"What means this?" she demanded, her voice now controlled and as cold as the steel in the sheath at her side.
Tomos, who was as much astounded as she, stammered as he trembled in his sandals of elephant hide. "There are traitors even in the temple of Thoos!" he cried. "I chose Erot to prepare the girl for the embraces of Xarator because I knew that his loyalty to his Queen would insure the work being well done. I did not know, O gracious Nemone, that this vile crime had been committed or that the body of Erot had been substituted for that of the daughter of Thudos until this very instant."
With an expression of disgust the Queen commanded the priests to hurl the body of Erot into the crater, and as it was swallowed by the fiery pit she ordered an immediate return to Cathne.
In morose and gloomy silence she rode down the winding mountain trail and out onto the Field of the Lions, and often her eyes were upon the bronzed giant striding beside her chariot.
At last she broke her silence. "Two of your enemies are gone now," she said. "I destroyed one; whom do you think destroyed the other?"
"Perhaps I did," suggested Tarzan with a smile.
"I had been thinking of that possibility," replied Nemone, but she did not smile.
"Whoever did it performed a service for Cathne."
"Perhaps," she half agreed, "but it is not the killing of Erot that annoys me; it is the effrontery that dared interfere with the plans of Nemone. Whoever did it has spoiled for me what would otherwise have been a happy day; nor have they accomplished anything in the interest of Thudos or his daughter or Gemnon. I shall find the girl, and her passing will be far more bitter than that from which she was saved today; she cannot escape me. Thudos and Gemnon will also pay more heavily because some one dared flout the Queen."
Tarzan shrugged his broad shoulders, but remained silent.