"This—" said the Princess. And for a long time two remarkably similar heads, both in physiognomy and mentality, bent close together in conference....
VI
"Tonight?" asked Dirk Morris. "You're sure, Neil?"
"This very night," swore Neil Hardesty. "At the Palace Royal. I got it on the highest authority. From one of the Imperial Guard, recently converted to our Cause. A grand meeting of the Emperor's strategy Council, summoned to discuss ways and means—" He grinned—"of apprehending the Galactic Ghost."
Dirk Morris smiled, too, though his features were invisible to his friend.
"The Ghost," he promised, "will attend the Council meeting. Neil, send out a hurried summons to all the Group. Tonight may be the night for which we have waited and planned. The situation has finally turned to our advantage. This is the setting we needed to strike our final, and heaviest, blow. A gathering of all Graed Garroway's most trusted lieutenants! What better time to bring an abrupt end to his tyranny?"
"Destruction?" asked Brian Shaughnessey. "You plan to kill them all, Dirk?"
"That is not the best way. Killing would immortalize Garroway and—in the minds of many misguided people—forever brand the Galactic Ghost as an outlaw and murderer. No ... I will not destroy the Overlord. I will make him appear ignominious in the eyes of his subjects ... prove to all men that his vaunted powers are weak and futile. There is no weapon so strong as mirth, no blade so keen as scorn."
Vurrth grunted heavily. "Maybe better you kill, Dirk. No trust Overlord."