A sweeping gesture, another sonorous phrase and the assemblage rose, bowed, backed out of the vault, toward the iron grating through which I peered.

I shrank back against the wall, becoming a shadow among the shadows, and waited for the grill to swing open, and let the worshipers enter the passage so that, emerging from my angle, I could mingle with them, one of them, disguised in my hood and mask, and guarded by the peacock on my wrist. And once they had passed on, I could return.

And then I remembered the warder I had bound and gagged. Would they notice him lying in the shadows? Should I hasten on ahead of them, conceal the sentry outside the passage, and thus avoid the alarm caused by his discovery? Damn that sentry! Why had I left him where he dropped?

The door clicked. Too late to run on ahead to clear the way. The cloaked worshipers crowded even into my corner in that narrow passage, not even noticing me. One, however, seemed to mistake me for a comrade who had knelt beside him, and had left at his elbow.

“The master seemed hasty tonight, don’t you think, Raoul?”

I shrugged my shoulders, mumbled a phrase in Tagalog. The ruse served well. Evidently men of all languages met there.

“Oh, pardon, Monsieur … ”

And he went on through the passage in search of his comrade.

I mingled with the dozen who were leaving, contriving to fall back unobtrusively, thus avoiding the appearance of lingering in a place from which all were departing. And as the tail of the file of hooded men rounded the first turn, I dropped back and resumed my post at one side of the grill, deep in the shadows, seeing, but unseen.

The Marquis descended from the altar steps, halted in the center of the vault; stroked his black mustache; frowned. Three swift steps to his left brought him to the heavy black arras, which he parted.

“They have gone, chérie.”

And from behind the embroidered hangings came La Belle Allzaneau, white arms and shoulders and iridescent gown agleam under that deep, lurid light.

“Etienne, I’m somewhat disappointed. I had expected …”

“To see something grotesque and awful, and outlandish? Ma chere, those whom you saw were neophytes, and the rites of the innermost shrine are not for their eyes,” explained the Marquis as he again parted the arras and drew from behind it a low table laden with refreshments.

He then drew up a chaise lounge among whose cushions the girl enthroned herself. The Marquis took his place opposite her, and facing me, so that while I could look him full in the eye, I could see but the profile of La Belle Allzaneau, Lili of Lachepaillet, the lorette who had the manner of a queen.

“No, petite,” continued the Marquis, “those were neophytes. But to you I shall reveal—”