n 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. That is no sort of a janitor for the house containing
the second-largest private gem-collection in all Rome. Nor any sort of
watch-dog."

"How came the door unbarred?" I wondered, "who showed you up here?"

"I came up alone," said Agathemer, significantly. "I have not seen a human
being except the snoring janitor. This house is at the mercy of any sneak-
thief. But you can return to that later. I have come to tell you good
news. Commodus is dead!"

"Really?" I quavered.

Oddly enough I felt no sense of relief. Before my eyes arose the picture
of Commodus as I had seen him facing the mutineers from Britain before he
condemned Perennis: I recalled how often I had heard said of him that he
was the noblest born of all our Emperors from the Divine Julius down; that
he was the handsomest and the strongest man in any assembly about him,
however large; that in his Imperial Regalia he looked more imperial than
any man ever had: I contrasted his possession of these qualities with his
pitiful squandering of his boundless opportunities, with his frittering
away his life on horse-racing, sword-play and such like frivolities. I
could not think of myself, only of what Commodus might have been and had
not been. I mourned for him and Rome.

Agathemer sat down on the edge of my bed and told his story.

"You know," he said, "that, as gem-expert and as salesman for Oro