"Just so," cried the red-headed lout who had heralded the council, coming forward into the fire-light. "I can try it and I may do it. If I do it, Commodus will be a corpse. If I fail, no one will know I have tried. And it is a jewel of a plan."
And he stood on his hands, feet waggling in the air, apparently from mere exuberance of spirits. Standing up again, he threw three flip-flops forward, then two backward, then turned a half a dozen cart wheels, during which gyrations he passed out of our field of view.
Torix sulkily agreed that the second plan remain unknown except to Maternus and Cossedo, the assemblage not supporting him when he pressed for its disclosure. But he was insistent about the third plan.
"The third plan," said Maternus, "is merely the first plan over again, except that I lead instead of Caburus and that we try after dark instead of by day. From all I can hear the opportunity will be even better by torchlight in the gardens about the temple than it will be by day in the jammed streets. I mean to be as cautious as I expect Caburus to be: there is no use making an attempt unless a really promising chance presents itself. If I see an opening I'll kill the monster myself, and I do not expect to need any help from anybody, except a little jostling in the crowd to increase the confusion. As rigged up in Praetorian uniforms we will be laughed at and indulged. Either in the noonday swelter or in the torchlit darkness it ought to be easy to pass from aping, mimicking and burlesquing Praetorians to personating and counterfeiting Praetorians. Once mistaken for real guards we ought to be able to get close to Commodus. Then in the torchlight it should be easy for me to finish him and for you others to escape. I shall not think of escape until the deed is done. Then I'll escape, if I can, but I shall let no thought of escape interfere with my doing what I purpose."
This speech was acclaimed by everyone except Torix. He said:
"All this is most ingenious. But there is in this plan one flaw which no one has noted. I suppose that you, Maternus, evolved this really promising idea from pondering on what Claudius told us. All the hearsay about Rome and its festivals which ever came to the ears of all of us put together is as nothing at all compared with what Claudius told us in two months. Claudius had lived in Rome, Claudius knew every alley in Rome. With Claudius to pilot us we might have hoped to succeed. But Claudius is dead, dead somewhere in the Alps, where he is no use to us. He had seen the Emperor, he knew him by sight. Not one of us does. And, as Claudius told us, at the Festival of Cybele, as at several other religious festivals, the Emperor does not wear his official robes, so that anyone may recognize him, but appears in the garb of a priest of the deity celebrated, as High Priest or Assistant High Priest, or as a dignitary of some other degree, the rank in the hierarchy varying with the deity worshipped.
"Now not one of us, who have never set eyes on him, can tell Commodus, in the garb of a priest of Cybele, from any other priest of Cybele. We have no reasonable assurance of recognizing the mark at which we aim. Thus we have only a small chance of success, by sunlight or torchlight."
This utterance started another wrangle; the men, apparently, about equally divided as backers of Maternus and of Torix. As I lay listening to this hubbub someone stepped on the calf of my leg, his foot slipped off of it, and he fell on top of me, with a smothered exclamation.
"Who are you?" he demanded, adding some words which I did not catch. It seemed that another man was occupied similarly with Agathemer. The man who had fallen on me, in the act of scrambling up, yelled out:
"Here are two men lying and listening and they do not seem to belong to us. They do not respond to the pass-word."