She smiled in surprise.

“Oh, you know that story....  Yes, like little Kaine.  But at least Kaine was sensible.  You ...  I do not understand.”

“I do not understand myself, very well.”

She looked at me with amused curiosity.

“Antinea,” I said.

“What is it?”

“I did what you told me to.  May I in turn ask one favor, ask you one question?”

“What is it?”

“It was dark, was it not, in the room where he was?”

“Very dark.  I had to lead you to the bed where he lay asleep.”

“He was asleep, you are sure?”

“I said so.”

“He—­did not die instantly, did he?”

“No.  I know exactly when he died; two minutes after you struck him and fled with a shriek.”

“Then surely he could not have known?”

“Known what?”

“That it was I who—­who held the hammer.”

“He might not have known it, indeed,” Antinea said.  “But he did know.”

“How?”

“He did know ... because I told him,” she said, staring at me with magnificent audacity.

“And,” I murmured, “he—­he believed it?”

“With the help of my explanation, he recognized your shriek.  If he had not realized that you were his murderer, the affair would not have interested me,” she finished with a scornful little smile.

Four steps, I said, separated me from Antinea.  I sprang forward.  But, before I reached her, I was struck to the floor.

King Hiram had leapt at my throat.

At the same moment I heard the calm, haughty voice of Antinea: 

“Call the men,” she commanded.

A second later I was released from the leopard’s clutch.  The six white Tuareg had surrounded me and were trying to bind me.

I am fairly strong and quick.  I was on my feet in a second.  One of my enemies lay on the floor, ten feet away, felled by a well-placed blow on the jaw.  Another was gasping under my knee.  That was the last time I saw Antinea.  She stood erect, both hands resting on her ebony scepter, watching the struggle with a smile of contemptuous interest.

Suddenly I gave a loud cry and loosed the hold I had on my victim.  A cracking in my left arm:  one of the Tuareg had seized it and twisted until my shoulder was dislocated.

When I completely lost consciousness, I was being carried down the corridor by two white phantoms, so bound that I could not move a muscle.

XVIII

THE FIRE-FLIES

Through the great open window, waves of pale moonlight surged into my room.

A slender white figure was standing beside the bed where I lay.

“You, Tanit-Zerga!” I murmured.  She laid a finger on her lips.

“Sh!  Yes, it is I.”

I tried to raise myself up on the bed.  A terrible pain seized my shoulder.  The events of the afternoon came back to my poor harassed mind.