Chapter VII: Part 7

“And what is that?” sharply demanded Jacques.

“The wedding of M. Capeluche, the headsman, to Mlle. Bonacieux, the condemned.”

Jacques threw back his head and laughed till the tears rolled down his cheeks.

“That indeed is droll!” he shouted. “M. le Headsman weds a woman and then immediately cuts off her head.”

The owl-like eyes of the Abbé regarded Jacques solemnly.

“You do not know the full import of what I have told you, Jacques.”

The old peasant sobered instantly.

“What’s that?”

“Then you have never heard of the Merovingian statute which provides that the headsman may marry a condemned woman, if he is able and willing, and thereby save her life?”

“Ah! Ah! Ah!” came from Jacques, his small eyes opening and shutting with lightning rapidity. “Thus it proceeds, eh? M. le Headsman surrenders to the charms of the beautiful Mlle. Bonacieux. He plans to take her to wife. Is not the situation amusing?”

Suddenly he shook the arm of the old Abbé.

“But it can not be, Abbé Kérouec,” he exclaimed vociferously. “I knew the worthy M. Capeluche at Fontainebleau. He was a friend of mine, and the father of the headsman in Peptonneau, and he confided in me that on a certain occasion a lady-in-waiting one day brought her child to the dwelling in red, whereupon the Capeluche sword rattled furiously in its closet, which meant, of an absolute surety, that the child, unless its neck was pricked by the point of the sword, would some day die by that sword. That woman bore the name of Bonacieux, and now, after eighteen years, old Jacques lives to see Mlle. Bonacieux, the child grown to womanhood, awaiting her death under the famous sword in the hands of a Capeluche.”

Jacques paused for breath. The old Abbé had endeavored to follow the harangue of the peasant.

“Understand? A portent!” shouted Jacques, in desperation. “Mlle. Bonacieux is to die tonight by the sword of the headsman, Capeluche.”

“Nay! Nay! Jacques,” in turn exclaimed the Abbé. “I know not of what you prate, save that it be Godless. But there will be a wedding in Peptonneau this eve, and no woman will die by the hand of Capeluche.”

* * * * *

A throng had gathered before the house in red by the time the Abbé and his companion Jacques made their way along the village street. The Comte met them. He was in doublet and hose of violet color with aiguillettes of same, having the customary slashes through which the shirt appeared. The dress was handsome, albeit it gave evidence of having been but recently taken from a traveler’s box, which had left it in creases.

“We have little time,” he said.

He left them, but returned presently with Mlle. Bonacieux, and at sight of her unusual beauty, accompanied by so graceful a figure as the Comte, a murmur of appreciation stirred the rustic spectators.

With the Abbé preceding them, the little party passed into the red dwelling. M. Capeluche, in the cloak of his office, stood awaiting them. The Abbé he treated with marked deference, a manner that sat oddly on him. As a man beyond the pale of both church and society, because of his calling, Capeluche had experienced some doubt as to whether the worthy churchman would perform the ceremony.

As affairs went forward, his face retained its customary grim composure; but his eyes, resting on the entrancing creature who stood demurely at his side, held a light that fully signified his reaction to the potentialities of the occasion.

An hour passed, and old Jacques lay on his bed. He was fully dressed and wakeful and alert, despite the fact that his retiring-time had long since gone by. Presently there came to him the sound of approaching hoofbeats.

With the restless activity of a jack-in-the-box, he ran from his house and was in time to see the horseman dash up to the dwelling of Capeluche. The riders, of whom there were seven, wore masks. They pounded for admittance.

A light showed within, and old Jacques could see, through an open window, the headsman. He was making all secure against the attack. However, a window to the right—one that had just been closed—was reopened unexpectedly, and a woman’s hand extended. From it there fluttered a handkerchief.

Two of the horsemen started toward the open window. But the hand was withdrawn swiftly, and a terrible shriek followed.

A moment later the door gave way. The attacking party hurtled into the dwelling stumbling over one another.

An appalling sight was before them. In the center of the room stood Capeluche, a scarlet Mephisto. His hands held the cleanly severed head of Mlle. Bonacieux, her beautiful tresses of hair depending almost to the floor. At his feet lay the long weapon of his office.

He extended the head before him.

“Perhaps,” he said grimly, “the Comte de Mousqueton would relish a kiss from the lips of Madame Capeluche, the wife of a headsman. She was very choice of those same lips—a Dauphin has felt them. And see! See how deliciously cupid they are!”

Suddenly Jacques’ voice broke in.

“Before God!” exclaimed the old peasant, with tremendous satisfaction. “_The portent!_”

_The_ HIDEOUS FACE

_A Grim Tale of Frightful Revenge_

By VICTOR JOHNS

Marseilles, one hears while traveling through Europe, is the most vicious town in France.

Whether or not this ancient seaport, whose history reaches deep into the shadows of antiquity, is deserving of a criticism so sweeping and so condemnatory, I do not know. Such, at any rate, is the reputation it suffers among travelers.

All roads in Marseilles lead to La Cannebière, a street of splendid cafés. Being a sort of hyphen that connects the waterfront with the fashionable hotels and shops of the Rue Noailles, it swarms with a curious blend of dregs and pickings. Up from the Quai de la Fraternité come sailors hungry for the pleasures a few hours’ shore leave will offer; Algerian troops, on their way to Africa, jostle English soldiers back from India; adventurers and _le monde élégant_, pausing in flight to or from the Riviera, and the inevitable Magdalens, spatter its length with color and charge it with restlessness.

Late one afternoon last winter I drifted through this famous thoroughfare, looking for a place among the tables that edge its pavements. It had become my habit to sit for half an hour before dinner somewhere along the street, drink an appetizer, and expect the crowd to entertain me. The rows of iron chairs were filled with earlier comers, who sat contentedly behind their _apéritifs_ or cups of chocolate, but at last, in front of the Café de l’Univers, I found a vacant back row table, which I quickly possessed. With a glass of _vermouth cassis_ on the table beside me, I yielded to the lure of seaport excitement.

