The Chemist motioned to his companions, and with obvious reluctance on the part of the Very Young Man they left, followed by Oteo.
On the way back the city seemed quiet—abnormally so. The streets were nearly deserted; what few pedestrians they met avoided them, or passed them sullenly. They were perhaps half-way back to the Chemist's house when the Very Young Man stopped short.
"I forgot that piece of stone," he explained, looking at them queerly. "Go on. I'll be there by the time you are," and disregarding the Chemist's admonition that he might get lost he left them abruptly and walked swiftly back over the way they had come.
Without difficulty, for they had made few turns, the Very Young Man located Reoh's house. As he approached he noticed the figure of a man lounging against a further corner of the building; the figure disappeared almost as soon as he saw it.
It was a trivial incident, but, somehow, to the Very Young Man, it held something in it of impending danger. He did not knock on the outer door, but finding it partly open, he slowly pushed it wider and stepped quietly into the hallway beyond. He was hardly inside when there came from within the house a girl's scream—a cry of horror, abruptly stifled.
For an instant, the Very Young Man stood hesitating. Then he dashed forward through an open doorway in the direction from which the cry had seemed to come.
The room into which he burst was Reoh's study; the room he had left only a few moments before. On the floor, almost across his path, lay the old man, with the short blade of a sword buried to the hilt in his breast. In a corner of the room a young Oroid girl stood with her back against the wall. Her hands were pressed against her mouth; her eyes were wide with terror. Bending over the body on the floor with a hand at its armpit, knelt the huge, gray figure of a man. At the sound of the intruder's entrance he looked up quickly and sprang to his feet.
The Very Young Man saw it was Targo!