SOME SHORT FICTION OF

WILLIAM J. MAKIN

2019

Contents

Strange / Weird

1: The Black Laugh

2: Anatomy Lesson

3: Man Killer

Isaac Heron

4: The Houseboat of  Missing Men

5: The Tattooed Man

The Red Wolf of Arabia

6: The Woman of Antioch

7: The Dhow That Sailed to Nowhere

8: Miracle in the Desert

9: The Garden of T. N. T.

10: The Drums of Omdurman

11: The Queen of Sheba

12: Orient Express April

13: London Blackout

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William J Makin (1893-1944) saw active duty during WW1, and turned to writing fiction in 1920. He had a prolific output and a wide scope, from pulp adventure to fantasy and sf to crime and detective.

One of his continuing characters was Paul Rodgers, "the Red Wolf of Arabia", who had many adventures between the wars; another was Isaac Heron, the Gypsy detective.

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1: The Black Laugh

Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror, Jan 1932

I AWOKE with a start. There was blackness all around except for the dull red glow of the camp fire, now almost smothered in white ash. The awful stillness of the veldt and that impenetrable darkness told me that it was the hour before dawn. A dreadful hour, and one that always finds me unprepared.

What had awakened me? I lifted my head from my sleeping bag and saw the vague, shadowy forms of my companions stretched in a deathlike stupor in a circle about the smouldering fire. Above was an empty blackness that had extinguished the stars.

And, about me, that awful stillness that emphasized the miles of wilderness.

Then, tearing the stillness, came that rumbling laugh, a laugh that began in the depths and cackled to hysterical heights. A black laugh. It was that which had awakened me.

Again that laugh rose in its crescendo. I twisted my head in the direction of the camp fire round which were grouped our native “boys.” A shadow moved. One of the natives was cackling horribly.

“For God’s sake, stop that laughing!”

Maxwell, his fair hair all tousled, had leaped from his sleeping bag and was shrieking his command into the night.

“Stop it, I say! Stop it!”

Dead silence followed. The laugh was lost in the stillness. One of the sleeping forms grunted uneasily. That was all.

But I was astounded at the appearance of Maxwell. Standing there in shirt and shorts, he was trembling like a man with a bad attack of malaria. He shook his fist into that empty blackness, and cursed. I half rose from my sleeping bag.

“What’s the matter?”

His eyes glinted at me, savagely. He did not speak, but walked to the camp fire, kicked some of the ash away, flung some logs into the embers, and then returned to his sleeping bag to sit upon it. He was still shaking as he sat there, all hunched up, as though expecting some terror would launch itself out of the darkness like a leaping leopard.

“That laugh!” he muttered. “You heard it?”

“Yes. One of the Kaffirs, damn him. Something funny came into his queer black mind, I suppose. I wish it hadn’t. There’ll be no more sleep for me.”

“Nor for me,” groaned Maxwell.

“Man, you’re shivering.”

“I know. That laugh comes to me like a curse. A black laugh. Ugh!”

As one of the logs in the fire began to crackle and blaze I could see the tense look in the face of Maxwell.

“Well, if you’re going to be upset by a laughing Kaffir,” I began jocularly, “the sooner you get out of Africa the better. These Kaffirs are always laughing. They’re happy, even though they are carrying the white man’s burden.”

But Maxwell refused to come out of his serious mood. He stared into the fitful blaze.

“Ever trekked in the Drakensberg district?” he asked suddenly.

I shook my head.

“I know it only vaguely,” I replied. “Somewhere on the borders of Natal, eh?”

“That’s it,” said Maxwell eagerly. He obviously wanted to talk. Men do become communicative round a camp fire, and this hour before the dawn invited confidences.

“I used to know the country round there very well five years ago. Five years ago! I’ve never been back there since.”

There was such intensity in the tone of his voice that I looked up quickly from the filling of my pipe. “Why?” I asked. “A girl?”

He shook his head, slowly.

“No. It was a laugh, a black laugh, that drove me out of the Drakensberg.”

I think I must have chuckled.

“Really, Maxwell,” I said, “are you serious?”

“Deadly serious.”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“I can’t imagine—” I began.

“Have you ever seen that peculiar kind of kopje that slopes up like a gentle hill for about five hundred feet and then shoots up a straight wall of rock for another five hundred feet?”

“Of course,” I nodded. “It’s not really peculiar, that kind of kopje. You will find it in different parts of the veldt. But I know the kind you mean—rather like a giant sarcophagus on a huge mound, eh?”

“A sarcophagus!” muttered Maxwell. “Yes, at sunset this looked like an enormous coffin. Horrible!”

“Had it a name?”

He turned his eyes towards me. They were lit up by the flicker of a flame.

“It was called—Spook Kopje.”

There was silence for a moment. The breathing of our companions in their sleeping bags sounded regular and sonorous.

“I WAS staying in a Boer homestead, not half a mile from that kopje,” went on Maxwell, hesitantly. “I was doing nothing in particular— not even prospecting. I rather enjoyed the quietness, the humdrum life of the farm, the unbounded hospitality of the Boer family with whom I stayed. A real rest.”

I nodded.

“A coloured girl from the Cape, Olivia, looked after me. Brought the morning tea, prepared my meals, mended my socks, and so on. A good girl, and quite attractive as far as coloured girls go. Something of a beauty for the neighbourhood, and courted by all the black farm boys in the vicinity. But she looked down upon them. ‘Dis black trash not good enough for me,’ she said decisively. And having said this she would go back to her pots and pans, humming an old missionary tune.

“She certainly seemed in no hurry to get herself a sweetheart. And a good thing, too, for the Boer, Oom Jannie, and his family. They depended more and more on Olivia. She was undoubtedly a household treasure. But when Johannes came into the district, she changed. Johannes was not the sort of man to let himself go unnoticed.”

“And who was Johannes?” I asked, puffing away at my pipe, determined. now that Maxwell had launched upon his story, that I would hear all the details.

“Johannes was a young buck, a coloured man, also from the Cape,” explained Maxwell. “He arrived in the Drakensberg district in a checked suit, a red beret, and a monocle stuck in his eye. He lived in Cape Town where he owned three hansom cabs that did a flourishing business after midnight. And he knew how to talk about himself and his hansom cabs, too. He had drifted to these parts for a holiday, apparently.

He had not been in the district three hours before he discovered Olivia. And he began to court her. Needless to say, Olivia fell blindly for the red beret, the monocle, and the three hansom cabs. At the end of the second day she possessed the red beret. It seemed certain that before another week had passed she would possess the three hansom cabs as well. The black farm boys of the district hated this successful interloper.”

I smiled at Maxwell, but his face still had that serious, intent expression.

“But although Olivia was practically conquered from the beginning, she still had a lurking feminine desire to see her cavalier of the red beret perform some doughty deed. Three hansom cabs were worth having, but Olivia also wanted a man. In her days at the Cape she had regularly visited the cinema, and her hero of the screen was Douglas Fairbanks.”

“I should think it would be Valentino,” I murmured.

“Not with Olivia. She adored the leaping antics of her hero, she thrilled when he flung himself to the top of a wall and crashed down again upon his pursuers. This was a man, and the sort of man that Olivia had decided to marry. Johannes was hardly that. Probably he had never climbed higher than the driver’s seat of one of his own hansom cabs. But his talk was dizzying enough, and Olivia’s mention of her hero encouraged his boastfulness. ‘I can jump, I can swim, I can climb,’ he announced to her. ‘Why, each Sunday on Table Mountain I have climbed where even der Europeans will not go. Allemagtig, I—’

“ ‘Could you climb that?’ asked Olivia carelessly. They were out on the veldt, walking within a hundred yards of that sinister-looking kopje, Spook Kopje.

“Johannes gave it one glance, and laughed. ‘Why, dat is nothing, he said. ‘I could climb dat in half an hour. Now, on Table Mountain, I once climbed and—’

“ ‘You certain dat you could climb dat kopje?’ persisted Olivia.

Again Johannes laughed. He was so certain that he did not even turn his head to look at the kopje again. Instead, he gazed boldly into the soft brown eyes of Olivia.

“ ‘In half an hour,’ he repeated.

“Olivia looked at him. ‘No one has ever climbed dat kopje,’ she said quietly. ‘No one.’

“‘No?’ Johannes was not disturbed. ‘When I take you back to

Cape Town, I—’

“ ‘Will you climb dat kopje for me?’ asked Olivia, excitedly.

“Johannes looked at her, and then decided he had better look at this kopje again. He turned his head and regarded it. In the stark sunlight it looked forbidding enough— the gentle slope, and then the granite cliffs climbing straight for the blue silk of the sky.

“ ‘Of course I will,’ he said, carelessly. But he didn’t mean it. Olivia did, however. She saw Johannes in a blaze of glory. She was quite right in her assertion that no one had ever climbed that kopje. In the memory of all in the district there had been only three attempts to climb Spook Kopje, and all had failed. One man had killed himself. Sheep had strayed up the slopes and failed to find their way back again. They had perished miserably from hunger. Since the last fatal attempt, Spook Kopje had been left severely alone.

“ ‘Climb dat kopje, and when you come down I marry you,’ said Olivia. And she meant it.

“Again Johannes regarded the kopje. He was beginning to feel uncomfortable about the affair. But somewhere deep down in him, beneath that boastfulness, there was a strain in his mixed blood that urged him to live up to the hero-worship of his sweetheart.

“ ‘All right, I do it,” he said.

“ ‘When?’ persisted Olivia.

“ ‘When you like.’

“ ‘To-morrow morning, at ten?’

“ ‘Yes.’

“And so it was settled. Olivia told me the gist of this conversation, excitedly, as she served me my supper. Here was a hero worthy of the films— and of Olivia. ‘My man is some man,’ she told me definitely. Oom Jannie shook his head over this folly. ‘Aach! Vhy do you want him to climb a kopje?” he asked testily. Olivia did not reply, but brought him his huge Bible that he read regularly each evening by candle-light.”

Maxwell stopped talking. The night was still dark and soundless. He walked over to the fire and kicked another log into the blaze. Then he came back and sat on his sleeping bag again.

“Did Johannes climb the kopje?” I asked at last.

Maxwell nodded.

“Yes, he did. Incredible. But it took him more than half an hour. Five hours, in fact. One has to admire the achievement. The Lord knows how he did it. But there, in the late afternoon, we could see him on the top of that granite wall waving the red beret which Olivia had given him as a talisman. We grouped ourselves to watch him— Oom Jannie and his family, two neighbouring farmers, three black farm hands, and myself. And among us strutted Olivia, proud of her hero, proud of his achievement, and not a little proud of herself. We waved back to the hero with the red beret.”

Again silence.

“Well? Did they live happily ever after?” I asked.

Maxwell turned his brooding gaze upon me.

“Johannes never came back,” he said briefly.

“But if he climbed to the top,” I said, “surely he could—”

“He never came back,” repeated

Maxwell, monotonously. “Olivia waited for him, we all waited for him to give him the welcome he deserved. But he did not come.”

“But you could see him,” I persisted.

Maxwell nodded.

“We watched that red blob of a beret trying to find a way down those granite cliffs for the rest of the afternoon. We watched until a saffron glow in the sky silhouetted Spook Kopje and made it once again a long black coffin. The glow changed swiftly into night, and still Johannes had not returned. Obviously he had not found it as easy to descend as to climb. He may have missed his way or, what is more likely, lost his nerve. But he did not return that night although Olivia sat whimpering with a lighted candle, waiting for him until the dawn.

“In the early morning we  watched the mist smoking away from the kopje. Again the granite cliffs were lit up by the stark sunlight. We searched anxiously. It was Oom Jannie, old as he was, who saw him first. He pointed a gnarled forefinger at the kopje.

“ ‘Daar is hij!’ he muttered.

“We followed his pointed finger. At last I saw him. The red blob of a beret. Johannes had clung to that throughout the night. He was still on the heights, still on the sinister summit of that kopje. But he had traversed the top from one end to the other. He was still seeking a route to descend.

“At this glimpse of him we shouted and waved. Olivia shrilled and screamed. ‘My man, my hero!’ she yelled. But the figure with the red beret took no notice. Not at first. But, as the sun climbed higher he saw us. He waved in reply; waved the red beret. But it was a tired gesture; the last panache. He was dispirited and anxious. For the rest of the time he held the red beret limply in his hand.

“Olivia completely abandoned her pots and pans. She stood in the doorway of the farmhouse, staring into the sunshine at that restless red blob on the kopje. We tried to comfort her with assurances.  ‘He’ll be down for dinner, the young fool,’ grunted Oom Jannie in her hearing. It helped her a little, that remark. But she refused to leave her post in the doorway.

“All through the afternoon, with my field glasses, I watched Johannes trailing desperately about the kopje. Yes, I could see he had become desperate. The owner of the three hansom cabs at the Cape had to get down or he would die of hunger and exposure. At first, I let Olivia watch him through the field glasses, but as the man became more and more desperate in his efforts to find a way down to earth I kept them to myself. Olivia began to weep. But she was not weeping, she was crooning those missionary hymns to herself. ‘Lord, bring him back to me,’ I heard her saying, over and over again. There was no use trying to comfort her, and, disheartened, I went inside.

“Late that afternoon, I went  myself up the slopes of that cursed kopje in the hope that I might help Johannes in some way. I toiled with two farm boys to the foot of those granite cliffs that went sheer into the sky. I marvelled that the coloured youth from the Cape had found a foothold of any kind. I traversed those cliffs from end to end, on each side of the kopje, but retired baffled again and again to the slopes. I tried three crevices, but each led to more sheer rock. I nearly broke my neck twice on that expedition. I returned in the darkness to the farmhouse and the weeping Olivia.”

A log fell noisily into the fire. Sparks shot upwards to the black sky.

“How long did this last?” I asked.

Maxwell shivered again.

“I think it must have been the third night that Johannes went crazy. I was awakened in the silence of the night by a horrible yelling laugh that resounded again and again across the empty veldt. I never heard such a blood-curdling laugh, coming from the depths and ending in a scream. A black laugh! The laugh that wakened me half an hour ago. Ghastly!”

Maxwell covered his face with his hands. It was some moments before he could continue.

“When I first heard that mad laugh I rushed out of the house onto the veldt. Instinctively I looked towards Spook Kopje. Moonlight bathed it, so that the granite cliffs looked black and slimy. But there, on the top, was a prancing figure, a figure that laughed and yelled, and danced. It was Johannes. He was mad, and half naked, but still clinging to the red beret. I heard a stifled scream at my side. It was Olivia. She also had heard that black laugh, and realized at once the full horror of it all.

“‘My man! Johannes! I so sorry,’ she whimpered, and then crumpled into a faint at my feet.

“Oom Jannie, too, looking like a stern ghost in his old nightshirt, had wandered out of the house.

“‘This is terrible... terrible!’ he muttered. He stared at the kopje in the moonlight. ‘Something must

be done,’ he muttered again.

“The next day five of us, all white men, made a desperate assault on the kopje. We tried again and again to scale those damnable cliffs, and again and again we failed. Baffled and dispirited we returned to the plains in the evening. And the mad, naked figure on the kopje kept up its yelling and screaming and dancing throughout. We all hoped that, mercifully, in this mad state Johannes would pitch down the cliffs and kill himself. But the man seemed to be possessed of an amazing amount of endurance. He lived, and kept up his black laughter throughout the night.

“Of course, every farm in the vicinity was terrorized by that horrible laugh at night. It kept us all awake, and the women folk were hysterical. Olivia had not slept since Johannes climbed the kopje. We were all waiting for the poor devil to die, and he refused to die. The madness seemed to have given him a new lease of life.

“At last, Oom Jannie called the other farmers to a conference in the eetkamer of his farmhouse. I will not weary you with the discussion that took place there. But a terrible decision was made. We all emerged from the eetkamer with rifles under our arms. All except Oom Jannie. He carried a Prayer Book. Outside the door of the eetkamer crouched Olivia. She gazed at us dumbly. Her sad dark eyes travelled from our faces to the guns under our arms. At once she understood the terrible thing we were about to do. With a shriek she flung herself at the feet of Oom Jannie. He gazed down at her with a stern face, but tears were in his rheumy eyes. ‘God’s will be done,’ he muttered, and gently thrust her aside.

“We all proceeded to the foot of that kopje with its mad, naked figure in a red beret still shrieking defiance of death and dancing hysterically on the edge of those granite cliffs. Slowly and deliberately  we toiled up the slope, and at last we came to the sheer granite. Oom Jannie sat himself on a boulder. The others took up their positions. I sprawled on the ground and rested my cheek against the stock of my rifle.

“‘Sight. Three hundred yards!’ I muttered mechanically to myself.

“The mad, prancing figure of Johannes was an easy mark. The red beret which still covered his head helped. I groped for cartridges in my pocket. I heard the ‘click-click’ as the others slipped the cartridges into the magazines of the rifles which were being trained on the mad, laughing man.

“Sitting on the boulder, Oom Jannie deliberately opened his Prayer Book. We had to wait while he adjusted his spectacles. He could never read without his spectacles. Then in a firm and reverent voice he began slowly to read the burial service in Dutch.

“ ‘Daar het de almachtige God, de Heer van leven en dood, behaagd heeft de geest van onze ontslapen broeder te doen weder keren tot God...'

“You know how it goes in English: ‘As it has pleased the almighty God, the Lord of living and dead, to let the spirit of our deceased brother return to God....’

“‘Crack!’ The first rifle had spoken.

“ ‘...die hem gegeven heeft, en die gesproken heeft...’ continued Oom Jannie deliberately.

“ ‘Crack! Crack!’ Two more rifles spoke almost simultaneously.

“The naked figure in the red beret continued to dance and shriek madly.

“ ‘Allemagtig! My hand shakes,’ cursed one Boer.

“I sighted on the red beret.

Crack! I had missed.

“ ‘...stoft zyt gy, en tot zult gy wederken.... ’

“ ‘Crack! Crack!’

“And so it continued in the stark sunlight. We must each have fired five rounds before the end came. We saw the figure in the red beret stagger, and then pitch down.

“ ‘...bevonded moogt worden in vrede,’ concluded Oom Jannie, softly, and closed the Prayer Book.

“Half an hour later we were back in the homestead.”

A LONG SILENCE followed. The campfire blazed merrily. The sky was paling. Dawn had come. Maxwell sat hunched on his sleeping bag. Neither of us spoke for some time.

“And you never went back there again?” I asked.

Maxwell shook his head.

“Never. I left the next day.”

“And Olivia?”

“I heard she went back to her pots and pans. She is now a silent, moody woman. She will never marry. Each evening she walks to that kopje and stares at the heights where lie the bones of the man she loved. And they do say,” added Maxwell, “that a mad laugh is often heard coming from those strange heights of Spook Kopje. And that laugh portends evil.”

I heard a deep chuckle behind me. Startled, I turned. The black face of my Kaffir servant grinned at me.

“Good morning, baas!” he said. “Coffee!”

The sleepers began to awake.

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2: Anatomy Lesson

Weird Tales, March 1937

A brief story about a skeleton that grinned, and grinned, and never ceased grinning, as if enjoying a huge joke

PROFESSOR CARTHEW adjusted his pince-nez. His stooping shoulders, tired sad face, and struggling wisp of gray moustache, seemed pathetically incongruous against the bold, upright skeleton that stood by his side flashing a blatant grin at the assembled class.

Young faces, eager and fresh, grouped themselves before the professor. Pristine notebooks were pressed open at the first page. The chattering undercurrent of lively young men and girls reached the professor.

"...a simply gorgeous film. I loved it.”

"...watched a perfectly marvellous piece of trephining by Juke and―”

"Can you manage tea at four o’clock? Oh, do!”

"Ahem!”

Professor Carthew cowed the young people into an indifferent silence. The faces looked up. Pencils and fountain pens were poised. The afternoon lecture on anatomy was to begin.

"Today I intend to depart from my usual procedure in these lessons,” said Professor Carthew, wearily. "On the last occasion when we met I discussed the vertebral column in detail. I dare say several of you found it highly technical. I do not intend to weary you again with such matters.”

"The old duffer has a date,” sniggered one of the pupils. "Wants to get away!”

"But this afternoon,” went on the professor, "I want to discuss the skeleton as a whole, to ask you to deduce, from these bones that stand before you, the sort of fleshy garb that once covered them. In brief, it is the man, not the skeleton, I will tell you about.”

Despite the coolness of the afternoon, the students in the leading row noticed with some surprise that the professor’s brow was beaded with perspiration. Unusual, in old, dry-as-dust "Bones”. Moreover, before he spoke again, Professor Carthew gave a half-fearful glance at the erect, grinning skeleton standing by his side on the raised dais.

"The more literary among you,” he went on, "will recall that Hamlet philosophized over the dug-up skull of Yorick, the king’s jester. 'A fellow of infinite jest’ is how he described the twenty-two bones composing the cranium and face of the thing unearthed.”

With a trembling pointer, the professor indicated the skeleton on the stand.

"Here, too, is a fellow of infinite jest—a fool!”

The savage utterance of the words caused several of the students to look up in surprise. One, who was engaged in a crossword puzzle, laid down his pencil.

A strange smile crossed the lecturer’s face.

"Perhaps some one among you will tell me what this skeleton suggests?” His eyes gleamed behind the pince-nez swivelling at the crowd of young faces.

"A best quality specimen, sir,” responded one wag. "Probably Austrian and worth every penny of fifteen guineas.”

A snigger went round the lecture room at this boldness. But the smile on the face of Professor Carthew seemed to accept the remark as a compliment.

"A good observation as regards the price, young man,” he nodded. "It is a best quality specimen, having a movable spine.” A jerk of his pointer, and the bones danced. "But you are wrong as to its country of origin. It happens to be an English skeleton.”

He seemed to enjoy the surprise on the faces of the students, for he paused with an actor-like love of the drama and poured out for himself a glass of water from the carafe at his desk.

"But, sir," stammered another student, "doesn’t that make it rather rare in medical schools? Was the subject a man who donated his body for medical research?”

"In a manner of speaking, yes,” murmured the professor. That smile still played beneath the wisp of gray moustache. "In fact, it is not without interest that the subject and myself had a discussion upon skeletons less than a hour before he became available for medical research.”

At this, the class of students sat all attention. Notebooks, for once, were ignored.

"A few moments ago I tagged a Shakespearean label on him—'a fellow of infinite jest.’ And so he was in a modern, ineffably boring manner. Actually, he was a surgeon— oh, yes, quite well-known— but famous for his fatuous jokes, his absurd stories at which he laughed so much himself, rather than for his skill with the knife. He had the supreme bedside manner. I have even seen some intelligent patients accept the aesthetic gladly when he was in the midst of one of his interminable funny stories."

Eyes gazed from professor to skeleton, and back again. The front-row students noticed that the beads of perspiration had increased, and that the eyes behind the pince-nez gleamed with hatred.

"With his silly jokes and butcher’s hands he had blundered into some sort of successful practise. One day a friend, a very dear friend of mine, was wheeled on an operating-table before him. True, the operation was a delicate one, but one which a clever surgeon with a proper knowledge of anatomy could have brought to a successful issue. The lady— the friend—died.

"I was actually on my way to the nursing-home when the dreadful business happened. And I arrived only to gaze upon her quiet, resigned face, so beautiful even in death....”

Professor Carthew’s voice had softened. For a moment, tears dimmed his eyes, only to vanish instantly and be replaced by that deep-seated hatred.

"You students are only yet learning the rudiments of dissection and anatomy,” he went on. "To your untrained eyes that surgical operation might have appeared a desperate but vain attempt to save life. As a man who has spent years on anatomical study, the operation revealed itself to me as murder—sheer, blundering murder by a fool with a knife.”

The voice was now harsh and damning.

Each student was transfixed to his desk. In the silence that followed, the loud ticking of the clock seemed emphasized. Even Professor Carthew gave the dock his customary glance to assess the progress in time of his lecture.

"There were two courses open to me,” he went on, in a monotone. "One was to indict the surgeon before the General Medical Council, denounce him as an incompetent blunderer and a danger to the public, and insist that he be struck off the rolls. It would have created a scandal, brought dishonour on a profession for which I have the highest respect and to which I have given the best years of my life. I should have been hated as a meddlesome old fool. Above all, it would have dragged the corpse of that very dear friend into the vulgar scrutiny of scandal. There remained the other course....”

He turned from the class and walked a few steps toward the skeleton. He seemed to be regarding it almost affectionately.

"Without a word, I went away from the nursing-home back to my house in Hampstead. A few of you young people have done me the honour at times to call upon me there. I am always delighted to see you, and give you the benefit of what modicum of knowledge I possess on the infinite subject of human anatomy. Some of you will recall my experimental laboratory, as I proudly call it—the shed at the end of my garden. It was to the laboratory I went after leaving the nursing- home.

"An hour later my preparations were made. I entered my house and telephoned to the surgeon in Wimpole Street. I asked him, in as ordinary tone as I could muster at the moment, to call and see me that evening. He seemed surprised, and uncertain whether he could manage it. I insisted. In fact, I made a few anatomical criticisms of that operation over the telephone. He blustered, but the fact that I had seen the body worried him. He agreed to come. I insisted upon absolute secrecy. He must tell no one where he was going that evening. I would meet him at the Underground station near my house. Frightened at the possibility of my threat, he agreed...

Professor Carthew turned away from the grinning skull, and drank the glass of water. The tired eyes wavered toward the clock.

"The well-known surgeon arrived— without his bedside manner. No one saw us enter my house. I took care of that.

"When we had seated ourselves, he came straight to the point. He wanted to know what I was going to do. I told him I wanted to talk of anatomy—and skeletons!”

Once again the grim smile.

"Perhaps the students of this class have been surprised on occasions when I appear to have wandered from the subject of my lectures on anatomy. But even the little philosophical reflections are only the result of much study in this fascinating subject. Some of those philosophical reflections I repeated to the surgeon, sitting in my house that evening.

"I pointed out the curious horror that living people have of skeletons; why, I have never been able to understand. Partly, I suppose, it is based on the strange idea that the skeleton is typical of death. But the skeleton is really only man-named. Skeletons have a living, purposeful unity of their own. They can be, as one student pointed out this afternoon, of best quality.

"Actually, of course, man is frightened of the skeleton only because it is a reminder that at the base he is himself shamelessly grotesque. It is this grinning ugliness of bony structure which is hidden by fleshy pomp and pride. Curious that some men should be proud of the flesh and ashamed of the bones. Personally, it is the framework and not the outward show that has always interested me...

There was a gurgle of water as the decanter was brought into play again. Only the professor, with his wavering glance, realized that the clock gave him less than a quarter of an hour to end his lesson on anatomy. The students might have been skeletons themselves, so rigid did they sit and stare.

"I could see that the surgeon was irritated, puzzled and scared in turn by my talk. But here again, I must ask students to make note of a curious anatomical fact. Whatever expression the fleshy face may register—joy or sorrow, love or hate— you may be certain that the skull itself, those twenty-two bones, are fixed in a hideous grin. As is the subject before you,” the professor added in a tone of profound contempt.

"And even as I spoke of my deep love for that dear friend whom his bungling hands and murderous knife had taken from me for ever, I was aware, paradoxically, that both our skulls were grinning at each other. My sorrow left his fleshy face unmoved. Only his eyes were calculating and his disgusting gray matter pondering what action I was going to take. I invited him, casually, to walk across the garden with me and view an anatomical specimen in my laboratory. Wondering a little, but anxious to please, he agreed.

"We passed through the garden and entered the hut. As some of you know, I have several excellent skulls there. I persuaded him to examine one closely—it is a curiously primitive example which I myself dug up from a barrow on Salisbury Plain. I pointed out how even this bronze age skull had undergone two trephining operations, and clever operations they were.

"As he bent closer over the skull, I struck—with a surgeon’s knife. I had assessed the position of his heart exactly. It lay, approximately, just here!” The pointer was casually inserted in the skeleton. "In less than a minute that blundering member of our great profession was dead at my feet. Before the morning, working steadily through the night, I had acquired an excellent new specimen of a skeleton for anatomical demonstration to students.”

One of the girl students stifled a scream that was rising in her throat. A gasp of horror went round the room. But not a single student dared rise. They were all rooted. Professor Carthew was blinking in tired fashion at the clock.

"Before we close the lesson for the afternoon,” he went on in that same dreadful monotone, "there is one final anatomical fact which I must bring to your notice. It concerns the lower limbs, and in particular, the feet of the subject. As I have told you in previous lectures, the foot consists of the tarsus, the metatarsus, and the five free digits or toes. In articulation they carry the weight of the body. They leave a definite mark in wet soil or similar substances.

"It is with this anatomical fact that I will conclude today. I said that a skeleton may be regarded as a living skeleton. It is so in this case, for the surgeon walking across my garden left a definite impress on his feet. A little over an hour ago those footprints were measured by some rather amateur scientists attached to Scotland Yard. They were found to fit, exactly, the shoes of the missing surgeon.

"It appears that one of that curious human species of loafers, men who hang about streets listlessly and apparently half alive, had seen me meet the surgeon at the Underground station. I was known to him; the surgeon he recognized from a photograph that was shown him. I suppose in the ordinary way, a professor of anatomy might be the last person to be suspected of murder. What I have done, however, is to rid the profession of a most undesirable practitioner.”

PROFESSOR CARTHEW drained the glass at one gulp. A spasm of pain twitched his features, and he swayed a little. Recovering himself, he gave a half-laugh of apology. He still faced that group of students, apparently oblivious of the horrified gaze that had fixed their young, eager features. He seemed equally oblivious to the opening of the door of the lecture room, and the entry of a powerfully built man with two constables in the rear.

"Marmaduke Arthur Carthew!” began the new entrant. "I am Inspector Rollins of Scotland Yard, and I hold a warrant for your arrest on a charge of wilful murder against―”

But the professor had held up his hand as though he would check some eager student in spate.

"Finally, I would say that it is my sincere wish— I have stated it in my will —that my own body be used for dissection purposes, and that my skeleton be used for anatomy lessons by my successor. But please do not forget, dear students, that however much my face may seem to gleam with sombre vanity or vulgar vengeance, the skull beneath is laughing for ever.”

And with an exuding sigh he crumpled suddenly at the bony feet of the subject he had lectured upon. His hand still clutched the glass, from which came a faint aroma of almonds.

The anatomy lesson was ended.

___________________________

3: Man Killer

Blue Book July 1933

"FACES,” said Jonathan Lowe, “often tell me too much. Walking the streets of this great city is much more exciting than walking through the jungle. I see wolves, vultures, tigers— the whole of nature, red in tooth and claw. There are men and women with the faces of beasts. Not a pretty sight.”

And with an apologetic smile he scratched the head of the blissful white monkey that squatted on the arm of his chair.

“Then you might be interested in this face,” I said, flicking over to him an early edition of the newspaper on which I worked. It was still damp from the press, but the picture-page displayed clearly the head of a man whom I pointed out.

“Can you conceive of any face more benevolent, more— er— respectable?” I argued. “There’s the face of a man who is much more likely to be preyed upon than to fight for himself. Look at the sad eyes! And the mournful droop of the mouth. A bald head, too.”

“A very interesting head,” observed Jonathan Lowe. “What’s the fellow done? Won a golf championship or married an actress ?”

“Neither,” I said slowly. “He discovered the body of a man brutally done to death, a few hours ago.”

“Really!” murmured Jonathan Lowe, still scratching the head of his white monkey. “You interest me profoundly, my dear Hayton. Tell me more.”

I glanced instinctively at the clock; it was nearly one o’clock in the morning. A newspaper man, and particularly a crime reporter, keeps queer hours. But I was a boarder in a strange household. I was, in fact, the only boarder.

Jonathan Lowe was my landlord. I had discovered him through a discreetly worded advertisement in one of the newspapers, offering a suite of rooms at the top of a rather large house in St. John’s Wood. The rent asked was fairly high, but the rooms were excellently furnished, and as I was earning a good salary, I did not hesitate.

Yet I confess that it was the man himself, Jonathan Lowe, who was the real reason for my taking those rooms. It is not every day that one finds a man with white hair, his skin almost the colour of mahogany from tropic suns, clothes of a snuff-coloured variety, and a pair of penetrating blue eyes, displaying a house in St. John’s Wood that was positively unique.

Two servants ran that house, and ran it perfectly. One was an Indian, Abdul Aziz; the other a negro, Milestone. The Indian was the cook, and was able to cajole me in for meals when my work at the office should have made me dine in town. Milestone, a shambling, smiling son of Africa, had a genius for anticipating wants and inventing little luxuries of existence. Both these men had served Jonathan Lowe in the wilds of Africa and India. They served him now in the heart of civilized London.

But of those strange characters, Jonathan Lowe was the strangest. For many years he had been a game-ranger in Uganda, trekking the bush with a rifle under his arm, and keeping such beasts as elephants and lions from raiding the farms of settlers in the districts. Before that he had served as a forest officer in India, wandering the slopes of the Himalayas and living what is one of the loneliest of lives that a white man can experience.

Now he had returned, to settle in St. John’s Wood. A huge garden stretched away from the house at the back. At the end of this garden Jonathan Lowe had installed a series of cages in which scrambled and scuttered the beasts that made up his private collection. For he was passionately fond of beasts— he knew their habits, their private lives, even their thoughts. Many a famous zoologist came to talk of beasts with Jonathan Lowe. The proximity of his house to the Zoo at Regent’s Park made it a rendezvous for men as strange and unique as the beasts in his garden.

Why had Jonathan Lowe decided to have a boarder in his house? He was possessed of a fairly comfortable pension, and had saved money during his long period in the jungle and bush. His tastes were simple, and the two servants who looked after the house were really more economical than English servants would have been. I flattered myself, at first, that this white-haired man with the intense blue eyes was really lonely and wished for company in the spacious house in St. John’s Wood. Then came the awful suspicion that perhaps he regarded me as he did those beasts caged at the end of his garden—a subject for study.

But my work as a crime reporter on the Daily Courier kept me too busy for speculating, upon such subjects. It was my habit, after a night at the office, to drop into his library and chat with him for a few minutes over a glass of port. And invariably I brought back with me the early edition of the paper which would be read by a million or more at breakfast....

“Yes, he discovered the body of a man brutally done to death,” I repeated, as the little clock tinkled one and the white monkey blinked at the sound. “The body was that of a middle-aged man, rather scrubby about the chin, and his clothes on the shabby side. He is still unidentified, and likely to remain so for some time.”

“Why?” asked Jonathan Lowe.

“Because of the very brutality of the attack,” I said. “The head and face was battered beyond recognition. A huge club— one of those athletic things known as an Indian club— was found lying in the gutter alongside the body.”

“Where was the body found ?”

“In a lonely part of Hampstead Heath,” I replied. “I’ve spent a good deal of the evening in the vicinity trying to piece a story together. It’s a dark patch of ground beneath trees. Just the place for a murder. Ugh!” I shivered.

“And the body was discovered by—”

“The fellow whose photograph is staring at you from that page of pictures,” I said. “A nice quiet fellow— been a clerk in a solicitor’s office for twenty years. Lived an ordinary, uneventful life for as long as he can remember, and then— this. I consider it was something of a scoop on my part to get that photograph. He was very reluctant to let me have it. And then, when I did take it to the office, what d’you think the news editor said ?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” said Lowe.

“He asked me if I couldn’t get a photograph of a girl, instead! ‘This is too damned ordinary,’ he said. ‘Surely there’s a girl in the case, somewhere?’ He went on grumbling, and eventually passed the picture for publication.”

“And isn’t there a woman in the case?” Lowe asked.

“The only woman I know of in this case is the wife of this nice quiet fellow. They live a very quiet suburban life in Golder’s Green. And, oh, yes, there are two little girls, his kiddies. He’s awfully fond of them. I caught a glimpse of them all when he took me home to get me the photograph.”

“It’s a very interesting photograph, too,” murmured Jonathan Lowe.

“D’you really think so?” I asked enthusiastically.

“Why, of course.. What is his name?”

“As ordinary as his face, or so the news editor said. It’s Ernest Meek.”

Jonathan Lowe did not smile.

“Ernest Meek, eh?” he repeated.

“I admit that he looks—er—placid,” I said apologetically. “I suppose it is those sad eyes.”

“Green eyes, aren’t they?” asked Jonathan Lowe..

I looked up in surprise.

“How did you know ?”

“Just a lucky guess,” he said. He wrinkled his eyes at the photograph. “But isn’t there something strangely familiar about this face to you?”

I stared at him. “I suppose it’s a face such as one might see in any suburban train any morning,” I said.

Lowe gave a little gesture of irritation. “Have you been to the Zoo lately, young man?” he asked.

I shook my head. “I’ve been too busy chasing criminals, to bother about a few mangy beasts in their cages,” I retorted.

He looked at me deprecatingly. “You might find it very profitable to go and study those beasts behind bars,” he murmured. “It’s really quite as interesting as going through Pentonville. But we won’t argue about that. I would only suggest that if you entered the lion-house at the Zoo and stared at one of those beasts lying in the sawdust you would see something resembling this―”

And his finger pointed to the photograph in the newspaper.

“By Jove, you’re right,” I chuckled. “I do recognize the face now: A bored, tired, listless-looking lion, blinking behind bars. A lion! Of course!”

“And a killer,” added Jonathan Lowe quietly.

I sat up with a jerk. Lowe’s mahogany face, creased with lines, had set like an idol. His white hair nearly matched that of the monkey, which now was slumbering peacefully at his shoulder.

“What did you say?” I asked, in a whisper.

“I said that this was the face of a killer,” repeated Jonathan Lowe quietly. “Just as a lion will defend his mate, his cubs, his den from the intruder, and yet to all appearances seem placid,— even bored-looking,— so this man whose face you have pointed out to me is capable of the most dastardly and frightful type of murder.”

I laughed outright. It woke the monkey, who grumbled in a muttering tone.

“Now you’re letting your jungle ideas run away with your common sense,” I protested. “Why, you haven’t even spoken to the man!”

“I don’t need to,” Lowe replied.

“But he couldn’t possibly be the murderer!”

“Why not?”

“He’s not the sort of man to go bashing his victim on the head with an Indian club. It’s highly probable that one of the many Indian students who live at Hampstead may have wandered onto the heath and—”

“I have never seen an Indian use an Indian club,” murmured Lowe. “If you think I’m exaggerating on this point, ask my cook, Abdul Aziz.”

“But the idea is fantastic,” I urged. “You might just as well tell me that the policeman who came in response to the cry of Ernest Meek committed the murder.”

“Have you a photograph of the policeman?”

“Good heavens, no!”

“Well, even policemen have been known to commit murder,” said Jonathan Lowe slyly.

By this time I was really annoyed.

“You can’t convince me that Ernest Meek is a murderer,” I said angrily. “After all, I’ve spoken to the man— and after three years as a crime reporter, I ought to know a murderer when I see him.”

“In this case you’ve failed to recognize one.”

“Because the fellow somehow reminds you of a lion,—and I admit there is a sort of resemblance,— you want to prove to me that he is a killer! Good heavens, if my news editor thought that I’d talked to a murderer and let him go, he would murder me if I ever dared show my face in the office again!”

The pitch of my voice caused Jonathan Lowe to chuckle.

“Now you’re suggesting that I ought to prove my fantastic idea, eh?” he said. “Well, it’s possible I can. If this man is a lion-man, as I believe he is, then he is sure to behave in a certain way. Now, just what would he do?”

I stared at this white-haired man as, sunk in his chair, he began to brood aloud. His calm, even tone of voice fascinated me.

“The lion, my dear boy, isn’t really a great thinking beast. For his size, he has a remarkably small brain. He is rather ashamed of it and you’ll find it well at the back of his receding head. I’ve shot too many not to know. The lion tries to make up in savagery what he lacks in intellect. But nearly all the beasts with better brains can escape the killer when he’s hungry.

“Because of this small brain, the lion is really a one-idea’d beast. One idea dominates him. He can show a certain amount of cunning when he is a man-killer, but even then one single idea obsesses him. For example, it is a curious fact that when a lion has killed a man and been deprived of his prey, he hangs about in the neighbourhood of the corpse. A gruesome obsession; yet it has been proved again and again. The beast seems unable to leave his prey. A friend of mine in Africa who was badly mauled by a lion, and was carried by his boys to the nearest outpost, had his stretcher followed by the beast for nearly thirty miles through the bush.”

The eyes of Jonathan Lowe, eyes which now reminded me of an alert monkey, lighted up as he came to this point in his musings. He turned abruptly toward me.

“Where is the body ?” he asked.

“The body! ” I gasped.

“Yes, the body of the unknown man who has been murdered.”

“Why, I—er—suppose it’s in the local mortuary at Hampstead.”

“Then let us go there at once,” he urged. “I’ll get my car out of the garage, and we’ll drive over to Hampstead. It won’t take us more than half an hour.”

“But it is already after two in the morning,” I protested. “I should hate going anywhere near a mortuary at this time. Why should we?”

His hand grasped my arm.

“I might prove my point about this man,” he said, nodding at the newspaper which had slipped to the floor. “Moreover, you might get what journalists call ‘a good story.’”

“I realize I’m not likely to get much sleep!” I groaned.

Nevertheless, I followed him out of the room in some excitement. If there was anything in his theory, it would soon be disclosed; if there wasn’t, well, I should soon be back in bed dreaming of a whole Zoo let loose in the city streets.

As we roared up the hill at Swiss Cottage toward Hampstead in the little “two-seater” car belonging to Jonathan Lowe, the rush of cool night air convinced me that we were behaving like a couple of madmen. The streets were deserted, and the street lamps flung queer shadows across the pavement.

“This is pure madness!” I yelled above the roar of the engine to Jonathan Lowe, crouched at the wheel.

“Of course it is,” he yelled back. “But I rather like it.”

I touched him on the arm as we drew near to the police-station. He understood, and stopped the car about two hundred yards away. Then we sauntered slowly up the hill. Our footsteps seemed to echo in that quiet street.

“A lion will defend his mate, his cubs, his den, from an intruder.”

“The mortuary is in the side street,” I whispered.

He nodded.

“Go quietly!” he commanded.

It was almost on tiptoe that we reached the corner of the street. Simultaneously, we both peered into the darkness of that side street. A yellow light gleamed in the station window. I could even see a uniformed policeman writing steadily. And in the side street— nothing. Shadows, queer shadows flung by the lamp. Nothing more.

I was about to chuckle. Jonathan Lowe was wrong, after all. Then I drew in my breath. One of those shadows had moved! Yes, there it was again; there was a figure, a man, lurking in the shadows.

“It’s a policeman on his beat,” I whispered.

“Is it?” murmured the man at my side. “Let us see.”

And with a swift movement, almost catlike in its silent rapidity, he had plunged into that side street. I followed.

The figure in the shadows tried to escape. But it was too late. I heard the stifled cry as we were upon him. And a chill crept to my spine as I recognized the face, that very ordinary face, beneath the yellow lamplight of the street.

“Mr. Meek! ” I cried. “What on earth are you doing here at this time of night?”

There was something like a sigh of relief as he recognized me.

“It’s you, Mr. Hayton! ” he said. “You terrified me, coming out of the darkness like that.”

He fumbled in his pocket for a handkerchief, and at the same time removed his hat. I could see in the lamplight that his bald, receding head was bathed in perspiration.

“What are you doing here at this time of night, Mr. Meek?” asked a grave voice at my side, and Lowe thrust his white head forward.

“Well, you— er— see,” began Ernest Meek in an agitated manner. “I suppose it does seem— er— curious. But then, you see, nothing like this has ever happened in my life before. It’s not every day that one stumbles across the body of a man who has been murdered, is it? No, indeed it isn’t! Well, after I’d gone home— to get the photograph, that is, for you, Mr. Hayton— I found I couldn’t sleep. No, I couldn’t. My nerves were all upset! Mrs. Meek and the children couldn’t understand it. I told them I must go out for a walk. And I found myself walking from Golder’s Green here—all this way. Strange, isn’t it?”

“Not very strange,” said Jonathan Lowe quietly.

He was staring at that figure in the shadows. I could see the eyes, the green eyes of Ernest Meek, alive in the darkness. And as he gazed back at Lowe, I saw them burn with hatred. There was a gleam in them suggesting that he was about to leap upon us. A strange shudder shook his body.

But Jonathan Lowe’s stare never wavered. The hatred in the green eyes died away and was replaced by a look of terror. Ernest Meek gave a startled gasp; then, before I could stretch out my hand, he had turned on his heel and was running, leaping away from us in the darkness.

Excitement seized me. I turned to go in pursuit. But Lowe’s steely grip was on my arm.

“Let him go,” he said quietly. “We know his den. In the meantime, d’you think I could get a glimpse of the body that was found on the heath?”

A minute later we entered the police-station. The officer on duty took our cards. I had called at that station before writing my story for the newspaper, so I was known; and I explained that my friend, Mr. Jonathan Lowe, thought he might be able to give a clue as to the identity of the victim.

The officer seemed to think this white-haired man with the sunburned face and snuff-coloured clothes looked harmless enough. He agreed to take him into the mortuary. I did not follow him; I preferred to stay within the comforting light of the police-station and analyse the strange actions of Ernest Meek.

In less than five minutes Lowe was back again.

“I’m afraid it will be a difficult job to identify him,” said the officer.

Lowe seemed lost in thought. He scratched his white head in a reflective manner. Then he turned to me.

“When did the last Canadian cattle-boat reach this country?” he asked.

I stared. “How on earth should I know ?”

“You’re a journalist,” he pointed out.

“I’m a crime reporter, not a docks’ man,” I protested.

“Well,” he mused, “if you can find a cattle-ship that arrived here a few days ago from Canada I think you might, by questioning the skipper, discover the name of that poor devil who now lies over there.... I’m afraid that’s all the help I can give you. Good night, Officer!”

And with a nod to the astonished policeman, he walked out of the station.

Only once, in that journey back to the strange house in St. John’s Wood, did he speak. It was when the lights of Swiss Cottage were at our backs.

“By the way, did you notice if Mrs. Meek had anything in the nature of a Canadian accent?” he asked.

“Yes, by Jove, she had!” I cried excitedly.

“Very interesting,” he yawned. “I should follow that up, my dear Hayton.

It might explain a lot. But here we are, and I’m going to bed.”

“And I’m going after one of the biggest murder-stories of my life,” I growled.

ONCE again the little clock tinkled one, and the white monkey Blanco blinked sleepily. With ceremony, Jonathan Lowe poured out a glass of port for me and handed it to me.

“You look tired, my boy,” he said. I nodded. For twenty-four hours I had not slept. Once again I flicked over to him the newspaper, damp from the press. That same photograph of the ordinary-looking Ernest Meek, now generously enlarged, stared from the front page. And a headline announced:

MAN-KILLER ESCAPES!

I noticed the smile on the mahogany-tinted face of Lowe.

“Yes, you were right,” I said wearily. “But how you sensed it beats me. After I’ve slept this off, I’m going to spend two afternoons a week loafing at the Zoo.”

Jonathan Lowe still stared at the newspaper.

“So he got away, after all.”

I nodded. “Thanks to you! He knew as soon as you spoke in that side street that his secret was discovered. And you let him run away.”

“Well, I like to see even a jungle beast get a chance,” he murmured. “But he will be caught when he tries to see his family— as he certainly will.... Why did he murder that man on Hampstead Heath?”

“There again you were on the right track,” I murmured. “The wife was in it, although she didn’t know it. Actually the murdered man was her husband —they were married in Canada many years ago, and he’d deserted her. Then he appeared in London, discovered that she had married again and went straight to the husband to levy blackmail. Evidently he intended to get ugly if his demands were refused, for today a pistol was found close by where his body had been lying. Ernest Meek told his wife nothing about the man from Canada. He merely arranged to meet the fellow on Hampstead Heath, and went there.”

“With an Indian club beneath his coat, eh?” asked Jonathan Lowe.

“Yes, he bought it in the city—probably with some idea of self-defence. Of course he had to buy a pair. Getting rid of the other club was a problem. We found it hidden in the solicitor’s office where he worked. But the really conclusive evidence was when we discovered the identity of the murdered man. What, by the way, gave you the idea that he had just come over on a Canadian cattle-steamer ?”

“The smell,” Lowe replied. “It clings to the poor devil’s clothes. You can’t work on a cattle-steamer for about ten days without the whole of your clothes reeking of cattle. That particular door puzzled me for some time. Then I recollected watching a herd of Canadian cattle being landed in this country. And I recalled that same smell.”

I nodded my appreciation.

“Well, we were able to trace the fellow as having arrived on the Calgary Transport only four days ago. Then we traced him to his hotel, a cheap place in the Euston Road. There a porter remembered a man who’d called and had a talk with the Canadian. The description was that of an ordinary sort of fellow—bald head, and a rather benevolent expression.”

“Ernest Meek.”

“Exactly. The next evening the Canadian had gone out and not returned. That was when he had kept his appointment with Meek on Hampstead Heath. His few belongings were still in his bedroom. Among them was a photograph of Mrs. Meek, taken some years ago, as well as a bundle of letters and the copy of a marriage-certificate. Of course, the case was obvious after that.”

“And now it is all over,” Lowe yawned.

“Ernest Meek is still at large!” I said.

He smiled. “A man with that kind of face can lose himself in a crowd as easily as a lion can lose himself in the long grass.... Anyhow, I hope your news editor was pleased.”

“Pleased!” I cried. “Why, I’ve given them the best scoop of the year, and they’re just purring!”

And with a satisfied sigh I drained my glass and climbed the stairs to bed.

__________________

Isaac Heron

4: The Houseboat of  Missing Men

Blue Book March 1936

Our gypsy detective risks his life to solve an extraordinary mystery.

ISAAC HERON was at peace with the world. He had become a water gypsy. Lounging against the mast on his little sailing boat, he dozed listlessly, lulled by the lap-lap-lap of the blue waters of the Waveney, in East Anglia.

He was on the “Broads”—that low- lying region of Suffolk and Norfolk, marked by lake-like expansions of the rivers. A boat, a dirty brown sail, a fishing-rod and a bucket containing a mess of bait provided him with a paradise enough. His lithe brown body, clad only in an old shirt and a pair of shorts, was whipped by the wind. His jet-black hair was strewn over his mahogany-coloured features.

But with a characteristic gesture, his hand swept the hair from his eyes as something strange, something incongruous, flopped into the wind-ruffled waters by his boat. Many queer things come floating down these rivers, jetsam from the villages near the banks. But the black thing floating in the river was unique: It was a top hat.

A jerk of a hand at the sail, and the boat pitched forward toward the floating object. Lazily curious, Isaac Heron stretched himself over the gunwale and grabbed the top hat as it floated past. Water dripped from it, but the hat was still sound.

He was giving this piece of salvage an amused gaze, when a flap-flop sounded a few yards away. He swivelled round. A hand was being drawn back into the interior of an old unpainted houseboat moored against the bank. And a pair of white spats were floating merrily downstream.

The dark, sombre eyes of the gypsy narrowed. He turned from these other pieces of jetsam to regard the houseboat past which his sailing boat was now slipping. It gave no sign of life; it was dirty and derelict— seemed to have been abandoned entirely to water rats. Yet the gypsy had seen a hand carelessly flinging these trappings of city life into the river.

Was it some business man who, strangely affected by this spacious landscape of water, waving green weeds and wind-blown sky, had decided suddenly to fling aside all suggestion of a city existence? But if so, why journey to the Broads in a top hat and spats? An odd garb for anyone in that green and blue paradise!

The houseboat was behind him now. Isaac Heron turned to regard the top hat. A strange smile crossed his face. The hat was a good one— glossy and fairly new. It has not been flung into the river because it was no longer respectable. He turned it over to look inside. The mark of a famous Bond Street hatter was prominent. And also a name— the name of the owner, in ink.

Julius Lasser

The gypsy gave a low whistle of surprise, then glanced quickly over his shoulder at the houseboat, now disappearing as his sailing boat rounded a bend. Then his eyes travelled to a map lying near the mast. He scanned it. He was within half a mile of a village.

Once more his hand jerked the sail. The wind caught it and sent his boat  swerving toward the bank. Easily, he jumped ashore; the sail tumbled down,  and the boat was tied to a little tree.

Holding the top hat in his hand, the gypsy began to walk toward the village. Ten minutes later the proprietor of the Brown Cow drew in his breath sharply as a most extraordinary figure stepped into the saloon-bar—a brown-skinned gypsy in an old shirt and a pair of shorts, wearing on his head a glossy top hat.

“Lawdy! I thought you were a cannibal chief!” exclaimed the proprietor.

Isaac Heron smiled.

“Have you a telephone ?” he asked.

“I have,” nodded the innkeeper, still appraising this strange figure. “But it costs money to telephone.”

The gypsy tossed a screwed-up pound note onto the bar.

“I want to telephone London,” he said quietly.

The innkeeper was impressed.

“Yes sir. This way, sir.”

He led the way into a little parlour, where an old-fashioned telephone was  fastened against the wall. He stood aside, watching the gypsy who patiently turned the handle to ring the local exchange.

“I want Whitehall One, Two— One, Two,” said Isaac Heron.

The innkeeper opened his eyes wide in astonishment. He had not listened in on the radio for nothing....

IN HIS LITTLE room at Scotland Yard, Detective Inspector Graves replaced the receiver with a thoughtful air. Then he scratched his head. Finally, with a reckless air, he picked up the departmental telephone.

“Give me the Special Branch,” he commanded. “Detective Benson, please.” Some irritating noises. Then: “Is that you, Benson? Graves speaking. Can you come over and see me for five minutes? Yes, something you’ve been sniffing after for nearly a year.”

The bait was sufficient to bring a broad-shouldered, cheery-faced young man into the room a few minutes later. Detective Benson was of the new school. He looked like a football player and ought to have been wearing an old Etonian tie. But about that he was always discreet. He was, however, wearing a suit that had the stamp of Savile Row.

“Discovered your fake passport-office yet, Benson?” asked Graves, pushing over a packet of cigarettes.

Benson gave a rueful grin and almost fell into a chair.

“No such luck!” he replied. “I know it’s becoming something of a joke. I’ve followed a dozen trails, but there it is. The scent gives out. The trails lead nowhere. I expect the Chief will have me on the carpet again soon.”

“Still, you’ve done something,” encouraged Graves. “You’ve stopped the revolutionaries, the anarchists and the usual danger-gangs of Europe getting into the country.”

“That was easy enough,” nodded Benson. “A tour of Dover, Folkestone, Harwich and Southampton— and every hole was stopped. What we haven’t been able to do is to prevent the escape of criminals from this country and journeying about the Continent with the finest faked passports ever devised.”

“Exactly,” nodded Graves. “And now I’ve got a tip for you.”

“A tip! ” The young man was genuinely excited.

Graves smiled. “There may be nothing in it,” he warned. “On the other hand, there may be a good deal. I’ve just had a telephone-call from the Norfolk Broads.”

“Damned good place for sailing,” said Benson.

“Yes, sailing for the Continent!” emphasized Graves. “You know that for two days our department has been trying to find the trail of the absconding financier Julius Lasser.”

Benson nodded.

“Cleared off with a quarter of a million, didn’t he? Our department was asked to keep an eye on the airports.”

“Lasser’s top hat was found floating In the waters of the Broads today,” said Graves. “No mistake about it. His name was inside.”

“Not suicide?”

“No one commits suicide with a quarter of a million in his pocket. The top hat was pitched into the river from an old houseboat moored against the bank. A pair of spats followed.”

“A good place to get rid of one’s city harness,” smiled Benson.

“A very necessary place,” agreed Graves. “A top hat on the Broads is about as conspicuous as a convict’s suit on Piccadilly. It seems that Lasser is using that houseboat to change his wardrobe—and incidentally, to take off for a sea trip. There’s a powerful motorboat hidden alongside the houseboat.”

“Umph! The plot thickens. I suppose Lasser owns that houseboat?”

“I don’t think he owns it,” murmured Graves. “But it strikes me as an extraordinary coincidence that two men whom we’ve caught trying to escape the country were arrested within twenty miles of this spot on the Broads.”

Benson’s cheeks glowed.

“And that Italian anti-Fascist who got out of England and created a schnozzle in Milan was last seen at Ipswich,” he  added excitedly. “When he was arrested in Italy, he had one of those faked passports in his possession.”

“Significant, eh?” said Graves.

“When are you going to the Broads?” asked Benson bluntly.

“In fifteen minutes, in a police-car.”

“Room for an extra one?”

“Sure.”

Benson took Graves’ hand in his huge paw and nearly crushed it.

“Thanks,” he grunted.

“Don’t mention it,” said Graves, wincing.

In less than fifteen minutes two police cars emerged from Scotland Yard, and quickly threaded their way through the London traffic.

They headed northeast.

WITH sweat-grimed face, sobbing breath and torn clothes, a man plunged across a darkened countryside toward the houseboat creaking in the oncoming tide. With a gasp of relief he stretched out a hand and swung himself aboard. For a full minute he lay there, face downward on the narrow deck, temporarily exhausted.

“Who the devil are you?”

The words were growled at the fugitive from behind the yellow gleam of a lantern.

“For heaven’s sake, douse the light!” gasped the voice of the man lying on the deck.

“What’s the game?” insisted the man behind the lantern, at the same time shading it with his coat.

“I want to get away, damned quick, out of this country,” whispered the prone figure.

The man with the lantern gave a grim chuckle.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’d better get off this boat, quick! ”

The figure on the deck pushed a dirty brown hand toward the lantern, revealing a bunch of five-pound notes.

“That shows I mean business,” he gulped, recovering his breath. “A fellow in stir told me about this boat. Just missed getting his own passage.”

There was silence for a minute.

“Better come below,” grunted the man with the lantern at last.

He led the way down a short flight of steps, into a little cabin where a carefully shaded lamp revealed two men playing cards at a table. The air was thick with tobacco smoke.

“Found this bloke on deck,” explained the man with the lantern. “Looks as though he’s been running for it.”

