Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Description: Full title: I, Savaran! Prince of Adventurers (1937) Author: Wilfrid Bernard Michael Newton, (1884-1951) who wrote as Wilfrid Douglas Newton and Douglas Newton. A collection of 12 short stories featuring the colourful adventurer Savaran (no other name), who has made Africa has stamping ground; getting in and out of incredible scrapes, in a lighthearted and wildly politically incorrect series of escapades. The hardcover original included 14 stories; however, the book is incredibly rare, and this edition has been assembled from 12 stories published in The Australian Women's Weekly during 1937. T

I, SAVARAN!

Prince of Adventurers

Douglas Newton

1937

Contents

Introduction

1: Moonbeam of Pearl

2: Blade of the Spear

3: Proud Beauty

4: Pawn to Check a Queen

5: Song Of The Siren

6: Wandering Gentile

7: Power of the Eyes

8: Lily of Deceit

9: Delilah's Daughter

10: The Young Lion

11: The Lady Jasmine

12: Riddle of the Devoted Sphinx

_________________

Introduction

ALTHOUGH sometimes described as a novel, I Savaran! is a series of short stories featuring Savaran, a free-lance adventurer in darkest colonial Africa, first published in "The Passing Show" in 1936, and published in hardback in 1937, a book containing 14 stories.

It is an extremely rare book.  It was serialised in the Australian Women's Weekly in 1937, with 11 of the 14 stories reprinted. In 1938 a solitary further story, "The Riddle of the Devoted Sphinx" appeared. The dates of publication are given at the end.  The remaining two stories have not been published in newspapers or magazines in Australia.

The stories are rampantly politically incorrect and wildly improbable, but the dubious adventurer is very entertaining.

___________

1: Moonbeam of Pearl

SAVARAN returned to Africa by way of the Keef Coast.

The point is interesting because Savaran, the most entertaining human firework Africa has ever endured, seems to have arrived more or less as himself.

Africa knew Savaran only too well before the World War. Indeed, for generations to come native rulers of discontented tribes will reach instinctively for their swords on learning that a white man with a genial eagle face has appeared in their land; while even to-day the dusty files of nearly every European police post contain the description of the bizarre, spider-lean adventurer under one name or another― and sometimes two.

The Germans hunted him as Le Geyt for teaching scientific warfare to their Hottentots, and as Polignac for wiping up a promising new diamond district without licence to work or sell. The Portuguese put a price on his head for gun-running in the name of von König. The Sultan of Mudonga prayed Allah for the joy of impaling him on a hardwood stake for having, in the name of Lincoln and by brilliant generalship, freed the subject Chapra tribe. The British longed to arrest him either as Jorgensen, Voysey, or Jones, for ivory smuggling, fomenting inter-tribal warfare, and for having made himself king of the Buna-Nanga, vice Usamba, deposed and hanged.

Something of a legend and very much a thorn in the sides of jog-along administrations― Savaran. An adventurer of genius and extravagance. One never knew where he would turn up next, or what his game would be. And he was also the very devil to pin down.

When he bolted from death by the sword or by African prison, it was inevitably into territory that found hanging or extraditing him complicated to impossibility. Speaking English, Italian, Spanish, and, indeed, any of the myriad and one tongues current between the Riffi and Table Bay, like a native, he seemed able to pass as a Frenchman, Arab, Portuguese, or any other race at will. And the fact that when caught he promptly adopted the nationality most likely to give trouble made the handling of him as lively as the handling of high-explosive.

Rather like an eagle with a sense of humour, Savaran. A tall, dark, limby fellow with startling military gifts and no modesty at all about his own genius. A creature of extravagant gestures and queer dominating power, he was a sort of Haroun al Raschid and Francois Villon rolled into one. with a touch of Napoleon to make him more complicated. Young though he had been then, he had played the very deuce with the tribes of the desert and the jungle, so that when the World War came there were some who almost hailed it as a relief from Savaran.

It was, they thought, the only thing big enough to engulf his extravagant ambitions. It did that quite respectably. He fought with amazing capacity on most fronts and several more of his own invention. The Russians, for example, found him waging a private Armageddon of his own against the Turks when they reached Lake Van. He also got mixed up with Lawrence's Arabs, while peace arrived only just in time to prevent him founding a kingdom of his own somewhere East of Ispahan.

After that Africa once more seemed the goal inevitable, and he drifted by natural stages to Mequala, the capital of the Keef Coast.

The Keef Coast is one of the few remaining oases where a man looking for trouble finds it. It is the colony of one of the more ooze-along European powers, and, since its local citizens still regard death by the sword as the highest form of good breeding, there is plenty of scrapping. Most of it is done― as with the French and Spanish― by a corps recruited from dare-devil foreigners, The Legion Sanitaire.

Savaran enlisted as a private in the Sanitaire with the idea of winning fame in his own name at last. One surmises this as, for the first and only time on record, he seems to have been betrayed into candour about himself. It is his own name that is entered on the Corps Roll, together with the following historical details.

Age: 35.

Trade or Occupation: Field marshal.

Birthplace: New Orleans, Louisiana, USA.

This may or may not be the whole truth about him― who but Heaven and Savaran will ever know it?

In any case, one can be quite sure that Savaran came to this beauty-invested, bug-infested portion of the East African seaboard determined that his capacities should win him a high command if not a governorship. And being Savaran he undoubtedly advertised his intentions to the world at large, the Sanitaire, and his sergeant. What is more, since he was Savaran, the world at large and the sergeant believed him to be absolutely capable of making good his boasts.

The sergeant thereupon acted like a sergeant.

Instead of marching out to wars and glory, Savaran became almost permanently scrubber to the Mequala barracks. Instead of battles and the adventures of the desert, he was given stable cleaning, guard-room duties, and other sniffling little jobs. When he protested he got cells, and bad marks on his promotion sheet. The sergeant was no soldier, but he was an artist in other ways.

It is a testimony to Savaran's determination to win fame by legitimate means that a nature so akin to a volcano remained reasonably meek so long. But steadily the grinding monotony, the heats, the smells, the tin-kettle amusements, the bi-monthly bouts of malaria, and the too-frequent familiarity with the lock-up stoked the rage within him. And one day it flared out.

On that day the sergeant came leering to him and said:

"You want promotion, my fire eater? I am satisfying you. An escort leaves for Nenussi to-morrow. You go as student-corporal under Lieutenant Garsali and myself."

Savaran's eagle face became cheerfully ferocious― a bad sign― as he listened, for he understood. The caravan route to Nenussi was infernal, half fiery desert, half stony hill gorges. Neither Garsali nor the sergeant would have taken it unless they were convoying something or someone of such importance that it meant honours. Also, there were brigands on the route, and that was why he was being taken along. Garsali, even more incompetent than greedier of medals for his pigeon breast. He meant to make Savaran do all the donkey work of fighting, certain that his underling's genius would enable him to apply for greater glories.

Savaran saw the pretty trick, grinned grimly and smote the sergeant on the nose. Then he walked to the lock-up on his own account. It would mean a court-martial, but that also meant that he had spoilt the sergeant's game.

He was wrong there. The sergeant followed him to the cells and, after threatening hell here and hereafter, showed his native cunning. He told Savaran that he would go on the escort all the same and that he would wait the court-martial until he returned. He meant to use Savaran's ability, and break him in his own time. Savaran sat himself down on the stone sleeping bench, lifted his feet clear of the flea zone, and said indifferently:

"I was a fool ever to come to this sty of pariah hogs. However. I have decided to leave it. Say good-bye prettily, sergeant, for when we meet again I shall be too busy wringing your neck to think of courtesies. Remember that who hurts Savaran pays Savaran with full interest."

That night Savaran kept his word and deserted. The sergeant put a double guard over him, but Savaran fooled them with a paliasse and rolled-up blankets; the window was too old a friend for its bars to hold him.

An hour or so later, in The Street of the Caliph, Savaran encountered two things that so often played a part in his destinies - a whipping and a woman.

The Street of the Caliph is a crooked drain, slimy to the ankle in viscid mud and steep with militant stenches, that runs pinched between the high, sombre palaces of the richest Arabs in Mequala. A man moves along it with care. A masked stone may pitch him into its mud. its deep gateways can am bush cut-throats, while round any of the tortuous corners can come camels or high-laden mules capable of going right over any pedestrian not nimble enough to jump into a doorway.

Savaran, his spider-spare figure in an aba he had borrowed from an Arab― not without violence― was not walking with his usual circumspection. It was because of this preoccupation that a kavass obtained a heaven-sent chance of hitting him across the face

A kavass is an Arab flunkey who runs before a person of importance, in order to clear the common herd from the path of his master.

The fellow hit the wall farthest from Savaran a split second after his whip fell and remained there apparently trying to hold his face together. Half a dozen others thereupon flung themselves in a mass on Savaran, who proceeded to demonstrate that six able bodied Arabs made decidedly no impression on a physique like his. When Savaran had wiped the last of them from off his tall frame, he stalked up to the master to present him with his personal opinion and rub his face in the street mud if the fellow would only be sport and show fight.

The Sherif was a huge man, bloated with arrogance and gross living.

The fat one. exhibiting that indifference that breeds murder, said: "Take hold of him," and when a dozen hands complied, "Give him thirty lashes."

Then he would have ridden on, but Savaran with a twist freed his right arm and grabbed the big man's bridle.

"Son of an ill-set jelly," he said fiercely "Have care."

"Beat him on the face," said the Sherif and, as it was done, "Make it fifty strokes."

He then rode calmly through a gate that had opened for him nearby.

Savaran lifted himself from the muck into which the Sherif's servants had flung him, and, pistol in hand, dashed for the gate before the last Arab could slam it. It was then that the laugh of the girl came.

It was a laugh, soft, silvery, as spontaneous as the swing of a wind flower, vibrant with youth. It came from an overhanging window in the very house the Sherif had entered.

The strong African moonlight was on her as she leant forward. He saw a figure, slight, swaying, swift like the stem of a flower.

She laughed again at his hesitance, called down with pretty impudence: "On, lion of vengeance, burst the gate."

"Not now, O piping bird in a high wall cage," laughed Savaran, using her own Arabic in its full poetic idiom. "One look at thee and thy father goes safe."

"My father!" the silver laugh became a gurgle. "My father! O-oh, but that is funny. That is Hamza Ibn Kalid, Sherif of Nenussi."

"Good," said Savaran with a flash of perfect teeth. "I am grateful that I can kill him without sorrow to thee."

He said it in his largest manner, and was taken aback to find her laughter increase.

"Aie," she cried, clapping her little hands softly. "Even as you talk you are a lion among men― and you have fought in wars?"

"I have made them," said Savaran largely.

She was half won by his daring, half timid.

"Why, you are only a 'Scavenger' after all!" ("Scavengers" is the term of common contempt employed by the Keef Coast Arabs in speaking of the Legion Sanitaire.)

"Who," he asked, his lean face darkening, "gave us so pretty a name?"

"Hamza Ibn Kalid," she said.

"This fat Sherif buzzes between us like a bluebottle," he said. "I find him more and more unpleasant."

"It is so," she sighed, "yet it is not you" who have to marry him."

"But― softness of moonlight, that misbegotten son-of-a-whale is not fit to wed thee!"

"Yet it is the truth," she sighed. "To-morrow I start for Nenussi and his harem."

"Nenussi-to-morrow!" he said sharply. "By Allah, it is thy caravan we escort, then! Savaran, your star is at work."

"It is so," she said. "You know my tribe, the richest and most powerful north of the Keef Coast. My father is its king. Hamza marries me because he is greedy of power and wealth."

"But you cannot favour this fat Sherif?" he cried.

"I? Am I asked? Does what is in a maiden's heart count in our marriage?"

"In thy heart?" Savaran frowned. "It would seem as though thy heart hath already found its desire then."

"It was lost five moons ago," she sighed. "To Zaid Ali of the Zeb."

"A wild desert man!" he jerked. "Could it be possible that such could count before Savaran?"

"Aie," she breathed. "Wild and tall and strong. Like a lion -like thee, Savaran!"

Was that instinctive feminine diplomacy? No matter, Savaran immediately felt there was a lot to be said for Zaid.

"But a man of a wandering tribe," he felt it necessary to point out. "A mere tent dweller."

"That is why my father favours Hamza before him," she said. "Hamza is powerful, of a strong, well-ruled tribe that will steadily become greater. Zaid
is also a chieftain, but his Zeb are scattered. They wander and fight in mere bands acknowledging no one ruler, so they are as feeble as they are numerous."

"Yes, they want a leader to pull them together," he said, his eyes gleaming with his quick thoughts. "Good stuff, with the right man to handle them-such as I am." His eyes became shrewd.

"But tell me― you have something in your mind?" she cried.

"Not now," he laughed softly. "I have just remembered a place to which I must return before the world and its sergeants take fright at the knowledge that Savaran is free."

And so Savaran returned to his prison house, by the way he came out, never having been missed by the guard set over him.

A CARAVAN of three hundred camels shuffled listlessly from the brazen sand of the Keef desert into the blistering stone lands of the border hills.

Garsall, Lieutenant of the Legion Sanitaire, his pigeon breast a rainbow of medal ribbons, his heart constructed by nature to turn to water at the smallest excuse, and his pretty face loose with fears, was finding he had several Quite large ones now.

Garsali blinked down at a flapping map, wondering how on earth Napoleon had managed to conjure victories out of such idiot things, and he said feebly:

"It would appear that four frontier lines come together about here."

"It is so," said Hamza Ibn Kalid who rode fat, perspiring, and almost grandly wordless to his right.

"Nenussi is the land straight ahead?" said Garsali.

"Two marches through the siks (gorges) of those mountains before us is Nenussi― my land!" said Hamza loftily.

"And over there, to the right, beyond the hills, is Beni-Seyyid?"
said Garsali.

"You have said it," grunted Hamza, who had very little small talk outside meals, money, and massacres.

"And among those hills is Yussif of the Dagger with his cut-throats?" Garsali's voice was husky.

"Indeed, the hills swarm with his vermin," said Hamza with a lofty unconcern.

Garsali gulped and stared at the sergeant. The sergeant decided it was wiser to change the subject. "But to the right above the Beni Seyyid and before we reach Nenussi we touch the land of the Zeb, do we not?"

"That is so," said Hamza, resuming a huge indifference.

"Arabs, too?" asked the sergeant.

"Friendly?"

"Nothing!" grunted the Sherif of Nenussi. "Just wild men, mere black-tent Arabs without power. A leaderless pack of wanderers."

"No danger from them?" asked Garsali with a wan smile.

"None for a large party, though they would cut our throats if they could. One day, after I have settled with Yussif, when my marriage and my natural might have brought the Beni-Sayyid under my dominion, I will move on to the Zeb and take all their land for myself. Then I will be the greatest ruler in this part of Africa-as, in- deed, I deserve to be."

"I see," said Garsali, looking anxiously towards the hills. "Meanwhile Yussif of the Dagger still lives."

"He troubles me not," said Hamza pleasantly. "Your government has promised me your head if any harm comes to me."

At that precise moment Savaran was riding beside the shugduf of a superb white camel splendid in its trapping. Also he was leaning forward from the saddle to kiss the tiny, hennaed hand stretching from the litter towards him.

"The delight of morning with its sunlight be on thee, most precious of women," he said, in his grimly cheerful way. "Even now we approach the hills that make the gate of Nenussi."

The shugduf shook as though its inmate was disturbed.

"You speak too lightly of a place more hateful to me with every stride my camel takes," said the soft voice of Moonbeam of Pearl.

"Aye, but when he smells battle in the wind Savaran's heart is always light, child," he cried, with a flash of his superb teeth.

"Fighting!" she breathed. "Yussif of the Dagger will attack?"

"He is in those hills to the right even now," cried Savaran, his eagle face aflame, "gloating over this rich caravan."

"And can we escape? These mountains are a death trap, they say," she cried anxiously.

"They are," he smiled, "but fear not, Moonbeam of Pearl, Savaran rides beside thee."

He continued silent for a few paces, smiling to himself. Then: "This dawn I sent a messenger to Zaid Ali."

"Zaid," the soft voice gasped. "But can Zaid and his Zeb do anything?"

"Little enough," he said cheerfully. "Without Savaran. But Savaran is here... and they are the men I love best. Wild leaderless fighters, those are the men I
can mould. Also I feel it is time for me to make a kingdom again."

The sergeant was  preening himself on being a good prophet. It seemed that after all he was the man to handle Savaran. Savaran who had been a docile yet dumb soldier up to this was suddenly goaded into his brilliant self by the threat among the hills. At the midday halt he dropped his reserve and made suggestions that Garsali translated into superb military gestures.

"Is it not as I said?" the sergeant chuckled. "I knew my man. His is the type that cannot keep in the background. He smells Yussif of the Dagger and cannot help acting the soldier."

Moonbeam of Pearl, her treasure and household camels, were placed in the centre of the caravan, and before and after her the ammunition beasts, while her Beni-Seyyid and the most trusted of Savaran's cronies among the Sanitaire acted as guard over the lot. Garsali, with the majority of the camels of the Sanitaire, led the column. The sergeant, guarding the Sherif of Nenussi and his beasts, brought up the rear.

The Sherif of Nenussi protested in plump wrath that brigands practically always attacked at the rear and that it was not becoming to a man of his importance to be the first to encounter vermin. Garsali said loftily that he had given orders and they could not be overruled. Savaran, who had given them to Garsali, grinned. He was not even displeased when Hamza Ibn Kalid moved discreetly closer to the middle of the caravan when it got under way.

Hamza was quite right. Yussif of the Dagger attacked at the rear. And why not? He had already blocked the valley ahead.

His tribesmen swooped down with popping guns and yells, as is the Arab way, and, as though worked by a single lever, all the Arabs, save Savaran's, dashed to join the dog-fight. As far as they counted the centre was left defenceless, but Arab attackers never turn from the rear to attack; it is probably against the rules. Savaran, wise in such methods, smiled his grim smile and held his own Sanitaire and Beni-Seyyid firm about the central mass with
the mere discipline of his eagle glance Also he gave his precise orders

They were being carried out when Garsali came spurring from the front, his medal ribbons bright his military intelligence duller than ever.

"They attack the head of the caravan," he bleated. "They have blocked the gorge.... What shall we do? What are you doing?"

"Extricating my force In good order," grinned Savaran. He turned to a Sanitaire who came spurring up. "You have found the canyon I pointed out on the map? Good! Swing this part of the caravan with all ammunition camels into it. Post machine guns on the spurs to cover the movement."

"But― but this means you run away?" gasped Garsali.

"Retreating to a defensive position is the correct military expression," grinned Savaran and gave

"But,― but you leave rear and van to fight the Arabs alone," shouted the sergeant who had also come up.

"Good generalship," said Savaran. "They protect my retirement."

"It is not good," cried Garsali, thinking of his honours. "We should stand and beat off these brigands."

"Go and beat 'em, then," grinned Savaran. "No doubt you know how, when I recognise there is no hope of fighting an overwhelming enemy on ground of his own choosing. So I'm choosing a bit for myself."

Garsali seemed to think he would go and help him choose it, So did the sergeant. So did the Sherif Hamza Ibn Kalid The latter, after sitting his horse fatly and proudly aloof, spurred furiously, and cried pompously:

"You are here to defend me and my property, and by Allah I insist upon it. I have much money on the camels those brigands even now surround."

"We're not so brave as thee, Hamza," Savaran grinned. "Fight 'em yourself. Or, better, bid your servants whip them― thirty lashes each." Hamza checked, goggling. He was remembering. "Or if thirty does not serve, make it fifty," said Savaran grimly "It is a number that should come easy to your tongue."

Hamza's pasty face went green. He shouted to Garsali:

"We are lost. I know this man. He is a scoundrel I had whipped! Arrest him before he betrays us all."

Garsali might have been willing, but he had other things to occupy him. Yussif's Arabs had seen the retreat. They were swarming in pursuit and their bullets hummed round his ears. This meant too much war in the air for Garsali, he bolted for the barricade up the gorge with the sergeant, but the Sherif of Nenussi beat them by three lengths

Yussif's wild  tribesmen charged for the third time against the barricade of camel packs Savaran had stretched from wall to wall of the gorge .As they came up the stiff slope they were cruelly raked by frontal and flanking fire from rifles and machine guns placed by a master, yet their numbers and their desire for the jewel camels beyond might have carried them on to and over the breastwork if Savaran had not jumped on to it.

