Two figures he saw there, and his hands released their grip on holstered pistolets. Master Elwyn and young Melton, slumped limply half across the surface of the adept’s desk, heads pillowed upon outflung arms—snoring gently in relaxed and dreamless slumber!
One long glance Duke Harald gave them, to be sure the gas had done its work. Then his gaze swung, single-minded, to the slender glassite rod that, dropping from the adept’s nerveless fingers, had rolled nearly all the way across the surface of the desk, trailing a thin line of moisture. The hypospray! And full-charged with the telepathic drug that was the goal of all this midnight burglary.
With cautious, trembling hands he took it. Carefully he sealed the open tip with sterile tape; carefully he wadded it about with handkerchiefs and stowed it in his pouch. He sighed then, inhaling gustily; half-conscious that he had been holding back his breathing for the past few seconds.
He looked about and something caught his eye: the sterilamp. Upset but still turned on, its flickering blue light shone full upon the white-haired adept’s sleeping face. He turned it off. Now that the game was—almost!—won, he bore the Terran no ill-will. No need to let the old man wake an hour later to a painful case of sunburn.
Almost finished now! By Master Elwyn’s silver-mounted desk clock, it was twenty minutes after midnight. Events were running well within his schedule. There was just one thing that needed doing. He had to get in touch with old Count Godfrey—what better way than by the adept’s private visiphone? Any other set he might have tried to use would have been monitored; but not, he thought, this one—not Master Elwyn’s.
Swiftly he set up the calling pattern. And, waiting, drummed a ragged little rhythm on the desk. Then the screen swirled into glowing life. An under-secretary’s face appeared—startled briefly out of well-trained stolidness by a flash of recognition.
“Get Count Godfrey!”
“Yes, your grace. At once!”
It seemed almost faster than that. Like a conjuring trick, the secretary vanished backward from the scanning field; and the ambassador’s alert old features came to view.
“Here! I’ll take it,” said the count; then, turning his head, “Get you gone, Borrow; but wait in the outer room. I may have need of you further.” Looking back again at Duke Harald, he said simply, “I’ve been waiting.”