Standing between the two in the shadows, lolling back half-insolently against Boss Lembken’s chair, to whisper in his ear, and again turning to the priest, was Sanson. I could not mistake the whitening hair brushed back, the gestures of intense pride and power, though I could hardly see the face. He wore a tight tunic of white, without a badge, and he bore himself with a complete absence of self-consciousness. There was not a trace of pose in the completeness of that manifested personality, with its alert poise, cat-like and tense, as if each nerve and sinew had been disciplined to serve the master-soul within.
As I watched I heard a strident, metallic voice call in loud tones:
“Wait till the Goddess awakens and the Messiah comes! He’ll make an end of Sanson and his cruelties, and give us freedom again!”
Now I perceived that behind Sanson and between the two thrones stood a telephone funnel, attached to some mechanism. It was from this that the voice had issued. It was followed by the clacking sound of a riband of paper being run off a reel. Sanson stepped back, picked up the riband, and ran it through his fingers, glancing at it indifferently.
“The speaker lives in District 9, Block 47, but we do not yet know his name. A trapper is watching,” said the voice in the funnel.
A bell rang, the door on the left of the Council Hall was opened by a guard, and a girl of about eighteen entered. She was robed in white and on her shoulder was the sign of a palm tree. She stood before Boss Lembken’s throne with downcast face and clasped hands, trembling violently.
“They sent for me,” she said in a low voice.
I saw the smile deepen on Lembken’s face. He sat leering at her; then he shifted each foot down from the stool and gathered himself, puffing, upon his feet. He put his hand under her chin and raised it, looking into her face. The girl twisted herself away, screamed and began running toward the door.
“Let me go home! Please—please!” she cried.
The guard at the door placed one hand over her mouth and dragged her, struggling, through a small door behind the funnel, which I had not seen.