Two hard, calculating faces stared at the bedraggled fugitive. They appraised him in silence. One man had an ugly scar across his cheek. The other, with cold blue eyes and an air of authority, addressed himself to the sweat-stained figure.

“A gypsy, eh?”

“Yes.”

Isaac Heron realized that this was no ordinary gamble. A slip, and his life would be worth nothing.

“What have you been doing?”

The gypsy shrugged.

“Broke into a country-house, got my hands on some notes, and then some one heard me. A Gorgio came for me. I had to knock him down.”

“Did you kill him?”

“I don’t know. Didn’t wait. Just grabbed what I could, and ran for it.”

“Where was this?”

“Fifteen miles away.”

The man with the cold blue eyes tightened his mouth.

“You damned fool! ” he snarled. “What made you come here ? There’s probably a whole pack of police on your trail.”

At the same time his hand slid significantly to his hip pocket.

The gypsy was desperate. He fell on his knees.

“I swear I gave them the slip,” he pleaded. “And I’ll pay you— pay you handsomely to get me clear. Here, take the cursed money.”

With a gesture of disgust he flung the handful of notes on the table. A sneer crossed the white face of the other.

“So you did murder the Gorgio, eh?” His fingers drummed a little tattoo on  the table. Then at last his eyes sought the notes. A gleam of cupidity came into the cold blue eyes. “All right, we’ll take a gamble on you. Damned lucky for you that a ship is sailing tonight. Holland. Introduce him to his fellow-passengers, Jake.”

“Yes, Cap’n.”

It was the man with the lantern who spoke.

“And remember,” came the final snarl, “you do as you’re told from now on. Orders will be given you.” He smiled ironically as he forestalled the gypsy’s attempt to take back a couple of the bank-notes lying on the table. “I’ll take care of that little bundle of loot,” he nodded, and rested his hand upon it.

“This way, gypsy,” growled the man with the lantern.

With a sigh of despair, Isaac Heron turned and followed him.

They proceeded along a little companionway, down another staircase, and then into a roomy saloon on a level with the lapping water of the river.

A queer group of people were lounging about in listless and yet impatient attitudes. A haze of cigarette smoke swathed them.

“Your fellow-passengers for Holland,” grunted the man with the lantern. “When we’re ready, you’ll be called.”

“How much longer are we to wait?” asked a heavily built man sitting on a cushioned bench.

“The ship ought to be signalling us within the hour, Mr. Lasser,” grunted the other. “In the meantime, here’s some fresh company for you— a gypsy dago.”

And with a casual nod, the man with the lantern departed.

“A gypsy! How thrilling! ” shrilled a feminine voice. A woman tawdrily dressed raised herself and sauntered over to Isaac Heron. “I’m Amy Wilone. I dare say you’ve heard of me.”

Heron nodded. Amy Wilone had the reputation of being the cleverest adventuress in Europe.

“Who hasn’t heard of you!” he said, with a bow.

“My assistant,” nodded Amy in the direction of the other woman. “We have a little business to transact on the Continent. It is unfortunate that one has to adopt this unconventional method of travel. What is your specialty, may I ask ?”

“Burglary,” said Isaac Heron bluntly.

“How crude! ” grimaced Amy. “I feel sure I could use you to better advantage.”

“Thank you.”

“Care for a game of cards, gypsy?” asked one of the men.

“Don’t be a fool,” broke in the absconding financier Julius Lasser, to Isaac Heron. “That’s Gentleman Joe, the card-sharper.”

“It’s no use,” smiled Isaac Heron. “I haven’t a cent left after paying my passage money.”

“Yes, this is a profitable racket,” mused the financier. “And a nice company for cruising! You see the Chinaman in the corner? A dope-peddler on the run. And the two men muttering to each other? Balkan revolutionaries with murder in their heads. Myself, a gentleman who finds it inconvenient to stay in England at present.”

He laughed, and pushed a box of cigarettes over to Isaac Heron.

At the same moment, the door of the saloon was opened, and the man known as Jake thrust his head inside, barking harshly:

“Gypsy! ”

Isaac Heron turned.

“Come along and have your mug taken. We’ve got to get your passport ready.”

ONCE again the gypsy proceeded along the maze of companionways in that strange houseboat. This time he was taken to a room which had been arranged as a photographers’ studio. An arc-lamp and a camera was focused upon him. A nod from the photographer, and he was released. Two men were working at a desk, bent over a little stack of passports, and using paint brushes which they dipped into bowls of chemicals. It was a brief glimpse of the passport factory at work. But a few minutes later Isaac Heron was back in the saloon among that little group who were to voyage to Holland.

They were each awaiting the hour of departure with ill-concealed impatience. The card-sharper was continually snicking a pack of cards. The two Balkan revolutionaries had lapsed into silence. The Chinaman wore a fixed bland smile. The rest of the party smoked interminably.

“Here’s your passport, gypsy!”

Ten minutes after the photograph had been taken, Jake brought the finished product. Heron glanced at it— an admirable piece of workmanship. He slipped it into his pocket, for Jake was already giving orders.

“We’ve got the signal. The motor launch is waiting. You all ready?”

With sighs of relief, they rose and passed out of the saloon onto the deck of the houseboat, then proceeded to the stern, where they lowered themselves one by one into a powerful motorboat. Heron observed that the captain and the man with the scar on his cheek were in command. They took their seats. A nod to Jake, and they were pushed away by a boathook into mid-stream.

The engine coughed into life. The exhaust clucked. They began to move swiftly along the river toward the sea some miles away. In a few minutes they were breasting the incoming salt-water tide.

“Put that light out, you damned fool! ”

It was the captain at the wheel who spoke.

“Sorry!” said Heron, a cigarette between his lips. He had flicked an automatic lighter.

There was silence for some time. They were at the mouth of the river, the open sea before them. Away in the darkness a light gleamed and swung. It was at the masthead of a steamer.

“There she is,” whispered the man with the scar on his cheek.

The Captain did not reply. His head was bent sidewise intently in a listening attitude.

“D’you hear anything?” he asked his companion.

The man with the scar was at the engine. He shook his head.

“Nothing, Cap’n.”

“Stop the engine a moment!”

The rhythmic throbbing died away. There was silence except for the slap-slap of waves against the hull.

“Another motor-launch!” gasped the man with the scar.

Even as he spoke, a beam of light cleft the darkness, and a searchlight from the following launch.

“A Coast Guard cutter!” snarled the captain. “Get every ounce out of that damned engine.”

The engine roared into life again. At the same moment the pursuing motor- launch fired a shot from a revolver into the air—a signal to stop. But already the quarry was leaping away, spray being flung over the bows.

“Somebody must have given the police a tip!” yelled the man with the scar, above the rush of wind.

“It’s that cursed gypsy,” replied the captain. “You head for the ship. I’ll deal with him.”

He whipped out a revolver, and came toward Isaac Heron.

“Police spy, eh! That’s what you are!” declared the captain, a grim smile on his face. His fingers curled dangerously around the trigger of the revolver and his eyes narrowed.

Isaac Heron shrugged. He realized that he had been playing a dangerous game, and that it was impossible to bluff further.

“All right,” he nodded. “Go ahead and shoot!”

A faint scream came from the women. They covered their faces with their hands as the revolver was levelled. But the grim smile on the captain’s face was still there.

“No, I’m not going to be fool enough to shoot you,” he said distinctly above the throbbing of the engine. “You’re worth more to the police behind there than you are to us. We’ll give them an opportunity to stop for you and pick you up out of the sea. Stand up! You’re going to jump overboard.”

Slowly, Isaac Heron raised himself. The motor-launch was pitching against oncoming waves. With feet planted firmly apart, the captain, gripping the revolver, watched him.

The gypsy gave a backward glance at the pursuit. He realized that in that motor-launch was Detective Inspector Graves. Although they would not know who had tumbled into the sea, they would surely stop to pick up the dropped cargo. And in those few precious minutes the launch would have reached the waiting steamer, and the escape of the fugitives accomplished.

“Well, good luck to you!” sneered the captain. “I hope you’re a good swimmer.”

For a moment his gaze wavered toward the black sea streaked with foam that was swirling past them. It was the moment for which Isaac Heron had been waiting. His brown fist shot out and caught the captain on the jaw. At the same time he jumped for the revolver.

He seized it at the moment the captain slithered to the bottom of the boat.

Without hesitation, Heron pointed the gun at the throbbing engine and fired, again and again. The bullets went crashing into the midst of the mechanism. The next instant, with the revolver in his hand, he jumped— and disappeared into the flurry of foam which the launch left in its wake.

Cursing and yelling orders, the captain scrambled to his feet.

“She’s still going!” shouted the man with the scar, triumphantly.

But even as he spoke, there came a sob of death from the engine, and it stopped. The launch slid helplessly in the trough of a wave.

Numbed by the cold of the sea, Isaac Heron struck out desperately for the oncoming Coast Guard cutter. It came rushing out of the darkness, a monstrous thing. He gave a frantic shout, imagining that the pursuers had not seen his jump overboard.

But even as the launch slid toward him, a familiar anxious face was leaning over the gunwale, and a sailor was poised with a rope.

“It is Heron!” cried Detective Inspector Graves.

At the same time the rope whizzed toward the swimmer. Desperately the gypsy grabbed it, and in a moment he was being hauled, a bedraggled figure, into the Coast Guard cutter.

“Good work, Heron! ” shouted Graves, as the cutter leaped forward again. “My friend Benson has raided the houseboat and got the whole gang there. And now we’re going to pick up these escapers. They seem in difficulty with their motor-launch, thanks to you.”

Isaac Heron leaned back, and helped himself liberally to a flask of brandy that was thrust into his hands.

“Sorry we’ve missed the steamer! ” he gasped, nodding in the direction of a black hulk, which, sensing something wrong, was already slipping away in the darkness.

“There’s a naval sloop waiting for her a few miles away,” smiled Graves. “In the meantime, come and meet your friends again.”

The beam of the searchlight silhouetted the little group of men and women in the bobbing, helpless launch. In dejected attitudes of surrender, they held their hands above their heads.

______________________

5: The Tattooed Man

Blue Book Magazine, May, 1936

The gypsy detective Isaac Heron solves one of his strangest cases

"THE tattooed man has died,” said Isaac Heron quietly. “I thought you would like to see the body before it is buried.”

Detective Inspector Graves, swathed in a raincoat, his bowler hat dripping wet, exploded amazement and exasperation at his friend the gypsy. They stood on the edge of a fair-ground, where a gasoline lamp hissed and spluttered in the rain.

“D’you really mean to tell me, Heron, that you’ve brought me from a comfortable fireside to this God-forsaken

part of London to see a corpse! Good heavens, don’t I see enough bodies in the course of my work?”

“But not tattooed bodies,” said Isaac Heron, with a queer smile.

“But you said this tattooed man had died.”

“Oh, everything is in order,” said the gypsy. “The doctor has signed the death-certificate, and the poor fellow is to be buried in the morning. Unless you stop it.”

Detective Inspector Graves frowned.

“But why should I? If the doctor is satisfied that the man died from natural causes—”

Isaac Heron shrugged his shoulders.

“Better come inside the tent out of the rain, anyhow,” he suggested.

And because this well-to-do gypsy had on a number of occasions been of very real help in solving difficult cases, the Scotland Yard man followed the lithe figure of Isaac Heron into that maze of drenched light that called itself, ironically, a Fun Fair.

They passed gaudy roundabouts churning out last year’s jazz. Booths with dart-throwers, shooting galleries with spouting celluloid balls, and lemonade stalls with bellied bowls of yellow liquid impeded their progress. Eventually pushing through an apathetic and drifting crowd of damp people they reached a dark, deserted booth where no lights were flaring.

It was possible, however, to glimpse a gaudy painting of a man whose torso was smothered with fantastic and writhing designs.

Graves stopped to read an announcement on a signboard which assaulted the eyes with the wording:

SEE THE EIGHTH WONDER OF THE WORLD

THE GREATEST OF ALL

TATTOOED MEN

ELMER HAYES

HE BEARS 350 DESIGNS

UNIQUELY ARTISTIC

ON EVERY PART OF HIS BODY

Walk Up and See Him for Yourself.

“And so he’s dead, eh?” said Graves.

“Died in front of a crowd of thirty people who had paid threepence each to see him.”

“Well, I suppose they thought they’d had their money’s worth!”

Graves stumbled up the wooden steps, across a little platform, and followed the gypsy into the booth.

A strange scene was revealed. A single low-burning lamp was slung from the canvas roof. A group of figures, as fantastic as any painted by Goya, were clustered beneath it. The Fat Lady, in a baby frock, glycerine-like tears squeezing from her eyes. The Lion-tamer, uncomfortably tapping his stained riding-breeches with a whip. Three dwarfs standing on chairs to peer over the shoulders of others. Shirt-sleeved men from the booths, and a solitary Italian ice-cream vendor.

The group fell apart as Isaac Heron advanced, and in the dim light their faces seemed filled with genuine sorrow. For a moment Graves hesitated; then, with an uncomfortable feeling, he removed his hat. He found himself regarding two trestles which upheld a coffin in which lay the body of Elmer Hayes, the Tattooed Man.

Even in death that purple-pricked body was exhibited. The huge chest displayed a series of fantastic designs—butterflies, snakes, airplanes winging among purple clouds, hearts with daggers in them and purple blood dripping, a Union Jack and the American Stars and Stripes, a clipper on a rough purple sea—there was no end to the conglomeration of pictures.

But it was to the now rigid face that Graves turned his gaze. Although the eyes were closed and the face possessed a semblance of peace in death, there was something drawn, something tortured, in those features that suggested the end was no happy one.

“He must have suffered,” muttered the Scotland Yard man.

“Poisoned!” wheezed a voice at his very elbow.

The detective turned. A moustached man with eyes magnified by spectacles was standing there.

“What d’you mean by that—poisoned?” snapped Graves.

“Just what I said, poisoned,” went on the moustached man. “Poisoned by his tea, I should say. He would eat mussels, and drink any sort of liquid that was given to him. That was the tea he had before he died. I warned him against it. Told him his stomach couldn’t stand it. But of course he paid no attention. Nobody ever does, to me. But I come in at the death.”

He cackled, in a grim fashion.

“Who are you, anyhow?” asked the Inspector.

“A doctor,” replied the other, twisting his moustache importantly. “They call me the shilling doctor, but I don’t always get my shilling.”

“And you say this man was poisoned?”

“By himself! Acute toxins resulting from indigestion attacking the heart. Or as we physicians call it, gastric enteritis. You’ll find that on the death-certificate.... Have you a match?”

His tobacco-stained mouth was slanting a cigarette at the detective.

But it was Isaac Heron who obliged.

“I’d like my friend to see the designs on the back of the body, Doctor, if you’ve no objection,” he said, holding a match to the cigarette.

“None at all. Delighted,” said the medical man. “Allow me.”

He plunged his hands into the coffin and with a deft twist of powerful wrists turned the body over. The back of the corpse was revealed, also smothered in purple-pricked designs.

“I think I’ve seen enough,” grunted Graves. There was something about this group of freaks and the sardonic “shilling doctor” that made him feel sick, and he was anxious to regain the rain-slashed darkness of the open air.

“But I particularly want you to see this design, Graves,” insisted the quiet voice of Isaac Heron.

Reluctantly, the Inspector followed the pointing brown finger and bent his head nearer. For among that phantasmagoria of dragons and flaming torches and yawning crocodiles was a tombstone. And marked on the tombstone, minutely pricked but clearly discernible were the words:

SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF

ELMER HAYES

DIED Nov. 30, 1935

Y.S.

“And when did this poor fellow die?” asked Graves.

“Yesterday,” replied the doctor importantly. He was not looking at the body. “You will find it on the death certificate, which is quite in order. ‘Gastric enteritis. November 30, 1935.’ ”

“Thank you, Doctor,” said Isaac Heron.

“But—but has he seen this?” blurted out Graves.

“Seen what?” asked the physician. He bent down over the corpse. “Umph! That’s queer. November 30th. The very day he died. I wonder how he got that tattoo mark?”

”It seems fairly recent to me,” said Heron.

The doctor nodded. “Yes, it is. Very recent.” He swung round upon the little group of freaks. “Has anybody been fooling about with this body?”

His eyes were blazing behind the spectacles.

A shirt-sleeved individual pushed his way forward. “P’raps I can explain, guv’nor!”

“Who are you?”

The shirt-sleeved individual jerked his head in the direction of the body.

“He was my show. I paid him his wages.”

“And what do you know about this tattoo mark?” demanded Graves.

The showman scratched his head.

“Well, guv’nor, all I can say is he had it done hisself. He was allus anxious to add a new picture to his collection, as it were. Most big towns we stopped at, he would look round for a tattooer and ask for a new picture. That one you’re looking at now was done about a week ago. Leastways, that’s when Elmer started going to a new tattooer he’d found.”

The doctor grunted.

“Well, that explains it,” He turned to the Scotland Yard man and the gypsy. “Seen enough?”

“Quite enough, thank you, Doctor,” said Isaac Heron.

Deftly the body was turned over. As the men moved away, the group of show people, the freaks, the dwarfs, and the workers closed in again upon the coffin and resumed their silent staring mourning.

“There’s Elmer’s daughter,” indicated the shirt-sleeved man. “Poor girl, she misses her father, shocking!”

Isaac Heron, followed by the detective, moved over to a figure sitting on an upturned bucket and crouched in an attitude of grief.

“My dear,” he murmured.

A shock of black hair was raised, revealing a face whose slightly yellow tinge, high cheek-bones and oblique eyes emphasized an Asiatic origin.

“Her mother was a Jap,” whispered the showman. “She died when the girl was born, so Elmer told me.”

“Is there anything I can do for you?” asked Heron.

The girl shook her head.

“Nothing—nothing. Father is dead—and that’s all.”

Sobs choked the rest of her utterance. Sadly the gypsy turned away. He whispered something to the showman, who nodded. It was the shilling doctor who broke in upon them.

“Well, I suppose there’s a queue of patients waiting for me. You won’t need me any more.” The end of his glowing cigarette was almost burning his lips. “Everything is in order. You’ve got the death-certificate. . . . Good night, gentlemen.”

And peering through his spectacles, he shuffled away into the night.

Five minutes later Isaac Heron and Detective Inspector Graves were standing once more in the rain on the edge of the fair-ground.

“Well?” asked the Scotland Yard man.

“Queer, isn’t it, that Elmer Hayes should die on the very day that the tattooed tombstone on his back indicated?” observed the gypsy.

“Might be coincidence,” said Graves.

“And it might be murder,” Heron rejoined quietly.

The Scotland Yard man started. “1 saw no indications of that.”

“Not even the redness and swelling beneath the tattooing of the tombstone?”

“Heavens, no! Are you suggesting—”

“Poison!” nodded Isaac Heron. “Certainly not gastric enteritis. That shilling doctor is overworked and careless. And once he’s signed a death-certificate, he believes in it implicitly.”

Graves stared at his companion. “Aren’t you rather jumping to conclusions?”

“Maybe I am,” admitted the gypsy. “But here’s a taxi. Let’s take it. There’s something else I want to show you tonight.”

Graves was too bewildered to protest.

"I saw the body of Elmer Hayes earlier in the day,” explained Isaac Heron, leaning back comfortably in the taxi. “And incidentally, I spotted that peculiarly new tattoo mark.”

“Who told you of his death?” asked Graves.

“A brother of the black tents,” smiled the gypsy. “News travels fast among show folk. And I confess to a Barnum-like fascination for freaks. Yes, I went to see the body of that poor fellow out of sheer curiosity.”

“And having seen it?”

“I telephoned for one of the best tattooists in London to come and see it. You probably know the man. He has his shop, or studio, as he prefers to call it, near Waterloo Bridge.”

“I know him,” nodded Graves.

“I showed him that tombstone on the back of the dead man. He examined it through a magnifying glass. To him that design was as plain as a fingerprint to your department at Scotland Yard.”

“What was plain about it?”

“That it was the work of a Japanese tattoo artist. I don’t know whether you are aware, Graves, but the art of tattooing began in the East and reached its highest development in Japan. The Japanese became past-masters of the art. Then it was prohibited in the East, and it travelled across the world and flourished in our East End.”

“Japanese!” said the startled Graves. “That girl we saw weeping for her father was half Japanese.”

Isaac Heron nodded.

“Her mother was pure Japanese. She married Elmer Hayes when, as a sailor, he landed in Japan. And as my tattoo expert pointed out, the majority of the three hundred and fifty designs on that body we saw had been done by Japanese artists.”

“As also the tombstone?”

“Yes, the tombstone that was pricked into his body only a few days ago,” emphasized the gypsy. “But the artist who executed that design, even though murder was in his heart and stringing at the end of his needles, couldn’t resist putting his signature to his devilment.”

“Signature! I saw no signature.” protested Graves.

“Just the letters ‘Y.S.’ beneath the inscription on the tombstone,” said Heron. “They were enough.”

The Scotland Yard man gave a quick glance out of the window of the taxi.

“I say, Heron, this fellow is heading for Limehouse. Is that all right?”

“Quite all right. Limehouse is where the Orientals insist upon clustering, in London. Chinese—and Japanese,” he added significantly.

“Japanese?”

“I took the liberty of telephoning the Poplar police-station in your name,” explained Heron. “I asked them if they knew of any Japanese claiming to be a tattooer, with the initials Y.S., who had set up shop in their district. I must say they were exceedingly smart. Within ten minutes they had the information for me. Yogai Safu was my man. His address was Limehouse Causeway. And here we are!”

ERON tapped sharply on the driver’s window. The man slurred his cab against the pavement and stopped. The two men stepped out. They were at the entrance to that dark, twisting gully of a street where solitary men shuffle quietly against unlighted houses.

Limehouse Causeway.

Followed by the Scotland Yard man, Isaac Heron plunged into that cleft in the darkness. They walked for about a hundred yards, then the gypsy stopped outside a shuttered shop that presented a blind exterior. The gypsy stretched out a hand, found a door-knob, turned it and padded along a narrow corridor. Then he opened another door and entered a room badly lit by a shield of bluish white gas.

Graves shuffled after him and peered about expectantly. It was the second strange interior he had seen that evening. The dirty yellow of the walls was an almost perfect camouflage for the wrinkled almond face of an old Japanese squatting on a heap of greasy cushions. There was not even a blink of surprise on that impassive Oriental face as it regarded the intruders.

“Yogai Safu?” asked the gypsy.

“Your honourable servant,” replied the Japanese, bowing and displaying a smooth bald head. “What would you have me do, gentlemen?”

His English was passable, his manner completely assured. Isaac Heron smiled easily.

“I’ve a friend here who wants to be tattooed.” Graves started; but Heron went on without a pause: “A sailorman tells me that Japs are the best at the job, and I saw the card in your window yesterday. Can you do the job?”

“It is, gentlemen, somewhat late in the evening.”

“But my friend is willing to pay,” added Heron.

The Scotland Yard man sniffed. This opening conversation was not to his liking. He preferred more direct methods. He opened his mouth and spoke roughly.

“What I want to know—” he began.

But Heron quickly interposed.

“My friend, as you will gather, is a little nervous. But then they all are, eh? Graves, strip off your coat and bare your arm to the gentleman.”

Mechanically, but more worried than ever, the Scotland Yard man obeyed. Despite the absurdity of the situation, his trained eyes were observing every detail, every object in that strange room.

LONG low table was covered with little coloured bowls and bottles—inks for the tattooer. A bunch of gleaming needles lay in a tray. And behind the table, against the wall, was pasted a medley of designs: mermaids rising on their tails, cherry trees dripping blossoms, a naked diver fighting a shark under water, a dragon breathing fire—these and scores of other sensational and murderous designs were ranged there.

“What a beautiful white skin for tattooing!”

The old Japanese was purring as he took the bared left arm of Graves in his own yellow fingers. The Scotland Yard man shuddered at the touch. At the same time he gave an appealing glance at Isaac Heron which suggested that the farce had gone far enough.

“And will the gentleman decide upon the design?” asked the Japanese.

Heron replied with that subtle smile:

“My friend is often in dangerous situations. He might easily be killed and his body be unrecognized. Now I suggest that, as a form of identification, you tattoo a tombstone on his arm.”

“A tombstone!”

The oblique eyes of the Japanese seemed to become mere slits in a yellow mask as he repeated the words.

“Why not?” inquired the gypsy. “It’s not an unusual design, is it?”

“No.”

“Then go ahead.”

The yellow hand stretched out for a needle. The point was tried against a thumb. He lit a spirit lamp, and dabbed the needle in the flame. Then he dipped it into a little bowl of purple ink.

“And what name would the honourable gentleman like to have tattooed on the tombstone?” asked the Japanese, the needle poised in the air.

“Detective Inspector Graves of Scotland Yard,” replied Isaac Heron.

RAVES felt the yellow clutch on his arm tighten. But on the face of the tattooer there was no expression.

“Very well,” he murmured, and dipped the needle into another bowl.

The slit-like eyes were regarding the sinewy white arm that he held in his grasp. Beads of perspiration broke out on the brow of the detective. His own gaze was fixed upon that gleaming needle that was about to plunge into his arm.

But even as the needle came toward the white skin, the hand of Isaac Heron was quicker. His fingers clutched the hand of the old Japanese in a vise-like grip.

“Grab the other hand, Graves!” came his warning voice.

The Scotland Yard man was only too eager to obey. In a few seconds the Japanese was lying on the cushions, his yellow wrists circled with the steel handcuffs which Graves always thoughtfully carried about with him.

“Poison, as I suspected,” said Heron, sniffing at one of the little bowls. “Once he heard you were from Scotland Yard, he realized he was suspected. He intended you to go the same way as Elmer Hayes. Isn’t that so, Yogai Safu?”

For once the yellow mask was twisted with rage.

“Elmer Hayes was a white dog. He deserved to die. Twenty years ago I swore, at the shrine of my ancestors, to kill him!”

“Twenty years ago!”

Isaac Heron lifted an eyebrow inquiringly.

IN native fashion, the Japanese hissed through clenched teeth: “Twenty years ago, that Elmer Hayes pose as honourable gentleman, and come to my studio in Yokohama for be tattooed. He wanted many, many designs upon body. I not know it was intention to show himself to crowds and make money by displaying body. Ugh! A vulgar practice. But many things I did not know at that time.”

“What else didn’t you know?” asked the gypsy.

“Elmer Hayes had infatuated my daughter, my only daughter. She was as sweet as cherry blossom in spring. I loved her as the last descendant of most honourable ancestors. That white dog from overseas smuggled her away in steamer.”

The old man’s voice was firm. Not a tear trickled down that wrinkled face.

“And then?” encouraged Heron.

“I make for hara-kiri,” said the old man. “But even as I prepare before shrine of ancestors, voice told me it was duty to get vengeance first. Honour had been violated. Until stain had been washed out with blood, my work on this miserable earth not ended. I packed up my needles, my inks and my kakemono, and sailed for America.

“A stranger in strange countries, it was not easy for me to follow their path. I find myself always too late. Across America, into Europe, through far lands I follow—for twenty years! I must stop often to earn money with tattoo. I open studio here in London. Then one morning the man himself walked into studio.

“The gods of my ancestors had answered my prayers and given enemy into my hands. He not recognize me. I used the same initials, but fake name. He saw only an old Nipponese who practice ancient art of tattooing. He asked me to prick design on back, one of few empty places left. I think first kill him quick. Then I remember he taken my daughter to live his life of shame; she had died in poverty. He must suffer for that. So, slowly, with cunning, I pricked poison into his body while making tombstone on his back. I knew just when that poison would take effect. So I pricked date on tombstone.”

“Yes, we saw it,” said Graves roughly.

“On his dead body, eh?” chuckled the old man.

There was silence for a moment. Then Isaac Heron spoke.

“There is one thing you do not know, old man,” he said.

“And what is that, honourable sir?”

“Elmer Hayes has a daughter. You are her grandfather.”

Once again came that hiss of emotion through clenched teeth. The old Japanese seemed to age before their eyes.

“That I did not know,” he faltered. “Is—is she beautiful?”

“Like her mother.”

The old man sighed.

“It is not right that her grandfather should be branded as a murderer.”

The remark seemed to rouse Detective Inspector Graves. He reached out for his coat and struggled into it.

“We’ll be making our way to the station,” he said. “I must phone to stop the burial of Elmer Hayes for tomorrow.”

He took hold of the old Japanese and raised him from the couch of cushions. In that moment the man seemed to age incredibly; he swayed and almost crumpled to the floor. With a jerk Graves brought him to his feet.

“I apologize, honourable sir,” smiled the Japanese weakly. “You see, I am dying.”

“Dying!” Graves stared, disconcerted.

“Yes,” mumbled the old man. “My work now is finished. I have avenged. It is better for the girl— she who is my granddaughter— that I do not live.”

He seemed to lapse into a coma. With the help of Isaac Heron the detective carried the Japanese to the door. Under the light of the street lamp the gypsy gave the old man a searching glance.

“Yes,” he nodded to Graves. “I think he is dying— and because he has determined in his mind to die. I doubt whether you’ll ever get him to trial. The ways of the Oriental are strange, Graves.”

And he went off in search of a taxi, leaving Graves supporting a very old and unconscious man.

________________________

The Red Wolf of Arabia

6: The Woman of Antioch

Blue Book, November 1932

"TEN O’CLOCK I”

The whisper reached the man with the pockmarked face. Without turning his head, he nodded, and pushed his fez at a jaunty angle. Then he drained his cup of Arab coffee at one gulp, flung a piastre to the waiter, and sauntered into the street.

He stood for a moment on the pavement. Before him, like a talkie-film strident with megaphones, was the clanging, dusty rush of Cairo in the evening. Tramcars spilled coffee-coloured men at every corner. Boys clamoured the sale of lottery tickets. News-vendors shrilled against the tinkling bell of a sherbet-seller. The noise rose in titanic waves against the tall, drunken houses that made a barrier for the Mouski bazaar.

“Ten o’clock!”

The pockmarked man whispered the command to a sweetmeat-seller squatting at the corner. This individual merely waved a cloud of flies from his sticky wares—but not before he had repeated the whisper:

“Ten o’clock!”

Puffing a highly perfumed cigarette, the pock faced man continued his stroll. He had entered one of those narrow canons between the tottering houses, a busy street in the bazaar. It was flaming with kerosene, and redolent with strange smells in the midst of which brightly robed men and black-veiled women haggled over their purchases.

Carefully, the pock faced man stepped aside to avoid stumbling over a camel squatting in the slime. A donkey, unnoticed, delicately licked the sweetmeats at one of the stalls. Through the jostling crowd careered a boy on a bicycle, ringing his bell, shouting and behaving like a trick cyclist.

“It is now five minutes to ten!” shrilled a young Egyptian, proudly displaying a new wrist-watch. Two men who had asked him the time, guffawed.

The shout had reached the pock faced man, but he ignored them. Through the smoke of his cigarette he was gazing at the Arabic sign over an open shop front. It read:

MAKMOUD ALI

Vendor of Carpets

From behind a multi-coloured collection of rugs rose a bearded face. Slightly tinted spectacles hid the eyes.

“You buy a rug— a cheap rug?” asked the bearded man, who was obviously Makmoud Ali himself.

The pock faced man ignored the suggestion. He fingered, casually, one of the rugs.

“A Bokharan rug,” whined the bearded Makmoud Ali. “I sell it for a hundred piastres.”

The pock faced man withdrew the cigarette from his lips and blew a cloud of smoke into the air.

“Show me something better than this rubbish,” he murmured. The eyes behind the tinted spectacles gleamed.

“Allah has sent you,” babbled Makmoud Ali. “Come inside, and I will show you a beautiful rug that has come from a palace in Persia.  A rug from Ispahan itself.”

Indifferently, then, the pock faced man lounged into the shop. A rug, rich and glowing, was spread over the little counter. It was the colour of dried blood, and Makmoud Ali stroked it sensuously.

“Such a rug I will sell for a thousand piastres,” he babbled. “It is a rug fit for a prince. Even the Holy Carpet itself is not so imposing.”

The pock faced man shook his head. His hands had strayed beneath that spreading luxuriance, as though he too would stroke the velvet pile.

“Take it away I” he growled. “I am no tourist to pay such mad prices.”

With a sigh, the bearded man drew the rug toward him. In doing so he revealed one of the hands of the pock faced man. It held a gleaming revolver, and a brown finger curled dangerously about the trigger.

Startled, Makmoud Ali allowed the rug that was the colour of dried blood to slip to the floor.

“Make a sound,” snarled the pock faced man, “and you die!”

At that moment a cheap clock at the back of the shop tinkled ten o’clock—a quick, jerky tinkle.

But neither Makmoud Ali nor the pock faced man stirred at the sound.

A shuffle of feet, and a file of men entered the shop behind the pock faced man holding the revolver. One of them was the sweetmeat-seller from the corner of the street. Another was the young Egyptian who a few minutes ago had been proudly displaying his new wrist-watch. And there were others, lithe, strong men.

“Upstairs!” came the command from the pock faced man.

A hanging rug was thrust aside. Quickly yet noiselessly the men entered and climbed the stairway that was revealed, and when the little group had reached the floor above, silence descended upon the shop.

“Hold out your hands!” commanded the pock faced man.

With a sigh, the bearded Makmoud Ali thrust his brown wrists forward. There was a click, and he was handcuffed.

A khaki-clad policeman entered the shop. The pock faced man nodded in the direction of the handcuffed Makmoud Ali.

“Keep an eye on him!” he ordered. And without a second glance, he ran lightly up the stairs.

The floor above was swathed in smoke. Through the murky film it was possible to discover several bodies strewn about the floor. At first glance it suggested that some madman had run amok in that room where plaster crumbled from the walls. But one of the bodies, a pot-bellied Egyptian, was being ruthlessly hauled to his feet by two of the men who had entered the shop at the moment Makmoud Ali was being handcuffed. Other bodies were ruthlessly kicked awake. Snarling epithets in Arabic, and sleepy grunts mingled.

“All hashish-smokers—doped,” said one of the group coming over to the pockmarked Egyptian. “What are your orders, Hassan Bey?”

The Egyptian selected another perfumed cigarette and lit it with care.

“The jail,” he replied briefly. “We will examine them at our leisure in the morning. Maybe we shall find the man we seek. The jail will cool their fevered dreams.”

“Very good, Hassan Bey.”

He rattled his orders in Arabic. One by one the hashish-smokers were taken down the stairs and stowed like sacks in four carriages with lean horses drawn up outside the carpet-shop. Some of the stupefied smokers were dragged by the heels, a foolish grin twisting their lips. Hassan Bey peered with his pockmarked face in the smoke-filled corners of the room. Suddenly he drew back with a grunt of astonishment.

An Arab in a blue burnous was eying him with quiet deliberation from beneath the cowl of his cloak. And those eyes, so alert and so penetrating in their glance, were strangely gray. The Arab sat still as a statue.

“Who are you?” asked Hassan Bey in Arabic.

“An Arab.”

It was the harsh speech of a man from the desert.

“That is evident,” said Hassan Bey, a dangerous flush crossing his pockmarked face. “Whence do you come?”

Those gray eyes regarded him calmly. “The desert,” said the Arab.

“That also is evident, son of an unmentionable ! ” snarled Hassan Bey, baring his teeth. “And what are you doing here?”

“Nothing.”

Without hesitation Hassan Bey let out a kick at the ribs of this monosyllabic Arab. He felt, for one luscious moment, the toe of his Parisian shoe bruising the flesh of the Arab in the blue burnous. But the next second the room reeled about him. A fist had caught his jaw and brought him with a surprised thump to the floor. He lay there, trying vainly to understand what had happened, while the harsh Arabic spat at him through the fumes:

“You unbegotten swine!”

But a medley of brown hands stretched out for the Arab who had dared to strike Hassan Bey of the Cairo police. They clutched that blue burnous and twisted his arms behind his back. The Arab kicked out and sent two men howling with pain to the floor. But another Egyptian and yet another leaped forward. Their hairy brown arms were about his throat. They bore him to the floor, and there was the click of steel as he was handcuffed.

Hassan Bey was sitting up, rubbing his chin.

“See that this spawn of the desert has a cell to himself,” he remarked ominously. “By Allah, he will be sorry for that blow.”

Still struggling, but helpless against the odds, the Arab in the blue burnous was dragged to the staircase.

“One moment!” ordered Hassan Bey, struggling to his feet.

He walked over to the squirming figure and gazed down upon it with a leer

on his face. His brown hand fumbled for a moment in the blue burnous. Then, with a grunt of triumph, he drew out a flat-shaped object—an automatic. He looked at it, and then at the strangely gray eyes of the Arab.

“I think we have found our man,” he said aloud. Then, with a gesture of his head, he dismissed the captive and his men, who promptly hurried down the staircase to the waiting carriages.

Once again Hassan Bey peered into the dim corners of that smoke-swathed room. It was empty. He found his cigarette smouldering on the floor where it had fallen when that Arab had struck him. Muttering, he picked it up, placed it in his mouth and puffed carelessly. Then he slowly descended the staircase to the carpet-shop beneath.

His assistant awaited him.

“A good haul, Hassan Bey,” he ventured.

The pock faced man nodded.

“Not so bad. And my carriage?”

“It awaits you, Hassan Bey.”

The pock faced man sighed. He walked toward the door. Then a thought struck him. He turned back, and picked up the blood-red carpet that Makmoud Ali had displayed before him. He slipped it under his arm.

"Yes, a good haul," ” he muttered and passed out into that narrow street of the Mouski.

B ARRINGTON PASHA, chief of the Cairo police, adjusted his monocle, pushed his fez back from his pink brow and stretched his expensive riding breeches beneath the desk. He wanted to be at ease.

Within the drab kalsomined walls of his office he had to listen to the continual reports, the promptings and the urgings of the pock faced man. In reality  Barrington Pasha hated Hassan Bey. But the pock faced Egyptian was useful—too useful! The fellow was able to move about the underworld of Cairo with the slinking sureness of a rat.

“And so, Hassan Bey, you think he is the man we are looking for,” drawled Barrington Pasha.

“I am sure of it, sir,” smirked the Egyptian. “He was hiding in the hashish den we raided last night. He speaks and behaves like an Arab from the desert— a real Bedouin. But I found this on him."

And he laid the automatic with a dramatic gesture on the desk.

Barrington Pasha glanced at it idly. “Latest pattern, eh,” he muttered. “It looks suspicious. I’d better see the fellow.”

The Egyptian walked to the door and yelled an order. There was a shuffling of feet, and between two khaki-uniformed policemen the Arab with the blue burnous appeared. The cowl still covered his head, and his body drooped as in pain. But the gray eyes stared forth aggressively, though there seemed to be the glitter of fever in them. He faced the pink-browed Englishman with indifference.

Barrington Pasha removed his monocle, polished it with a silk handkerchief and replaced it. He did this instinctively. It had terrified more than one criminal brought before him.

“Your name, fellow!” he began, sternly.

The Arab in the blue burnous opened his lips to speak. But only a groan came forth. He lurched forward, and would have fallen if the two policemen had not clutched him. And in clutching him, the cowl of the burnous slipped away from the head of the Arab, revealing a mop of flaming red hair.

“Water! For the love of Allah!” croaked the Arab,

Barrington Pasha had risen to his feet  in surprise. He gave a quick glance at Hassan Bey, who had an evil leer on  his face. From that smile the English- man understood something of the painful night spent by the Arab in the jail

But the leer on the face of the Egyptian widened as he saw the monocled Englishman take up a riding-crop from his desk and slash cruelly at the blue garbed Arab.

“Get back from my desk, you dog!” shouted Barrington Pasha.

The Arab fell back with a groan. Barrington Pasha nodded to the two policemen.

“All right! Leave him with me,” he ordered. “He shall speak before he drinks.”

The policemen saluted, and marched out of the room, leaving the Arab swaying drunkenly against the wall.

The monocle swivelled round on the pock faced Egyptian.

“I’ll ring when I need you, Hassan Bey,” he said quietly.

“But then, I have—this.”

And he toyed with the automatic on his desk.

Hassan Bey smiled. “Of course, sir. I’ll be within call, sir.”

And he also saluted the monocled figure before leaving the room.

The door closed. One minute elapsed. The Arab in the blue burnous still swayed against the wall. And he was watched, quietly, by the man at the desk.

Then Barrington Pasha slowly rose and walked to a cupboard. He brought forth a bottle of whisky and a siphon of soda. Deliberately he mixed a stiff drink. The fizz of the soda as it was squirted into the glass brought life into that swaying figure against the wall. A black tongue licked the dry lips.

The monocled Englishman walked over to the Arab.

“Here, old fellow, drink this!” he said quietly in English.

A lean brown hand grabbed the glass and drained it at one gulp. With an effort he pulled himself together and handed back the glass.

“Another, if you would be so kind,” he murmured, also in English.

Barrington Pasha obeyed. There was something in the tone of the man’s voice that made him obey. But as the Arab gulped that second drink, he could not resist a question.

“Who are you, my dear fellow? I guessed, from the badge you showed me, you were Intelligence. But—”

Something like a smile crossed the face of the Arab in the blue burnous.

“Have you a cigarette ?” he begged.

Barrington Pasha flashed his gold- plated case. The Arab selected one, accepted a light, and drew the smoke in greedily.

“A thousand thanks, Barrington,” he murmured. “And now if I can rest my bruised body in a chair for a few minutes, I’ll try and give an account of myself.” He flopped wearily into the chair that the monocled figure hastened to place before him. “A better set of thugs than the men who look after this jail I’ve yet to meet,” he went on. “They seem to have kicked all the life out of me.”

“My dear fellow—” began Barrington Pasha concernedly.

The Arab waved his cigarette in a gesture of protest.

“I can’t really complain,” he said. “After all, a good many kicks are part of the game. But that villain Hassan Bey is going to get the biggest hiding in his life before I leave Cairo.”

“I sincerely hope he will,” drawled Barrington. “It’ll do him all the good in the world. But again you rouse my curiosity. Who are you?”

For answer, the other allowed the blue cowl of his burnous to slip from his head. Once again that flaming crop of red hair was revealed.

“Doesn’t this damned red hair of mine shout the good news ?” he grinned. “It’s the one part of me I can never disguise. Thanks be to Allah, there are a few Arabs with red hair— holy men, too.”

Barrington Pasha drew in his breath sharply.

“Red Rodgers! By all that’s wonderful I” he exclaimed. “Red Rodgers of the Red Seal”

Again the Arab in the blue burnous smiled.

“So I’m called—in the vernacular,” he said. “Really, Paul Rodgers, sometime of the British Intelligence Service. And damned badly paid, too, let me tell you.”

Barrington Pasha went quietly to the door of his office and listened intently. Then he turned, adjusted his monocle firmly and gazed at this slim, unprepossessing figure whose exploits were whispered in bars, coffee-houses and even Government corridors from Port Said to Aden.

Red Rodgers of the Red Sea! Few claimed to have set eyes on this strange white man who could live among the Arabs, think like the Arabs, and even fight like the Arabs. Some of his adventures were like pages torn from the book of the “Arabian Nights Entertainments.” For two years he had roamed the desert as leader of a Bedouin tribe. When a certain sheik was proving troublesome to the British, Rodgers and his Bedouins had raced their camels into the stronghold of the sheik and fought a battle that was still whispered as an epic in the coffee-houses at Mokka.

“A Robin Hood of the desert,” some one had once named him. There had even been strange stories about brigandage in his past. It was said that he was an American by birth and education, and had fought in an Arizona contingent in France; that he had amassed a colossal fortune; that he had fished for pearls, dug for oil, and even robbed wealthy caravans for the sake of his coffers. On one occasion the British had even sent an armoured-car detachment with two airplanes into the desert to find this leader of the Bedouin tribe. But they had failed. Red Rodgers had a manner of effacing himself among the sand dunes which became perfect camouflage.

Then the man had become one of the British Intelligence Service, and joined that mystery branch of men in the English service who lived among the Arabs, moulded their desires, directed their ambitions, and even fought their battles. And whenever stories were told of Lawrence, of St. John Philby, of Bertram Thomas, inevitably some adventure of Red Rodgers of the Red Sea would be related and cap them all.

“What’s he doing it for? Is there a woman in his life?” These were the questions that the newcomers to the Suez and the Red Sea would ask when some of the exploits of the strange man had been related.

“There’s only one passion in his life— music,” a slightly drunken colonel had once admitted in the military mess at Port Sudan. “If ever you want to find Rodgers, look in any filthy den between Port Said and Aden where there’s a piano. He can’t keep away from those damned musical-boxes. One would appreciate him more if the fellow would play jazz. I always suspect the moral character of any man who wants to play Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata.’”

And this was the man, in a blue burnous, whom Barrington Pasha now surveyed a little nervously through his monocle. There was nothing in the physique of the fellow to attract attention. He was slim, with a suggestion of student frailty rather than of the man of action. The long slender fingers, browned like an Arab’s, had a beauty and repose about them which would have attracted the attention of a painter. But Barrington Pasha was a chief of police, and believed more in watching the eyes of men. Certainly the gray eyes of Paul Rodgers had the cold impersonal gleam of steel at moments. They narrowed, as the man’s brain began to work. And then from the steel came the sparks of intelligence as the idea was hammered out.

“He’s no fool,” Barrington Pasha conceded to himself.

BUT the quiet commanding voice of Red Rodgers was already speaking.

“Tell me, Barrington,” he asked, “why did you raid that hashish-den last night? You weren’t looking for hashish, I know.”

Barrington Pasha helped himself to a cigarette and lit it.

“You’re right. I was looking for a man.”

“Ah!”

Barrington searched those gray eyes at that exclamation.

“And what were you seeking in the hashish-den,” he ventured, “disguised as an Arab?”

Red Rodgers smiled.

“I was seeking a woman.”

“Ah!”

It was Barrington who made the exclamation. Curiosity shone through the monocle. Red Rodgers titillated it.

“Ever heard of the Woman of Antioch?” he asked Barrington.

“No. Who is she?”

“The most beautiful and most dangerous woman east of Suez,” said Rodgers seriously. “Like most beautiful women, she can be coldly passionless where men are concerned. She regards them as something less than human. Tell me, Barrington, have you ever listened to a blood-curdling piece of music known as ‘The Dance of the Seven Veils’ by Richard Strauss?”

“Good heavens, no,” said Barrington hurriedly.

“Well, you ought,” went on Rodgers. “It describes the Woman of Antioch in all her cold ruthlessness better than anything that I can say. She’s lured more than one poor devil of the British and French Intelligence service, to something worse than death.” His voice dropped to a strange quietness. “I’m searching for that woman, and I shan’t be satisfied until my own hands are at her throat squeezing the life out of her body.”

Barrington took the monocle from his eye and polished it.

“Hardly the act of a gentleman,” he murmured.

“One doesn’t behave like a gentleman when confronted with a snake,” replied Rodgers. “But enough of that. Tell me something of the man you’re seeking.”

Barrington replaced the monocle. A troubled expression crossed his pink face.

“I’ve been scouring Cairo to discover details of a plot to kill King Saad,” he said. “I had that damned hashish-den raided because I thought one of the gang might be there doping himself. Saad, as you perhaps know, returns from Luxor within the next forty-eight hours. He will drive from the station, through the streets of Cairo, and eventually to the Palace of Abdin. Somewhere along that route is stationed a machine-gun and a gang of men with automatics. It means a certain and nasty end for Saad if I can’t find that nest within the next forty- eight hours.”

“Haven’t you searched the route?”

“Every damned inch of it. No luck.”

“And no clue?”

“Not one. Only the certainty that the shooting will take place.”

Rodgers stroked his thin hands. The gray eyes had narrowed, and his face seemed to have sunk into something expressionless.

“It seems a bad business,” he muttered.

“A bad business!” expostulated Barrington Pasha, his face even pinker. “It’s infernal.”

“And only forty-eight hours in which to discover these potential assassins.”

Barrington glanced at his wrist-watch.

“It’s now ten ack emma. At the same hour on Thursday, King Saad begins his ride from the railway station through the streets of Cairo; and it will most certainly be his last ride through Cairo if I don’t discover this gang.”

Rodgers considered the problem for a moment. Then he rose from the chair and stubbed the end of his cigarette in the ash-tray.

“Would you like me to help you, Barrington?” he asked.

“My dear fellow, it’s awfully good of you. But—”

“But you don’t think I shall have any luck, eh?”

Barrington shuffled his feet.

“By all means do what you can, Rodgers,” he said. “But I’ve got squads of men scouring every quarter of Cairo.”

“So I’ve noticed,” murmured Rodgers, ruefully. He dragged the cowl over his flaming red hair. “Anyhow, kick me out of here, and I’ll see if I can do anything.”

Barrington Pasha regarded him curiously.

“Of course, this is entirely unofficial,” he said. “As Chief of Police, I can’t give you any authority.”

A smile crossed the brown features.

“I understand perfectly,” he murmured. “And now ring for that blackguard Hassan Bey. The first of those forty-eight hours is ticking away.”

Somehow, the Chief of Police could not resist that quiet, commanding tone. He pressed a bell beneath his desk. Almost immediately the door opened, and the pock faced Egyptian appeared. Barrington did not look up from his desk.

“Take this Arab away and kick him into the street,” he growled. “He’s a fool, but an honest fool.”

A look of astonishment came over the face of Hassan Bey.

“But sir—”

“That’s all. Kick him out!”

Discipline asserted itself. “Yes sir.”

He grabbed the figure in the blue burnous, and hurried him to the door. The noise of the Arab’s going resounded along the corridor. A few thumps, a yell of pain, and much swearing in Arabic. With his head cocked at one side, Barrington Pasha listened. There was faint amusement in his eyes.

It was recalled by the voice of Hassan Bey.

“But the automatic, sir?”

Barrington Pasha gave a quick glance at his desk. The automatic had disappeared.

“Well, I’m damned!” he muttered.

FOUR hours later, as Barrington Pasha was leaving Shepheard’s Hotel after an excellent lunch, a bullet whistled within a few inches of his head. The bullet then flattened itself against a convenient wall.

Startled, Barrington Pasha dropped his monocle. But his face did not go white. It became violently pink. He promptly pulled forth a revolver of his own and fired at an Arab who was scuttling round the nearest corner. Then, followed by the faithful Hassan Bey and two khaki-clad policemen, he dashed to the corner.

There was no dead body waiting for them. Instead, a very live Arab was thrusting through the congested street. He dodged almost beneath the wheels of an automobile, caused a horse to be dragged to a slithering standstill, and into a narrow alleyway.

“We’ll get him!” snarled Hassan Bey, his face livid.

But their quick chase was soon impeded. Three camels, and a group of wild-haired Bisharin camel-dealers, had lined themselves across that narrow alleyway. Hassan Bey yelled oaths at them in Arabic, and in turn the camel- drivers yelled at their beasts. Only the camels remained imperturbable in the pandemonium that ensued.

Eventually, Barrington Pasha and the pock faced Egyptian broke through. But the scuttling Arab was being helped through the congestion. Hands touched him and twisted him in a new direction. Voices whispered instructions. Groups broke apart to permit of his fast progress, and then closed again to become a barrier for the pursuers.

The Arab permitted himself to be guided into the labyrinth in which he now found himself. He turned another corner and scuttled along a strangely silent street. He had not gone fifty yards before a brown arm stretched out from the shadows of a doorway.

“Rest here!” murmured a voice in Arabic. With a sob, the hunted man plunged into that shaded doorway. The brown arm drew him into cool dark depths. His breath still jerked out in spasms.

“Follow me!” murmured that strange voice again, and a hand clutched the Arab in the darkness.

Two hundred yards away, Barrington Pasha, Hassan Bey and a group of Cairo policemen had come to a baffled halt. The would-be assassin had escaped. Barrington realized that he had been within a few inches of death.

“And did you notice, sir,” gasped Hassan Bey, “the Arab wore a blue burnous, and fired from an automatic.”

Barrington Pasha groped feebly for his monocle.

“Well, I’m damned!” he said for the second time that day.

ALONG that dark passage Red Rodgers followed his guide. There was surging within him the elation of success. He knew that his gamble had succeeded, and that he was in the house of the conspirators. A movement from Beethoven’s “Ninth Symphony” surged within his brain. Red Rodgers had his great moments, and this was one of them.

A stone staircase mounted upward. Rodgers climbed lightly, following the dim outline of his guide. A curtain was thrust aside, and he entered a room. It was a queer interior, lit by a latticed window, fretted in stone. Three men sat at a plain deal table facing the doorway. Simultaneously they rose to their feet and bowed as Rodgers entered.

“Good day, brother!” they repeated after each other, solemnly, like boys in a school greeting their teacher.

“Good day, brothers!” muttered Rodgers, his gray eyes narrowing and his brain working quickly. “May Allah protect this household!”

The three men resumed their seats at the table. Red Rodgers appraised them in one glance. Those three men each wore different headgear. One was a

Persian with a black fez. The second was a green-turbaned sheik who might

have come from a mosque. The third was a red-fezzed effendi, a smart young Egyptian in a suit that had been bought in Savile Row. All of them were powerfully built, and all of them had the mad gleam of fanaticism in their dark eyes.

Instinctively, Rodgers turned to face his guide. He saw a man with no head- gear at all. Instead, a mop of black hair, golliwog fashion, streamed out from his brown head. He wore only a loin-cloth, and an ugly curved knife stuck within the folds. Rodgers knew the type at once. A Somali—one of the fuzzy-wuzzies, that fierce fanatical race who had been led against the white man by one Mad Mullah after another. The curve of the Somali’s mouth was like his knife—cruel and deadly.

“You failed today, brother, but failed splendidly,” murmured the green-turbaned sheik. “You were led to us because we can help you to your vengeance.”

“You can shoot again—but to better effect,” added the black-fezzed Persian.

“And help to liberate a race groaning under despotism,” laughed the young effendi.

Rodgers joined in the fanatical chorus.

“May Allah wither the body of Barrington Pasha when my shadow falls across him!” he growled.

The green-turbaned sheik raised a pro testing flabby hand.

“Softly-softly, brother. The holy Koran preaches patience; and to him who has patience all things will come— even the joy of vengeance.”

“I am ready— now,” growled Rodgers.

The flashily tailored effendi leaned forward.

“Who are you? And whence do you come, brother of the cause?”

Red Rodgers’ desert Arabic slipped easily from his tongue.

“I come from the Rub ’al Khali, the Great Southern Desert of Arabia,” he rep lied. “I am called Rajil el Seyf, and seek to make camel-dung of these cursed whites.”

“They call you Rajil el Seyf, eh?” laughed the black-fezzed Persian. “Man of the Sword! Well, we will provide you with weapons more sure than the sword. White man’s weapons. Ahee! Even unto a machine-gun.”

“A machine-gun! By Allah!” cried Rodgers joyously.

“Hush, babblers!” cried the sheik in the green turban. “You call to the heavens like camels in pain. What, think you, the Woman of Antioch would say?”

“The Woman of Antioch!”

The words were whispered by the other two at that deal table. It was as though a chill breeze had suddenly stirred the room.

“The Woman of Antioch!”

A silence fell on that room. The three men bowed their heads as though the spoken words had been blows upon their back. Even the Somali shuffled his naked feet uneasily.

And into that silence came a rustle, the rustle of a woman’s garb. Rodgers turned swiftly. He found himself facing a woman dressed completely in black—veiled like the Egyptian women, the lower part of the face being covered, and only the eyes visible. And those eyes glittered like black diamonds.

At her side was a boy garbed in a black velvet suit. The boy had the big bold eyes of his mother, and that café- au-lait complexion of the Syrian. Over his shoulder dangled the hennaed nails of his mother’s hand.

“The Woman of Antioch!”

Once again those words were whispered at the deal table. Red Rodgers instinctively braced his shoulders at the penetrating glance those jet eyes gave him. This was the woman both beautiful and damned, the woman he had sworn to kill.

“Who is this man?”

The words, though softly and even musically spoken, had a corrosive quality; they fell like acid on steel.

“He is Rajil el Seyf, a Bedouin from the desert who has tried to kill that pig of an Englishman,. Barrington Pasha.”

Red Rodgers felt those black eyes tearing through his disguise. There was something uncanny in this woman, some devilish quality that caused him to feel uneasy.

“The streets are already babbling your exploit,” she murmured softly. It was like the stroke of a panther. “You have done well, but not well enough. The cause does not want bunglers. In a few hours you will have a chance to kill bigger game than Barrington Pasha. A king will pass by, and his fat body will be riddled with lead.”

A tinkling laugh, horrible in that quietness, fell from beneath her veil. Still caressing the boy at her side, she moved to the deal table. The green-turbaned sheik relinquished his seat with every mark of deep respect. She sank into it like a queen.

“And now let us complete the details,” she murmured. “The machine-gun, the window, the automatics—all are ready, eh?”

Her Arabic had become staccato.

“We only await your presence on the scene, Madame,” smirked the effendi.

She turned her glittering eyes on this smartly clad youth.

“I shall be there, behind you, with an automatic to see that you do your duty,” she said grimly.

The effendi paled slightly.

“And who is to manage the machine-gun?” she asked.

There was a slight shuffle of uneasiness around the deal table. Red Rodgers sensed the atmosphere. He did not hesitate.

“By Allah, I am the man!” he said.

The dart eyes of the Woman of Antioch narrowed as she sized up the physique, the hands, and the strange gray eyes of this Arab.

“Where have you learned to use a machine-gun?” she asked softly.

Rodgers babbled excitedly in his desert Arabic.

“Have I not fought with the Turks outside the Holy City? Have I not mown down the camels and their scum led by the great Laurens? Yea, verily, I am a devil with the machine-gun.”

Rodgers’ reference to the famous Lawrence of Arabia caused a stiffening in that little group. It was a name still to chill the blood of conspirators in the neighbourhood of the Suez.

“So you fought against Laurens, eh?” whispered the Woman of Antioch.

“Yea, and by Allah, spilled much blood,” boasted Rodgers.

Did those dark eyes smile softly at him?

“You are the man we seek,” she said. “You shall fire the machine-gun.”

