"Oh!" she ejaculated. "Really, Mr. Moynahan."
"What happened back in the grog shop?"
Joan hesitated, said, "It's all kind of foggy. I was simply petrified with fright. When the lights went out, someone grabbed me. I tried to cry out for you only someone had his hand over my mouth. I couldn't do anything but gurgle. They dragged me toward the back of the shop. I thought.... Well, never mind what I thought."
Jaro chuckled.
"It wasn't funny," said Joan, indignantly. "They hauled me down some stairs, into an alley. I saw then that they were Mercurians, and I wasn't so scared. They brought me here, and here I've been ever since. But I still don't understand how you found me."
He said, "There seems to be a regular network of these secret passages running through the walls. It was the merest accident that I stumbled into them. Where they lead, though, I don't know any more than you."
"What are we going to do?" she wanted to know.
"Find Karfial Hodes. I've a hunch that he's hidden here."
"I was afraid of that," she said in a plaintive tone.
Jaro found her hand, led her to the next alcove, applied his eye to the peep hole. The room, he saw, was identical with the one in which Joan had been imprisoned. On the bed lay the red-headed singer of Mercury Sam's Garden.