He stood tall, lean and exposed against the sky, a keg of powder lifted high in his powerful, spidery arms, while a fuse hissed its promise of death from the keg. He poised it calmly until it seemed that the spluttering fuse must disappear into the powder and blast him out of existence. Then at his own moment he heaved. The keg flew plump into the midst of the thickest group of Yussif's charging Arabs, exploding even as it struck. The sheer crash of the detonation was appalling, its effect terrific. It wiped out the group like hot flame licking up grass.

The attacking Arabs sucked back, wilted, saw Savaran catch up another keg― broke and bolted in panic.

There was a pause in the fighting. Beni-Seyyid Arabs and Sanitaire lay panting on their rifles behind the barricade and grinned the delight of good fighters as the master fighter moved from end to end of the line, rectifying weaknesses, smiling his flashing eagle smile, and seeing that all had rum and water. He had done well, and he let them know it.

Returning to the centre of the camp he found Garsali, the sergeant and the Sherif, watched by Moonbeam of Pearl's Beni-Seyyid men, sitting in a council of war near the girl's shelter.

"The Sherif," said Garsali, licking his dry lips, "thinks our best chance is to buy them off."

"It is, in fact, our only chance," said Savaran fiercely cheerful. "You think of bargaining with treasure of the dowry?"

"By Allah, no," snarled the Sherif. "They are fat with my money as it is. Besides, let Yussif have the treasure and, having all, he will cut our throats. On the other hand, give him a hostage and he must let us go free to raise the ransom."

Savaran's bright eyes gleamed.

"Has the noble-souled Sherif consented to give up himself to save us all then?" cried Savaran.

"Thou art unseemly," Hamza said pompously. "I, Sherif of Nenussi, hand my person to such scum!"

"Yet who among us has even the shadow of thy importance?" asked Savaran with a hard eye.

"She upon whom my shadow has rested," said Hamza loftily. "This girl I carry with me. She is to be my wife, that will exalt her in Yussif's eyes. She is the daughter of the chief of the Beni-Seyyid... rich ransom on both counts. Yussif will be satisfied with her and let us go our way."

"Most noble bridegroom," said Savaran mockingly. "O valiant husband I will bear what you say in mind. It will make negotiation infinitely easier."

Fifteen minutes later Savaran was leaning across the barricade and addressing a bulky, black and fiery-looking Arab with cheerful ferocity

"Nay, most exalted Lord of the Dagger," he said. "You get not the jewels of the dowry; you get not the war material, I have plans myself for that. You choose from two things only― fight on, or take hostages for ransom."

"All talk of hostages is vain talk," sneered Yussif. "Have I not every soul of you in my hands? Can I not take what I want?"

Yussif, scowling at the memory of the exploding keg, snarled: "I will starve you out."

"Before night marches on us, brother," Savaran said, "Zaid Ali of the Zeb with his tribe will be here. He will take you in the rear while Savaran gives you blazes in front. It will be a pretty fight after Savaran's own heart. Wait  for Zaid if you will― or close with a good offer while you are yet alive to make the best of it."

Yussif scowled again. He would have liked to have disbelieved and dared this lean eagle who mocked him, but he at least was a fighting man and could feel the strange force that came out of Savaran He said sullenly:

"Well― who comes for ransoming?"

Savaran smiled softly.

"What about a nice fat Sherif, brother?" he said grimly.

"A Sherif― The Sherif of Nenussi!" Yussif gasped, hardly believing his ears. "By Allah, do you fool me?"

"Savaran fools nobody― and is made a fool by nobody," Savaran said. "The Sherif of Nenussi is a firm offer."

"You dog," shouted the sergeant, "you dog! You shall pay for this. I'll punish you for this even if I have to search the whole of Africa for you."

"When Savaran has closed an account it is folly― and also dangerous― to reopen it," said Savaran pleasantly.

Savaran watched them being borne away to Yussif's lines, watched Yussif and his men ride off with them, stood exultant upon the spur of a hill until he saw a cloud of dust growing in the north. Then he stalked down through the Sanitaire and the Beni-Seyyid, who cheered him, ready to follow him anywhere to glory or death they were the nucleus of his new army―and presently stood before the slim and lovely figure of Moonbeam of Pearl.

"Queen of To-morrow," he said, kissing her hand. "Zaid Ali comes even as Fat Hamza goes. Savaran, having made his promises, keeps them."

_________________

2: Blade of the Spear

SAVARAN was sitting in the drawing-room, dining hall, veranda, lounge and public dust-bin— for all these noble chambers were one— of the Ritz-Plaza Hotel, Laonga, when Makepeace Bysshe Amah, the soot-tinted agent of Messie & Messie, Shippers, brought the Great Man to him.

Savaran was resting between Empires. Only a handful of weeks previously he had shattered the fighting Zonghoy, the terrors of mid-Africa, in a series of military miracles which would have left a certain gentleman named Napoleon gasping if you were to believe Savaran's own considered opinion, and by these victories had made Quali of the Chellum people Lord paramount over a kingdom almost as large as Middle-Europe.

That kingdom was to have been and would have been Savaran's in time, but there had happened one of those accidents which so often mar great designs. Savaran forgot to keep Quali out of his own harem garden, and when Quali paid an unexpected visit to it, Quali's tenth wife had been in it, and the moon, and Savaran. Quali's tenth wife was pretty.

Quali proved himself a diehard in such customs and Savaran's retreat had to be swift, if it was also masterly. The latter necessarily so, for his line of escape lay through three European colonies where every policeman was anxious to clap him in gaol and four independent native States with kings were even more anxious to hang him.

He had tried to reach the Gongoda, a people full of Imperial ideals, but empty of all military sense, and thus ripe for a man of his talents. He almost reached them but a certain Mindipi the Pox, a king of sorts, had headed him off, passing word to the European border states, so that only by a brilliance that almost dazzled himself had Savaran slipped through to Laonga.

An abominable place, Savaran abominated it— yet was pinned to it. On the land side it was hemmed in by European colonies which had doubled their border patrols in the hope of catching him at last; seaward his only escape was by trading tramps manned by seamen only too ready to earn the price put on his head. These things might not have disturbed him, because after all Savaran was Savaran, but there was one grave defect in his position.  He was without money or any prospect of gaining money.

"And unless I can find a new throne within the next fortnight," he grinned wolfishly, "even Mustapha Bimbi is going to run me into the common careel for my washing bill."

It was then that Makepeace Bysshe Amah  inserted the Great Man into Savaran's thoughts, saying in a husky and awed, whisper:

"Lord Zavarani, I have brought to you a Great Boss, one of the mountain peaks of the world. Abase yourself before him and speak humbly. He is one from whose hands drip power and riches."

Savaran, before whom kings had rubbed their noses in the dirt, looked up at a small, pudgy, pudding-basin of a man, who glared once at him and snorted in disgust:

"Why, Gosh, it's only a darn hobo!"

Savaran grinned his dark, hawk grin and said: "Sure, brother, just a Field Marshal on his uppers. This is a bad season for Armageddonites."

Makepeace Bysshe Amah wriggled anxiously, muttering.

"But Lord of Infinite Dollars, this is truly the certain person I spoke of— the great War Man. There is not his like in all Africa."

"Why stop at Africa?" asked Savaran.

"It is true," cried Makepeace Bysshe Amah.  "No man can make war better for you. He knows the jungle and the desert and their ways, and the fighting habits of the low nigger trash therein as no other man knows them. He is Zavarani!"

"Is he?" snapped the pudgy man. "Well, I'm Klatly!"

He said it as though it were some new planet that had put the sun in its proper place, and he scowled when he found no particular response. Savaran saw that he really must be a tremendous fellow-somewhere. He was a short, panting, pallid man with a radioactive manner and the hair of his forehead carefully shaved to make a brow. And it hurt him to be unknown. He glared stormily and cried again:

"Klatly! Hannibal Klatly!"

Makepeace Bysshe Amah cried fervently in Swahili:

"Speak smoothly and meekly before this little lord. He pays his cash on the nail." With a subtle movement of his hand he gave Savaran a glimpse of a ten-dollar bill, and so Savaran did not kick him into the gutter as was his due, but drew his tall, stringy figure to its full height and cried: "Say, not the Hannibal Klatly."

He wondered what the "the" might stand for, but it was certainly effective. The pudgy man relaxed, said:

"Sure! Could there be two?" And then. "You American?"

"Sometimes. Just now I am a free citizen of the kingdom the next police officer can't afford to offend. Do I understand you're looking for a war?"

"You do," said Hannibal Klatly, "and a topliner at that. None of your chicken-run wars need apply. I'm out for the real, red, raging, big thing."

"I believe I've met that kind," said Savaran who had led his hundred thousand spears through fires and furies that might have made Attila wince.

"What I mean is— big," said Hannibal Klatly. "Gigantic! Or, anyhow, as big as mere nigger scrapping can be made."

Savaran's eagle face smiled--perhaps sardonically.

"Nigger scrapping can be quite reasonably red and raging," he grinned with rising spirits. "Especially when planned to large scale-if that's your aim."

"There isn't a scale too large," scowled Hannibal Klatly. "This has got to be terrific! Immense! Titanic clashes of raging savages. Horror! Majesty! Splendour! Above all reality. The Real Thing."

"There's quite a lot of it in Africa," smiled Savaran, his heart bounding. The man was quite mad but his money seemed good. "Who do we march against?"

"Eh? Oh, who are we fighting? That's a detail," said the astonishing Hannibal Klatly. "Just whack up your armies. I'll see to the rest."

Certainly the little man was quite mad, but before giving way to disappointment. Savaran put him to the crucial test.

"Wars are expensive hobbies," he said.

"I'll foot any bill up to one hundred thousand dollars," said Hannibal Klatly with an indifference which almost took Savaran's breath away. "But I've got to have a dollar's worth for every dollar. Big stuff! Heart wringing reality! It must catch at people's throats an' leave 'em limp with passion and pity, horror and the tenderness of young love."

Savaran stared. The fellow was amazing, even for a madman. Passion and horror and the tenderness of young love! In Africa! In war! Red ugliness to be spoken of in the cloying captions of the cinema....

Abruptly he threw back his head and laughed his harsh, fierce laugh.

"And all this— this red, raging warfare, is for the films, I take it?" he chuckled.

"Gosh man," cried the pudgy fellow. "What else? Hain't I told you I'm Hannibal Klatly, of KlatIy's Hyperstar Productions, Inc.? Don't you read the papers never? Guess the whole world knows I'm here with Elveleta Lawless and Max Drelf making 'Red Love in the Jungle.' "

"You know," said Elveleta Lawless in her slow, rich drawl, "in spite of my he-man complex there's a sorta something about you. Mr. Savaran, that gets me."

"I remember a princess of Arab blood making much the same remark," smiled Savaran "But not so prettily."

Elveleta Lawless laughed in her free and splendid way. What a throat she had, thought Savaran; he knew queens who might envy it.

"You and your princess stuff," she said. "Comic! You'll be calling yourself king next."

"I prefer emperor," he said with his ferociously genial smile. "I've got into the habit."

"Yeh, you do look Lord Caesar of all the Huns," she said. "You're like a fierce man-eating bird— with a sense of humour. Queer my taking to you, because I'm prone to the real military type."

"And what type's that?" asked Savaran, tingling in his thirty battle wounds.

"Well— Max, of course," she said. "The real, cold, hell-anyhow, and what's-death kind of man. But then Max has been a real soldier."

Savaran looked through the hot, spice-scented glooms of Messie & Messie's great freight godown, to where a streamline man with machine-tooled features and a super-supercilious manner stormed in distinctly Balkan Californian at a baggage-man for allowing tropic heat to melt his grease paints.

"Yes, real soldiering does make a lot of difference," said Savaran. "Mr. Drelf served in the war?"

"Sure," said Elveleta. "Against us, of course, but that wasn't his fault. He belonged to one of the down-trodden nations. He drove a Major-General at the base during all the fiercest fighting at the front all the same, so what Max doesn't know about war isn't worth knowing."

Savaran's dark face creased In its eagle smile. How she amused him, Savaran, before whom fighting giants had gone down. Also, how she thrilled him, for she was beautiful and he was Savaran.

"Do you want your war real, too?" he smiled fiercely.

"Gee, yes," she cried and he could appreciate her intensity, for he, too, in his way, was an artist. "I've got to feel it here," she touched her superb young breast. "I've got to know the terror and horror of it, how else can I make others feel? You must make it big, Mr. Savaran."

"It will be as big as Africa and as Savaran can make it," he said in his large way, "since you want it so."

"And Hannibal, too," she said. "See, here, Hannibal isn't easy to please. He wants this as real as a clap of thunder, that's why we're here where primitive passion carries the authentic hallmark. And if you don't give him what he's after he'll— he'll tear you up and throw you away."

"And that idea doesn't please, Elveleta?" he said softly.

"Funny, isn't it?" she frowned, puzzled at herself. "I never saw anything in this sheik stuff-before." Her firm little chin went up. "Anyhow, you're too amusing to miss, so put red blood into those battles of yours, Savvy, and if you find the going hard get Max to help... Here, Max."

The semi-glacial young man was walking towards the sun-brazen door of the godown. He stopped, looked right through Savaran and said in his smooth Czecho-American:

"So Elveleta, you are having to bawl-out property mens, too? It is disgusting, the handling of our baggage. The creases have been so squashed out of my best battle tunic that I do not see how I am to do war in it at all. Also, all my medal ribbons have been torn."

"I'll give you some garter ribbon," she smiled. "But listen. I've been talking to Savvy about our war. You'll give him a tip or two about real fighting, won't you., Max?"

"But, yes, I mean to," said the hero grimly. "Those war shots have got to be big stuff."

"Big also seems to be Hannibal Klatly's morning and night prayer," said Savaran genially.

"Yes, but I know," frowned Max Drelf. "There won't be any fooling me with dummy soldier stuff, see. This war is to be real, red hot... War in the raw. Some of your black niggers may be hurt in the terrificness of it, so, but that cannot be helped. That is my way. I must have it: savage! Look, when I am leading my annihilated regiment in that last desperate charge against massed spearmen, I must feel that there is real slaughter before me, real death in the air. When I dash, fearing nothing, into the cannibal village to rescue Elveleta from the sacrificial knife, I must sense zizzing, bulling, hurtling spears, boomerangs, and things actually about my ears. But, take it from me, hell will be raised if I'm not satisfied."

Hannibal Klatly was doubtful about being satisfied also. He was never quite sure whether he had bought a genius in Savaran, or a lemon.

Hannibal came to Africa resolved to go to the Chellum country, where, report had it, there was the finest photographic scenery in the continent, plus a "ting, Quali, ready to be the good friend of any man with dollars to spend. This was true. Savaran admitted it. What he did not admit was that Quali waited for him with a hangman's rope, so, though he apparently worked hard for Hannibal it was not altogether surprising that the Chellum plan gradually vanished under an avalanche of difficulties.

Hannibal raved. Hannibal was used to getting his own way and had all the necessary permits and dollars to get it quick. But though he poured out the latter to Savaran for use as palm oil, nothing happened.

However, just as Hannibal made up his mind to write Savaran off as the world's vastest dud, the miracle clicked. Savaran suggested that it might be easier to go out through Portuguese Lumpuli and so reach Gongoda where the scenery was also passionately primitive: should he try it?

"Try it or Hades or anywhere that means quick action," snarled Hannibal, and got the startler of his life when, three hours later, Savaran told him that everything was settled and he could march for Gongoda in ten minutes' time if he liked. Nobody in Gongoda wanted to hang Savaran.

"It's all right," he said to Hannibal with his dry, fierce smile. "I've got six thousand Gongoda braves for you at half a dollar a man. They'll be waiting for us when we reach their territory. They're real fighting stuff, too, and will give us a better show than these Loanga he-women.''

"Snakes," gasped Hannibal. "You're a wonder-worker."

"They'll be waiting for us where the Gongoda River skirts the Riad forest," Savaran continued. "I've also saved you the trouble of carrying all those Ross rifles. The Gongoda bring their own arms, mainly Mausers and Martinis."

"But all our blank ammunition is Ross," frowned Hannibal. "Except the machine-gun stuff."

"This is our lucky moon, then," grinned Savaran, "for I've found an Arab with a godown full of Mauser and Martini. Just give me the permits. I'll doctor them so that the Lumpuli Customs will pass the stuff. I would have been the world's best forger if I hadn't had such a pronounced taste for Empires."

A marvel when he liked, Savaran, but heart-breaking in between. He organised the caravan and the head packs in a way to make the Hollywood property men, no mean experts, grin in admiration. He fixed every single detail so that there could not be a hitch. Then on the very morning of the march he failed them.

HE sent a burly and bearded dragoman with a broken nose, an ebonite skin and the name of Tamaka to tell them that his departure must be delayed for a day or two owing to his being in the common gaol consequent on pulling a Cadi's beard in a moment of absent-minded elation. He begged Hannibal to start his journey, assuring him that as soon as his feet had recovered from the effects of the bastinado he would break out and overtake the caravan. Meanwhile Tamaka of the Wry Nose would act as his deputy and do all that was necessary to make smooth the journey.

Hannibal Klatly told the world that this was the last straw. He also kicked Tamaka into the nearest cactus, certain that the best way to avoid future trouble was to run the caravan himself. In this he erred. At the Lumpuli border trouble of particular virulence was waiting for him. Every Portuguese Customs officer in the colony seemed massed to receive them, while drawn up, barring their path, were two native regiments with machine-guns to match.

"What do they take us for, a royal tour or an invasion?" asked Elveleta Lawless, but presently found that all these armed forces wanted was to be certain she did not carry a lean, six foot four man in her vanity bag. They were so sure that such a man must be in the caravan somewhere that, even when rigorous search failed to reveal him, it only seemed to make them doubly certain.

"For it is useless to lie at me," the fat Portuguese commander of the post roared in Hannibal's face. "That we do not see him is nothing. He is like that, this devil. Hound, he is so slick he can hide behind a thought. That man— I think it was him who taught Satan hall his art in cunning."

"That is probably true since it is of the lord Savaran you are speaking," said a calm voice in Swahili. "I know, for am I not Tamaka of the Wry Nose, my lord Savaran's chosen deputy?"

The jet black dragoman sat calm on a disconsolate donkey regarding the scene indulgently, and at the mere speaking of Savaran's name the whole Portuguese cohort rushed at him.

"Dog of dogs," snarled the fat commander. "What know you of Savaran?"

"I know much," said Tamaka, with a large pride. "I know, for instance, that he sits carefully in such a manner as to prevent the soles of his feet touching anything, save, maybe, those parts of the careel wall that are cool. And I know this because I, too, have had the honour of the bastinado."

"Savaran in gaol! Savaran whipped!" cried the Portuguese, and, forgetting all save this marvel, they crowded round Tamaka, while the black dragoman, savouring to the full the uniqueness of his position, told with gusto a story of a cafe dancing girl who forgot she loved a Cadi once the bright eyes of Savaran had rested on her.

"My lord Savaran," said Tamaka, stirred by the shouts of laughter his story evoked, "was in a gay mood. He had money. He had this caravan to command. He was escaping from the garbage tin called Laonga. He was reckless, wild, his most abandoned self. The girl was not pretty, but a Cadi in a rage is an amusement, so, when that Cadi put his unsheathed dagger on the table before him and glared at my lord Savaran, my lord Savaran just naturally had to take the girl upon his knee."

"Disgusting," said Max Drelf.

"Good heavens!" cried the Portuguese commander. "That is Savaran! And then, you say, the Cadi struck, and then Savaran took hold of his beard and jerked him into the biggest drum... the scoundrel, the dog. But I would I had been there, for he fights like a bull, Savaran. Continue, scum of the pit."

"There is no more," said Tamaka. "Twenty Laonga fellahs threw themselves upon my lord Savaran and now he sits in the careel most conscious of his feet."

Another shout of laughter at that. "But this is comic," the Portuguese roared. "Here is this rascal fat with pride at the thought of tricking us to-day imprisoned in gaol instead."

"But he will come," said Tamaka with a touch of melancholy. "In a few days, when his feet can bear the ground, he will follow." He sighed, looked slyly at the Customs man. "There is no doubt of that. Is there not much money to be made from these rich Americans? He will not leave that to me-if he can help it."

The Portuguese commander, wise in the ways of Coast Africans, who will sell even their sons for cash down, caught the note in Tamaka's voice, and said softly:

"It is indeed an evil thing that a mere boaster and brawler should deprive the honest Tamaka of good dollars."

"My stomach is sore with the thought," said the dragoman.

"Still we may stop him passing," said the Portuguese.

"No," sighed Tamaka. "For he is Savaran, clever beyond all men. His disguise will beat you."

"And you will lose much money! Is this disguise so clever?"