And she stretched her hennaed nails, like the blood-red claws of a beast, across that table until they touched the hand of Red Rodgers. Her fingers closed upon his. He felt the whole warmth of her being in that touch, the sensuality of the woman, and all her desire. The perfume of ambergris came stealing toward him, making his senses dizzy. Instinctively he raised those fingers to his lips.

“At what hour?” he asked hoarsely.

“The hour when the King passes by,” she said softly.

“And the place?”

There was a momentary hesitation. The Woman of Antioch gazed quickly around the deal table. The black-fezzed Persian nodded. Also the green-turbaned sheik. And most decisively, the young effendi.

Stroking the black, oiled hair of the boy at her side, she opened her lips to speak. At last Red Rodgers was to discover the danger-spot on that route along which King Saad would pass.

But as her lips moved, a bell shrilled in the little room. It was like a warning. The woman stopped speaking. The bell seemed to stiffen the others into attitudes of expectancy.

The Somali padded in his bare feet across the room. He drew aside a little curtain and produced—a telephone! In that native house fretted with latticed windows, it was an incongruous instrument. Silently he handed it to the Woman of Antioch. She took it, and spoke in that same sinister soft voice.

“Yes?”

Rodgers heard the cackling in the receiver. He would have given a fortune to have heard those words; and his gray eyes narrowed as they watched for every fleeting expression in the dark eyes of the woman before him. He cursed the veil that hid most of her face from view. But neither from her eyes nor the monosyllables that she uttered could he glean any information. He realized suddenly that her eyes were regarding him curiously. He was also aware that the fuzzy-haired Somali was in dangerous proximity behind him.

At last she put down the telephone. She sat there with the stillness and aloofness of a goddess. The three men with the different headgear waited. Red Rodgers waited. With arms folded, the half-naked Somali waited.

“You asked a question?” she said softly, to Rodgers.

“I asked where I might find the machine-gun.”

“Ah, yes.” She contemplated him for a moment. “Rajil el Seyf, throw back that cowl from your head!”

Red Rodgers regarded her in turn. Was the game up? Had she discovered him?

“I am waiting, Rajil el Seyf,” she murmured.

With an indifferent gesture, Rodgers threw back the blue cowl, and his flaming crop of red hair was revealed.

“Red hair, eh?” whispered the woman. The black eyes dilated.

“Allah gave it to me,” he said simply.

Slowly, the Woman of Antioch rose.

“You lie,” she snapped. “Red Rodgers of the Red Sea, you came here to spy. That telephone message explained all. It came from my good friend Hassan Bey.”

Rodgers promptly made a leap across the table, and at the same moment drew his automatic. But the Somali behind was too quick. He felt the strong, cruel hands at his throat. They pressed tighter. His tongue twisted in the agony of effort. Lights danced before him. He was conscious only of those jet black eyes, sparkling triumphantly. Then darkness overwhelmed him.

FAILURE makes fools of us all. It drives many men to a slough of despair in which they wallow and choke themselves to death. Others are driven to desperate chances. They gamble, hysterically, but often win through.

So it was with Red Rodgers. In the hours that followed, he tasted all the bitterness of failure. The Woman of Antioch had so plainly triumphed, had so magnificently torn away the mask of his disguise, that for Rodgers there was left only a vague wonderment. And that wonderment was concerned with the fact that he was still alive.

But he was not left long in doubt. In those hours of his defeat, the woman had herself come to talk to him of the torture and the terrible fate that awaited him. She was a connoisseur in emotions. Her jet eyes would gaze at him almost with the eager curiosity of a child, greedy to discover what was going on inside that brain of his.

She would talk lusciously of the misshapen being who would crawl from that house with the fretted windows when she had finished with him—dumb, blind and crooked of limb! He would be a loathsome thing to look upon. She was even anxious not to kill him. Death to Red Rodgers would be a merciful release. No! She intended he should crawl about the dust of Cairo, pointed at as the thing that the Woman of Antioch had made of him.

Those words, dropping softly from her lips, were the torture of the hours that followed for Rodgers as he lay bound and helpless in a room at the top of the house. And, consciously, as the stark sunlight of Cairo faded into that velvet blue of the night, he counted the hours of those forty-eight as they passed before him. Hours, long weary hours, of failure!

The night preceding the great day he spent awake in sweating agony. From the moment when the muezzin climbed a neighbouring mosque and called the faithful to prayer, “Allah O Akbar! God is great,” he twisted and tortured his limbs, was struggling to loose the thongs that the cruel-mouthed Somali had twisted about his body. But the man had done his work well. Rodgers was left with lacerated skin and a lacerating misery of soul.

Yet when the dawn came, pale and wide-eyed, he had partly succeeded. And he was clever enough to conceal it as he lay on the floor of that room, a cold sweat on his brow, and pain racking his limbs. His eyes were closed as the Woman of Antioch rustled into the room. She bent down, so that her maddening perfume overwhelmed him.

“You can hear me, Red Rodgers of the Red Sea,” she said softly. “You can hear every word I speak, though your eyes are closed and that mask of a face tries to conceal the pain that tears your body. Today will be a great day in Egypt A king will die. The mob will rise in revolt. The hated British will be driven out of Egypt. We shall see them, stampeding like camels, anxious only to save their own precious skins. By Allah, but today is the day.”

Rodgers opened his eyes, and gazed at the veiled face before him.

“Insha’allah,” he muttered in Arabic. “So be it.”

“Bravely spoken,” she whispered, her face close to his. “It is a pity those features of yours will soon be twisted with pain, that the tongue that speaks so sternly will be no more, and that the enticing gray eyes will be only blank sockets. A great pity! For I find you attractive—and a man.”

Before he could realize it, her lips were pressed against his. The veil was away, and the white beauty of her features revealed. Her cool slim arms were about his body, and her perfume enwrapped them both. Again and again she kissed him, one hand twisting into his red hair. There was a moment when her eyes closed in ecstasy. But only a moment. And again those jet eyes blazed at him, as though they had been dipped in his blood.

“You devil!” cursed Rodgers.

She laughed, and in that laughter was an ominous foreboding of what the day would bring on her return.

“Au revoir!”

And the Woman of Antioch had rustled out of the room.

She left Red Rodgers struggling desperately. The kisses of the woman had roused him to fury. His breath came in sobs as he fought against the cruel thongs. And as the hour passed, one hand came free. A laugh escaped from his cracked lips.

“Allah O Akbar! God is Great!”

It was the muezzin calling the faithful to morning prayer. Rodgers could hear the slippered feet in the street below. Men hurrying to the mosque to mutter the holy words of the Koran.... And somewhere in the distance, a king hurrying to his death.

THEY had gone and left him alone.

Rodgers bit furiously at one of the thongs. At last another hand was free. But what was the use ? The rendezvous of the assassins was still unknown to him. And it was still unknown to Barrington Pasha. Of what use was his freedom ?

Squirming on the floor, he released a leg. The rest was easy. As a distant clock clanged nine, he was lying exhausted and numbed on the floor of the room. Five minutes passed. In agony he crawled to the door. Locked, of course. Another five minutes passed after that great effort. The blood began to course slowly through his numbed limbs. He felt deathly sick and ill. At all costs, he must reach the little balcony opening out from the room and breathe deeply of the fresh air. That perfume still cloyed his senses.

At last, by a supreme effort, he had reached the balcony, and drawn himself to a kneeling posture with his hands. In the agony of those moments Rodgers found himself praying. The morning sunlight dazzled his eyes. When at length he opened them and gazed below, it was upon an empty courtyard.

An empty courtyard! Once again he cursed his ill luck. If only it had been a street, one of those narrow alleyways along which the slippered feet were now hurrying to line the route to watch a king go by. Even the excited murmur of the crowd reached him in his prison room of that old house in Cairo. It filtered through the fretted window in the wall. No chance of his attracting attention there.

The empty courtyard... But it was no longer empty. A solitary figure sat there.

Through inflamed and haggard eyes, Rodgers gazed at that figure. It was a boy in a black velvet suit. Her boy!  The son of the Woman of Antioch. He played in the quiet, serious fashion of an Oriental boy, bouncing a coloured ball, but not moved to laughter or excitement. The ball bounced a little higher. The  eyes of the boy saw that queer Arab in the blue burnous, and with the flaming crop of red hair, clinging to the little balcony.

He ignored the ball, and gazed with curiosity at this Arab.

“Good morning,” he said gravely, in Arabic.

“Good morning,” replied Rodgers with an equal gravity.

Silence for a few moments. Then:

“Will you catch my ball if I throw it to you?”

Rodgers nodded.

“And throw it back?”

Again he nodded.

Solemnly the boy picked up his ball and threw it to Rodgers. He put out a feeble hand to catch it, but missed.

The boy regarded him more solemnly than ever.

“You’re not very clever, are you?”

“No, I’m not very clever,” admitted Rodgers sadly.

AT that moment a clock clanged the quarter. Three-quarters of an hour were left to do the impossible.

“Well, let’s try again,” suggested the boy in the velvet suit.

Again the coloured ball was thrown; and this time Rodgers caught it. A moment later he flung it back into the courtyard, where it bounced and was caught.

“That’s better,” cried the boy, and threw it toward the balcony once again.

For some five minutes the game continued. Rodgers found irony in the situation. To be bouncing a ball with a boy in a velvet suit, while a machine-gun was being stationed in a window to riddle a passing king with lead! But in that situation he tasted all the sourness of defeat.

Suddenly a thought struck him. Catching the coloured ball once again, he held it in his hand and leaned over the balcony.

“What is your name?” he asked the boy in the velvet suit.

The boy considered the point.

“Yama,” he admitted, after a short silence.

“Well, Yama, do you like Turkish delight?”

For once the big dark eyes of the boy gleamed.

“Very much,” he said quietly.

Rodgers drew in a deep breath.

“I know where to get the finest Turkish delight in Cairo, he urged.

The boy gazed at him distrustfully.

“I don’t believe you,” he said a little impatiently.

“Yama, I will prove it to you.”

“How?”

“By taking you to the shop at once and buying a box for you.”

“I still don’t believe you,” repeated the boy petulantly.

“Oh, well,” said Rodgers and turned his back on the courtyard.

The clock clanged the half-hour.

“Will it be a big box of Turkish delight?” came the voice of the boy.

“The biggest you have ever had,” said Rodgers. “But, of course, if you don’t

believe me—”

“All right,” said the boy. “Come downstairs, and we’ll go out and buy it.”

Rodgers gave him a disarming smile. “But I can’t. The door of this room is locked. Do you know where the key is?”

But the boy made no movement. “Well, if you think it worth the trouble of finding that key and opening the door, we’ll set off at once for that box of Turkish delight.”

Yama considered the venture.

“All right. I’ll look for the key,” he sighed, and slowly walked out of the courtyard.

THE minutes passed. Rodgers was in an agony of impatience. He dragged himself up and down that little room, gradually regaining the circulation of his body. Then he stopped, suddenly. Footsteps were on the stairs. He waited. A key was inserted in the lock. The door opened, and the boy in the velvet suit stood regarding him with his solemn dark eyes.

Rodgers swayed out of the room. The boy followed, wonderingly. Before attempting to descend the staircase, the man turned and asked:

“Is anyone else in the house?”

“They have all gone into the streets to see the King go by.”

Quickly he began the descent, scraping the wall with one hand, and holding the boy with the other. Twice he stumbled and fell, but recovered himself and reached the courtyard.

They came to a heavy door, bolted. It took three minutes, three sweating minutes, before Rodgers had drawn back the bolts and swung open the door. More dead than alive, a strange figure in his torn blue burnous surmounted by his flaming red hair, he swayed forth into the street.

“Let us hurry, before Mother returns,” said the boy solemnly.

“Yes, we must hurry,” croaked Red Rodgers.

It was a quarter to ten.

ALONG the narrow alleyway they ran, into the clanging main streets of Cairo. Many turned to stare at this haggard-eyed Arab in the blue burnous, staggering along with a boy in a velvet suit clinging to his hand.

Rodgers was making for the railway station. But the boy importuned him.

“The Turkish delight!” he wailed, on the verge of tears at this hurried progress.

Rodgers fumbled in his blue burnous. They had taken his automatic, but not the money secreted against his body. He turned abruptly into the nearest sweetshop.

“The biggest box of Turkish delight you have!” he cried to an astonished Maltese behind the counter . At the same time he spilled ten piastres before the man.

A big box was brought forth.

“Shall I wrap it up?” asked the Maltese slowly.

The boy’s eyes glistened.

Rodgers grabbed the box and once more lurched forth along the street.

“But where are we going?” wailed the boy once again.

“We are going for a ride— a ride with a king! ” said Red Rodgers.

And he laughed loudly.

Outside the railway station, red-fezzed and khaki-clad troops were drawn up in square formation. A bodyguard on horseback sat with statuesque immobility. A blood-red carpet trailed across the pavement, and a group of men in glittering uniforms waited. Beneath the sunshiny sky of Cairo, it was a brave sight.

Guns in the distance began to boom out a salute. King Saad had arrived. The group of men clanked their burnished swords nervously. Next moment the swarthy face of King Saad, a fine majestic figure, appeared in the doorway. There was a hoarse yell of command, and the troops presented arms.

Barrington Pasha, smart in uniform, and with the inevitable monocle, advanced two steps and saluted stiffly. King Saad smiled a greeting. But Barrington Pasha was in a state of desperation. He had failed to gather in that nest of conspirators who were determined to kill the King. And of Rodgers he had heard nothing. The fellow had been swallowed up in the slums of Cairo.

With the guns still booming their royal salute, the King advanced toward the waiting white-enamelled automobile. The stiff puppet-like chauffeur saluted, and with a gentle pressure of his hand, the automobile purred into action. The King, who was in uniform and wearing many decorations, stepped in.

“Your Majesty!” entreated Barrington Pasha.

The King turned to him. “Yes?”

“I think, sir, as I said, it would be wise to drive direct to the Palace instead of taking the circuitous route arranged.”

The King looked at him. “Why? Again, why?”

Even the monocle trembled at that moment.

“Because, Your Majesty, I cannot guarantee the safety of the long route. There is a plot.”

“A plot, eh!” The King regarded him  steadily. “To kill me?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

There was silence while the guns continued to boom out the salute and the lines of troops stood stiffly at the present.

Something like a sad smile crossed the swarthy face of King Saad.

“When one is a king,” he murmured,  “there is always a plot to kill. I am not afraid. Kings are born to be assassinated. And it has been promised the people of Cairo that I shall motor the circuitous route, eh?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Then I insist, Barrington, that we take the circuitous route.”

Barrington Pasha saluted stiffly.

“Very well, Your Majesty. You are a brave man, sir.”

The King smiled, and lounged back easily in the seat of the automobile.

Barrington Pasha was about to join him, when there was a shout of disturbance in the distance. Across the deserted square hemmed in by troops staggered a red-headed Arab in a blue burnous, and at his side, a boy in a velvet suit. They approached the white-enamelled car.

Barrington Pasha put out a gloved hand.

“Who are you, fellow?” he demanded in Arabic. Then the monocle fell away from his face as he recognized Red Rodgers of the Red Sea.

Rodgers approached the King.

“Your Majesty,” he began, “there is no time to explain. But I beg that you will permit me—and this boy—to ride with you in your car.”

The King gazed at this red-haired Arab with interest.

“Who are you?”

“Paul Rodgers, sir. Intelligence.”

“Ah!”

The King was beginning to understand.

“But the boy?” he asked. He smiled at the little figure in the velvet suit whose big dark eyes gazed wonderingly at the glittering decorations.

“A friend!” said Rodgers simply.

The King leaned forward.

“Leave the boy,” he remarked. “I cannot permit him to ride with me. There is danger along this route.”

Rodgers dropped his yoke to a whisper.

“I realize that danger, Your Majesty. And I would say that I will answer for the boy with my own life. I beg of you, sir.”

The King hesitated.

“I would like to ride with you, sir,” said the boy suddenly, in a frightened whisper.

The King smiled at that.

“Come along, then,” he said. “You shall.”

And he himself lifted the boy into the white automobile. At the same time Rodgers, in his tattered burnous, calmly seated himself opposite the King.

“You assure me, Rodgers, that this boy is in no danger?” asked Saad.

“Your Majesty,” replied Red Rodgers, “he is safer than if he were at home with his mother.”

Barrington pasha gave a signal.

Two motorcyclists sputtered into action. They slithered away into the dust, advance messengers of the King’s progress, The mounted troops wheeled into position. They galloped in perfect formation. The white car glided behind them. Then more mounted troops, more automobiles. Then Barrington Pasha, sitting stiffly erect, gray with anxiety.

A roar greeted him as they passed from the station square into the street.

Windows, balconies, roofs—all were alive with the people of Cairo roaring a welcome to the King. Green and yellow flags fluttered against the sunlit sky. Khaki-clad troops lining the route presented arms to a continuous shouting of commands.

The route followed the old wall of Cairo. Saad waved his hand gently in response to those roaring thousands. Opposite him sat Red Rodgers, his gray eyes searching the line of houses, open windows, doorways, more windows, flat roofs, and crowded stands which passed like a dream panorama before him. And the boy in the velvet suit sat ecstatic at the side of the King, only occasionally helping himself to a lump of Turkish delight from the box on his knees.

Ten minutes passed—fifteen. Still the surf-like roar of the crowd was unbroken by any rat-tat-tat-tat of machine-gun. Another five minutes, and the procession would be entering the Palace. Red Rodgers, his nerves tense, gave a sidelong glance at the King and marvelled. The smile on that swarthy face was still there. The hand still waved a salute. There was not a tremor of fear in the man.

Then, above the roar of the crowd, he heard a woman’s scream. He looked up! An old, tottering house of old Cairo. And a broken shutter had swung open from the blind and dusty front of the house, revealing a little group crouching there.

Rodgers saw only a pair of jet eyes, staring with incredulity and hatred at the white automobile. One slim hand with its scarlet nails was held above her veiled head. He knew that when the hand came down, the machine-gun and automatics would spit forth death. But it was as though she was turned to stone. Her eyes had seen the boy Yama. The hand was still poised tremblingly above her head. And the next moment the white automobile with its smiling King, its tense figure in blue burnous, and a boy who sat with Turkish delight in his sticky fingers, passed on.

A moment later and they were entering the gates of the Palace of Abdin.

TWO hours afterward, clad in white ducks, and with a pith helmet hiding his flaming hair, Red Rodgers sprawled comfortably in a cane-chair on the veranda of Shepheard’s Hotel. He was sipping a cool drink with evident enjoyment, and idly listening to the chatter of Barrington Pasha, seated at the same table.

“Well, you pulled it off successfully,” said Barrington. “But I must admit that your attempted assassination of me was just a little too real to be really comfortable.”

“I’m sorry,” grinned Rodgers. “But it had to be done.”

“It was either damned good shooting or damned bad shooting,” grunted Barrington. “I can’t say which.”

“Neither can I,” admitted Rodgers.

“And that blackguard Hassan Bey is now under lock and key,” continued Barrington. “You’ve done us a great service, Rodgers.”

“I only hope our friend Hassan is occupying the same cell in which he placed me,” growled the red-haired one.

“He is.” Barrington adjusted his monocle. “And now what about the boy Yama?”

“He should be at home by now.”

Rodgers raised his glass, to drain it.

As he did so, a folded piece of paper was revealed beneath it. Idly he picked it up. To his surprise, his own name, Paul Rodgers, was scrawled across it.

He unfolded it. There was a pencilled message, written in English.

You devil! There will be a terrible reckoning for this.

He laughed, and tossed the note over to Barrington Pasha.

“Love from the Woman of Antioch!”

“And what next?” asked Barrington, when he had read the message.

Those gray eyes narrowed. An idea was developing somewhere beneath the flaming red hair. He rose abruptly.

“I’m going to search for a piano,” he said. “There’s a certain theme haunting me, and— Excuse me, one moment.”

He walked into the hotel. Barrington Pasha waited. Fifteen minutes. There was no sign of Rodgers. He called the head-waiter. The fellow had not seen him. Barrington Pasha adjusted his monocle with a grunt of impatience.

“A queer devil!” he muttered, and stamped down the steps to where his car waited.

And no one saw Red Rodgers in Cairo again that night, or for the next six months. He seemed to have vanished into the thin, sun-scorched air of the great city.

____________________

7: The Dhow that Sailed to Nowhere

Blue Book, Jan 1933

"YE no ken anything that’s more familiar-like than yon music, Rodgers?” asked McIntyre, the engineer on H. M. Sloop Daffodil. With an aggrieved air he reached for the whisky-bottle and helped himself liberally.

“You don’t like Scarlatti, eh?” smiled Rodgers, seated at the piano. The Intelligence officer had been playing in the wardroom while the gray-painted, heavily armed sloop tore a trail of phosphorescence across the inky surface of the Red Sea at night. Lieutenants McIntyre and Rushworth lounged at ease, pipes aglow, and glasses at their elbows.

“Well, how d’you like this?” asked the musician—that amazing musician whose desperate adventures had earned him the name, among the natives, of the Wolf of Arabia.

He began to play some lilting melody cleverly syncopated. The two lieutenants brightened considerably. Rushworth began to tap the faded carpet with his foot.

“What is it?” he asked, as Rodgers brought it to a crashing finale.

“Haven’t the faintest idea,” smiled Rodgers, swinging round on the piano stool. “I’m told it’s the latest musical comedy in London and taking three thousand pounds a week.”

“Losh! Wouldn’t it be grand to be sitting in the first row of the stalls tonight, you fellers?” said the engineer. “Instead of flitting about this damned Red Sea like a firefly gone mad.”

“You’d only be happy, Mac, if someone else had paid for those stalls,” grinned Lieutenant Rushworth, and cleverly dodged the book on navigation that was hurled forthwith.

At that moment there was aloud knock on the door of the wardroom. It swung open to reveal a bluejacket, his white garb giving him a ghostly appearance against the velvet-black background.

“Beg pardon, sirs!” he said. “Captain’s compliments to Lieutenant Rushworth, and will he kindly report to the bridge.”

He saluted smartly, turned on his heel, and disappeared.

“Wonder what the old man’s found now,” growled Rushworth, emptying his glass hastily and seizing his cap.

“I think I’ll come with you, Rushworth,” interposed Paul Rodgers. “The old man asked me to go on the navigation bridge sometime this evening.”

“Righto, if you’re ready,” said Rushworth cheerfully.

THE two men left the wardroom together. As they closed the door, Lieutenant McIntyre waddled solemnly toward the piano, set his glass on the top of it, and with one finger began painfully to poke out a melody that was suspiciously like “Annie Laurie.” And tears dimmed his eyes.

Outside, Rodgers and Lieutenant Rushworth walked smartly along the throbbing deck. The powerful engines pounded away steadily. The Daffodil was the latest type of Red Sea gunboat, and she was policing one of the strangest seas in the world.

The full heat of this glowing, throbbing steel craft smote them as they began to climb the steel ladder that led aloft. Down below, streaming with perspiration, men were watching the oil furnace. From the smokestacks at their back a glow tinted the trail of black smoke. Above that, the bright starry sky swung over with the lurch of the sloop.

“Good evening, sir.”

“Good evening, Lieutenant. Oh, is that you, Rodgers ?”

Captain Dagenham punctiliously returned the salute of Lieutenant Rushworth. They stood on the confined bridge of the sloop, the hot moist atmosphere of the Red Sea smothering their faces like a relay of hot towels.

“Take the glasses, Lieutenant, and tell me what you think of that dhow,” indicated the Captain.

Levelling the night binoculars, lieutenant Rushworth stared steadily at an Arab craft heeling over to the bulge of its ungainly sail in the darkness.

“It seems to me, sir,” he said, speaking slowly, “that it’s the same dhow— the white dhow.”

“I thought so,” grunted the Captain.

“What’s wrong with the white dhow?” asked Rodgers. He also was levelling his glasses in the same direction.

“Nothing,” muttered Captain Dagenham, “—except— well, it’s the Dhow that Sailed to Nowhere.”

“The Dhow that Sailed to Nowhere!” repeated the Intelligence officer. “A strange name.”

“Yes, and a strange craft,” murmured Captain Dagenham. “Three weeks ago, Rodgers, we came across the same dhow at this identical spot. But it was in the late afternoon. We watched it heading for some particularly dangerous coral reefs, two points to starboard. Then suddenly it vanished. We thought it had sunk with all hands. We even cruised about, expecting to find survivors. But one can’t go very close to those damned reefs. And now, here’s the white dhow again on the same bearing.”

“Shall we signal her, sir?” asked Rushworth.

“Give her the searchlight!” ordered the Captain.

A command was whistled along the deck. Next moment the darkness was sliced by a white beam that swung like a gigantic wheel-spoke across the sea and settled starkly on the heeling dhow.

Even more ghostlike was the white craft in that dazzling beam. But as the sloop nosed its way nearer, every detail of the dhow and its crew stood out with stereoscopic clarity. The crew seemed momentarily dazed by this beam of light blazing at them. They stood in stiff attitudes close to the mast and its crazy sail. A huge tarpaulin stretched across the boat to the high-built poop-deck with its tiller.

It was the Arab at the tiller of the Dhow that Sailed to Nowhere who attracted Rodgers’ attention. He was tall, hook-nosed, and with the black beard of a corsair. A blood-red turban was twisted about his head. And his oblique eyes stared back challengingly to the little group on the bridge of H. M. Sloop Daffodil.

“A real sailor!” muttered Rodgers in admiration.

“Tell him to heave to!” ordered Captain Dagenham.

The order was barked along the deck. A man with a megaphone shouted into the night in Arabic. The Arab at the tiller gave a curt order; the static crew sprang to life like a collection of dolls jerked by a single string, and in a few moments the sail was flopping downward like a landslide.

“Shall I launch a boat and board her, sir?” asked Lieutenant Rushworth.

“No need to do that,” barked the Captain. “Can you tell me, Rodgers, what that damned shorthand painted over her bow means in English?”

Rodgers had already seen it.

“The Black Pearl,” he replied.

“The Black Pearl, eh?” repeated the Captain. “D’you see anything suspicious about her, Lieutenant?”

“She looks like a pearler to me, sir,” replied the lieutenant. “You can see those lumps of rock aboard her. The divers tie them to their waist as they go overboard. And I believe those reefs are regular pearling-grounds.”

“Umph!” The Captain still seemed suspicious. The crew were now walking over that black stretch of tarpaulin.

“Ask him where he’s bound, where he comes from, and what he’s got beneath the tarpaulin?” snapped out the Captain.

Again the man with the megaphone was busy. It was the corsair with the black beard who replied, standing with a dignified straddle on his little deck, and shouting his reply with cupped hands.

“He comes from Suakin— bound for the pearling reefs known to the Arabs as Ras Zukur— and has a cargo of dates to sell to other pearling dhows.”

“Seems all right,” muttered Captain Dagenham. “At the same time I’ll swear this is the Dhow that Sailed to Nowhere.”

“I agree, sir,” said Lieutenant Rushworth modestly.

“Switch off the searchlight—give him half a minute of darkness—and then switch it on him again!” ordered the Captain. “Tell him we’re satisfied.”

The megaphone bellowed. With what might have been an ironical salute, the Arab with the black beard raised his hand to the blood-red turban. And at that same moment, darkness obliterated him.

The three white men on the bridge waited, tense, for the darkness to be split again. They could hear the engines of the sloop pounding gently beneath them. Otherwise the darkness had brought with it a strange stillness. Even the gurgle of the sea was missing.

Somewhere in the darkness a bluejacket was counting the seconds.

“Twenty— twenty-one— twenty-two.”

Captain Dagenham levelled his night glasses. His lieutenant followed his example.

“Twenty-eight—twenty-nine—let ’im have it!”

The searchlight stretched its bright arm onto the Red Sea. It revealed only a waste of waters. The light seemed to hesitate, uncertainly. It wavered, and then swept swiftly from side to side. But only the gray sea came within its orbit. The dhow had vanished as completely as though it had disappeared beneath the surface.

“The Dhow that Sailed to Nowhere— I knew it!” cursed Captain Dagenham.

“Yes sir,” confirmed Lieutenant Rushworth.

They turned to hear Paul Rodgers’ comment. But he also had disappeared.

Actually, he had made his way for’ard. There, leaning against one of the quick firing guns, he fallowed the beam of light as it cut through the darkness of sky and sea.

The Dhow that Sailed to Nowhere interested him. His gray eyes had glimpsed something aboard the dhow that even the keen vision of the naval men had missed. He had seen the tarpaulin move. Even though the Arab crew had walked lithely across it, he was not prepared to be fooled by the statement that the cargo was dates. He knew that something lived and moved beneath that tarpaulin. The cargo was a human cargo—and the black-bearded skipper of the Black Pearl had bluffed another load of strange freight through the watchful patrol of a British sloop!

LATER Rodgers sat at dinner with Captain Dagenham and his officers. The sloop was now throbbing its way toward Port Sudan, where it would stay some thirty-six hours before resuming its patrol of the Red Sea.

“Tell me, sir,” murmured Rodgers, passing the port-decanter on to the watchful Captain, “do you find much slave-smuggling between Africa and Arabia?”

Lieutenant Rushworth winced. Captain Dagenham glared, the port-decanter poised in his hand.

Rodgers smiled. He knew that he was regarded as a queer fellow by these naval men. Despite the flaming friendliness of his hair and the charm of his manner, they could not help but regard him with a certain amount of suspicion. He belonged, vaguely, to that suspicious department known as Intelligence. Naval men have an instinctive dislike of Intelligence, be it naval or military.

Moreover, the adventures of this red- haired fellow with the gray eyes, had been recounted in that wardroom again and again. Whether the adventures were mythical or real, they savoured somewhat of the underworld. And now that the fellow was actually among them,—a radio message from the admiral of the East India Squadron had ordered them to pick him up at Aden and convey him to Port Sudan,—his intellectual detachment secretly antagonized them.

“Of course there will always be slave-traffic between Africa and Arabia,” said the Captain. “We wouldn’t be cruising about in this damned hot weather if there wasn’t any. But I think I can claim that we’ve stamped out the best part of it. Yes sir, there’s very little of it crossing this ditch now...  But—er —you’re not suggesting that the cursed dhow we stopped this evening was a slaver?”

“Of course not,” smiled Rodgers, cracking a walnut between his palms.

“Well, then?” insisted the Captain.

“I happened to be in Mecca, some little time ago,” said Rodgers. He spoke of the holy city as though it was as easy of access as a London suburb.

“As an Arab, I suppose,” snorted the Captain.

“Naturally,” smiled Rodgers. “And while I was there I strolled through the Suk el ’Abid, or Slave Market. It is a very narrow street. Tall houses on either side almost hide the sunshine and make a chasm of it. And the street is made even narrower by long benches of stone, rather like high steps, in front of some of the houses. On these benches, from early morning to late evening, sit the slaves who are for sale. Rather like a local dog-market, I thought.”

“Disgusting, of course,” said Captain Dagenham, replenishing his glass from decanter. “But as we have no control over Arabia, I don’t see—”

“I talked with several of those slaves,” went on Rodgers imperturbably. “There were girls as well as men. Their Arab masters were anxious to display the best points. They looked upon me as a prospective purchaser. The girls were veiled, but at one word from the Arab slaver, the veils were torn aside. The girls were selling at from thirty to eighty pounds each, according to youth, beauty and household efficiency. The men cost slightly less.”

“So even in Arabia women have conquered,” laughed Lieutenant Rushworth, and then flushed as he realized he was laughing alone.

“But here is the extraordinary fact, Captain Dagenham,” — Rodgers’ voice took on a stern note,—“nearly all those slaves were Sudanese, black men and black girls from the desert—British, or we say natives who expect to receive our protection. And the traffic in Sudanese slaves has increased with a strange rapidity within the past six months. These slaves must cross the Red Sea. Unlike the children of Israel, the waters do not divide to give them a dry crossing. The slaver dhows are at work again, and are at work successfully.”

“And you, I presume, are going to Port Sudan to see about it?” insisted the Captain.

“Yes, I am,” replied Rodgers calmly.

PORT SUDAN is Britain’s beau geste on the shores of the Red Sea. Solidity on a sandhill. Like so many outposts of empire, the visitor is told to return in ten years’ time, and he won’t recognize it. But nobody ever wants to return to Port Sudan. One remembers only streets as wide and as dusty as deserts, and immense stone buildings as dark and gloomy as tombs of the Pharaohs.

When Paul Rodgers landed from the ferry-boat that rowed him across the pretentious harbor, he made his way to a huge stone building that might have been a museum or an art-gallery, but which was really the hotel. That hotel he knew to be the most luxurious along the whole coast of the Red Sea from Suez to Aden. To everyone on the Red Sea it was known simply as the hotel.

Rodgers was received by the little excitable Syrian manager.

“Ah, Meestair Rodger! You visit us once again, hein? Of course we have a room. You shall have the best. But I must ask you to excuse me for two meenits— two leetle meenits. A man is dying.”

“Good heavens— where? Not in your best room, surely?”

The Syrian waggled his little head like a ridiculous doll that could not be stopped. His podgy white hand clung to the telephone-receiver.

“No— no— no. He is dying outside the hotel— outside the hotel. He will not go away and die elsewhere. He insists on dying outside the hotel. Pouf! It must be stopped. It is reediculous. I telephone the Residency at once.”

“What is he— native?” asked Rodgers.

“He is a big black Sudanese,” went on the Syrian manager, his loose head  threatening to roll off his shoulders. “He is dying. You can see for yourself.”

His podgy hand waved toward the shaded side of the hotel. “Ah!” he cried in triumph into the telephone. “Ees that the Publeek Works Department?”

While the manager spluttered and explained over the telephone, Rodgers strolled onto the veranda that surrounded the hotel. On the shaded side, rooms opened out onto this veranda. A few dusty pepper-trees helped the shade, and beyond was the yellow desert of the street. And there, in the roadway, close to the hotel, was the dying Sudanese.

Rodgers strolled into the morning sunshine that beat down like a bludgeon on the bared fuzzy head of the Sudanese. He was an old man. What had once been a khaki shirt, now tattered and greasy, was flung carelessly across the broad black shoulders. He was a big black Sudanese, as the Syrian manager had said, but his body was terribly emaciated. The ribs stood out like charred sticks.

“What is your trouble, old man?” asked Rodgers in Arabic.

The man understood. He turned two glazed eyes upward. His wrinkled black face had flies swarming over it. He seemed too tired or indifferent to sweep them away.

“I am a lonely old man who is dying,” he muttered. “Allah give me peace!”

“Allah will surely grant it,” said Rodgers gravely. “But why not have the comfort of the hospital and the white doctor?”

The old man swayed to and fro, mournfully, in his squatting position in the dust. It was obvious that he was dying from malnutrition and exposure; his big body had suffered some terrible trial.

“I would rather die here,” the old man mumbled. “I will die here!” His clenched fist struck the dust. “If they take me away, I will crawl back and die in this spot. And he who has taken my black pearl will have my shadow haunting him for the rest of his days.”

The Black Pearl! As the old man dribbled the words in Arabic, Rodgers had a cinema flashback in his mind of a white dhow glistening in the beam of a searchlight. The Black Pearl was the Dhow that Sailed to Nowhere.

“A black pearl!” repeated Rodgers. “A valuable black pearl, eh ?”

“The only thing I loved and cherished in this world,” mumbled the old man.

“And who has dared to rob you of this treasure?” asked Rodgers.

“A white man. One who lives and laughs, but whom I will torment with my shadow. He is—”

The old man raised a skinny black arm, the finger pointing. But at that same  moment two khaki-clad Sudanese soldiers, their tarbooshes cocked at an angle and their military buttons gleaming in the sunshine, seized the arms of the dying Sudanese.

“Take heem away— at once!” spluttered a familiar voice from the veranda.

For a moment, as Rodgers gazed on this old man whose arms were held aloft by the Sudanese, he visualized that ancient great general of the Red Sea, Moses, who brought victory to the Israelites while his dying body was held up in this same fashion by two of his followers. He shrugged his shoulders.

“See that he is treated well!” he ordered the Sudanese soldiers. “He is not long for this world.”

And he thrust a handful of loose silver into a fold of that greasy shirt.

Raised, and half-carried, the old man moaned a final protest.

“I will come back and die as I want to die.”

A loud laugh came from the veranda of the hotel. As though lashed by a whip, Rodgers turned. He saw an extraordinary figure standing there, a cigarette elongated in a cigarette-holder in one hand, a cocktail glass in the other: a tall man with a monocle in one eye. And the figure was garbed in the white military uniform of a Russian officer.

"Permit me to introduce myself, Mr. Rodgers,” said the figure in the white uniform. “I am Captain Vladimir Korolenko, formerly of the White Russian Army. And I feel sure you need a cocktail after that compassionate little interlude in the hot sunshine. Permit me to order you a cocktail.”

And without waiting for the curt refusal that was on the tip of Rodgers’ tongue, he pressed the bell-button.

“Of course you feel sorry for that old man,” went on the Russian.

“Who wouldn’t?” replied Rodgers, nettled at the other’s easy cynicism.

The Russian drained his glass as the native servant in the long white robe entered.

“Two Martinis!” he ordered briefly. He indicated a cane chair. Aggressive, but nevertheless insatiably curious, Rodgers sank into it. The Russian lounged against the stone coping of the veranda.

“After all, he is an old man, and has lived his life. It does not seem to have been a particularly luxurious one. He is better dead. Why sympathize with anything that is already in decay?”

“A stern philosophy,” remarked Rodgers, narrowing his gray eyes as if he would measure the queer mind that hid itself behind that apparently gay mask.

“Life itself is stern,” retorted the Russian. “It is kill or be killed in these hot countries about the Red Sea. You know that as well as anyone.” His smile was more disarming than ever. “It is only in decadent Europe that one can afford to keep alive the old and feeble. Africa is virile and ignores such a self-destroying philosophy. I understand the Zulus used to club their old men and women, once they became too feeble. Only when the humanitarian British governed them did the practice cease. But I must apologize. I was forgetting you are British."

“You seem to be acquainted with me,” dryly remarked Rodgers. He accepted the cocktail that the native placed before him.

The Russian waved his cigarette-holder with a deprecatory gesture.

“Who has not heard of Paul Rodgers of the Red Sea ?” he said quietly. “Your exploits, my dear Rodgers, are recounted from one end of the Red Sea to the other.”

“You move about a good deal yourself, then?”

The smile faltered for a second.

“I am engaged in what you call ‘business’ in these regions.”

“Mining?”

“No.”

“Pearls, then?”

The smile on the face of the Russian was a little set.

“Is not everybody here interested in pearls?” he countered. “Naturally, a Russian refugee such as myself is grateful if he can pick up a pearl cheaply.”

“Black pearls, for example.”

The Russian shrugged his shoulders.

“A black pearl for preference. One must live.”

It was Rodgers who smiled now during this conversation.

“That, if I may so, seems the essence of your philosophy, Captain Korolenko. One must live. Curiously enough that old Sudanese who has just been carried away only desired to die— and to die within a few yards of this veranda.”

The Russian removed his monocle and polished it with his handkerchief.

“Let him die! ” he said with quiet vehemence. “Let him wallow in the misery of his last hours on earth. He enjoys his despair.”

And with an india-rubber squeeze on his face, he replaced the monocle.

“That, if I may say so,” said Rodgers, rising, “is a terrible philosophy.”

“Terribleness belongs to greatness,” smiled the Russian. “Let us not deceive ourselves.”

“I think I recognize the quotation,” murmured Rodgers. “Nietzsche, is it not?”

“Exactly,” replied the Russian, holding out his hand. “I see that you are acquainted with the only philosophy that civilized men like ourselves can accept in these hot countries... I hope we shall meet later.”

“I am sure we shall,” smiled the Red Wolf of Arabia; and taking the proffered white hand, he held it for a moment in his sunburned fist. Thus they stood and eyed each other.

“Au revoir!” murmured the Russian, and instinctively clicked his heels together and made a brief bow.

Rodgers sauntered back to the office. The loose head of the Syrian was lolling from side to side with a little more complacency.

“Ah, Meestair Rodger. We have given you the best room. Number Eighteen. Your bags are already there.”

“Let me see,” mused Rodgers, “that is the room next to the Russian, eh?”

“Captain Vladimir Korolenko—yes. You have made his acquaintance, hein? A charming gentleman.”

“Very charming—very charming,” continued Rodgers, apparently in a daydream of indifference. “Where does he come from, eh?”

The head of the Syrian began its metronome progress.

“He was once a personage of importance in St. Petersburg. But there the revolution— bah, these revolutions!— made him a refugee. He joined the Russian White army and fought against the Bolsheviks. He is said to be veree brave— veree rash.”

“I’m sure he is,” encouraged Rodgers.

“Naturally, after the failure of the counter-revolution, he fled—to Cairo.

But there were so many Russians in Cairo. All those princes and princesses—those haughty princes and those exquisite princesses, ma foi! He left Cairo and came south. He goes up and down the Red Sea, just like yourself, Meestair Rodger’. Yes, just like yourself.”

The words were being jerked out to the rhythm of his lolling head.

“But tell me,” asked Rodgers with quiet directness, “how does he live?”

The Syrian gave a superb shrug of the shoulders.

“How do any of us live in these parts, Meestair Rodger’? Somehow, hein ? He stays at the hotel on occasions. Visits the deserted city of Suakin, that city lost in the sand dunes, just forty miles from here. They say that he buys black pearls there, and sends them to a little shop on Fifth Avenue, New York. There is much money in black pearls.”

“Black pearls, eh?”

Paul Rodgers stroked the back of his flaming crop with a characteristic gesture. He was thinking hard.

“And it is also said that he deals in bêche-de-mer on a little island in the Red Sea,” continued the Syrian.

“Bêche-de-mer? But I thought the Chinese had cornered that.”

The Syrian grinned.

“The Chinese collect it. There are two on the island. But the Captain Korolenko is the big business man. He is the man who does things in style. He has ordered the best motorcar in Port Sudan to take him tomorrow to Suakin. Business again. He is the devil for business.”

“And the island—where is that?” inquired Rodgers.

The Syrian waved a hand vaguely toward that shimmering sheet of glass that stretched away from the yellow sand.

“Somewhere in the Red Sea, somewhere—”

He stopped. His eyes filled with horror. His head began to roll in hopeless fashion. Rodgers swung round and gazed in the same direction.

“That big black Sudanese has come back here again to die. Sacré! But I will not stand it.” His podgy hand reached out for the telephone. “Geeve me the Publeek Works Department at once! ”

Rodgers smiled and turned away. Then a thought struck him. He leaned over to the Syrian, who was perspiring in an agony of impatience at the telephone.

“By the way—you might order the second best motorcar in Port Sudan to be at my disposal tomorrow morning. Maybe I’ll go over to Suakin.”

“The Publeek Works Department—” moaned the Syrian.

RODGERS walked slowly along the cool corridors of the hotel toward his room. He still wore the light deck shoes that he had used aboard the Daffodil. His easy, lithe walk made no sound.

He suddenly found himself outside the open door of a room. He was about to walk in, thinking it his own. But he stopped. Inside that room Captain Vladimir Korolenko was laughing softly to himself. Something amused the Russian vastly. Seated in a cane chair, he was staring in front of him as at a picture.

Rodgers stepped softly to one side. He wanted to see the object that caused such strange mirth. He found himself staring into a mirror that was so balanced on a table that it reflected with the clarity of a cinema show the sunlit road beyond.

And in the centre of that mirror, an old man with the flies crawling over his black face, sat dying.

The Russian sat in his chair, smoking and laughing. The vision amused him. Rodgers tiptoed past the open door and reached his own room.

“A very interesting fellow, the Captain Vladimir Korolenko,” he murmured to himself.

NEXT day two white men entered the deserted city of Suakin, and disappeared completely. They left the hotel at Port Sudan separately. And each of them sent back by his chauffeur a message to the Syrian manager that his baggage should be stored away until called for. But only one of those white men ever collected his baggage.

The Syrian manager was sorry to see each of them go. They were both residents of interest. And in the hotel visitors were never too plentiful. Business, at the moment, was placid. To the relief of the manager the old Sudanese had died during the night. He was discovered stark in the early morning sunshine. The Public Works Department did its duty expeditiously. The body was removed as a lump of refuse.

“And so he never recovered the black pearl he prized so much,” mused Rodgers as the second-best automobile rushed him through the sand toward Suakin. His chauffeur was following in the tracks made by the car which carried Captain Vladimir Korolenko, and which had had a two-hours’ start from Port Sudan. “Perhaps his shadow is even now haunting the man whose hand closed upon that black pearl,” continued Rodgers, lolling at his ease behind the fezzed driver.

They bumped across the causeway that led from the mainland to the coral island on which Suakin was built. Soon they were in the town itself, Rodgers gave some curt orders to the chauffeur, and they turned through an Arab gateway into a courtyard. There the car was left while the Intelligence officer proceeded on foot into the town.

Suakin was not unknown to him. It always suggested itself as a city at the bottom of the sea. The houses, built of white coral stone, the deep silences of the deserted streets, the surge of the sea against the coral reef softened from a distance into a caress, and the peculiar greenish-blue sky of infinite depths that overhung this white grotto of a city— all emphasized the Debussy tones of its mystic unreality. Once, Suakin had been a flourishing Arab port. Then the British created the immensity of Port Sudan, thirty-six miles away. Sea and sand had swept through the deserted coral streets of Suakin. Its palaces were now empty of humans, except for stray fishermen or pearl merchants, solitary dwellers in a city that had been abandoned:

Into one of these apparently deserted palaces of white coral Rodgers strolled. He passed through filtering shafts of sunlight and shadow made by the fretted windows, until he came to a heavy door in front of which squatted four Somalis. Each Somali had a cruelly curved knife well displayed; fierce dark eyes were twisted into a slant of permanent suspicion, and their fuzzy golliwog hair could have concealed a whole army of daggers.

“Tell your master, Kra Krishna, that I would speak with him! ” ordered Rodgers in the Somali tongue.

The four men regarded him with silent insolence. Then one condescended to stretch himself and lounged through the doorway. A few muttered words, and Rodgers was permitted to enter the room.

He found himself regarding a fat brown Buddha who peered through a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles. Kra Krishna, despite his likeness to the squatting god of millions, was, however, a Hindu. He was so gross in proportions that he always gave the impression of having been forced into a chair. Much of the brown flesh bulged over. But Kra Krishna was one of the most successful pearl-dealers in the whole Red Sea region. Fleets of dhows set out from little Arab orts at one gesture of his podgy brown and. Through those steel-rimmed spectacles he had squinted upon fortunes in the shape of glistening white and black pearls.

“Ah, it is Rodger’ sahib who honours me with a visit!” exclaimed the Hindu, in a struggle to extricate himself from the chair. He was restrained by Rodgers’ outstretched hand, which shook his own in friendly fashion. He sank back in his chair, while the Intelligence officer seated himself in another facing him.

“It is a long time since we did business in pearls together,” smiled the Hindu, revealing teeth stained by betel-nut. At the same time he clapped his podgy hands together, creating a devastating sound that suggested that his whole body had exploded like a paper-bag. A Somali lurched into the room at the noise.

“Champagne—one big bottle!” ordered Kra Krishna.

Rodgers began a protest, but that commanding podgy hand stifled it.

“Please—please, Rodger’ sahib. Let us treat this as a ceremonial occasion. I am deeply honoured. And champagne is the national drink of all white men in these parts. Afterward we can talk business.”

For ten minutes they sipped the oversweet warmish wine, and made inquiries about mutual acquaintances. It was all done leisurely in the best Oriental tradition. Then, lighting a cigarette, Rodgers asked casually:

“Ever do business with a Russian— Captain Vladimir Korolenko?”

THE Hindu’s eyes narrowed. A brimming glass of champagne was in his hand, but he conveyed it to his lips without a tremor.

“I have heard of him, but we have never met,” murmured Kra Krishna evasively.

“Captain Korolenko is in Suakin at this moment.”

The Hindu replaced his glass on the table.

“Captain Korolenko is often in Suakin,” he said.

Rodgers nodded.

“I know. He says he is interested in pearls—black pearls.”

“I have heard it said.”

“And black pearls are your specialty, Kra Krishna.”

“That is so.”

Rodgers drained his glass.

“Doesn’t it occur to you as strange, Kra Krishna, that anyone who is interested in black pearls should ignore the one merchant in the Red Sea who has the finest collection?”

“I am a dealer in pearls, Rodger sahib,” muttered the Hindu. “And black pearls are considered very rare. But there is, if you will permit me to say so, a type of black pearl that is common in the Red Sea. That kind of black pearl I do not bother about. Trafficking in it is too— er— dangerous.”

It was as though the podgy brown hands had clapped together in an explosion again. Paul Rodgers realized everything. Black pearls! Slaves, of course. The Arab colloquialism. Farther south in Africa they talked of black ivory. Here on the Red Sea they whispered of black pearls.

His brain bubbled, like that awful champagne he had just drunk. The Dhow that Sailed to Nowhere, the Black Pearl, was a slaver. The black pearl that had been the treasured possession of the old man who died in the dust, was in all probability, a daughter. She had been sold and bought as a slave. And a white man was engaged in this business. The Nietzschean philosophy drawled forth so cynically by the Russian, was that the apologia of a slaver?

“I think I understand, Kra Krishna,” he murmured.

He walked toward an open window. It showed the blue expanse of sea, polished in the morning sunshine like a sheet of metal. A trail of surf revealed the long, tortuous channel that led to the harbor of Suakin. Idly he watched a dhow coming in from the open sea and being cleverly manoeuvred into that difficult channel of coral reefs. A white dhow. There was something familiar in its appearance.

An ancient pair of binoculars rested on a table by the window. Rodgers seized them, levelled them at the dhow making for Suakin. Like a close-up on a cinema screen, a tall hook-nosed Arab with a black beard came into his vision. There was a blood-red turban twisted about the man’s head. Rodgers slanted the glasses toward the Arabic scroll over the bows. The Black Pearl! So the Dhow that Sailed to Nowhere was coming home. It was ready to run the blockade of British sloops with another cargo.

He snapped the glasses back and turned to the Hindu.

“Can I hire a dhow in Suakin for several days’ voyage, Kra Krishna?” he asked.

The Hindu sighed, and tried to wheeze his body out of the chair.

“It is possible, Rodger’ sahib,” he replied. “The dhow is easy to obtain, but the crew—not so easy. Where do you want to go?”

“To an island, where they say there is much bêche-de-mer.”

The Hindu moaned aloud.

“You will never get a crew, Rodger’ sahib. I do not think you understand. This black-pearl business is a very dangerous business, and—” He hesitated.

“And Captain Vladimir Korolenko a very dangerous man, eh?” completed Rodgers.

A wave of the brown hand admitted it.

RODGERS walked back to the table. From his pocket he produced a handkerchief. Carelessly he spread it on the desk before the eyes of the Hindu. In the centre of the handkerchief was a black pearl.

“How much would you say that is worth, Kra Krishna?”

Two brown fingers picked up the pearl and twisted it toward the sunlight. Eyes squinted at it. Then the pearl trickled into the Hindu’s palm. The podgy, sweating hand weighed it as sensitively as a knife-balanced scale. A moment’s silence, and then:

“I would give you two hundred pounds for it, Rodger’ sahib.”

“Meaning that it is worth at least three hundred!”

The Hindu looked pained.

“But I don’t want to sell,” went on Rodgers. “I only want to barter. You would like that pearl, eh?”

“It is a fine black pearl,” conceded the Hindu.

“And you, Kra Krishna, have a small fleet of dhows, pearling dhows, in this harbor. I will give you the pearl, yes, give it in exchange for the use of one of those dhows and a crew of three men.”

The Hindu perspired more than ever.

“Who will navigate the dhow?”

“I will.”

“You are taking it into dangerous waters,” murmured Kra Krishna.

“It is a very good black pearl,” persisted Rodgers.

“True.” The Hindu’s eyes rested once more on the little black globule.

“Very well, Rodger’ sahib” He twisted himself by a supreme effort out of the chair. “I will give the necessary orders.”

THE two white men had left Port Sudan within an hour of each other in separate motorcars. They left the treacherous harbor of Suakin within an hour of each other in separate dhows.

Lying on the little deck near the rudder of the dhow Sahalla, Rodgers sensed through the medium of smell and sound the strange activities proceeding in the night aboard the Black Pearl, the Dhow that Sailed to Nowhere, which was moored against an old coral jetty a hundred yards away.

It was too early in the night for the moon. A velvet blackness, pricked only by stars, overhung everything. Yet, stretched out on the little wooden deck, a turban and a draped loin-cloth his only garments, Paul Rodgers could visualize everything as clearly as though the brilliant searchlight of H. M. Sloop Daffodil were shining on the midnight scene.

There were the whispered words of command in Arabic, uttered by the rais, the black-bearded Arab in the blood-red turban. His crew obeyed quickly, padding about the dhow with catlike tread. Ghosts, moving about a ghost ship. Within half an hour, the dhow was ready for sea.

Then came ten minutes of tense waiting. Silence enwrapped the Black Pearl. And an equally tense silence enwrapped Rodgers’ dhow Sahalla. The sea lapped gently against the battered sides of the anchored dhows. A thin cat which stalked the little deck alongside the outstretched form of Rodgers, mewed plaintively. In the darkness a light shone for a moment and then flickered out. It came from the city of Suakin, the white coral walls of which loomed ghostly in the distance.

At last Paul Rodgers raised his turbaned head like a jackal, sensing the darkness. He heard the sound for which he had been waiting, the sound that told him that the age-old traffic between Africa and Arabia was still being pursued. It was the shuffle of bare feet in the darkness, a slithering, sighing sound punctuated by the soft pad— pad— pad of the feet that trod in freedom.

The slithering shuffle denoted the chain of slaves moving over the jetty to the dhow. They shuffled in that tired dissonance which marks the tread of slaves all over the world, whether they are listlessly walking into one of the innumerable elevators in a great city blithely whistling them upward to the factories and workshops, or treading the gangway plank of a dhow that means the beginning of a trail of endless toil and miserable endurances.

Pad—pad—pad! A muttered curse in Arabic. And then the smell of that chain of slaves. Sweating black men, the tang of dirty flesh, combined with the door of soiled clothes, the halitosis of hashish-smokers and the pervading smell of stale coffee— a smell that had trailed across Sudan sands, dogged by jackals and suspiciously scented by the bigger beasts.

Pad — pad — pad. They were treading the gangway plank of the Dhow that Sailed to Nowhere. It creaked protestingly beneath the weight of the chain of slaves. The catlike crew of the dhow clambered about the deck. The slaves were being stowed away, their bruised black backs against the worn wooden ribs of the dhow. More and more were stowed away. Rodgers calculated that about fifty slaves had shuffled aboard. There were more whispers in the darkness. Then the creaking of the gangway was lost in the creaking of the huge sail being hauled aloft. Like a black cloud scudding across a wind-swept sky, the Black Pearl glided between the coral reefs toward the sea.

Rodgers did not stir. Still crouched on the little deck of the Sahalla, he watched the Dhow that Sailed to Nowhere nosing its way through the narrow channel. The whispering ghost craft merged into the darkness. He waited— half an hour, three-quarters of an hour, one hour. Then he rose.

“Let us start,” he ordered in Arabic.

The crew of three Sudanese leaped toward the mast. The thin cat scurried out of sight. Creaking and shrilling, the sails climbed that crazy mast.

“Alù, Allah! Alù, Allah —the sails, O Allah! ” chanted the crew.

The anchor was hauled aboard, and the dhow winged away from the jetty.

RODGERS had never navigated this coral-reefed channel. In the house of the Hindu Kra Krishna he had discovered an old Admiralty chart which he had studied closely, and its markings were imprinted on his mind. But for the most part he intended to sense his way toward the open sea with that same instinct that brought him safely through the desert wastes of Arabia.

At the same time the moon, like a blazing oil tanker on the horizon, began to climb out of the sea. Soon it silvered the surface and revealed to Rodgers’ searching gray eyes those treacherous depths where the knife-edged coral cut the watery envelope. With a hand on the tiller and occasional sharp commands in Arabic, he manoeuvred the Sahalla with uncanny skill. Only once did he feel the gentle bump beneath that told him that the dhow was on the reef. But one of the crew had also sensed the danger. Without hesitation the Sudanese jumped overboard; he wallowed through the surf and seemed in a moment to be walking on the surface of the sea. Actually, he was standing on the reef, pushing madly at the bows of the boat. A moment later they were in deep water again, and the Sudanese had clambered back. His black feet were bleeding freely from those knife edges of the coral. But he pattered about the deck nonchalantly, leaving a trail of blood.

“Wallah! But you are a sailor in a thousand!” cried Rodgers.

The Sudanese grinned, showing his filed white teeth, and swaggered for’ard.

At last they were out of the channel l and in the Red Sea proper. A strong southeast wind was blowing.

“It is the Azzieb, master!” explained one of the Sudanese.

Rodgers nodded. He knew that wind only too well. It meant that they would have a rough passage. He set his turban tightly over that blazing crop of red hair and twisted another fold in the draped loin-cloth. Away in the distance the moonlight showed him a black sail cutting the surface like a shark’s fin. He jammed the tiller hard over, and set off in pursuit.

Spray and sand pelted his half-naked body as he drove the dhow forward. The wind was sweeping across the Arabian desert, and the sand was carried over the sea. The Sahalla lurched and bounced in the troughs with all the buck-antics of which a dhow is capable. One moment her bows were pointing to the moon; then with an aerial spin and sideslip she crashed back again. She followed this up by rolling her stern in the air, and wallowing once more in the spume. Every timber in her groaned and creaked.

But Paul Rodgers was thoroughly enjoying himself. He loved the Red Sea in this tempestuous mood. There was a challenge in the driving spray and sand that he was only too eager to take up; the sea was in a mood that suited his own temper. Drenched to the skin, the wind whistling against his body, he hummed snatches of strange music. He pulled away the turban and flung it at his feet. The three Sudanese, working like black demons at. the mast, were awed at the sight of this man whose flaming red hair was strewn and matted by wind and spray over his dark eager face.