My thoughts were soon interrupted, however, by an American voice asking in French if the other chair at my table was taken. I turned to assure the gentleman it was not, that he was in no way intruding—and I looked into the face of Lawrence Bainridge.

“Hello, Bayard,” was his casual greeting. A bit too casual, I thought, considering the fact we had not seen each other for nearly two years.

I, contrariwise, must fairly have gasped, “Good Lord! What are you doing here?” for, as he swung the unoccupied chair about and sat down, he said,

“Well, what’s so strange about meeting me on La Cannebière?”

There was nothing strange about it; and I wondered at the amazement which so energetically had voiced itself. A rich, itinerant artist, Lawrence had zig-zagged several times around the world to paint unknown by-ways and hidden corners. Astonishment at meeting him in Marseilles was therefore absurd. Also, I felt he might construe my lack of _savoir faire_ as a blunt refusal to play up to his well-known and fondly-cherished reputation as a globe trotter. He was childish in certain respects—artists are.

The waiter quickly fetched a champagne cocktail and a package of English cigarettes. The cocktail Lawrence downed in a gulp and called for more. The second he drank with more restraint.

Though I had not seen him since two summers before—at Land’s End, an isolated village in Massachusetts—our conversation was rambling and disjointed, like that of incompatible strangers who find no ease in silence. This annoyed me, for our similarity of tastes, I felt, should more than outweigh the separation.

As the late afternoon merged into early evening, the mistral blew its cold and sinister breath out to the Mediterranean. We drank steadily, Lawrence all the while jibing at me for clinging to so impotent a mixture as vermouth, currant juice and seltzer. He had reached his fifth cocktail, but through the exercise of will, apparently, was still sober. Nevertheless, he worried me.

Furtively, almost defensively, Lawrence sat in his chair. I reacted to his attitude by bracing myself against an intangible, though imminent, danger which thickened the atmosphere. He breathed jerkily, emitting from time to time a sharp clicking sound, as though part of his breathing mechanism had suddenly refused to function. Quivers ran through his body and ended in a twitch.

But he spoke with a crisp enunciation, and so precisely that each word seemed to have been scoured and weighed before utterance. On not a syllable was the checkrein loosened. I sensed a splendid effort at self-control.

I suddenly recalled the wild absurdity of Lawrence’s recent work. In Paris, three months before, I had gone to his exhibition at the Vendome Galleries and left the place convinced that Lawrence Bainridge had gone stark mad.

“Flowers, _Messieurs_?” A flower girl, her wicker tray heaped with heavy-scented blossoms, paused before us. “No? Ah, _Messieurs_, but one little rose apiece—for luck!” she said.

Then she picked up a red rose bud and pinned it to the lapel of Lawrence’s coat.

“_Ugh!_ Take it away!” he screamed. “I can’t stand it!” He tore the flower from his coat and hurled it into the gutter.

“Lawrence!” I reproved, “You’re drunk.”

“No, I’m not drunk,” he protested. Contrition had subdued his voice. “But—I can’t stand—the smell—of roses.”

Thinking to avoid a scene, I suggested we take a walk. He said it might be a good idea, first, though, he would fill his cigarette case. A subterfuge, I told myself, to regain composure, and an obvious one. Lawrence had never been obvious.

At that moment there passed before us on the sidewalk such a ghastly thing that my scalp tingled and the flesh on my legs seemed to shrivel and fall away.

It was a man whose face was like a hideous mask; the left side—young and unblemished; but the right half—so mutilated that description would nauseate. Fair was divided from foul by a line running down the exact center of forehead, nose and chin.

* * * * *

My exclamation of horror drew Lawrence’s attention to the repellent sight. At that moment the gruesome thing turned full upon us.

Lawrence fumbled with his cigarettes; the case fell from his trembling hands and clattered to the pavement. Quickly he reached down, but did not straighten up again until after the man—a sailor, to judge from his rolling gait, though he wore no uniform—had gone.

“Poor soul,” I said. “How his fingers must ache to choke the life from the _Boche_ responsible for that.”

Lawrence made no reply. He was drained of blood. He sat rigid, petrified.

“In Paris and London,” I continued, “one sees hundreds of _mutilés_—the war’s driftwood—and I have trained myself to look unflinchingly into their eyes. But”—I glanced in the direction the sailor had disappeared—“my histronic ability would fail me there.”

Still Lawrence made no move or sound. That he was profoundly touched I knew, for a sensitiveness, abnormal in its refinement, had been his lifelong curse. It had prevented his marriage to a young woman in whom were combined, he thought at one time, all the qualities that appeal to a man of esthetic temperament.

In his studio, one afternoon, they were planning for the wedding. Lawrence recalled a newly-acquired _object d’art_ and took it from a cabinet. The treasure was an exquisite bit of ancient Egyptian glass, a spherulate bowl, so delicate of line and so ethereally opalescent of color that it always made me think of a bubble poised to float away.

I can imagine how he carried it across the room—with that caressing touch of velvet-tipped fingers peculiar to artists. The young woman, in order to examine it closely, grabbed the bowl and proceeded to paw it as a prospector might a bit of rock. Lawrence said afterward that had she struck him he could not have been more shocked. He broke the engagement that afternoon.

“Come, drink up, man!” I urged. “Stop looking as though you’d seen a ghost.”

“Things other than ghosts can haunt one,” he answered in a pinched tone.

We ordered drinks again, with misgivings on my part, for I felt the trembling man opposite me already had had too much. He sat slumped in his chair, shoulders hunched forward, and stared straight before him. Reminiscent or speculative, I could not tell.

Then he began to tell me a story that explained many things. His words were no longer crisp; he now spoke in a heavy, monotonous way, with many pauses, pressing his hands together in a gesture of anguish.

