"Here," she said rapidly, "is what strengthens John in his folly. This
is a passage that leads under the Temple through Moriah into Tophet.
The whole city is underlaid with these galleries, but this is the only
one which leads to safety."
She dropped the curtain and approached him.
"But thou canst not go out of that passage alone!"
He smiled, and then with that boyish impulsiveness that he had
cultivated to cover the evil in his nature, he thrust out his hand to
her.
"Here is my hand on it!" he exclaimed.
"Go, then, and cease not till you have found her. Then, by any or all
the gods, I shall see that you do not go out of that passage
empty-handed."
He smiled at her radiantly and went at once to his chambers.
When he reached the apartments, he found them silent and deserted. He
seized upon the opportunity as most propitious for a search for the
possible hiding-place of the dowry of two hundred talents.
When he opened first the great press in which his lady kept her
raiment he was confronted by emptiness. Dismayed, he turned to look
into the room and found the chests for the most part open and rifled.
On the brazier, now cold, lay a wax tablet. He snatched it up and read: Received of Julian of Ephesus the appended salvage in good repair.
Items: One wife, Two hundred talents.
JOHN, KING OF JERUSALEM.
He went back to the andronitis of Amaryllis.
"I have lost interest in the treasure," he said whimsically. "But I'll
go out and look for the girl. I--I should like to discover of a truth
if the passage leads out of Jerusalem."
Amaryllis closed her lips firmly. Philadelphus read in the look that
he could not escape without Laodice.
Without further speech, he went to the vestibule, took his cloak and
kerchief from the porter and went out into the city.
It was nearly midnight when he passed into the streets. The tumult of
assault on the walls had ceased. The long lines of beacon-fires on the
walls showed only a few men in arms posted there. Without there came
no sound of activity in the camp of the Roman. The streets below,
lighted up by the ever-burning beacons, showed its usual restless
tramping of houseless, hungry ones. But there was no talk; each one
who walked the passages went wrapped in his own dismal thoughts; the
thousands took no notice of one another. Jerusalem was as silent as a
city stricken with plague.
From the summit of Zion, which Philadelphus mounted, he could see
three Roman war-towers, planted along the outer works, dimly lighted,
and manned by a vigilant garrison of legionaries. These had been a
dread and a destruction which the Jews had been unable to overthrow;
coigns of vantage from which the enemy had been able to deal the
sturdiest blows of the campaign. They had permitted no rest to the
defenders on the wall; they had spread ruin by fire and carnage, by
arrow and sling for days. Sorties against them had resulted in the
death of their assailants, only. Jewish engines accomplished nothing
against them. The three, alone, were taking Jerusalem.