“Wallah! But I would sail with this rais through the gates of hell and beyond,” cried the Sudanese who had jumped overboard earlier in the voyage.

Never for one moment over the tumbling seas did Rodgers lose sight of that black fin cutting through the waves. The Black Pearl was a fast dhow. The black-bearded captain was also no fair-weather sailor. And despite his moaning cargo of slaves, he got a fine speed out of his pitching boat. The Dhow that Sailed to Nowhere was heading straight for some definite destination.

So intent was Rodgers on following the trail, so unwavering his gaze, that he did not notice a long black shape rolling and racketing toward him. It was only when he heard a warning yell from one of the Sudanese that he glanced swiftly to port. A heavy black mass of throbbing steel and pouring smoke was bearing down upon him.

Without hesitation Rodgers swung his helm hard over. Simultaneously he yelled to the black crew. The crazy sail swung sidewise. Tons of water poured over the deck. Rodgers had a glimpse of the thin cat being swept by the wave into the waste. He stretched out a hand and grabbed it. It squalled fiendishly.

At the same moment the throbbing mass of steel lurched past. Voices were yelling. Lights twinkled. The ship swung round in a ragged circle. Then a beam of light came stabbing from the steel ship. It was aimed directly at the Sahalla.

“Hey! Heave to, there!” megaphoned a familiar voice.

Half blind with salt and spray, a sodden loin-cloth clinging to his slim figure, Rodgers stared into the searchlight.

“This is H. M. Sloop Daffodil!” boomed the voice of Lieutenant Rushworth. “What the hell are you doing without lights on a night like this?”

Further remarks were yelled in Arabic. Rodgers grinned into the searchlight. His hand still clung to the tiller. He was certain that not even his companions of the wardroom would recognize in this sea-soaked Arab on the deck of a dhow the red-haired white man who had played Scarlatti on their piano. At the same time, taking no risks, he calmly donned the turban.

“My respects to the Captain of H. M. Sloop Daffodil," he yelled back in Arabic, “and tell him to mind his own cursed business. I don’t intend to heave to.”

There was an audible gasp from the interpreter at this reply. Rodgers wondered what the effect would be upon Captain Dagenham. He felt sure that the silent service would not remain silent for long. He gave a curt order to the Sudanese. His crazy sail flapped over; he leaned hard against the tiller, and in a few seconds he had cut through the searchlight and was back again in that waste of sea.

“Heave to, damn you!” megaphoned Lieutenant Rushworth.

The wind carried his impatient voice to the ears of Rodgers—but the eyes of that adventurer of the sea were searching the silvery troughs for another glimpse of that black fin. He saw it— the Dhow that Sailed to Nowhere. He would follow it to the end of the journey.

Orders were being yelled from the bridge of the sloop. Bluejackets were hurrying along the steel deck. After wavering madly in the darkness, the searchlight once again picked him up. Rodgers cursed aloud. But the searchlight had done him one good turn. It had shown him that he was near to pearling reefs known to the Arabs as Ras Zukur. He was almost in the same spot as that previous night when the searchlight had revealed the Black Pearl.

Now the searchlight was on the dhow Sahalla. The sloop was pitching in the heavy seas, while the dhow was being thrown about like a cork.

“I’m sure they’re going to let off that gun that I once leaned against,” muttered Rodgers to himself. “But I’ll doff my hat to gunnery mathematics, if they hit us.”

“Heave to, or we’ll fire!” came a distant shout from the megaphone.

Rodgers grinned, and kept his hand firmly on the tiller. The thin cat was busy with intimate ablutions at his feet.

Boom!

A spout of water shot up a hundred yards ahead.

Rodgers knew that this was a preliminary warning. He clenched his teeth, yelled an order to the Sudanese that sent them crouching out of sight against the ribs of the dhow, and swung the tiller over again.

Boom!

A whistle through the air that was not the wind caused the thin cat to look up curiously. The shot had missed the dhow by a few feet.

“I’ll compliment that gunner next time I see him,” muttered Rodgers.

A third shot was wide of the mark. It was more difficult than shooting with a rifle at a celluloid ball bobbing about on a jet of water. Both the dhow and the sloop were pitching heavily. Nevertheless Rodgers kept on his course. His eyes were still on the Dhow that Sailed to Nowhere.

The engines of the sloop were thundering into activity again. The searchlight wavered for a moment, and the Sahalla slipped into darkness. Rodgers glimpsed a line of creamy foam stretching before him. The coral reef again. His eyes searched it for a possible opening. He could see none. The black-bearded captain of the other dhow knew it well, and had gone through. In the minute’s grace that the sloop was giving him, Rodgers decided on a gamble. He would jump the reef.

It was only a narrow strip; but if the white teeth came against the bottom of the dhow, the timbers would be ripped asunder. The gamble depended upon the heavy waves that were rolling over it. One of them might just carry the Sahalla over. He tacked, and waited.

“Pray to Allah, my men!” he yelled.

It was at that moment that he saw a heavy wave bearing down upon them from behind. It came towering toward the stern with a rush that threatened to engulf them. Rodgers flung his weight against the tiller. The wave caught them, lifted them, rushed them forward and sent the dhow hurtling at the reef almost as a porpoise shoots from the sea.

In those few seconds Rodgers lived with an intensity and zest that few men can experience in a lifetime. The wind whistled against the dhow; the crazy sail flapped madly; the whole sky and the moon with a tattered cloud stretched across it, heeled sideways. And then came a sickening crash, and a welter of water swirled over the dhow. The bow lifted. Rodgers, knocked half-unconscious by the weight of the sea, still clung desperately to the tiller.

“Allah O Akbar! We are over!” the Sudanese cried.

He lifted a black hand in salutation to this mighty red-haired rais who was giving them the sea-adventure of their lives.

WITH the dawn streaking the sky, Paul Rodgers found himself in calm but treacherous waters. The Sahalla seemed floating in a Sargasso of coral, red seaweed and queerly tinted water. When the vermilion drop-scene of the dawn had raised, he searched in vain for a glimpse of the Dhow that Sailed to Nowhere. It had disappeared. Instead his gaze followed the pointing finger of a Sudanese who had climbed the mast. An island, a coral island, lay ahead.

Rodgers twisted his drenched body and gazed back at the reef over which they had driven the Sahalla like a sea-horse at a deadly leap. He was able, then, to see quite clearly the narrow channel through the reef, which the other dhow had successfully navigated. He pointed it out to the crew. They nodded their heads and grinned. Beyond the reef, against the rose-tinted sky was a thick smear of smoke. H. M. Sloop Daffodil was cruising there, watchful and, no doubt, irritated. Captain Dagenham had not dared navigate that expensive piece of floating steel nearer the reef. But he was determined to wait there for the return of that dhow whose captain had grinned into his searchlight.

Rodgers navigated the Sahalla slowly but surely through this maze of coral. At last they bumped against a beach.

It was the island, a lump of coral rising from that wine-red sea and known to the Arabs as Ras Zukur. The three Sudanese raised a shout, and flung themselves down like tired beasts.

Paul Rodgers, however, wasted no time. He rummaged below the little deck and brought forth an Arab burnous, a doubtful white in colour, but at least dry. This he donned, adjusted his turban, and called to the Sudanese. They stood before him, three tired but admiring men.

He spoke slowly and deliberately to them in Arabic. He pointed to the horizon beyond. They showed the whites of their eyes in surprise. Then he repeated his orders. They nodded understandingly. Finally he drew a scrap of paper from his burnous, scribbled on it in pencil, folded it and handed it to one of the Sudanese. Then with a smile, he clapped each of them on the back and stepped from the dhow onto the island.

“Time is precious,” he warned the Sudanese.

In two minutes they had prepared the Sahalla for sea again. Rodgers watched them float gently away. The Sudanese at the tiller manoeuvred her with a certain clumsy skill. They shouted a farewell to him.

“May Allah grant that we meet again, O master of the seal”

Rodgers laughed, and turning on his heel, walked up the beach.

All was silent. Except for the splash, splash, slosh, slosh of small fish jumping away from the sharks that swarmed about the island, there was not a sound to be heard. The sharp coral cut through the sandals that Rodgers wore, and the sun swinging into the sky blistered him with devastating heat.

Slowly and painfully he crawled toward the top of a high ridge of coral. Once he had surmounted it, he gazed down upon a scene vastly different from that beach on which he had landed. Noise, tumult and life swarmed there. Black men, brown men and yellow men mingled in the mass. Three dhows, including the Dhow that Sailed to Nowhere, were stretched like dead monsters on the farther beach. He realized that his guess had been correct. He was on the island of slaves.

Without hesitation he strolled down toward the swarming beach. In his dirty white burnous and turban he looked like any of the other Arabs who were kicking and hitting the black slaves toward a pen, built of coral, that had been prepared for them.

Rodgers joined in the mêlée.

The slaves that had been landed by the Black Pearl seemed cowed enough by the storm of overnight. One of them dragged a broken limb over the sharp coral. There were several Sudanese girls in this batch, their finely built black bodies swathed only by pieces of dirty white calico. A few Galla men tried to carry themselves proudly, but repeated jabs from poles carried by some of the Arabs sent them sprawling again and again to the coral.

One of these Galla men, knocked to the ground, rose slowly with the gleam of madness in his eyes. He sprang with the agility of a flying acrobat upon the Arab who snarled above him—and with a sudden twist of his two black hands, he broke the neck of that Arab. The whole of that black and brown multitude seemed frozen into inaction. They followed the rapid sequence of events purely as an audience.

The Galla slave gazed down upon the dead Arab, stirred him with his black foot, and laughed. Then with swift strides he rushed over the beach toward the sea. Without hesitation he waded in to his thighs, and then struck out, swimming with powerful strokes.

Suddenly the mass of watchers were jerked into action as though a string had been pulled. Men ran to and fro, while babel broke loose. Then a girl slave screamed, and continued screaming at the top of her voice. She was pointing toward the sea, where the Galla man was still swimming.

Gliding toward the black arms thrashing the water were the fins of two sharks. The Galla slave saw them. He turned on his back and began kicking the water madly. But the fins came on relentlessly. He attempted a despairing dive to escape them. The white belly of a shark caught the sunlight as it twisted downward after its prey. The black body never came to the surface again. A patch of red appeared, floating like scum.

"Quite rightly they call it the Red Sea, eh, Mr. Rodgers?” drawled a voice in English at the Intelligence officer’s side.

He turned quickly. Captain Vladimir Korolenko, smart and alert in his white military uniform, stood there. The Russian was lowering a pair of binoculars through which he had been watching the futile efforts of the escaping slave.

Rodgers did not betray himself by any movement. He could see, out of the corners of his gray eyes, that four Arabs armed with pistols had, at a gesture from the Russian, casually grouped themselves about him. The other Arabs were speeding the slaves into the pen.

“The Red Sea, unfortunately, swarms with vermin—white vermin, such as yourself,” quietly replied Paul Rodgers.

The smile twisted dangerously on the face of the Russian. He stabbed a cigarette into the long holder, lit it, and puffed it with enjoyment for a few seconds.

“The death of that slave is unfortunate —financially,” he drawled then.

“For you, no doubt,” replied Rodgers. “But I think the slave is to be congratulated rather than pitied. That death is infinitely preferable to the life that you were prepared to sell him into.”

The Russian sighed.

“Ah, these humanitarians! What a nuisance they are! Tell me, Mr. Rodgers, what do you think that slave was worth ?”

Paul Rodgers shrugged his shoulders. “I have seen such slaves sold in Mecca for forty pounds,” he said.

“Forty pounds, eh ?” muttered the Russian. “Not a bad price. Now, that unfortunate incident has cost me forty pounds. A lot of money.”

“Blood money!”

The Russian laughed.

“Let us continue this interesting discussion on the market price of slaves,” he murmured. “Tell me, my dear Mr. Rodgers, what price do you think would be bid for your own living body in the Suk el ’Abid at Mecca?”

“There will be no bidding for my body, alive or dead,” replied Rodgers.

“No?” Captain Korolenko with a swift movement tore the burnous from the shoulders of the Intelligence officer. Then he eyed the physique with the appraising glance of a cattle-dealer. “A little thin, but wiry and strong,” he murmured. “Yes, I think, Mr. Rodgers, that we could get fifty pounds for you.”

“You flatter me,” said Rodgers, narrowly eying the Arabs and their pistols.

“Not at all,” continued the Russian. “Providence has been kind to me. I lose a slave in the sea. But no sooner is he lost, than a new one appears, one who very nicely walks into my camp.... Ah, my dear Mr. Rodgers, I knew you were interested in my activities as soon as I saw you at Sudan. When I heard that you had followed me to Suakin, I was certain. It was very adventurous of you to follow the Black Pearl to our little island, but I gave orders to the captain that he should permit your dhow to keep us in sight.... And here you are, Rodgers of the Red Sea, as ubiquitous as ever, and full of the egotism of the lone fighter.”

“Exactly, and not at your service.”

“Of course not,” replied the Russian, puffing a little cloud of smoke into the sunlit air. “A dangerous man, eh, who set out to thwart my choice of this historic and venerable profession—slave-dealing.”

“I’m glad you’re proud of it,” said Rodgers, scorn in his voice.

“I find it—er—amusing and profitable,” replied the Russian. “Is it, after all, any worse than that of the blackguardly business-man who thinks he can buy a typist, body and soul, for thirty shillings a week? There is plenty of slavery in London and New York, you know. Men deal in white pearls, as well as black pearls.”

“Not decent men.”

The Russian bowed.

“Vileness can only be practiced by great men. I am a great man. Yes, laugh, my dear Mr. Rodgers, but I rise above the common emotions of mankind. For example— yourself. I have already said you are a dangerous man. You intend to put an end to my profitable traffic. Logically it would seem best for me to have you killed like a dog, here on this coral island. I have only to give the word to these Arabs, and their pistols would spurt lead at you.”

“And pray, why don’t you?”

“Because my philosophy is stronger than logic,” went on the Russian. “An enemy is a nuisance. He must be removed. But if, in removing him, I can also profit by him,—well, so much the better. And so it is with you, my dear Mr. Rodgers. I shall remove you, by the Black Pearl, to the shores of Arabia. There a price will be paid for you that will bring some profit to myself. I think you understand. There is nothing more to be said. My apologies for talking philosophy at such length in this damnable heat.”

He bowed, and at the same time whispered a command in Arabic. The four Arabs threw themselves upon Rodgers. He caught one in the pit of the stomach with his foot, and sent him howling to the ground. His fist crashed into another’s jaw and the fellow dropped with a grunt. He then tackled the other two. They were sent spinning. With a laugh, he prepared to leap upon the military-clad Russian who seemed to be watching the struggle with mild amusement.

But at that same moment something caught Rodgers round the throat and brought him choking to the ground. He tore at it with his fingers, and found a silken cord biting deeper and deeper into the flesh. His brain reeled. In the mists of unconsciousness that swirled about him, he heard the mocking voice of Captain Vladimir Korolenko:

“My Chinese servants can always be depended upon, Mr. Rodgers. They fish, not only for bêche-de-mer, but also for men. And they draw their nets uncommonly tight, don’t they ?”

And so the Red Wolf of Arabia was dragged across the beach to the coral pen where a multitude of slaves awaited their fate....

AT SEVEN O’CLOCK, in the cool of the evening, Captain Vladimir Korolenko sat down at his dinner table. He was dressed as a civilized European—semi-military mess-jacket, stiff shirt, two miniature black pearls as studs, a black bow tie that emphasized the ironic cast of his features. His monocled eye glanced approvingly over the white napery of the table, the gleaming cutlery, and the iced cocktail that stood beside his napkin.

“Excellent, Li Chung! ” he murmured to the impassive Chinaman who stood beside the table. “Let us begin.”

He smacked his lips appreciatively over the cocktail, and surveyed the luxury of the little hut which had been specially built on this island of coral. A sizzling kerosene lamp blazed on its brilliance— on the Persian rug that smothered the floor, the Indian hangings, the fretted Arabian stools, and a long, low couch with cushions. And in the centre the European table, laden with good things, including a bottle of rare Chateau Margaux which even now the Russian was carefully pouring into his glass. A bookcase, tightly packed, flanked one side of the hut.

The Chinaman placed a small dish of what appeared to be dried bananas before the solitary diner.

“Bêche-de-mer, eh?” exclaimed Captain Korolenko. “What a pity one is never served with them at the best restaurants in Europe! And how horrified the waiter would be if you told him you had a passion for sun-dried sea-slugs.”

Li Chung, who understood but little of this meditation of a gourmet, did not change his blank expression.

The Russian ate with evident relish. A pilau, piled high with rice, followed. It encouraged the solitary diner to tip more of the Chateau Margaux into his glass and indulge in further meditations.

“A good job I didn’t sell this cook to some pot-bellied Egyptian. He’s the best slave I ever kept for myself. A Goanese. I really think he feeds me well because he hates me like the devil. And he hasn’t had the courage yet to smother my food with powdered glass. ‘Let me have fat men about me,’ said the Shakespearean Caesar who feared assassination. But as a Nietzchean, I say: ‘Let me have enemies about me, for then I am safe.’ Even you, you expressionless yellow devil who waits at my table, you would delight in the chance of initiating me to some exquisite torture learned in the byways of Canton! Your health, and long life to me, Li Chung!”

He raised his glass of wine to the impassive Oriental.

SLOWLY and deliberately the meal proceeded. Through the open window facing him came a breeze from the sea. He could hear the sigh of the surf as it lashed into foam against the coral reef.

“A great man, this Paul Rodgers, of the Red Sea,” he murmured to himself. “There is not room for two such men as Paul Rodgers and Vladimir Korolenko, in this region of the Red Sea. The greatest genius must survive, and he can survive only by crushing the other. It is well that my brain told me to wait. Sooner or later we had to meet. And now he is in my net, never to escape. This is indeed a night for celebration. Li Chung! Another bottle!”

With faintly blurred vision he watched the uncorking of the wine. The meal was ending. The cigarette-holder pointed toward heaven, and the incense of smoke curled happily toward the sizzling lamp. The Russian stirred.

“Send Syyed to me!” he ordered.

Noiselessly the Chinaman slipped away. A few moments later a squint-eyed Arab entered. He cringed like a whipped dog before its master.

“Syyed, I would play the Caliph tonight,” burbled Captain Korolenko in Arabic. “I noticed a tall coffee-coloured Abyssinian girl in that bunch we brought over from Suakin last night— a girl in a white chamma.”

“She is in the pen, master,” replied Syyed. There was a furtive grin on his face.

“Send her to me!” commanded the Russian, and with a wave of his hand dismissed the squint-eyed Arab.

A glass of wine in his hand, he walked over to a phonograph that stood in one corner of the hut. Above it, against a wall, hung a whip with a long lash. A slaver’s whip.

“The emblem of my trade!” he chuckled as his monocled eye glimpsed it.

With the deliberation of a semi-drunken man he selected a record, placed it on the disk, and switched on the mechanism. The needle blurred its way into the Roman Carnival Overture by Berlioz. The symphony orchestra fiddled madly to the crescendo of the fireworks music.

“Gay music— wine— women,” he burbled.

A shot rang out in the night. Then another. Bent in drunken ecstasy over the music, Captain Korolenko did not hear them. But he swayed round as Syyed, the squinting Arab, stumbled into the room. The man’s dirty brown hands were clasping his side, and his face twitched with pain.

“Master— the slaves!” he moaned.

“Well, where is the girl?” demanded the Russian.

“The slaves—they are loose,” cried the Arab in desperation. “That red-haired fiend whom you flung into the pen— he— he gathered the Africans together and attacked the guards. They have broken through the coral wall, have killed my men, and— and are now rushing toward this hut.”

A silence followed these gasped words. Instinctively Captain Korolenko straightened himself. His head jerked sidewise in a listening attitude. Then his face went pale as he heard that distant roar which was not the sea, a roar at the sound of which all men who have lived in coloured countries shiver: A mob looting and intent on murder. The slaves— free, and seeking vengeance.

“The dhows! Get to the dhows! ” cried the Russian.

The Arab groaned.

“Too late! They’re burning them! Look!”

He pointed to the window. One swift glance by the Russian was enough. He beheld a Dantesque scene, a blazing ship on the beach with naked black men dancing madly in the glow of the flames.

“Your men!” commanded the Russian.

“All dead— or dying— even as I die!” groaned Syyed.

He took his hands from his side and looked at them, stupidly. They were stained with his blood. He stood for a moment in the attitude of a dirty schoolboy told to go and wash himself.

“Allah O Akbar!” he muttered, and pitched dead to the floor.

Captain Korolenko cursed aloud. He walked quickly to the prostrate body and kicked it.

“Fool! You let a handful of niggers get the better of you!”

The roar of the freed slaves grew louder. He jerked himself into action.

Quickly he darted to the stool where his revolver lay gleaming in the unreal light of the kerosene lamp. As his fingers closed upon it the cool steel gave him a thrill of comfort.

“I’m afraid that won’t be much use,” a voice drawled from the window.

KOROLENKO turned with a gasp. Half-naked, Red Rodgers confronted him. He had climbed silently through the window and now stood against the phonograph which still churned its gay, carnival music by Berlioz.

“So!” murmured the Russian, drawing himself to his full height. The monocle gleamed evilly. “I might have known that we should have a final duel. Well, my friend, it is true that there is not room for both of us in these Red Sea regions, but by all the prophets of the Koran, you are the one to die! ”

And with cold deliberation he raised the revolver and fired.

But simultaneously he dropped the gun and his fingers clawed at his throat while a hoarse scream rent the air. A silken noose was biting into his flesh, and behind him the yellow face of Li Chung was bared to the teeth in a ghastly grin.

At the same time the symphony orchestra playing Berlioz went mad. It roared and snapped. The bullet had been jerked into the phonograph. Rodgers watched the Russian go on his knees. The monocle fell to the rug and rolled irresponsibly in a series of circles until it flopped into the blood of the dead Syyed. Korolenko’s eyes bulged; his face went purple.

“I don’t want him killed!” snapped Rodgers.

The Chinaman relaxed slightly. “All li’,” he muttered. “He belong to me.”

Another shot rang out in the darkness. The flames of the burning dhow flickered weirdly. Rodgers glanced through the window. A boat had sped, skilfully driven, through the surf and dark figures were landing on the beach. Bluejackets!

“Steady, men—steady!” yelled the voice of Lieutenant Rushworth.

“Keep him tied up! ” ordered Rodgers to the Chinaman.

“All li’,” replied Li Chung, and he grinned happily as Rodgers swung himself through the window again and sped along the beach.

The bluejackets were rounding up the slaves. They were managing to get some order out of this black chaos that spilled like a gigantic pool of ink over the white coral.

Paul Rodgers was shaking hands with Lieutenant Rushworth.

“Of course we didn’t entirely believe those blighters in the dhow when they came alongside the Daffodil,” explained the lieutenant, “but your note seemed genuine enough. The old man was in a bad temper, too, and inclined to let you go to the devil.”

“I’ll wager he was drinking port at dinner,” smiled Rodgers.

“How did you guess?” asked the lieutenant.

“Just a touch of omniscience.”

“Anyhow, he let me take a launch and one of your black fellows, and we came through the reef and landed here. Just in time, apparently. What’s the celebration?”

“Freedom,” replied Rodgers. “This is a slave island, a sort of halfway house between Africa and Asia. These poor devils are the slaves. They battered to death the Arabs who guarded them.”

“And who’s the boss of this island?” asked the lieutenant.

“I’m going to introduce you to the gentleman,” grinned Rodgers. “He’s a Russian, full of philosophy and good wine. And he calls himself—”

He stopped, and stared at a flame that shot up in the darkness. The lieutenant turned and stared in the same direction.

“Gosh! That hut is ablaze. Petty Oficier!”

“Yes, sir! ”

A man jerked to his side, and saluted. But while the lieutenant was giving orders to the bluejackets, Rodgers was racing back to the hut. It was well ablaze when he reached it.

The dining-table was a chaos. A bottle of Chateau Margaux had rolled on its side and dribbled wine to the floor where it mixed with the blood of the dead Arab. Of the Chinaman and Captain Vladimir Korolenko there was no sign. Only one other object was missing from the room. It was the heavy slave whip that had hung above the phonograph.

A MOMENT later, the bluejackets were vainly attempting to quench the flames. There was nothing on that bare coral reef to aid them, however, and they had to stand looking on, helplessly. “Beg pardon, sir!”

A bluejacket was saluting at Lieutenant Rushworth’s side.

“Yes?”

“One of them dhows, sir, has just set out to sea!”

“What!”

Rodgers and the lieutenant swung round and gazed toward the white curl of surf. A dhow, the Dhow that Sailed to Nowhere, was leaping toward the darkness.

“Who the devil is it?” asked the Lieutenant.

Rodgers had seized his binoculars and was focusing them on the dhow. He was able to discern a strange figure at the tiller. It was not the hook-nosed Arab in the blood-red turban. He was lying on the beach, his head battered with coral, lolling drunkenly in the surf. The man at the tiller was Li Chung, and he grinned at a bound figure— a man in European dress who lay before him. And Li Chung held something else in his hand besides the tiller. It was the slave whip. Occasionally he lashed playfully at the trussed Russian. Rodgers swung his binoculars to another figure, clambering the mast and unfurling the crazy sail. A Goanese; Captain Vladimir Korolenko was in their hands.

A little shiver passed through Rodgers. “Just a trio. They’ve escaped!” he muttered.

“There’s still one dhow left,” said the lieutenant. “I’ll use that to take the slaves back to the Daffodil. A good night’s work, eh?”

SOME hours later, Paul Rodgers stood once again on the deck of H. M. Sloop Daffodil. He was in Captain Dagenham’s own cabin, and “the old man” was regarding him dubiously.

“Is this your usual costume, Rodgers, for adventuring in these waters?” he asked.

He noticed, rather petulantly, that the half-naked body was dripping water on his best carpet.

“I find it— er— the most convenient for my purpose,” murmured Rodgers.

“I see.” Captain Dagenham shuffled. “Er— have a drink, will you?”

“Thanks, but I’d rather not. I just stepped aboard to thank you for your excellent co-operation. Now I’ll get back to my dhow.”

“D’ye mean to say that you’re going to sail that crazy thing back to Suakin?” exclaimed the Captain.

Rodgers nodded, a smile on his face. “My crew expect me,” he replied simply. “They’re fine fellows, you know.” He held out his hand. “Well, good-by, sir, and thank you.”

Captain Dagenham took his hand. Five minutes later, the officers and men of H. M. Sloop Daffodil watched that lithe figure with the flaming crop of red hair take its place at the tiller of the dhow Sahalla. The searchlight glared on the craft.

Rodgers snapped an order. The three Sudanese scrambled at the mast. Like a gigantic bat, the sail squealed upward.

“Alù Allah! Alù Allah! The sails, O Allah!” chanted the crew.

A wave of the hand, a cheer from the bluejackets, and the dhow glided out of the shaft of the searchlight....

ONE NIGHT, a year later, squatting in a circle of coffee-drinkers around the fire of the Brethren of the Black Tents, the Bedouins of the desert, Rodgers heard of a Russian, blind and crippled, who had been sold amidst laughter for five pounds in the Suk el 'Abid at Mecca.

He sipped his coffee thoughtfully.

________________

8: Miracle in the Desert

Blue Book Feb 1933

"A DISGUSTING business,” shivered Eustace Adam. Stretched before them was the body of an Arab girl. She had been strangled.

Paul Rodgers— a roving Intelligence officer known to the natives as the Red Wolf of Arabia— agreed.  A black scarf was twisted tightly round her neck. And a few yards away lay the body of a white man. He had been strangled in similar fashion.

“And queer,” he added.

They stood in a room in a little wooden house in Jidda and stared at the floor.

“A disgusting business,” repeated Eustace Adam, who in his capacity as political resident at Jidda for the ruling sheik, had been called to this house by a khaki-clad Arab policeman.

But whereas Eustace Adam stared with the fixity of horror, the gray eyes of Red Rodgers narrowed with thought.

“Who was he?” asked Rodgers, indicating the prone body of the white man.

“An Italian— a shipping clerk,” jerked out Adam. “Bought coffee and skins, as an agent. Had him to dinner once. Not a bad young fellow. Only he greased his hair and created an aurora of perfume about himself. Still, one needs perfume in Jidda.”

“And the woman?”

Rodgers’ gaze had travelled toward the other body. Most Arab women are born to but a year’s beauty— one Cinderella year of grace, and then they are changed into bent crones. He could see, despite the agony of the features, that this Arab girl had been in the full flush of beauty.

“Who can say?” Eustace Adam was saying with a shrug of his shoulders. “It is obvious that she lived here, with her Italian lover—”

He indicated several gorgeous yellow silk petticoats, a medley of silk stockings, and five pairs of high-heel shoes. “For an Arab girl, she had decidedly civilized tastes,” he added.

Paul Rodgers stroked the back of his flaming red head with a thoughtful gesture.

“Yes; and perhaps that was the cause of her death,” he murmured.

“You think that the girl’s beauty—”  began Adam.

Rodgers nodded.

“It is unwise for an Arab girl to give

herself to a white man—in Arabia,” he said. “And this girl belongs to the Koreysh nomads. Look!”

With a sudden movement he twisted the limp arm so that Adam glimpsed a queer Arabic sign tattooed in the flesh.

“So it is purely a crime of vengeance, eh ?” said Adam, turning away from that sight. “Her brothers came in the night, strangled both, and so wiped out the insult to their blood.”

“Such is the law of the desert,” mused Rodgers.

He walked slowly across the little room and took hold of one of the silk stockings that were dangling limply from a cord stretched across a corner. His fingers smoothed the sheeny surface.

“Beautiful, desirable silk stockings,” he murmured half to himself. “No wonder women adore them! No wonder this Arab girl ran away from the tents of the desert in order to possess them, together with her Italian lover. Beautiful indeed, and yet— sinister. They might easily have been used to strangle these lovers.” He walked back and examined the black scarf twisted round the girl’s neck. “Why should the thugs of the desert prefer these two strips of black cloth?”

“There’s something funereal in the colour,” shivered Adam. “Isn’t there a black silk stocking in that collection dangling against the wall?”

“Not a single black one,” replied Rodgers. “All bright pink or flesh-coloured, my dear Eustace. The dream stockings of every native woman east of Suez.”

The political resident shrugged his shoulders.

“Well, what does it matter?” he said. “The poor devils are dead, and I expect half the Italian colony across the Red Sea will be yelling for justice within the next twenty-four hours.”

He went to the door of the room, leaned over the rickety staircase and called out in Arabic. A few moments later the khaki-clad policeman stood beside him. Instructions were given, and with a sigh of relief Eustace Adam walked to the door.

“Coming, Rodgers?” he called out.

“Er—of course,” replied Red Rodgers absently.

"SANTA DIAVOLONE! I expect  something to be done,” spluttered the perspiring Italian.

Francesco Grazzini, patriotically clad in a black shirt in defiance of the devastating heat, argued before Eustace Adam. The political resident, seated at his desk, lit a cigarette in despair. In the shadows of the big room that constituted an office, Red Rodgers loafed listlessly.

“What is there that can be done, my dear Grazzini ?” asked Eustace Adam.

The Italian snorted.

“My brilliant young assistant, dear Giovanni Bottari, has been murdered. A young man on the verge of a great career, strangled by some cursed Arabs! And you ask me what can be done. Santa diavolone! I want justice.”

Adam blew a little cloud of cigarette smoke into the air.

“No man demands justice in vain in the country of the Hedjaz, my dear Grazzini,” he replied. “Justice is for every man, as our ruling sheik has said, be he European or Arab.”

“Then why not—” began the Italian.

The political resident raised his hand.

“Justice can be exercised by every man,” he went on calmly. “It is his right. The law is clear. ‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.’ In the Hedjaz, a blood feud is permitted. It is easy enough to discover the Arabs who murdered your assistant. You need to look no further than the relatives of the Arab girl who was strangled with her lover. Let the relatives or friends of the murdered Giovanni ride into the desert and attack the Koreysh nomads. They are probably expecting such a duel. It is the law of Arabia.”

Again the Italian snorted.

“Do you expect me to ride into the desert, with a rifle under my arm, in order to find the Arab who killed Giovanni?”

“Such is the custom of the Hedjaz,” remarked Eustace Adam.

“And if I do not?”

“Then it would seem that you are not so anxious for justice, and the blood feud will end.”

The Italian perspired more freely than ever.

“My poor Giovanni! ” he cried. “Why did you go among those cursed desert nomads to buy skins? And because you pluck a desert flower, death is upon you. Signori—” He turned in a blaze of fury upon the political resident. “It is incredible, unbelievable, that murder should be done against one of the Blackshirts, and that the murderer should escape our vengeance. Il Duce himself shall be informed, and—”

“But he did not wear a black shirt,” drawled a voice from the shadows.

With a twist of his ungainly body, the Italian faced the voice. It came from Paul Rodgers. The sunburnt face and gray eyes had assumed a mask of indifference.

“Giovanni Bottari was one of the leaders of the Fascisti,” spluttered the Italian proudly. “In our colony of Eritrea, he had organized and drilled the Black Shirts. Such a murder would not go unpunished on our side of the Red Sea.”

“And yet, I repeat, he never wore a black shirt,” drawled Paul Rodger.

“Santa diavolone! But how do you know ?”

“Because I searched the room and his wardrobe,” said Rodgers. “Neither Giovanni nor the Arab girl who died with him had a single black garment between them. And yet a black scarf strangled each. Queer, isn’t it?”

Eustace Adam flung away his cigarette impatiently.

“I see nothing queer in it. After all, why should anyone wear black in this damned climate?”

“The Fascisti, signor, are proud to wear black,” said the Italian, mopping his swarthy face with a black handkerchief.

“Exactly,” murmured Rodgers. “And yet young Giovanni, the leader of the  Fascisti, would not wear a black shirt in Jidda.”

The Italian regarded Rodgers thoughtfully.

“It is true, what you say, signor,” he admitted with a sigh. “From the moment that Giovanni returned from trading with those Arab nomads, he sent all his black shirts back to Eritrea. I asked him only three days ago why he had done this. He shuddered, and said something about it not being wise to wear black in Jidda. Faithful Fascist though he was, he would not have black colours anywhere in his house. He tried even to persuade me to discard my black shirt. He seemed to have developed a fear of anything black. ‘Black,’ he said, ‘is the colour of death.’ ”

“And with a strip of black cloth he was strangled,” mused Rodgers.

He leaned forth from the shadows, his keen face alert. The gray eyes searched the doorway. An Arab, garbed in a black mantle, had entered as silently as a cat. He ignored the Italian but bowed low before Eustace Adam. In his strong brown paw he presented a document scrawled fantastically in Arabic. The political resident seemed to welcome this intrusion upon a painful interview.

“Have you gathered your men together, Bedr Basim ?” he asked.

The Arab in the black mantle nodded.

“They are ready, master, to march into the desert tonight.”

“How many?”

“Two hundred.”

“Good.”

Eustace Adam took the document, glanced idly at it, and then scrawled his signature in Arabic at the foot.

“That will pass you safely through the tribes to the diggings,” he said.

“Thank you, master. May Allah protect you! ”

“And you, Bedr Basim.”

A swift genuflexion, and the Arab in the black mantle sidled out of the room in the same stealthy fashion that he had entered.

IN the short silence that followed, Eustace Adam took the opportunity of lighting another cigarette.

“I am afraid, my dear Grazzini, that I cannot do anything more,” he said. “If a European enters upon an amour with an Arab girl, he must accept the consequences. Such is the law of the Hedjaz.”

Francesco Grazzini bowed his head.

“I understand, signor,” he replied. “I thank you for this interview. But I return to Italian soil profoundly dissatisfied. Good day.”

And tilting a big black hat over his perspiring head, he marched out into the sunshine.

Paul Rodgers regarded his departure thoughtfully.

“I feel sorry for him,” he murmured.

“So do I,” admitted Eustace Adam. “But this is Arab country, and Arab law prevails.... And now I must report to my master the sheik.”

His hand reached forth and drew a telephone toward him. A moment’s pause; and then:

“Give me Mecca— One,” he demanded in Arabic.

At the same time he turned a smiling face to the slim sunburnt figure at his side.

“Such is the holy Hedjaz of today,” he murmured. “I can telephone to the

Sheik in Mecca, talk to him, and hear the gossip of the holiest of all cities. The city that Burton and other Christians visited with their lives in their hands, is nowadays as easy of telephone access as, shall we say, Hampstead.”

“Easier, I am certain,” murmured Rodgers.

“Over this telephone,” went on Eustace Adam, “Lawrence of Arabia first spoke to Sheik Hussein and arranged for that great upheaval that led to the freedom of Arabia from the Turk. Over this same telephone went curt orders to Hussein to abdicate his throne. It was the end of his regime. And now—”

“Now you are going to tell the story of a sordid murder of an Italian and the Arab girl who loved him, eh?”

There was irony in the voice of Rodgers; but it was lost, for Eustace Adam was already speaking to the Sheik. The long rhetorical roll of Arabic continued, while Rodgers paced the office with the restless padding of a caged panther.

At length Adam put back the telephone.

“So much for Mecca I” he concluded.

“Have you ever ventured into the holy city?” asked Rodgers.

Eustace Adam shook his head and smiled.

“No, and I really have no desire to join that band of Christian pilgrims who have entered the city. I know enough of Mecca to realize that it is dirty, diseased, and no doubt dismally unattractive. If one must be a pilgrim, why not Moscow? Isn’t it more important nowadays than Mecca?”

“So they say,” mused Rodgers. “But one day I shall enter Mecca again. I want to see the Holy Kaaba, the black stone that has been kissed by the millions. Yes, scoff if you will, my dear Eustace, but there is a fine spirit among those Mohammedan multitudes.”

“I believe you’re half a Mohammedan already!” smiled the political resident.

“I believe I am,” murmured Rodgers.

“And if you reach Mecca,” continued

Eustace Adam, “do not forget that punctually at eleven every morning the telephone rings in the palace. It is I, speaking to Mecca.”

“I shall not forget. Maybe some day I shall answer that telephone! ”

“If you do, I shall know that you are doomed never to leave Mecca alive.... And now, my dear Paul, what about strolling back to my house and playing the piano?”

“You like my playing?” asked Rodgers.... “By the way, what did that Arab in the black mantle want?”

“You mean Bedr Basim ?”

Rodgers nodded.

“He’s taking two hundred men to the diggings. I signed the laissez-passer.”

“Sol gathered. But what diggings?”

“Haven’t you heard? There’s an archaeologist fellow in the desert who has discovered the tomb of the Caliph Mohammad Mahdi. He’s clearing away the sand, and has asked me for more workers. Bedr Basim is taking them away tonight.”

“Interesting. The tomb of a caliph, eh?” Rodgers stood in the doorway, musing. “And who is this energetic archaeologist?”

“He is a Syrian. For the moment I forget his name. Selim, I believe.”

Rodgers laughed. “A Syrian archaeologist, eh?”

And they did not speak again until they had reached the crazy Arab palace in which Eustace Adam lived.

IT was while his fingers strayed idly over the keys of the piano in a Debussy fantasy that the mind of Paul Rodgers conned the events of the day. Music always stimulated his mental powers. He was apt to argue that music was a pure science, developed even beyond the abstruse realm of mathematics. That is why he was often contemptuous of romantic melodies. “No good music was ever composed by the heart,” he declared. “Tin Pan Alley is the place for such musicians. There, hearts are worn on sleeves, and ‘red-hot mammas’ dance like dervishes at the sight.”

Now, in the yellow lamplight of the Arab palace, his face was as set as an ivory image, the eyes lost in thought. And the visions that Rodgers conjured in his mind were of a strange medley, mixed and irrational: a page of prose by James Joyce; a woman and a man strangled by black scarfs; a Black Shirt without a black shirt. Then the sunshiny streets of Jidda— with isolated groups clad in the black burnous. The Fascist jingoism of Francesco Grazzini. Perspiring perplexity. Two hundred men going to the diggings. A Syrian archaeologist. And once again— black— black— black. A black burnous!

‘“A tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing,’” quoted Rodgers, smoothing the piano keys into silence.

“I thought it sounded jolly good,” said Eustace Adam.

“Have you ever read ‘The Arabian Nights?”’ asked Rodgers, swinging round in his chair.

Eustace Adam nodded. “I spent three weeks, when I was up at Oxford, reading Burton’s translation.”

“One of the vices of Edwardian undergraduates,” smiled Rodgers. “Seriously, though, I would argue that all administrators, proconsuls, viceroys and the gilded intelligentsia who are sent out from Britain to do a job of work east of Suez should make ‘The Arabian Nights’ their Bible.”

“I agree,” nodded Eustace Adam.

“It is the greatest revelation of the Oriental mind ever compiled,” went on Rodgers. “But there is one story that even the versatile Scheherazade forgot.”

“And that is ?”

“The story of the Caliph Mohammad Mahdi.”

“The man whose tomb has just been discovered?”

Rodgers nodded.

“Wasn’t he the caliph who ruled Bagdad before Haroun al Raschid?” asked the political resident.

AGAIN Rodgers nodded. “The rule of Mohammad Mahdi, like that of most caliphs, was one of blood and tyranny. The worst tortures of the Inquisition pale into insignificance compared with the subtle punishments devised by those who were descendants of the Holy Prophet.

“Many men hated the Caliph. Like all tyrants, he had enemies. But they were scattered. They lurked in single spies among the beggars of Bagdad. Until, one day, a usurper arose. He called upon the faithful to overthrow the tyrant. He lurked in the byways of Bagdad, whispered his creed, was acclaimed, and soon gathered about him a strange army. It was a gospel preached in the gutter, and it was a gutter crowd that surrounded the usurper. They shouted their song of revolt in the cellars of Bagdad. You remember Flecker:

Cracked of lip and gapped of tooth,

Apoplectic, maim or mad,

Blind of one eye, blind of both,

Up, the beggars of Bagdad.

“I think that trifle by Debussy that you were playing is more exhilarating,” broke in Eustace Adam, blowing the smoke of his cigarette into spirals.

“A strange man, this usurper,” went on Rodgers quietly. “Alive, no one ever saw his face. Always he appeared before his followers wearing a mask and a black mantle. A black mantle! Strange, eh ?”

“And his name?”

“No one ever knew. Throughout Arabia he was called the Veiled One .”

“Rather smacks of Lyceum melodrama,” murmured the political resident. He was beginning to be a little impatient of this strange vagrant of the Red Sea, Paul Rodgers, mystery man, an enigma even to his friends.

“But the Caliph was no fool,” went on that quiet voice. “His spies heard whispers in the bazaar, and those whispers reached the Caliph. He determined to strike at once. A raid was made upon the byways of Bagdad. At all costs the Veiled One must be found and killed. But the usurper escaped into the desert. The Caliph’s men returned with blood-stained swords, but the chief culprit was still alive.

“An army of men on fast racing-camels set out the next day. They raced the sun in a desperate chase after the Veiled One. And at last, after some days, they ran him down. He was still wearing his mask and black burnous. As he saw the Caliph’s men advancing over the wastes of sand, he visualized the seven merciless torments that would rack his body if he were taken alive back to Bagdad. He did not hesitate. His dagger gleamed in the sunshine, and with his own hand he killed himself. His blood was staining the sand as the Caliph’s men raced up. They cut off his head, still with the mask over the face, and carried it back to Bagdad.”

“A story worthy of the ‘Arabian Nights,’ ” said the political resident.

“It is written in the history of the caliphs,” observed Rodgers. “A book, my dear Eustace, much more sanguinary than Fox’s ‘Book of Martyrs.’ ”

“So I should imagine,” growled the other, clapping his hands in command. An Arab servant made his appearance with a little tray of drinks. Rodgers took the lime and gin that was offered him.

“But the story is not yet finished,” went on Paul Rodgers.

“When the head was brought before the Caliph, he laughed at it. A head with a mask! Even his soldiers had not dared to tear it away. But the descendant of the Holy Prophet had no such qualms. He reached out a firm brown hand and tore that strip of black stuff away. And the eyes of the dead man and the live man stared into each other.

“A terrible silence had descended upon the palace. Slowly the Caliph rose. He still stared into those awful eyes set in the sun-withered head. Then he tore the silence with a scream. He yelled his horror, his disgust, his madness. And he leaned over toward the head and spat at it, between the eyes. After which, laughing loudly, he staggered away. The head seemed to watch this madness with a calm gravity.”

“What happened to the head?” asked Eustace Adam.

“Some one threw it out of a cart at night into the byways of Bagdad. It rolled into the gutter— and disappeared. But the Caliph Mohammad Mahdi declared that the head still lived, that it haunted him in his palace. He could not escape it. He locked himself into rooms. That sun-withered head with the staring eyes followed him everywhere. He awoke in the night, sweating with fear, to find the grisly thing watching him with calm gravity. Even in the arms of houris he could not forget it. Once, as the pomegranate lips of a Persian girl were raised toward him, he found himself kissing the bloodless sun-withered thing that had once been the usurper. He seized the sword of one of his guards, and slashed madly at it. The Persian girl was hewn to the ground.

“The end came soon. The gibbering, tortured man who called himself Caliph and descended from the Holy Prophet, died. He had asked that his tomb might be built secretly, far away from Bagdad and in the heart of the Arabian desert. He had the fear that the cursed head would haunt him even in death. And that fear proved true. For when the burial party entered the secret tomb in the desert, carrying the body of the great Caliph, they saw with horror that the tomb was already occupied. Lying in a corner was a headless skeleton. Not one of those men was brave enough to disturb the bones. Terror-stricken, they thrust the body of the Caliph into its appointed place, sealed the tomb, and decamped to Bagdad. Time and the sands did the rest. In five years the tomb was lost. And no one ever saw the sun-withered head of the usurper again. But the Arabs believe that it is still haunting the Caliph in the awful loneliness of that lost tomb in the desert.”

A short silence followed the telling of the story by Rodgers.

“And that is the tomb which is now found again, eh?” asked Eustace Adam.

“So it is claimed,” murmured Rodgers. “By a Syrian, didn’t you say?”

Eustace nodded. “Why don’t you visit the diggings, my dear Paul?” he asked.

Rodgers rose slowly from his chair. “Maybe I will,” he said, quietly.

HALF an hour later there was a transformation. Clad in a black burnous and looking the real Hedjaz Arab to the life, Paul Rodgers stalked through the sunshine of the streets of Jidda.

He carried himself proudly. Solemn Arab children at play skipped away at his approach. A leper, whose one arm seemed always outstretched for alms, raised it in reverent salute at the passing of the slim figure in the black burnous. Three men emerging from a mosque, hand in hand in Arab fashion, bowed deeply as he went by.

“There is a mystery in this black mantle,” mused Rodgers, gazing down at the dyed stuff that enfolded him. “Maybe it shrouds the reasons for the murder of a black-shirt Italian and an Arab girl.”

With an air he sat himself in the dusty and fly-blown atmosphere of a coffee-house. Many Arabs were there, talking of religion or politics with a fervour that was reminiscent of the coffee-houses of Eighteenth Century Europe. But one subject the Arabs did not discuss— woman. This subject was as scrupulously ignored as it would be in the mosque.

The cynosure of many eyes, Rodgers sipped his perfumed coffee and waited. Something might happen.... Something did happen: a shadow crossed his table. He looked up. Standing at his side was a replica of himself, a proud-bearing Arab in a black burnous.

“Allah is great,” murmured the standing figure.

“Allah is all-powerful,” mechanically repeated Rodgers.

“You are one of us, brother?”

“I entered Jidda only this afternoon,” replied Rodgers. “But as you see,”—and he smoothed the black burnous that clothed him,—“I am one of the black mantles.”

The aloofness of the other disappeared. He sank into a chair at the same table.

“By the Prophet,” he murmured, “but you have come to Jidda at the right moment. This evening there is a meeting of the faithful at the house of Bedr Basim.”

“I had heard of it,” said Rodgers.

“They say that the Veiled One has appeared and is calling upon the faithful to begin the holy war against those who desecrate the tombs of Mecca.”

“Speak softly, brother,” urged Rodgers, entering blithely into this atmosphere of conspiracy.

The other glanced round nervously, then laughed.

“Nearly all in Jidda are with us,” he remarked. “Have you not heard that two hundred men are marching into the desert tonight ? They are to be provided with camels and rifles, and will meet the Veiled One at the ‘diggings.’ ”

Rodgers turned his head cautiously. Then he leaned across the table to the other.

“Who is the Veiled One?” he asked quietly.

The Arab in the black mantle drew in his breath sharply. His eyes glinted suspiciously.

“It is not like one of the brothers to dare such a question,” he murmured.

Red Rodgers drained his little cup of coffee. He licked his lips appreciatively, and said:

“I give all for the cause. The fame of the Veiled One is whispered throughout the desert. By Allah, I believe in him. But my eyes have not seen him. Perchance, brother, you have been more fortunate ?”

The other’s suspicions were lulled.

“Nay, I have not set eyes on the Veiled One. His face hides behind a black mask. And he has assumed the holy garment of the black mantle. But those hundreds already gathered on the ‘diggings’ saw the miracle as it happened in the fierce sunshine of day. He walked forth from the tomb of Mohammad Mahdi, and called the faithful to prepare for the liberation of the Holy Kaaba at Mecca. A miracle in the desert, brother.”

“A miracle indeed.”

“And a great cause. One worthy of sharp swords and merciless men. It is the Veiled One who will lead the black mantles to the attack on Mecca.”

“And he stepped forth from the tomb of Mohammad Mahdi,” mused Rodgers. The tall Arab rose.

“But we waste time, brother, in talk. We should be on our way to the house of Bedr Basim. Shall we go together?”

A strong brown finger entwined itself in his own. It was an Arab command. Without hesitation Rodgers also rose. He flung a coin on the table.

“We go together, brother,” he murmured ; and hand in hand the two wandered away from the coffee-house.

THE swift darkness of the desert had already stretched over Jidda as Red Rodgers and the tall Arab entered a narrow, reeking street that was less than two hundred yards away from that palace where Eustace Adam, the political officer, was lying nude and comfortable in a tepid bath.

As Rodgers stumbled into the darkness of this living drain, he was aware that formless shadows were crowding upon him. Some one brushed against him. Then he realized that he was surrounded by men in black mantles. They came in twos and threes, hand in hand, slinking silently as rats. And like rats they nosed for the hole in the wall into which they disappeared. The strong hand of his companion guided Red Rodgers toward that same hole in the wall. Wrapping his black burnous about him, he plunged forward. He was in the house of Bedr Basim.

A few minutes later, as he squatted in a huge room among other Arabs, he glanced round stealthily from the cover of his black hood. It was a low, white-walled chamber lit brilliantly by forty candles. The candles burned steadily in an atmosphere like an oven. And crouched in a semicircle were some forty Arabs all garbed in black mantles. Like a nightmare vision, thought the Intelligence officer as he craned forward. Forty candles dribbling white wax, forty Arabian black mantles; and— his gray eyes widened in astonishment— a gorgeous white carpet six feet square, in the centre of which rested a blood-red pomegranate.

Not one of those black-mantled figures encroached upon the silky white surface of the carpet. And the blood-red pomegranate lay in the centre as though some playful child had thrown it there. Nevertheless all eyes were fixed on that pomegranate.

Suddenly, through the brilliant haze of the forty burning candles, stepped a figure in a black mantle. There was a masterful arrogance in his pose. It was a few seconds before Rodgers realized that this was the cringing figure who a few hours previously had entered the office of Eustace Adam and received a signed laissez-passer for two hundred men to proceed to the diggings. It was Bedr Basim.

Bedr Basim held aloft a brown paw.

“Peace be upon you!” he cried.

“And upon you be peace and the mercy of God and His blessings,” rejoined the forty black mantles.

Bedr Basim seated himself with the air of a sheik on a pile of cushions facing the white carpet and the semicircle of Arabs in black mantles. His eyes ranged slowly over the faces of those forty men. Rodgers waited. For an instant the eyes rested upon him. He seemed to lose himself in their black depths for an interminable period. Then they seemed to narrow in suspicion. The next moment they passed on. Rodgers’ moist hand loosened its hold upon the revolver that he carried beneath his black burnous.

Apparently satisfied, Bedr Basim threw back his head.

“O Allah, bless our great cause!” he chanted.

“And sharpen our swords against the infidels,” growled the black mantles.

“O Allah, send us victory! ” chanted Bedr Basim, his eyes glittering ecstatically.

“And may the blood of unbelievers run in the streets of Mecca I ” responded the black mantles.

“Allah is great.”

“Allah is all-powerful.”

A short silence followed. In that hot, sweaty atmosphere, the forty wax candles guttered fantastically. And together with Bedr Basim forty hooded heads were bowed....

Bedr Basim raised his head. Throwing back the hood of his burnous, he revealed the glittering eyes and sloping brow of the religious fanatic. His words tumbled forth in hot excitement.

“The time has come, brothers, when we must draw our swords for the cause. The Veiled One”—and here the black mantles bowed their heads—“awaits his army of true believers. Nearly a thousand men are gathered at the tomb of Mohammad Mahdi. They are ready to fight for the true Caliph, the Veiled One, who will purge Mecca and the holy places of idolaters and infidels. Two hundred men leave Jidda tonight. This is the last caravan. Once it arrives at the ‘diggings,’ the advance begins. In two hours, my brothers, we leave. Are you, the black mantles, ready for the journey ?”

“By Allah, we are ready!” growled the forty voices.

“Our swords are sharp, our daggers are keen,” shouted one Arab.

Bedr Basim flashed a scornful glance in his direction.

“There are rifles, aye, and machine- guns, hidden away at the tomb of Mohammad Mahdi,” he said. “They kill the infidels quicker than swords.”

“By Allah, we shall be victorious,” growled the black mantles.

Again Bedr Basim raised his brown paw. Silence smothered the room. Then the hand descended, and a figure pointed to the blood-red pomegranate in the centre of that white carpet.

“Behold! The holy city—Mecca! ”

His finger pointed to the pomegranate.

“And behold, the surrounding country, the Hedjaz!”

Both hands indicated the white carpet.

“The problem is before you, brothers of the black mantle,” he went on. “How to take the pomegranate, without stepping on the carpet ? He who solves the problem shall have the blessing of the Veiled One himself! ”

An awed silence followed these words. Once again forty pairs of eyes levelled themselves at the solitary pomegranate. Whispers began to mix with the smoke of the candles.

"Is there no one among you with wits above a camel?” asked Besdr Basim.

One Arab in a black mantle stepped forth. He stood on the edge of the silky white Carpet and considered the pomegranate.

“Our prize—the holy city,” encouraged Bedr Basim.

The Arab threw himself to the ground at the edge of the carpet. Then he stretched forth a lean brown arm above the white surface. He extended his fingers. But the blood-red pomegranate was out of his reach.

Undeterred, he rose to his feet and tried from another edge of the carpet. But still the pomegranate was far from his reach, and he dared not go closer to that spotless white carpet.

“Mecca is all that we want,” murmured Bedr Basim, regarding the reaching figure gravely.

The Arab gave it up. Another stepped forth. He also was appalled at that white silky surface. The whispers had now become a gabble. Then the gabble died like sand silting after a storm. Red Rodgers in his black mantle stood before the arrogant Bedr Basim.

“The problem is simple, brother!”

“So?”

There was an ironic gleam in the black glittering eyes now fixed upon Paul Rodgers. But with an innate, superb artistry, the Red Wolf of Arabia felt sure of himself. In the glittering light of those forty candles he knew that his Arab disguise was safe. For he instinctively thought and acted as an Arab.

“Mecca and the Holy Kaaba,” said he, pointing a brown finger at the pomegranate, “awaits the Veiled One. That is so, eh?”

“It is so.”

“Then the problem is easily solved.” He knelt at the edge of the white carpet. He inserted his hands beneath the white silky surface and slowly began to roll the carpet toward the pomegranate. As he went forward inch by inch, the black mantles watched him. Finally he reached the pomegranate.

“Take the villages surrounding the holy djer,” said Red Rodgers, “and Mecca falls into your hands.”

And he lifted the pomegranate with his palm toward Bedr Basim.

“By Allah, you have solved the problem,” cried the squatting figure on the cushions.

He took the pomegranate in his powerful brown hands and squeezed it. The blood-red juice dripped on to the white carpet.

“The problem is solved,” cried the forty black mantles.

Bedr Basim turned his searching black eyes upon the kneeling figure.

“Who are you, brother ?”

“I come from the desert,” replied Red Rodgers simply.

“But you have the brain of a leader.”

“One learns cunning in the desert,” was the murmured reply.

“And tonight you join the last caravan, eh?”

“The last caravan!”

Unconsciously Red Rodgers repeated the phrase. There was something sinister in it. The last caravan! His first impulse was to escape from the white-walled room with its forty candles and forty black-mantled figures. He would return to the Arab palace of Eustace Adam and tell him of a great conspiracy that was stirring in the desert. But—

“Melodrama, my dear fellow! I don’t believe a word of it.”

He could hear the sneering words of the political officer, and see the delicate white hand stretching out for another cigarette.... Once again it would be necessary for the Red Wolf of Arabia to play a lone hand. But it was one man against a thousand fanatics.

“I go with the last caravan, tonight.” he murmured.

A shout went up in that room. One by one the candles were guttering in a waste of wax. The light grew dim. Paul Rodgers felt a hand close like a steel trap about his own. He looked up. Bedr Basim was smiling down upon him.

“You will keep at my side, brother of the desert. There will be great need of your cunning brain.”

But in those twitching eyes there was still the gleam of suspicion.

A STRANGE caravan was that last caravan. Two hundred men, a medley of camels dripping saliva and moaning as beasts damned to eternal burdens, with strange bundles bound against their mangy sides—the whole scene lit by smoking torches, and worthy of Doré.

