balls for feet and sat
stiffly, her ringed fingers tapping restlessly upon the wide arms.
Presently the man returned, carrying a wide flat box. Thereafter,
while Zoraida watched him impatiently, he occupied himself after a
fashion which Kendric found inexplicable. From the box the man took a
number of rectangular mirrors, fine clear glass framed with thin bands
of ebony. Deftly, into a groove made in the back of each mirror, he
slipped the end of a tall ebony rod. Then he rolled back the heavy rug
from two thirds of the floor. The floor was of stone, laid fancifully
in colored mozaic; here and there, seemingly placed utterly at random,
were smooth round holes in the stone blocks. Into each hole the haft
of one of the rods was thrust so that when the man stepped back to
survey his handiwork there was a little forest of mirrors on glistening
stems grown up in apparent lack of design, like young pines on a
tableland.

Then Zoraida rose and went from one of the glasses to another, turning
them a little to right or left, adjusting painstakingly, seeming to
read the meaning of some fine lines scratched in the stone floor. Her
eyes were like a mad woman's. She herself moved her chair, shoving it
from the rug to the bare floor, careful that each supporting crystal
sphere rested exactly upon a chosen spot. Her retainer handed her a
small stool; she placed it and, since it was near the spot where he
stood, Kendric made out the four crosses where the four legs were to
go. Then Zoraida went swiftly back to her chair.

As she sat down she called again sharply to the squat brute who served
her. His broad ugly teeth showed white in his animal grin; he ran
across the room and swept back the curtains draping the wall. They
were laced to rings along the upper edge and the rings ran on a long
rod. As they were whipped back they disclosed no ordinary wall but a
great expanse of mirror extending from floor to ceiling, from corner to
corner. When two other walls were exposed they too resolved themselves
into clearly reflecting surfaces.

"Clap-trap again," muttered Kendric, beginning to feel a strange dread
in his heart and growing angry with it and determined that Zoraida
should not guess.

"Be seated," commanded Zoraida sternly. "If you would see what
amusement is being offered a friend of yours!"

One by one the lamps were being put out by the hasty hand of the fellow
whom Kendric began to long to strangle; he could h