It was the first time we had had any freedom since our arrival. Ren had not returned with Jim. If the king were really dead, there would be a great confusion at the castle. They might be detained indefinitely. Sonya would not wait. “A few hours only,” she urged. “Then we will be back. I will leave a message for my cousin and your friend.” The first shock of Dr. Weatherby’s death was over. There was no advantage in the girls remaining here. We started finally. On the lower floor of the house we found long dark cloaks and donned them, with a queerly flat, mound-shaped hat for me and light scarfs to cover the girls’ heads. The lower door was open. Ren had left it so, knowing that Sonya would stay with us. Technically we were prisoners. But Sonya paid scant ceremony to that now. The king was dead: our oath of allegiance to the nation would be taken for granted. “My allegiance goes to you,” Dolores said naively. “You girls.” Alice nodded. “Yes,” said Sonya. “But do not say so openly. And you, my friend, Leonard—you are a man—be careful what you say if you have any sympathy for our cause.” Sympathy! How mild a word, as again visions of what she had told us sprang before me! In this residential section of the city there was at this hour no traffic in the street. The shouting crowd had disappeared. Sonya led us to the main street level. The pedestrian bridges were above us. An unnatural silence seemed to hang about the dark, somnolent city, as though it only seemed sleeping and was wide awake. A tenseness was in the air. The houses were dark, but in almost every window I fancied that figures were watching, faces peering out. We avoided the lights. Mounted the hill for a block or two, then turned into a very narrow street of shadows. The houses here, the back of houses, I assumed, were blank, two-storied walls. We passed each of them hurriedly. My heart was thumping. Sonya had said that these were merely back entrances to inner courtyards of the houses. But it seemed, to my sharpened fancy, that in every one some horrible lurking thing was waiting to spring upon us. Sonya was leading. She was taking us through a back way to her home, to get the vehicle that would transport us to the island. We were nearing the end of the alley; it opened ahead of us into a broad street with a dim glow of light illumining it. To our right, just ahead, was a courtyard entrance: a yawning cave-mouth of emptiness. We had almost reached it when Sonya abruptly halted, checked our advance as though she had struck some invisible barrier, stopped, and shrank backward, pressing against us. And her hand in terror was over her mouth to stifle a scream.