In that darkness the black mantles had disappeared. They were replaced by the white garb of men who journey across the desert. The two hundred looked more like a gang of slaves, with their bowed backs, pock-marked faces, and scanty garb stained with sweat. A bundle of digging tools was prominently displayed.

Bedr Basim surveyed the strange rabble from his riding seat on a camel.

“Rats from the cellars of Jidda!” he muttered contemptuously. “Let us hope that they will nose their way through the sand to the cellars of Mecca.”

“It is as Allah wills,” murmured a voice at the side of his camel.

Bedr Basim looked down. The newcomer, he who had solved the problem of the pomegranate on the white carpet, stood there. And he also was in the white garb of the pilgrim.

“Insha’allah!” Bedr Basim shrugged his shoulders. “The Holy Kaaba will be cleansed by a little blood-spilling.”

It was nearly midnight. Seated in an automobile was another observer of this scene—Eustace Adam. Piqued by the non-appearance of Paul Rodgers at a very excellent dinner his cook had prepared, the political resident was too well acquainted with the stories told about Red Rodgers to worry unduly about his disappearance.

“Don’t forget to telephone daily to Mecca,” a voice whispered in English in his ear.

Startled, Eustace Adam swivelled his head in the direction of that voice. But except for an Arab in a not-too-clean white burnous, nobody was there....

A guttural command from Bedr Basim. The crack of a whip in the darkness. The moaning and slobbering into one fiendish symphony of a hundred camels rising out of the sand. Answering shouts from the men. A smoking trail of torches. The last caravan was beginning to march.

THIS, my master, is the man.”

Red Rodgers threw back his shoulders and gazed boldly at the man who regarded him narrowly. He stood before Selim, the Syrian archaeologist. And Bedr Basim, resplendent in a black mantle, was at his side.

They stood outside a tent in the desert— a black tent, such as the Bedouin pitches in the wastes of sand. Selim the Syrian was dressed in European fashion, open-necked white shirt, khaki breeches and polished yellow riding-boots. He toyed negligently with a riding-whip, and puffed a perfumed cigarette.

From beneath long eyelashes he regarded this slim Arab who stood before him.

“You have strange eyes,” remarked Selim the Syrian quietly.

Red Rodgers did not flinch.

“They are as Allah and my mother bestowed upon me,” he replied.

“So?”

The steady regard of those gray eyes seemed to irritate the Syrian.

“There is the cunning of a jinni in his head,” broke in Bedr Basim.

There was the crack of a whip, and Bedr Basim staggered back. Selim had lashed out at him.

“Be quiet, dog!” ordered the Syrian. Whimpering with pain, Bedr Basim crouched at his feet. Ignoring his presence, the Syrian turned to Rodgers.

“What is your name?”

“I am called ‘the Fighter.’ ”

“So?”

“I fought against El Laurens and his men. Twice I came near to killing that cursed Englishman.”

“And you have been a leader?”

“Our tribe has roamed freely over the desert ever since the great guns boomed against Jidda.”

“So?”

The Syrian regarded him thoughtfully. “Tell me of your plan, so that we may sacrifice these idolaters on the black stone of the Holy Kaaba.”

Red Rodgers sank to his knees. His long lean finger began to trace a plan of campaign, Arab-fashion, in the sand. He knew the topography of the Hedjaz well. He even flattered himself that his plan of campaign was a good one. A thousand men, bold and merciless in their methods, might take Mecca. As his finger moved rapidly over the sand and he gabbled his plan in Arabic, the Syrian, in spite of himself, was impressed.

“One by one the villages fall into our hands,” explained Red Rodgers. “Mecca is the centre of the noose. Slowly we tighten it, like a black scarf round the neck of a man. Tighter and tighter. The life gurgles out of him. One last despairing groan—and Mecca is ours. The black mantles rush into the streets of the holy city.”

Selim the Syrian smiled mirthlessly.

“You are apt with your imagination, you who are called ‘the Fighter.’ Rise, and listen to me.”

Rodgers rose. The whip negligently poked his shoulder and twisted him in the direction where the sun was sinking toward the waves of sand.

“Do you see?”

Selim the Syrian was pointing. Rodgers saw a white dome, almost engulfed in that sea of sand.

“I see.”

“It is the tomb of Mohammad Mahdi, the false Caliph of Bagdad. In that tomb there now sits the only true Caliph, the Veiled One"

“Praised be the Veiled One l”

An ecstatic chant broke from the still cringing form of Bedr Basim.

The mirthless grin never left the lips of the Syrian.

“Tonight, you who are called ‘the Fighter’ will meet the Veiled One. And once again we shall hear your plan.”

Paul Rodgers bowed his head.

“To Allah I shall give eternal thanks,” he murmured.

IT was beneath a crescent moon, dangling like a silver scimitar over the desert, that a little group of men approached the white tomb of Mohammad Mahdi. They had to descend into a squared clearing, on the edges of which mounds of sand had been banked by the spade workers of Selim the Syrian archaeologist.

It was Selim who led the little group. For this ceremonial occasion he had donned full evening dress. A purple order of Ottoman magnificence was stretched across his white shirt-front. He carried a long black cane with a silver knob. Over all this magnificence was draped a black opera-cloak. To Red Rodgers he appeared the absurd apotheosis of stage villainy.

“Make clean your hearts before Allah,” murmured Selim, “for you are about to hear the commands of the Veiled One”

The little group of men who followed Selim genuflected. Red Rodgers, like the others, knelt in the sand. A short muttering of verses from the Koran, and they rose. One by one in single file they stumbled after Selim, who led them through a narrow entrance, along a dark passage, their backs bent, and so into a spacious chamber.

Selim carried an electric torch. The thin silver beam cut the darkness and patterned the heavy granite walls of the tomb with a white circle. The air was foul and scented with decay. In that pitch darkness slit and crisscrossed with the beam of an electric torch, Red Rodgers shivered. A trembling hand closed on his own. It belonged to Bedr Basim, who had all the superstitious terror of the Arab pulsing in him.

A twinkle of light appeared. One of the Arabs had lit a candle. Other candles were quickly lighted. The candles burned steadily. Desert winds did not penetrate this tomb which for centuries had been sunk in sand.

Scattered about the strange chamber was the funeral furniture of the Caliph: Arab stools, a table, and a low wooden couch which had probably been the funeral bier. As Selim the Syrian moved a stool with his foot, a sand-rat scuttled away to some hidden hole.

Facing the little group was a granite doorway, fretted in Arabic fashion. This led to the inner chamber, the chamber of the dead. Somewhere in the darkness beyond lay the skeleton of the Caliph Mohammad Mahdi. Perhaps, also, the headless skeleton of the usurper!

“Peace be upon you, men of the black mantles,” murmured a strange voice.

It came from the darkness of the inner chamber, from the darkness where lay the skeleton of the Caliph Mohammad Mahdi—a voice that had all the weariness of centuries in its tired but yet commanding tone. At the sound of it the men prostrated themselves, with the exception of Selim, who merely bowed his head in dignified fashion.

“Rise and seat yourselves, children of Allah,” commanded the voice.

Red Rodgers was the first to face the figure that had entered the chamber. The Veiled One! A face covered with a black mask, a body enveloped in a costly black mantle. Through the slits of the mask the glittering gaze of two eyes fastened on Red Rodgers. The gaze held him. A medley of emotions, fantastic thoughts, suspicions, memories surged in him. The Veiled One! Could it be? Half-hypnotized, he sank upon the stool that was nearest to him.

“The thousand are ready. They are armed. They are waiting.”

So began Selim the Syrian, the inevitable sensual smile on his face.

“Good.”

The Veiled One nodded.

“Soon we shall surge through the streets of Mecca, killing the unbelievers, the infidels, and cleansing the Holy Kaaba of the idolaters,” went on Selim, swishing his cane against a candle, so that it spluttered and went out.

A murmur went up from the little group.

“May Allah be praised. The Veiled One is the true and only Caliph. The black mantles will be all-powerful.”

“And the plan ?”

It was a harsh, direct question from the masked figure.

Selim indicated Paul Rodgers.

“Here is the man with the plan.”

AGAIN those glittering eyes fastened on the slim figure in the black burnous. And in that moment Red Rodgers felt the chill of the tomb strike him. For the awful suspicion that had been in his mind when he first glimpsed this masked figure was now a certainty. He knew the person behind the mask. The Veiled One was—

“Before we hear the plan, let us drink coffee.”

As the words were spoken, a negro slave materialized from the darkness beyond. In front of his polished black body he carried a tray with coffee-pot and brass cups. This tray he set upon the table.

The Veiled One waved the negro aside. “I will serve the coffee.”

A brown, steady hand reached from beneath the black mantle and poured coffee into the cups. One by one the cups were handed to the little group of black mantles. Selim was served first. He accepted the cup with a smirk. Then came Bedr Basim, then the two other men. Red Rodgers waited.

The brown hand reached toward him, the cup held firmly. Rodgers stretched his own hand to take it.

“A bitter drink, but in Arabia the drink of friendship,” murmured the Veiled One.

But a dead silence followed these words. For the hand had shaken, and the coffee spilled over the black burnous of Red Rodgers.

Selim the Syrian rose to his feet. The smile had left his face. The ruby lips were twisted into something ugly. The others in that chamber rose too. Only the Veiled One and Paul Rodgers remained seated, eying each other.

Instinctively all knew what that spilling of coffee indicated. This stranger from the desert was a marked man. He was to die. The Caliph had indicated the enemy in the customary Arab fashion.

“What does this mean?” muttered Selim the Syrian.

“Who brought this man?” asked the Veiled One.

Bedr Basim threw himself forward to the ground.

“I did, holy Caliph. The man solved the problem of the pomegranate and the carpet.”

The Veiled One looked down upon the grovelling Bedr Basim.

“I have to thank you. I have sought this man for many moons.”

“He is named ‘the Fighter,’ ” cried Selim.

The Veiled One smiled.

“He would be. But I know him as Paul Rodgers, the Red Wolf of Arabia.”

Rodgers made one desperate lunge forward.

“And I know you, impostor, as—”

His hand was stretched out to tear the mask away from those glittering eyes. But at this desperate act of sacrilege, the others leaped forward.

Rodgers fought furiously. He whirled a funeral stool in the air and crashed it against the head of one of the Arabs, who went to the ground with a grunt. But Bedr Basim, who was already grovelling when the attack began, clutched the legs of Red Rodgers and brought him to the ground. Desperately the Intelligence officer fumbled in his black mantle for his precious revolver. With a snarl he brought it forth, levelled it— then felt a mad, stabbing pain in his arm.

He gave a groan of agony, and the weapon slipped from his hand. He turned on his knees to find Selim the Syrian, the naked blade of a sword-stick in his hand, smiling evilly at him. So that was the meaning of the silver- knobbed cane!

“Damn you!” he moaned, in English.

The other Arabs were upon him. Bleeding freely from his arm, Rodgers nevertheless used his feet effectively. Once again the Syrian prepared to lunge with his blade.

“Enough, Selim!”

The Veiled One had spoken.

“The dog must die! ” snarled Selim.

“The dog shall die,” murmured the Veiled One. “But among the Arabs there are a thousand and one deaths, as well as a thousand and one fairy-stories. And those deaths are equally unpleasant.”

Complete imperturbability marked the utterance of the Veiled One. The figure had not stirred from its sitting posture, had not even winced when the sacrilegious hand was stretched forth to tear away the mask. And now the Veiled One gazed down upon Paul Rodgers’ futile struggles against odds which included the negro slave. Within a few minutes he was securely bound and helpless.

“And now?” asked Selim.

“Carry him into the other chamber,” ordered the Veiled One.

The powerful negro slave took the captive in his arms. He was carried easily through the fretted doorway into the darkness. Even in his half-fainting condition, he was conscious of the overwhelming stench of decay. He was thrown roughly onto some rugs, and the negro padded away. Dimly he heard the voices in the next chamber.

The Veiled One was speaking in that strange voice, tired but commanding. And knowing the voice so well, Paul Rodgers sensed a chill creeping slowly through his bruised body.

HALF an hour later yellow light streaked the darkness. The negro slave had entered, a giant black acolyte carrying lighted candles. And behind him stalked the masked figure in the black mantle.

Carefully the candles were placed on the ground. They flung tortured, elongated shadows against the stone walls of the tomb.

“Release the infidel’s hands, and raise him!” commanded the Veiled One.

The negro was clumsily obedient. Rodgers was propped up with his back against the wall.

“And now wait for me in the next chamber.”

The slave bowed low and shuffled ungainly out of that fantastic yellow light. The Veiled One and Paul Rodgers were left alone. It was only through the mist of half-consciousness that the Intelligence officer visualized these movements. But a spark lit his gray eyes as the Veiled One spoke quietly in English:

“So we meet again, eh?”

The flaming crop of red hair seemed to slump a little wearily.

“I ought to have known that the Veiled One would be yourself,” he murmured in reply. “There is no one else in Arabia with the imagination or the fiendish ingenuity to embark upon such an adventure.”

“You flatter me, Paul.”

A ripple of laughter came from beneath the mask.

Rodgers closed his eyes. The wound in his arm was painful.

“Nevertheless you will find this adventure too big even for your insensate ambition,” he said through clenched teeth. “You cannot capture Mecca as easily as a handful of dates.”

“I have a thousand men, all fanatics and every one a fighter,” said the Veiled One. “Moreover I have you, the Red Wolf of Arabia, the most dangerous feringhee in the whole Arab world. Could I have hoped for more? Allah is on the side of the black mantles.”

“Blasphemous cheat!” cried Rodgers.

Again that ripple of laughter.

“And what brought you nosing my trail again like a hungry jackal?” went on the Veiled One. “I am curious to know. Ah, of course! You were in Jidda. It was necessary to kill a fool of an Italian and his love-sick Arab girl. They had learned something of the black mantles; and like all foolish children who have discovered a secret, they thought they would whisper it to others. Luckily the words were strangled in their throats in time. But you were there. You have almost a feminine intuition in these matters, Paul. And so you donned the black mantle, thereby delivering yourself into our hands. Fool! I recognized you the moment I set eyes on you. Even if it were not for the vanity that won’t allow you to dye that romantic crop of hair, those gray eyes would tell me everything.”

Rodgers twisted a smile.

“The recognition,” he murmured, “was mutual.”

A ripple of rage passed through the black mantle.

“And once again, Paul, you are going to see that face close to your own. You know the story of the Veiled One of old? I see you do. No one looked upon his face and lived. Such blasphemy was struck down immediately by the sword. And I, the Veiled One of today, have sworn the same oath. No one shall look upon my face and live. And I am now going to unveil myself before you.”

“A convenient threat for you,” murmured Red Rodgers. “A thousand ships were launched because of Helen’s fair face. But that was in Greece. In the Hedjaz not even a thousand men would march on Mecca if they learned the blasphemous truth that the one who has assumed the black mantle of the holy Prophet, who dares to attack the Holy Kaaba and be proclaimed Caliph, is—”

The Veiled One tore off the mask with a fierce gesture. Two brilliant eyes blazed at Rodgers.

“Is a woman, eh?” hissed the figure in the black mantle.

“Yes, the Woman of Antioch,” replied Paul Rodgers steadily.

Once again he found himself facing this strange creature who was the apotheosis of the medley of emotions surging in the Oriental woman. Hatred, mingled with distorted desire, gleamed in the black pools of her eyes. The full red lips were half-parted as though in an ecstasy. And the low, rich voice, almost masculine in its depth and intensity, now lashed him unmercifully.

“I am that same woman of Antioch who held you prisoner in my house in Cairo. You were clever that day, Paul. But you also dared too much. You placed my boy in danger. While I waited to shatter with bullets the miserable carcass of King Saad, you dangled my boy on your knee before the levelled rifles! Only the damnable ice-cold brain that thinks beneath that flaming hair could have devised such an escape. You laughed over it, you and your friends on the veranda of Shepheard’s Hotel. But the laugh died when my threat came. For you knew that the day was coming when I should exact full vengeance.”

Red Rodgers regarded her from beneath his half-closed lids.

“I have never underestimated your melodramatic earnestness, madam,” he murmured.

The plump features came nearer. He could see the kohl smearing her eyes; he sensed the heavy perfume with which she had drenched her body. She twisted so that she leaned against him.

“The last time we parted,” she went on, “it was with my lips on yours. Ah,

I see you have not forgotten that, either. Am I then so repulsive to you ? Tonight we are to part forever. You will never look upon a living woman again. So, hating me as you do, look your fill. And taste the last woman’s kiss you will ever receive.”

With a sudden movement she pressed her lips on his. Weak and helpless, Rodgers struggled. His whole being sickened at the contact. His freed hands tore at the black mantle. He twisted her shoulder mercilessly. His fingers dug through the black stuff into her flesh.

A cry of pain came from her. He flung her aside. As she staggered away, the black stuff of her mantle was ripped, and the white flesh of her shoulder was bared, revealing the scar of a cross. The Woman of Antioch had been branded!

Cursing softly, she hastily covered the damning mark on her shoulder, and again covered her face with the mask.

Once more she was the Veiled One. She also recovered something of that poise with which Red Rodgers had been struck in his previous encounter with her.

“That is the end of our romance, Paul,” she said quietly. “It only remains for me to take my departure. At the head of a thousand black mantles I shall advance on Mecca. There is one final tribute I shall pay to you: I shall use your plan, the plan so adequately expressed by the pomegranate and the white carpet. I only regret that you will not be with us to see it in operation.”

Rodgers was too weary to banter further. He leaned his head against the wall.

"Insha’allahl” he murmured. The Arabic fatalism suited his mood. “Bring in your thugs and strangle me as you did that poor Italian.”

He was answered by soft laughter.

“No, my dear Paul, that would be too easy; I’m afraid your death pangs must be prolonged. The Arab mind is only rivalled by the Chinese in its devising of delectable deaths. Yours is to be particularly apt. Open your eyes, and gaze about you.”

He stared at the woman uncomprehendingly. She was carrying lighted candles toward the far shadows. And their flickering flame revealed a horrible sight.

A mummified figure lay there, the wrappings gashed at one side. Through the gash of this bandaged chrysalis dangled a yellow skeleton arm. The head, too, had been exposed, the teeth showing death’s eternal grin.

“Once the holiest of all men, and the prophet of Allah,” mused the Woman of Antioch. “It is all that is left of Mohammad Mahdi, Caliph of Bagdad.”

She laughed softly as she stuck a candle at the head of the figure.

“And the headless skeleton, the usurper?” asked Rodgers.

She turned toward him.

“I do believe that you are much more the archaeologist than my brother Selim,” she said. “I regret to spoil a pretty story, Paul, but the headless skeleton was not found in the tomb. Of course, we may not have searched closely enough. You will have excellent opportunities to continue our rather perfunctory researches.”

“What do you mean?”

She placed another candle at the foot of the mummified figure.

“The Red Wolf of Arabia is to be given a tomb worthy of his notoriety,” she went on. “When we leave here, within the hour, the tomb will be sealed. Heavy boulders prevent anything but sand-rats entering the sacred burial place of Mohammad Mahdi. But it will also be the burial place of Paul Rodgers. Don’t be unduly distressed. You are to be left here alive. In fact, I have given orders for enough provisions to be left to keep you alive for a week. There will also be enough candles for at least three days. I should like you to meditate upon the remains of Mohammad Mahdi. And when you are hungry and insane, I’ve no doubt you will make excellent companions. You see, everything has been devised to keep you from dying too soon. A man like yourself should be given every opportunity of getting used to his tomb before death claims him.”

“I am honoured.”

She moved toward the door. Once only did she turn, and from behind that black mask her eyes gleamed strangely. The next moment she passed into the darkness, and Red Rodgers was left staring at the mummified figure that grinned at the granite ceiling.

Quickly he struggled with the thongs that still bound his feet. As his fingers tugged furiously at them, he could hear the heavy breathing of men as they worked in the distance. There was the crashing sound of a boulder rolled against the outer doorway, then another. The doorway was blocked.

Rodgers tried to struggle to his feet. His legs were numb. He stumbled and

fell. The pain in his arm throbbed through his whole body. Half crawling, a lighted candle dripping hot wax over his hand, he stumbled through the doorway, along that narrow passage and reached the end. It was blocked completely. With a groan he pitched to the ground in a faint.

Archaeologists are among the darlings of our civilization. For their researches in the dust and debris of the past, honours and titles are heaped upon them. Modern man in his skyscraper, and with electric toys to his hand, is flattered when shown the withered corpse of his early progenitors. Yet though there are thousands of years between the Egyptian mummy in its glass case in the British Museum and the slum child of today idly gazing at it, civilization does not seem to have advanced much.

That the archaeologist is after all merely a grave-robber, a ruthless digger of the dead, was borne in upon the mind of Paul Rodgers as he opened his eyes in the darkness of the tomb. Dimly in the distance he could discern a flickering yellow light. It came from the candle which the Woman of Antioch had left burning by the mummified body of Mohammad Mahdi. His faint could not have lasted half an hour.

Quickly he stumbled along the passage back to that chamber of the dead. Less than an inch of the candle remained. The exposed head seemed to shrivel at the nearness of the flame, but the teeth were still clenched in a macabre grin. Near the body lay a heap of candles, some dried dates and figs, coffee, and a jar of water. A sand-rat which had been nibbling at these provisions scuttled away at his approach.

Hurriedly Rodgers lighted another candle. He tore off part of his garment, and made some sort of bandage for his arm. Then he sat down to consider the situation.

The full fiendishness of the death devised for him by the Woman of Antioch began to appear. There were enough provisions and a sufficiency of water to keep him alive for a week—at the most, twelve days. Obviously there was no chance of his escape; otherwise the provisions would not have been left. Actually, they desired to prolong the agony of his imprisonment in this sinister tomb so that he would end it all a madman.

How long could a man be expected to sit at the side of a mummified figure that had been dead a thousand years and still retain his sanity? He had a sudden horrible vision of himself at the end, a gibbering madman recklessly lighting one candle after another and apostrophizing that withered creature of the eternal grin. And the mummified Caliph would grin back at him. He shuddered. Then he took a firm hold on himself...

Eustace Adam and the palace in Jidda! The piano and the nuances of Debussy! How civilized and how secure it now seemed in retrospect! Would Eustace Adam, suddenly plunged into such a situation, a prisoner in a tomb with only a mummified body and a few rats as companions, dare to light a cigarette and sneeringly describe it as in the worst melodramatic taste? Rodgers laughed aloud at the thought. His laugh echoed strangely throughout the tomb. The mummified figure seemed to laugh too. Rodgers found himself jerking his head and peering into the shadows.

Already his nerves were taut and ready to snap. He took the candle away from the head of the mummy, gathered some of the provisions in his hand and walked into the adjoining chamber. Here at least he would be free from the presence of Mohammad Mahdi. And he might profitably spend an hour examining his prison and seeing if there was any possibility of escape. Even Selim the Syrian archaeologist might have overlooked some other entrance to the tomb. With a sudden enthusiasm he began with the candle, examining every yard of those stone walls about him.

After two hours, with a fresh candle lit, he had to sit down and admit defeat. The tomb was as safe a prison as the latest steel cell in Sing Sing. Secret passages had not entered into the imagination of the man who a thousand years before had built this stone house in the desert. There was only one entrance, and that was also the exit. Heavy boulders blocked it completely.

Rodgers yawned. He suddenly felt the need for sleep. The candle burned steadily at his side; and although he had couched himself on a few rugs, he hesitated before blowing out that flame and plunging the tomb into complete darkness. That mummified figure was still grinning there in the next chamber.

The funeral furniture of the room met his eye. Why not a fire? And there was coffee among the provisions. He began at once to break a stool into small pieces. The dry wood crumbled in his ands. A moment later, a little fire was blazing merrily in the centre of the stone-walled room; and it certainly brought a comforting glow to the chilled body of Paul Rodgers.

Sleepily he stretched himself on the rugs and blinked at the little flames. He found himself drifting into strange dreams.

“If only I had a piano, I would play mad music to that damned mummy,” was the last absurd thought that flitted through his waking mind.

FEW civilized men can endure silence. Stillness can be more deadly than noise. Red Rodgers of Arabia was brought perilously near to madness in the days and nights that followed.

Days and nights! He could not distinguish either. Time had been obliterated. There was only darkness, relieved by one solitary candle, the flame of which was jealously guarded. Sometimes for an hour, two hours, Rodgers would endure total darkness. But that darkness smothered him, mind and body, more completely than a thousand black mantles. When combined with the awful stillness it became unendurable. Stamped on the screen of his mind, a lantern-slide that had jammed and could not be withdrawn, was the picture of the black mummy that had once been the holy Caliph.

Those hours of darkness would end by whispered curses, the spurt of a match, and once again the blessed yellow flame of a candle flinging grotesque shadows of the imprisoned man on the walls of the tomb. Sometimes a wind would come sighing across the desert, whipping the sand-particles and stroking the stone walls outside with a soft, crooning sound. Once again the sand of the desert was smothering the tomb.

Rodgers tried to fill his waking hours with the scraps of music that twanged the taut nerves of his brain. Bits of Beethoven, the sadness of the Kreutzer Sonata, and snatches of resignation that came from the symphonies. Then would come a few macabre moments from Ravel— a mad medley of strange melodies merging into the limelight brilliance of Liszt. He would hum aloud their dissonances, then stop and listen acutely. Had something stirred ?

With a sob he would light another candle recklessly, and stalk bravely into the funeral chamber. The mummy still grinned. The yellow skeleton arm still dangled from the bandaged chrysalis. Once or twice he could have sworn that the arm moved. And he would bend down, holding his breath, examining with the meticulous care of a surgeon that black withered face.

Day followed day. He lost all count of time. He had been in the tomb a hundred years, and was still alive. What fools those modern philosophers were! Bergson, who had written a whole book about laughter, had never heard the laughter of a man who was keeping an age-long vigil with a mummy. Ha!

Ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha! He clenched his teeth. He could grin alive as Mohammad Mahdi grinned in death....

It could all be resolved into that mystic chord of Scriabine—the divine madness of the third piano sonata. Like a stab at the silken belly of the sky! He, Paul Rodgers, had last played it in a dismal cafe in Suez. Three half-castes, a coal-black Sudanese, the drunken skipper of a tramp steamer, and a Bombay harlot—that had been his audience. And they had soared from their earthly hells to some ineffable heaven of their own imagination as his thin, sunburnt fingers conjured the music of Scriabine from the yellow ivory of the piano.

“Tum — tum—ti um — tum!” hummed Paul Rodgers, his fingers straying toward an imaginary piano.

“Tum—tum — ti um— tum!” hummed the bandaged corpse in the next chamber.

“Tum — tum—tum!”

That was wrong. The rhythm was wrong. The sound was wrong. But who was it, beating that strange rhythm in the darkness?

“Thud — thud — thud!"

“My God, I’m going mad! ” whispered Rodgers to himself.

The noise continued. The mummy! Had that music raised it from the dead as once Lazarus stood and let the shroud fall from his death-wrapped figure ? Was the living Mohammad Mahdi walking slowly from the funeral couch toward the dead Paul Rodgers? Darkness! Let there be darkness! The trembling hand of the Intelligence officer closed on the feeble yellow flame and strangled its life. One could hear better in darkness. And like life, stirring feebly in chaos, came the breathing of men.

Stretched at full length in the darkness, ear to the ground, Red Rodgers  listened, frozen motionless as a jackal in the full flood of a beam of light— stabbed into inaction! And the breathing of men grew louder.

The faint stirring of wind. A few grains of sand against his cheek. Desert wind. Then footfalls. The pad-pad-pad of bare feet along that passage. The breathing of men. A whisper. The lilt of Arabic. And then the smoking, trailing fire of a torch.

As they shuffled toward the funeral chamber, those three Arabs did not notice a figure stretched on the ground wrapped in a black mantle. The glow of their torch did not reveal the glittering eyes of a man who had been in the hashish world of mad dreams. Intent upon their foul work, they padded quickly into the funeral chamber.

Grave-robbers! Those few whispered words of Arabic had told Red Rodgers everything. These human sand-rats had heard of the tomb that had been unearthed from the desert. From afar they had watched the departure of the thousand men who adventured against Mecca. They preferred to rob the dead rather than the living. Even at this moment their fingers were ruthlessly tearing away the bandages that swathed the body of Mohammad Mahdi. Somewhere there must be jewels....

Bent upon their ghoulish work, the Arab grave-robbers did not notice that strange figure swaying in the doorway. Only when the silence of the tomb was suddenly shattered by mad laughter did they look up.

“Ha! Ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha!”

Petrified, they saw a red-haired man as white as a corpse gazing down upon them. A ghost! A white jinni! A desert madman!

“Allah protect us!”

“A jinni!”

They flung themselves grovelling before that strange figure who seemed to sway in company with a multitude of shadows conjured by their torch. The laughter redoubled. It seemed to wing its way like a bat to the entrance of the tomb— an entrance they had created by moving the heavy boulders. It resounded along the dark passageway, and then was lost in the spaciousness of the desert.

When the three grave-robbers ventured to raise their heads, the tomb was vacant save for the grinning skull whose empty sockets stared at the stone ceiling.

WITH his knees gripping the mangy sides of a camel, the Red Wolf of Arabia raced through the desert. The beast he rode was one of two that he found kneeling in the sand outside the tomb of Mohammad Mahdi. They belonged to the grave-robbers. A scraggy camel, but its legs pounded away like pistons, tireless and mechanical. As he reeled in the saddle, faint from those long nightmare hours in the tomb, he laughed loudly like a maniac. Above him the sky was ablaze with stars. Greedily he drank the champagne air of freedom.

Forty miles away lay Mecca. Instinctively he urged the camel toward the holy city. He had carefully studied the direction on a map in the palace that belonged to Eustace Adam. No doubt the Woman of Antioch and her pitiless black mantles were already in possession of the black stone of the Holy Kaaba.

How long had he been in the tomb? Five days—ten days ? He did not know. The plan of campaign he had suggested for the black mantles meant a fortnight’s slow circling of the holy city.

The rhythmic pounding of the camel through the sand lulled his senses. He wanted to sleep. But the moment he closed his eyes, dreadful visions of the tomb and the swathed mummy appeared. Dare he ever sleep again and face that nightmare? In any case sleep was impossible at the moment. He must reach Mecca and enter the holy city. The Woman of Antioch must be cheated in her mad ambition. The black mantles would turn on her in fury when they saw that it was a woman who had dared to assume the holy black garments.

The thought of entering the holy city brought a thrill to his racked mind and body. He, Paul Rodgers, was emulating the red-bearded Burton of the Arabian Nights. He would feast his eyes on the Holy Kaaba, kiss the black stone, and then, without mercy in his heart, seek out the Woman of Antioch and unveil her. The rampant fanaticism of Mecca would do the rest. Let him perish in the rain of steel swords and knives that would descend. It would be a death far more worthy than that of a gibbering fool in a tomb....

Thirty miles to Mecca. He was nearing the well-worn pilgrim route from Jidda. The scraggy beast he rode still pounded along tirelessly. He must avoid the villages which had already succumbed to the fanatical march of the Veiled One and the army of black mantles. His gray eyes searched the sky. No man could guide himself more surely in the desert. His feet kicked the camel’s sides. The beast swerved obediently.

A plan was forming in his mind. He knew instinctively that those days and nights in the tomb had sponged the sunburn from his features and left him white and ghostlike. One glance at his hands assured him of that. And the gray eyes were brilliant and feverish from the confinement. He looked— a white man.

The words of an old Arab pounded their way into his mind as he rode.

“Unbelievers,” said the old Arab, “cannot exist in Mecca. The dogs would tear them to pieces in the streets, or God would strike them with thunderbolts from the skies.”

But even if the seven delectable tortures awaited him, Paul Rodgers the unbeliever was determined to enter the holy city....

Twenty miles to Mecca.

Night, and the canopy of stars still covered the desert.

THE pink of dawn was already streaking the sky when a man in Bedouin garb yawned and stretched his arms. He sat on a bench against a white wall, and by his side was a yellow lantern.

Along the narrow sandy path stumbled a strange figure swathed in a black mantle. The figure reeled from side to side like a man fuddled with hashish. Slowly the man in Bedouin garb rose from the bench. He took hold of the lantern and went forth to meet the reeling figure.

“Wallah!” he exclaimed. “Whence do you come?”

He held aloft the lantern and saw before him a pale white face and glittering eyes.

The figure in the black mantle reeled, and almost fell.

“I— I come from the desert,” he muttered. “Allah be praised!”

“And your camel?” asked the man with the lantern.

“I am poor in worldly goods. I have walked from the desert.”

“Wallah!” murmured the Arab, holding the lantern closer. “You are strangely white.”

The glittering eyes twitched, and a ghastly smile crossed the greyish face the lantern revealed. A thin white hand stretched out from beneath the black mantle.

“The curse of the jinn is upon me,” he muttered. “I come to Mecca to pray that Allah the all-compassionate will cleanse my body.”

The man with the lantern drew back with a start.

“A leper!” he whispered. His hands twitched. “May Allah cleanse you, my brother! ”

And he turned his back and hurried away from the man in the black mantle who stumbled forward along that narrow sandy path.

Paul Rodgers was in Mecca.

He was hemmed in by a chasm of tall, straight flat-roofed houses. Narrow slits in the walls for windows seemed to wink wickedly at him. Beneath his bare feet the sandy street was strewn with the debris of pilgrimage— palm-leaves and sacking. And down that chasm in the early morning sunshine winged myriads of birds, holy birds that fluttered and swept in dizzying circles, unfrightened by this strange pale man in the black mantle.

He plunged into the semi-darkness of the bazaar. Here the morning sky was hidden by sackcloth stretched above. A sweetmeat-merchant sat methodically piling his sugary delights into little mountains. The pale stranger stopped beside him. The sweetmeat-merchant gave him one quick glance, and shuddered.

“May Allah protect us—a leper!” It was a frightened whisper in Arabic.

Rodgers nodded, and stretched out a thin hand.

“I have hunger, O seller of many sweet delights,” he murmured.

With a terrified gesture the sweetmeat merchant took a little wooden bowl, piled it with sugary confections, and handed it to the man in the black burnous.

“Eat, my brother!” he whispered. “And may Allah cleanse your body!”

Rodgers took the bowl.

“I heard in the desert that the streets of Mecca were stained with blood,” he said quietly. “Is it so, brother?”

“It is not so,” replied the merchant. “Mecca is at peace, and the morning sunshine is even now gilding the Holy Kaaba. It is but a tale told by mad camel-drivers that you heard.”

“May Allah be praised!” murmured Rodgers fervently. He realized that he was in time, and that the army of the black mantles had not yet clutched the pomegranate.

He nibbled with zest at some sugared dates. At the same time his burning gray eyes caught sight of a Mohammedan calendar hung with all the care of a local London grocer at the back of the sweetmeat-stall. And the day stared him in the face. It was exactly a week since he had entered the trap of the tomb of Mohammad Mahdi. The black mantles were following his plan. They must now be within thirty miles of Mecca.

“Thank you, brother,” he said, and stumbled on through the semi-darkness of the bazaar, while the sweetmeat-seller hurriedly withdrew to wash himself.

Others, early astir about their business in the bazaar, shrank from that thin pale figure in the black mantle. A leper! He was feared worse than death. Covering himself with the hood of his burnous, Red Rodgers smiled. He had prepared his entry into Mecca as carefully as any actor entering upon a flood-lighted stage. His make-up had been the work of half an hour, the smearing of his face with gray dust outside the city. And what appeared to be the silver sores of the leper on his arms was merely his own white skin rubbed with a stone.

ONCE more his brain was working with clarity. He must prevent the attack on Mecca. But how? The gray eyes were lost in thought as he stumbled along that street known as the Suk es-Saghir, flanked on each side with the open shops of butchers, fruiterers, chandlers, barbers, grain-sellers, lemonade-sellers—the paying road to Paradise along which the pilgrims pass. Arabs squatted on their rush-matting in the dust. They displayed, strewn on these mats, slices of mauled melon, battered prickly-pears, grimy bowls of sour milk, stale bread, and a few diseased tomatoes. Nevertheless this was one of the streets of wealth, the Fifth Avenue of Arabia, and the prize of loot promised to the army of the thousand black mantles led by the Veiled One.

Suddenly, in the quick dawn, rose a mournful quavering cry. Immediately Red Rodgers stopped in his shuffle through the bazaar. Men around him dropped to the dust like automata at that cry. And the cry was repeated, echoing and re-echoing in volume as the sun swelled into the sky.

“Allah Akbar! Allah Akbart Allah

Akbar! Allah Akbart Ashhadu ann

Id ildha ill Allah....”

It was the call to prayer, ringing out in a magnificent volume of sound from the seven towers that overlook the city.

Red Rodgers also sank on his knees in the dust of the street.

“There is no God but Allah!” he repeated.

When he raised his head again, the sun was glittering everywhere. Those ringing cries had raised the curtain as the fateful knocks in a French theatre begin the drama.

“It is whispered that there is an infidel in Mecca— a spy.”

The muttered Arabic came to him as he raised himself from the dust. Slowly he turned his head. It came from a group of men sipping their cups of coffee at a little table outside the coffee-house. The eyes of one of them fell upon the pallid stranger, and examined him, curiously. Then he twitched the sleeve of one of his companions, whispered something and pointed. The other turned, and his eyes glinted at sight of the black mantle.

Without hesitation Rodgers shuffled forward. He confronted the group of coffee-drinkers and held out a thin hand, clutching a bowl.

“May the grace of Allah be with you eternally!” he croaked.

The two men rose to their feet with a shudder of disgust.

“A leper!” they cried.

The black-burnoused stranger cringed. “Give me food! ” he asked.

But a sandaled foot shot out from one of the group, and kicked him sprawling into the debris of the street. A cackle of laughter went up in the coffee-house, in which the two men joined. They paid no further attention to the miserable figure in the black mantle.

Picking himself out of the filth, Red Rodgers stumbled forward....

Soon he was passing through a tunnel-like passage beneath some houses adjoining the wall of the Great Mosque. Then at last he came to the head of a flight of stone steps leading to a small narrow gateway. This little doorway, only large enough to permit the entrance of one man at a time, led to the Holy Kaaba, Bayt Allah, the House of God. Through this doorway unnumbered millions had entered, with all the ecstasy of men who pass into paradise.

“Bismillah!” cried the pale stranger aloud, and passed through the doorway.

AN hour later the leper, who had stood with the long lines of worshipers facing that black-draped cube in the Kaaba, who had kissed the black stone and repeated the prayers from the Koran, was striding with fixed determination on his face through the streets of Mecca. Occasionally he stopped to ask his way. Men shrank from him, but pointed the direction dumbly. Always he asked: “Where is the palace, brother?”

It was while he had stood in the serried ranks of worshipers facing the black cube that the idea came to him. The muttering of the imam, the holy priest who led the prayers, had come to his ears like a faulty telephone-call—a restless twanging of telephone wires. A telephone— there was a telephone from the palace at Mecca to that little office in Jidda where he and Eustace Adam had discussed the murder of the Italian. And each morning at eleven o’clock, with commendable official punctuality, Eustace Adam would ring up the palace at Mecca to make his daily report.

“Where is the palace, brother?”

Once again a trembling finger was outstretched. And the stranger, his black mantle swathed about him, stalked on.

At last he reached it. The palace was an imposing building, constructed of that gray granite from the hills surrounding Mecca, and of which most of the houses were built. Like a thread across the sun scorched sky was the telephone-wire.

From beneath the hood of his black mantle Rodgers’ eyes had searched for it; but even as he glimpsed it, misgivings seized him. Surely the Black Mantles had already cut that slender line of communication with the coast?

He passed into the courtyard of the palace. A few black slaves eyed indifferently the leper in the black mantle who shuffled his way through the dust. Rodgers found a doorway into which he passed, and was immersed in the coolness of the shadows within.

Room after room he wandered through in the palace without hindrance. Slaves were grouped about. An occasional khaki-clad Arab soldier drowsed over an old musket. The indolence and indifference which greeted Rodgers everywhere told him that the Sheik, the ruler of the Hedjaz, was away. A whisper among the slaves confirmed it. The Sheik was at Medina, many miles north, on a visit.

Rodgers covered his face carefully with the black mantle. He did not wish to declare himself a leper, here in the palace of the Sheik.

It was at this moment, in a palace in the heart of holy Mecca, that Red Rodgers heard a sound which filled him with joy. It was the shrill tinkle of a bell. And an ear tuned for any sound gave him the direction. Without hesitation he plunged through a little doorway half hidden by a hanging carpet.

He was in a private apartment belonging to the Sheik. His bare feet, dusty

and bleeding, sank into the softness of the rich Bokharan rugs with which the floor of the room was scattered. But of the luxuries of the apartment he noticed nothing. His eyes sought at once the fretted Arab table on which stood the prosaic telephone.

A brilliantly garbed Arab whose green turban surmounted a grave, intellectual face, had already stretched out his manicured brown hands toward the instrument. But to his profound astonishment a black shadow crossed his path. He looked up to see a man garbed in a black mantle, a man with a pale face and red flaming hair who had seized the telephone and was gabbling in a strange tongue into its carved mouth.

“Is that you, my dear fellow ? Is that you? Paul Rodgers speaking. Yes, at Mecca. In the palace. Listen! I want to tell you—”

The Arab in the green turban flung himself upon the foul intruder. Rodgers did not hesitate, but lashed out with his fist and sent the Arab groaning to the ground. From the corners of his gray eyes he watched him twisting and muttering on the soft Bokharan rugs.

“Yes, my dear fellow, I had to knock some one down.”

“But what does it all mean?” cackled the voice of Eustace Adam in Jidda. “You’ll be killed, Paul. You’re a damned nuisance in Mecca. You’ve no right to be in Mecca. Don’t expect me to—”

“This is a matter of life or death to the Sheik and everyone in Mecca,” broke in Paul Rodgers. “At the moment an army of a thousand men are advancing across the desert toward the holy city. They’re fanatics, led by one who intends to be proclaimed the Holy Caliph. I’ve no time to explain.... They’re the men who gathered together at the diggings.... Yes, Selim the Syrian.... Organized a revolt.... There’s one chance in a hundred of beating them. Send the three airplanes from Jidda— the airplanes owned by the Sheik. It’s your only chance.”

The Arab in the green turban had crawled to his feet. He swayed, and as he gazed at that red-haired figure in the black mantle who was speaking rapidly in a strange tongue, down the telephone, he yelled at the top of his voice.

Still eying him, Red Rodgers babbled his final words. “Bomb them from above. It’s your only chance. You’ve three hours to do it.”

“But what about you, Paul?” Adam protested. “You’ll never get out of Mecca alive.”

The only reply was a laugh.

At the same moment three black slaves rushed into the room in response to the yells of the green-turbaned Arab. He pointed to the strange figure in the black mantle.

“An infidel!” he screamed. “Seize him. He is Inkilizi!” (English).

The slaves went forward. The pale intruder awaited them calmly. He bared  his arms. At the sight of the greyish- white skin the foremost slave stopped.

“Wallah!” he cried. “He is a leper!”

The other slaves muttered the dreaded word, and hesitated.

“Aye, a leper,” said Rodgers in Arabic, grinning at them. “The man who dares to lay hands on me will wither and become accursed in the sight of all who are clean.”

“Why was this filthy dog allowed to enter the palace?” snarled the Arab in the green turban. Unconsciously he was wiping his hands. “He is an infidel.”

“I am no unbeliever,” replied the pallid stranger. “I entered the sacred Kaaba for the first prayer this morning, and went on my knees to Allah. An infidel who dared that would be struck dead.”

“Why spoke you in Inkilizi over the telephone?” asked the green turban.

“Because I am come to Mecca with bad news,” went on Rodgers. “A thousand men, who call themselves the Black Mantles, are even now marching on Mecca. They intend to take the city by the sword.”

The dark eyes of the Arab gleamed suspiciously.

“What do you know of the Black Mantles?” he asked.

“I know their plans and their leader,” replied Rodgers. “The Black Mantles are led by the Veiled One”

“The Veiled One!”

Even the slaves repeated the name with awe.

“And the Veiled One is— a woman.”

The Arab started at the revelation.

“Is there a woman in Arabia who dares assume the mantle of the Holy Prophet?” he bellowed.

“Go into the desert with your men and discover the truth of my words.”

Taking a silken cloth in his hands, the Arab went to the telephone. Gingerly he took hold of the receiver.

“Give me Jidda— the political resident— at once! ” he ordered.

There was the cackling response of an excited voice.

“Wallah! The line is cut!” he exclaimed.

“The Black Mantles!” said Paul Rodgers.

The Arab in the green turban eyed him suspiciously. He whispered an order

over his shoulder to one of the slaves. The man went out of the room, and reappeared almost immediately with a piece of white chalk. He bent down, and carefully, over the rich carpets, chalked a huge circle in the centre of which the intruder stood and waited.

“And now,” said the Arab, “we shall see the truth of your story. I am going  into the desert to find these Black Mantles. And if they exist only in the imagination of your diseased mind, then, leper though you be, I shall have you tortured so that even those numb nerves will suffer agonies. You will stay here until my return. A soldier with a rifle will be on guard at the doorway of this room. Dare to move outside the circle of chalk, and you will be shot like a dog.”

“The truth shall prevail,” murmured the gray-eyed stranger.

“Let your prayers be to Allah, who is the truth! ” replied the Arab.

And turning, he quickly left the room.

The slaves waited. A khaki-clad soldier appeared in the doorway, a loaded rifle in his hands. At the sight of him, the slaves slunk away. Rodgers squatted on the floor Arab-fashion. From out the folds of his black mantle he brought forth his beggar’s bowl, still with the sweetmeats that had been given him in the bazaar.

Outside, bugles were blowing. Loud commands were being shouted. Camels were grunting into action. And whispers were being carried excitedly through the many rooms of the palace.

And within his circle of chalk, watched narrowly by the sentry, the Red Wolf of Arabia munched a sugar stick.

IT was about three in the afternoon.

Rodgers dozed comfortably within the circumscribed area,*in the richly carpeted room in the palace of Mecca. Suddenly, from the distant desert, came a roaring sound. The sentry, watchful as ever, pricked up his ears. Rodgers opened his eyes and listened.

It was as though a colossal wind were sweeping toward the city. The roar grew louder. It was over Mecca, and zooming toward the palace.

“The jinn of the air!” muttered the sentry.

Now the palace was shaking to that roaring rhythm. Rodgers smiled.

“Good boy, Eustace! ” he murmured. Three airplanes piloted by European- trained Arabs were throbbing over the holy city. With these airplanes the ruling Sheik commanded the desert tribes and was thereby all-powerful. But Mecca itself was too holy for such modern machines. They were kept secretly at Jidda, ready to attack the enemies of the Sheik. That brief telephone message had stirred Eustace Adam to action, and he had dispatched them on their war mission immediately.

“Allah help the Black Mantles!” grunted Paul Rodgers, and closed his eyes again contentedly.

The zooming sound died away; the three airplanes were heading for the desert. Silence once again descended upon the holy city, and in the palace Red Rodgers couched himself comfortably. Soon he was snoring lightly. The sentry gazed at him in wonderment.

“Wallah! He is a leper, but his soul is at peace with God,” he said to himself. And he drowsed lazily over his rifle.

IT was in the evening when the darkness of the room was rudely dispelled by the entry of men with smoking torches. In their white burnous and lit by the flickering yellow light, the Arabs were like the figures of a Doré imagination.

As they ranged themselves in the room, Red Rodgers glimpsed a solitary prisoner in their midst— Selim the Syrian. He was still in European costume, open-necked white shirt, khaki breeches and yellow riding-boots. But they were sadly soiled; the shirt was torn, and the riding-boots were smothered in the dust of the desert. His Oriental face was twitching with terror.

He recognized Rodgers at the first glance— and stared incredulously at him.

“Even the dead fight against us!” he moaned.

At the moment of that recognition the Arab in the green turban stalked into the room. He eyed the two men gravely.

It was Rodgers who first spoke. Rising slowly within the circle of chalk, he turned to the Arab.

“The Veiled One— where is she?”

The Arab shrugged his shoulders. He was about to speak, when Selim, a sneer on his ruby lips, spat forth:

“She lives, and will not fail to exact vengeance.”

Paul Rodgers shook his head sadly. “So once again the Woman of Antioch and myself must meet,” he murmured.

The Arab in the green turban gave an order. Selim, cursing and shouting, was seized. His cries could still be heard as he was hustled through the corridors of the palace.

“He dies tonight,” said the Arab. “But not so bravely as did those followers who battled in the desert. They were bombed from the sky, and their blood spattered the white sand. Thanks to you, the Black Mantles are no more.”

“But the Veiled One remains.”

“She is only a woman!” The Arab dismissed her with a contemptuous gesture.

“Insha’allah.” Red Rodgers fell back on the fatalism of the desert.

The Arab in the green turban, standing well without the circle of chalk, eyed him curiously.

“You are the first leper who dared enter this palace, and yet you brought useful news. You may ask for whatever you will.”

“I wish only one thing,” said Rodgers.

“And that is?”

“A camel.”

The Arab seemed surprised.

“Of what need for a camel has a leper?”

“I wish to ride away into the desert,” said Paul Rodgers.

“And that is all?”

“That is all.”

The Arab clapped his hands. Once again the three black slaves appeared.

“You shall have the best camel in Mecca,” he said.

He gave orders to the slaves, who hurried away.

“And now, I suppose, I may go?” queried the pale stranger.

“With the blessing of Allah, and the surety that I shall relate to the Sheik on his return the strange story of the leper who dared to enter this palace, who spoke in Inkilizi into the telephone, and who dared to strike me and yet lives.”

“Strange stories have been told in Arabia,” murmured Paul Rodgers, wrapping the black mantle about his body.

At the same moment he stepped boldly outside the circle of chalk. The Arab in the green turban retreated a step, hastily.

“May Allah cleanse your body!” he muttered. He raised his hand in a gesture of farewell. “Where go you now ?”

In the doorway Paul Rodgers turned.

“To seek a woman—and kill her,” he replied quietly.

“Bismillah! ” cried the Arab, and then found himself alone. Only the circle of chalk remained to tell him of the strange visitor.

He shuddered. Then he clapped his hands. A slave appeared.

“Burn those rugs!” he ordered, and stalked out of the room.

THREE hours later the Red Wolf of Arabia was riding toward the sea and Jidda. Mecca, the holy city, was behind him. He was urging the splendid camel to its utmost. In his mind was the tempting vision of a piano, and his fingers were itching to stray gently over the keys.

_______________________

9: The Garden of T. N. T.

Blue Book Magazine, March 1934

"THE king is dead; long live the king, eh?” suggested Paul Rodgers, smiling slightly.

“Exactly,” replied the Chief of Police, twisting his moustache and crossing his legs with a slightly nervous air. “The leader of the rebel Druses, the Sheik Sonieda, was murdered on his way here in the Jerusalem Express. Thanks to you, the murder was no mystery.”

“Except to the Druses themselves,” replied Rodgers—an Anglo-American Intelligence officer whose daring exploits had caused him to be known among the natives as the Red Wolf of Arabia.

The Chief of Police nodded.

“Lost without a leader, their revolt in Jerusalem never materialized,” he mused, uncrossing his legs. “And a good job for us, too! Give me a quiet life.”

“Is that why they made you Chief of Police in Jerusalem, my dear Travers?” asked Rodgers with another smile.

Colonel Travers flushed, which is unusual in a policeman. But it was whispered that the wife of some great British pro-consul had once seen that flush, and had been so delighted with it that immediate promotion followed for Travers. He now held the highly nervous job of Chief of Police in Jerusalem, where most of the crime was political, and fanatics from three great religions involved were in it.

“Nevertheless, I know these Druses have found a new leader, and they’re up to some devilment,” went on the Chief of Police, ignoring Rodgers’ thrust. “I know they are,” he repeated miserably.

“Who is the leader?” asked the Intelligence officer.

“That I don’t know,” was the reply, given with another twist of the moustache. “My spies—and although they’re a cut-throat crew, they can be depended upon— assure me that something is brewing. That is all they can tell me. And that is why I’ve come to you.”

“Who sent you?” Rodgers was blunt.

Once again Colonel Travers flushed.

“It was the Governor,” he admitted. “When I took him my report, he threw it aside and said: ‘Go and talk with that fellow Paul Rodgers. If you can keep him away from a piano, he’ll find out more than all your spies.’ ...And so, here I am.”

The Red Wolf did not smile. He was fully aware that his reputation as the finest Intelligence officer, his astonishing adventures and his ruthlessness in unravelling a mystery to the finish, were bruited from one end of the Red Sea to the other. With a characteristic gesture he stroked the back of his flaming crop of hair, and said abruptly:

“Talking of pianos, do you realize, my dear Travers, that there isn’t a decent one in this hotel— which calls itself the most civilized in Palestine.”

“Isn’t there?” inquired the Chief of Police blankly.

“No, there isn’t,” snarled Rodgers. “There’s a crime that, as Chief of Police, you might investigate.”

“But it isn’t a crime not to have a piano in a hotel, surely ?”

The Red Wolf thrust his youthful, energetic face forward.

“I once knew a man who intended to go out at night and commit murder,” he said solemnly. “But he found a piano and sat down to play. In ten minutes he had played all the rage and murder-desire out of his soul.”

“That’s devilish interesting. How do you know?”

“Because the man was myself,” replied Rodgers.

Aggressively he stared round the luxuriously furnished lounge of the Crusaders Hotel, which lies to the north of Jerusalem. There, within sight of that Garden of Gethsemane where once a Man prepared Himself for execution, beautifully gowned women and men in uniforms and evening-dress strolled, and chattered of the trivialities of life.

“Well, if they haven’t a piano here,” murmured the Chief of Police, twisting his moustache, “they at least have an excellent dance band.”

And as though he had commanded it, the strains of a waltz, the “Blue Danube,” floated toward them from the ballroom.

“A dance band!” muttered the Red Wolf bitterly. “And playing the ‘Blue Danube’ in that muddled, stodgy fashion of all bands that have never seen the Danube.”

“It’s not a bad waltz to dance,” went on the Chief of Police bravely. “I even proposed to the woman who is now my wife after dancing the ‘Blue Danube’.”

“Naturally.”

“Well, why not dance tonight?” went on Colonel Travers jovially. He glanced approvingly at the evening-dress which Rodgers wore, and which revealed his slim, athletic figure to perfection. “Find an attractive woman and dance with her.”

“And then marry her?”

Colonel Travers blushed again. This Paul Rodgers, Red Wolf of Arabia, was a difficult fellow in all circumstances. But the man of many adventures had narrowed his gray eyes and was staring across the lounge.

“Perhaps I will dance tonight, Travers, after all. Good night.”

Slightly bewildered at this sudden dismissal, the Chief of Police rose.

“But I have your promise that you will help?” he ventured.

“Help! In what ?”

“In finding the new leader of the rebel Druses.”

“Oh, that! Of course.” Rodgers nodded and held out his hand. “By the way,” he added in a whisper, “tell me, when you turn, Travers, the name of that woman who has just entered the lounge.”

Instinctively, Travers turned. He saw a tall, slim woman in a white satin gown of Chanel stamp, whose dark hair coiled voluptuously about her ears and emphasized the pallor of her face.

“That is Lola Nerval, a Frenchwoman. I’m told she’s delightful. But alas, I don’t speak French.”

“Why is she wearing that red necklace, which I’ll swear is four thousand years B. C., with a gown that is 1934 years A. D.? But don’t stare so deliberately, Travers. Light a cigarette and tell me.”

“I hadn’t noticed the necklace,” faltered the Chief of Police. “But if it is as ancient as you suppose, it is easily explained. Her husband, Jean Nerval, is an archaeologist, a Syrian, attached to the expedition that is digging near the Dead Sea. It is claimed that the expedition has discovered the old cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, which were destroyed by fire. Probably the necklace was among the trinkets found there.”

“Daring, but effective,” agreed Rodgers, his eyes narrowing in the direction of that blood-red necklace that hung against a perfect white throat. “A woman who comes from the ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah to dance the latest jazz! Lot’s wife was not so lucky.”

“She rather looks like a pillar of salt in that white satin gown,” laughed Colonel Travers; and then flushed again at the boldness of his remark. “Would you like me to introduce you, Rodgers?”

“No, thanks,” was the reply with a shake of the head. “To be introduced by a policeman casts a blight upon any romance. It’s good of you, Colonel, but I’ll introduce myself.”

The Chief of Police shrugged his shoulders.

“Well, I’d like to stay,” he said; “but hearing that waltz reminds me that I must get home to my wife. She’s a bit nervous, these days, with all this trouble brewing.”

“I’ll do my best for you, Travers,” nodded the Red Wolf, and with a parting smile, he turned away from the Chief of Police.

Ten seconds later Colonel Travers turned in the doorway that led out of the lounge. What he saw caused him to twist his moustache. Paul Rodgers was walking toward the ballroom, and the dark-haired beauty in white satin was at his side. She was laughing easily, and her hand slid into the arm of her companion.

“Quick work!” approved the Chief of Police. “These Intelligence fellows have all the luck.”

And with a sigh he set off toward his home, to allay the fears of his wife.

RODGERS had been bold. Women, particularly beautiful women, frightened him. The dark beauty in white satin before whom he bowed had an alluring quality which ordinarily would have caused him to turn his back on her. But it may have been that brilliant red necklace, or perhaps a perverse intuition of his own, that drove Paul Rodgers to an unusual social gesture.

“Madame Nerval—” he began.

She stopped in her progress across the lounge, and regarded him with surprise.

“I am a complete stranger here,” he continued in rapid French. “A desolate stranger, Madame. And on seeing such beauty and hearing such music, I am mad enough to beg a dance with you.”

Her surprise disappeared in a laugh. “Are you drunk, monsieur?”

He shook his head.

“Drunk only with the vision of you crossing this room. Say the dance is mine, Madame!”

“I couldn’t resist it, after such a speech from a complete stranger,” she replied. Then, as with the most natural air in the world they walked toward the ballroom, she asked:

“Who are you ?”

