Hurling his keys impatiently to the ground, Tam attacked the door with his heavy tulwar. The blade bit through the wooden paneling four times in quick succession, cutting a rectangular opening. Through the aperture, he saw that which made his blood boil—Nina fighting off the advances of a fierce but wary manacvan with a jewel-hilted tulwar, while a hare-lipped, hunchbacked idiot leaped up and down before the cage, laughing uproariously.
Snatching his long dagger from his belt, Tam balanced it for a moment, then hurled it with the strength and precision which his years of training had given him. It struck the manacvan's shaggy temple just back of the eye, with a force that mere bone could not resist, and passing on through the brain of the man-dog protruded from the other temple. Slain instantly, and almost painlessly, the beast slumped to the floor of the cage without a sound.
Almost before the manacvan had collapsed into the filthy litter at the feet of the astonished girl, Tam had squeezed through the opening he had cut in the door, and was bounding forward. At sight of him and the other men crawling through the cut panel, the idiot voiced a howl of fear and dived beneath the cage. But Tam grasped him by an ankle, and dragging him out, gave him into the care of the major.
Nina, still holding Nirgo's tulwar, seemed dumfounded at first by the swift sequence of events. Because of the cries of the idiot and the snarling and growling of the manacvan, she had not heard Tam cut the hole in the door. Her first intimation that rescue was at hand had been the sight of a long dagger sticking clear through the skull of the dog-faced man as he slumped to the floor. Bewildered, she had turned in time to see Tam's back as he bent to pull the idiot son of Nirgo from beneath the cage. Behind Tam stood a tall, slender man whose hair was slightly gray at the temples, dressed in clothing the like of which she had never seen before. And squeezing through the door panel was a shorter, stockier man with glasses and a flaming red beard. These, she thought, must be Tam's father and his friend the doctor of whom Lozong had spoken. With a glad cry, she hurried to the front of the cage.
There were doors at the back of the cage, but Tam did not even see them. Gripping two of the heavy bars, he bent them apart as if they had been putty, while his father and the doctor looked on amazed at his great strength. Nina stepped through the opening, and Tam, standing on the floor below her, caught her in his arms as she jumped.
No longer clad in metal, but now wearing a soft, white diaphanous garment, she seemed a new Nina to Tam. It thrilled him unaccountably to hold her there in his arms, to feel her soft young body close to his. And looking down into her eyes, he saw a light which sent the hot blood coursing through his veins. The cage, the dead beast, the idiot, the presence of his father and his father's friend—all were forgotten in that instant. A soft arm stole about his neck. A hand caressed his hair. Their lips met in a moment of ecstasy that set them both trembling.
"Tam," she said. "My Tam, I thought I should never see you again."
"And I feared that I should be too late," he replied.
He turned to face the others, but as he did so his foot encountered something soft, warm and sticky. Looking down in surprize, he beheld the bloodstained countenance of Nirgo, his jeweled crown jammed down over his forehead and badly dented in the center.
"Dead?" he asked Nina.
"No, only stunned," she replied. "I struck him down with his own tulwar but the blade did not touch him. His crown cut him as it was driven down over his forehead."
"Then," said Tam, "while he remains in oblivion permit me to present my father, Major Evans."
The major advanced, and with a courtly bow, kissed the hand of the Princess, while the doctor took charge of the frightened idiot. In his turn, he held the quaking Virgo while the doctor was presented.
At this juncture, Dhava and Yusuf arrived, both dressed in armor taken from the guards who had been slain in the dungeon, and bearing their weapons. The former dropped on his knees before the Princess, who gave him her hand to kiss, and commended his brave defense of her during the attack by Ranya, lieutenant of Siva. The major presented Yusuf, who had knelt beside Dhava.
"What are Your Majesty's commands?" asked Dhava, who was now attired in the armor of an officer of the palace guard.
"You will know where to find my loyal retainers," she told him. "Take this man with you in case you are attacked, and as soon as you have gathered sufficient forces, put every Nirgo vassal in the dungeons. Send a guard of ten men to me, here."
"I hear and I obey, Majesty," replied Dhava, and departed, followed by Yusuf.
"What will we do with the usurper and his idiot son?" asked the doctor.
"I suggest the cage as a good place for them," said Tam, "until such time as Her Majesty shall have decided their fate."
"A splendid idea," said Nina. "Let it be the cage."
The idiot, Virgo, was placed in the compartment where the manacvan had been confined. Then, after the door between the two sides had been closed, Nirgo, who had begun to recover consciousness, was deprived of his dagger and thrust into the other. Tam then pushed the bars back into place, and after he had straightened them, neither Nirgo nor any other man in that company could have moved them from their places again.
SOON there was the clank of metal in the corridor, and the guard of ten men which Nina had ordered, arrived. Leaving a man to guard the caged usurper, who was now groveling in the filthy litter in abject terror, and his idiotic son, they ascended to the ground floor of the palace. Here Nina was met by her lord chamber-lain, who had just been notified of her presence, and who, with a hastily assembled group of dignitaries and servitors had hurried down to meet her.