"No! No! You let me alone!" His accents were those of a spoiled child. The Director hesitated, and Georg, with a hand to his forehead, wavered toward the casement. The Director saw him standing there; saw him sway, then fall or jump forward, and disappear.
They rushed outside. The snow was trampled all about with heavy footprints, but Georg had vanished. From the women's apartment, the attendant came back. The Princess Maida could not be found!
And in those moments of confusion, from outside across the starlit snow, an aero was rising. Silent, black--and no one saw it as it winged away into the night.
I must revert now to those moments in the tower room when Tarrano dissolved the isolation barrage which Wolfgar had thrown around us. Georg escaped, as I have recounted. Tarrano--there in the tower room--rendered me unconscious. I came to myself on the broad divan and found Elza bending over me.
I sat up, dizzily, with the room reeling.
"Jac! Jac, dear----" She made me lie back, until I could feel the blood returning to my clammy face; and the room steadied, and the clanging of the gongs in my ears died away.
"I--why, I'm--all right," I gasped. And I lay there, clinging to her hand. Dear little Elza! In that moment of relief that I had come to my senses, she could not hide the love which even now was unspoken between us. Tarrano! I lay there weak and faint; but with the pressure of Elza's hand, I did not fear that this Tarrano could win her from me.
Wolfgar was standing across the room from us. He came forward.
"You did not die," he said; and smiled. "I told her you would not die."
It was now morning. Wolfgar and Elza told me I had been unconscious some hours. We were still imprisoned as before in the tower. Georg had escaped with Maida, they said; or at least, they hoped so. And they described the burning of the other tower. The city had been in a turmoil. It still was; I could hear now the shouts of the crowd outside. And turning as I lay there, through the casement I could see the blackened, still smoking ruins of Maida's tower; the broken iron terrace; the spider bridge melted away, hanging loose and dangling like an aimless pendulum.
The latest news, Elza and Wolfgar could not give me. The instrument room of our tower had been disconnected by Tarrano when he left some hours before. As they said it, we heard a familiar buzz; then the drone of an announcer's voice. Tarrano's guard had doubtless observed my recovery and had had orders to throw current into our instruments. Strange man, this Tarrano! He wished the news spread before us again. Confident of his own dominance over every crisis, he wanted Elza and me to hear it as it came from the discs.