"Marvellous!" murmured Tamaka, looking as crooked as his nose, for he was looking down it. "It will be the same as he was to use today. Dressed as an ordinary Laonga fellah he will mix with a caravan, then in the tumult by this gate he will slip off his long robe and lo! he will be dressed in the uniform of one of your own Portuguese Customs officers. Thus you will never notice him."

"It is truly a marvellous way to fool us," said the Customs man gravely. "Clear your caravan now, quickly, and travel fast so that at least you may get many days ahead of him. As for me, I must retire apart and ponder if it is possible to beat this Savaran's tricks."

So, leaving the Portuguese not unelated, Tamaka marched the caravan across Lumpuli so swiftly and without fault that Klatly decided the change was all to the good. For Tamaka had a genius, too. He handled the carriers like a master, and a glare and a word or two could smooth out almost any trouble. Indeed, he turned the difficult jungle trek into something like a picnic and he was, moreover, a vital and genial soul into the bargain, ready to talk about the wonders of the bush and himself at any moment, particularly to Elveleta, who found him thrilling. So helpful was he that when they had cleared the Portuguese Customs on the farther side of Lumpuli and gained a land of petty chiefs, all with the minimum of friction, Hannibal cried:

"An' I don't give a darn if that fellow Savaran never does turn up. You're a jewel Tamaka, and of the two I prefer you."

"That's a pity," said Tamaka, in English that was no longer beach pidgin, and he straightened his nose by removing certain particles of wax. Also he plucked the beard from his chin and gave them the full benefit of a genially ferocious eagle smile.

"Hades!" gasped Hannibal "Savaran all the time."

"I always keep my contracts," Savaran grinned, "even when it's one with myself never to see the inside of a Portuguese gaol."

"Savvy— you beast," cried Elveleta. "It's you I've been flirting with all the time!"

"Yes," said Savaran, his teeth flashing. "My charm at least is beyond even my talent in disguise."

"WELL," growled Hannibal, after three hours staring at it. "Your scenery's great, but where's your darn war?"

Standing in a clump of tall, dense trees, he glared across a sun washed plain of grass and bush to where a long hill ended sharp against the hard African sky. There was nothing in sight. Not even a leaf stirred. Even Savaran's six thousand Gongoda braves, duly collected, drilled by Max Drelf to do the goose step and form fours and then put into the quaint uniform proper to film armies, seemed to have melted out of sight. Only a hundred or so squatted back of the trees near the sand-bagged camp, scratching and dozing until that moment when Max would lead them in an heroic charge against impossible odds. Just those few fighters and large areas of wild scenery were all they could see of the really real war Savaran had promised them.

"Heavens!" groaned Max Drelf, impatient for heroism. "Was ever anything so silly? No regiments marching. Not one soldier in sight. Where have you got your ideas of war from?"

"Mainly from battles and sudden death," grinned Savaran, tall, thin and striking in his loose Arab robe, and suddenly he held up his hand. From a great distance there came a sullen bump, like a van man dropping a packing case. There came another. Even there came as many as two more.

"It begins," said Savaran, his eyes bright.

"I don't see it," said Hannibal sullenly.

"It's beyond that hill," said Savaran. "My outposts are drawing the enemy towards us."

"Well, I'm glad something is happening at last," snapped Hannibal, and putting a megaphone to his mouth he called to camera-men on platforms high up in the trees to stand ready.

Then he waited another hour.

"My sacred hat," he cried after that time, "What is it you are giving us, an international chess tournament, or a slow-motion exhibition of sleeping sickness? I'm about— "

He broke off to give a little yelp, for out of the very grass at his feet wriggled a lean, brown, naked man, ferocious with war paint and stabbing spears and almost unrecognisable from leaves and tufts of grass tied over him He gave Hannibal a tiger grin that made the film man leap backwards, saluted Savaran with upheld spear and poured out a stream of Gongoda.

"Pass the word to your cameras." said Savaran. suddenly keen and fierce "Fighting begins any minute now Their first regiment has just come over the hill into the plain "

"And that's a lie," snapped Max 'I've been watching I haven't seen as much as a marching squad "

Savaran ignored him. Savaran was snapping a string of calm orders Hannibal gave another little squeal, for this time a whole line of Gongoda soldiers heaved themselves out of the grass and threw themselves on their stomachs, rifles at the ready

'You look like the king-emperor of all Africa, Savvy," Elveleta said softly, her eyes on his exultant face.

"One's destiny is written on one," he flashed back at her. "And then I must look a king, for certainly you are a queen."

Well, she looked it. Clad in barbaric robes, mainly feathers and beads, for she was to be shown rallying her warriors in several 'cut-ins.' she looked every inch a chieftainess. She laughed softly at Savaran's compliment, and Max Drelf, very pretty in a uniform utterly unsuited for tropic fighting, snarled:

"Seems to me this is the season for slush-in words and work. What's it all about? Where's this fighting you're supposed to give us?" He swung in fury on Hannibal. "I told you all along that this boob had no more idea of what real fighting is like than a fireside cat He's a washout I'm going to take over and get some guts into it. If I've got to be a hero, I've got to have it fierce and— "

He was interrupted by a high nasal call from a native watcher up with the cameramen. Savaran darted quick glances at the stagnant landscape laughed in harsh savagery "There's your war," he cried pointing

"What? Where? Those waving bushes, you mean?" said Hannibal, staring hard and puzzled.

"Focus on those bushes," snapped Savaran to the cameraman near him "Distance 780 yards Start taking now " He called the same order up to the men in the trees

'What do we do," sneered Max, "wait until they break into bud?"

Hannibal cried in a suddenly excited voice: "Gosh! They're hell, they're walking across the plain towards us. Solid bushes strolling along."

" 'Birnam Wood do come to Dunsinane,' " grinned Savaran "That's the oldest military stratagem in the world." He put a whistle to his lips and blew sharply and at once there came a slash of rifle fire away to the right and left of them as the Gongoda soldiers loosed off

There came a wave of yells, and the moving bushes went down— and leaping through them, like warriors spring fully armed from dragon's teeth sown in the earth, there charged a thousand naked savages. Big, sinewy braves, their bobbing feathers making them nine feet tall, their war paint making them devils: their great red shields shone like blood in the sun, while massed spears swung aloft like the glittering spray of a wave bursting against a sea wall. A great roar came from them, the drumming of spear shafts against shields, and in a mighty surge they hurled forward

"Gosh!' screamed Hannibal. "Camera... Cam-era! Get that, you sons of guns Gosh! That's great stuff!"

"Soft," sneered Max Dreft. "Sort of thing they do in a circus. Thought you wanted real war Hannibal! Why, a spinster sisterhood could do better than that! Any mutt'll know it's mere play-acting directly he sees it on the screen Why— look at the way they're dying. Dropping forward like sacks— no drama. No action! No actuality! You've got to give me something better than that before I can get the real, red, hell-courage feeling in my bones. Unless I feel a kick— "

He stopped. There was actually a kick— the sound of a mule kicking the tree beside him. They all jumped and looked up, except Savaran, who merely smiled fiercely and gave orders to GoIgoda runners, and looking up they saw a big ugly wound gouged in the bark of that tree.

Then, most emphatically, all became aware of many thin and vicious snake hissings in the air about them, then another something smacked a tree and a cut off a branch came crashing down. Looking across the plain they saw that the charging warriors had flung themselves flat and that many balloons of black powder smoke were breaking above their line, and as ; they looked a Gongoda soldier near them leapt to his feet and then fell like a sack— without action or drama, but in a way unmistakably dead.

There came a little whimper, but it came from Max Drelf, not Elveleta, pale under her greasepaint. She gave a sound that was half-gasp, half-laugh. Hannibal Klatly on his part just swore, to himself and at Savaran.

"You absolutely insisted on its being real," Savaran grinned. "I prefer it that way myself, too. Also, it fitted in with a long-thought-out scheme of mine for making the Gongoda the paramount fighting race in this area."

"You— you've risked all our lives," cried Max Drelf throatily.

"Not necessarily," grinned Savaran, straightening his turban, which a bullet had flicked. "That Mauser and Martini blank the faked permits got by the Portuguese— isn't blank. These Gongoda braves will use it like geniuses because a genius is handling them, and speaking personally, you'll be perfectly safe behind the sandbag square in the middle of the camp, if you like to retire there— you certainly must, Elveleta."

Elveleta certainly did not. Max Drelf went behind the sandbags at a run, but Elveleta stayed. She laughed in a queer, strained voice, "Savaran, you've a new thrill every trick you turn," but she would do no more than sit behind a tree trunk where she was reasonably immune.

And Hannibal Klatly would not even sit, though Savaran pointed out he could give his orders as well and very much safer that way. He snarled: "You're a darned murdering scoundrel— but this looks like being the fiercest, biggest, realest stuff in movie history, and Hannibal Klatly is not the man to fall down, or even sit down on it."

He stood and directed his camera work, and the cameraman beside him stood too— those high in the trees were safe. Savaran was not the only man heedless of all save his art on that field, even though bullets zizzed, and arrows and assegais came over in unhealthy numbers.

And Hannibal Klatly admitted that Savaran gave him his money's worth, and so has the public since. Savaran, being Savaran, seemed indeed to take a joy in proving that he could even manipulate battles to meet screen requirements... a surging sea of warriors came splendidly on to the hard skyline of the far hill, thousands of sinewy silhouettes, lean, muscular, magnificent with their flaunting feathers and their upflung shield and spear arms showing sharp against the sky.

"Gosh!" gasped Hannibal. "That catches the throat! Gosh! If we could only have a 'retake' to make sure of it."

"We will," grinned Savaran, and snapped orders. The three mountain and five machine-guns which he had held silent until then suddenly came into play, spraying the hillside so heartily with shells and bullets that the savages went scurrying in a ragged mass back over the skyline.

"They'll come again in double strength," said Savaran. "You'll get a better picture: warn your cameras."

Savaran, in fact, seemed to be able to do what he liked with the enemy, and to revel in his mastery. He let the warriors charge right up to the cameras, until the very thunder of their feet and the dust they raised seemed about to engulf the de-fence, but a cloud of hand grenades burst in their faces, doing little harm save that the sheer dramatic shock of the explosions shattered the charge as a jet of water quenches flame.

At another time with his exploding shells heading it and herding it like sheep dogs, he sent the enemy mass streaming across the front, and Hannibal's cameras got magnificent shots.

"Mere tactical trickery," Savaran shrugged. "But, of course, one has to be master to do it."

"A little bit— savage?" panted Hannibal.

"Not half as bad as they hoped to deal out to the Gongoda," said Savaran grimly. "Also this is the Riad people, a tribe and a king needing a lesson."

Soon the battle dwindled. The Riad attack was broken. Only a big body in the centre maintained a long-distance fight.

"They've got to be scattered with an attack," said Savaran, and grinned. "This is where Max shows the hero stuff in him and leads his regiment in that last desperate charge of his "

"Yep," sighed Hannibal. "This is it— a peach of a picture, too. Only— only Max'll never do it."

"Lucky then that Savaran will," said the tall adventurer with relish. He ripped the long robe from his body revealing the fact that he was clad in an exact copy of Max Drelf's pretty uniform— even down to the medal ribbons that were really Elveleta's garter. He also clapped on a duplicate of the neat moustache Max wore for military pictures, so that with the brim of his solar topee well down he became a remarkably good substitute for Max.

He blew a whistle, and his Gongoda, grinning like wolves, came to their feet at a bound.

"Savaran!" cried Elveleta, in a shaky voice. "Savaran! Don't... it's death!"

"More the glory, then," he cried, with a flash of white teeth, "for I carry your ribbon over my heart!"

Then with a magnificent wave of his sword, he led his yelling Gongoda in that wild, brilliant and smashing charge which, millions of film fans have since agreed, showed Max Drelf as his most heroic self.

That charge crushed the Riad and rounded off a peerless battle picture, but Savaran did not see the rout driven home for a panting messenger had brought him a woeful story.

Four hundred yards from the camp he came upon a shivering Max Drelf telling a stammering story to Hannibal Klatly, while a hundred Gongoda looked on with bewildered eyes.

"A big, buck nigger with a score of other fiends at his heels crept up to the camp and sprang into the sandbag square so suddenly that it was only by sheer luck that I escaped with my life. And let me tell you, Klatly, my contract— "

"There was a camp guard," said Savaran harshly. "What happened to it?"

"Lot of darn fools," cried Max "One jabbered something at me, and I told him to get to the devil out of it— and he did, with all the others!"

"They thought you were a real soldier giving real orders," snarled Savaran. "What then?"

"Why— why, these black devils made a sort of little fort in the middle of the camp, and strapped Elveleta to a pole— "

"They've got— Elveleta!" cried Savaran. He caught Max Drelf, shook him until his false moustache fell off, threw him aside and made for the camp at a run.

When Hannibal Klatly and the others reached the sandbag wall, Savaran was standing a little in I side it, facing across a bare, sun stark place a grim little group of savages who glared ferociously back. There were less than a score of these, but they were all giants, young, lean, bronzed creatures, superbly muscled, barbarically arrayed, and grouped— a king's picked bodyguard about a king.

And their king was there, a huge bull of a man with a lioness' skin about his magnificent torso and a vehement sunray of scarlet plumes about his great and ferocious head. And that head was turned, watching Savaran with a wary stealth, while his thick right arm was fore-shortened ready to stab the shovel-broad blade of his spear pointed straight at the breast of Elveleta, standing bound hand and foot to a post.

"Gosh," gasped Hannibal, as he looked over the sandbags, "here's hell! But it's the 'rescue shot' from the scenario better than written, too."

"So," Savaran was saying quietly, to the big king. "Mindipi is the Pox to the last, and prefers to fight women to men."

"Stand back, Zavarani," growled the big chief, not altering his pose. "And make but one evil movement and the white woman dies."

"And Mindipi the Pox will be given to the Gongoda women so that his death may be more slow and more shameful," said Savaran.

"What matter," snarled the Riad king, "for she dies first."

They glared at each other like two tigers meeting in a death struggle. Mindipi's eyes wavered.

"I am standing still," said Savaran softly.

"Then I will tell you what you must do," said the big chief. "You will march your Gongoda away leaving all your guns behind. You will leave my land in peace. When I know you are beyond the river boundary I will send the woman back to you unharmed."

"Truly you are called Mindipi the Pox for good reason, since you think to escape the vengeance of Savaran by a trick and a woman," jeered the spider-lean adventurer. "But that is not Savaran's way. I have broken your people, and you, too, I will break, Mindipi, for you have shown treachery to Savaran."

"Then the woman dies!" growled Mindipi the Pox, and he would have stabbed then and there only a crash of metal at Savaran's feet brought him round with a bound

Savaran with a quick gesture had unbuckled and dropped his belt, his sword, his two pistols falling with it. Savaran stood before his foe weaponless and with folded arms. It was magnificent and it was also Savaran

"I am unarmed, Mindipi," he said evenly. "You should find me as worthy of your steel as a woman."

Laughing softly into the face of the huge king, he walked quietly forward.

Hannibal Klatly gave a little gasp. Even the cameraman beside him swore— but he kept on grinding. The savage bodyguard stood back in awe, leaving a wide space about the two men— as Savaran knew they would. And Mindipi the Pox stood, taken aback, hesitant by such cold daring— while across that stark, sun-bright space Savaran walked calmly on to the poised steel.

Savaran walked on, slow, smiling, to certain death. Mindipi the king wondered what trick of cunning was behind that calm eagle smile. He hesitated, ne hesitated just a fraction too long. Suddenly, and with a shout of impulsiveness, the savage swung his arm. Elveleta screamed "Savaran!" Mindipi ducked a little at the scream, and as he ducked Savaran, like a leaping cat, was under the blade, had the great arm forced up, had the great leg back heeled, and in one tremendous twist, more trick than strength, had Mindipi the king on his face, nose in the dust: and as the big king went down, Savaran wrenched the big stabbing spear free, and with the whetted point against the brown and brawny shoulder blades he cried:

"Savaran wins as Savaran meant to. Move not, O guards, or your king dies. Hannibal, when you think you've shot film enough, let the Gongoda come to me."

"Great fella," cried Hannibal wringing his hands thirty seconds later. "Great fella walking straight on to that blade made my blood run cold, but it'll make a dandy picture and. see here, I guess it's you we'd better take releasing Elveleta from the sacrificial stake "

"No," said Savaran, with an eagle frown "No, I think not... undignified. I'm a king again— Savaran, first king of the united empire of Gongoda and Riad... I've got to think of my prestige."

_____________

3: Proud Beauty

HILARION LAZAGA, police major, from the Portuguese colony of Anacora, drank long and gazed longer at the girl facing him under the silken awning of her tent.

What a marvel she was in her still, white, arrogant beauty, also how entirely insane to parade such loveliness unescorted through the wilds of Africa, but then these Americans were all mad. Still, he felt it his duty to break off talk of his own business to say:

"Permit me to mention that it is not wise for the Senhorita to travel alone in such a land as this."

"I prefer it," said Eia Barbary looking coldly at the big, overbearing pomposity of the man.

"But that is not natural, with your looks." he said, twirling a shoe-lace moustache with a jackboot manner; then as an angry gleam came to the splendid dark eyes, he added hastily. "I speak out of concern for the Senhorita. Even I, Hilarion Lazaea, whose name is terror, do not travel the Gongoda country without ten well-armed dogaris."

"I am not new to safari," said Eia Barbary evenly. "I have hunted big game in all parts of Africa— alone. "

"But not in Gongoda,'' said Lazaga. "Gongoda is not a good place. This king they have, Sandra Boma, is bad; an animal of the worst degree. A dangerous and treacherous snake, with a nasty reputation with—" his eyes dropped before her haughty glance, "with, er, ladies."

"You were speaking of an escaped criminal named Savaran," said Eia Barbary, changing the conversation with a contempt that made the big man bristle.

"It is my duty, Senhorita, first to insist upon this matter of your safety," he said fiercely.

"I have listened." she said evenly. "I can look after myself." She turned to a tall hooded Arab who had just stepped softly into the shadow beside her tent, said in Swahili. " The peace of Allah on thee. Whence come you and what want you with me?"

Lazaga, who had no taste for so summary a dismissal from a beauty as yet unconquered by his well-known gallantry, said sharply:

"Let the dog wait. I have yet to finish warning you against this felon,  Savaran."

Eia Barbary having once dismissed a man, that man ceased to have further human existence— that had been her attitude to the male from her cradle up. She turned to freeze Lazaga off the earth, and the shadowy Arab said in a soft sing-song:

"Peace to you, O Lily of Wonder. Thy slave can wait. I will sit within the shadow of thy beauty while he whose name is Fear talks."

"You see the effect of me on these black scum," the Portuguese said with swelling chest. "They are all like that, and Savaran, in spite of his boasts, will find me terrible, too. I am here to catch this Savaran and hang him."

"I have heard of that man," said Eia Barbary, held by her interest, "and from what I have heard he will not be easy to hang."

"Not for an ordinary man— no," admitted the Portuguese largely, "but me. I am Lazaga. That is why I am sent to take him. It needs a redoubtable man, for this Savaran is not without a certain low cunning and power over the natives. But I, Lazaga, will show Africa the way a man of deeds deals with a mere rascal of a boasting sneak thief."

"It is of Zavarani you speak," came the sing-song of the Arab, who was now squatting in the shade and smoking placidly. "But that is a name of power. From the Fezzan to the Great Thirst kings tremble at the rumour of it and even the white lords mass their regiments for fear of his stroke. There is no man so great in Africa since the days of Saladin, on whom be peace."

"It is not meet for a black dog to lift his voice in the presence of white lords," Lazaga snapped at him. He turned to Eia Barbary. "That is the boasting the fellow has spread among the ignorant natives. But the real truth about this Savaran is that he is a contemptible creature: a ragged adventurer chased from one State to another by the police: a smuggler, a gun-runner, a thief, a stirrer-up of native revolt. I myself hold four warrants for his arrest, two of which are hanging matters."

"And he is here in Gongoda?" said Eia.

"I have word it is so," said Lazaga. "He sneaked by the police of our western colony of Lumpuli by a base trick and was last heard of heading for Sandra Boma's court. He is, of course, after Sandra Boma's diamonds."

"He's just plain crook." said the girl, her lovely face cold with contempt.

"Of the lowest order," said Lazaga, "a trafficker with niggers. He is even wanted for smuggling drugs."

"That makes him more detestable," she said fiercely. "I hope you will take him, Major; such brutes ought not to be at large."

