For a moment Basil stared from Daoud the Moor to his shadowy visitor, then he bade the runner arise and commanded him in some Eastern tongue to unburden himself. With many protestations of his devotion the monster produced a bundle which Basil had not noted, owing to the swiftness with which the African had entered the chamber. Panting, with deft, though trembling fingers, Daoud untied the cords and a bloody head, severed from its trunk, rolled upon the floor of the chamber, and lay still at Basil's feet. It had lost all human semblance and exhaled the putrid odor of the grave. Basil started to his feet, staring from the Moor to Hormazd. "Dead--" his pale lips stammered. Then, turning to his dark companion, he added by way of encouragement to himself: "You gave me truth!" Daoud was cowering on the floor, his eyes staring into the shadows, where hovered the Persian's almost invisible form. A nod from Basil caused him to rise. "Away with it!" shrieked the Grand Chamberlain overcome with terror. "See that no one sets eyes upon it!" The Moor wrapped the severed head into the blood-stained cloth and darted from the chamber. Then Basil turned to his visitor. "In six days Rome shall hail a new master! Let then the sable banners of Hell be unfurled and the Nameless Presence rejoice upon his ebony throne! And now do you come with me into the realms of doom that gape below, that your eyes may be gladdened by that which is in store for you!" Taking up a torch, Basil lighted it with the aid of two flints and the twain trooped out of the chamber into the shadowy corridor leading into the crypts of the Emperor's Tomb. CHAPTER II THE ESCAPE FROM SAN ANGELO Hidden away in some secret vault of the great honey-colored Mausoleum Tristan found himself when the men-at-arms had departed, and he had regained his full senses. Color had faded out of everything. The rock walls were lifeless and grey. The immense silence of the tomb surrounded him. The rayless gloom was without relief, save what sparse light filtered through a narrow grated window so high in the wall that nothing could be seen from below, save the sky. The torture of it all he could have endured very well. There was something greater. It was the thought of Hellayne. This dreadful uncertainty swung like a bell in his brain, cut through the fibre of his being. And when these thoughts came over him in his lone confinement he beat his hands upon the stone and wept. They had placed him in a cell, which seemed to have been hollowed out of the Travertine rock. It was small, built in the thickness of the mighty Roman walls. Tristan set his teeth hard, prepared to endure. He knew well enough what it meant. He would be confined in this living tomb till his enemies thought his spirit was broken, and then he would be summoned before a tribunal of the Church.