“The odor of that rose,” he said, “and the sight—I can’t stand the smell of roses! Not since two summers ago. I met a Portuguese sailor on the Wharf one day—you know—in that damn place—Land’s End. Had planned a canvas, and all summer had been looking for a model—a type.

“A Portuguese Apollo he was—but a Portuguese devil, too. Didn’t find that out till later. I stopped him and asked would he pose. Conceited swine! From his smile I knew it was vanity, not industry, that made him accept.”

A venomous hate wove its way through Lawrence’s phrases. He continued:

“Well—he called at my studio—the next afternoon—and I started the picture. He was a find. Dramatic. An inspiration.

“During the rest periods Pedro—that was his name—would lie on the floor and talk about himself while I made tea. God! How vain he was! Boasted of his success with women—his affairs. They were many. Quite plausible. He spurned the Bay and its fishing, and shipped on merchant-men. The ports of the world were his haunting ground, he said. Swashbuckling bully!”

To hear Lawrence speak so bitterly of Land’s End and one of its people was puzzling, for the extraordinary note sounded in that small New England town by its so-called foreign settlement, descendants of Portuguese fishermen who came over some seventy years ago and settled along the New England coast, had appealed strongly to his artistic appreciation two years before. He had looked upon these natives as gentle, lovable folk, but to me their black eyes, heavy-lidded and drowsy, had always suggested smoldering fires, not dreams; their excessive tranquillity I thought crafty, hinting of vendettas.

Lawrence picked up the thread of his story:

“One afternoon Pedro began talking about a Portuguese funeral in town that day. A friend of his had died. I dislike funerals—corpses and such—even the mention of them. Always have. Told him to shut up. Instead, he began to tell of an interrupted funeral in Singapore he once had seen. Spared no details. Losing patience and temper, I flung a tube of paint which struck him on the head. He was furious. I told him I was sorry.

“‘Pedro,’ I explained, ‘ever since I can remember, things connected with death have been the only things I’ve feared. I have never in my life been in a cemetery—and I have never seen a dead body. Just to hear of them brings out a cold sweat.’ Pedro laughed and said cemeteries—or dead bodies—couldn’t hurt one.”

This phase of Lawrence’s susceptibility I had not known. And then his pictures in Paris danced before me. What had Pedro to do with them? What had Pedro to do with the change in my friend? But I asked no questions lest I rouse Lawrence to a stubborn silence.

I found myself fidgeting about, peering suddenly into the crowd as if to catch the gaze of hypnotic eyes. Once I saw the _mutilé_ standing across the street beside a kiosk, watching Lawrence, or so I imagined, with ferocious intensity. My _vis-a-vis_ and his emotional recoils had by that time become agitating companions.

Yet, in truth, there was much in his surroundings to breed thoughts of adventure, even crime. Wharf loungers and apaches were slinking among the well-dressed shoppers who drifted down from the region above. Fringing the port, only a hundred meters distant, were the dark, twisting streets of a district noted for its nefarious habits and avoided by the wary; rumors of tourists who had wandered alone at night into that abyss of lawlessness, reappearing days later on the tide, skulls crushed and pockets empty, were far too numerous to pass unheeded. Out beyond the harbor the Château d’If clung to its rocks, guarding well grim secrets of a tragic past.

* * * * *

But to return to Lawrence.

“To blot out the Singapore funeral,” he said, “I painted quickly. Makes me concentrate. Got so interested I stopped only on account of bad light. Put on my hat and left the studio—with Pedro—for a walk. Fresh air clears the brain. Must have been exhausted, for I walked along without seeing. Just followed Pedro, I suppose. A bend in the road—and I woke up—galvanized with terror.

“Before me stood the entrance to a graveyard. The stones bristled ghostly in the twilight. I halted—alert.”

The stem of the glass, which Lawrence nervously had been twirling, broke, and his unfinished cocktail spilled upon the table.

“I couldn’t go on—on through that forest of spectral marble. Pedro continued to walk. Was some distance ahead before he noticed I had stopped. He turned and told me to come along. I refused. He laughed—a derisive laugh—then spit out a single word—‘_Coward!_’

“I’ve been through jungles in India. Gone deep into China where no white man had ever been. Know Calcutta—Port Said—explored the worst slums of the world—and I had never been called a coward before.

“‘You don’t understand, Pedro—I _can’t_, I _can’t_ go on!’ He laughed again—like a hyena.

“‘Yes,’ Pedro said, a coward. How they will laugh—when I tell!’

“Had never been called that before—you know. I began walking forward—slowly. My legs trembled, but I walked. Passed through the gate.

“‘That’s right,’ Pedro said. ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of.’

“‘No—nothing,’ I answered, my jaws chattering.

“Then Pedro said, ‘I’m going to the grave of my friend who was buried today and say a prayer, take a rose from his grave and dry it—to carry in a little bag—always—for good luck. No harm comes then. _You’ll_ take a rose, too.’

“I saw a large mound of flowers. The air was strong with perfume. Roses.... We reached the grave. Pedro stopped, knelt down and said a prayer. Shadows under the trees were black and the leaves rattled like bones. I wanted to run—but I stood beside Pedro—and shivered. Pedro took a rose from the grave and put it in his pocket. Then he took another, got up and offered it to me.

“‘No!’ I cried, drawing away. ‘I won’t touch it!’

“Pedro said, ‘You’ve got to be cured.’ He pointed to a large flat stone lying flat on the ground beside him, and explained:

“‘Over a hundred years ago—you can see the date when it’s light—a funny man had this grave made. Built it like a cistern. Brick walls. Look!’ and he slid the stone to one side. Pedro was strong.

“I refused to look. Kept my eyes on the path. A gust of wind blew my hat against Pedro, and it fell to the ground.

“As I stooped to pick it up, he pushed me—_into the grave_!”

* * * * *

The horror of this piece of perversity got me.

