"It wasn't funny," said Joan, indignantly. "They hauled me down some stairs, into an alley. I saw then that they were Mercurians, and I wasn't so scared. They brought me here, and here I've been ever since. But I still don't understand how you found me." He said, "There seems to be a regular network of these secret passages running through the walls. It was the merest accident that I stumbled into them. Where they lead, though, I don't know any more than you." "What are we going to do?" she wanted to know. "Find Karfial Hodes. I've a hunch that he's hidden here." "I was afraid of that," she said in a plaintive tone. Jaro found her hand, led her to the next alcove, applied his eye to the peep hole. The room, he saw, was identical with the one in which Joan had been imprisoned. On the bed lay the red-headed singer of _Mercury Sam's Garden_. "The Red Witch," he whispered. "We're getting hot." "Who's she?" said Joan. She pushed Jaro aside, put her eye to the peep hole. "Where _do_ you meet these people?" she asked. Jaro said, "I'm going in and talk to her. Wait here." "What?" cried Joan, "Leave me out in this dark hole? I should say not." "All right," he replied. He glanced again through the peep hole. The woman was asleep. She lay on her side, her red hair turning the pillow to blood. She still had on the abbreviated costume she had been wearing on Mercury Sam's stage. Jaro opened the panel, crawled into the room, Joan on his heels. He went up to the bed, looked down at the sleeping woman. He thought she looked hollow cheeked, unhappy in her sleep; nothing like the flaming wanton who was known throughout the Universe as the Red Witch. He touched her shoulder. She opened her eyes. They were a vivid green. Recognition swept her features. V "Jaro!" she cried, a note of fright in her voice. She jerked up, swung her bare legs off the bed onto the floor. "What do you want? How did you get here?" Those amazing green eyes flicked past him, discovered Joan. She wasn't too frightened to raise her eyebrows. "There are a few questions I'd like to ask," he replied coolly. "Just who is behind this revolution?" There was the faintest hesitancy in her reply. "Hodes. Who did you think?" He looked skeptical, waited. She said, "You don't believe me? When I talked with you, I exaggerated perhaps. But there is very much money involved, very much indeed. Should the Mercurians be successful, they would take possession of the Latonka Trust, the plantations, and the mines. The Earthmen would be dispossessed. Naturally, they are very anxious to frustrate the revolution." "But the Mercurians are in the right," Joan burst out. She had been swelling up like a toad in the effort to contain herself. "Albert Peet and his kind, stole everything in the first place. They deserve to be kicked out. Mercury has a right to self-government."