"Be assured. I, Hilarion Lazaga, will take him if he is twenty times more formidable than his boasts," said the major grandly.

His chest swelled magnificently, he twirled his moustache grandly. He knew he was superb— and just at the peak of his pride he was taken aback by a laugh.

The Arab in the shade had laughed. He was still squatting and smoking calmly, but the hood of his burnoose was back now, and Lazaga, snatching up his hippo-hide whip to chastise the fellow, looked sharply and dropped the whip aghast.

"Savaran!" he choked.

The Arab's face showed dark, sharp and eagle-fierce above the snow of his robe. There was a smile, dry, sardonic and terrible, on his masterful lips. He did not stir. It was Lazaga who backed, goggling in fear and fumbling at his pistol butt.

Savaran took the cigarette from his lips, expelled a slow and luxurious cloud of smoke, said calmly: "I did not know there were two of our might in Africa, Lazaga."

Lazaga's pistol came out, but it was a shaky voice that cried: "Up, scum. I am arresting you."

"The terror of your name unnerves me," Savaran grinned. "My shaking limbs refuse to lift me."

"Up!" roared the new angry Portuguese, "or I shoot you as you are."

"It is unsportsmanlike to shoot sitting game," said Savaran. with a flash of splendid teeth, "ungallant to shed blood in the presence of a lady. Also, why lose the glory of taking Savaran alive, Lazaga?"

"Well, then, alive I take you and hang you on the spot," cried the other, and shouted for his dogaris. But when they came running they looked one look at Savaran and were content to remain behind Lazaga, ignoring his orders and rolling fearful, negroid eyes at the spider-spare adventurer.

"It appears they know Savaran, low trash and thief though he is," said the seated man with a smile, for Eia Barbary. "He is not then so mean a person as a dago liar painted him."

Eia Barbary rose coldly from her chair

"Possibly my presence hinders you, Major Lazaga." she said. "Get your business done and leave my camp as soon as possible."

She took a step towards her tent door only to be halted by Savaran's soft laugh.

"I ask pardon for incommoding you while I justified myself," he said. "But now I will remove this offence and end the incident."

He blew upon a gold whistle and Lazaga, turning with an oath to order his men to act, checked his order with a yelp.

From the jungle surrounding the camp clearing, in a complete ring, tall men came striding inward. They seemed to materialise out of the very shadows at the trill of the whistle. They were brawny, french-bronze savages, barbaric in tall feathers and gold bangles. The sun blazed on their vermilion shields, their spade-headed stabbing spears and the workmanlike Mauser rifles slung across each broad back. They moved with an effortless leopard lilt. Lazaga goggled at him, gasped :

"Sandra Boma's bodyguard!"

"And mine." said Savaran, getting to his feet. "You are a little late in the day, Lazaga. I reached Gongoda a month ago and a month is more than enough for Savaran to found a kingdom. Gongoda lies in my palm, Lazaga, and the Riad— which I subdued in my stride. Sandra Boma is king of both, by leave of Savaran, who has other work to do with his hundred thousand spears."

"Gongoda! The Riad!" stammered Lazaga, a green tinge in his yellow face, "Then— then half of middle Africa is at your feet."

"As a beginning— yes," said Savaran, with his ruthless, eagle smile. "But I am a man of ambition and destiny, Lazaga. I am already dreaming a larger dream, and Savaran's dreams come true. Even now I march to break the Taruk. Tomorrow, who knows, but all the tropic belt, jungle and desert and sown, from ocean to ocean will be mine. The conqueror will, Lazaga, it cannot be denied." His wolf smile mocked the Portuguese. "How unfortunate for you that you should meet Savaran when his day has dawned. Now, which tree will you hang me on— or I you?"

Perhaps he would have hanged Lazaga— who ever could say what Savaran would do in his fierce whimsy?— but just then there came a blare of silver trumpets and gold chained slaves bearing Sandra Boma on a palanquin of jewelled ivory trotted into the clearing.

Sandra Boma was your true savage monarch in temperament if not in capacity. He could not even alight from his litter without using the backs of crouching women as stepping stools He rolled towards Eia Barbary's tent robed in tissue of gold, his fabled diamonds blazing in the African sun. He was magnificent, Sandra Boma, in all things save mind and manhood.

He was over fat, over short and over young, yet his face proclaimed that even his few years had made him a master in over-indulgence and viciousness. The soulless cruelty of an animal stamped his squat, sooty features; stealthy cunning was in his charcoal-black eyes.

Those eyes found Eia Barbary at once, swept her straight, regal whiteness with an unsavoury gusto while his lips seemed to smack in relish. Then he saw Lazaga in the hands of his guard, and that passion that was even more to him than love of women, cruelty, blazed within him.

"Yallah! An efferingi prisoner," he cried in a vice-husky voice. He clapped his pudgy hands. "My chair of state, here under this awning. We will sit and watch this pig die— softly. It will be pleasant."

Perhaps it was this that saved the shaking Lazaga. Savaran, being Savaran, could not resist the chance of showing Eia Barbary how he coerced kings. He said grimly :

"The man will be marched in safety to his own territory of Anacora by guards who will be answerable to me for his life."

Sandra Boma turned a face evil with hate upon the lean adventurer. It could be seen there was no love lost between the king and the kingmaker.

"The king has said he shall die," he snarled. "My chair, at once!"

"The king then will fight the white goms when they come with their cannons and flying canoes that drop earthquakes," said Savaran grimly cheerful. "The British and the Franchi as well as the Portuguese, for all are jealous when white blood is shed by black."

"Let them come," said Sandra Boma. "Who am I to tremble? Am I not Sandra Boma, King of Kings from the days of Adam, conqueror of the Riad, the Word of Life and Death for all Africa? I fear them not!"

He sat himself fatly in his golden seat. Savaran merely turned and called for his horse.

"What is this?" Sandra Boma squealed on another note. "You leave me, Zavarani?"

"You fight white men alone," said Savaran calmly. "And may you also hold back the Riad spears better than you did before I came "

Sandra Boma was up and at the spider-spare man's side at a bound, clawing pitifully at Savaran's robe, entreating him to stay, for the Riad had treated the Gongoda people as slaves, and henmen before Savaran had conquered them for Gongoda, and the Riad taking vengeance for defeats were not a pleasant people. No wonder Sandra Boma cringed in fear and snivelled promises to do all the Lord Zavarani commanded.

"Give the man presents and send him back to his land," said Savaran curtly and his flashing smile called Eia Barbary to admire his power over rulers. And Eia Barbary drew herself up in cold scorn and said:

"It's... loathsome... a white man trafficking with such a black reptile!"

With a look of absolute disgust she turned and entered her tent.

And Lazaga, fired by her, flung down the jewels that had been put in his hands and shouted for her to hear.

"I take nothing from a thief who has gone nigger. And be warned, Savaran. Set as much as a foot in Anacora and by the living truth nothing will stop me hanging you. I swear here and now that whatever the cost to myself I will rid the world of such a devil as you."

Savaran smiled cheerfully, picked Lazaga's pistol from Eia Barbary's table, ostentatiously made sure it was loaded, and then thrust it into the braggart's hand.

"Better take your gun then, Lazaga," he said. "One who boasts so rashly will need good protection."

For a breathless half-minute they stood, then the power in Savaran's eyes sent the courage oozing out of Lazaga's veins. He turned and walked sullenly away, beaten.

FOUR hours later Savaran stood in the outer chamber of Eia Barbary's tent, saying with his fiercely genial smile:

"You will break camp at dawn, Miss Barbary, and will reach Kallat in a week of quick marching. I am sending twenty picked men with you."

Eia Barbary stood cool and hostile in the soft gloom of her big tent. She was at once more beautiful, more difficult, and more desirable.

"I do not discuss my affairs with you," she said evenly.

"I am not discussing anything," he said. "I am giving orders, and warning you that my men will see that they are carried out."

"Leave my tent," she cried; "your play-acting does not impress me, if it does your filthy black king. I stay or go, as I choose."

"You are magnificent," he said, his fierce eyes saying more. "There never was a woman so queenly. No wonder Savaran loves you."

He reached out, lifted her hand, kissed it as Napoleon must have kissed the hand of Marie Louise. Half intimidated by the strange force in him, half hating him, she hesitated to snatch it away until his lips touched, then with a little cry she jerked free, caught a whip from the rack round the tent pole, and slashed his face.

"A man like you," she cried. "You— defile!"

She flung the whip away, turned and vanished through the curtains that divided the living and sleeping quarters of her tent, leaving him alone

SAVARAN rode without companions to Gongoda. He made the journey in exultance as well as stealth The day of his glory had begun. In one swift and electric march he had crushed the Taruk.

Never before had his genius in war, the conqueror power within him been so sure and overwhelming The Taruk had acknowledged it. They had caved under the first smashing battle, though they were a dogged people and had yet many fighting braves to carry on a war of years amid their mountains.

Baratodi, their kai, which means priest-king, had paid tribute to the wonder of Savaran at the great peace palaver.

"It is thou, Zavarani, who fights as a god fights, who has mastered us— not these Gongoda she-men, not the harem king, Sandra Boma, who has not dared show his face on the field of battle. To thee then do we bow, because war against thee is a vain thing. But to thee only, to the Gongoda, not to Sandra Boma, never! No Gongoda hog will ever be lord over Taruk With them we will march till all Africa is at thy feet, yes― but only if thou are king. That is our true word. For Sandra Boma to be king is a shame we will not face, and that we will fight until our last youth dies amid the mountains. I have spoken."

So Baratodi of Taruk had said the word that was to raise Savaran like a new star over Africa. Sandra Boma must be deposed and Savaran reign king. His day had come.

He now rode to Gongoda to clinch the master stroke. That was all there was left to do. He was king in all save the detail of turning Sandra Boma off his throne. He was riding to Gongoda to arrange that.

Sandra Boma had remained in his capital. He felt safer there, not only from the threat of war, but from danger to his throne. With the hardier, warrior section of his race away fighting the Taruk he was surrounded almost entirely by his adherents and his Cronies: crafty, stay-at-home creatures who enriched themselves through Sandra Boma's luxuries and so were the last to want him de-throned.

They would fight for Sandra Boma, these creatures, would at a pinch persuade him to enter into a swift alliance with the Portuguese of Anacora or the French protected Sultanate of Kallat, both eager to get Gongoda under their thumbs. If either happened Savaran was beaten. He might have the genius but he certainly had not the munitions to fight European powers— yet.

To win his game, Savaran must use guile, most lure Sandra Boma to the fighting front. Directly he got him there and the terms of the Taruk were put before the warrior ranks it would mean the end of Sandra Boma.

Sure of himself and the certain success of his star, Savaran rode into the big palaver square of the palace. It blazed with lights and echoed with barbaric music, but it was entirely empty.

"Another feast," Savaran smiled, "so Belshazzar behaved before his line was swept away." He threw the reins of his horse over a post and made for a small door that would allow him to enter the great ball of the palace unobserved.

Sandra Boma had the habit of feasts, yet one glance into the hall told Savaran this was a feast out of the ordinary. It was a wedding feast.

Savaran stared amazed. A wedding feast! Who of the importance this feast proclaimed was being married tonight?

Even as he asked he knew.

He saw a slim back, the gleam of a marble-white shoulder through a torn khaki hunting shirt, a proud head and a lovely, still profile— Eia Barbary!

Eia Barbary was sitting on the king's divan alone with Sandra Boma. Eia Barbary and Sandra Boma both wore the diamond-encrusted diadem which is the insignia of a royal wedding in Gongoda.

Eia Barbary was being married to Sandra Boma.

Savaran stared, amazed and furious, the blood of anger rising hot to his head. It set throbbing a line of pain across his face, the weal of a whip-stroke not yet quite healed— so soon after scorn of him had Eia Barbary come to this!

He scowled as he looked closer. He saw more definitely that the girl's shirt was torn and how still she was, like something already dead. He saw dust on her cheek, a bruise on a smooth shoulder; saw that she ate nothing though Sandra Boma ogled and pawed her, offering choice tit-bits of meats with his brutish fingers.

And then as the fat king became too insistent her hand went up to brush his aside and Savaran saw gold chains upon her wrists.

She was to be a bride by force. She had ventured back into Gongoda despite his warnings, and Sandra Boma, who never could forgo a desire and who felt safe in his vileness with Savaran away, had taken her.

Savaran glared at her in anger. This was the last possible occasion for his wanting to save her. This was the moment of moments when he must play Sandra Boma delicately.

It was the moment of his greatest stake and the gods of destiny had weighted the balance against him. Not only the winning of Sandra Boma, but the saving of this girl, was in the scales of chance.

A girl who had slashed his face in contempt— or the crown of his ambition? Eia Barbary— or an empire? Which was it to be?

Hts sardonic laugh startled the great feast. In the shock of silence that followed all eyes swung to him— Sandra Boma's in goggling fright; Eia Barbary with swift hope in her glance.

Savaran, ignoring Sandra Boma, ignoring the great crowd, looked only at Eia Barbary, his fierce smile full of irony.

Their eyes met, held for a breathless moment, then the light in her face died and she became still again and whiter. She was remembering her whip stroke and her contempt of him. Her slim throat quivered, then the small, proud head turned with a firm movement and she fixed her eyes upon her chained hands in her lap. Neither by word nor look could she appeal to this man whom she had insulted, though death and worse than death awaited her

And Savaran, hawkeyed, watching for weakness, laughed again and strode, a lean, menacing, and barbaric figure, to where Sandra Boma sat and shook. A hundred daggers were ready to leap out at the fat king's nod, and Savaran ignored them with his scornful back. He was Savaran and knew his power over men as well as kings.

He stared down at the flabby wretch and cried in harsh menace;

"What does a white woman alone on Sandra Boma's divan?"

"An honoured guest," Sandra Boma managed to mumble, his shifty eyes darting here and there seeking help. "She hunted near and I made this great feast in her honour."

"And put chains upon her wrists and the marriage circlet upon her head." said Savaran.

Sandra Boma's glances had told him that Savaran was alone. He said with a stubborn sullenness: "You warned her that I desired her and yet she came back. It is plain she is not unwilling to favour a king."

Savaran's sardonic glance turned on Eia Barbary. "I hope you appreciate the workings of the savage mind," he said, but the girl answered nothing, only shuddered.

"You know what the white man will think of such a shame," he said grimly to Sandra Boma.

"But he will not know," cried the fat king ingratiatingly. He had felt there was a hostile note in Savaran's word to the girl. "I have seen to that— very cleverly. In Kallat they think that she and three of her hunters have been destroyed by lions. I have sent garments of hers with blood on them and her broken gun to prove it, with men of my own to swear to it. Nobody saw my men take her but those three hunters. There is no one to make trouble."

"Except Savaran!" said Savaran.

"You are my man." snarled Sandra Boma, wincing but stubborn, "and she herself has spoken evil words of you. All Africa knows that. What does she matter to you?"

Eia Barbary gave a little shudder at that, but only from the way her hands gripped and by the stress of her bosom did she show the tumult in her heart.

"It is true, O Sandra Boma, that I am your man," said Savaran softly, "and through you I have greatness and power."

"All the riches you need are yours," the now beaming king cried. He snatched a chain of diamonds worth tens of thousands from his fat neck and flung it at Savaran's feet. "My diamonds, slaves, gold, lands— all you ask is for the asking. O Zavarani. What can Gongoda withhold from the greatest warrior of its history?"

Savaran looked at the girl, who looked up, caught the sardonic light in his eyes, and dropped hers shivering gently. She understood. This was his day.

"Zavarani is wise," cajoled Sandra Boma. "What is a woman beside greatness— whatever her skin?"

"Aye, what?" asked the fierce adventurer. "Yet Savaran is Savaran— a strange, mad fellow."

He said sharply in French "Stand up, Eia Barbary. Do as I order without hesitation." And in Swahili to the king: "Up, too, thou black snake, and walk before me.'

Sandra Boma shuffled on his divan and screamed viciously "Beware, white dog. I am king and my guards are about me."

"I am he who commands kings," cried the spider-spare man, and in a bound he was beside the fat monarch, had yanked him to his feet by his ear. There, holding his sovereign like a naughty schoolboy, Savaran faced the crowd— and so did the iron muzzle of his pistol.

There was a monkey-house babel of yells, over which Sandra Bomas' shrill screech to slay sounded in frenzy. Three gold decked guards lunged forward, spade-spears at ready; three flames spat from Savaran's weapon. Three gold-decked guards I thereupon began to yelp and hop about on one leg— the right leg. A bullet had snicked through the left calf of each. All there began to huddle backwards, recalling that, among his other virtues, Savaran was the deadliest pistol shot in Africa.

Savaran, splendid in exultance, swung the whimpering king about.

"March to the door, little fat slug," he said. "Eia, go before. You will find my horse outside. You will find the king's stables to the left of the great court. Ride to it, bring three good horses." He plucked a jewelled dagger from Sandra Boma's sash and handed it to her to cut the halters. "Call through that window there when you are ready."

He backed until he leant against the wall, the king in front of him. His great voice rose: "And you, Gongoda dogs, silence, and down on your knees all. He who rises, dies."

A wave of bodies sinking to the floor, a thick silence as the feasters obeyed. One lithe black did leap for the great door at the further end, and even as he leapt a bullet caught him in mid air and he died across the threshold. Silence again, more stark than ever, with Sandra Boma snivelling promise after promise of glory and wealth, for he feared death. The lean, fierce man paid not the slightest attention but kept his dark strong glance on the crowd, cowing it.

Then the sudden clatter of hoofs and the girl's voice calling, saying, "Shall I come in to help cover you? You can't possibly get out alone!"

She did not know Savaran. With a curt "No!" he snatched from the nearby wall one of the flaming torches. With a lightning gesture he touched to flame the gold tissue on Sandra Boma's over-swaddled body, then with a kick he sent the blazing king among his people.

While the whole mob fought to save the sanctity of their ruler's person from the flames Savaran was outside and into the saddle and, taking the halter of one of the spare horses, was off.

But he rode first to the king's stables, a crazy structure of thatch on poles and here and there he thrust the flaming torch into the thatch. As he heard the panic among the stabled beasts his face broke into its wolf-smile. Thanks to the war against Taruk, there were few horses in Gongoda City beyond the king's. It would be hours before their enemies rescued and pacified those brutes enough to pursue them.

They rode at a gallop, striking north.

Eia Barbary, swinging her mare level with him, had cried:

"Ride west to Taruk and your armies, you can save the day yet."

"No," he said curtly. "Their drum signals will warn the villages on the march. We shall be taken before the second day's ride is done."

"But— but," she panted, "you lose everything this way, ambition, empire. You can't do it."

"Savaran can," he grinned fiercely and struck spurs to flank. "It's his way."

Hurtling through the night, league on league, they came presently to the branching of caravan routes. She expected him to bear east; he swung north--still north--riding harder.

Again she was at his side, slowing him with a hand on his arm: "Go east." she cried, "to Kallat!"

"Listen," he said, halting, and the very cock of his head seemed to bring to life the throb, throb, throb of bush drums. "Kallat is a week's riding and the road is strewn with villages. There is no chance that way. Ahead the frontier is but a night and day's ride across an almost empty land."

"But— but," she gasped. "It is the Anacora frontier."

"It is," he said and lifted his horse into movement again.

"But Lazaga waits for you at Anacora!" she cried, grasping his arm.

"Eagerly!" he grinned.

She gave a little gasp that might, also have been a sob. "Will— will he keep his promise to— to hang you?"

"He'll try," grinned Savaran, and his whip flicked the flank of her mare and they were galloping again.

Night helped them through such villages as there were, for the natives were too confused by the dark to do more than yell and fire at them. At dawn Savaran halted under a hill. He climbed it and came down grinning.

"A village a mile ahead through the scrub, with the local watch committee spread out to stop us— and I am also hungry," he said. And while she wondered what he meant, his sword was busy on the bushes about them.

In a few minutes he had piled and tied branches on the backs of the horses that had carried them so far, and over these branches he spread on one his own vivid and unmistakable cloak and on the other his horse blanket. Leading all four horses, he went stealthily through the scrub beyond the hill until he reached an open space that the villagers must see. Then with stinging cuts of the whip he drove the burdened horses across the open space.

They heard yells from the natives ahead, the sounds of the chase, and Eia Barbary realised that at a distance it must look as though two horsemen had suddenly turned aside from the trail at the sight of the villagers and were trying to make their escape through the scrub.

When the whole mob of blacks had streamed into the bush in pursuit of the animals Savaran and Eia mounted the spare horses and rode into the village. The women screamed and the old men looked defiant until Savaran's eagle-gaze touched them, then they brought water for the horses and themselves and food.

