They came to the end of the corridor, mounted a broad staircase. Jaro sensed that they were still deep in the bowels of Mercury. At length, they were halted before a massive door. A priest stood at the entrance. There was an exchange of words between their captors and the solitary guard. Satisfied, the priest stood aside, flung open the door. Jaro and Joan were motioned inside. The portal clanged shut behind them. "Caught again," said Joan. "I'll never feel at home now unless I'm behind bars." Jaro chuckled. "This isn't a jail," he pointed out. "The cells are below us. I think we are about to see Karfial Hodes at last." * * * * * The room in which Jaro and Joan found themselves was a large, bare, vaulted hall. At the far end, Jaro saw an imposing door. He advanced curiously toward it. "Are we just supposed to wait?" asked Joan. "How does Karfial Hodes know we're here?" "He's probably been notified by visoscreen," he assured her. He pushed experimentally at the massive door. It moved easily beneath his touch. "Hey!" he said. "It's not locked." His voice echoed hollowly in the vaulted antichamber. "Are we going in?" asked Joan weakly. "As if I didn't know already." Jaro gave the door a push. It swung wide. "Look!" cried Joan. "My god, look!" He saw a magnificent room, the floor of polished marble. A row of fluted columns ran down each side. There was a desk, a modern desk, strangely out of place in the antique setting, opposite the door through which they had entered. Across its polished surface a man sprawled limply, just as if he had fallen forward from his chair in sleep. With a bound Jaro sprang across the room, felt the man's withered wrist for any signs of pulse. He was a very old man, he saw, and he was quite dead. "Karfial Hodes!" murmured Joan in a low frightened voice. "I saw him once in a street procession. Is he dead, Jaro?" Jaro nodded. From the back of the old man's neck, he plucked a tiny metallic splinter. "They got him with a poisoned dart gun. He's still warm. It couldn't have happened but a minute before." "Oh, Jaro, and he was such a nice old man. Who could have done it?" Jaro straightened, said, "One of Albert Peet's renegade whites." "Ugh! And to think I worked for that man." But Jaro wasn't listening. He had gone behind the desk. "This is how they got him," he said, excitement in his voice. It was, Joan sensed, the excitement of the man hunter when he grows hot on the trail of his quarry. There was a cold and ruthless edge to his voice which she had not heard before, and for the first time she found herself a little afraid of this strange man about whom she really knew so little. Hesitantly she edged after him. Behind the desk, she saw a panel gaping ajar in the stone wall. It was the same kind of panel which gave admittance to the secret passages on the lower levels. Jaro was nowhere in sight.