“I want to leave this hell!” I cried. “Which way? Which way?”
“You want—you want—?” he stammered.
“The Strangers’ House. I am lost here—”
He looked at me in utter perplexity.
“Help me!” I pleaded. “Show me the way!”
The door behind him opened, and there stepped out a man of about fifty years, dressed in white, with a golden swan on each shoulder. Jones stepped aside and saluted him. The newcomer approached me. His hard, clean-shaven face was impenetrable, and his eyes burned with a dull fire. Behind him crept a second figure; it was the old priest.
“There he is! Seize him!” he shrieked.
The first man laid his hand on my shoulder. “I am Air-Admiral Hancock,” he said. “You are to accompany me to Boss Lembken.”
I went with him across the bridge into a doorway set in the west side of the Temple building. I expected again to see the vast interior beneath me, but we entered a narrow corridor and stepped into a small automatic elevator. In a moment we had shot up and halted inside the Palace entrance. Hancock opened the door of the cage.
We were standing in a spacious hall, bare, save for the hanging tapestries and heavy Persian rugs on the mosaic floor. It was half dark, and there was a perfume that made my head swim. Before the curtained aperture opposite us stood a negro boy, with a Ray rod in his hand. As we approached he threw the curtain aside and saluted us.