Almost simultaneously the tablet on the wall shone out. Craving his royal charge’s close attendance, the Viscount led the way upstairs. He was familiar with the mysteries of the place; though, to be sure, there was no mystery in it all to be compared with that of his own blind faith in the charlatan its master. Presently the two were committed, scarce breathing, to the dark “operating” room.
“I do not like it,” whispered the King suddenly.
There was certainly nothing very likeable in that profound gloom. It was so dense, so gross, as to appear palpable to him; sooty cobwebs seemed to stroke his face; he swept his hand over it disgustedly.
“Understand,” he muttered, in angry agitation, “that you are my mouthpiece; that I will not be betrayed; that—Ah!”—he gave a little jerk and shriek—“something touched me!”
On the instant, light glowed out in the room—or rather diluted darkness than light—and in the same moment an apparition showed itself.
Bonito, in black skull-cap and black skin-tights, his unearthly face and long white hands showing in the gloom like detached members, made a sufficiently ghastly spectacle. Even the little Vicomte, accustomed initiate, could never surmount a certain terror of him under such circumstances. And the present ones found him exceptionally nervous.
“Hail, Spartacus!” he whispered, his voice fluttering like a leaf. “Thou seest before thee a petitioner.”
“For what?”
The soothsayer’s face seemed to hang, a livid intent blot, in the darkness, its lips alone alive.
“For the truth.”