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. There were soft solar lights in the next room, which was rose-red, and decorated and furnished in the style of Louis Quatorze. Another negro stood in the doorway opposite; he, too, saluted and threw the curtain back. The third room was enameled in blue. The blue lights gave it an unearthly aspect, which was increased by the baroque style of its ornamentation. The perfume was stronger. The negro at the door of the fourth room was a giant. He wore the uniform of an eighteenth century grenadier. His scarlet coat and white pigtail formed vivid spots against the dull-gold curtain. The room within was dark. We waited on the threshold. At first I could see nothing. Then, gradually, the outlines of the room came into sight. There were low divans and rugs, and mirrors on every wall multiplied them. I heard a rasping sound, and a blotch of crimson and green became a brilliant macaw that scraped its way with its sharp claws from end to end of a horizontal perch. Behind it I now saw the white gleam of Lembken’s robe; then the couch on which he lay; then the girl who crouched, fanning him, at his feet; then the rotund form of the old man, the sharp eyes and the heavy jowl with the pendulous cheeks. “I have executed your orders, Boss,” said the Air-Admiral. The old man rose upon his feet heavily and came puffing up to us. His heavy soft hands wandered about my robes, patting me here and there, while he puffed and snorted like some sea monster. “You haven’t a knife or a Ray rod?” he inquired suspiciously. “You haven’t anything to harm me? I am an old, weak man. I am the people’s friend, and yet many want to kill me.” He seemed to satisfy himself with the result of his inspection, and withdrew to his couch, picking up a Ray rod and resting it across his knee. He dismissed Hancock and the girl. She rose to her feet briskly, with a mechanical smile. She was about twenty years old, it seemed to me, but there was a hardness and cruelty about her mouth that shocked me, and the soul behind the mask of youth seemed centuries old.