Scarcely had the sudden silence warned those standing outside that they were discovered, when the curtain was drawn back.
The clerk Phanos, the persecutor of the hetaeriae, entered the room, while his companion, a subaltern officer of the city police, remained standing at the entrance.
“The house is surrounded!” cried the latter in a loud voice. “No one can escape.”
With these words he pulled the curtain farther aside and beyond it appeared, like a living wall, the dark figures of the toxoternae or bowmen, whose helmets, spears, and shields flashed in the torchlight.
All eyes were fixed on Phanos, a small, stout man, with a pale, handsome face. A lock of black hair hung low on his forehead, but the most remarkable thing about him was his eyes—a pair of clear, light-blue eyes, sparkling with intelligence, whose gaze was doubly piercing because he bent his head a little and looked out from under his eye-brows. It was evident that those eyes forgot no one, and that each person on whom they rested might as well have been recorded in a book. He wore a plain white robe, entirely without ornament, and had thrown a brown mantle around him.
At sight of Phanos Acestor made a movement as though he were about to escape through the peristyle. “Where are you going?” whispered Thuphrastos. “You will run directly into the arms of the archers. No, hide, hide!—Phanos has heard every word.”
“In there!” added Xenocles hastily, pointing to the door of the bleaching-room. “He hasn’t seen you yet. Perhaps you will be forgotten.”
Acestor crept behind the counter and stole like a thief into the bleaching-room, closing the door carefully behind him.
It was quite time. Half a score of the slaves of the city police pressed in from the peristyle and watched every exit, among them the door through which Acestor had slipped.
While this was happening Phanos had gazed sternly around him, but at the sight of Thuphrastos and Xenocles his face brightened. Approaching Lamon, the owner of the house, he held out his hand.