One word more—guard the robot and your results with the utmost care!”
“Yes, Commander.”
Hal Samdu saluted, eagerly, and a joyous smile lit his big ugly face.
“Aye, and it’s good to have something really to do, Jay, at last!”
And he stepped after Hannas into the elevator-beam.
“Now, Giles,” the Commander continued, “there are three men I must learn more about.
I know the overwhelming weight of evidence that Chan Derron is our Basilisk—perhaps with the android’s complicity.
But, hi a case so grave, we can’t afford to overlook any other possibility.
Admitting that the Basilisk must have a brilliant, pitiless, and scientific mind, there were three others present in the Diamond Room who might possibly be suspect.”
“Eh, Jay?”
The small fishy eyes of Giles Habibula blinked.
“Who?”
“The engineer,” began Jay Kalam, “John Comaine—”
“Ah, so,” agreed Giles Habibula.
“I didn’t like the look of his mysterious box.
And the others?”
“The gambler, Brelekko,” said the Commander.
“And Hannas, himself.”
“Hannas!
And Brelekko?” The old man nodded.
“Ah, so, I guess they all three fit your classification.
I know less of this Comaine.
But if two men ever were ravening wolves, Jay, they were Hannas and Brelekko!”
“You knew them, Giles.
Were they always friends, as now?”
“Friends, Jay!”
The leaden eyes peered at him.
“Ah, Jay, they were bitter enemies as ever fought—the three of us, each against the rest.
Ah, so!
And if any of us had been less a man than he was, the others would have picked his precious bones!”
“Tell me about it, Giles.”
“It was forty years ago, and more, Jay.”
Leaning on the cane, he heaved to a sorrowful sigh.
“When Giles was still a man—aye, a fighting man, not the miserable old soldier dying before you now.
He was back on Venus, on furlough from the legion—”
“Furlough, Giles?” inquired the grave Commander.
“For five years?”
Giles Habibula sucked in his breath, indignantly.
“The charges of desertion were never proven, Jay,” he wheezed.
“Ah, all that was a wicked plot of my enemies, to wreck the career of a loyal Legionnaire—”
“Never proven,” put in Jay Kalam, solemnly, “because all the documents in the case mysteriously vanished from the files of the Legion.”
“I know nothing of that.”
The fishy eyes blinked.
“Jay, Jay! If you’ve nothing better to do than turn up all the malicious lies that were invented by human demons like Hannas and Brelekko to ruin the bravest soldier that ever risked his life to save the System—” His thin voice broke, piteously.
“Forget it, Giles.”
A fault twinkle lit the dark eyes of Jay Kalam.
“Just tell me what happened on Venus.”
“Ah, thank you, Jay,” wheezed the old man, gratefully.
“You were never one to dig up mortal skeletons to haunt a poor old soldier with!”
He balanced himself on the cane.