The young men were already running back to the village when they set out again, but Savaran did not bother. There were no horses in the place.

They rode on hard and in silence and by dusk were at the Anacora river with safety in sight. Savaran wheeled along the bank until he found the rope bridge across the swift narrow stream, and it was there Eta Barbary swung her horse to bar his way... for at their coming there had sprung up an activity on the other side, dogaris and their Portuguese officers springing to arms at the approach of strangers.

'"Mr. Savaran-Philippe-what-ever your name is-you can't do this! It is prison or death across that bridge for you."

He sat his horse with that mocking fierceness of his that was also a charm.

"Savaran," he said, "never does anything by halves. I will see you safe into the hands of someone responsible."

There came a shout from the bridge. "So it is the boaster," a big voice yelled. "I have you in the end."

Lazaga was on the bridge. Lazaga inflamed with triumph. Lazaga with a pistol in each hand, while his bull voice shouted to his dogaris to line the bank with their rifles and shoot the dog Savaran if he dared try and ride off.

Savaran stiffened at that. Eia Barbary beside him, hand on his arm, lifted a face tremulous in its beauty.

"Escape, Savaran," she whispered. "You have given too much for a fool of a girl already. You must not give this. I couldn't bear it. See, I will ride between you and the bank until you are out of range, and they dare not shoot."

He looked at her, smiling grimly. "And you would do this for the ragged adventurer?" he said.

"Savaran," she said chokingly. "Savaran— I would give you my life."

And then it was she who caught his hand and lifted it, and pressed it to her lips with a fierce passion.

"Savaran," she said again, "ask me and I, too, will ride with you— a ragged adventuress— to conquer the world."

He sat back on his horse and laughed softly.

"Yes," he said. "You are of the kingly kind, even as I, but such beauty as yours is only fit for an established throne."

He bent forward and kissed her on the lips.

"So I had better go and win another."

With a laugh he wheeled his horse and galloped away along the bank into the night. The rifles cracked and cracked, but the only interest he showed in them was to turn in his saddle to wave a splendid farewell to Eia Barbary.

Savaran could never resist a good curtain.

______________

4: Pawn to Check a Queen

THE tall, gipsy-faced man asked fiercely:

"Why does this bwana mai ula minggi (much fat master) and the Missy send a dog of a Jerd to spy on Savaran?"

The captured negro squirmed. He feared his master, but this was Savaran; that wild adventurer whose exploits, mainly illegal, and reputation, wholly terrifying, were known to all Africa.

"Because of the hate they have for thee, O Eagle," he muttered.

'Why such hate?" the spidery man demanded.

"Lord of Lions, how can a base slave know? I am but the eyes to count your spears, the mouth to tell this Bwana Vardier what I see."

"Yet you know that he and this Missy hate me?"

"Does not death itself look out of their eyes when they speak of Zavarani?" the man said.

John Hyde, the young American who was collecting native antiquities under Savaran's wing, broke in: "Do you know this Vardier and the girl, Savaran?"

"Not from Adam― or Eve," the bizarre man grinned cheerfully.

What kind is this Missy?" he asked their prisoner.

"As lovely as the passion tree in bud." said the Jerd. "Her name is Athenie and she is the daughter of the Bwana Vardier's brother."

"I'd have remembered that combination if I'd ever made love to it." Savaran frowned.

John Hyde, with his youth and his race's disgust for such philanderer's boasts, said curtly. "But if they hate you. you must know them."

Africa is far too full of those who hate Savaran for me to meet them all," the lean man shrugged. How do these lice hope to trap a lion?"

"Would a white bwana tell a slave?" muttered the negro.

"Are a Jerd's eyes so dull that he cannot see which way the wind blows the reeds?" mocked the fierce man.

"We dare not see. The Bwana Vardier holds us in fear." the man said, and cringed under the flame of the eagle eyes. "It is true, O Lion. All I know is that thou art to be held at Pitichi-dai till vengeance is done to thee."

"Rubbish," John Hyde broke in. "How can he hold us since we take the steamer at once?"

There's more cunning in Africa than even a Yale education can perceive." grinned Savaran. "Is there a bul ama tari (government official) at Pitichi-dai?"

"There is only the Bwana Varnier, the trader," the Jerd said. "He is the whip and the law over all the Bitter River lands."

"You see, the sole white power in six days' march," said Savaran. He can do as he likes."

"He's still answerable to the Kruman government, though," the young man objected.

"Oh. I don't doubt our removal will be managed so neatly that there'll be no blame attached," said Savaran genially. We'll find it a pretty plot, innocent as sunlight and bedazzled with beauty."

"We'll find― You're never going to walk into that jackal's den?" gasped the young man.

"It's Savaran's way with jackals. Also, hates are always interesting, especially when mysterious and concerned with beautiful women." He turned with tigerish ferocity on the trembling Jerd.

"Zavarani spares your life, dog. But only thus: you return to the Bwana Vardier telling him only what you were sent to find. That is. that Savaran is on a peace safari, that he has no fighting spears, only Dumbi carriers, and that he behaves like a man suspecting no evil. Of what has passed between me and thee no word― Is it understood?"

"It is understood, O Pear of Elephants. Of my palaver with thee no word shall pass, by the Beard I swear it." the negro mumbled, then his eye gleamed: "Aie, and with my heart, for it may be that Zavarani will deliver the Bwana Vardier to the vultures."

"Vardier doesn't seem too popular." Savaran grinned as the Jerd escaped like a shadow into the hot jungle glooms.

"I don't see that that adds much pleasure to having our throats cut," John Hyde growled.

"My throat never had the habit, and yours," the keen dark eyes dwelt on the youngster's marked good looks, "is far too handsome to run such a risk."

"I guessed." Savaran said with fierce cheerfulness, "that beauty was to be the bait. He knows Savaran better than I imagined, this mysterious Vardier."

Leading the caravan next day the two men had stopped dead just short of a sun-drenched clearing. In that clearing was a girl, lovely and startling. A girl as ardent as a flame: young, yet with that ripeness in honey-gold splendour that told of Arab blood, but with, also, a sense of race and grace that suggested France. John Hyde gasped at her beauty, while even Savaran. connoisseur of women, thrilled at her young wonder, and frowned, too.

He found something elusively familiar in the fine cameo of her features.

She stood boldly in the sunlight fashioning a garland from the scarlet and blue bush flowers her lithe Jerd women brought her. Seen like that after days of jungle glooms, her loveliness was as instantly conquering as the stroke of a sword.

Savaran felt it so. Also he knew it was meant to be.

Perfectly stage-managed," he chuckled.

"You mean." John Hyde said thickly. "She purposely―?"

"Behold Athenie, whose charms are to lure Savaran to his doom," said Savaran, white teeth flashing in a Lucifer smile.

"That lovely thing! I can't believe it!"

"Even that does not prevent it being true. It's going to be entertaining - very."

The lean adventurer broke off to peer into the depths of the bush. "'Yes, very-for we can make it even more romantic. The hero will gain his introduction to the beautiful and innocent maiden by saving her life― all in the best tradition."

He bent swiftly, caught up a dead branch and flung it into the undergrowth. There came a coughing snarl, a crash of bushes and a tawny flash, a leopard bounded on to the trail ahead. John Hyde cried out in fear for the girl and the big cat turned snarling on him, only to meet the fierce eyes of Savaran, who advanced with clapping hands.

Intimidated by such daring the brute turned again and loped into the clearing. There the sight of Athenie and her woman halted it but this time dangerously. With a throaty roar it sank to spring, ready to fight a way to freedom with fang and claw.

It was a moment that drained John Hyde's heart of blood. The Jerd women screamed and vanished into the bush. Athenie did not scream, but stood spellbound, watching death crouching to spring on her.

John Hyde, sick with horror and anger at Savaran, fumbled with his rifle. He was a good shot, but he dared not fire for fear of killing the girl. As he fumbled the great cat leapt.

It hurled straight for the young breasts, doom incarnate. And at the moment it rose from the ground a shot crashed out from John Hyde's side. In mid-air the beast checked, twisted and fell clawing to the earth. Savaran was calmly returning his pistol to its holster as the young American swung on him.

"Shoot again, blast you!" he shouted. "He may get her yet."

"No need," grinned the lean man. "One shot is enough when Savaran fires."

John Hyde, furious that Savaran should choose such a moment to show off, turned to find it was so. The big cat lay stiff and still. Savaran, the finest pistol shot in Africa, had put a bullet through its brain.

Hyde had neither inclination nor opportunity for admiration; the girl was swaying. He reached her just in time to save her falling. She lay, he thought, like flowers and flame against his breast as he soothed her. In a minute her
young courage was trying to smile, and the tremulous beauty of it went to his head. It was then that a voice said:

"Pretty work, John Hyde. Even I, Savaran, could not have brought off a neater shot."

Savaran was at his side, watching the girl with his bright, sardonic eyes. And as he named himself the pliant body in John Hyde's arms became steel, while hate flamed in the ravishing face against his shoulder. It was only for an instant. The innocence, the girlishness returned, the soft, rich body sagged more helplessly and she smiled wanly― at Savaran. Yet she had betrayed herself, as Savaran meant her to. Even John Hyde no longer doubted that this girl was playing a siren's game for Savaran's undoing.

But Savaran was playing a game, too. By deliberately causing the leopard to attack her, he had placed her under obligation. Only he was making her feel that it was an obligation to John Hyde. John Hyde, knowing how easy it would be to fall in love with this amazing creature, felt he was being used as a pawn in a double game.

Athenie, now seemingly all dazzling gratitude, led them along the trail to her uncle's great trade compounds and bungalow on the bank of the Bitter River. And Vardier, the trader, the uncrowned king of Pitichi-dai, was also all smiles, far too effusive in gratitude for those who already knew of the black treachery in his heart.

A grotesque as well as malignant thing, Vardier. A stocky man, bald as a pink egg, his vast face sprawled down through many chins to merge into a ballooning chest and belly. And his head was as immobile as a block of wood. He had to turn the whole of his bulk to look at a man. His neck muscles had become bound together by an old wound.

He excused this disability at once, explaining that he had been shot through the neck many years ago. He even seemed to have a curious gusto in telling Savaran about it, if his slightly mocking glances at the spidery adventurer meant anything. There was a beautiful woman in the room, that was enough occupation for Savaran.

His frank admiration of Athenie filled the young American with sick fury. Even at a moment of danger this gesture-loving Francois Villon of the jungle had to play the lady-killer. But maybe John Hyde's bitterness arose from Athenie's attitude. She who was so young and lovely, whom he had held in his arms, had no eyes for him; all her femininity seemed aflame for the eagle-eyed man.

"So, you are really the great Zavarani," she cried, in a voice that would have warmed a stone. "The master fighter who subdues tribes and kings at a glance―"

"And women," Savaran said in his large way. "Those born to conquer do not stop at kingdoms."

John Hyde writhed. Couldn't the bemused fool see that the girl was only playing with him? Why, even Vardier was smirking over her easy triumph, saying with sly malice:

"He has a tongue in his head, this Savaran. It will be a pleasure for lonely people like us to have his company for a few days."

"We go on at once," Hyde said curtly. "I understand the river steamer turns back here for the coast about the 16th of each month."

He was at once aware of a tenseness. Even the girl broke off flirting with Savaran, with a catch of breath. Vardier said softly:

"That is so, M'sieur. But it desolates me to say the steamer will be badly delayed. Something happened to her engines; she is being repaired at Ibashie."

"Twelve days down the river," Savaran said genially.

"Is there anything about Africa the great Zavarani does not know?" said Vardier with a sneer in his eyes.

"Little, and ever that grows less, like my enemies," the lean man answered with a flourish for Athenie's sake. "What about canoes? I noted none on your beaches."

"There are none," Vardier smirked. "These animals, the Jerds, have gone, every one of them, to the Fishers' Feast on Likelemba Island and that, Zavarani will know, is five days up stream."

"Chance seems to have played a happy hand for the day of our arrival," Savaran smiled at the girl, whose face immediately changed its strained look to laugh back.

"Will a few days with us be too dull?"

"If they are too few― yes," laughed Savaran, his eyes unable to leave her face. "How few will they be?"

"Not more than seven, I fear," said Vardier, yet his fear seemed to make him quiver with an inner mirth.

With growing unease at that mirth, at the malignant spirit that seemed to be closing In on them, angry at the girl's almost wanton ogling of Savaran, John Hyde snapped:

"We can continue overland to Ibashie, I take it?"

"But certainly," Vardier leered. "There is a good trail, if you can persuade your Dumbi carriers to take it."

They had agreed to pay off their carriers here, and there is always trouble in persuading natives to extend a march, yet something in Vardier's voice suggested a more evil reason.

"You think they won't go on?"

"Who am I to say, M'sieur. But the Dumbi are a timid people and three days' march along your trail you must pass through the land of the Thonga."

Again there was a tenseness in the big, cool "trade" room. Something wicked seemed to come into it with the mention of the Thonga. John Hyde asked a question.

"Ask Zavarani. He knows more about the Thonga than any man," Vardier answered, and he seemed to take a special joy in saying it.

"They're the vilest black murderers in Africa," came the cheerfully savage voice of the adventurer. "Living devils to most men and especially to those who cross them. There is also a hate feud between them and me. They raided the women of a tribe friendly to me, and, being Savaran, a champion of women, broke them for it."

The girl looked at him sharply, startled by his words. Vardier, with a furtive glance at her, said j quickly: "That being so, it will not be to your comfort to risk capture by them."

Even Savaran shuddered at the suggestion. "I could pity my worst enemy if, incurring their anger, he fell into their hands," he said, his eyes grim on Vardier.

The wooden-necked monster shifted uneasily under his eyes, but said thickly: "Then it will be wisest for you to wait here until you can use the river, M'sieurs."

"Also much to my taste," grinned Savaran, and with a stride that was a flourish he returned to Athenie's side.

Like a lean and doubting Lucifer, the eagle-faced adventurer assessed the camping ground the trader had given them.

"A sweet devil, our Vardier," he said. "Plans to the most delicate detail. This camp, for example, so entirely suitable― and so cleverly remote. It will be obviously impossible for the valiant Vardier and his depleted staff to sally from his bungalow to aid us when we are murdered."

"Murdered!" cried John Hyde. "By whom?"

"By the Thonga, naturally," Savaran grinned.

"Good Heavens! You don't mean..."

"It's his plan of vengeance? Yes. Quite a noble conception; even that wart-hog could not wish for a greater joy in horror than what that black hell-scum will do

"Surmising! It is as plain as a printed book. Bush rumours told Vardier that Savaran, who, for some reason, he hates like death, was heading for Pitichi-dai. Yesterday that Jerd spy I released told him that not only was it true but that I was without fighting forces. This morning, then, Vardier sent away his steamer, and every canoe in the place.

"If you had eyes you would have noted that the beach is still fretted with marks of canoe bottoms that the dawn rain should have washed away had they gone before. Also, insects still scurry about searching for new nests in the wood-pile from which his steamer was hurriedly fuelled. Savaran was to find no transport here. Nor would even he persuade his Dumbi to march through the land of the
Thonga. More, our head 'boy' has already told me all our carriers will return home to-morrow. Nothing will hold them. They have already learnt that the Thonga are dangerously active. You grasp it? A sweet plan. Savaran will be marooned here without men to defend him when the Thonga attack. Even the Kruman Government will absolve Vardier for my death. How can he defend me with so few, when he, himself, has a woman to protect? It is a scheme that Satan himself would admire."

He paused, frowning.

"Yet there must be more in it than that. Even Vardier cannot trust the Thonga. He'll have arranged an emergency way of escape for himself and the girl. What, I wonder? That is one of the several things we must find out,
Johnny Hyde."

"But how can you be so sure he means to use the Thonga?"

"And yet you were present when I took such pains to find out!" the lean man mocked. "Didn't you hear how definite that hog was when I asked so innocently how long we must stay here?

"Seven days, he feared, feeling very clever. And he told us why. The Thonga are three days' march away. We are therefore to be detained long enough for his messenger to reach the Thonga and bring them back-with one day
margin for eventualities."

"You're right," John Hyde said thickly. "Yet knowing you, how could he expect to fool you?"

"By playing the girl. He knows Savaran's reputation. Savaran being Savaran and Athenie's tiger-lily of loveliness, he baited his trap well... Anthony, of Rome, also neglected certain elementary precautions for the sake of a lady, you remember, only fortunately I was forewarned by his Jerd spy."

"I can't believe it of her," the young man said. "Except that she really does hate you."

"Like double-distilled poison," Savaran admitted cheerfully.

"But why?"

"That is part of the riddle we have to solve. I think Vardier has lied about me and some woman― did you note her surprise on learning I was a champion of women? But whatever it is, that angel of slime has taught her well."

"And you don't even suspect what he has against you?"

"That secret is still with Allah. It links with the girl, maybe, for there is something about her I seem to know, yet that human baboon I do not know. Still, Savaran has scattered cause enough among the riff-raff of Africa to breed a hundred hates like this. Perhaps it was my pistol that put the bullet through his neck― I hope so."

"And what do you propose to do about our own necks?" the American asked tartly.

"Follow the maxim of the copybook― 'Love will find a way.' "

"Love," John Hyde glared. "You mean you and the girl?"

"Hopeless. I am Caliban with a dash of Satan to her. It is you who wins her young heart."

"I!" gasped the American. "Why, she won't even look my way."

"That is it― she fears to," chuckled Savaran. "Already you have carried the outer defences as I knew you would when I made you act Sir Galahad, rescuer of maidens."

"Curse you," raged the American. "I won't play a dirty game."

"What game does she play?" jeered Savaran. "Are you nobler than she?"

John Hyde winced, muttering: "That's no reason why I should descend to such levels."

"No," the lean man was acridly genial. "Then the Thonga will take you to their dark groves and tie you to a stake. Their ju-ju man, cunning from years of experience, will begin his slow work on you. It will be days before you die and you will be conscious all the time, for they are artists..."

"Shut up," shouted the young man. "If you can't see..."

"I haven't your noble disposition," Savaran shrugged. "Perhaps I had better win her love myself― it is a moment for an expert."

"Confound you," the young man raged. "Do you even use a man's heart against himself?"

"Repeatedly," the lean man smiled. "When it serves my ends, and, incidentally, saves a boy I like from a messy death."

THREE DAYS LATER John Hyde reported stiffly: "You are quite wrong about Athenie. She's as innocent as a child."

"A half-Arab woman of twenty is anything but in the nursery," mocked Savaran.

"In mind she is a child," the American insisted hotly. "If you'd sat with her as she weaves chaplets of flowers and eats candy like― like a jolly schoolgirl, you'd be convinced yourself."

"I am― more than ever," smiled Savaran. "Beware the Ancient East when it seems innocent, it is then most deadly. Tell me of her girlish prattle. Mainly of you, of course."

"She does find American life wonderful," John Hyde blushed.

"Any particular aspect of it?"

"Well, motoring and that sort of thing."

"Including, maybe, motor-boating?"

"Why, yes," John Hyde was a little startled. "She's asked a lot about speedboats, whether I find them easy to handle and so forth."

"The innocence of childhood'" chuckled the lean adventurer. "I hope you assured her you found all types easy?"

"Well, so they are," scowled the American. "What do you think you're getting at, anyway?"

"It tells me just why their Jerd houseboy took a canoe load of gasoline cans across the river at midnight last night."

"You mean that Vardier's got a motor launch hidden there?"

"I said he'd have an emergency way of escape. Not even he dare trust the Thonga. Besides, an honest trader forced to flee for his life will avoid suspicion of complicity in my death, and the river will be the safest for that; the Thonga are not a canoe tribe."

"Maybe," John Hyde frowned. "But where does Athenie's talk of motors fit in?"

"She has reacted to Savaran's plan," the lean man exulted. "She loves you, Johnny Hyde, loves you as passionately as she hates me. She is seeking a way to save you when I am due to die. Your being able to handle a motor launch may be that way. We shall see. Also we must And out exactly where that launch is hidden...  Hmm! Did she talk of anything else?"

"Little that matters," John Hyde said, shortly.

"Surely she did not entirely ignore me!" Savaran insisted.

"Well, no. Your reputation interests her. She has asked me many questions about your adventures."

"Any in particular?" The keen dark eyes were alert.

"Oh, any story does," John Hyde paused and looked up quickly. "But now you mention it, she does ask again and again if there were any on the French Desert Border... In the Tirsherifian, specially. She particularly wants to know if you have ever fought the celebrated Zend Arabs."

"The Zend Arabs!" the eagle face was suddenly keen, "and you told her―?"

