Half quieted by the bishop’s intervention, my fellow-prisoners ceased to offer forcible resistance. But they wept and prayed, and David grasped me by the hand.
“We shall be together in spirit, Arnold!” he cried. “God be with you. God be with you.” He flung his arms about me, and the guards, touched by the scene, permitted him to accompany me as far as the door. They picked their way carefully by the light of their torches, to avoid treading on the dogs, which crept to their feet or strained, yelping, upon their chains. At the door I found Elizabeth.
“We shall be with you in your hour, Arnold!” she said, embracing me and fighting back her sobs valiantly. “We shall all think of you tomorrow.”
The crowd dispersed. The last thing that I saw was the white, terrified, maternal face of the little woman, as she clutched her children to her breast, and, over her, the bishop’s pastoral staff, held up as if to shield her.
The door was closed behind me, and the soldiers shot the bolts home. In front of me was a flight of winding concrete stairs, dividing at a central space into two portions that ran right and left respectively. We took the left. I expected to emerge into the Vivisection Bureau, to see the eager students of the medical school, and Sanson, the presiding devil, there. But instead I saw a gate above me; a guard unlocked it. Then I found myself standing alone beside Mehemet, in the interior court between the Temple and the Airscouts’ Fortress, between the Science Wing and the Council Building.
High above me the bridges crossed, spanning the gulf in whose recess we stood. I saw once more the palms against the upreared crystal walls.
As I watched I saw the battleplanes take their flight once more, one by one, from the roof of the Airscouts’ Fortress, rising into the dark night like luminous balloons. In the distance London glowed like day.
Behind us, in the outer courts, a multitude was shrieking curses upon the Christians; and, for the first time, I heard threats against Lembken, and realized that Sanson’s plans were made for that coup which I was never to see.
“We are going to Sanson?” I asked Mehemet, nerving myself for his affirmative reply.
He spat. “The jackal!” he said. “Sooner would I become a Christian than serve such spawn. We are going to the People’s House.”