“Lawrence!” I exclaimed. “You don’t mean it!”

“Yes,” he answered, in that new tone, so flat and spiritless. “I sank into something—soft.... Pedro’s laugh sounded far away, and he closed up the grave—with the stone.

“My throat was in a vice. Couldn’t make a sound. Tried to gather strength for one big scream—then something somewhere in me snapped. ‘_Tsing!_’ it went, soft and little.

“Don’t know how long I was there. It seemed an eternity. I lived on—with the dead man—and crawling things. I don’t know. There may have been nothing at all. At last I saw a rift above—the night sky—and Pedro reached down to pull me out.

“When he came the next afternoon I told him I must rest for several days. My nerves were bad. All night I lay awake—and thought—and planned. At daybreak I fell asleep. In the afternoon I went to Boston.

“Three days later, back in Land’s End, I settled my accounts. All but one. Told the neighbors I was leaving for New York next day. Gave instructions to have my things packed and shipped to me there.

“Pedro came as usual in the afternoon. I worked as though nothing had happened. He got tired and lay on the floor. I boiled some water for tea. Very, very carefully I made that tea.

“‘What kind of tea is this?’ Pedro asked. ‘It tastes so queer.’

“‘A new kind,’ I told him.

“He drank, then lay back—asleep.

“From a shelf of etching materials I took a bottle. The liquid inside was clear. So harmless it looked! Poured some into a cup. Filled the cup with water, then knelt down beside the sleeping Pedro—dipped a feather into the liquid—and painted half his handsome face. Nitric acid—bites deep....

“Pedro’s groans were silenced with a gag. More tea for rest and sleep.

“The streets that night were empty as I half carried, half dragged Pedro to the shanty where he lived alone. I threw him on the bed and looked without pity on his face.

“No—there was nothing—to be afraid of, I told him. But Pedro didn’t hear.

“Don Juan’s career was finished. Apollo had become repulsive. My last debt was paid.

“I packed two bags and caught the early train. That afternoon I said ‘Good-bye’ to the islands of Boston Harbor as I steamed out for England.”

Several minutes dragged past before either of us moved.

“Come, let’s go,” was all I could find to say.

* * * * *

I took Lawrence to his hotel and left him at the entrance with a promise to call the following morning. Unable to keep the appointment, I went around during the afternoon. He was not in his room and could not be located.

Deciding to take one last look about the Old Port before leaving for Paris that night, I strolled down the Rue Noailles, through La Cannebière and the Quai de la Fraternité, into the Quai de Rive Neuve, where a group of excited men were gathered at the water’s edge. As I reached the crowd two sailors with grappling hooks were laying a dripping corpse on the pavement. It was the body of Lawrence Bainridge.

_The right side of his face was slashed and crushed into a shapeless mass—but the left half was untouched and fair._

Did Solomon Give Queen of Sheba an Airship?

He certainly did, according to an ancient Abyssinian manuscript, entitled “The Glory of the Kings,” and recently translated by Sir E. Wallis Budge, director of Egyptian antiquities in the British Museum. The manuscript states that Solomon gave to the Queen of Sheba “a vessel wherein one could traverse the air (or wind), which Solomon had made by the wisdom that God had given unto him.”

“This ancient manuscript has, of course, been translated many times,” said Col. Lockwood Marsh, secretary of the Royal Aeronautical Society, “but the statement about Solomon’s airship apparently escaped the notice of the reviewers, and it has been left to a flying enthusiast like myself to discover and proclaim it. Solomon lived in the Tenth century, B. C., so it is quite the earliest reference to flying extant, and as such will be added to our records.”

Theosophists, however, believe there were airships a million years ago in lost Atlantis.

_Secrets of the Ages Were Sealed in_

_The_ FORTY JARS

_A Strange Story of the Orient_

By Ray McGillivray

The sands of Bo-hai never quite are dark.

It matters not that a blood-red, maniacal sun deserts this waste; that sullen cloud banks close in with freezing chill of midnight. A misty, spectral light yet emanates from the sand—quite as if stored-up heat and light were retained by the layers of baked, anhydrous surface. At any time sharp eyes may discern the ghostly shadow of a man who walks, even fifty yards distant.

Mad creatures people Bo-hai, creatures that burrow deep beneath the Wall, from Ninghia to Langchau, coming out only for orgies of the night. Any Mongol knows that venturing alone to the salt shores of Gileshtai means joining forever the flitting horde of Nameless Ones—for lepers, and the shades of lepers centuries dead, owe no allegiance either to living law or to the kindly teachings of Tao, the All-Wise.

They gibber in tongues ranging from the twanging patois of Jesaktu to the dry gutturals of Yunnan, and take to themselves either for screaming torture or for the slower, more horrid death of the White Dissolution, all whom their distorted, clawing fingers may clutch.

Driven on and on before food robbers the roving, famished mountain bands of Nan-Shan—Selwyn Roberts had come to Bo-hai. He had not wished to come, for the excavations made by his expedition, which had proved most absorbing, lay in the neighborhood of Kulang, forty miles to the southwest.

Persistent attacks by the brigands of Nan-Shan—starving men who coveted the long train of food supplies with such frenzy of desire that even automatic rifles could not dismay them utterly—had necessitated retreat. Roberts, heading the expedition, saw that rich (in the Chinese conception), well-fed white men, bringing with them provisions for eight months’ travel, could be naught save the most juicy, irresistible bait. He decided to return to headquarters in Taiyuen, thence shipping back what remained of his provisions as the greatest contribution to charity his purse could afford.

On the edge of the desert this altruistic plan met defeat. The flitting, fantastic shadows of Bo-hai accomplished by stealth and thievery what had balked the bolder spirits of Nan-Shan. Christensen and Porterfield, acting as sentinels, disappeared soundlessly—and with them all save a small remnant of provisions.