But once again Paul Rodgers shook his head.

“It is too early in the evening for the stranger to unmask, Madame Nerval. Let this dance be with a stranger.”

“And yet you know my name,” she pouted.

“Who would not demand to know it, the moment that he set eyes upon you?” Rodgers smiled.

“All these pretty speeches suggest that you want something,” she murmured, eying this strange red-haired man who looked so attractive in evening-dress.

“Only a dance,” he said, taking her in his arms and gliding easily to the music of the waltz.

The Intelligence officer danced well. Lola Nerval was superb. The colour in her cheeks heightened, and there was a sparkle in her dark eyes as she realized that this stranger was no clodhopper in the ballroom. As they circled round amidst the well-dressed throng, Rodgers let his gaze rest upon that blood-red necklace clasping the white throat.

She was suddenly conscious of his attention.

“You like it, this necklace, hein?”

“I think it is beautiful,” he said. “Where did you get it?”

“From the neck of a skeleton, five thousand years old,” she replied calmly.

“You are a brave woman.”

“Why?”

“To wear what has adorned a skeleton.”

She laughed easily.

“The skeleton was once a woman of fashion.”

“Yes?”

“A woman who lived and loved in those cities known as Sodom and Gomorrah. My husband turned over the skeleton with a spade.”

“An archaeologist ?”

“So you might call him. I expect, my friend, you are thinking that he is but a grave-robber.”

Rodgers guided her gently toward the centre of the ballroom.

“Only the ancients buried treasure with their dead,” he observed. “Today we are practical enough to see that no wealth is lowered with the corpse.”

“You have a gruesome mind, my friend.”

“You have a gruesome ornament, Madame Nerval.”

For a moment they stared into each other’s eyes—a dark, challenging gaze from Lola Nerval; a shrewd gray glance from Paul Rodgers. Then the waltz dribbled to an end; slowly they sauntered from the ballroom back to the lounge.

“That was a divine dance,” she murmured.

“You dance divinely,” said the Red Wolf, bowing her to a seat.

She accepted a cigarette from his proffered case, her painted fingernails drooping for a moment like red talons.

“And now that you have granted a stranger the desire for a dance,” said Rodgers slowly, “I am going to beg another favour.”

“Mon Dieu! I might have guessed you were being too nice. What is it now, my friend ?”

“I would like to see the grave from which that necklace came.”

She blew a cloud of cigarette-smoke into his face.

“Are you then pretending to be interested in archaeology?”

“There is no preteens. I am intrigued.”

“With Sodom and Gomorrah?”

“Who would not be?”

She flicked the ash from her cigarette.

“That should be easy enough. The Governor of Palestine, Sir Hubert Laidler, is paying a state visit to the diggings the day after tomorrow. Why not join the official party?”

“I hate official parties,” protested the Intelligence officer. “And surely I could ask for no better guide than yourself.”

She hesitated. This persuasive stranger seemed possessed of a pertinacity which interested her. Moreover, he was sufficiently good-looking and well-mannered to appeal to her.

"I go back to the diggings tomorrow,” she said. “They lie to the north of the Dead Sea.”

“Let me take you there by car— tomorrow,” he suggested boldly.

“Why not?” she murmured, half to herself.

“Yes, why not?” he repeated.

She turned her dark eyes toward him.

“Very well, my friend. But let us now cease this romantic blague. The time has now come to unmask. You know me as Madame Nerval. Who are you?”

His sunburned face smiled at her.

“My name is Paul Rodgers.”

“Paul Rodgers!” The flush in her cheeks disappeared, and a dead pallor remained. “Then you are the man they call the Red Wolf of—”

A little evening bag which she had carried slipped to the floor with a thud. It burst open, and a mixture of ridiculous contents spilled forth. Lipstick, powder-puff, a small tube of perfume, a key and other objects. In the confusion that followed, Rodgers bent down and gathered them in his hands.

But even as he did so, the red talons descended.

“Thank you, monsieur.”

Swiftly she scooped them into her bag. Then she rose. The incident had disturbed her composure.

“I must go now, Monsieur Rodgers. Thank you for an amusing half-hour. Good-by.”

“Au revoir, Madame Nerval. Until tomorrow.”

“Are you serious, then ?” she asked.

“Are you afraid?” he countered.

Once again their glances challenged each other.

“Till tomorrow, then,” she said with a sigh.

He bowed. Still statuesque in the white satin gown, she sauntered away.

The Intelligence officer stood with his hands clenched. As she passed out of the doorway, he sank back into a chair and unclenched his hands. A ball of paper was in one of his palms. He had concealed it from that spilled evening bag. Carefully he smoothed it out over his knee. It was scrawled with strange hieroglyphics, and signed. He read:

CH_3C_6 H_2(NO_2)3

Raoul Sabin.

“Queer,” murmured Rodgers to himself. “A woman in a Chanel gown. A necklace five thousand years old that comes from Sodom and Gomorrah. A divine dancer who, in a bag that contains her lipstick, also carries a formula for that most deadly explosive known to science—T. N. T.!”... A strange mixture that required sorting... And who was Raoul Sabin— Raoul Sabin— Sabin?

Like the Leitmotif in a musical composition, the name began to reiterate in his mind. Raoul Sabin. It was a theme with variations. Memories began to be stirred, like dead leaves in an autumn wind: Raoul Sabin. Paris. A boulevard cafe. Newsboys crying the latest noonday scandal. Dynamite. Yes, that was it! Raoul Sabin, the famous dynamiter— sentenced to transportation to Devil’s Island.

With a quiet smile of triumph on his face, the Intelligence officer rose. He walked across the lounge and made his way to where the hall porter rested lethargically against a series of pigeonholes of abandoned letters.

“I shall want a car for a long journey tomorrow,” he said to the porter.

The porter blinked into action.

“Yes sir. I will get you the best motorcar in Jerusalem, sir.”

Rodgers grinned and walked away.

THE motorcar purred easily over the brown plains that led toward the Dead Sea. Paul Rodgers was driving, and his slim hands controlled the wheel as easily and as firmly as if he were aboard his favourite mount, a camel.

For some time the woman in white, Madame Nerval, who was seated at his side, had been silent. Suddenly, with a slight hesitation of her rouged lips, she asked him:

“Why did you insist upon coming with me to the diggings?”

He smiled. “Because I am curious, Madame Nerval.”

She did not smile.

“Will you stop the car, please?” she commanded.

Automatically he did so, glancing at her in surprise. But her gaze was fixed beyond him toward the brown plain where a few stumps glistened white in the sunshine.

“There was once a woman who was curious—” began Madame Nerval.

“Naturally.”

“She stood on this very spot, and gazed back upon the burning cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. For her curiosity, she was changed into a pillar of salt.”

The Red Wolf narrowed his gray eyes. “Lot’s wife?”

“Lot’s wife.” She nodded gravely.

He laughed lightly.

“But where is the pillar of salt?” he asked, looking round at the brown plain.

“Some enterprising Levantine business man decided to dig it up and sell it as table-salt,” she explained. “This particular pillar of salt was always described by guides as Lot’s wife. And when hundreds of pilgrims heard of the desecration, they protested vigorously.”

“Did it have any effect ?”

“It merely gave the Levantine gentlemen a new idea,” she continued. “In future they sold their salt as a rare and curious commodity— salt that had once been Lot’s wife. And they got a much better price for it.”

“You know the history of this region very well,” he observed.

“My husband is on the diggings,” she explained.

Rodgers eyed her cautiously.

“Am I to suppose, then, that there is a moral in the story you have just told me?” he asked.

Her face was white and set. Her dark eyes stared ahead.

“You said you were curious.”

“I am, very curious,” he said quietly. Imperceptibly she shrugged her shoulders.

“Very well, then. I have warned you. Let us drive on.”

And for the rest of that swift journey across the plains, she did not speak.

Very soon they reached a number of little hillocks alongside the River Jordan. It was an area known as the Wady Djarafa. Heaps of earth were being flung up by little armies of Arabs with spades. At first glance it gave the impression of a series of trenches being built for the use of a defending army.

“Sodom and Gomorrah?” asked the Red Wolf.

She nodded.

“And there, on the right, is the tent of the leader of the expedition, Father Talman,” she added dryly.

Rodgers switched off the engine of the car, and gallantly helped the beautiful woman in white to descend. A slight smile of triumph crossed his face as he noticed that here, away from Jerusalem, she seemed slightly ill at ease. Much of her poise had disappeared. Nevertheless she accompanied him as he strolled toward the tent set among the rough heaps of rubble.

Father Talman came out to meet them. He was a fat, swarthy Frenchman, whose absurdity was heightened by the khaki shorts, piratical-looking belt and tennis shirt in which he was garbed. A scraggy beard hid his throat.

“Bonjour, Madame Nerval. You come back early.”

“And I have brought with me— a friend,” explained Madame Nerval. “He is curious to see the work you have done. He—insisted upon coming.”

“Your work, cher maitre, is known even in Europe,” smiled Rodgers, holding out his hand. “When a few weeks ago I was talking with some friends at the British Museum, there was much,— shall I say, scientific?— envy of your brilliant discoveries. And when in Jerusalem last night I made the acquaintance of the charming Madame Nerval, I could not resist paying a personal visit to your diggings, Father Talman.”

The fat and sallow Frenchman blushed with pleasure at this greeting.

“But of course, monsieur, you are very welcome,” he purred. “I will myself conduct you over the ruins. It will be a pleasure, Monsieur—er—”

“Rodgers,” said Madame Nerval quietly. “Monsieur Paul Rodgers.”

Father Talman nodded. The name meant nothing to him. He took the Intelligence officer by the arm and began walking toward the diggings. Then he suddenly recalled the existence of the woman.

“Ah, but I am forgetting. Your husband, Madame Nerval—”

“Yes?”

She now seemed listless and indifferent.

“He is at work by the house.”

“By the house! ”

Despite the monotonous repetition, something like a gleam of satisfaction came into her eyes. Then she turned those lustrous dark eyes toward Paul Rodgers.

“I shall see you before you leave.”

“Of course.” He bowed.

Father Talman hurried him away to the heaps of rubble and stones and the delving Arabs which told of the great cities of antiquity being restored. Caressing his scraggy beard, the fat Frenchman told of his discoveries.

“I came across it by chance. A stone in the sand! You understand, mon ami? I began digging. In three weeks my proofs were convincing. I had discovered the long-lost cities of Sodom and Gomorrah—the cities of antiquity and great iniquity.”

He chortled to himself.

“And they were destroyed by the wrath of Jehovah?” asked the Red Wolf, his gray eyes searching the men and the objects they delved.

Father Talman nodded.

“It would appear so, my friend. What probably happened was in the nature of an earthquake. And doubtless as you know, there is much oil below the surface here. An American company has recently acquired the rights. This earthquake of antiquity probably started several gushers, some of which caught fire. It was not long before the cities began to be engulfed by the blazing oil. That is the scientific explanation.”

“And your own opinion?” asked Paul Rodgers politely.

The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders.

“I belong to the Church, not to science.”

He bent down and took up a piece of pottery that had been carefully put aside with a few other broken objects.

“Exquisite, is it not?” he asked. “It is a pity that the wrath of God, in the shape of fire and earthquake, left so little for a poor archaeologist to discover. Not even the walls of the cities were left standing.”

The Intelligence officer examined the pottery with interest. His life in the desert, his extensive reading of Arabic literature, and the Koran in particular, had made him an authority on the ancient Middle East. The discovery was genuine.

“But did I not hear you mention to Madame Nerval something about a house?” he ventured.

“That is so,” babbled the Frenchman. “We shall go there at once. A luxurious house with the remains of what must have been a garden. I think I can justifiably claim that the house is one which originally belonged to the Lot of the Bible, and in which his family dwelt while this city endured in its wickedness.”

“A great claim!” said Rodgers.

“But justified. I have proofs,” went on Father Talman. “I will show them to you. In this house Lot received the two angels who came to warn him of the forthcoming destruction of Sodom. It is this house which I hope to show with great pride to His Excellency the Governor, Sir Hubert Laidler, when he honours me with a visit tomorrow.”

Obviously the forthcoming visit was to be a great occasion for the fat Frenchman. As he led Paul Rodgers through the heaps of rubble, his voice in sonorous fashion announced the program of the visit. The Red Wolf paid little attention to the details. His narrowed gray eyes were fixed on the Arabs, nearly all young men, who were working vigorously with spades.

They neared what had obviously been the principal gate of the city. Father

Talman was prattling away vivaciously. But a single sentence growled in Arabic by a workman arrested Rodgers. It was a simple but mysterious sentence:

“The tulips are planted in the garden.”

“Aiee!” grunted the other Arab to whom the sentence had been addressed.

RODGERS glanced swiftly at them. But they had bent over their spades and were digging vigorously.

“And here is the house of Lot,” went on Father Talman. “Magnificent, is it not, my friend? Regard the solid workmanship. Thick walls, which only the wrath of Jehovah could overthrow. We have even found traces of frescoes which suggest that artists of diabolical skill existed in Sodom. But enter, Monsieur Rodgers.”

The Intelligence officer passed beneath what had once been the doorway. Then he crossed a heap of rubble and found himself in the remains of a spacious courtyard and garden, with a lily-pond and fountain— obviously the house of a person of consequence.

“Even Lot believed in luxury,” ventured Rodgers, examining the ruins with interest.

“Lot was favoured by Jehovah,” went on the Frenchman. “But let me show you an altar which—”

“The tulips are planted in the garden.”

Once again that phrase was uttered, this time in French. Rodgers looked up. But it was not Father Talman who had spoken. A dark, sour-faced Syrian had whispered the phrase to a woman.

“Be quiet, you fool!” was her reply.

The woman was Lola Nerval.

“Ah, permit me, Monsieur Rodgers,” burst out Father Talman. “This is my chief assistant, Jean Nerval. I depend upon him, particularly for the Arab labour.”

Sullenly the Syrian bowed.

“Bonjour, monsieur .”

“An excellent army of workers, Monsieur Nerval,” commented Red Rodgers. “They seem so well— er—disciplined.”

“It is not an army,” growled the Syrian in reply. “And they work because today is pay-day.”

The Intelligence officer smiled pleasantly.

“Nevertheless, I must compliment you on the splendid work you have done, here particularly,” he replied. “Not only have you cleared this courtyard, but you have almost made the garden bloom again.”

The Syrian started. Father Talman interposed with a laugh:

“That, I am afraid, would be impossible, my friend. A garden blooming in the ruins of Sodom! No, no, that is too fantastic. Perhaps when His Excellency the Governor visits us, we may present him with a bouquet.”

And Father Talman roared at what he considered an excellent joke. Even the Syrian lost his scowl for a moment, while Lola Nerval smiled gently. Only Rodgers remained serious.

Then, abruptly, he faced the little group.

“But already I have taken up too much of your time, cher maitre. I recollect that I have urgent business in Jerusalem. I must take my leave.”

“Surely you will lunch with us?” protested Father Talman.

Rodgers shook his head.

“Alas, it is impossible. But I am so enchanted with your discoveries that I will surely arrive with the Governor tomorrow. I must see them again.”

Father Talman purred.

“That is indeed a compliment. For the moment then it is only au revoir.”

The fat Frenchman shook hands with the slim figure in white. Rodgers murmured his thanks, nodded casually to the Syrian, and walked over to Lola Nerval.

“These ruins are an admirable setting for you, Madame Nerval.”

Her dark gaze rested upon him.

“Am I to consider that a compliment? Sodom was a wicked city.”

“I enjoy wickedness,” observed the Red Wolf.

Her dead-white face seemed strained in the cruel sunlight.

“Must you really return tomorrow?” she asked.

His gray eyes opened a little in surprise.

“Not necessarily,” he replied. “But I should like to come to see you.”

There was silence for a moment.

“I would advise you not to come to the diggings again,” she said curtly, and walked away.

AN hour later Paul Rodgers had stopped his car at the identical place where earlier in the day Madame Nerval had commanded him to halt. It was the spot which tradition had identified as the death-place of Lot’s wife.

Within the shade of the car he had squatted in Arab fashion, an incongruous figure in his white European clothes.

“Why a tulip garden in the desert?” he asked himself.

The very absurdity of the phrase had stamped itself on his mind. Tulips of the cultivated varieties were flowers unknown to the Arab. But were they? A thought, a devilish thought, entered the mind of the Red Wolf. The audacity of it took away his breath. His sunburned features set grimly.

“A garden of death!” he muttered. “And the tulips are explosives buried in the earth. Once again there are to be screams of destruction in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.”

He continued to sit there until the sun had dropped below the scarlet ruined hills. Then he stood up and began to walk. But his direction was toward the diggings of Sodom.

NEXT DAY a procession of white motorcars moved toward the diggings near the Dead Sea. They carried the Governor of Palestine, a few bored A. D. C.’s and others. In the rear car of that procession sat the Chief of Police, Colonel Travers, and an inscrutable Intelligence officer.

“But why, my dear Rodgers, drag me into a picnic of this character ?” protested Colonel Travers. “I loathe picnics.”

“So do I,” was the reply. “But this picnic may have startling consequences. I hope your camel patrols started early this morning?”

“My men can be depended upon,” grunted the Colonel, glancing instinctively at his watch. “They should be in the vicinity now. But why be so mysterious, Rodgers? Can’t you explain the need for bringing nearly half the police-force of Jerusalem into the desert?”

“The Governor is in danger,” said the Intelligence officer briefly.

“So you have said,” was the weary reply. “But what danger can there be in two dead cities?”

“Has it ever occurred to you,” asked the Red Wolf, “that rebels might consider it well worth while to conquer two dead cities before moving on to living cities ?”

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

“These ancient cities of Sodom and Gomorrah are already in the hands of the rebel Druses.”

“Nonsense! It’s an old French padre who’s in charge of the diggings.”

“A figurehead,” said Rodgers, “a blind man concerned only with the Bible and his scientific discoveries. All the Arabs who work for him are rebels. An army of Druses! Naturally, Father Talman does not know.”

Colonel Travers began to be interested.

“Then the leader of these Druses—”

Rodgers nodded.

“We shall find him there. He will be introduced to the Governor.”

“Good heavens! What’s the game? Assassination ?”

“Not only of the Governor,” Rodgers said calmly, “but all of us.”

“How? Sudden attack?”

“Something more cataclysmic than that. Dynamite!”

“Good heavens!” Colonel Travers began to look uncomfortable. He looked ahead at the other cars. “Don’t you think we ought to stop this—er—”

“Picnic? Certainly not. You want to capture this leader of the rebels?”

“Naturally. But—”

“And you carried out my instructions to the letter?”

“I did, but—”

“Then there’s nothing much to worry about, my dear Travers. Let us look at the scenery. Did you know that this was the spot where Lot’s wife is said to have met her doom ?”

“I only hope it isn’t going to be the spot where we meet our doom,” grunted the Chief of Police.

ON ARRIVAL at the diggings they were received by the perspiring, excited Father Talman. His beard had been combed, his garb newly laundered. The Governor, Sir Hubert Laidler, shook hands with him, and the tour of inspection began. The diggings seemed deserted. Only a few Arabs were visible.

“They asked that they might be gathered outside the diggings to welcome Your Excellency,” explained Father Talman.

Rodgers gazed round for a glimpse of Lola Nerval, but she was not to be seen. Then his eyes turned toward a sandy hillock in the distance. Something white was crouched there. He smiled grimly, and whispered something to Colonel Travers. The Chief of Police gave a whispered order to one of his lieutenants, who saluted and walked away in a casual fashion.

After an examination of several objets d’art, discovered among the ruins, the Governor, accompanied by Father Talman, began a stroll among the heaps of rubble. Slowly they approached the house that might have been Lot’s. The fat Frenchman was babbling excitedly. He indicated the doorway. The Governor stooped and entered.

“And now for the courtyard and the garden, Your Excellency,” said Father Talman. “It is, I venture to think, the finest piece of archaeological work in Palestine today.”

The Governor stepped forward. The lily-pond and fountain attracted him at once. He moved toward them.

The A. D. C.’s followed. Behind were the Red Wolf and the Chief of Police. Colonel Travers looked at Rodgers.

“Is this quite safe, Rodgers? Aren’t we carrying this play-acting a little too far?” he whispered.

The Intelligence officer did not answer. He knew only too well that it was a gamble—a gamble with death. Beneath that garden was enough T. N. T. to blow them all sky-high. And connecting that garden was a thin copper wire that led to an electric detonator on a sandy hillock near by, where a woman in white squatted, awaiting a signal...

The signal was given. A figure in the distance raised a hand. Even at that distance Rodgers recognized the man. It was the sullen-faced Syrian, Jean Nerval. And while Rodgers waited for the white flame of the explosion that in the moment of death would tell him of failure, he turned to the Chief of Police.

“That’s your rebel leader, my dear Travers. He was introduced fifteen minutes ago. Better get him, now.”

Nothing had happened. The Governor was still talking amiably with Father Talman, and bending over the lily-pond. Once again that silhouetted figure raised his hand, this time with a gesture of impatience.

“—and I am now convinced, Your Excellency, that it was in this courtyard that Lot received the two angels sent by Jehovah to warn him.”

“Most interesting!” said the Governor.

They turned away from the lily-pond. It was then that the figure in the distance lost all control of himself. He stooped, picked up a rifle and levelled it at the little group in the garden. The Red Wolf drew himself up tensely. One shot into that garden of dynamite, and the lost city of Sodom would be destroyed again.

A shot rang out. But it did not come from the figure in the distance. Instead, the sullen Syrian pitched forward in the sand, and his body began to slither down the slope. And simultaneously there was a shout, and a roar from beyond the diggings. The massed Arab army, also awaiting that blinding flash in the sky, had suddenly found themselves surrounded by armed police on camels. Rifles and revolvers were pointed at them.

The Governor looked up inquiringly. He strolled toward the Intelligence officer.

“Is anything the matter, Rodgers?” he asked. “You look a little pale.”

Rodgers stroked beads of perspiration from his brow with his fingers.

“I find this garden rather uncomfortable, sir,” he said.

“It is a trifle hot,” nodded the Governor.

Slowly they passed out of the house of Lot, walked among the rubble heaps, and toward the tent where Father Talman pressed liquid refreshment upon them. The swarthy Frenchman was still babbling of archaeology, still talking of his newly found cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, still bowing and shaking hands, as the procession in the white cars left again for Jerusalem.

RODGERS found himself seated in the last car, beside the Chief of Police.

“And the woman, Travers?” he asked. “What happened to her?”

Colonel Travers stared out at the burned landscape.

“I’m sorry to say, Rodgers, she was shot trying to escape. When she realized that the detonator did not work, that some one had cut the wires, she knew that the plot had failed. There was a horse waiting. She jumped into the saddle and galloped away. Some of our police followed.

“It’s strange, you know,” the Chief of Police went on. “But at that very spot which you pointed out to me this morning, the spot where Lot’s wife turned and gazed back at the burning Sodom and Gomorrah, and was turned into a pillar of salt—there for some inscrutable reason Lola Nerval turned and gazed back at her pursuers. They fired. When they reached her, she was dead.”

Rodgers nodded.

“Poor woman! It was her hatred of the French, and therefore of Europeans generally, that drove her to plot with that Syrian. Did you know, Travers, that her real husband is a man named Raoul Sabin?”

“I didn’t. Who is Raoul Sabin? And where is he ?”

“He’s a prisoner on Devil’s Island, the French penal settlement,” replied Rodgers. “He was convicted for an attempt to dynamite the Chamber of Deputies in Paris. A former chemist, with an extensive knowledge of explosives. Haven’t you heard of him ?”

Colonel Travers shook his head.

“I never bother myself with French criminals,” he replied.

“I confirmed my suspicions by a telephone conversation with the French

police at Damascus, the evening I introduced myself to Madame Nerval,” went on the Intelligence officer reflectively. “I also discovered that her husband, her real husband, had sent her all the necessary formulae for this explosive camp which would start the rebel Druses scampering through Palestine again. She hated the race that had imprisoned her husband. Then when the Syrian, Jean Nerval, offered her fame and fortune, with himself as the future conqueror of Palestine, she accepted. And the coup very nearly succeeded. A chance remark I heard sent me hurrying through the sands last night into that garden. It was as I suspected. I found the wires and cut them.”

“And supposing they had discovered the cut wires and replaced them early this morning?” asked Travers.

Rodgers smiled.

“We should have joined those citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah who died five thousand years ago.”

The Chief of Police lit a cigarette. He felt comfortably alive.

____________________

10: The Drums of Omdurman

The Blue Book Magazine, April 1934

Author’s Note.

IT was while I was roaming the suk and coffee-houses of Omdurman some six months ago, in company with a Syrian attached to the Sudan Intelligence, that I first heard the story which I have made the basis of an adventure of the Red Wolf of Arabia.

I had studied the history of the Dervish campaign and that surprisingly successful empire built up by the Mahdi and in which General Gordon played a tragic role. A perhaps morbid curiosity led me to try and discover what had happened to the head of Gordon, from the moment when it had been unwrapped for the horrified gaze of Slatin Pasha, then a captive in the Mahdi’s camp.

For a time Gordon’s head was fixed to a tall spear and set up outside the Mahdi’s tent. It is thought that the rest of the mangled body was flung into the Nile. No trace of it was ever found. Later the head of Gordon was paraded in triumph throughout the countryside. Then it was lost to history.

Yet a clever and interesting Arab dealer in gum who invited me into his house in Omdurman related to me the equally grim story of the other head in that drama of the African desert—the head of the Mahdi.

When, several years later, Kitchener and the British armies advanced upon the Dervishes and began the battle of Omdurman, shells from the artillery began to smash that elaborate tomb of the dead Mahdi built by one of his Italian prisoners. It is reported that when the British troops entered Omdurman, the body of the Mahdi was discovered uprooted by the shells. Commands were given that this body, which the natives still regarded with religious awe, should be scattered to the winds of the desert.

But according to the story told me, a British officer secured the head of the Mahdi, hid it in his baggage, and set off on leave for Europe. At Wadi Haifa, however, the affair was discovered. The officer was arrested, and commanded to take the head into the desert and bury it. This he dutifully did. Natives still believe that the head of the Mahdi of Allah lies in the sands of the Nubian Desert, and that some day this holy relic will appear again.

Such is the story I heard one night while the drums of Omdurman were thudding weirdly in the darkness.

—William J. Makin.

______________

"HE had huge, ugly, flapping ears. I—And he knew he had them. He hated his ears. So he killed himself by tumbling in front of a Metro train. Helas!”

The little fat man drowned his sigh with a choice liqueur.

“What is the moral to your sad tale, cher ami?” inquired Paul Rodgers.

The man who was known as the Red Wolf of Arabia sprawled at ease in a comfortable chair in the lounge of Shepheard’s Hotel, in Cairo. A thin veil of cigarette-smoke shrouded his keen features; his gray eyes were half-closed; his lithe body rested with a suggestion of panther grace.

“The moral! ” A pair of plump hands brushed aside the smoke-curtain. “I could have cured him. Yes, I, Doctor Henri Tobine, the greatest facial surgeon in Europe! Two little cuts on those flapping ears with my scalpel,—oh, so very little cuts,—and that miserable man would have walked out of my operating- room in Paris an optimist.”

The Intelligence officer could not resist a smile at the enthusiasm of the podgy man facing hint. They had met in a concert hall in Cairo; Beethoven's  “Moonlight Sonata” had been played by a quartet, and Rodgers had found himself talking eagerly with the podgy Frenchman who had also been enthralled by the music. They were both staying at Shepheard’s Hotel. It was natural that they should meet after dinner the next evening and sip liqueurs together.

“Face-lifting? A queer job, Doctor.”

“Not at all, my friend,” protested Henri Tobine. “A very necessary job, in our civilization. Consider, for example: You walk into a department-store to buy a pair of silk stockings.”

“But I never do.”

“Ecoutez! Every man does at some time in his life. You reach the counter; and there, waiting to serve you, is a girl with a badly shaped nose, queer eyes, or an ugly mouth. What do you do?”

“Be a gentleman, and forget it,” smiled Red Rodgers.

The little surgeon snorted his disgust.

“If you were a Frenchman, or one to whom beauty appeals, you could not forget it. No, mon ami. You would be disgusted. You would walk away without buying that pair of silk stockings.”

“Is this the latest salesmanship from Paris?"

“Call it so if you will,” said the surgeon with a cherubic smile. “But it is that which has given me the wherewithal for a month’s holiday in Cairo.”

“How so?” inquired Rodgers.

“A certain department-store in Paris approached me sometime ago. The gentleman in charge lamented that they had the best working-girls in the whole of the city; but ma foi, they were also ugly. A comic journal had said so, and Paris had laughed. Would I, as the most famous of all plastic-surgeons, make these girls beautiful? There were forty-eight of them who needed treatment.”

“Good heavens! What did you do?”

“I quoted a fee for the whole forty-eight,” replied the surgeon blandly. “In two months the job was finished. The girls were beautiful, but I was slightly fatigued. I collected my fee and sailed for Egypt.”

There was such an expression of content and self-approbation on the face of the fat man, that the Intelligence officer laughed aloud.

“But where is the humor, mon ami?” protested Doctor Tobine.

Rodgers sobered his countenance.

“A thousand pardons, Doctor. I had forgotten that old French proverb: il faut souffrir pour etre belle.”

“Quite right,” nodded the Doctor, appeased. “But one need not suffer much these days to be beautiful. At least, not by an expert. If you had cuts on your face from a motor smash, I could remove the scars with my scalpel.”

“In these parts,” murmured Rodgers, “the Somalis deliberately make three cuts on each cheek because they believe it to be a sign of beauty and manhood.”

“A barbarous custom,” snorted Doctor Tobine. “Do you know, mon ami, that I have performed three thousand operations for wrinkles, and only after the five hundredth did I feel that I was becoming a master of my technique. Now a femme du monde can come to me, and in fifteen minutes I can subtract fifteen years from her looks.”

“A miracle,” agreed Rodgers idly. “But at least, Doctor, you would have no cause to perform any such operation on that creature who is now addressing herself to the hotel-porter. Beautiful, is she not?”

Doctor Tobine hurriedly adjusted a pince-nez that dangled from a broad black ribbon against his paunch, and stared at the woman indicated by Paul Rodgers. At first he saw only a flame-coloured evening frock out of which rose a shapely pair of white shoulders. Then she turned her head.

“Admirable,” murmured the surgeon. “The nose a little tilted, perhaps.”

“But giving her a pert, intelligent look,” pointed out the Intelligence officer.

“The eyes they are dark, hein?”

“Violet in tint,” said Rodgers, whose glance was keener.

“Then they match her dark hair, which under the light seems to have a purple tinge. And that neck, ma foi! So swan-like. It would entrance a sculptor.”

“A worthy model for your Paris establishment,” smiled Rodgers. “Why not secure her services, Doctor?”

“Alas, she is too beautiful,” sighed Doctor Tobine. “My patients would never be satisfied in her presence.”

And the pince-nez fell back to its comfortable resting-place.

Through the haze of his cigarette-smoke, Rodgers continued to eye the beauty. She was talking animatedly, yet commandingly, to that Swiss porter of Shepheard’s, Adolf the admirable: Adolf, who was never perturbed, who spoke every language like a diplomat, and who apparently never slept. Always he was behind his counter with a medley of orange-jerseyed messengers slithering into life at the crook of his finger.

Adolf accepted her commands with respect. The next moment the superb creature flaunted toward them. She moved with the grace of a mannequin and the superb aloofness of a duchess. As the flame-coloured creation swished silkily within a few feet of him, Rodgers sensed a subtle perfume.

“Ah, I should be a very poor man,” commented the surgeon cynically, “if she were not a woman in a thousand.”

“In ten thousand,” added Rodgers, with admiration rare for him.

AND then the vision was blotted out suddenly. Before their table bowed a military, red-faced figure incongruously wearing a fez and a monocle.

“Barrington Pasha!” murmured the Intelligence officer. “You blot out a vision like a black cloud.... And how are the criminals of Cairo?”

“Quiet for the moment,” smiled the Chief of the Cairo Police. Rodgers introduced to the surgeon the man whom all criminals in and around the Suez feared more than the jinn of the desert. Doctor Tobine rose and bowed with true French politeness.

“It is a great honour to meet the famous Barrington Pasha,” he said with obvious respect.

“And I am desolated because I must take away our friend for the evening— cet poll de carotte,” responded Barrington Pasha.

“But I’m enjoying myself, loafing,” grimaced Rodgers.

“And I have a little affair to discuss,” commanded Barrington Pasha.

Rodgers shrugged his shoulders.

“As you will,” he said resignedly. Then, to Doctor Tobine: “Au revoir, mon ami. We will discuss the beauty of your Frankenstein scalpel again.”

“It is, to me, always a pleasure,” replied the surgeon, wreathing his fat face in a smile.

Barrington pasha led his captive to another part of the lounge. “That woman in the flame-coloured frock,” he began. “You noticed her?”

“Who could not help noticing her,” said Rodgers. “Who is she ?”

“A very dangerous woman.”

“That is obvious.”

“She has come to Egypt for some sinister purpose.” The monocle glittered in the light.

“What is the purpose?” asked the Intelligence officer quietly.

Barrington Pasha twisted his mouth. “I wish I knew. It’s because I don’t know that I’m begging your assistance.”

“Begging, eh?”

“Well, I know I can’t command you, my dear fellow. But you are the only man I can depend upon to discover what mischief Anna Sokolovitch is up to.”

“So that is her name—Anna Sokolovitch.”

Barrington Pasha nodded.

“A Russian, and a good bolshevik. All the more dangerous because she was once an aristocrat. Beware, my dear Rodgers, the aristocrat turned communist. She’s here for mischief, and not one of my agents have been able to discover her game.”

“She might be here for a holiday, like most of these sun lizards who creep here from Europe,” ventured Rodgers.

Barrington Pasha shook his head. “She no longer belongs to that crowd. She works, my dear fellow, and is recognized as one of the cleverest agents of the G.P.U.”

His monocle swivelled in the direction of the Red Wolf, and the suspicion of a smile crept across his face. The Chief of the Cairo Police realized only too well that he had aroused the curiosity of this strange adventurer of deserts and the Red Sea.

“Any chance of discovering her mission?” asked Rodgers idly.

Barrington Pasha answered equally carelessly,

“She’s just asked Adolf to find her a trustworthy and discreet dragoman,” he murmured. “She leaves Cairo tomorrow morning by air-liner, for Wadi Haifa. Afterward she goes farther south, to Khartoum.”

“And the dragoman goes with her ?”

“He goes with her.”

“I see.” Rodgers braced his shoulders instinctively. “Well, perhaps I may look into it. See you again, Barrington. Au revoir.”

“Au revoir,” chuckled Barrington to the figure receding from him. “And good hunting.”

With a sigh of content he slid into a comfortable chair and beckoned to a waiter.

“Bring me a cigar and a brandy liqueur,” he ordered.

Barrington Pasha considered he had achieved a good evening’s work.

2

THE woman in the flame-coloured frock, a long cigarette-holder jutting from her carmined lips, regarded the gayly garbed dragoman before her with a keen scrutiny of her violet eyes.

“Your references are excellent, Abdul Bahri,” she said in French, flicking a little packet of papers toward him. “And Adolf the porter has enthusiasm about you.”

“Adolf is generous,” murmured the dragoman, stretching out a brown hand from beneath his gayly brocaded kuftan to take the papers.

“But,”—and the violet eyes narrowed in their scrutiny,—“the dragoman I want must be a very special dragoman.”

“That is why I offer myself, lady,” replied Abdul Bahri with a logical simplicity.

Anna Sokolovitch did not smile.

“You speak English?” she asked suddenly.

“Naturally,” replied the dragoman. “It is part of my trade. But—”

He hesitated. The woman waited.

“Well?” she asked.

The dragoman flung out his brown hands in a typical gesture.

“I prefer to speak French,” he replied. “I like not the English people.”

"So!"

“No true Egyptian welcomes the yoke that the English have placed on our shoulders,” he went on slowly.

“But the yoke is there,” she said, blowing a little cloud of smoke into his face.

“Aiee!” he agreed. “But some day Allah will help us, and the yoke will be removed. Until that day we wait patiently.”

WITH a bow, the dragoman made as if to leave.

“I am sorry, lady,” he added, “that I am not found suitable. I let my feelings show themselves. So I will bid you good night and wish that you may find the dragoman of your desires.”

“Stay!” Her sure commanding voice halted the figure in the gaudy kuftan. “I am not displeased with your speech. Come closer, Abdul Bahri.”

The red slippers of the dragoman padded across the heavy rugs, and he stood in the centre of the room while those violet eyes regarded him. She stretched out a slim white hand, on which a solitary flame-like jewel glistened, and touched the fez of the dragoman.

“It is strange,” she said slowly, “to meet a dragoman in Cairo with red hair.”

“There are many of us in Egypt, elect of Allah, who are so favoured,” was the quiet reply.

“You have a ready tongue,” she said.

“But only for the gossip of the bazaar,” he replied boldly. “Secrets die in my throat.”

For fully half a minute he endured her close scrutiny. Those dark eyes seemed to pierce his brown skin and see deep down into the heart of him. But whatever she saw seemed to amuse her, for a faint smile crossed her carmined lips.

“You are engaged, Abdul,” she said softly. “Be prepared to leave here at seven o’clock in the morning. We fly to Wadi Haifa.”

“Certainly, lady. I will bring your tea at six o’clock.”

“That will be excellent.” She stifled a yawn and stretched her panther-like body. “Good night, Abdul.”

“Good night, lady, and pleasant dreams.”

He shuffled with a final bow out of the room. Once in the corridor of the hotel, he unrolled a piece of sacking and stretched it before the door. He removed his fez, and placed it delicately on the floor. Then with a quick agile movement he rolled himself in the sacking, and couched against the door.

In five minutes he was fast asleep, a strange smile on his face.

3

THE big air-liner left the ground, banked majestically over Heliopolis, and with a steady crunch-crunch of the four engines headed south through the opaque air of the early morning. There were six passengers in the machine, all Europeans with the exception of the dragoman in the gaudy kuftan who sat behind Anna Sokolovitch.

Garbed in a soft pearl-gray dress, the Russian woman seemed cool and more mysteriously detached than ever. She stared indifferently through the cabin windows at the Pyramids below. From this height of two thousand feet they appeared like hillocks of sand built playfully by children out of the desert.

Paul Rodgers stroked the back of his head, characteristically, and adjusted the angle of his fez. So far, he was completely baffled. During the process of preparing light baggage for the airplane journey, he had combed the Russian woman’s belongings and found nothing more damning than an array of perfume bottles and a lavish collection of frocks. Perhaps the one peculiarity was an empty hat-box. He had put it aside with the baggage which was to be left at Shepheard’s Hotel, but Anna Sokolovitch had pounced upon it.

“I thought I told you that this must go in the airplane with me?” she had said sharply, menacingly.

“Yes, lady; but it is empty,” protested the dragoman.

“Exactly. Like your head, Abdul Bahri.” Her voice was dangerously quiet. “See that the hat-box is placed in the cabin of the airplane. And remember in future, Abdul, that my commands are to be obeyed.”

“Yes, lady.”

Five minutes later he was examining that hat-box, running his thin brown fingers over it to discover whether anything was secreted in the lining. There was nothing. Just an ordinary empty hat-box that could be purchased for thirty piasters anywhere in Cairo.

“And now help fasten my frock, Abdul.”

She had called impatiently over her shoulder. Paul Rodgers padded back into the room at the hotel, and the thin brown fingers fumbled with the fastenings of her dress. Mentally he cursed Barrington Pasha for suggesting the role of dragoman. But it was too late to attempt anything else.

For a moment their eyes met in the mirror before which she was standing. Violet stared into gray—a steady scrutiny. The Intelligence officer drooped his lids. He heard her soft laugh.

“For a Moslem, you seem very ignorant of a woman’s dress, Abdul.”

He had replied adroitly:

“Our women dress differently, lady.”

The four engines crunching their way rhythmically through the desert air lulled his mind. It was music devoid of counterpoint, a pure symphony of power. Below he could see the Nile, a broad steel ribbon bordered with green. On either side stretched illimitable desert, losing itself in the shimmering sunlight. And just in front of him was a figure in a pearl-gray dress, sitting alongside an empty hat-box.

AT Assuit the air-liner descended for half an hour. A light breakfast was served in a marquee on the aerodrome. Then once again the machine climbed, slitting the blue envelope of the sky with its shattering drone, and headed across the desert.

The rarefied air caused the air-liner to bump about alarmingly. The pilot sent the machine up another thousand feet. Below was sheer desolation. Black hills looking like charred mounds rose out of the gray sea of sand. The sun seemed to have blistered all life out of existence.

The bumping caused more than one face among the passengers to assume the gray colour of the desert. But it did not disturb Anna Sokolovitch. Just as they were approaching Luxor and the Nile once again, she twisted round in her seat and regarded the dragoman behind.

“Abdul!”

“Yes, lady.”

“Have you ever flown before?”

With memories of many desert flights, Rodgers grinned within. But he lied easily: “No, lady.”

“Are you frightened?”

“I prefer camels, lady. For the rest, it is with Allah.”

And the laughter which reached his ears above the drone of the engines told him that his disguise was still convincing.

They swooped down on Aswan, the half-throttled engines spluttering as they crossed the gigantic dam and the almost submerged Temple of Philae. There they lunched. An hour later they were on the last stage of the day’s journey along the Nile, over the First Cataract, and on to the gateway of the Sudan— Wadi Haifa. And always the empty hat-box reposed at the side of the mysteriously aloof Anna Sokolovitch.

At the end of that day of monotonous droning rhythm, of flying over drab desert or apparently endless ribbon of the Nile, Rodgers was tempted to send a telegram to Barrington Pasha suggesting that the Cairo police should stop harrying an innocent tourist. But as they were entering the doorway of the white painted hotel set among a garden of palms, Anna Sokolovitch turned to her dragoman.

“After dinner, Abdul, I shall require a car to drive into the desert.”

“Yes, lady. And for how long?”

“Probably for the whole night.”

“Will you require me, lady?”

“Of course. Oh, and don’t forget to bring that empty hat-box in the car.”

The dragoman bowed. Decidedly this Russian woman, who wanted to spend a night in the desert with an empty hat-box, was an unusual type of tourist.

Swathed in a white silk cloak that made her appear a figure in alabaster, Anna Sokolovitch took her place in the limousine which the dragoman had conjured out of the little town of Wadi Haifa.

“First to the suk,” she commanded. “I want the house of El Kawa, the grain- merchant.”

“There is only one El Kawa in Haifa,” murmured the Arab chauffeur respectfully. “He is rich and powerful. But after sundown his house is closed to all visitors.”

The murmur was in Arabic, and meant only for the dragoman, who was seated beside the chauffeur. The Russian woman heard it, however, and understood. She replied in Arabic:

“El Kawa expects me. Drive there quickly! ”

And her slim hand rested upon the empty hat-box on the seat beside her.

The limousine swung away from the brightly lighted hotel, and in a few minutes had entered the narrow streets of the suk, or bazaar. Into these streets the desert had overflowed, a gritty yellow flood that lapped against dark doorways. Oil lamps burned smokily in strange interiors. Goats scuttered about restlessly. The monotonous cadence of a dancing girl’s song was caught for a moment by the limousine in passing, and then lost in the rumble of the exhaust.

The chauffeur applied his brakes outside a tall house built of sun-baked mud and stones, graced with a crazy balcony and displaying fretted Arabic windows.

“The house of El Kawa,” he said.

Red Rodgers the dragoman stepped out. At a sign from the woman he opened the door of the limousine and assisted her into the sand.

“I will knock,” she said quietly.

Her white hand tapped against the door four times. Almost instantly the portal swung open, and a coal-black Sudanese, who in the darkness with his long white garment gave the appearance of a decapitated monk, growled a welcome.

“Enter, lady from the snows. The master awaits you.”

She plunged into a dark passage, Red Rodgers padding after her. They were shown into a heavily carpeted room where one dangling oil lamp threw their giant shadows against the bare walls. Simultaneously a wizened old man with a gray beard brushing against his gay coat also entered the room. He bowed low to the Russian woman.

“Welcome, Anna Sokolovitch. You come at the very hour of the moon as you promised.”

“As I promised, El Kawa,” she replied. “I plan, and the plan moves and takes shape, just as the Holy Prophet Mahomet planned and eventually took Mecca.”

“Allah is great. And Mahomet is his prophet,” murmured the old man mechanically. His rheumy eyes had swivelled toward Rodgers. “But who is this effendi?”

“My dragoman, Abdul. And a hater of the English,” smiled the woman. “He knows not of the plan; yet he is a faithful son of Allah.”

“Allah O akbar!” intoned the Red Wolf, feeling that the short silence necessitated it.

IT was in that same silence that the gay coat worn by the wizened old man had stirred his memory. At first he had thought of the cynical magician who stirred the dolls to life in Stravinsky’s famous ballet “Petrouchka.” Then he recalled the bloody history of these deserts. The gay coat was the colour-patched jibba once worn by thousands who followed that mad fanatic of the desert calling himself the Mahdi of Allah.

The frenzied thousands in their patched jibbas had stormed Khartoum, and killed its defender General Gordon, after one of the most desperate sieges in history. Years later those same patched jibbas had, once more by their thousands, launched themselves in a mad charge against the heavy artillery of Kitchener and his army outside Omdurman. And for miles the sands had been strewn with their torn and maimed bodies, the night wind stirring the jibbas until it seemed that the whole desert heaved beneath a gay patchwork quilt.

Now, thirty-five years after that devastating defeat at Omdurman, an old man in the suk of Wadi Haifa dared to wear the jibba.

“All faithful ones are welcome to this house,” purred El Kawa, removing his gaze from Red Rodgers.

“Are the diggers ready?” asked Anna Sokolovitch quietly.

“Aiee! My own son is one of them,” nodded the old man. He clapped his hands softly.

Two young Arabs, young enough not to have beards on their chins, padded into the room. They each carried a short desert spade like those used by the tomb-diggers of Egypt.

“Good,” approved the Russian woman, with one glance at them. “And now let us motor into the desert. There is much work to be done before the dawn.”

“It is holy work,” muttered the old man. “May Allah look down and bring you success!”

Anna Sokolovitch seemed impatient to be away. The two young Arabs with their spades were hustled into the waiting limousine. The dragoman found himself seated at the back alongside the Russian woman. And on her knees she nursed that empty hat-box.

As they lurched away into the desert, the Intelligence officer tried desperately to sort out this jigsaw of impressions. They rather resembled the crazy patchwork pattern of that jibba worn by the old man. He gave a side-glance to the beautiful woman at his side. In that white silk cloak she seemed enveloped in something unearthly, detached from the mundane world. And yet she was going into the desert with a hat-box! The absurdity of the adventure almost caused him to laugh aloud.

But the alabaster figure had leaned forward and was whispering instructions in Arabic to the driver. The limousine was plunging into the desert as into a yellow sea. It lurched from side to side as though heavy waves of sand flung it into a trough. The headlights cut the darkness and revealed more advancing waves of the desert. But always when the driver hesitated and gave a backward glance, the woman urged him on.

“On! Still farther!”

The tires slid against the sand, and the engine raced desperately. But always they went farther into that empty darkness.

AFTER an hour of this lurching, racketing journey, Anna Sokolovitch gave the command:

“Stop! We must be near the place. Out of the car, all of you! Abdul, take charge of the hat-box.”

Rodgers stumbled into the desert, the hat-box held in his lean brown hands.

He shivered slightly as the biting wind came stirring the sand at his feet. Overhead were a myriad bright stars. Shafts of light from the car lamps made ghostly the waste of sand beyond.

Anna Sokolovitch sat on the running-board. With an electric torch she bent over a roughly drawn map which she brought from the folds of her cloak. Beside her was a pocket-compass, gleaming in the darkness. This she also consulted.

A few moments later she stood up, and solemnly paced ten steps. Then once again she consulted the map and compass. Rodgers waited expectantly. The old fox Barrington Pasha was right, after all. This Russian woman was no mere tourist. But for what was she searching? Treasure?

“Dig here!” her voice suddenly commanded in the darkness.

The two Arabs with their spades hurried forward.

THE engine of the car had been switched off. A blanket of silence was over the desert, broken only by the thudding of the spades. One of the diggers had brought an oil lamp, and by its flickering gleam spadefuls of sand were thrown aside. The scene had a ghoulish air. Rodgers narrowed his eyes as the thought crept into his mind: Were they digging for a body?

For two hours the digging continued. All the time Anna Sokolovitch, cigarette after cigarette gleaming against her pale face in the darkness, sat in aloof silence, swathed in her white silk cloak. She looked ghostly, a mysterious wraith in the fitful gleam of the oil lamp.

One of the diggers growled something. He dropped his spade and strode over to where the Russian woman was sitting. His face and arms were beaded with sweat.

“Nothing yet, lady,” he pleaded in Arabic. “We must rest awhile.”

She took the cigarette from her lips. “There is no time to lose,” she said. “Abdul, take the spade. Let the chauffeur also take a spade. And dig, dig hard. Dig a trench toward me.”

“Certainly, lady,” replied Rodgers, slipping out of his kuftan. “And for what are we digging?”

“That which you find will explain itself,” she replied enigmatically. “Get to work! ”

The dragoman and the chauffeur took the places of the two young Arabs. As he bent to his task, shovelling sand from a long trench, the Intelligence officer wondered again at the madness of the task. They might have been four men and a woman trying to move the Nubian Desert, for all the effect the thudding spades had.

After an hour he removed another garment. The lamp was replenished. As its gleam lit up his slim athletic body bent over the trench in the sand, he was conscious that the ghostly figure in the white cloak was regarding him with interest. He could only sense those violet eyes in the darkness. But their gaze was upon him.

At the end of the second hour the chauffeur groaned and collapsed. Rodgers turned. He saw that the two Arabs were lying prone, resting.

“Kick them awake and make them dig!” came a soft low voice in the darkness. “And hurry! In two hours it will be daylight! ”

A note of anxiety had crept into her voice. Once again she flashed the electric torch and pored over the map. Then she straightened herself and walked to a queer-shaped boulder which had been the landmark for stopping the limousine. Once again with a compass she measured ten paces and stopped two yards from where they had been digging.

“Try this place,” she commanded the two young Arabs. “And dig deep.”

Rested by their two hours in the sand, the Arabs began again with furious determination. Rodgers slipped back into his kuftan and stretched his weary limbs in Arab-fashion on the cold sands.

“You are tired, Abdul?” came her voice caressingly.

“A little, lady,” he murmured.

“You have earned your rest,” she said; and to his surprise, he found that her slim hands were stretching a rug over his body. She bent over him, and for a moment he was acutely conscious of that exquisite perfume, and of the violet eyes staring into his. Then she was back again at the diggers, lashing them to renewed efforts with her tongue.

JUST as a gray tint appeared on the horizon, the gray of a dying man’s face, one of the Arab diggers gave a yelp. It was followed by a change in the sound of the thudding spade. Something other than sand had been struck. The sound aroused Rodgers. He flung aside the rug, raised himself and struggled forward.

Already Anna Sokolovitch was there. The two Arabs had flung aside their spades and were digging with their hands like eager dogs at a hole. Their fingers grasped something, tugged, and after a straining effort brought forth a small wooden box out of the hole. Then it must be treasure! Rodgers recognized the box as the type used for many years by the British Army for carrying rifle- cartridges.

“Stand back!” commanded Anna Sokolovitch.

She jumped into the hole. A knife was in her hand. She slipped it beneath the lid of the box, and pried it open.

The Red Wolf craned forward, but in that dim dawn he could see nothing.

“Abdul! The hat-box! ”

He hastened to obey. Her white hand came out of the darkness and grasped it. Then, as she bent down and dived both her hands into the wooden ammunition-box they had discovered, both the young Arabs let out a howl of religious exaltation and fell upon their faces.

“Allah O akbar. God is great!”

In astonishment Paul Rodgers twisted round to look at them. When he turned again, Anna Sokolovitch was stepping out of the hole, the hat-box in her hands.

“Wake the chauffeur, and let us drive back to the hotel at once,” she commanded.

Three minutes later they were jolting back in the direction of Wadi Haifa. The Russian woman nursed the hat-box on her knees, and in the rosy flush of the rising sun, her eyes gleamed like those of a girl in love. Red Rodgers sat at her side, but she did not speak until the car reached the hotel, and a yawning servant stared at them in surprise.

“Tell the chauffeur to take the two Arabs back to the house of El Kawa.

Let them report to the old man that all is well, and the plan moves. For yourself, Abdul, go to your bed and rest. Within two days we must go even farther south, to Omdurman.”

“Omdurman! ”

Red Rodgers was again surprised. What business had Anna Sokolovitch in the city where once that fanatical Mahdi had ruled relentlessly the thousands of holy dervishes! But his exclamation brought no reply. The Russian woman had fluttered past him, carrying the hatbox in her hands.

He gave his instructions to the chauffeur. Before they left, he tried to engage the young Arabs in conversation.

“A good night’s work,” he ventured.

“Holy work,” they replied. “And Allah has performed a miracle.”

Then their mouths closed, and as the limousine hurtled away, they began intoning endlessly the Beautiful Names, the exalted Attributes, in the Arabic of the Holy Koran:

“Er Rahman, er Rahim, el Kerim, el Halim, el Bassir —”

The rest was lost in the splutter of the exhaust.

Tired and baffled, the Intelligence officer trod wearily along the corridor of the hotel. He slipped off his shoes and padded silently in his bare feet.

Then he stopped, holding his breath. He had reached the room of the Russian woman, and the door was slightly ajar. There was a tense silence. Rodgers slowly pushed the door open. What he saw froze him into statuesque horror.

Anna Sokolovitch was seated before her mirror. The fiat-box was open. In her slim white hands she held the Thing that had been dug out of the desert. It was a head, the mummified head of an Arab. The sand had preserved the cruel brown features, the sensual droop of the eyelids, the sloping brow of the fanatic.

The Russian woman was crooning soft words to the head that she held in her hands. To the petrified Paul Rodgers it was a glimpse of a modern Salome with the decapitated head of John the Baptist delivered to her after the dance of the Seven Veils. But whose head was it ?

Even as he gazed, the excited violet eyes caught his in the mirror. She did not turn, but held up the monstrous Thing that he might better see it.

“Look at it, Abdul, and go down on your knees like a good Moslem. This is the head of the greatest of all followers of Mahomet, the Mahdi of Allah, who led the dervishes to a great empire.”

“The Mahdi of Allah! ” muttered Red Rodgers. “But lady, his tomb was shelled by the British, and his body scattered to the desert vultures.”

“That is so,” she said, still staring at him in the mirror. “The body was scattered, except the head. Have you not heard the story, Abdul? The head was secreted by a young British officer in an ammunition-box. He wished to display it to the curious in Europe. But on his way by train to Cairo the secret of the ammunition-box was discovered. The British officer got no further than Wadi Haifa. Here he was arrested, and ordered to take the head into the desert and bury it. He did as he was commanded. Some hours later he returned to Wadi Haifa without the head— but not before he had drawn a rough map of the place where he had buried this holy symbol of dervish triumph.”

“And you have found the head again, lady!” exclaimed the Red Wolf.

“Yes, I secured this map, and the great secret, after a night of wine and dancing with an old fool on the Riviera.”

“And what now?”

“It goes with me to Omdurman, to be shown to the thousands who still wait for a sign from Allah before rising in their fury to sweep the hated British out of their desert lands.”

“A dangerous plan, lady.”

“Life is only worth while because of danger,” she exulted.

Then, as though she realized she had said too much, her eyes lost their frenzied excitement. Something like a gleam of fear came into them. The drooping eyelids of the withered head she still held in her hands were expressionless. But Rodgers himself felt that his own eyes had blazed through the mask of the dragoman Abdul.

Softly he closed the door and padded away.

An hour later he was bent over the pages of a book which he had found in the small library belonging to the hotel. It was the story of that Austrian, Slatin Pasha, who had been a captive of the Mahdi for many years. And it told, graphically, of another head, the lost head of General Gordon, the defender of Khartoum.

On the night that Khartoum was attacked by the forces of the Mahdi, Slatin lay a captive in a tent near Omdurman. As the guns crashed and-the thousands shrieked their frenzy to Allah, the tumult swept back across the Nile. A negro, Shatta, came toward the tent of Slatin, carrying something in his grasp, a dripping bundle, a bloody cloth.

Slatin’s heart stood still. The negro removed the cloth, and a bloody head appeared, with snow-white hair and side-whiskers— Gordon’s head. The blue eyes were open; the mouth was smiling peacefully.

“Is that the head of your uncle, the unbeliever?” asked the negro Shatta.

Slatin answered at once: “He was a brave soldier, and he is happy now that he has fallen!”

That was the story of the other head in this great tragedy. The head of Gordon, carried on a spear for days, and then lost to history. Another head! An idea struck the pretended dragoman who thumbed the pages of this book.,

“Two heads are better than one!” he murmured.

He walked out of the hotel into the sunshine of the morning. Half an hour later he was writing a telegram to be sent to Cairo. But it was not to Barrington Pasha. It was addressed to Doctor Henri Tobine at Shepheard’s Hotel, and read:

COME TO KHARTOUM BY PLANE AT ONCE BRINGING YOUR SCALPEL. URGENT CASE. GENEROUS FEE AND EXPENSES.

PAUL RODGERS.

“If I know the Doctor he won’t be able to resist,” murmured Rodgers with a smile.

THE DRUMS of Omdurman were sounding. A few tourists dining in the spacious room of the Grand Hotel heard the thudding sound as it came across that waste of waters where the Blue Nile and the White Nile meet. Khartoum was quiet. After a sultry day the guests of the Grand Hotel were lazily indifferent to happenings in the native city of Omdurman across the waters.

At the palace, the Governor General of the Sudan, Sir Michael Fyfe, was giving a small but elaborate dinner-party in honour of a visiting politician from England. The politician, who was displaying more interest in the wine-cellar of the palace than the problems of the Sudan, was blissfully happy.

