The contents of the casket which all Yaque had mourned lay scattered in this secret place of which only this strange, mad creature, a chance pensioner at the palace, had knowledge.
Suddenly the memory of Balator's words smote St.George with new perception.

"He walks the streets of Med," Balator had told him at the banquet, "saying 'Melek, Melek,' which is to say 'king,' and so he is seeking the king.

But he is mad, and he weeps; and therefore they pretend to believe that he says, 'Malakh,' which is to say 'salt,' and they call him that, for his tears." Could old Malakh possibly know something of the king?
The hope returned to St.George insistently, and he watched, spending his thought in new and extravagant conjecture, his mental vision blurring the details of that heaped-up, glistening confusion; and on the opposite side of the table the old man lifted and laid down that rainbow stuff of dreams, delighting in it, speaking softly above it.

Had he been the king's friend, St.George was asking--but why did no one know anything of him?
Or had he been an enemy who had done the king violence--but how was that possible, in his age and feebleness?
Mystifying as the matter was, St.George exulted as much as he marveled; for it would be his, at all events, to place the jewels in Olivia's hands and clear her father's name; he longed to step out of the dark and confront the old man and seize the casket out of hand, and he would probably have done so and taken his chances at getting back to the upper world, had he not been chained to his corner by the irresistible hope that the old man knew something more--something about the king.

And while he wondered, reflecting that at any cost he must prevent the replacing of the pivotal stone, he saw old Malakh take up his taper, turn away from the table, and open a door which the room's central pillar had cut from his view.
He was around the table in an instant.