The Magic City

He lighted candles and set them on the table as Lucy asked eagerly:

'What Destroyer? Is it a horrid woman in a motor veil?'

'You've guessed it,' said the captain gloomily.

'It's that Pretenderette,' said Philip. 'Does Mr. Noah know? What has she been doing?'

'Everything you can think of,' said the captain; 'she says she's Queen, and that she's done the seven deeds. And Mr. Noah doesn't know, because she's set a guard round the city, and no message can get out or in.'

'The Hippogriff?' said Lucy.

'Yes, of course I thought of that,' said the captain. 'And so did she. She's locked it up and thrown the key into one of the municipal wells.'

'But why do the guards obey her?' Philip asked.

'They're not our guards, of course,' the captain answered. 'They're strange soldiers that she got out of a book. She got the people to pull down the Hall of Justice by pretending there was fruit in the gigantic books it's built with. And when the book was opened these soldiers came marching out. The Sequani and the Aedui they call themselves. And when you've finished supper we ought to hold a council. There are a lot of us here. All sorts. Distinctions of rank are forgotten in times of public peril.'

Some twenty or thirty people presently gathered in that round room from whose windows Philip and Lucy had looked out when they were first imprisoned. There were indeed all sorts, match-servants, domino-men, soldiers, china-men, Mr. Noah's three sons and his wife, a pirate and a couple of sailors.

'What book,' Philip asked Lucy in an undertone, 'did she get these soldiers out of?'

'Caesar, I think,' said Lucy. 'And I'm afraid it was my fault. I remember telling her about the barbarians and the legions and things after father had told me—when she was my nurse, you know. She's very clever at thinking of horrid things to do, isn't she?'

The council talked for two hours, and nobody said anything worth mentioning. When every one was quite tired out, every one went to bed.

It was Philip who woke in the night in the grasp of a sudden idea.

'What is it?' asked Max, rousing himself from his warm bed at Philip's feet.

'I've thought of something,' said Philip in a low excited voice. 'I'm going to have a night attack.'

'Shall I wake the others?' asked Max, ever ready to oblige.

Philip thought a moment. Then:

'No,' he said, 'it's rather dangerous; and besides I want to do it all by myself. Lucy's done more than her share already. Look out, Max; I'm going to get up and go out.'

He got up and he went out. There was a faint greyness of dawn now which showed him the great square of the city on which he and Lucy had looked from the prison window, a very long time ago as it seemed. He found without difficulty the ruins of the Hall of Justice.

And among the vast blocks scattered on the ground was one that seemed of grey marble, and bore on its back in gigantic letters of gold the words De Bello Gallico.

Philip stole back to the prison and roused the captain.

'I want twenty picked men,' he said, 'without boots—and at once.'

He got them, and he led them to the ruins of the Justice Hall.

'Now,' he said, 'raise the cover of this book; only the cover, not any of the pages.'

The men set their shoulders to the marble slab that was the book's cover and heaved it up. And as it rose on their shoulders Philip spoke softly, urgently.

'Caesar,' he said, 'Caesar!'

And a voice answered from under the marble slab.

'Who calls?' it said. 'Who calls upon Julius Caesar?'

And from the space below the slab, as it were from a marble tomb, a thin figure stepped out, clothed in toga and cloak and wearing on its head a crown of bays.

'I called,' said Philip in a voice that trembled a little. 'There's no one but you who can help. The barbarians of Gaul hold this city. I call on great Caesar to drive them away. No one else can help us.'

Caesar stood for a moment silent in the grey twilight. Then he spoke.

'I will do it,' he said; 'you have often tried to master Caesar and always failed. Now you shall be no more ashamed of that failure, for you shall see Caesar's power. Bid your slaves raise the leaves of my book to the number of fifteen.'

It was done, and Caesar turned towards the enormous open book.

'Come forth!' he said. 'Come forth, my legions!'

Then something in the book moved suddenly, and out of it, as out of an open marble tomb, came long lines of silent armed men, ranged themselves in ranks, and, passing Caesar, saluted. And still more came, and more and more, each with the round shield and the shining helmet and the javelins and the terrible short sword. And on their backs were the packages they used to carry with them into war.

'The Barbarians of Gaul are loose in this city,' said the voice of the great commander; 'drive them before you once more as you drove them of old.'

'Whither, O Caesar?' asked one of the Roman generals.

'Drive them, O Titus Labienus,' said Caesar, 'back into that book wherein I set them more than nineteen hundred years ago, and from which they have dared to escape. Who is their leader?' he asked of Philip.

'The Pretenderette,' said Philip; 'a woman in a motor veil.'

'Caesar does not war with women,' said the man in the laurel crown; 'let her be taken prisoner and brought before me.'

Low-voiced, the generals of Caesar's army gave their commands, and with incredible quietness the army moved away, spreading itself out in all directions.

'She has caged the Hippogriff,' said Philip; 'the winged horse, and we want to send him with a message.'

'See that the beast is freed,' said Caesar, and turned to Plumbeus the captain. 'We be soldiers together,' he said. 'Lead me to the main gate. It is there that the fight will be fiercest.' He laid a hand on the captain's shoulder, and at the head of the last legion, Caesar and the captain of the soldiers marched to the main gate.

CHAPTER XII

THE END

Philip tore back to the prison, to be met at the door by Lucy.

'I hate you,' she said briefly, and Philip understood.

'I couldn't help it,' he said; 'I did want to do something by myself.'

And Lucy understood.