“How romantic those drums sound in the distance! ” remarked the politician’s wife gushingly. “Do you think they are in our honour, Sir Michael ?”

“Let us hope so,” replied the Governor General laconically.

He had been disturbed by several strange reports that had been placed before him by the Chief of Intelligence. Jibbas had been seen worn in the streets of Omdurman. Crowds had been gathering at the ruined tomb of Mahdi. And now the drums were thundering a frenzied summons to the faithful all over the Sudan. The echo of those drums would be heard in the sandy wastes of the Nubian Desert, in the black swamps of the Sud, and even as far away as the mountain border of Abyssinia. The faithful millions would be listening; and Sir Michael Fyfe would be glad when the dinner-party ended and the reports of his agents drifting among the crowds of Omdurman were brought to him.

“Try this liqueur brandy,” he suggested to the politician. “It’s 'eighty-five vintage.”

“Thanks. I will.”

“And after dinner, Sir Michael,” gushed the politician’s wife, “will you show us the spot behind the Palace where General Gordon was killed? I think that story is so romantic.”

“It will be a pleasure,” murmured the Governor General.

The dinner proceeded with official decorum.

ACROSS the black waste of waters which were the two Niles, crowds were gathering in that spacious dusty square where the shattered remains of the Mahdi’s tomb still stood. There was a time when all the slave-trails of Africa led to Omdurman. Something of the dusky African melange could be seen in the crowd gathering on that night.

Coal-black Nubians rubbed shoulders with lithe coffee-coloured Arabs. Long-legged Shilluks from the swamps stalked among wild fuzzy-haired Nuers. Old slave-raiders from Kordofan stroked their beards while standing alongside the blood-drinking Dinkas. And showing in the flickering torches and lamps carried by many were the color-patched jibbas hidden so long by the dervishes. The cosmopolitan crowd jostled and scrambled in the huge square. Soon all were swaying, moved by one recurring rhythm, the thudding of the drums.

Within the holy tomb, facing this black and brown mass, was a little group of figures. Startlingly prominent was a beautiful white woman wearing a flame-coloured evening gown. Her white shoulders gleamed; her violet eyes were ablaze. Her lips were parted, and a stream of eloquent Arabic came forth.

“Tomorrow is the dawn of a new day for the faithful,” she cried. “The hated Englishman, the cursed effendi, will be driven out into the desert where the vultures will take their fill. It has been prophesied that Allah’s kingdom shall again stretch across the earth.”

“Allah is merciful! ”

“Allah is great!”

“Allah is all-powerful!” droned the crowd.

“And to inspire you in this holy war,” went on Anna Sokolovitch, “Allah has performed one of his miracles. I have been chosen to bring back to you, to bring back to this holy place, the head of the great descendant of the Prophet— the Mahdi of Allah.”

“The Mahdi of Allah!” The news shrilled through the black mass of natives. “A miracle indeed!”

The Russian woman had paused. She knew well the dramatic effect of this short silence. There was a smile of triumph on her beautiful face, and she glanced sidewise at the dragoman in the gaudy kuftan and the red fez who stood at her side. Moslem priests were bowed among the ruins of the tomb, chanting praises from the Koran. The crowd also chanted in unison.

Anna Sokolovitch held up her hand.

“It was the Mahdi of Allah who stormed and captured Khartoum. Your fathers, O faithful ones, were his warriors. Tonight you can follow in their footsteps. Khartoum awaits a conqueror. The city is yours to take. Are you true sons of your brave fathers?”

“Lead us to the attack!” cried the crowd.

The violet eyes were drunk with power.

“The head of the Mahdi of Allah shall lead you,” she went on.

“Aiee! Show us the head.”

Anna Sokolovitch made a gesture to the dragoman. He bent down and held forth in his hands the hat-box from Cairo.

The Russian woman raised both her white arms to command-silence. In that flame-coloured frock, which seemed to blaze in the torchlight, her blue-black hair streaked by the night wind, she was indeed a superb figure, a prophetess come to Omdurman.

“Before I show you the head of Allah’s holy one,” she cried, “I am going to give you a blood-sacrifice. It is a sacrifice that will bring you victory. Here in this sacred tomb despoiled by the British, let us sprinkle the ruins with the blood of an enemy in our midst.”

“An enemy in our midst!”

The words sent an uneasy thrill through the crowd. Even the drums seemed to rumble into a menacing mutter.

“Who is the enemy ?” cried a priest.

Anna Sokolovitch pointed a finger in the direction of the dragoman.

“Here is the enemy. A snake in the desert; Paul Rodgers, known as the Red Wolf of Arabia! Look upon him for yourselves.”

With a contemptuous gesture her hand knocked away the red fez. The flaming crop of Red Rodgers was revealed. And the mutter that passed through the crowd told that his adventures were not unknown in the suk of Omdurman.

“He was sent by the English to spy out my plans, but he discovered them too late. And I penetrated his disguise. What is the penalty for a spy?”

“Death!” shrieked the crowd.

A dozen knives flashed forth. Paul Rodgers faced them. Except for a slight tightening of the muscles, a tense attitude, he showed no surprise. The violet eyes gazed at him wickedly.

“And I shall look upon your head, Paul Rodgers,” she said in French, “as I looked upon the head of the Mahdi of Allah in my room at the hotel of Wadi Haifa. A head for a head, hein?”

Her white hands tore open the hatbox and dived within.

“Look, faithful ones, upon the head of your leader to victory!” she cried, and displayed the withered head in the gleam of a hundred torches.

A murmur, a shout—and then screams of fear! It was as though that black

and brown mass shuddered at the head which was displayed before them. Even the knives that had flashed before Paul Rodgers dropped back. For the head held by the woman was not that of the Mahdi of Allah.

Sensing the thrill of fear which had passed through the crowd, Anna Sokolovitch gazed up at the Thing she held in her hand. It was the head of a European, with snow-white hair and side-whiskers— Gordon’s head.

“Gordon Pasha!”

It was a shout of fear from the crowd. And there was an instinctive turning of backs when the dragoman stooped down, retrieved his fez, and calmly placed it on the snow-white hair of the head held by Anna Sokolovitch.

“Aiee! You foolish ones!” he shouted in Arabic. “It is the head of Gordon Pasha which still watches you and demands vengeance for your butchery. Beware, you rabble of Omdurman!”

There was a scream of terror from the Russian woman. She dropped the head to the ground. Another scream, and then she slid in a faint after that awful head. Rodgers caught her in his arms.

At the same moment shrill whistles came from the darkness. Suddenly the square was criss-crossed with shafts of light. They showed the egg-shell whites of terrified eyes transfixed by what they saw.

Five searchlights from armoured cars flooded the square. Behind the lights the muzzles of machine-guns pointed dangerously at the brown and black masses. And like a voice of thunder orders in Arabic came through a megaphone.

“All to your homes! Anyone found in this square within five minutes will be shot. To your houses!”

There was a scutter of thousands of naked feet in the dust. A black avalanche poured out of the square. The dark streets of Omdurman saw slinking figures going like rats to their holes. The drums ceased. Relentlessly those lights criss-crossed, searching the huge square until the last of the mob had disappeared.

Only a gaudily garbed dragoman holding the body of a woman in a flame-coloured frock remained....

Away across the waters, in the Palace at Khartoum, the Governor General, Sir Michael Fyfe, was showing the wife of the politician the spot where Gordon fell.

“Thank heaven, that sort of trouble isn’t likely to happen again!” yawned the politician.

At that moment the drums of Omdurman ceased. The Governor General saw a single searchlight pointing to the sky. It was the signal he had hoped for and waited.

“No, thank heaven!” agreed Sir Michael.

AT the aerodrome at Khartoum, Paul Rodgers was shaking hands with the famous plastic surgeon Dr. Henri Tobine, who was returning by plane to Cairo.

“A strange operation which you asked me to perform, mon ami,” said the little fat man with the cherubic smile. “But I hope it was satisfactory.”

“Very,” replied the Intelligence officer. “You are the one man in the world who could have done it. The resemblance was startling. It almost convinced me that it was the head of General Gordon. And you may have the satisfaction of knowing that your face-lifting saved my life.”

The surgeon chuckled.

“But before I go, mon ami,” he pleaded, “there are two things I should like to know.”

“Yes?”

“Whose head was it that you asked me to work upon and make like the photograph of the great General Gordon ?”

“I hate to libel the medical profession, cher ami,” replied Rodgers, “but it was a surgeon at the hospital in Khartoum who provided me with the head of a European suicide who had chosen ; to be decapitated by a train rather than endure this life. Poor devil! His remains served his country like a true patriot.”

“And now for the second question: Where is the mummified head of the Mahdi of Allah?”

Rodgers shook his head.

“That, cher ami, must be my own secret. Let it be sufficient to say that it is resting somewhere in the great desert again. And I have not drawn a map of the locality... So good-by, and a thousand thanks.”

"Some day you must visit me in Paris,” smiled Doctor Tobine. “You may need my scalpel. Do you know what I am studying now?”

“No.”

“How to change the color of the hair by surgical operation.”

Red Rodgers laughed.

“Thank you, but I prefer my own as it is.”

They took leave of each other with Gallic bows. Then Rodgers walked over to another passenger who was proceeding to Cairo by the air-liner. It was a woman dressed in a pearl-gray frock.

“Good-by, Anna Sokolovitch,” he said quietly.

Violet eyes in which the lustre had been dimmed, regarded him. Something like a wry smile twisted her rouged lips.

“I think I like you best as a dragoman,” she murmured, looking at his well-cut white suit of European garb.

“When did you first discover that Abdul the dragoman was really Paul Rodgers?” he asked.

“That morning in Wadi Haifa,” she replied, “when you watched me in the mirror. For one fleeting moment I realized that you were not an Arab. A pity that I did not continue to watch the head of the Mahdi instead of watching the disguised dragoman! It was clever of you to substitute the head of Gordon Pasha.”

“You were playing a dangerous game, too dangerous for a woman,” he replied.

She nodded.

“Yes; it was because I was a woman I lost.”

“You were brave, Anna Sokolovitch.”

“But not brave enough. Do you realize what was, for me, the hardest moment of all?”

“I should like to know.”

“The moment when I denounced you to that mob in the square at Omdurman. I had known that you were Paul Rodgers, the famous Red Wolf of Arabia, for over five days. I could have had you killed easily within that time.”

“Why didn’t you?”

She hesitated. The engines of the air liner suddenly burst from the tick-tock of preparation into the roar that told of immediate departure. A gust of wind and sand swept toward them.

“Because I was in love with you.”

The whisper came above the drone of the engines. She extended an ungloved white hand.

“Good-by, Paul. At least I have to thank you for nothing worse than banishment from Egypt and the Sudan. But I have hard taskmasters to face in Russia. They will not easily forgive my failure.”

Impulsively Red Rodgers bent over that slim hand and kissed it. Something like a sob escaped the woman. She drew back her hand and ran toward the waiting plane. A few moments later the airliner was nosing into the sky, heading for the north.

The Intelligence officer returned to the Grand Hotel. A telegram awaited him. He tore it open and read:

SPLENDID WORK.

BARRINGTON.

At the same time a splendidly uniformed messenger from the Palace handed him a large official envelope. It announced that the Governor General, Sir Michael Fyfe, would be pleased if Mr. Paul Rodgers could dine at the Palace that evening.

Rodgers turned to the hotel porter.

“Isn’t there a train leaving for Port Sudan today?” he asked.

“Yes sir. In an hour’s time.”

“Book me a seat and have my baggage packed,” he ordered.

He had a sudden nostalgia for a glimpse of that glittering Red Sea on which he had sailed and adventured a hundred times. It was a nostalgia which had seized him even in the confines of Paris and Berlin. Now he could give way to it.

He seated himself at a writing-table to scribble a polite refusal to the invitation to dinner at the Palace. And even as he wrote, a hotel boy came into the lounge carrying some of his baggage.

“There is an empty hat-box here, sir. Will you take it with you?”

Last pathetic relic of Anna Sokolovitch!

“Yes; put it aboard the train,” he said.

_________________

11: The Queen of Sheba

Blue Book June 1935

FOR a moment the ragged, dishevelled figure swayed in the doorway. Eyes half-closed as in agony gazed from beneath matted hair at the strange scene. One hand clutched a curtain, desperately.

A solitary, lithe man in white was seated in that mud-walled room of Aden, playing a piano. A man entirely engrossed! The bowed back ignored the swaying figure in the doorway. The ears were deaf to everything but the sonorous music conjured forth. With a pained, rueful grin on its brown face, the figure in the doorway padded toward the player... .

Long, lean fingers moved rapidly over the black and white keyboard of the piano. They were very much alive, and yet at moments rigid with nervous tension. The bare, spacious room with a few gaudy curtains hung athwart the mud walls, resounded to the brilliance of the music.

Paul Rodgers, an Anglo-American Intelligence officer known to the natives as the Red Wolf of Arabia, was playing the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue by Bach. The exciting contrapuntal quality of the music suited his mood. The smooth casque of his red hair was bowed; the ears were alert to every contrasting tone of the fugue. Only the figure padding painfully toward him was ignored. Bach was a god, and for the moment Paul Rodgers was an adoring disciple.

The heavily draped lamp sent no shadow from the dishevelled figure. Red Rodgers had reached the thrilling part of the fugue, which is a heavily decorated masterpiece built up piece by piece with mathematical certainty. His fingers sped rapidly along the keyboard. Suddenly they faltered. They had come to a blob of red wetness on the white keys.

The fugue came to an end in a feeble discord as, startled, Rodgers looked up.

The dishevelled figure was leaning heavily against the piano. A trickle of red was coming from the mouth. But the rueful smile was still there, and the spasm-drawn face nodded.

“Sorry, Rodgers,” murmured the figure. “They got me as I was coming to your house. Knifed me in the back—”

And he pitched forward across the keyboard, sending out a mad, crashing discord.

From out of the dream world of music Paul Rodgers came into instant action. His hands stretched out and lifted bodily the man sprawled over the keyboard. He carried him easily to a low couch. Then he darted to a corner cabinet, brought forth brandy and carried it in a glass to the prone figure on the couch.

He lifted up the head with its matted hair and beard-raddled cheeks. The face was brown and dirty. Bare feet stuck out from the tattered burnous of an Arab beggar.

“Drink this, Tomlinson! ” said the Intelligence officer quietly.

He forced the glass against the clenched teeth of the man. Despite the disguise, Rodgers had recognized him— Lieutenant Tomlinson of the Aden Intelligence, a man who had done good work among the tribes in the Aden Protectorate. And now he was dying, a knife wound in his back.

“Too late, Rodgers,” sighed the man on the couch. “I’ll be a dead man in a few minutes.”

Already a gray pallor seemed to be spreading over his face.

“Why did you come here?” asked Rodgers.

Tomlinson tried to smile, but failed.

“Just to—to tell you a tale,” he groaned. “But—damn—what did Shakespeare say?... ‘A tale full of sound and fury—signifying nothing.’ Thought you’d understand—”

Once more Paul Rodgers forced brandy through those clenching teeth.

“Go on,” he insisted.

The eyes were glazing.

“Damn’ fine music—you were playing,” he maundered. “What was it ?”

“Bach.”

“Ah, yes. Cathedrals—religious music —the Old Testament.”

The dying mind was wandering. But the slit body, out of which the lifeblood was dribbling, made a final convulsive effort.

“Rodgers, you there?”

“Yes, Tomlinson.”

“Everything is dark. Don’t forget, the Bible! The Queen of Sheba.”

“The Queen of Sheba?”

“She— she’s in Aden tonight— damn her! ”

And in that final effort the man shuddered, and died. Paul Rodgers, his hands sticky with blood, was left gazing down upon a dead comrade. Lieutenant Tomlinson had paid the penalty of many who wandered in the tortuous byways of Arab intrigue.

But brave and sardonic to the end! Even as the tears came to Rodgers’ eyes, he was startled to hear a choking sob from the doorway. He swung round. A half-naked Arab boy, about ten years old, was squatting there. His dark, liquid eyes were gazing with a doglike devotion at the dead man.

Quietly, Rodgers sidled up to the boy and brought him inside. The lad promptly grovelled by the couch and sobbed and cried. The Intelligence officer waited. In a few minutes the boy drew himself up. His lip was quivering, but he was trying to control himself. It is not good for an Arab to display emotion before others.

“Who are you?” asked Rodgers quietly in Arabic.

“The slave of this brave lord,” said the boy, indicating the dead man. “May Allah take his soul into Paradise,” he added devoutly.

“What is your name ?”

“Abdul—just Abdul.”

“And whence have you come?”

The question caused a frightened gleam in those dark eyes. Once more he looked at the dead man.

“He was my friend, Abdul,” said Paul Rodgers. “And he wanted me to know.”

The boy shivered.

“We had spent the evening on the beach,” he said. “Wah! A dark and fearsome place.”

“What were you doing there?”

“My lord gazed upon the old dhow of the Queen of Sheba.”

“The Queen of Sheba! ”

ONCE again that exotic Biblical character had intruded into this tragedy. Red Rodgers knew the dhow of which the Arab boy spoke— a few rotting timbers bearing the semblance of a boat displayed by guides to credulous tourists as the very barque in which Sheba sailed the Red Sea on her historic visit to Solomon, King of Kings.

“And what then?” asked Rodgers. Tears again gleamed in the boy’s eyes.

“We came back to the Arab town. We entered the dark and narrow streets. It was very late. In the doorways men, wrapped in their burnouses, slept. I was leading the way, a camel's-length ahead.

“Suddenly I heard a choking cry behind. I turned. Some of those sleepers had risen like men from the dead. They attacked my lord and master from behind. A knife was plunged into his back. And then they fled! ”

Impulsively the boy caught at the dirty limp hand of the dead man and kissed it.

“He swayed and leaned against a wall,” continued the boy. “Then out of the darkness came the sound of strange music—your music. My lord smiled. It was his last smile. He seemed to know that you, his friend, were here. Painfully he staggered along the street and came to your doorway. The rest you know.”

“The rest I know,” repeated Red Rodgers sadly, gazing at his dead comrade.

He crossed the room, drew aside a curtain, and revealed a cunningly concealed telephone. In a few moments he was speaking, in English. The boy watched him, wonderingly.

“Yes, a bad business, Chief,” the Intelligence agent was saying. “Knifed, less than a hundred yards away. He died in my arms, ten minutes ago.”

“I’ll come at once,” said the voice. Rodgers replaced the telephone. Except for a whispered muttering from the boy Abdul, who was repeating from the Koran the prayers to the dead, a strange silence enfolded those clay walls which had previously resounded to the music of Bach.

And Rodgers himself squatted on a cushion, a Bible in his lap. He was reading the Book of Kings:

And when the Queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the Lord, she came to prove him with hard questions.

And she came to Jerusalem with a very great train, with camels that bare spices, and very much gold and precious stones; and when she was come to Solomon, she communed with him of all that was in her heart....

He was still reading when, half an hour later, there was the crunch of sand beneath boots, and the curtain was thrust aside to admit Major Stoddard, Chief of the Aden Intelligence.

"A SERIOUS business,” agreed Sir John Robbins, the Resident of Aden, staring at a pathetic group of relics on his desk. They included a belt, an empty pouch and a crumpled packet of three cigarettes. “This is all that was found upon the body of poor Tomlinson ?”

“That’s all, sir,” replied Major Stoddard briefly.

“If he had been carrying any papers, sir,” interposed Paul Rodgers, who was also in the spacious room of the Residency, “they must have been taken by the Arabs who knifed him. That is, if they were Arabs,” he added quietly.

“What d’you mean?” asked the Resident.

Rodgers gave an imperceptible shrug.

“I examined that wound on poor Tomlinson pretty closely,” he drawled. “The Arabs use a curved knife. Tomlinson’s wound was caused by a straight, stiletto instrument, such as Galla men from Abyssinia carry.”

“Go on,” nodded the Resident. “Did you observe anything else?”

“Several things,” said Rodgers. “A smell, for example.”

“A smell!”

“Yes, the smell of Africa. Easy enough to distinguish on this side of the Red Sea, at the end of Arabia. I would say that Tomlinson had lately come over from the African side, and in a dhow too, with other Africans.... And then, of course, there was his cryptic remark to me just before he died: ‘The Queen of Sheba is here.’ Well, I think I can guess the rest. He’s been on the Abyssinian affair, eh?”

SOMETHING like a grim smile crossed the Resident’s face.

“You fellows who are in this work are not so blind as we who send you forth sometimes imagine,” he said. He turned to the Chief of Police. “Better explain everything, Stoddard. Our friend Rodgers may as well know the odds if he is prepared to gamble.”

The Major nodded.

“Quite so, sir. It’s only fair to tell Rodgers that Tomlinson is the third man who has failed in this Abyssinian affair.”

“No, he didn’t fail,” insisted Rodgers. “He passed on useful information.”

The Major made a despairing gesture. “It may be so. But facts, real facts, are what none of those three men ever brought back. I can only imagine that Tomlinson was delirious when he babbled of the Queen of Sheba. Of course, we all know that the Abyssinian rulers claim descent from that historic meeting of Sheba and Solomon—”

“We’ll leave the history, Stoddard,” said the Resident a little impatiently.

“Yes sir.... Briefly, Rodgers, things are happening in Abyssinia—things we don’t know anything about. There have been frontier fights with Italians and British patrols on the Somaliland border. And the diplomats in Rome, Paris and London are getting agitated. Mussolini threatens to send a punitive force into Abyssinia, unless the raids cease.”

“And I’m deluged with messages from the Foreign Office asking for information,” growled Sir John Robbins.

“All of which is contemporary history,” said Red Rodgers.

“Quite so—quite so,” retorted the Resident sharply. “It’s getting into every damned cheap newspaper.”

Major Stoddard took up the tale.

“Tomlinson was the third man we had sent into Abyssinia in search of information,” he said. “I was not aware that he was back in Aden. He didn’t report at Intelligence. According to that Arab boy Abdul, he called upon him in the bazaar,—he always had a fondness for that boy,—and together they went and sat on the beach.”

“To gaze upon the old dhow of the Queen of Sheba,” murmured Red Rodgers.

“A sheer waste of time,” growled the Chief of Intelligence. “If he had any information, it was his duty to report to me at once in Aden. As it was, the poor devil paid for it with his life.”

“And the other two men?” asked Rodgers.

Major Stoddard turned his face away from the light.

“Conway was found insane and dying in the desert by a British patrol in Somaliland. He was blind, had suffered torture, and had been turned loose into the desert to die. The poor devil died within ten minutes of being found.”

“And told nothing?”

“He had no tongue,” replied Stoddard bluntly.

There was silence for a moment.

“What of Webster Smith ?” asked Rodgers.

Both men turned upon him in astonishment.

“How did you know Webster Smith had been sent out to Abyssinia?” asked the Resident.

“One hears these things in the course of his work, sir,” he said.

“All that we know of Webster Smith,” said Stoddard, “is that he was shipped with a cargo of slaves in a dhow from a Red Sea port. Since then, we’ve heard nothing.”

“But I have,” said Red Rodgers sombrely. “He was landed in Arabia, and taken to the slave-market at Mecca. There he was sold to a brute of an Arab for ten pounds. He was taken into the desert. His spirit was broken. He was beaten to death. That’s the saga of Webster Smith, if you want to know.”

There was a rising bitterness in his voice. The Red Wolf of Arabia could never conceal it in dealing with officialdom. They were often too engrossed with their facts, their card-indexes, and their pretty political maps to consider the fine mettle of the men broken in the service of their country in this thankless Intelligence work.

“Where did you hear that, Rodgers?” asked the Resident.

“From the desert, sir,” replied the Red Wolf. “I have friends there who bring me news. And enemies as well,” he added thoughtfully.

“So now you realize what you’re up against, Rodgers,” said Major Stoddard. “We need that information from Abyssinia badly. Something strange is going on there, something that might easily lead to a big war. We’ve got to know what it is. Are you ready to go ?”

“Of course,” nodded Rodgers, as mechanically as some people accept an invitation to dinner. “I have a desire to get my fingers on the throat of that damned Galla who knifed Tomlinson,” he added quietly.

The Resident walked across the spacious room to his desk where a survey map of the Red Sea regions was spread.

He placed a well-manicured finger-nail on the area of Abyssinia.

“The most dangerous spot on the map of Africa today,” he pronounced. “It’s got to quiet down and—”

He stopped. The door of the room had opened. A well-dressed A.D.C. in carefully tailored whites had strolled in, a sheet of paper in his hand.

“I told you, Willoughby, that I was not to be disturbed,” snapped the Resident.

The A.D.C., an engaging, well-bred smile on his face, squeaked an apology.

“Sorry, sir. But it’s imperative that you approve this list of invitations to the ball at the Residency tonight. An important social matter, sir.”

Major Stoddard turned his back upon the A.D.C.

“A ball!” he muttered. “What the devil next!”

But the Resident had already taken up a dutiful pen.

“Quite so, Willoughby,” he murmured. “This is the final list, eh?”

The A.D.C. nodded.

“I’ve taken the liberty of adding the name of Sari Mansur to the list,” squeaked Willoughby. “The lady has arrived in Aden. She made a formal call at the Residency yesterday.”

“The richest woman in Africa,” sighed the Resident. “And is she as beautiful as reports say, Willoughby ?”

“Even more so,” replied the A.D.C. enthusiastically. “She’s a peach, sir.”

The Resident chuckled.

“Well, don’t monopolize her too much in the dancing. I can still waltz, you know.”

And he scrawled his signature at the bottom of the list.

As soon as the immaculately dressed and straw-haired A.D.C. had strolled out of the room, the Resident turned again to the two men.

“You accept, Rodgers?”

“Yes sir.”

“I can arrange for a sloop to carry you across the Red Sea tonight,” suggested Major Stoddard.

Rodgers shook his head.

“If you don’t mind, sir,” he said to the Resident, “I would like to begin this adventure where poor Tomlinson ended his —in Aden.”

“The matter is devilish urgent,” said the Resident.

Rodgers nodded.

“I realize that, sir. And for that reason I’m venturing to trespass upon your hospitality further. May I have an invitation to the ball tonight?”

The request took away the breath of the already bewildered Chief of Intelligence.

“Of course, Rodgers,” nodded the Resident, nevertheless raising his eyes in surprise. “May I ask the reason?”

Paul Rodgers smiled and reached for his sun-helmet.

“I also am rather anxious to dance with the beautiful Sari Mansur,” he said. “Good morning, sir.”

And he walked out of the room, leaving the two men staring at each other.

As the Red Wolf left the Residency, an Arab boy rose from a squatting position in the dust and sunshine, and shuffled after the white man. There was a dog-like adoration in the liquid eyes.

It was Abdul following his new lord.

THE richest woman in Africa,” repeated Captain Willoughby, A.D.C., to the Resident, as he stood upon the edge of the dance-floor and watched the slim form of Sari Mansur dancing in the arms of Paul Rodgers.

“You sound envious,” said Major Stoddard, resplendent in mess uniform.

“I am envious,” sighed the A.D.C. “Rodgers has monopolized that woman throughout the evening. Even Sir John hasn’t had five minutes with her.”

“Where does her money come from?” asked the practical Stoddard. He hummed lightly to himself as the Air Force band played a lilting waltz.

“Oh, mines in Abyssinia—gold or platinum—probably both,” replied Willoughby vaguely. “You’ve heard the story of the lost mines of Sheba? Well, Sari Mansur is a land-owner in that part of Abyssinia where the mines are said to be located. What is more, Sari Mansur claims to be directly descended from the Queen of Sheba.”

“The Queen of Sheba!” exclaimed Stoddard. “Gad, she looks it! ”

With her dark, glossy hair stretched tightly over her head, and coiled richly at the nape of her neck, Sari Mansur had something of an Old Testament voluptuousness. Her skin had the delicate brown sheen of a pure-blooded Galla woman. But this, and her dark, flashing eyes, were all that betrayed the Africa. Her yellow evening frock, daring in color and cut, had the stamp of the Rue de la Paix in its lines. She wore jewellery sparingly, but such as there was had a unique quality.

"EVEN the Queen of Sheba dancing before Solomon could not have excelled you in grace,” murmured Rodgers as the waltz drifted dreamily to an end.

Sari Mansur’s lips parted in a smile.

“The Queen of Sheba danced for a reason.”

“And that was?”

“To captivate Solomon, to make him fall in love with her.”

“And Solomon succumbed,” nodded Rodgers.

Languorously she waved her large yellow ostrich-feather fan.

“Let us go into the garden,” she said quietly. “I am told that it is beautiful in the moonlight."

Rodgers drew aside a curtain. They passed through a French window into a velvet darkness shot with the strange tropical scents. Easily he slipped his hand beneath her arm. Her own hand came up enticingly to meet his.

He looked down at the slender wrist. A thin gold chain clamped with a curious clasp glittered in the moonlight. He raised her hand to press his lips against it, but his eyes narrowed their gaze upon the bracelet.

“A curious bracelet for a woman to wear,” he said, touching it with his finger.

“Why curious?” she asked, withdrawing her hand suddenly.

He laughed.

“Because it is the least valuable piece of jewellery you are wearing.”

“It might be the most valuable,” she said.

“It might,” he nodded. “For if I am  not mistaken, it was a gift from a man.”

“Yes? Go on!”

“And that man died last night in my house. His name was Tomlinson.”

The lissom figure in the yellow evening gown swayed. The next moment she had recovered herself.

“I think your imaginings are apt to be dangerous, perhaps silly at moments, Paul Rodgers. Who is this man Tomlinson? How could this gold chain possibly belong to him?”

“Because I have seen it on his arm several times,” said Red Rodgers. “Even when we went swimming, he wore it. He wore it when he disguised himself and went as an Arab into the heart of Abyssinia. Last night, when I collected the few pathetic relics of the dead man, I noticed that it was missing. And he would not easily part with it. That gold chain is a family heirloom. It was given to Tomlinson by his mother.”

They had approached the extreme edge of the garden of the Residency. They stood facing each other, shadowed by a sprouting ground palm. Below them, the built-up wall of the Residency grounds dropped to a narrow road. Beyond lay the Indian Ocean, silvered in moonlight, a smoothly shining sheet of chromium.

“Let us not talk of dead men,” shivered Sari Mansur. “I have been dancing in your arms. You have stirred me as I never imagined a man could ever again affect me. This moment is for love. You, and I—”

Her slim arms went without hesitation about his neck and drew him toward her. Paul Rodgers glimpsed the expectant parted lips, the gleam of her dark eyes. But in that moment his brain was cold and passionless. His eyes saw again the choking figure of Tomlinson sprawling across the piano. And on that brown arm that coiled about him was the gold chain which Tomlinson valued as his life.

Rodgers shuddered, and moved a step backward. But the arms of Sari Mansur tightened. They suddenly became as steel. And the misty gleam in her eyes changed to something which mocked him. Even as he stretched out his own hands to tear the jewelled fingers away, there came a sudden blow, lights danced before his eyes, and a wave of darkness swept over him....

“BE CAREFUL, you fools! ” whispered the woman in Arabic to the two half-naked figures that had crept from the shadow of the palms. “Are the others below?”

A low whistle from the darkness of the road answered her. Quickly the limp figure of Red Rodgers was raised and dropped. Outstretched brown hands  caught him. Then, after a low obeisance to the woman, the two burly figures vaulted after their captive.

FIVE minutes later Sari Mansur entered the ballroom of the Residency, fanning herself languorously.... The A.D.C. spied her and hurried forward.

“Surely that fellow Rodgers has not monopolized you for this dance?” he pleaded.

She gave him a dazzling smile.

“Even if he had, the dance would be yours,” she said.

“Didn’t he take you into the garden?” smiled Willoughby. “A dangerous place in the moonlight.”

She nodded.

“Very dangerous. But Paul Rodgers left me there. He said he had work to do. Tiresome, isn’t it?”

And she stretched out her arms toward the radiant A.D.C.

WHEN Red Rodgers blinked himself awake with a sickening pain in his head, he realized that his acute instinct had led him to blunder into the very middle of the mystery.

“The Queen of Sheba is in Aden—” Tomlinson had babbled before he died.

That could only mean Sari Mansur, the wealthy woman from Abyssinia. Yet what part was she playing in the secret happenings across the Red Sea now perturbing the diplomats in Rome, Paris and London? And why was he, the Red Wolf of Arabia, permitted to be alive to ponder the problem?

Not that he felt exhilaratingly alive! With aching head he peered about in the darkness in which he lay. A faint shaft of sunlight which came through a barred window high against the wall told him that he was in some sort of cellar. He tried to caress his bruised head with his hand, but he was unable to move. Wrists and ankles were chained to the floor. He was lying spread-eagled.

There was the noise of bolts being withdrawn. A white, ghostlike figure seemed to be gliding down from the ceiling toward him. It was a few seconds before he realized that the vision was caused by the beautiful Sari Mansur, dressed in a thin white frock, stepping delicately down a flight of mud steps toward him. Her French high-heeled shoe touched him.

“So you are recovering, Paul Rodgers, from our unfortunate meeting in the Residency garden last night,” she nodded.

Rodgers found his voice, thin and cracked.

“I cannot say that I altogether appreciate your hospitality,” he replied. “Am I considered so dangerous that I must be trussed in this fashion, like a slave?”

“You are very dangerous,” she went on calmly. “But at the same time you can be very useful. In the ordinary way, I should have disposed of you without a second thought—”

“As you disposed of Conway, Webster Smith and—Tomlinson, eh?” hinted Rodgers.

Sari Mansur’s face set grimly.

“I am gambling for a kingdom. I cannot allow a few miserable white men to deter me from my goal.”

“Gambling for a kingdom,” mused Rodgers, looking up at that set face. “So the Queen of Sheba would be Queen again! ”

“Exactly,” she nodded.

“And why am I permitted to learn this?” he asked.

She was equally calm.

“Because you are to help me win that kingdom,” she said.

And once again she appraised him with her dark eyes as she would a beast for sale in the marketplace.

“I suppose you offered the same dubious adventure to the others?” he said.

“Yes, and they refused.” Her voice was harsh.

“And why should you imagine that I am different?”

Her face came nearer. The swarthy skin seemed to be burning.

“Because you are more a man, more akin to these peoples of the Red Sea than any of the others. You can live among Arabs, rule them, be a leader in whom they delight. Men, lesser men, will follow you to the death. And yet for the moment you choose to be a miserable cipher in the Intelligence Service! I offer you a kingdom to share with me in Africa. You can become as great as Prester John, as powerful as—”

“I would be a fool,” said Red Rodgers bluntly. “My answer is the same as the others’.”

She drew in her breath sharply, and gazed fixedly at him.

“You know what happened to them?”

she said quietly.

“They died—like gentlemen,” he replied.

“Like dogs!” she cried out furiously. “Whipped, tortured curs!” She came

even closer to the prostrate man. “Let me tell you that the tortures suffered by those men are nothing compared to the excruciating delights I can command in this old villa in Aden. You will agree to work with me, my friend—  else you will discover that Abyssinians are as well versed in the arts of torture as the Arabs. In the meantime you will have two hours in which to make up your mind. I have to play hostess to that silly puppet of an A.D.C., who insists upon visiting me this morning. He flirted outrageously with me last night after you left so abruptly. I hope to find you in a better mood on my return— and to move you from these slave quarters to an atmosphere more in keeping with the man who will help me rule Abyssinia.”

She clapped her hands. Again the door opened, and a powerful Sudanese appeared. He held a strip of cloth in his hand. Quickly and brutally he gagged the prostrate white man.

“You will be able to hear our chatter over the teacups,” smiled Sari Mansur. “The veranda is just above your barred window.”

And with a parting nod the white-frocked figure seemed to float upward in the darkness.

AS the door closed, Red Rodgers heard l the crunch of boots in the sand and gravel beyond his window. By twisting his head, he could see a few inches of the path now bathed in sunshine. And a pair of elegant, highly polished riding-boots strode past. Groaning within, Red Rodgers recognized them. Only the distinguished Willoughby, A.D.C. to the Resident, would wear such boots.

He could hear the A.D.C.’s high-pitched foolish laugh.

“Jove! But you look really delightful this morning, Sari.”

“Flatterer!” she laughed in return. Once again, the clap of her hands. “I thought we might have tea on the veranda this morning. Such a beautiful morning, isn’t it?”

“Good to be alive, and all that,” laughed the A.D.C. “But there’s something better—having you in my arms while a dreamy waltz is being played.”

“You’re in a highly sentimental mood this morning, Captain,” said Sari Mansur. “Is it to be Indian or China tea?”

“China,” squeaked Willoughby, and sighed with the content of a man who is enjoying himself.

The prattle of conversation continued.

Desperately Paul Rodgers twisted his head in an endeavour to free himself from the suffocating gag. His body was bathed in sweat from his struggles with the chains that clamped him to the ground. But it was all in vain....

An hour passed. There was the scrape of a cane chair on the veranda.

“Then you promise faithfully to go for a drive with me this evening?” An ecstatic note was in Willoughby’s voice.

“I shall be delighted,” she replied. “Shall we say six o’clock?”

“I’ll be here on the dot.”

He had shuffled to his feet.

“Oh, and by the way, Captain, if you should see Paul Rodgers, say how sorry I was that he had to leave so abruptly last night.”

“I won’t forget,” chuckled the A.D.C.  “But I don’t suppose we shall be seeing Rodgers in Aden for some time. A queer fellow, you know.”

“So I’ve heard. Till six o’clock, then.”

“Six o’clock,” he repeated.

And once again, twisting in his agony, Paul Rodgers saw those highly polished riding-boots stroll past the window of his prison....

A deep silence seemed to have enfolded the villa. To Red Rodgers, it was a sinister silence. It boded preparations by this determined woman, this modern Queen of Sheba. She was thoroughly ruthless, and—

A scratching sound caused him to twitch at his bonds. He fixed his gaze upon the door, awaiting the entry of that powerful black Sudanese. But the door remained closed, though the scratching sound continued.

Once again, Rodgers twisted his head in the direction of the barred window. The shaft of sunlight had been broken. A face, a dark face with liquid eyes, was peering in between the bars. Accustomed as he was to the darkness, Red Rodgers recognized him. It was the Arab boy Abdul, the faithful follower of Tomlinson.

Desperately, Rodgers tried to speak, but the gag prevented him. And all the time that boy’s face, a helpless expression on it, stared in at the window. It was doubtful whether Abdul could see into that darkness. And so securely trussed was the Intelligence officer that he could not even make a sound to provoke the attention of the boy.

It seemed only a matter of seconds before the boy’s face was withdrawn. Once again the shaft of sunlight broke through. There was the scurry of naked feet, a shrill angry call, and once again silence. With despair in his heart, Rodgers sank back limp and exhausted.

MAJOR STODDARD, with three Sikh policemen, stepped onto that sunlit veranda. He confronted a fragile-looking woman in a thin white frock. Sidling close to the Chief of the Aden Intelligence was an Arab boy whose liquid eyes gleamed in a frightened manner.

“I am sorry to appear in this fashion,” Major Stoddard growled, “but this boy Abdul claims to have seen a white man lying trussed in the cellar of your villa.”

Sari Mansur opened wide her dark eyes. “But how absurd, Major!” she protested. “What should I be doing with a white man in my cellar?”

Major Stoddard nodded.

“I quite agree it sounds fantastic. Nevertheless I must insist upon searching the villa.”

“Of course,” nodded Sari Mansur. “And perhaps when you’ve finished, you’ll honour me by staying for tiffin ?”

“I’m afraid that’s impossible.... May I begin with the cellar?”

“I’ll lead the way,” smiled the woman. “I’ve never had the courage to go into that cellar myself. I believe it is the place where the Arab who once owned this house dealt with slaves in the usual barbaric manner. Here it is. The door is unlocked. Be careful of the steps, Major.”

The Arab boy still clinging to him, and the three Sikhs bringing up the rear, Major Stoddard descended the clay steps into that cellar of dank darkness. It was empty. In the middle of the rocky floor were embedded chains and clamps. They lay rusty and loose.

“Horrible, aren’t they?” shivered Sari Mansur. “This is where the slaves were brought and whipped.”

THE boy Abdul, gabbling in Arabic, pointed to a barred window against the wall.

“He says it is from that window he looked down and saw the white man stretched on this floor,” murmured Major Stoddard.

Sari Mansur shrugged her shapely shoulders.

“Arab boys have vivid imaginations, Major,” she replied. “How do you imagine he could see down into this horrible darkness?”

“Oh, they have eyes like cats,” said the Major. Nevertheless he seemed frankly puzzled. He satisfied himself that there was no captive hidden away in the darkness. “Just to make certain,” he growled, “I think we had better see the rest of the house.”

“Naturally,” smiled Sari Mansur. “You shall even see my bedroom, Major— a privilege, I assure you.”

There was a mocking sureness in her tone that made the Chief of the Intelligence Service feel even more uncomfortable. For once, he felt like a blundering policeman. He glowered down at the unfortunate Abdul, and climbed out of the cellar, followed by the three Sikhs.

Nevertheless, Stoddard did his job thoroughly. He examined every room in that villa overlooking the Indian Ocean, and finally made his way out to a piece of sandy waste-land at the back.

“The servants’ quarters,” said Sari Mansur, indicating a series of mud outhouses.

Stoddard insisted upon plunging into those dark smelly interiors, where Arab men and women huddled in the darkness. Only at one outhouse did he hesitate. A miserable figure swathed in dirty white garb was squatting there.

“Unclean— unclean, Lord,” babbled this figure, holding out the stump of an arm.

“He is a leper—dying,” said Sari Masur quietly. “I have allowed him to stay here. Will you go inside, Major?”

“Thank you,” said the Chief of the Aden Intelligence, “but I think that will do.” He stared round at this square piece of waste-land, with its surrounding mud wall. He had seen everything. “I think we’ll go back to the villa.”

“As you will,” smiled the woman in the white frock. “I’m sorry your search has been unsuccessful.”

“I’m not,” said Stoddard, a smile breaking out upon his stern face. “I should have hated to find such a pretty woman involved in political intrigue.”

“I hate politics,” said Sari Mansur simply.

It was not long before Major Stoddard took his departure. The Arab boy, silent and subdued, kept close to the white man’s side. Only when Sari Mansur had seen them climb into a motorcar and watched the dust of their departure did she clap her hands once again.

The powerful Sudanese appeared.

“The warning was timely,” she said in Arabic. “Give this bag of thalers to the Sikh who sent the news.”

And she tossed a clinking bag of coins into the outstretched palms of the native.

Then swiftly she proceeded through the villa back to that piece of wasteland. She crossed the sunshine-dusted ground to the outhouse where the leper had squatted not fifteen minutes previously. The leper was no longer there.

She gave a mutter of annoyance. Without hesitation she entered the filthy mud house. For a moment the transition from bright sunlight blinded her. Then she made out three African negroes lying on the ground.

One was dead, shot in the stomach. Another was lying senseless in a corner. A third lay doubled up, groaning loudly.

In a fury the woman strode toward the groaning one and kicked him so that he faced her.

“Where is the white captive whom you had here, bound and trussed?” She demanded.

Still groaning, the negro pointed to the wall surrounding the waste-land.

“But how could he escape?” shrieked

Sari Mansur. “He was bound and—”

“Another white man came, a fiend,” groaned the negro. “He fell upon us like a thousand desert devils. We had no chance, and—”

The negro scrambled hysterically to his knees. From some hidden fold in her filmy frock Sari Mansur had drawn an automatic pistol. Without reply, she pointed it at the quivering black body and fired. The thick mud walls suffocated the sound....

A few seconds later she was back in the villa. She snapped out orders in different dialects to the scurrying natives. Like men possessed, they scurried about the rooms. A car purred outside. Within ten minutes Sari Mansur was seated in it. It lurched away in a cloud of dust.

As the sun came swinging over that dusty town in a crater, a powerful cruising motor-boat sped out of the bay toward the Red Sea. The bumping prow was pointed toward Africa. The creamy wake told of the Queen of Sheba escaping in her modern dhow.

"AND there, for the present, we must leave Sari Mansur,” murmured Red Rodgers as he stood at a window of the Residency, watching that motor cruiser plunging towards the African coast.

“I can get a sloop or an airplane after her in a few minutes, Rodgers,” urged the Resident, Sir John Robbins.

Paul Rodgers shook his head.

“She’ll be more dangerous in jail here, than in Abyssinia,” he said. “Her plans are prepared. Within two months an attack will be launched upon the Italian outposts in Somaliland. It will be a definitely prepared incident. Mussolini will have no option but to order an advance into Abyssinia. It will mean a bloody and protracted war.”

“But of what advantage is that to Sari Mansur?” asked the Resident.

“It will bring a modern European army against her most hated enemy, the present Emperor of Abyssinia, Ras Tafari. Sari Mansur, who is gambling for the throne herself, wants to see Ras Tafari overthrown. She is not powerful enough to achieve that herself. She hopes that the Italians will do it.”

“And if they do?”

“Then Sari Mansur will rally the remnants of the Abyssinian army to her own flag. She will begin a guerrilla campaign against the Italians. And for anyone who knows those blue highlands, those mountainous regions with its narrow defiles, the success of such a campaign is almost certain. The Italians will withdraw. And Sari Mansur, claiming descent from the Queen of Sheba, will be crowned Queen of Ethiopia.”

“Damned clever; but perhaps too ambitious,” was the Resident's comment.

“But she’s capable of achieving it,” said the Red Wolf of Arabia, “unless—”

“Unless?”

“I’m going over to Africa tonight,” said Rodgers quietly.

Both men looked up. The A.D.C. Captain Willoughby had just entered the room. He looked excessively spick and span as he brushed imaginary dust from the lapels of his white evening jacket.

“Thank goodness for a bath,” he squeaked. thankfully. Rodgers walked over to him, holding out his hand.

“I want to thank you again, Willoughby,” he said, “for the way you laid out those three negroes in the outhouse.”

The A.D.C. grinned foolishly.

“Rather unsporting methods, and all that,” he laughed. “Had to shoot one and kick the other in the stomach.”

“And laid out a third with a knock-out to the jaw,” added Rodgers. “Great work, Willoughby! I never thought you had it in you.”

“A disgusting brawl,” was the A.D.C.’s comment. “I wouldn’t have done it if that dirty little Arab boy hadn’t come after me when I left the villa, and insisted that you were lying there trussed up in the cellar.”

“And what did you do, Willoughby?” asked the Resident with a smile.

“Decided to make my way over the wall at the back, sir,” murmured the A.D.C. “I was just about to climb over when I saw them hurrying our gagged and bound friend into one of those huts. I just watched and waited. That wasteland seemed full of people. I guessed the Arab boy had reached Major Stoddard’s office, as I ordered him.

“Well, to cut a long story short, it was at least an hour later before I dared show myself over that wall again. I didn’t know that Stoddard had already searched the place. I shinned over the wall, passed into the hut—and just went berserk.”

“And a few seconds later I was loose and being pushed over the wall,” nodded Rodgers. “Thanks again, Willoughby. It was thoughtful of you, too, to go to morning tea with a gun in your pocket.”

“One never knows what is going to happen in this damned town,” murmured the A.D.C.

At that moment a clock in the room tinkled six o’clock. Captain Willoughby started, and then sighed. “It’s going to be a dull evening,” he said.

______________________

12: Orient Express

The Blue Book Magazine, April 1940

A comedy of the Intelligence service— and a surprising exploit of the Red Wolf of Arabia.

"EN voiture, mesdames et messieurs!”

The chocolate-uniformed conductor of the Athens coach of the Orient Express almost whispered the command. But Europe was again at war, and the heavily masked lights of the Gare de Lyon induced subdued tones. Every window of the train was firmly closed and curtained. The few travellers, soon to be hermetically sealed for the crossing of many frontiers, broke away from mute groups and scrabbled aboard.

Five minutes to nine.

Paul Rodgers lit another cigarette and cursed softly. Beyond the barrier he saw groups of French soldiers, bowed under the burdens of rifles, knapsacks, shrapnel helmets and nailed boots, drifting toward a troop-train: Paris was sending another batch of men to defend the Maginot Line. Rodgers wished devoutly that he was going with them. Instead, he waited impatiently for a woman, and a journey that would take him away from war.

At two minutes to nine she arrived. She came imperiously, attended by three uniformed porters of the most luxurious hotel in Paris. The brilliant-coloured scarf that floated from her throat, the fountain of sables cascading from her shoulders, and the high French heels of her shoes seemed an affront to this shabby, serious Paris of the winter of 1940. With her head held high and her unusually beautiful features emerging toward him from out of the gloom, Rodgers saw her as a living replica of the Winged Victory of Samothrace.

For one moment her brilliant dark eyes rested upon him as he stood there in his rather shabby travelling-clothes. Rodgers felt himself redden. The glance was more than the cold blank stare of a statue. It registered deliberate indifference.

She gestured with an exquisitely gloved hand to the train, and flung a few contemptuous words of French at the porters. They hurled themselves forward with her little mountain of baggage. A moment later they bowed to her contemptuous dismissal.

She stepped aboard. A lamp was waved, dumbly. Without a sound, in almost furtive fashion, the Orient Express began to glide away from the platform. Rodgers had swung himself aboard. He had to stand in the corridor while the magnificent creature gave strategic orders to the conductor for the disposal of her baggage in the compartment. It seemed likely to be interminable.

“Will you pardon me?” said Rodgers, in English.

She turned her dark eyes upon him again. There was the faint suggestion in her imperious gaze that someone had spoken. She stepped delicately into her compartment.

“Thank you!” muttered Rodgers.

His own compartment was adjoining. He flung himself on his bunk. He was perspiring as though after a fierce encounter. When the conductor stepped in to collect tickets and passport, Rodgers was refreshing himself with a flask of cognac.

“When do we reach Athens?” he asked.

“Three days hence, monsieur.”

Rodgers sighed at the departing conductor, and gave himself up to sleep.

HE AWOKE abruptly. He reached over and flicked up the blind. Dawn was tinting the snow-capped mountains. He judged the train had just left Lausanne. The wheels were sounding rhythmically. But it was a quiet, precise conversation in French in the adjoining compartment that had awakened him. The imperious Voice of the woman sounded.

“I swear that if you do not leave this compartment at once, I will shoot you!”

A heavy masculine laugh had followed.

“That would be a great pity, Fraulein, both for you and that charming young man whose photograph I see in your dressing-case.”

“My brother can look after himself.”

“Maybe, but—”

“What do you want?”

“To talk business—big business.”

Bent with his ear to the thin door separating the two compartments, Rodgers did not hesitate. He reached out for a dressing-gown, inserted a key in the lock, and stepped into the lighted compartment.

Two faces swivelled at his entrance. The woman, in a yellow silk dressing- gown that emphasized the raven-black hair drooping over her proud neck, opened her eyes wide in astonishment. Her slim hand held an automatic pistol. It was pointed at a heavy, grizzled-haired man who was in the act of lighting a cigarette. But even his blue eyes registered surprise as the lithe figure of the newcomer stepped into the compartment.

“Der Teufel!” he exclaimed. “It is my old enemy Paul Rodgers, the Red Wolf of Arabia.”

With a tightening of his lips, Rodgers recognized the German.

“I might have known, Krauss, that you would be up to your old tricks.”

“But my dear Rodgers, my country is at war.”

“I am quite aware of it.”

“And once again we are enemies?”

“Very much so.”

“A pity. But it is amusing to meet like this on neutral soil.”

“May I point out,” interposed that imperious voice, “that you are making use of my personal wagon-lit for your reunion.”

Krauss grinned at Rodgers.

“She is a beauty, hein? It is a pleasure to have to deal with such a creature.”

“Nevertheless, she is a lady,” replied Rodgers, “and I must say that under the circumstances you are behaving in a disgusting fashion.”

The German shrugged.  “Always your fault, my dear Rodgers, insisting upon being a gentleman under all circumstances. The British will never win a war with public-school inhibitions.”

“May I again ask both of you gentlemen to what I owe the honour of your forced entrance into my compartment?” Her voice was acid. “If no explanation and apologies are promptly forthcoming, I propose to stop the train.”

Her hand was already reaching for the alarm-signal.

“Please, Fraulein, no further delaying of the Orient Express,” said Krauss. “It was an hour late when I boarded it at Lausanne, and a dismal business it was, waiting in the dawn. Suppose you put away that absurd pistol and ring for the conductor, instead. I think it would be an excellent idea for us all to have hot coffee and rolls in this compartment.”

“I don’t think I ought to allow that,” said Rodgers, stubbornly.

“Oh, come! I give you my word that I will not talk business.”

“Well, if the lady has no objections?” hesitated Rodgers, turning toward her.

There was suppressed fury in her eyes. Nevertheless she thrust the pistol into a pocket of the yellow dressing-gown and rang for the conductor. That individual appeared in shirt-sleeves and yawning. His yawn froze at the sight of the trio.

“Coffee and rolls for three, vite!” demanded Krauss.

If the circumstances were peculiar, the coffee and rolls when served were excellent. Krauss, helping himself liberally to butter, was in an amiable mood.

“How delightful to find oneself at this time in a country which is not at war, and with no food rationing!” he murmured, gulping his coffee greedily. “I must say the Swiss always do themselves well.”

“The Swiss have happily preserved their neutrality for over a hundred years,” emphasized Rodgers.

“Alas, that is true,” nodded the German. “They might have produced more men of genius had they been invaded. As it is, after a century of peace, their greatest creation is the cuckoo clock. What do you think of the Swiss, Fraulein?”

The lady in the yellow dressing-gown licked some apricot jam delicately from her finger-tips before replying. She was beginning to accept the unusual couple with more equanimity. Nevertheless she retained a cat-like aloofness.

“I have met the Swiss only in hotels,” she replied vaguely. “I find them very attentive and efficient. Their faces remind me of the cows in their pastures.”

Krauss flung back his head and roared.

“You have wit as well as beauty, Fraulein Coukidis. If the Greeks had an Aristophanes today, he would be writing a comedy worthy of you.”

There was a slight flush on her unrouged cheeks.

“Both of you appear to know who I am,” she began.

“Who has not heard of Dmitri Coukidis, the Greek millionaire of Piraeus whose fleet of freight-steamers covers the Levant!” murmured Krauss. “But I will confess that this is the first time I have met his charming and beautiful daughter, Fraulein Helene.”

“Yet you choose to introduce yourself by knocking at the door of my compartment, announcing yourself as a customs’ official and demanding entrance,” she continued. “Who are you, Herr Krauss, if that is really your name ?”

“I can answer that,” said Rodgers, draining his cup of coffee. “I have his dossier complete in my mind. We are old—er—enemies.”

“So I gathered,” she said.

“Go ahead, my dear Rodgers,” said Krauss. “Tell her the worst. I am all attention. Is there any butter left?”

Rodgers hesitated.

“Yes, Karl Krauss really is his name,” he began. “He seldom changes it, even though he is one of the best secret agents of the Nachrichten Bureau of Berlin.”

“I change it no more than you do your own, Rodgers,” interposed the German. He smiled reassuringly at the Greek lady. “Do not believe those fantastic stories of the secret service that you read in books, Fraulein. Rodgers, who is one of the best agents in the British Intelligence, will tell you that such tales are nonsense.”

“I do not waste my time reading such books,” said Helene Coukidis, coldly.

“I first met Krauss some years ago in Teheran,” resumed Rodgers. “He claimed to be nothing more exciting than a traveller in toys—German toys, of course. He sold flaxen-haired dolls to dark-haired people, and incidentally made puppets of them all. His real business was the selling of machine-guns, airplanes and incendiary bombs. His political objective was a revolution, and then the appropriation for Germany of the British-capitalized oil-fields.”

“Pleasant days!” mused Krauss.

“He managed to get the Shah of Persia out of the way by inducing him to go to Paris. Paris, he shrewdly decided, would kill the Shah with its pleasures quicker than would Berlin. His plans were working out admirably. The Shah died in Paris. The subtle business of revolution began. Krauss became a nuisance. It was necessary to get rid of him.”

“Why didn’t you kill him?” asked the Greek lady.

Krauss, his mouth full of food, protested.

“My dear Fraulein, I’m sure you do read those fantastic spy novels.”

“Within a week of my arrival in Teheran, I had him shanghaied one night,” went on Rodgers, complacently. “Krauss was taken to Basra, pushed aboard a steamer, and I conveniently forgot him. I did not see him again for some years.”

"Dirty trick,” said Krauss, shaking his head. “I wouldn’t have believed my friend Rodgers capable of it. Do you know, Fraulein, that I did not step ashore from that filthy ship until three weeks later. I then discovered that I was in Sourabaya, and a very long way from home.”

“But he got home in time,” resumed Rodgers. “He resumed his profitable occupation, selling guns from the factory of Krupp. He was sent to South America, and wherever he found trade bad, he started a revolution. I heard that he did quite well.”

“Very well, danke sehr.”

“Krauss returned to a Germany that was itself in revolution. One heard of him in a gang led by Ludendorff. Then he was engaged by the famous Colonel Nicolai. By the time Hitler and the Nazis were in power, Krauss, because of his experience, held an important post. Later I met him in Istanbul. On that occasion Krauss behaved in almost disgraceful manner.”

“Actually, I returned the dirty trick with interest on my old friend Rodgers,” chuckled Krauss, lighting a cigarette.

“Now, with our countries at war, we meet again,” said Rodgers, quietly.

“And in my private compartment,” insisted the Greek lady, helping herself to a cigarette from the packet carelessly thrown toward her by Krauss.

“That is only because Krauss works with a brutal directness,” said Rodgers, also helping himself to a cigarette.

“May I ask, then, why I should be the victim of your forced entrance, the subject of your threats, and suffer the doubtful pleasure of your company?” asked the Greek lady.

“I assure you, Fraulein, I have the most amiable intentions.”

“I am waiting to hear Mr. Rodgers’ explanation,” she said severely. “He appears to be possessed of a key opening to my compartment, which is more than you could claim, Herr Krauss.”

