Old Giles Habibula, come on a wicked and perilous journey to set you free, lass.
Just wait a few blessed moments, while he works another precious lock.”
Already he was on his knees by the sliding grille, his thick fingers curiously deft and steady, moving over the little strange levers that projected from the case of the mechanism.
“Aladoree!” cried Hal Samdu, an odd, yearning eagerness in his rusty voice.
“Aladoree—have they—hurt you?”
“Hal!” came her glad, trembling cry.
“Hal, too?”
“Of course.
You think I wouldn’t come?”
“Hal!” she sobbed again, joyously.
“And where’s Jay?”
“He’s———” began John Star, when Jay Kalam’s grave tones, weak and uneven, came beside him: ,
“Here, Aladoree—at your command.”
He reeled to the edge of the grating, sank beside it, still weak and white with pain, though smiling.
“I’m so—glad!” her voice came from darkness, broken with sobs of pure joy.
“I knew—you’d try.
But it was—so far!
And the plot— so clever—so diabolical———”
“Ah, lass, don’t weep so!” urged Giles Habibula.
“Every precious thing is all right, now.
Old Giles will have this door open in a moment, and you out in the precious light of day again, lass!”
John Star abruptly sensed something amiss.
Quickly he looked up and down the long, high-walled black hall.
The vast bulk of the dead Medusa lay motionless, serpent-locks sprawling and still.
The floor of dull green light revealed nothing moving, no enemy.
Yet something was wrong.
Suddenly it struck him.
“Eric Ulnar!” he gasped.
“Did you help him out of the cell?”
“Ah, yes, lad,” wheezed Giles Habibula.
“We couldn’t leave even him for the wicked things to torture.”
“Of course,” rumbled Hal Samdu.
“Where is———”
“He’s gone!” whispered John Star.
“Gone!
Still a coward and a traitor.
He’s gone to give the alarm!”
22 Red Storm at Dusk
“Ah, now!” wheezed Giles Habibula.
“Ready, lass, to come?”
The lock had snapped; he slid back the barred door.
“Please go down, John,” said Jay Kalam.
“Help her.”
John Star swung through the opening, hung by his arms, dropped lightly on the floor of the cell, beside Aladoree.
Her gray eyes watched him doubtfully, greenish in the gloom.
“John Ulnar,” she asked, her scornful dislike less open, yet still cutting him deep, “you came with them?”
“Aladoree!” he pleaded.
“You must trust me!”
“I told you once,” she said coldly, “that I could never trust a man named Ulnar.
That very day you locked up my loyal men, betrayed me to your traitorous kinsman!”