"I have never heard you speak of them. Do you know them?"

"The Zend Arabs! Eye of Mahomet. I was their Sheyk and blood brother to El Melik, their king. It was many years ago yet the name brings all back. I and a French ex-major―" Savaran's eyes suddenly widened "Grace of Heaven― is that it?"

"You are remembering why they hate?" John Hyde cried.

"I wonder! I wonder!" the bizarre creature whispered. "But if it is so, Johnny Hyde, here is an experience startling even for Savaran... Truly we have much to find out."

But the days went by without discoveries. John Hyde sat with Athenie and sank deeper in love. Savaran idled in their now empty camp or about the country and learnt little. Vardier was too shrewd, and all feared for whispers to reach even Savaran.

On the sixth day of their stay they heard shooting from the trade house. Going there they found Vardier on the veranda firing at aspirin bottles that Athenie threw out over the river. Each time Vardier fired a bottle flew to pieces.

"I give an hour to pistol practice every week. With a dangerous tribe like the Thonga nearby, it is wise," the fat man said, his eyes mocking Savaran. "I hear you are something of a pistol shot, too. Athenie, my dear, a bottle for Zavarani."

"No need to waste a whole bottle," the lean man said in his large way. He took one of the small phials from a boxful on a chair, unscrewed its tin cap and handed that to the girl. She was surprised at the tiny mark, but catching Savaran's sardonic grin, her eyes clouded with hate and she flung the capsule into the sunlight with all her strength.

Even as it glinted through the air Savaran's pistol spoke and the shiny cap leapt, only to leap again as the second bullet struck it. Vardier's gross mouth fell open at such shooting and fear slid into his eyes. But in a moment he recovered and said:

"Aie, but that is marksmanship, better even than Vardier's. And yet you use the same make of pistol, the same calibre, even. See, Athenie, my cabbage, our weapons are identical, yet what a difference the genius of hand and eye can make." His words not only drew the girl's attention to Savaran's pistol but seemed to convey a message. Even to Hyde he said: "And you, M'sieur, use the same type? Yes, of course it saves trouble over ammunition. And you shoot as well as Savaran?"

"I can hit a man four out of five," Hyde told him grimly, "but beyond that I am no marksman."

"Ah, and I'd hoped we might have a match to enliven us," Vardier sighed. "Shooting at a distant mark, for instance. That is not so simple as snap shooting."

"I find it all one," boasted Savaran. "Yet it is a test. Particularly if the target is moving. Try bottles dropped into the current against the opposite bank of the river ."

Again Vardier shook with inward mirth as Savaran fell into his trap. With a flourish he ordered Athenie to tell a house boy to take a box of bottles across the river and let them float down with the stream. She was away a few minutes, and soon both men were shooting at bottles bobbing along under the distant bank.

A difficult mark. Indeed, in spite of his boasting, Savaran did badly at it. Vardier usually got his bottles within three shots, but the lean man had to fire four, five, even more times before he hit. And the more he missed and the further the bottles floated away, the more enraged he became. Soon he had recklessly blazed away all the ammunition he carried and Hyde's as well, and had to get more from Vardier. And as he did that Vardier's glee rose, and he threw many a sly glance at the girl.

Yet once his glee froze. It was when Savaran, furious at missing a bottle that had floated far down stream, not only loosed the whole of his magazine machine-gun fashion at it, but whipped up Hyde's automatic and did the same. So wild was his aim that most of the bullets raked a densely-bushed islet against which the bottle was floating. It was then Vardier stopped laughing and shouted thickly:

"Nom de chien! Careful! Stop shooting! That islet..." He gulped deeply as Savaran's bright eyes found his. "That Islet is taboo. There is― there is a Ju-ju there. If you hit that there will be a massacre ..."

"SO, THAT is where the motor launch is hidden― on that islet," John Hyde said later. "And that's the reason for your absurdly bad shooting, Savaran, and why Vardier was afraid. It wasn't a Ju-ju he thought you'd hole, but his one means of escape."

"You're coming along," the lean man laughed. "Yes, that was part of the reason why I let Vardier lure me into the shooting match. The Jerd with the gasoline paddled down towards the islet. I only had to rake the river bank for Vardier's anxiety for the motor-launch to give Its position to me."

'"What do you mean by 'part of the reason'?" Hyde asked anxiously.

"Ah, you haven't come along as far as that yet," Savaran mocked. "Got any ammunition left?"

"Only the clip Vardier loaded into my magazine from his store," the American said. "You blazed all ours away, you know."

"Enough to take a shot at that durra palm then, if you think you can hit it from here," the lean man said.

"Easily," said John Hyde, jerking out his pistol. But he did not hit the tree. Only a click came when he pulled the trigger. "A dud cartridge," he scowled.

"That's the rest of the reason. All your cartridges are duds," Savaran told him grimly, and, testing out his magazine, the American found it was true. "That's why he 'tricked' me into that shooting match, to get rid of all our ammunition," Savaran scowled.

"But that's absurd. We've a boxful here, he must know that;-"

Savaran did not answer― in words. He went to their ammunition box, tore open the top package, extracted a cartridge. When he broke the bullet from it, dirt and not cordite came out. All the cartridges in the box, their remaining stock, had been treated in the same way.

"A thorough-going gentleman, Vardier. He makes sure there will be no danger to him from my shooting-this time "

"This time? You know you have met him before? Who is he?"

"I begin to suspect, but we shall see."

"See," stormed the young man. "We have no time to see. The Thonga will be upon us tomorrow, and without means of defence we are doomed."

"That will depend on the girl."  "Athenie!" John Hyde was bitter. "She's as bad as he. Don't you see she's responsible for these dummy cartridges? Vardier called her attention particularly to the make and calibre of our weapons so that when she went out she could arrange with a house boy to
substitute this dud stuff in our ammunition box. And she hates you."

"But not you," Savaran said. "That is why she will warn us."

"Absurd. You have no grounds―"

"Every ground," the sardonic fellow mocked. "Copy book maxims never err. She loves you― love will find a way."

AND Savaran, as usual, was right. At mid-day next day, the fateful seventh day, Hyde, coming from a tête-à-tête with Athenie, reported:

"I don't know whether it means anything but she― er― Athenie specially wants me to meet her alone at that clump of poinsettias beyond the 'trade' house at nine tonight."

"How wonderful are copybooks― and love," Savaran said, his dark
eyes gleaming. "And also Savaran. The Thonga are to attack tonight."

"How can you be so sure?"

"It is obvious. These poinsettias are opposite the islet where their motor-boat is hidden. Easy to get you to it before the attack begins."

"Does she imagine I'd leave you in the lurch?" Hyde cried.

"She is probably not so childish as that. The very position of the poinsettias suggests she has a plan." Savaran shrugged, and as the American protested, added, "My dear imbecile, she is half Eastern, she'll have a dozen ways of carrying you off against your will. You have a habit of sharing her candy for one. Well, she only has to dope that, get a house boy to canoe your insensible carcase to the motor-boat and the thing is done."

"Do you think I'd give her the chance?" the young man blazed.

"No― you're a young fool after Savaran's own heart," the lean man grinned. "Also there'll be no need. This is where Savaran acts. We call on Vardier at 8.30."

VARDIER, packing a valise, looked up into Savaran's grim face and knew his plot was found out. Also, Savaran left no doubt of it:

"You mean to be well away in your motor-launch before the Thonga start in on me?" he said with acid geniality.

Vardier came upright, his stiff necked stare on the eagle-face, his hand on his pistol. There was no fear in him; he was still sure he was master of the situation. Only the girl had a doubt; she sprang forward with a cry of anger.

"The prospect of my escape pains you, Mam'selle?" smiled Savaran. "Might one ask why?"

She stood before him flaming hate.

"Aie, you'll know why," she cried fiercely. "My mother was Khadra, daughter of El Melik of the Zend Arabs― does that tell you?"

"It tells me what your loveliness taught me to suspect," he smiled. "But it is no reason for hate."

"Liar!" she stormed. "Or has so much foulness bade you forget how my mother was carried off by a slaver, a white slave raider; that my father was killed trying to save her... and that my mother died after her capture, leaving me..."

"So― she died," Savaran's tone was soft. "You are sure of that?"

"Of course, she died," Vardier snapped. "The march was too much for so delicate a creature."

"Ah," Savaran whipped in, "so you know that― what I have always wanted to know."

'But you must know― you were that slaver," Athenie cried suddenly bewildered.

"Either that― or you have been fed on lies," Savaran said. "We may learn that from others. What was your father's name?"

"But Vardier," the girl faltered, "like my uncle's. They were brothers."

"And you think that any kin of that wart hog could have fathered you?" Savaran suddenly flamed scorn. "Or could have been chosen by Khadra, daughter of kings and the loveliest flower of womanhood I knew? Pah! Look at him and see the lie in his low-born grossness. Your father was a great gentleman, Henri de Veoux, Major of France, gallant as only you'd expect from your mother's choice― and my sword brother in many a danger."

The scalding passion of the man, the truth his words exposed, carried the girl. She stared wide-eyed from him to Vardier, shrank from the latter, cried huskily: "Then, why am I here? Who is he? Why did he make me hate you?"

"I will tell you," Savaran rasped. "There were two Frenchmen, brothers, the scum of the earth. Their name was not Vardier then, but Fulon― and they were slavers. Your grandfather, my good friend El Melik, caught them once, had them both flogged and branded on the shoulders as felons. That is why in revenge they carried off your mother and you, a child of two, from a hunting camp. We chased and fought them, but we were too few. Your father was shot and they got away. That is why you are here."

"You are sure?" the girl breathed.

"I will prove it by showing you the brand on Fulon's back," Savaran said genially and advanced on the gross trader.

The man who called himself Vardier had listened with mockery on his face. He made no attempt to interrupt, he was sure of his triumph. Now as Savaran approached, he calmly drew his pistol, and, still smirking, said:

"Stand, Savaran. What matter if I am Fulon, the girl has served my vow to pay you back well. Yes, I am Fulon. Yes, I and my brother did carry off El Melik's daughter and her child in revenge for the branding and the flogging. The mother died, but I kept the brat for me for the use her beauty might be. It has, indeed, been more useful than I ever dreamed, for it has trapped you, Savaran, whom I swore to punish."

"Then it was I who put that bullet through your neck," the lean man smiled.

"Aye, you... and you killed my brother, too, in the fight about that hunting camp. You did not know us, we wore Taureg veils, but I knew you and what your pistol had done, and I have nursed the memory all these years. And now I pay back! Yea, and better than I hoped, for the daughter and the granddaughter of the man you loved will also stay behind to meet the Thonga. Perhaps even you can savour the completeness of my revenge."

"Full confession, Pulon, is an excellent thing for a man about to die," Savaran laughed, and walked closer.

"Stand back," Vardier mouthed. "Don't hope that I will shoot you dead― that would be too easy. It'll be through the thigh, Savaran, so that you will not miss a moment of the Thonga's methods... Stand! Stand, I tell you!"

Savaran, smiling like Lucifer, refused to stand. He walked so steadily on to Vardier that the man was forced to back away, point his gun at the lean man's thigh and pull the trigger.

And then he gasped. For all that came from his pistol was a hammer click. He jerked the cartridge free, then, since Savaran was on him, jerked the weapon up and fired point blank at Savaran's chest. And again all that happened was a click. He took one look at the weapon and uttered a great cry of fear.

"My pistol, as you see," Savaran jeered. "I was suspicious of your kindness in reloading mine after that wasteful shooting match, so I effected an exchange. This, Fulon, is your pistol, loaded as you loaded it. Would you like to give me an opportunity of testing the cartridges in it― say in the thigh?"

The gross man only shrank away. He knew that there were no dummy cartridges in his own pistol. And as he cringed in fear from the cold light in Savaran's eyes, the lean man motioned to John Hyde to bind him.

As the motor-launch shot down stream an hour later, the forest on the Pitichi-dai bank began to trill with strange bird-calls.

"That's quite beautiful," John Hyde said to the girl whose hand he held. "What birds are those?"

"The Thonga," Savaran told him from the steering wheel. "Duck to cover."

A moment after he spoke a rocketing rifle shot and a silver flight of arrows cut across the moonlit water.

"They took us for Vardier," Savaran said as, crouching, he steered them out of range. "A pity we did not leave him behind to receive such guests."

"Don't worry," John Hyde called from the cabin. "We've evidence enough to get him a life sentence from the Kruman Government... you mustn't be so cold blooded, Savaran."

"That to me, who has destroyed this whole business of hatred with love..." the bizarre adventurer grinned, and, making a long leg, closed the door of the cabin― so that love could still find its way

_____________________

5: Song Of The Siren

EVEN FOSS, prepared for something like this,  halted with a cry at the jungle edge. Even Savaran, for whom Africa had few surprises, stared startled. For their part the handful of askaris of the caravan huddled together, frankly scared.

Astonishing sight enough! To come upon a fore-and-aft schooner sailing apparently through the grass of a green field would be a surprising freak anywhere. To come upon such a sight upon emerging from the hot glooms of the African bush hundreds of miles from any civilisation, hundreds of leagues from an ocean, was― well, as Foss put it: 'Gosh. It gives me the spookies!"

There it sat as though tied up snug to some New England string piece, a natty craft, sails neatly furled, and, from this distance, every spar and running line in good order: "As though just about to sail off on a deep sea voyage amid the shades," Foss said in a voice thick with awe.

And all about her, making her very presence uncanny, was that clean sweep of green grass, and about the grass was the sentinel circle of the massive and brooding African jungle thick as a wall, save just beyond the schooner. There an abrupt and lonely hill reared jagged, steep and dark against the brassy sky― a rough and savage hill well fitted to move dark African minds to fear.

"The Hill of Dread," the headman of askari muttered, teeth chattering.

"This is an evil place, O Lion. See on the trees the Ju-ju taboo."

Savaran saw on trees all round the clearing those signs, frightful and obscene, which warn black men that they are on ground made holy by the presence of the wickedest breed of demons; also that death accompanied by ail the artistic refinements of African torture waited on any trespass.

"Got to make things snappy," said Foss anxiously. "These local Leppa-Leps have nasty habits. Come on, Savaran."

He began to stride quickly across the sun-blazing grass, but at the tenth step halted with a cry that was edged with fear.

A thin, clear voice as penetrating as fine steel had abruptly cut through the thick and malignant stillness of that bated place. A voice chanting from nowhere; keen, unseen and uncanny. It rose and fell to a measured beat. It seemed to be striking straight at them so that only the fierce eyes of Savaran held the huddled askari from flinging away their arms and bolting. Then, quite as abruptly as it had begun, it shut off.

The stark silence of the place seemed more fearful when it stopped, the very sunlight seemed black with demon threats, and they became shiveringly aware that no living thing, beast or bird, stirred about this baleful clearing.

Foss, loose at the knees, mopping his face, glared at the schooner they had come so far and through such dangers and difficulties to find.

"Curse Africa." he snarled. "You never know what hell's mixture it'll serve up to you next."

"Could you place that voice?" asked Savaran, fierce eyes frowning.

"Do I hobnob with devils?" growled Foss. "No negro throat ever loosed a sound like that or knew a song like that."

"Yet." muttered the lean adventurer. "Where have I heard it before?"

"In your nursery, maybe." snarled Foss, his eyes on the dark. Lucifer face. "Don't the blacks say you are the son of Satan himself?"

"I wonder!" the strong white teeth in the gipsy face flashed their starling smile. "And since I am Satan's son and darling of demons, this place is home from home for me. Come on."

"Oh. I'm with you," said Foss, but with an effort. "That's Parton's ship, a white man's ship, and I'm a white man― but well have to kick these Kanur boys across to it."

"No need." grinned the spider spare man. "When Savaran says the word his men would storm the very clinkers of hell."

They did not want to, for a dread more terrorising than death was in their hearts, yet under Savaran's fierce eyes they did as most black men did, cringed and obeyed.

As they crossed the strange, still green paddock towards the schooner.

Savaran, master of tongues as of most things, asked the askari head man: "Whence came that singing?"

"From the Hill of Dread, O Tamer of Kings," shuddered the negro. "It is the god house of the Leppa-Lep, a place where no human feet may tread save, in season, Mbam'ala, the ju-ju man. his priests, the vestal women and―" the eyes rolled fearfully in the lamp-black face― "the victims of the sacrificial stake. There be terrible demons in that hill. O Zavarani. and my belly is sick at the thought of them."

"There is, also, someone who sings a song I seem to have heard― and I think it is a woman." said the eagle faced man. and his eyes gleamed; for woman as much as war was a force that stirred him to his most sublime extravagances.

Foss, ahead, shouted back in his relief at finding one material explanation among the mysteries of this fear-crawling place.

The weird presence of a deep-sea schooner in the middle of a field was a simple enough affair after all. An arm of water, so thick with tropic scum that at first it had been difficult to distinguish it from the grass, wound out of the jungle from round the base of the Hill of Dread.

"A swamp channel." Foss said.

"All this country's cut up with 'em. It probably leads down to the Lilekemba River, and that, as you know, falls into the Rovuma... and we know that Parton was dodging the Germans thereabouts when he vanished in 1914."

He peered across the scummy channel at the schooner.

"And by the living Mike he dodged 'em good― look at the deck. Savaran! Piled up! The ivory's still aboard." He flung his arms up in a tremendous gesture of triumph.

"We've done it Savaran." he shouted. "There's our fortune waiting for us. My life in Paris and Monte Carlo, your Empire of Middle Africa. Ours but for the porterage. We've won!"

He stopped. The spider-lean man was  standing stiff, his fierce face listening with that ferociously genial smile that was a sign of danger in the air. And Foss listened too with a blanching face.

From beyond the Hill of Dread came the faint mutter-mutter of drums, bush drums calling through Africa the alarm.

"The Leppa-Lep are broadcasting our arrival." grinned Sa varan.

In forty minutes the little force was in command of the empty vessel, their one machine-gun set up behind a breastwork on the high deckhouse, the box of Mills grenades placed handy, half the askari lined along the bulwarks ready for anything, and the other half already cleaning quarters and cooking food. That was Savaran the soldier at work. It was safety first before gloating for him.

Besides, Foss was doing the gloating.

The lean adventurer found him in the captain's cabin, a chamber still strangely shipshape and tidy despite the work of tropic insects. Foss was at the desk reading ship's papers and whooping for joy.

"It's Parton's schooner all right," he shouted. "All the papers are clear. They were in the safe there, bug proof. The key was in the lock, but they hadn't been disturbed― queer that. Nothing, in fact, has been touched, nothing looted― it's darn queer, eh?"

"The devils of the Hill of Dread are good protectors," Savaran grinned, taking a stand by a port-hole from which he could watch the shore. "What have you found?"

"Everything!" cried Foss, overlooking devils in his triumph. "The ship's chock full of ivory, as that old Hzramut pedlar told me.

"From the piles on deck lt's all here, too― queer again, but that don't matter. Parton himself lists seven thousand tusks. All first-chop 'A' ivory, too, my son, None of your Ruba 'Aj' or Nuss 'Aj' stuff, prime fifty-dollar ivory every tusk, and seven thousand tusks, my boy.... It's a killing!"

"It doesn't appear to be the only one," said the lean adventurer with his grim smile. "What became of Parton?"

"Oh, Parton," grunted Foss, as though humanity scarcely mattered before such a vision of wealth. "I haven't got that yet. I checked up on the ivory first. But as far as I can see―" He flicked back pages of what was obviously a diary. "He's been collecting ivory for years, and, as that old Hazramut whispered to me back in Dar es Salaam, he seems to have found a small elephant graveyard, too.... Having cached his stuff he went to the coast for this schooner. Had to transport it this way, it seems, because it was autumn '14 and the War had begun. He didn't dare risk a caravan with the Germans on the move and the tribes up, you see.... Seems, too, he got to the Rovuma at a bad time. The German patrols were all over the place and he was shot at several times. In fact, only his auxiliary engine saved him from capture once.... It got so hot that he decided to dodge into little known rivers and lie low until the going was better.... There are days and days of log bearings here you can look at if you like... but I guess we can see pretty plainly how they got here."

"They?" was all Sa varan's comment.

"Oh," said Foss uncomfortably. "Parton had his family with him. They ran the schooner with three black boys."

"What family?" asked Savaran, his eyes narrowed fiercely on the Hill of Dread.

"Oh," muttered Foss. "There was his wife, an' two sons, youngsters from the sound o' things, and what he calls the baby― a girl, I guess; he writes or her as Tess, Tessy or Therese...." The thick and wicked stillness of the place seemed to settle down on them with so tangible a weight of horror as he spoke that Foss ended in a husky whisper: "I guess they're all dead."