“I admit an explanation is due, mademoiselle,” smiled Rodgers. “Might I suggest, therefore, that you join me at a table for luncheon, in the restaurant-car at noon?”

“Excellent idea,” exclaimed Krauss. “Make it a table for three.”

“I have no intention of allowing you to force your acquaintance further upon this lady.”

“Oh, come, Rodgers!”

“I think I should prefer a table à deux,” said the Greek lady coldly. “Perhaps Herr Krauss may have the opportunity of forcing himself upon my company at dinner, which I understand is at eight o’clock.”

“Shortly after leaving Trieste,” nodded the German. The smile had left his face.

“Yes, I think we shall be dining together, Fraulein.” He saw that an equally stern expression was on the face of Rodgers. He rose slowly to his feet, gave a stiff bow and a click of the heels. “Auf wiedersehen, then.”

PICKING up his packet of cigarettes, he sauntered out of the compartment. The Greek lady turned to Rodgers. “And now, perhaps you’ll oblige me also by leaving my compartment. We meet again at noon.”

With a sigh, Rodgers rose and passed through the communicating doors. As he entered his own compartment, he heard the savage snap of a bolt.

From the windows of the restaurant- car, the placid waters of Lake Maggiore reflecting mountains and islands, seemed a vision of an unreal world, a world at peace. But Rodgers had to admit that the vision confronting him was much more distracting. Helene Coukidis had taken the trouble to appear at her best. Incidentally her velvet eyes rested approvingly on the slim, agile figure of Rodgers with his earnest, ascetic features.

“It begins to appear that you are adopting the role of protector to me,” she began, sipping at the excellent wine which he had chosen.

“I am afraid that is exactly why I am here,” he admitted.

“But why? Is it considered dangerous for a woman to take a journey in the Orient Express, even though Europe is at war?”

There was an ironic smile on her slightly rouged lips.

“Extremely dangerous,” said Rodgers, quietly, “particularly when you are carrying a document signed by the British Government, and worth nearly half a million pounds.”

Her hand instinctively went to her silken blouse.

“So you know why I went to London ?”

Rodgers glanced over his shoulder.

Several tables away, Karl Krauss was enjoying a hearty luncheon with a huge mug of beer. The German raised the mug of beer in genial salute, grinned, and bent his grizzled head to the meal.

“I am fully aware, mademoiselle, that on the outbreak of war, your father, Dmitri Coukidis, shrewdly decided he would offer his fleet of steamers to the highest bidder in Britain or Germany. Unable to travel, himself, he sent you, his daughter, to negotiate the sale in London. At the same time your brother Simon was sent to Berlin to discuss the same proposition with the Nazi Government. Dmitri Coukidis knew full well the value to the Nazis of his steamers trading under the Greek flag. Plying across the Mediterranean and using such ports as Piraeus, Trieste and even Genoa, they could carry the desperately needed supplies for a Germany at war.”

“I can see that you fully appreciate the value of my father’s business,” she smiled.

“Let us say that the British Government fully appreciated the value of those ships to the extent of half a million pounds,” said Rodgers. “They, at least, were determined that Germany should not have the use of this fleet of freighters. Within twenty-four hours of your arrival in London, an offer was made. A bill of sale was approved, and an order on the Egean Bank in Athens handed to you. It needs only the acceptance of your father, to whom you are now taking the document, for the sale to be concluded.”

“Well, then,” she flashed at him, “if such a satisfactory deal has been concluded, why should the British Government consider it necessary to provide me with such a—er—presentable escort?”

Rodgers flushed at this speech.

“Because the deal is not really concluded until your father, Dmitri Coukidis, presents the order on the bank,” he said.

“Are you suggesting that what the Coukidis promise they do not fulfil?”

He shrugged. “The forced entry of Karl Krauss into your compartment this morning indicates that Germany has not yet given up hope of securing that fleet of steamers for use by the Nazis. We were fully aware in London that your brother was trying to deal with Wilhelmstrasse at the same time that you were negotiating an offer in Whitehall. The British Government closed the deal exactly an hour before the Nazi Government offered to buy. I believe the British figure was slightly higher than that offered by the Nazis?”

"Apparently even my private telegrams have been read,” she said, biting her lips.

“Despite their attempt at a code, yes,” he replied. “Once the deal was completed in London, you booked on the Orient Express. I was ordered to travel on the same train and see that you arrived safely—with the bill-of-sale— at Athens.”

“Which explains your own uninvited entry into my wagon-lit?”

“Exactly. Krauss has obviously been ordered to rectify this business which was bungled by Wilhelmstrasse. His aim is to secure the steamers for Germany. It explains his boarding the train at Lausanne.”

“And you really think that an individual of the calibre of this Herr Krauss can divert the sale to Nazi Germany?”

“I have never underestimated the powers of Karl Krauss, even though I deplore his methods,” smiled Rodgers in his turn. “He is without doubt empowered to offer you a higher price than that given by Britain.”

“It is too late,” she said. “You will both discover that the word of a Coukidis is as good as a bond. The deal is settled.”

“Which means that Krauss will attempt more direct methods,” said Rodgers, bluntly. “It is likely to be something more drastic than entering your wagon-lit.”

“For example?”

“Did I not hear him threaten you regarding your brother, the youth whose photograph you carried in your dressing-case?”

He saw her cheeks pale.

“He can do nothing against my brother. Simon is already on his way to Trieste, there to board this train and accompany me back to our father in Athens. I had a telegram from him, after he had left Berlin. He congratulated me on the deal in London.”

“Even so,” said Rodgers, stroking his chin thoughtfully, “there are unusual resources at the command of our fellow-traveller, Karl Krauss.”

“Let us not spoil this lunch further with talk of business,” she said. “It appears that I am to have your company as far as Athens. I intend to make the most of it. It was a charming thought of the British Government to provide me with a bodyguard. Now that you have introduced yourself, I wish to say I approve. In fact, I know I shall enjoy the feeling of security you bring.”

There was a flirtatious gleam in her eyes, but Rodgers did not respond.

She sensed his indifference, and it piqued her feminine assurance. She savagely stubbed the cigarette in the ashtray. The train had stopped for a few moments. She glanced out of the windows at the peasants on the platform.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“Baveno,” he replied. “We are now in Italy. On the other side of the lake, there, you can see Stresa.”

“Famous for another international failure,” she nodded. “I wonder where the Peace Treaty of this war will be signed, and whether it will be worth the paper it is written on?”

But Rodgers did not reply. He had just glimpsed the burly form of Karl Krauss emerging from the telegraph office. The German gave a genial grin to an Italian officer pacing the platform.

The next moment the Orient Express moved toward Milan.

"TRIESTE in ten minutes, monsieur.”

Rodgers roused himself from his book of verse, the rhythmic rumble of wheels, and the brightly lit compartment. He flicked up the blind and stared out into the darkness. The blackness was split by a beam of light from the harbor lighthouse. A liner, her decks brightly lit, and arc-lamps revealing derricks swinging cargo aboard, showed that this Mediterranean port was exceedingly busy.

The mellowed Austrian architecture flitted past. The brick walls were scrawled with Italian inscriptions, the “Viva Mussolini” forcing itself upon the attention. Then the illumination increased. The Orient Express had steamed into the station. The platform was lively with uniformed figures, vendors of newspapers, and the inevitable white-jacketed youth pushing a cart filled with bottles of Chianti, cold roasted chickens, ham rolls, and coffee. The station clock registered eight o’clock. The Orient Express was on time.

As the train drew to a standstill, Rodgers let down the window and leaned out. The chocolate-uniformed attendant was already chanting instructions in the corridor of the train.

“Messieurs et mesdames! Please to remain seated in your compartments. No one is permitted to leave the train.”

Yet one figure had descended, even before the Orient Express drew to a standstill. It was the lively, irrepressible Karl Krauss. He hurried forward, to be met by two Italian policemen, who saluted him importantly. They conversed quickly together. One of the policemen jerked a hand significantly over his shoulder. Rodgers followed the direction of the gesture.

As he did so; he heard a cry from the next compartment. Helene Coukidis was leaning forth from her window, an eager expectancy on her face. Rodgers realized she was searching for a glimpse of her brother, who had promised to meet her on the train at Trieste. She had suddenly seen him.

Pale-faced, and with a strained expression, he was walking down the platform. On either side of him marched an Italian policeman. His hands were held in mute fashion before him. They were manacled, and he was being urged toward the waiting Karl Krauss and the other two policemen.

The German watched the approach with a sardonic grin on his face. He lifted his face toward the agitated Helene Coukidis.

“A depressing business, Fraulein,” he murmured. “It seems your brother has been arrested on a serious charge. Espionage, I am told. I have decided to remain in Trieste myself and see that justice is done. Should you also desire to descend here, I have already arranged the trifling matter of your passport visa. It is possible for you to stay the night. I am told they serve a most excellent dinner in the Hotel Bella Vista—where, no doubt, you would like to join me.”

But already she was struggling toward the platform, and she ran toward her captive brother.

“Simon! What have they done? Where are they taking you?” She gasped the words in Greek.

The good-looking youth shrugged.

“Don’t worry, Helene. They’ve arrested me on a fantastic charge. They've got nothing against me, and—”

Roughly, at a sign from Krauss, the policemen jerked the youth away. Impetuously, Helene was about to follow but the bulky form of Krauss barred the way.

“You heard what your brother said, Fraulein? There is no need to worry. I am looking into his case personally. Ah, I see already the conductor is depositing your baggage on the platform. Shall we say dinner within the hour Fraulein? Auf wiedersehen!”

And with a parting grin, he swaggered away in the direction taken by the Italian police and their prisoner.

Rodgers had quickly sensed the implication of this new development. In spite the protest of the conductor, he forced his way on to the brightly lighted platform. He tried to speak to Helene Coukidis, but she was almost hysterical.

“Simon is in danger. I must go him,” she repeated excitedly.

“But don’t you realize that it is a trick, a prearranged plan to prevent you from reaching Athens?”

“I must be with Simon.”

“And what about the contract with the British Government, signed in the name of Coukidis?”

“What care I for any contract?” she flashed back. “Simon is in danger.”

Rodgers groaned in his impatience. He wanted to seize this woman and forcibly thrust her back on to the Orient Express. But already she was moving toward the station exit, her baggage trundled along behind. Rodgers realized that importuning officials were all the time at his side, babbling in Italian, French and bad English for him to resume his place on the train.

“It is absolutely forbidden —dejendu — verboten —for a passenger to walk the platform. I beg of you, monsieur, mistake—signor—before you are arrested—”

Arrested! The word fixed itself in the mind of Rodgers. He turned. The white-jacketed youth came alongside pushing the cart filled with bottles of Chianti, cold roasted chickens, and ham rolls. At a gesture from Rodgers he stopped expectantly.

The lithe figure with the red hair leaned toward the cart, a strange gleam in his eyes. He selected the largest bottle of Chianti he could find. Deliberately he held it poised in his hand for a second. Then, with the sudden, whirling motion of throwing a hand-grenade, he hurled it through the window of the station restaurant. The awful crash of glass transfixed those persons on the platform.

But Rodgers had only just begun. Another, and yet another bottle he seized and flung in other directions. A roasted chicken caught a bustling Italian business man in his well-lined spaghetti paunch. He slid to the ground with a groan. A ham roll plastered the face of a policeman. The grinning driver of the Orient Express, leaning over the side of the locomotive, caught with grimy hand a flying packet of chocolate.

“Bravissimo!” he chortled, and then spat fury as an orange struck his face.

The white-jacketed youth stood with mouth open, watching this madman wrecking his stock-in-trade. Every bottle of wine had been smashed. The cart was almost empty. Then, when the madman saw an approaching posse of police, the trolley was sent careering madly along the platform toward them. They dodged it agilely, and it crashed into a bookstall, where yellow-backs tumbled in an avalanche of disorder.

It was all over in three minutes. The Italian agents fell upon Rodgers. The blowing of police whistles mingled with the impatient Whistle of the Orient Express. Ignoring the struggle, a railway official walked the length of the train blowing a tin trumpet, There was a hiss of steam as Rodgers went to the floor of the platform beneath the weight of law and order. . . .

As the Orient Express jerked itself out of the station, Paul Rodgers was being jerked out of the exit. Hatless, and with his clothes drenched in red wine, he was bustled into a taxi.

Already the rumour was being gasped about Trieste....

“A violent assassin has been captured at the railway station. The monster killed six people, and when he was overpowered, was streaming with blood! ” The cell into which they flung Paul Rodgers, unceremoniously, after a painstaking examination of the charge of violent insanity, was merely a box of cement.

Slightly dishevelled, but exhilarated from his struggle, Rodgers realized at first glance that escape was impossible. The Italian who had built that prison was evidently acquainted with the classic story of Casanova’s escape over the leads in Venice. He intended that no distinguished political prisoner should follow that example. Even the barred window was situated some nine feet from the ground.

BUT the fact that it was a prison used for opponents of the Fascist regime, was one of the reasons why Rodgers was exhilarated. He had discovered that, ten minutes previous to his own struggling entry in the hands of the Italian police, a young Greek, Simon Coukidis, suspected of espionage, had been lodged in the cell next to the one in which he was so hastily flung to await proceedings.

Rodgers had, of course, been searched. The importantly uniformed chief of the prison who received him was obviously disappointed at finding only a book of verse, some small change and a piece of chicken in the pockets of his prisoner. There ought to have been more in the possession of one travelling de luxe from Paris to Athens in the Orient Express. But that in itself made the charge of madness more than plausible, confirmed by the quiet inquiry of the prisoner as to whether he could be locked in a cell that contained a piano.

Actually, Rodgers was possessed of other material belongings, A thin wad of French banknotes, for example, to the value of a thousand francs each. These he now conjured from somewhere beneath his torn clothing. He gazed at one of these thousand-franc notes thoughtfully, for a moment, and then pushed it beneath the door of his cell. It materialized in the corridor, along which paced a prison warder, heavily.

It was true the warder was dreaming of a certain dark-haired girl with the face and allurement of a Botticelli angel, but his ideas changed quickly at the sight of the thousand-franc note. His footsteps faltered. He glanced swiftly over his shoulder. No one was looking. He was alone with his duty. Swiftly he stooped and picked up the note, and equally as swiftly it disappeared within his uniform. Then he resumed his pacing of the corridor, and only with an effort could recall that vision of the darkhaired beauty.

The next time he passed the cell where the madman was lodged, he was all alert. He felt somewhat aggrieved that another thousand-franc note was not visible. In fact, he was roused sufficiently to thrust back the grille shutter over the door of the cell and peer into the lighted interior. What he saw, intrigued him. The madman stood , in the centre of the cell, holding in his hand in enticing fashion two further notes of a thousand francs each. Impossible to resist such insolence from a prisoner: once again the guard looked over his shoulder, satisfied himself that all was well, and opened the door of the cell.

He may have been surprised at the swift blow that caught him beneath the

jaw and caused him to slide to the floor. But his mind was equally swift. Before he fell, his clawing hand caught the two thousand-franc notes. And as he rolled helplessly to the ground, the notes also disappeared within his tunic. All that was lost was the bunch of keys which Rodgers calmly appropriated. The prisoner stepped out of the cell into the corridor, and locked the door behind him. He moved swiftly to the next cell, unlocked it, and entered. A youth was sitting in hunched, despairing fashion on the bed. He was Simon Coukidis.

“Come along!” announced Rodgers, in French. “Venez vite! I have a call to make before we set off for Athens.”

The youth looked up in surprise.

“Who are you? And where are you taking me ?”

“I’m taking you to see your sister,” said Rodgers calmly. “Any further introductions can wait.”

Such was his peremptory tone, that the young man did not hesitate. He followed Rodgers’ cat-like tread along the corridor. He was in an agony of suspense while various keys were tried on different doors leading to an exercise yard beyond, and heaved a sigh of relief when the main gateway presented no difficulties, owing to a merry Chianti party taking place in the distant lodge. The street beyond was dimly lit, and their hurried progress was unnoticed.

Rodgers calmly made his way to the main street where many citizens of Trieste promenaded in thankfulness for the few lighted cafes and cinemas which were crowded. A garage announced itself in blood-red neon. Rodgers entered, and was soon bargaining with the shirt-sleeved proprietor.

“A car to take you into Jugoslavia?” said the proprietor. “That is two hundred kilometres. And with this cursed shortage in gasoline—” He shrugged.

“How much?” demanded Rodgers.

“For a thousand lire, it might be possible.”

“I’ll give you one thousand five hundred if you can have a car ready in five minutes.”

“Presto!” shouted the proprietor, realizing that this was business. At his command a sad-faced mechanic emerged from the shadows. Still gulping the remains of his supper, he began to struggle with a powerful Fiat.

“This is madness,” ventured Simon Coukidis. “Already it is possible our escape has been discovered. They will send police cars in pursuit.”

“Exactly what I was thinking,” smiled Rodgers.

“Well, then?”

“Jump in! The car is ready.” Rodgers turned to the driver. “Drive first to the Hotel Bella Vista. I have to collect some baggage.”

In a moment they were speeding along the main street. They drew up outside a towering mass of cement which announced itself as the Hotel Bella Vista, with “all modern comforts.” Telling the driver to wait, Rodgers strode confidently into the lobby of the hotel followed by the hesitant young Greek. He faced the reception-clerk.

“Herr Karl Krauss is expecting me,” he said, in German. “What room?”

The harsh Prussian accents jerked the clerk to attention.

“Suite Sixty-seven, mein Herr. Shall I announce you?”

“No.”

Rodgers was already striding into the elevator, followed by the Greek. Arriving at the sixth floor they walked along the corridor until Suite Sixty-seven revealed itself.

Rodgers rapped at the door.

“An urgent message for Herr Krauss,” he announced.

Something like a sigh came from the room beyond. The door was unlocked, and the irritated face of Krauss appeared. But the irritation turned to baffled rage as he was thrust forcibly aside, and Rodgers and the youth elbowed their way into the suite. Once again Rodgers took the precaution to lock the door behind him, taking the key and pocketing it. Then he turned.

In the background, seated at a small desk, was Helene Coukidis. A pen was in her hand, and she was obviously about to sign the document which Krauss had placed before her. In the black evening gown she wore, the pallor of her features was emphasized. There was open astonishment in her dark eyes at this sudden entry. But she rose swiftly with a cry to embrace her brother.

Krauss had realized the situation as soon as the two men entered. As Rodgers reached out for the document on the desk, his harsh voice was heard.

“Put up your hands, all of you! I’ll shoot the first one who dares to move.”

He had his back to the door, and had levelled a pistol at the trio.

Rodgers turned, raising his hands, slowly.

“My dear Krauss,” he said, quietly, “you are behaving as usual like a character in one of those novels you read. Don’t be a fool. Realize that you’re beaten.”

Krauss recovered his geniality at once, but kept the pistol pointed steadily at the group, where brother and sister had fallen apart, each of them raising hands, Helene Coukidis contemptuously.

“As usual, Rodgers, you are rushing your fences. That, I believe, is the correct English expression? But now that you have so gayly stumbled into this room, I shall make full use of you. You will kindly witness the signature to the document that Fraulein Coukidis is about to sign, which sells the fleet of steamers possessed by her father to the German Reich. The Wilhelmstrasse is rather meticulous about the legality of such signatures. That such a document should be witnessed by Paul Rodgers of the British Intelligence will, I am sure, appeal to the Wilhelmstrasse. They will certainly not question its authenticity. Probably I shall be complimented.” Krauss grinned. “Now, Fraulein, I’m sure you are ready to lower those attractive hands of yours and return to the desk to complete the signature so rudely interrupted.”

“Even if you get the document, Krauss, that doesn’t mean that you get the ships,” said Rodgers, standing aside as Helene moved obediently toward the desk.

“Germans have the advantage of being methodical in their plans,” chuckled Krauss. “Already in Athens our agents are waiting to pay the money to Dmitri Coukidis, and take over the ships. Dmitri Coukidis will do as he is told as soon as he receives a certain telegram signed by his adored daughter and son. When I am satisfied that the deal is complete, I shall place no further obstacles in the way of your resuming your journey in the Orient Express, which again passes through Trieste tomorrow.”

Helene, white-faced, had taken the pen. She was about to dip it into the heavy inkwell, when she caught a glance from Rodgers. She bent her head over the document. In his eagerness, Krauss made a step forward. The next moment she had turned, and the heavy inkwell was flung by her, full in the face of the Nazi agent.

Simultaneously, Rodgers had dived for the big feet of his man. The gun exploded, and a bullet went into the ceiling. Krauss came crashing heavily to the carpet. He presented a pitiable object as Rodgers seized the gun. Ink was streaming down his face, and had mixed with a streak of blood.

“Bravo! ” nodded Rodgers, busy with a curtain-cord on the wrists of his prisoner. “A magnificent throw, mademoiselle.”

“I don’t read silly espionage novels,” said the furious Helene, looking down on the spluttering German. “But it may interest you to know, Herr Krauss, that I’ve seen many a custard pie thrown in the movies. You ought to go more often to see them.”

Krauss only spluttered his fury as Simon Coukidis joined Rodgers in safely binding the prisoner to a chair. During this operation, Helene took up the document and began to tear it into small pieces.

“No time to lose!”

The commanding voice of Rodgers interrupted this proceeding.

“Are you ready?” he added.

“If you mean for dinner, I’ve already dined, thank you. It was over the dinner-table that I learned to hate the face of Karl Krauss.”

“So much the better if you’ve dined,” decided Rodgers. “Put on that wretchedly expensive fur coat of yours, and come along.”

“Where are we going?”

“To Athens, by boat. The ship sails at midnight.”

Helene Coukidis drew herself up.

“I refuse. I will not travel in any filthy steamer.”

“It happens to be one owned by your father.”

“All the more reason why I should stay here, spend a comfortable night, and catch the Orient Express tomorrow evening. I have a good deal of baggage with me, too.”

There was a challenging glint in her dark eyes. Rodgers squared his jaw. He had a sudden desire to fling that inkwell back at her. But he restrained himself. He shrugged, sat down in a chair and took out a cigarette.

“Very well, then,” he said, quietly. “Let us sit here and amuse ourselves until the police come to capture your brother and take him back to the cell from which I rescued him. I also have the suspicion that instead of spending a night in the hotel, you will really experience an uncomfortable night in an Italian prison cell. And I have no desire to get myself into further trouble on your behalf.”

Her rouged lips tightened. She was about to storm at this lithe figure who attracted her so violently and yet calmly ignored her advances. But at this moment her brother, in excited Greek, intervened.

“Let’s get away, Helene, while we can.”

Coldly she addressed Rodgers.

“At least you will allow me time to change into a travelling-frock?”

He looked at his watch.

“We haven’t two minutes to spare,” he said. “And even Adam, I suspect, had to wait longer than two minutes for Eve to change.”

She flung the magnificent furs over her shoulders.

“I think you’re the most detestable man I ever met in my life,” she snarled.

“I’m sure Krauss agrees with you,” chuckled Rodgers as, with a parting nod to the pinioned Nazi agent, he opened the door, switched off the lights, and ushered the Greek couple into the corridor. He took the precaution of leaving a card swinging on the doorknob of the suite: “Not to be disturbed.”

As they descended by the elevator into the lobby of the hotel, he once again approached the reception-clerk.

“Herr Krauss gives strict orders that he is not to be disturbed until the morning. He has a slight headache. Will you see that he has breakfast at eight? Coffee and rolls, and plenty of butter.”

“Certainly, mein Herr.”

Rodgers started away, then turned.

“And one more thing. Mademoiselle Coukidis requests that her baggage be placed aboard the Orient Express tomorrow and consigned to Athens. Herr Krauss has kindly consented to settle her account.”

“Very good, mein Herr.”

With a parting nod, Rodgers strolled out of the lobby. He jumped into the car where his two passengers were impatiently awaiting him. Some whispered words to the driver, and they drove at full speed toward the docks.

In a few minutes they arrived alongside the ship that Rodgers had glimpsed through the windows of the Orient Express on entering Trieste. The passengers were saying their last farewells. Officials were already walking away from the gangway and leaving it to be dismantled by the sailors. A warning siren was sounded.

Rodgers had some final instructions for the driver.

“Go as fast as you can to the Jugoslav frontier. At the frontier post you will find a red-faced captain with a stern manner. He will interrogate you. All you have to do is to hand him this sealed envelope. Then you return to Trieste. You understand?”

“Si, signor.”

“And here is a hundred lire for yourself. Off you go!”

“Grazia, signor.”

The delighted driver snicked his gears and set off with the powerful car in the direction of the frontier. He did not know that police cars were already leaving Trieste in full pursuit of him.

“I am curious to know what was in that letter,” said Simon Coukidis, as Rodgers hurried him and his sister towards the gangway.

“Just a blank sheet of paper,” smiled Rodgers.

“But who is the red-faced captain with the stern manner?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea, but my experience of frontiers proves that there is usually such a captain, whatever the country.”

They had reached the barrier of the gangway. An official hurried forward

irritably at these last delaying passengers.

“Passports and tickets!” he grunted.

“Left them aboard,” said Rodgers hurriedly. “In fact, after seeing your delightful city, all I have in my possession is this—to which you are welcome.”

He pressed a hundred-lira note upon the official.

It was sufficient.

“Grazia, signor, and a good voyage.”

The gangway was lifted behind them as they stepped aboard. Rodgers gave a glance at the fur-swathed figure who had been silent since they left the hotel. There were tears of mortification in her dark eyes.

He sighed.

THIRTY hours later, the aging Dmitri Coukidis sat in his office overlooking the busy port of Piraeus. He nodded his head. He had just received a telephone notification from his bank that he was richer by half a million pounds.

“The ships now belong to Britain,” he said, in his tired voice to Paul Rodgers, who confronted him. “May I wish the Allies a swift and successful conclusion to the war.”

Rodgers drew his lean form from the chair and also gazed out of the window. Along the waterfront he saw three steamers. The blue and white Greek flags were being lowered, and the Union Jack fluttered in their place. He saw the burly forms of British mercantile marine officers taking over the command of these ships. Simultaneously, he knew that a similar act was taking place in Alexandria and at Istanbul. Radio messages were being flashed to ships at sea. The fleet that was once the pride of shrewd Dmitri Coukidis, was now under orders direct from the British Admiralty.

“But I have also my personal thanks to convey to you,” said Dmitri Coukidis. “Only by your efforts am I able to welcome home again the joy of my heart, my daughter and my son.”

The old Greek was holding out his gnarled hand in thanks. Rodgers took it, and at the same time glanced at that fur-swathed back which had been persistently turned upon him since he rushed her aboard the steamer at Trieste. It had been a cold and uncomfortable journey across the Adriatic. Helene Coukidis was still in that flimsy black evening frock which she wore when Rodgers ruthlessly dragged her away from the wily Krauss.

She turned. Her dark eyes rested challengingly upon the lithe form with the tanned face and inscrutable eyes.

“Perhaps Mr. Rodgers would honour us, papa, by dining at our home this evening? It is full moon tonight, and if he so desired he could see the Acropolis by moonlight. It is the most beautiful thing we could show him in Athens.”

Rodgers sighed, and shook his head.

“Alas, much as I would like to,” he said, “I’m afraid I must decline. I have work to do.”

“Are you afraid?” she challenged.

“There are some adventures which the wise man does not enter upon,” he replied, cryptically.

“But at least you are staying in Athens ?”

“For the moment, yes.”

“Then we shall meet again.”

She had recovered some of her confidence. There was a sureness in her femininity as she held out her hand. She realized that his rejection of her invitation was in itself, a victory. To Rodgers she was, once again, the alluring Victory of Samothrace.

“It may be that we shall meet again,” he said, quietly.

“Then, au revoir,” she smiled.

And with a last flirtatious gleam of those dark eyes, she released him.

HALF an hour later, Rodgers went through the foyer of the Hotel Grande Bretagne. Grouping themselves apart from the medley of French, British, Italian and Greek personages who passed to and fro, were three bullet-headed Germans.

Each one lowered a copy of a German newspaper as he sauntered in.

Rodgers hesitated, and stopped before the most military-looking of the trio.

“You are, of course, awaiting Herr Krauss?” he said, in German.

The military-looking man registered surprise but, after a glance at his two companions, nodded:

“Ja!"

“I have a message from him,” went on Rodgers easily.

“So?”

“He will arrive in the Orient Express within the next hour. He particularly asks that you have sent up to his room a tray of coffee and rolls, and plenty of  butter. You understand, plenty of butter.”

“It shall be done, mein Herr,” said the German, impressed and rising.

“And please see that it is given to him with the compliments of Paul Rodgers,” nodded the red-haired man—and with a parting smile, his lithe figure passed through the door into the dining-room.

___________________

13: London Blackout

The Blue Book, May 1940

The Intelligence officer known as the Red Wolf of Arabia follows a desperate Mediterranean adventure to its climax in war-time London.

"DARKEN ship! All lights out! Tell that misbegotten Arab to make me another cup of coffee.”

Captain Kormakiti, his sallow face as greasy as the plate he pushed aside, gave his excited orders to the crew of the Greek steamer Paphos. Then he unbuttoned his dirty tunic and lit a cigarette that scented the air of the cabin like burning brown paper.

Ten o’clock on the evening of September 2, 1939. Europe had been at war for some hours. The Paphos, lurching north toward the Bay of Biscay, had slipped past Gibraltar exactly an hour before Britain had officially declared war. For which fact Captain Kormakiti was devoutly thankful, for he had no desire to have a British destroyer or any naval officers making inconvenient inquiries about the cargo he was carrying from Beyrouth.

“Coffee! D’you hear, you spawn of a camel?”

Captain Kormakiti opened wide his mouth. It was as though a mastiff had been chewing a bone of gold. Into the range of his raisin like eyes came the dishevelled figure of an Arab who humbly placed before him a cup of the treacly Turkish coffee that he loved.

Captain Kormakiti smacked his lips over the sweetness.

“Not bad,” he declared. “For a rat of a stowaway, you’ve proved less useless than most. Maybe at the end of this voyage I shall sign you on as a regular member of the crew. What d’you think of that, Azul?”

The thin, lithe Arab raised his head. He had been discovered sprawled among the oranges and barrels of olive oil three hours after leaving Beyrouth. Kicked out into the sunlight, and confronted by the wrathful Captain Kormakiti, he had proved grateful for the menial tasks flung at him. It was in the art of coffee-making he excelled. Even Captain Kormakiti grudgingly admitted that it was nearly as good as that served in his favourite cafe on the waterfront of Piraeus.

“D’you hear what I said, Azul? I’ll make you a member of my crew.”

“Allah is bountiful in all his goodness. Allah is great!” muttered the Arab.

“Never mind Allah. Put your trust in Captain Kormakiti and the good ship Paphos. They’ll bring piasters to your pocket, my man.”

And the Greek displayed his expensive mouth of gold again.

Captain Kormakiti had every reason for his satisfaction. The Paphos was his golden argosy, disreputable freighter of twenty-five hundred tons though she was. Good money had been made running munitions into Spain during the civil war. The sudden termination of that conflict had forced the wily Greek into the dubious business of smuggling Jewish immigrants into Palestine. Now another and bigger war had begun. A fortune was to be made, provided one remained a roaming internationalist, with no scruples about neutrality. Captain Kormakiti had loaded a heavy cargo at Beyrouth a few hours after a talk with a German-speaking individual in a Syrian eating-house. A bargain was struck. Within the next few hours the Greek would be keeping his bargain. He drained his cup of coffee and nodded to the Arab.

“Okay! Imshi!"

THE Arab stepped softly out of the cabin. Outside the door, he hesitated for some moments. A swath of dirty rag about his head served as a turban. His hair was red. Alert gray eyes peered from the sun-tanned face along the deck. Blackness shrouded the sea. The Arab saw a yellow flicker fall like a shooting star. It was the light from the masthead, the last light of the ship being lowered. As the Captain had commanded, the Paphos was now rolling northward without a glimmer showing.

A curtain shrouded the light in the Captain’s cabin. The Arab stowaway stood there listening. Captain Kormakiti was indulging in a strange form of entertainment that had been an obsession with him for the past three nights. He had switched on a radio set, and was listening to the broadcasting of advertisements from the Continental stations. When the sales-talk for Portuguese wines, Italian pianos, Scandinavian soaps, Spanish medicines and the like were superseded by music or news, the Captain impatiently switched to some other station. It was now the Madrid station which was announcing in persuasive Spanish that sufferers from eye-trouble should try the lotion “Madre de Dios.”

Gently the watching Arab twitched back the curtain; Captain Kormakiti was bent over the table, head cocked in a listening attitude to the radio, and his big rough hand writing down a phrase on the paper before him.

“Alio— alio!” rattled on the irrepressible voice in Madrid. “Have you suffered from sea-sickness, train-sickness or air-sickness? You need never again, if you take that certain remedy, Buenamer. Don’t forget the name— Buenamer.”

Apparently Captain Kormakiti was determined not to forget it. He was writing it down, religiously. Why should this Greek, who had sailed the Mediterranean in all weathers since he was a boy, be so interested in a remedy for sea-sickness?

“Buenamer will cure all your ills when travelling,” went on the persuasive voice. “It is sold in different packets of special strength. Ask your chemist for these numbers—”

The Captain’s pencil was busy.

“Dies y ocho.... eighteen.... forty-one.... fifteen.... twelve.... thirty-six. That is all. Don’t forget: Buenamer. Muchas gracias.... Adios!”

A military band began to play. Impatiently the Greek switched off the radio. He drew toward him a chart of the Spanish coast, and with compass and dividers began to plot a position. The watching Arab saw his lips soundlessly repeating those numbers, “Eighteen.... forty-one .... fifteen .... twelve .... thirty-six.” There came a sigh of satisfaction and the Captain stabbed a pin in the chart.

“Azul!” he called. “Where is that pariah of the desert?” The ragged figure stood before him. “Tell the mate I wish to see him at once.”

Two minutes later the mate was standing in front of Captain Kormakiti.

“You’ll make for this position, Mister. Eighteen degrees north, forty-one west. Steer north by northeast. You ought to make it by three o’clock in the morning. I’ll get the engineer to force an extra couple of knots out of the ship.”

“And when we get to the position, what then?” asked the mate.

Captain Kormakiti was blunt.

“Heave to, and await my orders.”

“Very good, sir.”

The mate made his way back to the bridge. Captain Kormakiti descended into the hot bowels of the engine-room.

Nobody bothered about the ragged Arab. He had gone for’ard, crawled into a bunk, and lay with his face against an open porthole. From his rags he produced an electric torch. He began to flick the light against the black sea surging and hissing past.

Within half a minute there came a flickering light from the distant darkness. Then the Arab began to signal rapidly. He too was sending forth that series of numbers which had been broadcast in a radio advertisement from Madrid. An answering flash showed that his signals had been received.

“There was a light for a moment on the port bow,” said the mate, as Captain Kormakiti came up to the bridge from the engine-room.

The Greek chuckled.

“It’s of no account, Mister. Whoever it was couldn’t spot us in this darkness. We haven’t a light showing, eh ?”

“No sir.”

Back in the galley, crouched over a charcoal fire, the Arab was busy preparing another cup of coffee. It was for his own delectation. He sipped it appreciatively, and then lit a cigarette. On his clear-cut features was a grim smile.

IT was three o’clock in the morning. The engines of the Paphos were silent. The freighter lifted and flopped into the black swell of the sea a few miles from the Spanish coast.

“See anything, Mister?”

Captain Kormakiti, leaning from the little bridge, addressed himself to the mate.

“Not a thing, sir,” was the reply.

The Greek lifted an electric lamp into the darkness. He clicked it softly. It sent a signal across the blackness of waters. Still there was no response. He waited anxiously.

Suddenly there came the sound of swirling waters. It was as though some mammoth beast were lifting itself from the sea. There were strange gurglings. Then a long black shape loomed alongside the Paphos. The keen eyes of the Greek discerned a conning-tower and the streaming steel decks of a submarine. An officer, the pallor of whose face was almost hidden by the upturned collar of his naval uniform, stood there, a megaphone in his hand.

“Guten Morgen,” came a harsh voice. “Is that the Paphos?”

“Ja,” replied the Greek.

“This is Untersee Boat Fifty-six. You have the oil and provisions ?”

“Ja, mein Herr.”

“Good! Get ready to fill our tanks. Stand by for the pipe-line! ”

A rope came whizzing through the air. It was caught deftly by a waiting group aboard the Paphos. They tugged smartly at it, and a pipe of flexible steel came slithering aboard. This was run toward one of the open holds, at the bottom of which more men screwed it into what appeared to be the bilge-tank.

“Start the pump!” ordered Captain Kormakiti.

“Send me a man to help with the pipe here!” ordered the German commander of the submarine, which was now alongside the Paphos and lifting gently in the swell.

“Here, you! ” shouted the Greek to the slim, shadowy form of the Arab who was watching the proceedings. “Get aboard there and help with the pipe.”

The Arab flung a rope overboard and clambered to the steel deck of the submarine. It was wet and greasy. His bare feet, however, held him to the deck. He found himself with a group of German sailors all moving swiftly at the sharp, whispered commands of the officer.

The Arab worked feverishly, screwing the flexible steel pipe tightly. Already the snakelike object was alive. Gallons of oil, secretly stowed away in the hold of the Paphos at Beyrouth, were now pouring into the tanks of U-boat 56.

“Send aboard bread, butter and water!” commanded the U-boat officer. “Hurry! I don’t want to be here in the dawn.”

Food supplies in cases were being lowered from the Paphos. Sailors scurried over the steel decks, flinging provisions into the bowels of the steel monster. The Arab, crouched by the gurgling oil-pipe, stared anxiously in the darkness about him. His gray eyes were watchful.

“Three minutes late!” he muttered to himself.

Suddenly the darkness was split by a blinding beam of light. It swung across the water and rested upon the Paphos and the heaving U-boat. Everything was revealed with stark clarity. For a moment the sailors stood there, frozen by the blinding light into immobility. The commander of the U-boat was shown, his pale face and blue eyes lit with startled anxiety. At the same time a megaphoned voice in English came from behind the light: “Ahoy, there! This is the British cruiser Durbar. I order you to surrender!”

The voice jerked the U-boat commander into action.

“Cast off, there! ” he yelled. The Greek sailors needed no encouragement. Already the Paphos was lifting away, and Captain Kormakiti was shouting instructions to his engine-room. “Crew, action stations!” yelled the German commander. “Get that pipe-line away! ”

On the steel deck of the submarine the Arab was struggling with the still gurgling pipe. German sailors were scurrying past him. The British cruiser saw all the movements in the blinding glare of the searchlight. There was an explosion. A shell came screeching overhead and sent up a column of water, drenching the now terrified Captain Kormakiti.

“Run up the white flag and order full speed to the engine-room!” he shouted to the mate. “Cast off from the U-boat! ”

“That Arab is still below there!” shouted back the mate.

“Leave him! We can’t be bothered with stowaways."

Already the Paphos was moving away from the submarine. The Arab, raising himself from his desperate struggle with the pipe, suddenly realized his retreat was cut off. At the same moment he discovered that the U-boat was submerging. The last sailor had clambered into the conning-tower, and the clang of the steel door as it closed had a finality for the solitary figure on the steel deck. He saw the sea swirling toward him. Again there came the explosive sound of the cruiser’s gun, and the scream of a shell.

The Arab leaped into the sea. Simultaneously the shell hit the disappearing U-boat and tore a hole in the conning-tower. At full speed the cruiser came racing to the scene. It steamed over the swirling sea mixed with oil, released a depth-charge from the stern, passed on and cleared just as the sea erupted with the force of an explosion. Watchers on the deck of the cruiser saw the bow of the submarine lift and point toward the graying sky. Then it slid slowly into the depths.

“Stand by, to pick up survivors!” ordered the young commander from the bridge.

“Doesn’t look as though there are any, sir,” said his lieutenant, peering at the wrack of oil-smeared sea which told of the end of U-boat 56.

“Afraid not,” said the commander. “Give orders full speed ahead. We’ll pick up that Greek steamer now.”

"I THINK I should forget the Greek steamer,” said a voice behind them.

The two officers swung round in astonishment. Standing there was the dripping, ragged figure of the Arab. He had lost his turban in the sea, and a dank lock of red hair dangled in his gray eyes.

“Who the devil are you?” demanded the lieutenant.

But the Arab ignored him. He had gone up to the commander.

“Permit me to introduce myself— Paul Rodgers, an unwanted passenger in the Greek steamer. I’m glad you picked up my orders in time for this rendezvous.”

“So you’re the mysterious fellow we’ve got to thank! ” said the commander, regarding this strange, dripping figure.

Rodgers nodded, with an ironic smile.

“Yes, even though I was left to pick myself up out of the sea. So my telegram from Beyrouth was received in Gibraltar and acted upon?”

The commander nodded. There was a growing respect in his voice.

“I was ordered to intercept the Greek steamer, take you aboard, and hold myself at your orders,” he said. “I saw your flashlight signals and came to the rendezvous as arranged. I didn’t expect to bag a U-boat. We’ve got to thank you, Rodgers, for that. But in the meantime that Greek steamer is getting clear away.”

“Let it!” Rodgers was his dominant self again. “I have reasons for wanting that ship to reach its English port safely. And now, if you would kindly provide me with a change of clothes and—”

“Of course, Rodgers— my apologies,” hastened the commander. “By the way, are your orders that we return to Gibraltar ?”

“No. You’ll steam direct for England.”

The commander’s eyebrows lifted in astonishment. But there was something in the voice of the bedraggled figure that would not be denied.

“Very good, sir,” said the commander  quietly.

“Lifts ’isself out of the blarsted sea and calmly orders the ship to take ’im to England,” grinned one of the sailors later, as he swung himself into a hammock in the throbbing hull of the cruiser.

“Takes a meal as civilized-like as if he was in the bloomin’ Savoy Hotel itself, and only grumbles about the coffee— which, mind you, I made myself.”

“And then he asked you to tuck him into his bunk, eh?” grunted a voice from the next hammock.

“Not on your life. He just asks, quite cool-like, if we’ve got such a thing as a piano aboard. I ask you! A piano! Thinks he’s aboard a ruddy P. and O. liner. Gorblimey, a piano!”

And with a laugh that croaked into a snore, the sailor fell asleep.

"I NEED hardly emphasize the importance of this area,” said the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs as he indicated a map of the Mediterranean with a well-manicured finger. Lord Helston sat in his red-carpeted room at the Foreign Office, the windows of which overlooked the autumn tinting of the trees in St. James’ Park.

An autumn-tinted head, that of Paul Rodgers, known because of his many strange adventures as the Red Wolf of Arabia, nodded approval.

“Now that we are at war,” went on the tired voice of the Foreign Secretary, “the Mediterranean is more than ever our lifeline. Three continents close in on that inland sea— Asia, Africa and Europe. With the exception of France, all the countries bordering on this sea profess to be neutral. Absolute neutrality is a difficult affair, as our American friends have discovered. Let me say at once that there is no real neutrality in the Mediterranean today.”

“I have already had experience of that,” said Rodgers, a grim smile crossing his intellectual face.

Lord Helston, who had recently passed through days and nights of the world diplomatic crisis, took a sip at a glass of water.

“It is essential that the Allies shall have full freedom of the Mediterranean,” he went on. “The mechanized forces of France depend largely upon the safe arrival of tankers with oil from Syria and the Persian Gulf. France also has her reservoir of men in North Africa, and the safe transport of these troops is vital for her security. Again, Britain has considerable forces in the Middle East. We have to protect Egypt, the Suez Canal, the Arabian states and, of course, India. Supplies for these forces have to go by way of the Mediterranean. There must be no break in the lifeline. Above all, we must be careful not to infringe the declared neutrality of those nations who border upon the Mediterranean. Do I make myself clear?”

“Perfectly, sir.”

“At the same time,” continued the Foreign Secretary, “the enemy is straining every nerve to obtain supplies by way of the Mediterranean—oil, copper-ore, food, textiles, everything that she cannot obtain by way of the Atlantic and the North Sea. To some extent these efforts must be successful. There are many individuals of the declared neutral nations who will not hesitate, when big money is at stake, to ignore neutrality. These individuals are at work now; they violate the Hague Convention daily. As to the extent which they are successful in the future will depend a good deal on yourself. It is a tremendous responsibility we are placing upon your shoulders.”

“I appreciate that, sir.”

The tired eyes of the Foreign Secretary took on a gleam of pleasure.

“Your work in Palestine and Arabia has not gone unnoticed, Rodgers. I can tell you that your past achievements highly commend you for this important task which I now offer you. I need hardly say that the delicate nature of the work necessitates that you have no official status. If you get into trouble, you must get yourself out. You are not entitled to appeal to any official representatives of His Majesty’s Government abroad. If I myself should meet you at any time, I shall not be aware of having had the pleasure of your acquaintance. You will, be left entirely to your own resources. It only remains for me to ask whether you will undertake this task on behalf of Britain?”

“I came here at your request, sir,” said Rodgers quietly. “And I do accept, unconditionally.”

Lord Helston stretched forth a hand and shook that of Rodgers with surprising vigour.

“It is a pleasure to shake hands with a brave man, Rodgers,” he said. “At the same time, I do not ask you to accept unconditionally. I need hardly say that when this war has been brought to a successful conclusion,—as I know it will,—  you have only to return here and you will not find us ungrateful.”

The Red Wolf rose. His clean-cut features were set, and there was a stubborn angle to his jaw.

“I demand only from myself, sir, the satisfaction of knowing that I’ve done my job as well as I was able.”

The Foreign Secretary nodded.

“That is worth more than all the honours and rewards,” he said. “Well, good luck, Rodgers. The Mediterranean is your stage. I know you will play a brave role. And may God be with you.”

Lord Helston was a severely religious man. He meant what he said.

FOUR DAYS after Paul Rodgers had arrived in England, he watched the Paphos discharge her legitimate cargo of olive oil and oranges at the East India Dock in the Thames. In his discreet lounge suit and indolently swinging a cane, Rodgers was unlikely to be recognized as the Arab stowaway from Beyrouth. In fact, when Captain Kormakiti came strolling down the gangway to go ashore, he gave only an indifferent glance at the loitering figure. The Greek hailed a taxi. As he drove off, Rodgers followed his example.

The trail led into the darkened West End of London. Luckily the twilight still held. It was a gray and sombre London, grimly determined on war. Barricades of sandbags mounted against the buildings. Windows were strip-papered against the splintering of glass. Against this background moved the men in uniform— the khaki of the Army, the light blue of the Air Force, and the dark blue of the policemen with their shrapnel helmets and gas-masks slung from shoulders. Even the pedestrians carried their gas-masks. There was the unusual sight of a formally dressed couple entering the Ritz with gas-masks hanging from their shoulders. They were saluted with respect by the porter, who was belted with a tin canister containing his own mask.

Everywhere flared the notices: “To the Trenches,” or “Air Raid Shelter .”

The raisin eyes of the Greek peered nervously on this London at war. He had no liking for the interview which awaited him in this grim city. The taxi swung him into Soho. With a sigh he descended outside an odorous shop window filled with bottles of wines, dried figs and scrawny vegetables. It declared itself as the Café Orient.

When Rodgers strolled inside, Captain Kormakiti had already seated himself facing a compatriot at one of the small tables. And judging by the golden scowl which the mouth of the Captain revealed, the conversation was not a pleasant one. Rodgers, who looked an ordinary West End lounger, seated himself at a table and ordered a Turkish coffee. He made a wry face as he tasted it. At the next table, Captain Kormakiti was more explicit.

“Filthy coffee!” declared the Greek. “Now I had a scoundrel of an Arab aboard the Paphos, who knew the right strength and sweetness of Turkish coffee. A pity I lost him in that unfortunate affair at sea.”

“It is indeed unfortunate that you encountered that cruiser at all,” said the other Greek darkly. “In fact, Kormakiti, you’ve got to explain a lot. The boss wants to hear your story. Better think fast. He won’t take any excuse.”

“But did I not get clear away with my ship?” protested Kormakiti.

“You may have got clear away; the U-boat didn’t,” was the reply.

“It was every man for himself.”

“You won’t persuade the boss with that talk. He pays well, but only when the results are successful. When anyone fails—" There was a significant shrug. “Swallow your coffee and come along.”

OBVIOUSLY Captain Kormakiti was a troubled man as he left the Orient Café in company with the other Greek. Once again a taxi was hailed, and Rodgers took up the trail in another taxi. This time the hunt was difficult. Darkness, the complete darkness of the nightly blackout, had descended upon London. Only a few pin-points of light told of the moving traffic; an occasional flash from the torch of a bewildered pedestrian. The main streets of London were, to Rodgers, as black as the chasms of the Taurus mountains— and much more difficult to negotiate.

“I’ll do my best to follow, guv’nor, but what you really need in this blackout is a blind man to lead you,” grinned the taxi-driver.

Luckily, the drive was short. The a taxi with the two Greeks drew up by a pretentious house overlooking Regent’s Park. For a moment a searchlight among the trees flickered toward the sky and was masked again. It had caught the silver belly of a balloon trailing the mists of cloud.

Rodgers saw the two men entering the doorway of one of the darkened houses. He gave a coin to his taxi-driver, and when that cheerful individual had driven away, he surveyed the stone mass before him. The pretentious pillars and balustrades of the Victorian façade merely affronted his aesthetic tastes. Ironically enough, these monstrosities were heavily protected. Even the sandbags had a fat, bourgeois appearance. He decided to have a look at the back of the house.

There he found a wall, a dank, untended garden, and some twisted ivy by a drain-pipe. These obstacles he agilely surmounted, and thereby reached a balcony which seemed about to fall despairingly into the garden. A few moments’ work on an old-fashioned window, and he stepped inside a room. He stood for a moment in the darkness. He could hear voices down below. He fingered the heavy black cloth that blinded the window. A chuckle escaped him as his hand moved across the wall toward the door.

He tiptoed softly down the stairs, then stood motionless a moment, taking his bearings in a luxuriously furnished hall. Some ghostly shapes revealed themselves as pieces of Italian sculpture— pre-Mussolini period.

“Deplorably bad and expensive taste,” decided Rodgers, but he hesitated a moment by a grand piano which flanked a corner of the hall. Then he moved quietly toward a doorway across the hall, where a chink of light and the sound of voices were revealed. He bent an eye to the keyhole.

“I’m not concerned with excuses, only the facts,” a cold, unemotional voice was saying. The speaker was a thin, stoop shouldered figure who sat at the end of the table facing the gaze of Rodgers. The man was in evening-dress; his lips were bloodless, and he sipped a glass of milk at intervals.

“I did my part. I ask only to be paid,” was the defiant answer of Captain Kormakiti, whose back was toward the door.

A laugh without a smile escaped from the stoop-shouldered man. He turned to the other three seated at the table.

“This chaffering Greek thinks only in terms of drachmas,” he said coldly. “I am spending thousands in building up an organization here to help our brave submarine crews to victory. I want to see this detestable nation of Britishers brought to their knees. I will pay well for that privilege. But I demand absolute obedience and duty to the death. And this Greek asks for drachmas!”

The others made no reply to this contemptuous statement. The silence became uncomfortable. Captain Kormakiti opened his gold mouth and closed it again without speaking. That cold, unemotional voice had resumed:

“Who was the spy aboard your ship, the traitor who gave away to the British the time and position of that rendezvous ?”

“Spy! There was no spy aboard my ship,” protested Captain Kormakiti.

“Don’t quibble, you Greek fool! There must have been. Maybe you gave away the rendezvous to the British yourself! They are always generous with their gold. To a Greek who would sell his soul for five drachmas, gold would buy any information.”

“A lie!” shouted the Greek. “I went to the rendezvous as ordered. Even my mate was unaware that the Paphos was steaming toward a U-boat. I give you my oath on that, Mr. Mallescu. The sudden arrival of the British cruiser was a great surprise to me. They even fired a shell at me and nearly sunk the Paphos.”

“What do I care for the Paphos and your filthy skin,” snarled the strange figure at the end of the table. “I only know that a U-boat was sunk from information given by someone aboard your ship. That is certain. What I must know, for the safety and continuance of my work here in London, is the name of the man who gave that information to the British.”

“If I knew, I would tell you, Mr. Mallescu,” said the Greek wildly.

Calmly the man called Mallescu took a watch from his waistcoat pocket and laid it on the table before him. He took another sip at the glass of milk. Then, in the same quiet manner, he produced a revolver and levelled it at the startled Greek.

“I shall give you exactly two minutes to think seriously and name that spy, Captain Kormakiti. I am not a man to swallow any sort of nonsense. And believe me, I won’t hesitate to shoot you where you sit. No sound will be heard outside. These walls are very thick. And maybe you noticed the piles of sandbags outside the house? They have a useful deadening effect. I will also mention that I have a convenient cellar for the disposal of your remains.... One minute has passed. There remains one minute in which to tell me the name of the spy aboard the Paphos.”

The perspiration of fear was trickling down the face of the Greek. Again he opened his mouth to speak, and failed. He looked at the relentless face, the bloodless lips of the man confronting him. He realized that whatever name he babbled would not carry conviction. There was the lust for murder in those cold and fishlike eyes.

“I— I—”

“Thirty seconds remain!”

The faces of the other three men at the table seemed to be counting, mentally, those seconds.

Then, quietly, the door swung open and a slim man, dressed in a lounge suit and carrying a cane, sauntered in. He stood there gazing upon the group as though contemplating a waxworks scene at Madame Tussaud’s.

“Good evening, gentlemen!”

Two of the men started to their feet. Only the man with the levelled pistol did not move. His gaze lifted for a second.

“Who are you ?” he demanded.

“The spy aboard the Paphos,” declared Rodgers, cheerfully. “I gather from the determined fashion with which you were questioning Captain Kormakiti that you are anxious to make my acquaintance.”

“Was this man aboard the Paphos?” demanded the man called Mallescu from the Greek.

“I— I—” The Greek was almost fainting. “I never saw him in my life before,” he bravely declared.

“Come, Captain,” said Rodgers with a smile. “Surely you haven’t forgotten the Arab who made such excellent coffee for you?”

“Azul—the stowaway?”

“Exactly. I made it my business when I saw that oil being taken aboard at Beyrouth, to find out just where it was going. I could only find out by voyaging with you. I travelled as an Arab stowaway. Very clever of someone to think of radio advertisements as a cipher code of instructions for ships to refuel U-boats. In fact, it so intrigued me that I was anxious to meet the gentleman who had arranged the system. When I had signalled to a British cruiser to appear on the scene and sink the submarine, I also arranged for Captain Kormakiti and the Paphos to escape. I felt sure they would lead me to the man who had arranged these matters in London. May I say therefore, Mr. Mallescu, that "this meeting— innocently arranged by the Captain— is a mutual pleasure.”

“And one that ends here and now, you cursed spy! ” said Mallescu, swivelling the pistol toward Rodgers and jerking at the trigger.

But the shots splayed into the ceiling. For Rodgers, with a flick of his wrist, had brought forth a thin blade of steel from the cane he carried, and had made a lightning lunge at the arm holding the pistol.

There was a yell of pain, and the man’s pistol dropped to the ground. And the Red Wolf, his duelling sword flicking in and out with the speed of a snake’s tongue, drove the group of men into a corner of the room.

"I hardly expected to bag so many scoundrels in one evening,” Rodgers

chuckled. “You will all be much safer in an internment camp. Particularly this financier, Mr. Mallescu, whose affairs are much too dangerous and dubious to be allowed at large in London.”

“Shoot the man down, you fools!” groaned Mallescu. “Don’t you realize that he’s alone? He has walked into a trap and is trying to bluff his way out.”

The men glanced at each other. Was it true?

Paul Rodgers realized that now they were looking beyond him into the deserted hall. The moment was desperate.

He saw their bodies go tense. Then suddenly there was a loud knocking at the front door. It was repeated; the thuds resounded throughout the silent house. There followed the loud ringing of the electric bell.

“It appears someone else is anxious to make your acquaintance, gentlemen,” said Rodgers quietly. “Captain, you’ll oblige me by opening that front door at once. Any attempt at treachery, and I’ll spit you against this expensive but detestable wood panelling.”

The Greek, who had aged considerably in the past ten minutes, needed no further threats. He hurried to the front door and swung it open.

Two uniformed policemen, their shrapnel-helmets and gas masks giving them an unfamiliar appearance, strode into the hall.

"Where’s the owner of this house?” demanded the sergeant sharply. “There’s a room upstairs brilliantly lit, and no curtains across the window. Don’t you realize that there’s a blackout in London, and that you’re liable to a penalty of—”

“Come in, Sergeant,” called the voice of Paul Rodgers. “I’m the person who switched on those lights and left the window bare. But here is the owner of the house, and a very dangerous fellow indeed.

“Yes, Mr. Mallescu, you were right— I came here alone. But I also realized that no London policeman would miss the signal of that lighted room in a blackout.”

The sergeant of police stared for a moment uncomprehendingly at the scene— a lithe individual holding a group of men at the end of a drawn rapier. But only a scant moment did he hesitate—for Rodgers was snapping out instructions to him, and comprehension came swiftly. The sergeant brought forth steel bracelets and advanced upon the group.

“Come on, Alf,” he said over his shoulder to his companion. “We’ve caught a whole bloomin’ nestful of spies. This is our night out.” Within a minute he had triumphantly secured his captives. “A good job of work, sir,” he concluded, turning to Rodgers as the prisoners were marched out of the door.

But that individual had lit a cigarette and was seated at the piano in the hall, playing a Chopin nocturne with an air of complete absorption.

End

Table of Contents

1: The Black Laugh

2: Anatomy Lesson

3: Man Killer

4: The Houseboat of  Missing Men

5: The Tattooed Man

6: The Woman of Antioch

7: The Dhow That Sailed to Nowhere

8: Miracle in the Desert

9: The Garden of T. N. T.

10: The Drums of Omdurman

11: The Queen of Sheba

12: Orient Express April

13: London Blackout