XXII.
Scarcely had the sudden silence warned those standing outside that they were discovered, when the curtain was drawn back.
The clerk Phanos, the persecutor of the hetaeriae, entered the room, while his companion, a subaltern officer of the city police, remained standing at the entrance.
“The house is surrounded!” cried the latter in a loud voice. “No one can escape.”
With these words he pulled the curtain farther aside and beyond it appeared, like a living wall, the dark figures of the toxoternae or bowmen, whose helmets, spears, and shields flashed in the torchlight.
All eyes were fixed on Phanos, a small, stout man, with a pale, handsome face. A lock of black hair hung low on his forehead, but the most remarkable thing about him was his eyes—a pair of clear, light-blue eyes, sparkling with intelligence, whose gaze was doubly piercing because he bent his head a little and looked out from under his eye-brows. It was evident that those eyes forgot no one, and that each person on whom they rested might as well have been recorded in a book. He wore a plain white robe, entirely without ornament, and had thrown a brown mantle around him.
At sight of Phanos Acestor made a movement as though he were about to escape through the peristyle. “Where are you going?” whispered Thuphrastos. “You will run directly into the arms of the archers. No, hide, hide!—Phanos has heard every word.”
“In there!” added Xenocles hastily, pointing to the door of the bleaching-room. “He hasn’t seen you yet. Perhaps you will be forgotten.”
Acestor crept behind the counter and stole like a thief into the bleaching-room, closing the door carefully behind him.
It was quite time. Half a score of the slaves of the city police pressed in from the peristyle and watched every exit, among them the door through which Acestor had slipped.
While this was happening Phanos had gazed sternly around him, but at the sight of Thuphrastos and Xenocles his face brightened. Approaching Lamon, the owner of the house, he held out his hand.
“Lamon,” he said, in so loud a tone that the officer and slaves could hear, “it is fortunate for you that I meet men like Thuphrastos and Xenocles here. I know them—they are plotting no evil. Your hetaeria does not seem to be of the sort we so rigidly pursue. You are office-seekers, not men striving to usurp the government. I have now seen with my own eyes.... Yet—did I not hear a chatterer shrieking among you? He has shouted intolerably long; I’ll close his lips.”
“If you heard that,” replied Lamon, “you must have heard our disapproval.”
“Well then,” continued Phanos, “speak frankly. To what places do you want to be elected?”
Lamon—and then the others—obeyed the command without hesitation.
“Very well!” Phanos then continued, “promise to break up the hetaeria, and you shall lose nothing. The places of which we dispose are not dependent upon election, but are appointments. But there must be no more meetings of the hetaeria. If, in spite of your promise, you secretly assemble, woe betide you! No punishment will be too severe for us.”
Without bending an inch, or condescending to flattery, Thuphrastos thanked the clerk for his consideration and, after having exchanged glances with Lamon and the others, promised, in the name of himself and his friends, to disband the hetaeria.
Phanos now turned towards Hipyllos, the youngest of the group.
“Bring me that shrieker,” he said to him, “the only one of you who fled.” And, with a smile that showed he had noticed everything, he pointed to the door of the bleaching-room and added, “You’ll find him in there.”
No command could have been more welcome to Hipyllos. His heart throbbed with joyous anticipation; he had a presentiment that he was near his aim.