"The slave, Tarzan!" he announced in a loud voice.
The lord of the jungle stepped into the adjoining chamber, crossed to the center of it, and stood erect, silently regarding Nemone. He did not kneel. Erot was there standing at the foot of a couch upon which the Queen reclined upon fat pillows. The Queen regarded Tarzan from her deep eyes without any change of expression, but Erot scowled angrily.
"Kneel, you fool!" he commanded.
"Silence!" admonished Nemone. "It is I who give commands."
Erot flushed and fingered the golden hilt of his sword. Tarzan neither spoke nor moved nor took his eyes from the eyes of Nemone. Though he had thought her beautiful before, he realized now that she was even more gorgeous than he had believed it possible for any woman to be.
"I shall not need you again tonight, Erot," said Nemone; "you may go now."
Now Erot paled and then turned fiery red. He started to speak but thought better of it; then he backed to the doorway, executed a bow that brought him to one knee, arose, and departed.
As Tarzan had crossed the threshold his observing eyes had noted every detail of the room's interior almost in a single, sweeping glance. The chamber was not large, but it was magnificent in its conception and its appointments. Columns of solid gold supported the ceiling, the walls were tiled with ivory, the floor a mosaic of colored stones upon which were scattered rugs of colored stuff and the skins of animals, among which was one that attracted the ape-man's instant attention—the skin of a man tanned with the head on.
On the walls were paintings, for the most part very crude, and the usual array of heads of animals and men, and at one end of the room a great lion was chained between two of the golden Doric columns. He was a very large lion with a tuft of white hair in his mane directly in the center of the back of his neck. From the instant that Tarzan entered the room the lion eyed him malevolently, and Erot had scarcely passed out and closed the door behind him when the beast sprang to his feet with a terrific roar and leaped at the ape-man. The chains stopped him and he dropped down, growling.
"Belthar does not like you," said Nemone who had remained unmoved when the beast sprang. She noticed, too, that Tarzan had not started nor given any other indication that he had heard the lion or seen him; and she was pleased.