"And hope it― knowing the Leppa-Lep," said Savaran softly. "Does that diary give any hints?"

You could hear Foss turning the pages in that dread silence, then he said in a tight, edgy voice: "Yes...  here's the last passage but one...  'A woman is singing again on the Hill of Dread. It means blood sacrifice... God save us all. Mary, Mother of God, protect me and mine...'"

He stopped, shuddering. Savaran said in a voice with a new, hard
decision in it: "What's the last passage?"

"They'd come for them," said Foss hoarsely. "Listen:  'Jargon the king, Mbam'ala the witch doctor and his devils are on the bank beside the schooner. It is the end. God have mercy on our souls.' "

"Jargon, the king, Mbam'ala and his devils," said Savaran quietly. "All here!"

"What's that?" cried Foss.

"Look!" said the lean man.

Foss looked through the porthole and cried out again.

Lined up on the bank beside the schooner were more than a hundred tall, thin, repulsively ugly and fearsomely silent black men. In the centre sat a squat and evil grey pate on a high gold and ebony stool of state― Jargon, King of the Leppa-Lep. At his elbow was a thing all dangling bones, snake skulls, amulets and painted face, who nursed in the crook of his steel-wire arm the great half-moon blade of a sacrificial knife― and that was Mbam'ala, the ju-ju man, whose name was terror and whose power of life and death was greater than any king's. And behind him was a demon-masked rank of satellite priests.

"Bluff him, Savaran," cried Foss, crouching in cover as the limby adventurer stood straddled and four-square on the top of the deck-house, listening to the sly and ominous inquiries of Jargon, the king, as to why white strangers had ventured not only into his country, but on to the most sacred ground of his tribe. "Bluff him, Tell him we've a right to come here and collect this ivory. The Portuguese never venture near the brute, so he'll know nothing about the law of it."

"Savaran is quite as good a liar as any slippery trader," the fierce man
mocked. "Also kings are his sideline." He leant comfortably on the deck-house rall. "O king," he said genially, "big words do not disturb me, for I am Savaran before whom rulers and tribes habitually wither."

Jargon, the king, shifted uneasily on the throne that looked rather like a clumsy edition of a quick-lunch counter stool. Even he, remote and terrible over his kind, had heard whispers of this bizarre war maker and his genius.

"This is a bad thing you have done, O Zavarani. This wind-canoe which you desecrate with your unpurified feet is set apart for the great and angry spirit of the Hill of Dread. Blood and death must appease his wrath else I and my people die. Thus said the demon through Mbam'ala his mouth."

"I also have a demon," grinned Savaran. "He is the power by which white men smite. And thus he saith through the mouth of Savaran his sword: the wind-canoe belonged to a white man and to white men it must be restored and all that is in it, else there shall be woe on the Leppa-Lep and their king shall have no throne. And my demon also asks: What have you done with the white men of this wind-canoe, Jargon the king?"

Jargon shifted still more uneasily. Remote he lived, yet he had heard of punitive expeditions and the vengeance of white men for white men killed.

"They died," he said sullenly.

"All?" Savaran's voice was a sword edge. "The woman and the sons as well― and the little Missy?"

"All dead," the king continued. "They broke the taboo and the spirit of the Hill claimed them." The ju-ju man spoke again and the royal and wicked face brightened. "That is the law. And it is also the law that all that belongs to strangers who die thus goes to the demon of the Hill." "These are not our laws," said Savaran, serenely ignoring the fact that he was there to loot that ivory. "With us no black man, king, priest or demon, may take from whites what belongs to whites. And thou knowest well, O Jargon, that many strong kings have gone down in the dust and their tribes have been eaten up for disobeying that law."

But Jargon was already snapping orders. His bodyguard leapt about him, screening him with their great oryx shields. At the same moment thirty picked braves advanced on the schooner in mass, shield locked to shield in a wall.

Savaran did not seem excited. With his elbows unmoving on the rail, his eagle grin unabashed, he cried grimly:

"O men of Leppa-Lep, why be so eager for death and everlasting damnation?"

The phalanx hesitated before that sardonic unconcern, and Savaran said quietly to the hidden Foss: "Ready with that Mills bomb."

Mbam'ala shouted and two of his  devil-masked priests sprang to lead the braves. Mbam'ala shouted again: "On, men of the Leppa-Lep, no arrow, spear, or white man bullet can kill you now― on and kill!"

"Savaran slays not with bullets but with the thunderbolts of heaven," cried the lean man, still not stirring, and, as the braves made a compact forward rush: "Let 'em have it, Foss."

Foss, whatever else he was, had been a bombing sergeant in the War. He held the grenade to the exact second before lobbing it quick and true into the pack of warriors. It exploded amid the very thickest of their bodies and about waist high, and its effect was terrible. When the smoke, confusion and the dust made by the stampeding feet of half his remaining forces had cleared, Jargon, the king, looked at the shambles which had once been his storm troops, and then at Savaran, who still leant savagely sardonic and unmoved on the rail.

He was very much afraid, Jargon. A Mills bomb was a new death palaver to him.

"Thou hast shown thy might and the might of thy demon, O Zavarani," he muttered. "Take what belongs to white men and go in peace."

When Savaran came back from sounding the channel― two of the schooner's boats were reasonably watertight Poss met him heady with joyful
greed. "It's all here," he cried. "Every tusk of Parton's seven thousand is aboard and I never saw such prime ivory. Fifty dollars will be the minimum. You and I have our hands on big money at last, old campaigner. Gosh, it's dreams come true, your empire, my villa, on the Riviera-all ours for the taking."

"And the getting away," said Savaran grimly. "You have had time to find out whether the schooner will float, I hope."

"She'll float― or just about; her bottom's still sound enough. She'll carry us and the ivory to where we can cash in, if you can get us to clear water― can you?"

"It'll take work," said the lean adventurer. "There are shallow patches to be passed but the mud's mere swamp slime. The auxiliary engine's no good, I take it?"

"No good, and no petrol," said Foss. "But I can make the capstan work and I've found a good wire cable in the chain-locker. If we get that ahead to the trees we can manhaul her, eh? It shouldn't take long."

"No," said Savaran, "not more than a week."

"A week!" Foss shivered and his scared eyes glanced at the sinister hill behind which the Leppa-Lep king-town stood. "A week, that's a darn long time."

"Maybe it'll be longer," grinned Savaran. "It'll take us that to get to the broader channel beyond the jungle; after that it will depend how free the river is behind the Hill of Dread."

"These devils have got my nerves all jangled," shuddered Foss. "I feel like getting out to-night."

"You could-in those boats," the lean man jeered, "but you wouldn't be able to take a stick of ivory with you."

"And, by Heaven, we're not going to lose that," cried Foss. "Not now. Not for any Leppa-Lep ju-ju man. Can we stand them off for a week?"

"We ought to," frowned Savaran. "Mbam'ala is the danger, but he's lost 'face' and it'll take him time to get this power over the tribe back. Before he does and can raise those black devils against us we should be clear― that is, if the river beyond  the Hill is easy."

"We ought to find out about that at once," cried Foss.

"Are you volunteering?" the lean man mocked.

"Me!" Foss went green. "I'd― I'd only make a mess of it. You've got a genius for these things, Savaran."

"I thought I might have― and for other things," jeered the eagle-faced man. "I'll go tonight. And I want to find out why that song seemed familiar, anyhow."

"The song we heard from the Hill of Dread?" cried Foss abruptly anxious. "The song the woman sang? You just can't go monkeying with dynamite like that, man! That hill's triple-distilled sacred. If you break that taboo there'll be no holding them then.... And these ju-ju women they're sort of Vestal Virgins. They're as strict as death about them. Why, even for one of their own men as much as to look on them is death..."

"Gives them the double allure of mystery and terror, doesn't it?" said Savaran.

"For heaven's sake drop it," cried Foss. "It's smash, man. Not even our Mills bombs will stop them if you stir up a religious war like that. They'll go after our blood blind, bald-headed and raving and-and there are three hundred thousand dollars of easy money to share, Savaran. All that you aim for, all that you've dreamed, is in your hands at last. Don't chuck it all away for a fancy."

"There is, of course that," said the lean man with his ironic frown. "And yet-there's something that calls to Savaran in that song and the woman who sang it."

Savaran worked his boat through the jungle and right round the Hill of Dread that night. In the heat-stagnant darkness, full it seemed of a crawling evil, he crept by the sprawled and smelly king-town of the Leppa-Lep unobserved. There was, in fact, no one to watch him.

The tom-toms were throbbing from the base of the Hill of Dread and in the blood-red flames of fires he saw massed black men watching a grotesque and terrible figure mowing and jerking and screeching before them.

Mbam'ala was already at work trying to recreate that religious fervour for murder which Savaran's Mills bomb had so badly blunted.

Savaran, laughing his savage, soundless laugh, slipped by and found his best hopes realised. Beyond the Hill and the town the swamp backwater joined a considerable stream that flowed free, deep and with a steady three-knot
current towards some mightier African river. Let them but warp and pole the schooner into that stream and it would carry them to safety with no more effort on their part than steering.

In a week they should be away and safe with their riches and dreams secure. Savaran saw the best chance of his life all but fulfilled. He was returning exultant, already planning how, with the aid of the Mattabarri, a poverty rowelled but warlike people, he might make a good beginning in empires, when he heard the singing again.

Clear and near under a shoulder of the Hill of Dread that hid her from Mbam'ala's ju-ju palaver, the girl was singing again. Clear and eerie and profound that silver voice that never came from a negro throat floated across the night water.

"Make stroke! Make stroke!" the askari headman yelped in panic. "Pull dogs-devils be out to-night."

But Savaran cried fierce and soft: "Pull in close to the singer. Quiet, dogs. Put me ashore... and haul off to the far bank until I signal for you to take me off again."

He landed. He was sure the singer must have watched him, yet felt
she had not run. His bush cunning, his courage, his discipline were never held tighter in hand, for he knew that he was on taboo ground and that a spear from the night might spit him any moment. Yet, when he had watched the boat away, he deliberately began to sing, too.

He sang softly, using the tune the singer had used, only his words were true words, where hers had been meaningless sounds.

"Ave maria stella,

Dei Mater alma "

he sang, and then even he lost himself in a jumble of sounds. He, too, had forgotten what followed, for he, too, had not sung those words since childhood.

He stopped singing. There was a white, slim glimmer in the bush ahead of him, a frightened voice crying in Leppa-Lep: "White Lion! White man! Don't kill― I am white!" Then the voice broke and said in faltering English the only words she knew to prove her blood: "Good night, Dads! God bless you!"

And Savaran was at her side, holding her tight, something thick in his throat as he muttered: "You poor kid. You poor darn kid... Hold up. Everything will be right now. Savaran is here!"

Parton's daughter. The baby, the Tess of that pitiful diary. Parton's daughter alive― all that the Leppa-Lep had let live.

She told him about it, whispering fearfully in the thick, tropic darkness with
the throb of the bush drums and Mbam'ala's blood howls as a fitted background. But luckily it was not much she could recall, for she had been no more than four or five when that horror of horrors had overwhelmed her family.

She recalled but little of the voyage of the schooner, and only that because men had fired at them now and then and they had been so frightened that they had prayed together every night in the cabin that they might escape dangers, and sung hymns, too; that was how "Ave maria stella" had become bitten into her mind. She recalled the gladness of her father and mother at finding the green place under the Hill. How that gladness had changed to fear.

She remembered an abrupt uproar of shooting and fighting on the deck above her head and then a rush of black men Into the cabin where she lay... how she had screamed... how her mother had stood against her bunk shooting until she sank under the spears.

She had been reared with other Leppa-Lep children until she was about seven or eight, not unhappily, for since she was destined for great things care was taken of her. After that period she was taken by Mbam'ala to the caves in the Hill of Dread, where the Seven Young Unwedded and the Seven Old dwelt as priestesses to that abominable shrine. There, with other girl children, she was trained in ritual dancing, singing and the like in the Outer Caves in preparation for the day when she would replace one of the seven younger vestals as priestess of the more hateful rites in the Inner Cave. Only her part was to be a greater one than any of her companions.

"In five moons from now," she told Savaran, "Mivambe, the eldest of the seven old women, will be given to the fire, as is the custom. Then Irarna, the first of the Young Virgins, will move up into her place and I am to be the First of the Virgins at once, without the usual progress, step by step, through the Seven-for I am white and Mbam'ala says I have great Ju-ju In me..... And as chief of the seven I shall have terrible things to do and must be present at the killings... and I fear."

She clung to Savaran, slim, shaking, pitiful and very young, begging him to take her away. White blood rebelling against black infamy in spite of black upbringing, in spite of the fact that she went as naked as any black save for the
few clinking ritual beads upon her ghostly white slimness. White blood was passionate for rescue, and Savaran, being Savaran, just naturally swore that he was here for nothing else but to save her from this Infamy. "Tomorrow! Tomorrow night without fall Savaran will come for you. Wait you for me here at the same hour."

And full of sardonic mockery at his chivalry, he freed himself from her arms and signalled his boat.

The sweating men strained groaning on the capstan, the schooner heaved and slithered in the mud as the hawser strained taut; heaved and slid sideways as before, but not forward.

The askari hanging over the bows and prodding about In the mud called back: "Old mango roots. Big stuff. Take time and time and time to cut him away."

Foss, red-hot with rage and sweating like a pig, flung down his capstan bar and snarled at Savaran: "We can't do it. Not even you can work miracles."

The lean adventurer turned his twisted smile to the too swift evening sun.

"No, I've got us over two mud banks instead of one― nearly three. Three days' work in one. If I had five hundred men working in the channel and on ropes I'd have done it... but, well, you're right, even Savaran has limitations it seems."

"We've cut down time, anyhow," said Foss with forced cheerfulness.

"It'll still take two-three days," sighed the lean man.

"Well, we've got those days," growled Foss challengingly. "You've said so yourself. No need to work us to rags."

"No need," said Savaran grimly. "No more need at all..." He turned to the askari. "Eat well and sleep, O men, you have a hard night
before you."

Foss blazed rage:

"Curse you, Savaran, do you mean to go on with this rescue?"

"Savaran has given his word."

"But, by Heaven, it's utter folly," shouted Foss. "Sheer madness. Chucking away half-a-million In Ivory for a whim; wealth you've sweated for, risked your life for... And all your dreams-are all those to be flung away for the sake of
a chit of a girl?... It's crazy madness..."

"My heart's savage with thinking of it," frowned the lean man. "I even curse the girl that stirs this folly In me― and as I curse I hear this"― he hummed "Ave maria stella"

"A white child singing in a black land the hymn I used to sing as a child, Foss. And, hearing it, Savaran, who has broken kings and shattered tribes, whose ambition is of the stars, becomes well, the utter darn fool you see before you. Queer what flaws Nature serves out with greatness."

"By Heaven, you're past argument," raved Foss. "Won't anything make you see sense? What about the danger? These Leppa-Lep devils will go blood raving if you touch this sacred woman of theirs. Nothing can save us from them then."

"As to that," said Savaran, always fiercely cheerful under danger, "what is a little risk beside Savaran's word? The boats will move off an hour after dark."

"You've made up your mind to double cross me then?"  Foss shouted.

"Not at all," shrugged Savaran. "I'm leaving you all the ivory."

"Leaving me in the lurch, you mean."

"You can have one of the boats, half the askari, and I think you'd better have the machine-gun and bombs too."

"And you'll march in on the king and all his army with bare fists, I suppose," snarled Foss. "Curse you, you know I can't let you down even if I had nerve enough to stay."

"White blood is a noble but unprofitable bond, isn't it?" grinned the lean man. "Then you'll take your place in command of the second boat an hour after dark. I rather I expected you would."

There was no more hope for the ivory or his dreams. Savaran had feared that from the first, even though he had tried to work miracles. There seemed, even, little hope of their lives when they came in sight of the king-town of the Leppa-Lep.

The great fires were burning again close under the Hill of Dread. The bush drums were throbbing. Silent, massed faces, blood-red from the flames, stared at Mbam'ala as he pranced and moved once more in the wide, cleared ring round which the tribesmen squatted. Only now Mbam'ala was not trying to win them through speeches, but through religious blood frenzy.

He was not alone now in that clearing.

There was another figure with him, more dreadful, more lonely. A single, slim figure bound helpless to the tall thick post in the centre of the clearing-the sacrificial stake.

A frail slip of a figure, white in the fire glare and unmistakable. Even as Savaran stood up in his boat, his steel-wire figure dreadfully tense, his fierce eyes glittering, Foss cried from the boat alongside: "My Heaven, the girl! The swine are going to sacrifice the white girl."

Savaran, standing like an angel of death, said nothing. His iron glances were studying the hideous scene, the approaches, the chances, the condition of the girl herself.

There was no doubt it was she; her white skin shone like a flame amid all that blackness. Someone had seen her talking to a man― and a white man at devilish that― last night as she had feared, and the witch doctor had seen in that offence his chance of stirring up the blood lust of his wavering dupes.

She was bound by her ankles and her wrists, the latter tied high above her head so that her body would be free for the work the moon-bladed knife would presently do. Mbam'ala was in the midst of a ritual dance full of rushes at her and retreats. Every time he came near her his great knife slashed within a hair's breadth of her shrinking body. Thus he tormented her as well as worked up the excitement of the Leppa-Lep to fever pitch.

Towering over this ghastly ceremonial, and some ten feet behind the girl, was a big and horrible carving of the Demon of the Hill. The idol, which had been rolled forward on a platform of rough wheels, was monstrous and vile. Carved from some black and brittle stone, it gleamed in the firelight with a
sinister life, while its great bulging brass eyes seemed to gloat over the promise of blood.

Savaran studied everything with a still deliberation that made Foss cry out against the delay, but when he spoke his voice was steady and unflurried, his orders as precise as though he had plotted them on paper. Careful, daring, deadly orders for Foss and the askari, and he ended:

"Wait exactly on the signal for the machine-gun fire and the bombing, Foss― and give me a couple of bombs now―"

Foss made no protest then. Looking at the girl, he thrust the Mills grenades eagerly into the lean hand, anxious for action.

Savaran took them quietly, and quietly landed.

He walked calmly and boldly at an unhurried pace, not by a stealthy path but straight through the squatting ranks of the Leppa-Lep. Daring strokes were paralysing strokes, and Savaran was a master of icy daring-also he had to give Foss and the askari time to get into position.

The impudent recklessness of it carried him through. The Leppa-Lep stared dumbfounded and awed. So completely did he dominate them that it was only when Mbam'ala turned in his dance to swoop down upon his victim to make the first blood-drawing stroke that he realised that he was no longer alone in the clearing with the victim.

He halted dead as he saw the eagle-faced man. Even he was awed. Savaran looked so tall, lean and savagely powerful in the flame light that he seemed a towering figure of terror and vengeance. And Savaran moved not at all. He stood, hands lightly on pistol butts, holding the throng by the sheer spell
of his personality and daring. So he stood until an owl hooted behind his back. Then the fierce smile flashed in the gipsy face. Savaran had done it again. By daring and magnetism he had won the first, most momentous move. Foss and his askari were in their appointed places.

Mbam'ala acted.  He saw his chance of winning back the wavering Leppa-Lep by the single stroke of sweeping this dangerous white devil away. He flung his moon-blade gleaming aloft and shouted for death.

Not a warrior dared stir under those masterful eyes, but five of the devil-masked priests leapt forward to overwhelm this sublime fool with their stabbing spears and knives. Forward they charged and still Savaran did not move. Half-way across the clearing they stamped in a swirl of dust, yelling and threatening. Only then did the lean right hand twitch. Only that, a twitch-no more than was needed to jerk a pistol out of its holster. It was from the level of the hip that the pistol spoke. Five shots it fired, and so quickly that they seemed but one long explosion. Five shots, no more. No more were needed. The five priests were dead

As the great circle of blacks cringed and sucked back, loosing a storm of cries at the wonder of that shooting, the lean adventurer stepped to the sacrificial post. His hand went up to the bound wrists and a knife gleamed. A couple of quick cuts and the wrists were free, the knife was in the girl's hands and Savaran had stepped back to cover her with his pistols as she stooped to free her ankles.

He had won the second move in the way he had planned to win it.

But he had, as he had also foreseen, loosed the real danger at last. His interference with the sacrificial victim, a taboo maiden, too, his threat to rob the Leppa-Lep of their night's pleasure in torture, raised the storm. Mbam'ala. screeching against sacrilege, had little need to yell. With a roar the whole black mob was on its feet clamouring for vengeance, and sweeping together as surprised blacks will, in a compact mob, poured towards him.

