I spent some days mostly in resting and dozing, being drowsy all day, even
with long nights of sound sleep.
On the fatal last day of the year I did not go out, but read or dozed and
went early to bed. I slept heavily, knowing nothing from composing myself
in bed until I wakened suddenly in the almost complete darkness of the
first hint of light at the dawn of a cloudy, windless winter day, I woke
with a sense of having been roused, of something unusual; and, vaguely
descrying a human figure by my bed asked, sleepily:
"Is that you, Dromo?"
"No," said Agathemer's voice, "it is I."
I raised myself on one elbow, shot through with foreboding. But my
apprehensions were mastered by an idle curiosity. I knew he had some
imperative reason for coming to me, yet I did not ask his errand, but
queried:
"How on earth did you get in?"
"The house-door was open," he said simply.
"But," I marvelled, "I am surprised that the janitor was awake so early."
"He was not," said Agathemer with deliberate emphasis, "he was as fast
asleep in his cell on the right of the vestibule as was the watch-dog in
his on the left."
"And you walked past both unnoticed?" I hazarded.
"I did," said he, "and you had best warn Falco somehow or induce him to
sell his janitor and buy one he can trust or to put in his place some
trusty home-slave.
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