You are free till
tomorrow at sunrise. Dromo will show you your quarters."
And he beckoned one of the slaves.
Headquarters was a low rectangle of two stories only, built of some stone
like lime-stone, roofed with red tiles and set about a spacious courtyard.
The ground floor seemed mostly stables; but, besides the office in which
we had found Procillus, it had other office rooms, a common-room, and we
glimpsed a bath and a kitchen. Dromo led us up the stone stair and along
the colonnaded portico of the second floor to clean rooms, provided with
comfortable cots, chests, stools, and not much else.
We threw our wallets on our cots and sat on stools. As soon as Dromo was
gone we opened our wallets, made ourselves comfortable, disposed all our
money about us in the body-belts we had bought at Genoa and went out,
unopposed and apparently unremarked.
Through the lively streets of Marseilles, in the mellow glow of the
evening sunshine, we made for the harborside, Agathemer nosing the air
like a dog on the scent. Presently he remarked:
"We are not far from what I am looking for."
And he turned up a side street to our right. As we took turn after turn
each street was less savory and more disreputable than the last till we
were in a sort of alley populated it seemed by slatternly trulls and
trollops.
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