Now not the least remarkable circumstance in this startling episode was that I had not talked to Ziliah at all, though we understood each other. Telepathy, or sympathy, or suggestion, had done its perfect work so far; not a word had passed between us, but at this obstructive ignorance staring me, so to speak, in the face I opened my mouth.
“Ziliah are these all?”
“ALL,” came the answer very quietly, but with a frankness and certainty that assured me.
“Do you know anything about them Ziliah? How they work?”
Ziliah knew nothing. “The—,” I understood her to mean the doctors, including her precious father, “will kill you all—Ah! Spooce, too. No! No! Take them away,” pointing to the chest, “AWAY—AWAY.”
The girl’s nerves were reasserting themselves; time was running away too, my friends were deserted, and detection was imminent at any moment. Another glance at the desperate little instruments, and then—nolens, volens—I picked them up and pushed them under my tunic, so that I felt their cold surfaces chilling my skin.
Then I shook Ziliah and pointed to the door, closing the lid of the chest. She understood. Our way back was as noiseless as our entrance had been. Unless our footprints remained as silent betrayers of our robbery, there was no reason for suspicion, no proof of our misdeeds. Misdeed indeed; it was our SALVATION.
In five minutes I was back with my friends, and Ziliah, reaching the limit of her endurance comfortably fled to her familiar refuge—Hopkins’ arms.
Now you may ask incredulously—Why did you not in the first place ask Ziliah where were the tubes; why impair the credibility of your story by injecting this transcendental nonsense about—telepathy.
I don’t know, sir; the facts are just as I have related them.