arefully away, but
in spite of this promising beginning he was not tempted to proceed
further on this golden trail. He had another purpose in view, and so
found his way to the principal staircase and began the upward climb.

Interminable it seemed, and the sense of loneliness and oppression,
which lay heavy on Constans's spirits, increased steadily as he went
from one landing to another. Each succeeding story was so precisely like
the one he had just left; it was always the same long, marble-paved
corridor, with every door and window exactly duplicated. How could
living men and women have endured the appalling uniformity of this
human beehive? Everywhere, too, were the same recurring evidences of the
haste and panic that had characterized the final moments of that
terrible hegira. Hats and garments, cash-boxes and account-books,
littered the hallways, and were piled in little heaps at the entrances
to the elevators--impedimenta that must inevitably be abandoned at the
last if life itself were to be saved. And the final tragedy--an elevator
cage that had jammed in its ways and so hung fixed between two landings.
Its occupants had suddenly found themselves entrapped, with no one to
hear or to help. One can fancy the growing uneasiness, the wild amaze,
the terror that was afraid of the sound of its own voice. Constans
hurried by; he had looked but that once.

Onward and upward, and at last he had gained the topmost floor. It was
hardly worth his while to ascend to the roof itself, and so he walked
into a room that faced the north and consequently commanded a view of
the city along its longitudinal axis. He gazed long and earnestly into
the obscurity, and far in the distance he caught the faint twinkle of a
solitary light--a camp-fire, perhaps. He tried to fix its bearings in
his mind; if it were a fire it must indicate the neighborhood of the
Doomsman stronghold.

For a long time Constans stood at the window seeking to penetrate the
mystery of the darkness that surrounded him; then at last nature
asserted her rights, he yawned vigorously, and his eyelids fell. There
was a brown leather lounge in the room, still in tolerable condition,
and he threw himself down without even troubling to remove the thick
coating of dust that covered it. He slept.

IX

THE KEYS OF POWER

The sun was high in the sky when Constans awoke. For a moment or two the
unfamiliar environment puzzled him; then the keen edge of remembrance