There were many tracks of bare feet in the desert—bare feet that rarely left marks of toes.... No clues pointed to the direction the captives had been taken, unless scurrying footprints, criss-crossing the sands in every direction, might be considered clues.

These always ended in bare stretches of shifting sand. Their story was for the reading of a moment; next night wind and sand wiped the record clean. Though Roberts, alone now with his diggers and coolie bearers, attempted to trail the party which had come to his camp, the end of a day found him withdrawing to a position in the foothills which might be defended. The coolies, terrified into spineless, crawling things, clung to him because he represented their only protection. His diggers, strong, black-browed mountaineers of Shensi, gave no sign of fear. He could depend upon their loyalty, but not upon their shooting.

For them the half-light of midnight desert was peopled with strange, sacred shapes—_suan yi_, the giant horse, eighth of the nine offspring of the Dragon; _kuei she t’u_, the mammoth serpent which struggles continuously with a tortoise; these and countless others from Chinese legend. The diggers might defend camp valiantly in daylight combat; at night they were inclined to commend themselves to Maitreya (Buddha), and await his dispensation with fatalistic calm.

Roberts watched, his own rifle and revolvers loaded and ready, and a second rifle reposing before him in the midst of a dozen loaded clips of cartridges. Sunk in a grim, terrible fit of depression at knowledge of his comrades’ fate and his own impotence, Roberts repeated over and over a defiance that was near a prayer.

“Let them come! Let them come! Only let me _see_ them...!” fell soundlessly from his stiffened lips.

Without cessation, his eyes swept the semi-circle of open desert. At his back, a curious, overhanging basalt cliff denied attack. In front of him, and to the sides, black figures of the Chinese lay or squatted.

Christensen and Roberts, experienced delvers in Oriental antiquity, had planned the journey. At the time they came to Kulang the crisis of Chinese famine had not arrived. They had taken with them Porterfield, an enthusiastic youth from the consulate at Shanghai. It was his first trip to the interior, Roberts, secure in his own reputation, had thought the trip—an investigation of certain definite clues regarding the old palaces of the Yüan dynasty, and particularly dealing with the possible identification of Kublai Khan, first emperor of the Yüans, with the semi-mythical Prester John of mediaeval history—an excellent chance to give a youngster whom he liked a toe-hold on fame.

To be balked by famine, and then to lose his comrade and protegé in the leper caves of Bo-hai! Strong teeth bit into his lower lip until the blood flowed unnoticed. Silently, Selwyn Roberts swore to himself with immovable earnestness that he would remain. Either the three white men would return together, or all would perish. Roberts, not in the least sleepy, though his body was fatigued, waited with restless grimness for the dawn of another day.

* * * * *

Bo-hai, the capricious and terrible, is not a silent waste after sundown.

With the descent of cold air from the heavens come buckling squalls of wind, plucking pillars of sand and dust from the surface and flinging them broadcast with a singing be-e-e-e of flying particles. Far out behind, carried on a wind from nowhere, reverberates at times the faint, unrhythmic banging of _boutangs_, the wailing of _jins_ and _nakra_.

And there are voices. At times a rising squeal of Chinese chant makes itself distinct for a second but most often a low, formless murmur, as of howling monkeys heard from a distance of miles, is the constant undertone.

Roberts heard all these, but it was sight, not sound which absorbed him. Flitting scarecrows from the caves might approach soundlessly over the sand, but he did not believe they could reach him unseen.

He had not calculated upon the sand and dust. A squall came up, beating upon the watchers with a fusillade of fine, choking particles, and raising a screen before Roberts’ eyes. In the midst of this he heard dry coughs. Someone was out there, approaching with the shielding sand!

Still the watcher, alternately brushing grains of sand from his nostrils and eyes and peering along the barrel of his rifle, found no target. A sudden notion came to him that the marauders now were inside his camp, about to leap upon him.

He dropped the rifle, and seized two revolvers, shaking the sand and dust out of their muzzles.

As suddenly as it had risen, the veil lifted. Roberts, peering out eagerly, saw only a single bent, stumbling figure—a man who fell to his knees, head almost in the sand, and tried to arise.... A snap shot from the ready revolver stretched him flat, his breath leaving in a sharp exhalation like air drawn from a pneumatic tire.

In that instant Roberts stiffened. From out there ten paces had come a gasping sound. It was the wounded man, the desert rat.

“_G’bye!_” he wheezed. “_G’bye ... never come ... back ... now...._”

_The words were English!_

* * * * *

Selwyn Roberts, waiting only to draw on heavy gloves of Llama hide, ran, crouching, to his fallen adversary.

Catching the shrunken, bowed figure beneath the arms—arms which at biceps gave only a pinch of flesh and bone into his grasp—he scurried back. Then, stationing the Chinese in a semi-circle further out, so that no marauders might enter without encountering opposition, he turned to the fainting figure of his victim.

Screening electric torch by flaps of jacket, he looked down at the man. He saw a yellowed, meager face, with eyes that had become long and narrow from much squinting in the desert. The man, unconscious now, had his head shaved except for the circle and queue usual among natives of Inner Mongolia. Except that no sign of leprosy showed, he looked the part of a desert exile. Tearing away his black cotton shirt, however, Roberts saw, with a sinking heart, that the intruder’s skin was as white as his own!

Desperately, casting aside all caution in use of the flash-lamp, Roberts worked. He found the wound, a gaping hole from soft-nosed bullet, which lay just beneath the stretched ridge of the left clavicle. Probably the bullet had punctured the top of the man’s lung. This was rendered plausible by flecks of reddish foam gathering in his mouth corners.

Roberts stanched the external bleeding, and fetched whisky from his personal pack. Forcing three tablespoonfuls of the potent fluid between the man’s lips, he held forward the lolling tongue which would have shut off respiration. Ten seconds later the patient squirmed, trying to sit up. Roberts, a solicitous tyrant, held him fast.

“Not dead yet?” queried the man, ending his sentence in a ghastly cough. “What the hell...!” He choked, spitting sidewise to the sand.

