These, which he had already described, I needed at once. Our enemy—I still could only call it the Nameless Horror—probably had a base near Kalima. Prince Altho perhaps was in captivity there; Jim and Ren, if they were alive, might be there also. This aerial device might enable me to locate the enemy base.
Maxite and I were descending into the lower floors of the castle. We passed rooms where the refugees were huddled. Girls had been organized to care for them. On another, still lower floor, I saw my guard pacing back and forth through dim stone corridors. We were now below the terrace level, but higher than the level of the back street.
We descended other floors, came to a narrow dark corridor. This, Maxite told me, was at the street level of the back castle wall. I remembered walking along that curving street, at the base of the wall, remembered a small door there.
“It’s here,” said Maxite.
We stood in a dim blue radiance at the intersection of two corridors. Ahead lay a floor-opening, where down a flight of curving stone steps was the entrance to the first of the subterranean arsenal rooms. To the right, a branching passageway led to the small street gateway.
“A guard is there,” said Maxite, “armed with a fire-flash for close-range work. He could kill anyone who came near him. Oh Grett!”
He called the guard but there was no answer. His soft voice echoed between the narrow passage walls. We hastened to the gate door. The guard was not there! But in the darkness we heard a sound. Maxite’s hand-wire in its blue tube flung a faint beam around us. On the stone flagging a figure lay twisting. We had heard the scrape of its movement. It was the guard, lying there bound and gagged!
XIV
FUGITIVES IN THE STARLIGHT
I had sent Alice, Sonya and Dolores into one of the castle bedrooms. They were all tired and overwrought with the excitement through which they had passed. A dream awakened Sonya, after how long an interval she did not know—several hours undoubtedly. She dreamed she had been talking with Prince Altho: he was in a cave; Jim and Ren were with him.
For a long time Sonya lay pondering. Then she awakened the other two girls.