Therefore, suddenly to hear Rollo's voice at his shoulder came as a distinct shock.
"It's one of them little brown 'uns, sir," Rollo announced in his best tone of mystery. "He's settin' upstairs, sir, an' he's all fer settin' there till he sees you. He says it's most important, sir."
Amory heard.
"Shall I go up?" he asked eagerly; "I'd like a whiff of a pipe, anyway. It'll be something to tie to."
"Will you go?" asked St. George in undisguised gratitude. He was prepared to accept most risks rather than to lose sight of the star he was following.
With a word to Balator who explained where, on his return, he could find them, Amory turned with Rollo, and slipped through the crowd. Having reasons of his own for getting back to the hall below, Amory was prepared to speed well the interview with "the little brown 'un" who, he supposed, was Jarvo.
It was Jarvo--Jarvo, in a state of excitement, profound and incredible. The little man, from the annoyingly serene mode of mind in which he had left them, was become, for him, almost agitated. He sprang up from a divan in the great dressing-room of their apartment and approached Amory almost without greeting.
"Adôn, adôn," he said earnestly, "you must leave the palace at once--at once. But to-night!"
Amory hunted for his pipe, found and lighted it, pressing a cigarette upon Jarvo who accepted, and held it, alight, in the palm of his hand.
"To-night," he repeated, as if it were a game.
"Ah well, now," said Amory reasonably, "why, Jarvo? And we so comfortable."
The little man looked at Amory beseechingly.
"I know what I know," he said earnestly, "many things will happen. There is danger about the palace to-night--danger it may be for you. I do not know all, but I come to warn you, and to warn the adôn who has been kind to us. You have brought us here when we were alone in America," said Jarvo simply. "Akko and I will help you now. It was Akko who remembered the tower."
Amory looked down at the bowl of his pipe, and shook his vestas in their box, and turned his eyes to Rollo, listening near by with an air of the most intense abstraction. Yes, all these things were real. They were all real, and here was he, Amory, smoking. And yet what was all this amazing talk about danger in the palace, and being warned, and remembering the tower?
"Anybody would think I was Crass, writing head-lines," he told himself, and blew a cloud of smoke through which to look at Jarvo.