“No, you’re not dead, and you’re not going to die!” replied Roberts with forced calmness. “Take it easy. You’re among friends.”

“Oh yes, I’ll die,” stated the man with conviction. “Where am I? Who are you? _I Ch’ueh shih hsiang...._” His speech trailed off into a Buddhist prayer unintelligible to Roberts.

“Never mind that now. The first thing is to make you comfortable. You are safe. Don’t forget that. Later we can talk. I have many questions to ask you, but the night is long.”

The slight frame shook.

“Something over six—maybe ten years. What year is this?...” His voice seemed to fail. He lay back, occasionally coughing, but for the most part silent.

A half hour dragged by. Roberts did nothing save inspect the wound he had made, and occasionally give a spoonful of stimulant to the prostrate man. The latter’s heart action was faint, but constant. Roberts knew he would live till morning, at least.

“I have talked to myself, to the lepers’ priests, to the sands—in English,” he said suddenly. “That’s why I remember. My name’s Bowen—Wade Hilton Bowen. Calligraphist for the Central Historical Society. My home was on Perry street, Montgomery, Alabama. A nice house, with barn for six horses. Box stalls ... I have said this many times....”

“Montgomery has changed since you were there,” put in Roberts quietly. “I’ll tell you more about it tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow ... tomorrow in hell!” he coughed, and then was silent again.

Roberts, bringing all his mental cohorts to bear upon the possible relation between this queer derelict of the desert and his two companions, made no attempt to string on the conversation.

One hour before dawn the man tried to sit up, strangled in a fit of terrible coughing, and then fell sidewise.

“Can’t—can’t lie on my back,” he gasped. “Spine bowed. Hurts. How—how long have I got?”

“You’ll get well,” Roberts assured him. “I’ll take care of you. Here, try a little more whisky. I want to ask you a lot of questions when you’re able to stand the strain.”

“_Um-m._ Good whisky. Used to like it. Forgot there was such a thing. You’ve no notion how a man forgets....” His voice was low, rambling, jerky. “Won’t get well, though. Hope not. They fixed me. Found out I was immune ... you know, leprosy. They all have it. Want everybody in the world to get it. But there are worse things....”

Coughing cut short his speech for a moment.

“Not many,” said Roberts with a shudder. “I thought you were one of them, and so I put on gloves. They’ve captured my two comrades. What I want to know as quickly as possible is whether you can help me rescue them. Can you?”

“Captured two men?” repeated the other vaguely. “Shouldn’t allow it. Better die with a nice, clean bullet. That’s the way I’m going to finish it. You’ve got a gun. You’ll lend me just one bullet? I’m not dying fast enough.”

His skinny hand made a weak grab for Roberts’ revolver, but the latter shifted his holsters out of reach.

“No! I’ve got to have your help.”

“Help!” sniveled the prostrate man in bitter impotence. “Don’t you see what I am? I’m sorry about those men. They’ll wish for quick death, but it won’t come. Like as not they’ll be put in the leper chambers. I was there for two years. There were six of us. All of them got it but me. They were Chinkies and played me dirt, or I’d have made _them_ immune, too.

“But maybe it would have been better if I’d caught it. Then they’d have let me alone. They got jealous. Just seeing a healthy man makes ’em crazy. Most people wouldn’t understand how mad they get. They want to kill, but not all at once. Oh, no! Death like that is quick and sweet. I used to be a coward about it, but not now. Just give me that gun a minute, and I’ll show you.... _Why_ don’t you let me?” His quaver sank in sobs and coughing.

“Mainly because I can’t stand by and see a white man kill himself. Then, as I said, you must help me. If you haven’t got leprosy, though, I can’t imagine why you stay here—or why you want to die. Why is it?”

A light of wild derision gleamed in Bowen’s eyes, upturned to the flash. Seizing Roberts’ hand he drew the fingers along his bowed ridge of backbone.

“Algae,” he gritted. “Algae from Gileshtai the Accursed. Puncture, you know. Scum grows in the spinal fluid. Every month I stoop more and more. The pain, you know. Now when I run I am bent like a question mark. Oh, I tried to escape a dozen times. Always they caught me. Couldn’t travel far or fast, you see. And no food to take. They—they did this. They are clever. _Damned_ clever!”

Roberts had no answer for this. He was chilled with horror. Such practices had come to his ears as whispered rumors, yet he had not believed. That his big, silent comrade Christensen, and the youth Porterfield, were this minute in the hands of the devils of the caves, perhaps suffering as Bowen had suffered, and certainly absorbing the awful, infectious dampness of the subterranean passages, undermined his nerve as no certainty of instant destruction could have done. He shuddered.

“See here, Bowen!” he cried. “We _must_ get them out! You know the way. It will be terrible suffering for you, but you are a man—a _white_ man! Even if it costs the life you do not value you must give these men their chance. I will have two of the diggers support you....”

* * * * *

Some of his intense earnestness caught hold in Bowen’s dulled brain.

“You’re right,” he mumbled. “White men ... like you and me. Yes, we can get them out, I think, but not yet. Wait till the sun rises. Then all the _Yengi_ are below ground. They have no firearms. By quick attack through the Wall corridor ... yes, we should succeed. But then? Do you know your peril in venturing, even for a moment, below ground?”

“My peril matters not!”

Bowen nodded slowly.

“You are brave,” he mumbled. “But perhaps you have not seen them ... the Yengi?”

“I can imagine,” cut in Roberts shortly. “How many of them are there?”

“Hundreds. One never knows exactly. They are sent each week. Some die, of course, but most live on and on....”

“Can you shoot?”

Bowen grimaced.

“I used to,” he answered. “I’ll _have_ to, now. Each of us will take as many guns as he can stow away. And plenty of ammunition. Enough so we can give arms to your friends. Merely reaching them will be simple enough. That will not finish it, though. We must go on.”

