: Tarzan and the lost empire by Burroughs Edgar Rice Frazetta Frank Illustrator - Tarzan (Fictitious character) Fiction; Fantasy fiction; Adventure stories

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There was that in the tone and manner of von Harben that compelled confidence and belief, so that even the suspicious Validus gave credence to the seemingly wild tales of the stranger and presently found himself asking questions of the barbarian.

Finally the Emperor turned to Fulvus Fupus. "Upon what proof did you accuse this man of being a spy from Castra Sanguinarius?" he demanded.

"Where else may he be from?" asked Fulvus Fupus. "We know he is not from Castrum Mare, so he must be from Castrum Sanguinarius."

"You have no evidence then to substantiate your accusations?"

Fupus hesitated.

"Get out," ordered Validus, angrily. "I shall attend to you later."

Overcome by mortification, Fupus left the garden, but the malevolent glances that he shot at Favonius, Lepus, and Erich boded them no good. Validus looked long and searchingly at von Harben for several minutes after Fupus quit the garden as though attempting to read the soul of the stranger standing before him.

"So there is no Emperor at Rome," he mused, half aloud. "When Sanguinarius led his cohort out of Aegyptus, Nerva was Emperor. That was upon the sixth day before the calends of February in the 848th year of the city in the second year of Nerva's reign. Since that day no word of Rome has reached the descendants of Sanguinarius and his cohort."

Von Harben figured rapidly, searching his memory for the historical dates and data of ancient history that were as fresh in his mind as those of his own day. "The sixth day before the calends of February," he repeated; "that would be the twenty-seventh day of January in the 848th year of the city--why, January twenty-seventh, A.D. 98 is the date of Nerva's death," he said.

"Ah, if Sanguinarius had but known," said Validus, "but Aegyptus is a long way from Rome and Sanguinarius was far to the south up the Nilus before word could have reached his post by ancient Thebae that his enemy was dead. And who became Emperor after Nerva? Do you know that?"

"Trajan," replied von Harben.

"Why do you, a barbarian, know so much concerning the history of Rome?" asked the Emperor.

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