Zitlan, in the meantime, had entered the suite of Fragoni and he now came out, Inga walking before him.
She was silent and proudly erect but there was a pallor in her face that indicated her realization of the danger that she was threatened with.
When Dirk saw her she gave him a brave smile, which he answered with a glance of reassurance.
He could see the great clock in the Metropole Tower, and he noticed, with a feeling of grave apprehension, that it was twenty minutes to four o’clock.
There were only a few minutes more in which to make a desperate and apparently a hopeless effort to save Inga, his friends and himself from a catastrophe which he had been instrumental in contriving.
Then Zitlan stood before him, haughty and arrogant, his lowering countenance ugly with hatred.
“So, dog,” he said, “you who dared to defy Zitlan now stand before him a captive!”
Neither Dirk nor any one of the three others who were guarded with him replied to the utterance.
“You and that woman of yours,” continued the Lodorian insolently, “both are my prisoners to do with as I please. Your fate,” he continued, “I already have planned for you and I assure you that it will not be as pleasurable as the one to which she is destined. You will find that Tigana, on which you and those with you will be cast, is a world of terror such as you never could dream of. Even the monsters which crawl through the deliriums of the mind are not as horrible as those which infest the mad and haunted world of which I speak.”