“Fight our way out, you mean?”

“Oh yes, that of course. But first fight our way further _in_! It would not do simply to escape.”

“Why not?”

Bowen grinned wryly. He fumbled in a hidden pocket, coming out with a flat bit of green stone oddly carved with interlaced dragons—a jade pendant.

“Know anything about this?” he asked.

The light of dawn was not yet sufficient. Roberts turned on the flash again. Then he nodded shortly.

“Interesting,” he said. “A jade, probably of the fourteenth century, the Yüan dynasty. A week ago I was searching for things like that, but now....”

Bowen leaned forward, raising himself to a sitting position.

“Look!” he cried, his voice squeaking into a cough. A touch of his tapered finger nail had caused the pendant to fall into two halves. There before Roberts lay a tiny roll of tinted silk upon which vertical rows of black ideographs were revealed.

Roberts removed the silk carefully, spreading it across his knee.

“The key to one of the treasure caches of Kublai Khan!” shrilled Bowen. “It’s mine. I found it. By using it, I managed to keep clean of body. It is the only hope for your friends—and you, if you venture in!”

Silently, and with a growing intensity of interest, Roberts deciphered the characters. The colophon furnished simple, straightforward directions, yet the tale it told was unbelievable.

“A—a _cure_?” he stammered shakily.

“Yes—or at least a preventive. _I_ can answer for that.”

“And is there plenty?”

Bowen cackled, raucous froth appearing on his lips.

“Forty jars!” he retorted. “Each jar with eight panels, and holding about a peck. Treasure, indeed! On those panels is carved the history of the reign of Kublai Khan!”

Roberts was on his feet.

“Let’s start!” he commanded, his voice shaking with anticipation of high, terrible adventure. “There is the rim of the sun! Take one last drink of the whisky, Bowen....”

* * * * *

All of the Chinese save two were left behind. This pair, stolid, fat, over-muscled giants who had been with Roberts for years, made a chair of their hands, and carried Bowen back across the rim of desert toward the Great Wall. All four of the men bristled with weapons, and had their pockets crammed with loaded clips.

To Roberts’ surprise, Bowen directed the course of the journey back to the east, in the direction of Dadchin.

“Three corridors run the length of the wall in this section,” he explained. “One corridor is not known to the _Yengi_.... It is how I got among them first....”

Over tumbled ruins of wall climbed the four. At a black aperture, scarcely wide enough to permit the passing of a heavy man, Bowen signaled.

“Hang and drop,” he commanded, speaking in a whisper. “The corridor floor is eight feet down. I know a better way to climb, but, going in, it is simpler to drop....”

From the black slit an odor rose which made Roberts stiffen. He had caught a faint suggestion of it from Bowen’s clothes, but now it came to him, fetid and strong—a scent of rank, damp decay.

He snatched one last breath of desert air, knelt, swung himself down into space, and let go. As Bowen had said, the drop was short, but Roberts, in the dark, fell sidewise to the slimy bricks of the passage.

In a second he was up, shrinking involuntarily from the contact. When Bowen was lowered from the slit of light, Roberts caught him and set him down carefully. The Chinese did not follow.

“I told them to wait there,” Bowen whispered. “They’d be useless down here. There’s no sense in spoiling two brave boys.”

“But can you make it?”

“Yes, if I don’t have to cough. When we get in the third passage it won’t matter. No one is there. Come on. Hold to this rag....” He placed a shred of his tattered blouse in Roberts’ palm, plunging immediately into the blackness.

Roberts, stumbling blindly after—recoiling from each touch of the horrid, oozing walls—ran on tip-toe in order to match the silence of his barefooted guide.

They passed spots of light. These showed openings to right or left—openings to chambers lighted with flickering flames of green or yellow. Once Roberts looked, his flesh acrawl with morbid curiosity. He saw within the place three sprawling things of rags and decay, things which did not—perhaps _could_ not—move. Thereafter he kept his eyes averted, and clenched one fist about the solid butt of his revolver.

After perhaps ten minutes of travel, Bowen, wheezing audibly now, bent forward in a silent convulsion which brought blood to his lips. Only at the last did he make a noise. Then a gasping inhalation was not to be controlled.

A second later he crowded back against Roberts, crouching at the side of the passage. A leap ... a dulled groan.... Bowen had brought down the butt of one of his borrowed revolvers upon the skull of a newcomer whom Roberts had neither seen nor heard!

A moment later they squeezed through another narrow opening, descended a flight of block stairs, and were in another corridor—one much more populous than the upper, to judge from the sounds. Roberts heard the subdued chattering of many voices. Here faint light showed.

Bowen led on hurriedly. At a point indistinguishable from the rest of the wall, so far as Roberts was concerned, he pushed inward a block of stone, which went to the horizontal, immediately swinging back when they had passed.

“Now we’re all right for a minute....” began Bowen. His long-repressed coughing attacked him then and he surrendered to it for the time. “Lungs ... filling up ... won’t last long....” he gasped then. “This corridor ... no way out ... get back in the other, if I am not ... with ... you....”

“We’ll manage _that_; don’t you worry!” answered Roberts. “Lead me first to those two men. After that, the Buddha.... I feel unclean already!”

Bowen incomprehensibly laughed at that—a shrill giggle, half-hysterical. But he led on, of a sudden turning, squeezing through to the second corridor again, and then, without warning bringing up two automatics. Two streams of fire ... four shots....

“Got ’em all!” he shrilled, laughing. “Come quick now!”

* * * * *

Roberts found himself dragged forward at a half-run.

Again Bowen’s two guns spoke. This time, in the light of flashes, Roberts saw two crouching things succumb. Through a black doorway they plunged. Then a faint light from a single insufficient wick lighted a chamber perhaps twenty by ten feet in size. Chained, backs outward, Porterfield and Christensen were spread-eagled against the fetid, oozing wall!

