“I know nothing,” she answered. “How strange that you should ask me.”
“Is it not true, then,” he continued, “that you and he and your brother are plotting against the King?”
She regarded him with uplifted eyebrows. Then she patted him gently on the arm with her fan.
“It is the moon, my friend,” she declared. “A little brief frenzy, is it not?”
His tone recovered confidence. He breathed a sigh of relief.
“The man lied to me,” he declared. “Now I will tell you just what has happened to me. You know that I have a room in the Theba Place. Well, to-night, as I was about to prepare for dinner, a messenger, a native Thetian he seemed to me, brought a note to my rooms. It was neither signed nor addressed. But it bade me follow the bearer without question if I would be of service to Theos.”
“You went?” she asked.
“Of course,” he answered, quickly. “If the summons was genuine, well and good—if it was false, I still wanted to know the meaning of it.”
“And which was it?” she asked.