to wait and clothe himself.  He would not wait.  He ordered them to bring his cloak and overtake him.  Then he observed Narcissus, standing near the horse-gate, waiting to summon his trained gladiators for an exhibition: 

“Not this time, Narcissus.  Next time.  Follow me.”  He waited for a moment for Narcissus.  That gave the substitute time to come down from the box and go hurrying ahead into the tunnel-mouth; he went so fast (for he knew the emperor’s moods) that the attendants found it hard to keep up; most of them were half a dozen paces in the rear.  A senator gave Commodus his cloak.  He took Narcissus by the arm and strode ahead into the tunnel, muttering, ignoring noisy protests from the senators, who warned him that the guards were not yet there.

Then there was sudden silence; possibly a consequence of Caesar’s mood, or the reaction caused by chill and tunnel-darkness after sunlit sand.  Or it might have been the shadow of impending tragedy.  A long scream broke the silence, thrice repeated, horrible, like something from an unseen world.  Instantly Narcissus leaped ahead into the darkness, weaponless but armed by nature with the muscles of a panther.  Commodus leaped after him; his mood reversed again.  Now emulation had him; he would not be beaten to a scene of action by a gladiator.  He let his cloak fall and a senator tripped over it.

There were no lamps.  Something less than twilight, deepened here and there by shadow, filled the tunnel.  By a niche intended for a sentry the attendants were standing helplessly around the body of a man who lay with head and shoulders propped against the wall.  Narcissus and another, like knotted snakes, were writhing near by.  There was a sound of choking.  Pavonius Nasor was silent.  He appeared already dead.

“Pluto!  Is there no light?” Commodus demanded.  “What has happened?”

“They have killed your shadow, sire!”

“Who killed him?”

“Men who sprang out of the darkness suddenly.”

“One man.  Only one.  I have him here.  He lives yet, but he dies!”
Narcissus said.

He dragged a writhing body on the flagstones, holding it by one wrist.

“He was armed.  I had to throttle him to save my liver from his knife.  I think I broke his neck.  He is certainly dying,” said Narcissus.

Some one had gone for a lamp and came along the tunnel with it.

“Let me look,” said Commodus.  “Here, give me that lamp!”

He looked first at Pavonius Nasor, who gazed back, at him with stupid, passionless, already dimming eyes.  A stream of blood was gushing from below his left arm.