They were stripped to the waist. Across their white backs, greenish now in the light of the floating wick, were the red criss-crosses of flagellations.

“Thank God you’ve come!” cried the usually silent Christensen, as Roberts shot away the rusted chains binding his arms and ankles to the wall. “This place ... do you know what it is?”

“All about it!” answered Roberts, succinctly. “Here, take these!” He handed a brace of revolvers and a handful of clips to his Norwegian comrade.

Then he turned to Porterfield. Four explosions, and a series of wrenches set free the boy, who did not wait to have the dangling shackles shot off his wrists and ankles.

Bowen, stationed at the entrance, was shooting now. A gathering handful of _Yengi_ crowded in the passage. These threw lances, or cut at the defending figure with knives that were long, keen and curved.

Bowen was unharmed, however, except for scratches. His revolvers had kept him out of serious danger. He seemed to take an inhuman delight in snapping away at every figure of a Chinaman that showed itself. When all had fallen between him and the turn of corridor, he still fired away. Before the four left, he had to reload all four of his revolvers.

Bowen and Roberts left in the van, Christensen and Porterfield were given the job of protecting the rear. The four hurried down the corridor, occasionally stopping for a second to pump out a shot or two at some unsuspecting, hurrying figure.

Throughout the underground corridors weird shouts resounded. Cries in a tongue that even Roberts could not translate called for reinforcements from the chambers. Somewhere an eerie gong clanged its resonance.

The four pushed on, led forward by Bowen, who seemed to have reached an exhilaration which thought nothing of wounds. His bent figure now was wracked by continual coughing, but he paid no attention, gasping in sufficient breath somehow. Each five or six yards Christensen and Porterfield paused, to throw backward a fusillade at the gathering throng of maniacs.

They reached a triple fork in the passage. Without hesitation, Bowen chose the center one, which led on a gradual slant downward. Fifty paces further a brocaded curtain shut the passage. Here the light was bright from many swimming wicks set in the side wall.

“Straight in!” cried Bowen, and flung himself upon the curtain. As his fingers clutched the cloth to pull it aside, a long keen blade reached out, puncturing his side in a swift flash.

“Ah-h!” he cried. “The priests! Kill them!”

He stumbled, and in falling, brought down the heavy weight of the curtain across his body. Through the aperture eight wizened specimens, flourishing drawn swords, charged the invaders.

* * * * *

Roberts backed away, firing. From the floor, however, came the streams of fire which dropped three of the priests.

“They’re the ones who fixed _me_!” shrilled Bowen, firing as fast as his fingers could pull triggers.

The last toppled. The doorway was clear.

“You’ll—you’ll have to drag me.... I’m done....” Bowen continued, his voice suddenly weakening. “I’ll show you....”

Roberts stooped, picking up the slight figure as he might have lifted a tumbled chair, and darted inside the last chamber.

Here he stopped a split second in open-mouthed amazement. He had expected a statue of Buddha. The colophon was explicit. Yet what a statue! From the wide base to the top of the broad forehead was at least fifty feet! The altar, surrounded by fire at the base, though itself the height of a man, seemed a puny thing.

“Hold the doorway!” cried Roberts to his two rescued companions. “Now, Bowen....”

But there was no need to ask the derelict. Reeling forward out of Roberts’ arms, he pointed to a knob seven feet from the floor. “Turn ... turn that ... and press here ... and here!” he gasped, choking.

Roberts obeyed. A second later he was scrambling up to force further open a slab which swung creakingly. Perched there on the slab to hold it open—it was weighted, and after the initial swing of opening, began to close—he glanced inward. There, stacked before him, were tiers and tiers of the eight-paneled jars that Bowen had mentioned. One, as if it had been opened, stood on the floor of the storage chamber. He seized it, finding it heavy in his hands, and leaped down.

Bowen clawed off the cover, reached in, and came forth with three greenish, soft masses clutched in his skinny fingers.

“The eggs!” he cried. “Seven hundred years old! Make ... make each of them eat one right away! We’ll have a hard time....” He choked, flinging a thin, trembling arm in the direction of Christensen and Porterfield, who were having their hands full at the doorway.

Roberts seized his own weapons, ran up, and in terse sentences explained the situation.

“A ... a _cure_?” cried Porterfield, incredulously.

“Bowen says so. Try them, anyway. Eat one apiece. I’ll hold the door. _Hm!_”

The last was an exclamation of pain. A thrown knife had sliced a six-inch cut just above his knee. He fired, conserving bullets now, for down the corridor as far as he could see the _Yengi_ had banked themselves. Already a breastwork of Chinese bodies was growing in front of the chamber entrance.

Behind him, Porterfield sputtered over swallowing his portion.

“Awful taste!” he cried, grimacing.

“They’re treated with something,” answered Christensen, wiping his lips and leaping to Roberts’ side with one of the ancient eggs.

Roberts stuffed half of the greenish mass into his mouth, swallowing it whole. The taste was not altogether unpleasant, yet acrid. As he fired on and on, emptying one after another of the revolvers, he caught himself wondering how long it had taken for the shells of those eggs to become resorbed.... He ate the rest.

The fight was hopeless from the first. Though few bullets missed a human target—the narrow corridor was jammed with yammering, horrid humanity—and little damage could be accomplished by any of the _Yengi_ at first, the inexorable pressure began to tell. Christensen, cursing in Scandinavian, plucked a lance from his shoulder. Later he dropped like a stone. The thin hilt of a knife quivered in the socket of his right eye.

Bowen, dragging himself to the entrance, diagnosed the reason.

“We’re desecrating their shrine!” he yelled. “In a way, I don’t blame them.... They’re.... They’re....” Coughs ended his sentence.

And then, catching up the eight-paneled jar, and begging from Roberts the silk colophon, he threw his mangled body out before the breastwork of dead Chinese. High and shrill rose his voice, a fast, excited jabber which Roberts could not decipher. It continued....