“We are much better friends to-day,” I said, flattering him so that he would not give a dangerously loud growl.

I tried to open the door.  The light, coming through the window, fell upon the floor, green and red.

A simple latch, which I turned.  I shortened the leash to have better control of King Hiram who was getting nervous.

The great room where I had seen Antinea for the first time was completely dark.  But the garden on which it gave shone under a clouded moon, in a sky weighted down with the storm which did not break.  Not a breath of air.  The lake gleamed like a sheet of pewter.

I seated myself on a cushion, holding the leopard firmly between my knees.  He was purring with impatience.  I was thinking.  Not about my goal.  For a long time that had been fixed.  But about the means.

Then, I seemed to hear a distant murmur, a faint sound of voices.

King Hiram growled louder, struggled.  I gave him a little more leash.  He began to rub along the dark walls on the sides whence the voices seemed to come.  I followed him, stumbling as quietly as I could among the scattered cushions.

My eyes, become accustomed to the darkness, could see the pyramid of cushions on which Antinea had first appeared to me.

Suddenly I stumbled.  The leopard had stopped.  I realized that I had stepped on his tail.  Brave beast, he did not make a sound.

Groping along the wall, I felt a second door.  Quietly, very quietly, I opened it as I had opened the preceding one.  The leopard whimpered feebly.

“King Hiram,” I murmured, “be quiet.”

And I put my arms about his powerful neck.

I felt his warm wet tongue on my hands.  His flanks quivered.  He shook with happiness.

In front of us, lighted in the center, another room opened up.  In the middle six men were squatting on the matting, playing dice and drinking coffee from tiny copper coffee cups with long stems.

They were the white Tuareg.

A lamp, hung from the ceiling, threw a circle of light over them. 
Everything outside that circle was in deep shadow.

The black faces, the copper cups, the white robes, the moving light and shadow, made a strange etching.

They played with a reserved dignity, announcing the throws in raucous voices.

Then, slowly, very slowly, I slipped the leash from the collar of the impatient little beast.

“Go, boy.”

He leapt with a sharp yelp.

And what I had foreseen happened.

The first bound of King Hiram carried him into the midst of the white Tuareg, sowing confusion in the bodyguard.  Another leap carried him into the shadow again.  I made out vaguely the shaded opening of another corridor on the side of the room opposite where I was standing.

“There!” I thought.

The confusion in the room was indescribable, but noiseless.  One realized the restraint which nearness to a great presence imposed upon the exasperated guards.  The stakes and the dice-boxes had rolled in one direction, the copper cups, in the other.