Savaran flung up his left hand.

From the darkness behind him came the shattering stutter of the machine-gun leaping into action, the slash-slash-slash of the askari's volley firing. From four points of the circle Mills bombs rained into the packed mass as fast as arms could hurl them, bursting with terrifying explosions and deadly execution amid the thick press of the bodies.

The surprise effect was as appalling as an attack of the gods. Even as the rush started it seemed to be scythed down and blown to pieces by the very thunder and fire of heaven. The rush halted, broke to pieces and scattered backward with screams. For a moment hopeless panic reigned. Savaran waved his hand again and knew by the clatter in the darkness behind him that Foss and his men were legging it to their boats as ordered. So far his plans had gone like clockwork. But now his own safety and the girl's was to be a matter of luck and moments.

Mbam'ala knew it. He leapt forward, stilling the chaos with his brazen yells. He waved the moon blade above his head like a standard and ordered the Leppa-Lep under threat of the Demon to follow him. The warriors began to rally. It was going to be touch and go for Savaran and the girl.

Savaran had seen it like that, too. He had retreated to the idol of the demon. On the very platform of the great image he turned, and his high, fierce voice called back:

"Woe to you, Leppa-Lep, for my gods are angered with you. See with your own eyes how Mbam'ala and his demon will be destroyed. Fall on your faces, O pigs of vileness, and eat dirt else the same wrath devour ye."

As he spoke his pistol cracked and Mbam'ala, rushing towards him, leapt high and died.

The warriors hung back for an instant under that death and Savaran's threat. It was just long enough to allow the lean man to whip the safety pins out of the two Mills bombs and roll them under the platform of the idol. Then he caught the girl's hand and ran for the bush.

As they ran they heard the roaring of the Leppa-Lep as they started in chase. They gave tongue like wolves eager for blood-for five seconds. Then came the earth splitting crash and the blinding flame of the double explosion and the sound of a brittle carving flying to pieces.

Savaran pulled the girl to a halt. He heard no pursuit now. Only the screams and the wailings of a tribe smitten with superstitious terror as they looked upon the splintered ruin of what had once been their god.

"And that, my dear, saves us," the lean man grinned as Foss helped
them into the boats. "The Leppa-Lep will be too occupied dreading the vengeance of Savaran and his gods to think of pursuing us... Savaran may not have worked miracles with ivory, but in purely theological spheres he has not done so badly."

________________

6: Wandering Gentile

ASKERN stood on the tiny veranda of his "Residency'" waiting for death. Far across the clearing, against the deep mystery of the dark and brooding jungle, a body of Sharti spearmen danced about a blood-red fire to the howled chant of a witch-doctor. They were working themselves into the right frenzy for slaughtering him. He could do nothing. His bearers and his Askari guard had bolted. There was nothing for it but to stand ready to meet death with a white man's dignity― and to think. He thought of many things, but mainly he wondered if Flemalle had really been as kind as he had seemed.

Louis Flemalle, Secretary of the Interior to the Mandatory Government that had taken control of the vast Malaria Coast, protectorate after the war, had given Askern his chance by sending him as the first envoy to the Sharti. Only, now. in the bitter-clear moments between life and death. Askern could not help remembering that Flemalle had never given him a thought until Blanche had come to Paronga, the capital, to marry him

An ugly idea― he fought it.

But Blanche's corn-fair beauty undoubtedly did appeal to Flemalle's semi-Eastern darkness, and Flemalle had shown that it appealed. Wasn't it because Flemalle liked Blanche that he had given Askern this opportunity? Why else had he singled out an unconsidered subordinate for so tremendous a task? Beastly thoughts Askern beat them back. Flemalle had been so generous and so frank. He had never overstepped the bounds of social propriety in his calls on Blanche during her long― too long― stay at Government House. He had never hidden the fact that he liked Blanche so well, as an uncle likes a nice niece, that he wanted her to start her married life auspiciously in a Residency instead of in a small bungalow in Paronga's cheaper white quarter, with a Pro-consular status instead of at the social level of a senior clerk.

HE had said this quite frankly to Blanche and Askern in the presence of both. For that reason he had given Askern this chance; and to make the most of his chance the wedding had been postponed.

But had there been something behind it? Askern lashed himself for being an ugly-minded brute at the mere thought. His mood was only the result of frustration and failure -failure! He stared across at the dancing figures looking so like devils in the flickering wood flames, and his hands, reeking with tropic heat, clenched in an effort of self-control

How long now before he was hacked down and life and ambition-and Blanche ceased to be for him?

A whisper came from behind him. Amazing! A whisper from his empty hut!

"Come inside!" it said in English.

Askern jerked nervously. Were his wits cracking? Was he hearing imaginary voices?

"Stir yourself, my gallant General Gordon," said the voice. "They'll be ripe for murder in about three minutes."

Askern was inside the hut. gazing with shaky astonishment at the strangest-looking scarecrow that had ever uttered words in English.

It was a man tall and incredibly tattered. He was a spider-spare fellow, all iron sinews and fierce resolution There was an unmistakable if cheerful ferocity in his dark, aquiline face; a mocking ruthlessness that was also a charm. Askern realised him as a sort of shock.

"Who the blazes are you?" he gasped.

"Ha," said the other, "are you the complete working model of a resigned and noble death? Don't you even carry a gun?"

"Not on me," stammered Askern... "Don't want to parade force No use anyhow against a whole mob? Best meet what's coming with dignity "

"Glorious!" said the stranger with a flash of splendid teeth. "But I'm not. I want a gun." Askern lifted the lid of a carrier's box dropped it again.

"It's no good," he said. "We'll only stir up bad blood for generations to come My orders are particular about avoiding that sort of thing..."

"I thought your type died with Casablanca," the stranger said, and, smiling pleasantly, he dropped Askern with as wicked a blow to the jaw as a man could give.

"No time to argue with great white souls," he said and grabbed pistols from the box. loaded each with a full magazine and crammed extra clips into his tattered pockets. He had. as a matter of fact, no time for niceness; the Sharti spearmen were already advancing on the hut led by the gibbering and howling witch-doctor. They did not halt as the stranger appeared, just brandished their spears with blood-curdling yells. The big scarecrow stood and looked at them-and laughed.

He stood a tall, almost eerie figure, wrist on ragged hip, automatic pistols dangling behind― and he laughed. And the clear, cutting mockery of that laugh halted the line of buck warriors like a brake.

He gave them plenty of time to look at him. and then said cheerfully in the Sharti tongue:

"My brothers. I have not been so moved to joy since the day I shaved the beard of your chief, the Sharti koru. Prance on. It amuses me!"

They did not prance. They sucked back. Hoarse murmurs came from them. The man was dirty and a scarecrow, but they feared him like death.... And Askern on his hands and knees saw that the man enjoyed the effect of that fear.

"My shadow still makes you tremble, eh?" came the mocking voice. "Good! now you will take your ju-ju man and hang him on that baobab tree for daring to threaten a white lord.''

The witchman loosed a frenzied torrent of words. The spear line showed confusion. A big negro sank from the hip to heave his spear. He died even as he moved, though the spitting pistol did not rise above the stranger's hip.

"So, you only half remember." he cried. "I will take one in three of you then to refresh your minds "

The automatics in both hands rapped and flamed. The braves hurled a harmless spear or two. and died even as the stranger had promised. A regular one in three went down before that extra-ordinary pistol play.

The scarecrow actually strutted as he saw the terror his shooting had created. He roared :

"You know me. You know I am lord over your lives. Throw down your spears.... Now the witchman to the tree or do I take one in two?"

The fetish doctor leaped forward screaming, an axe whirling in his hand The stranger fired once and dropped him with a bullet in his leg. Then with a flamboyant gesture he waved the blacks to their task

They nearly fell over each other in their haste to obey.

As they carried the yelling ju-ju man to the tree Askern fainted.

IT WAS days later that Askern came to himself. He knew this by the state of his surroundings. He was in a clean-sheeted camp bed. The room was spick-and-span. He heard the laughing voices of house boys, and, more startling, the stamp and rattle of an Askari sentry halting at the end of his beat outside.

He thought he was dreaming. He was not. As he sat up a man put a pretty native girl from his knee and came cheerfully to his side. It was the lean and dashing stranger, but he was no longer a scarecrow. He was in a silk-twill tropic uniform that made him almost extravagantly dapper... a beautiful suit. Askern glared stupefied at it. It was the one really good suit of his own that he had preserved through all adventures to grace the 'king palaver' that was to be the great triumph of his residency.

As he glared at it, at the row of medal ribbons the stranger had had the cheek to sew to the breast, the cheerful hawk face flashed in a smile.

"Made a first-rate job of it, eh?" he said calmly, "tailoring is one of my minor gifts. Made a first-rate job of you, too. You've had a bad bout of fever. You'll be yourself in no time; medicine is also one of my accomplishments."

"Anything else?" Askern asked feebly.

"Everything else," the big man grinned, and something in his smile
made Askern feel he was right. The fellow had a curious force.

"What has happened?" he groaned. "The Government has resumed control," said the man with his fierce cheeriness. "Law runs in Sharti. I brought your boys back from the bush, shot the sergeant of Askari for desertion in face of the enemy, and you now have men you can rely on. The Sharti-kor―"

"Has called his tribe to arms," croaked Askern, trying to rise.

"The Sharti-kor has called on me," grinned the stranger, pushing him back into his bed.

"Nonsense!" snapped Askern. "He wouldn't let me even call on him . . . sent me the head of a Portuguese trader to show what happened to white men who tried to force themselves into his land."

"The Sharti-kor called," said the stranger, enjoying every moment of his own wonder, "clad in penitential sackcloth with dirt on his head. He crawled from the edge of the clearing to this hut on his tummy, rising only to make the five grovellings his ritual of abasement demand―"

"The Sharti-kor!" gasped Askern. "Impossible!"

"You think so?" grinned the other. "Well, we'll make him do it all over again when you're up and about."

Askern stared. But he knew this curious man was speaking the truth. He, too, felt the something in him that must have cowed the fierce old chief. There was not only power in this bizarre man, but also an extravagant joy in exercising it.

"And what next?" he asked feebly.

"Oh, I started bringing the Sharti under the beneficences of white rule, reported same to the capital..."

"You've reported― blast your impudence. I'm resident here."

"You've been on your back for three weeks and the white man's burden had to be shouldered... Besides, we needed supplies, support and so forth, and your little portable typewriter made correspondence a temptation. I like to talk largely to government mandarins. And I do this sort of thing so much better than you ever will." He brought a mass of carbon duplicates to Askern. "Look those over. You'll find they are models of what a district officer's communiqués should be. Paronga will be startled at your brilliance."

"My brilliance!" Askern feverishly read to the final page, saw the carbon duplicates of a signature and gasped. "My name― my signature! But, by heaven, this is forgery!"

"One of my lesser gifts," smiled the other. "There were reasons why I could not take the credit I deserved? But you'll get it, Bobby Askern. When those reports are read in Paronga you'll be a made man."

And that was likely to be true, Askern realised when he read those reports: they were masterly. Then however, he could only rage at this stranger-out-of-nowhere's internal impudence.

"Who are you?" he snapped

"The Wandering Gentile," grinned the other, as he produced Askern's cigarette case, full of Askern's cigarettes, selected one and lit up.

"I was told," said Askern slowly, "that there was no white man in this belt save a ruffian dodging the law."

"That's me, naturally," said the stranger.

"I see! And that's why you're ashamed of your name."

"This is where the ruffian winces and hangs his head," grinned the stranger. "Ashamed of it? Lord no. I'm proud of 'em all. I've made history with most of them and must have at least twenty by now."

"Twenty aliases―?"

"Noms de guerre," said the other, puffing luxuriously. "Apart from their legal convenience, I have a taste for them. Which of them do you know... Le Geyt?― no! Jorgensen?― no! Voysey...?"

"Voysey!" cried Askern, his fists clenching "or rather Savaran, who calls himself Voysey."

"Yes, I prefer Savaran to most of the others," the man mused. "I've done all my best things in that name, and it has a sound."

"You've a price on your head!" Askern raged.

"On most heads under most names," said Savaran indifferently... "Oh. I see; a sense of duty , gnaws at your vitals. You are ready to arrest me, bare-handed but strong in the might of the law, eh?"

He stood up, leant across the bed and patted Askern's shoulder.

"You're a nice child, Bobby," he said. "But you've a lot to learn about Africa― and me! Being arrested single-handed is one of the few sensations denied to a nature like mine."

"That was a bad break," said Askern hoarsely. "See... I took this from your holster."

He held a wicked-looking automatic pointed at Savaran's chest.

"That's one of the guns I saved your life with," smiled Savaran, flicking the ash off his cigarette.

"Great scott! You make use of that to serve your own ends?" cried Askerrn.

"That or anything," Savaran's eyes crinkled up in amusement. The pistol in Askern's hand began to wobble as he tried to master the lean man's glance. Then he flung it down.

"I thought it would act," said Savaran in a sort of intoxicated glee as he picked the weapon up.

"It's the force in me, Bobby... I enjoy testing it. Oh, yes, I let you get hold of that gun purposely... I've got that extra power... the super-man force that makes you and other men do my will."

SAVARAN had certainly done wonders, Askern saw when he could get out and about.

Where there had been merely the lonely Residency hut cowering under the threat of the jungle, a busy village had sprung up, with the once sullen Sharti active as traders, house-builders, road makers, and couriers carrying trade and reports along the six weeks' jungle trail to Paronga.

All this was due entirely to the power and genius― his king instinct, he called it― of Savaran. Askern, lost in admiration, could only find one flaw. That was the presence of too many women and Savaran's too evident interest in them.

"Hang it all, haven't you any dignity, man?" Askern rapped, as in response to a languishing glance from a superb pair of native eyes Savaran chucked the lithe, red brown owner under her chin.

"Dignity!" Savaran's eyes gleamed dangerously as his strange, overweening egoism was touched. Then he laughed. "That sort of condescension is the privilege of princes, as history will show you. You take romance, like everything else, too seriously, Bobby. It's that darned Sir Galahad kink in you. I bet even your engagement―"

Askern strode on white with fury. He knew Savaran had made no bones about prying out all there was to be known about his engagement while he was unconscious.

"Pretty girl― Blanche," mused Savaran, who really knew no more about her than her photo, signed with that single name, told.

"Curse you!" cried Askern swinging on him. "You go too far! I won't have you mention that lady's name."

"She waits in England for you?" asked Savaran unmoved.

"No!" snapped Askern. "In Paronga."

"Here... and you didn't marry her before coming to the Sharti?" Savaran's eyes showed surprise. Askern said nothing, just faced him ready to dash a fist in his face. And Savaran went on with his disarming charm.

"Come along and see the rich Sharti trade pouring into your go downs."

SAVARAN certainly had a magic, not merely in winning Askern, but in winning the difficult Sharti... They were already bringing their palm oil, kernels, ivory, gold-dust, hides and the like into the store sheds, and in such quantities as to promise that this territory was going to be what Flemalle had said it would be, the richest under Malaria Coast rule.

And he was resident. That is, he was, thanks to the astonishing way j Savaran had mastered the Sharti, through the Sharti-kor, their redoubtable chief.

"He knew better than to set himself against Savaran," Savaran said indifferently. "I taught him what such folly meant months ago."

"I seem to recall something about shaving off his beard," said Askern, not really believing anybody could have dared that supreme Insult to a fighting Moslem.

"That was it," said Savaran.

"But― where were his warriors?" demanded the astounded Askern.

"Drawn up in a hollow square round him in his own palaver place in his own capital, of course," said Savaran, enjoying the boy's awe. "Don't you realise yet that when I make gestures I make 'em big?"

"But― why?" Askern gasped.

"He tried to raid an ivory caravan I was taking through his land to the Zeb Arabs."

"Ivory! But― that's illegal."

"I mostly am," grinned Savaran. Then his eyes narrowed. "This land is a paradise for the smuggler, anyhow. Take hashish running, for example. An immense field with an immense fortune in it."

He looked at Askern with such a curious light in his eyes that the boy felt he was feeling him out in the hope that he would abuse his position and join him in the trade. Askern's face became as stone. "Try any of that sort of vileness In my district, Savaran, and in spite of all I owe you, I'll hunt you down like a dog."

"I believe you mean that," said Savaran softly, watching closely.

"Mean it!" rapped Askern. "Don't you understand? That's an ultimatum."

Savaran laughed in his quick way and flung his arm about the boy's shoulder.

"I shouldn't have doubted the Galahad strain, eh?" he said. "There's not much to you, Bobby, but what there is, is pretty good."

"I notice you don't express any opinion on this filthy dope traffic yourself," said the boy, stiffly.

"On hashish smuggling!" There was a sudden cruel rasp in Savaran's voice; his arm slid from As kern's shoulder, and for the moment he looked like a gipsy-skinned Lucifer. "My opinion on that, Bobby? You saw me when I first came to you! I was filth and tatters― me! Savaran! Hashish had done that to me, Bobby!"

"To you? Do you dope?"

Savaran jerked out of his trance of fury, glared, bellowed with laughter.

"Dope― me? Never! His own egoism is all the stimulant Savaran needs. No, a swine peddled the stuff to my bearers and gunmen."

His face became as harsh as death. "And one day," he said slowly, "that swine will know what it means to cross Savaran." His quick mood changed. "It cost me seventy thousand dollars gold, Bobby; the profits of five months' danger and sweat getting that Ivory to the Zeb Arabs. Oh, I wouldn't have minded losing it in fair scrapping with one of you Government 'wallahs' or even to old Sharti-kor― those are the chances of the game. But to lose it by foulness―"

He paused, scowling.

"I was coming back from the Zeb with the cash. I was going to lay it out on more Ivory― and treble it. I had a good lot of men; wild and dangerous, of course, they have to be for that game, but Savaran could handle 'em, or could until we got to a dirty little ford village, Tchik on the Tiboru."

"That's on our ground," said Askern. "I came through Tchik on my way up here."

"Yes," said Savaran grimly, "and, as a Malaria Coast official, you'll be overjoyed to learn that Tchik on the Tiboru was packed with hashish."

"I saw nothing," frowned Askern. "It is a fact that there's a traffic in the accursed stuff we don't seem able to stamp out. But I saw no trace at Tchik."

"It was there after you had gone through," said Savaran. "Yes, I heard of you there. Well, this stuff was sold to my boys and it made them killer-mad, of course. It was me they decided to kill― for my seventy thousand dollars in coin. They didn't kill me, but even Savaran couldn't fight one hundred and thirty doped blacks running amok. So, after I had shot a few, I had to run for it. Me, Savaran, had to bolt from a swarm of mangy blacks pretty, hey? And that explains me as you first saw me."

"Why follow me― into the wilds?" frowned Askern, and Savaran answered with a strange twist to his lips.

"Oh, to Join forces with a bold pioneer was very much to my fancy."

Askern did not think that was the true explanation, and the queerness of Savaran's behaviour in the next few weeks strengthened his doubt.

Savaran not only helped to build up the power of white rule with really uncanny administrative genius, but he also seemed to spend a great deal of time hunting for information of some sort. It was only after the first caravan got through from the capital with fresh forces and supplies that the reason for this came out.

He said abruptly, one day across the tiffin table:

"Who hates you at Government House, Bobby?"

"Hates me?" Askern felt a little sick. "Why?"

"Felt it yourself, too, I see," said Savaran.

"Never mind me, what do you  mean?"

"I mean, I still can't see why you were sent up here alone― as ground bait."

"Ground bait― for what?"

"War!" said Savaran softly. "It's usually a too venturesome missionary who is allowed to wander to certain death at the hands of a tribe needing subduing, or maybe a trader whom nobody will miss. You're a puzzle. Government officials aren't usually wasted that way."

"You seem to me to be talking nonsense," said Askern, sweating and trying not to think of Flemalle.

"Man, it's plain," snapped Savaran. "There's your Inexperience of jungle diplomacy; there's your caravan, as ill-equipped as any might be; there's your Askari, Urubi coastmen, no use in bush fighting and known for their habit of bolting at the first hint of danger― whoever sent you meant you to die!"

Askern choked and sweated; it was horrible this proving of his own suspicions against Flemalle. Savaran went on:

"There's another item I haven't quite got the hang of yet, though I think it fits in somewhere. You left a little rat of a coast Kru at Tchik, on your way up. He went sick, I understand, but got well quickly enough to come up here in the next caravan. His name is Yaunde."

His hard eyes on Askern saw the boy wince.

"You remember Yaunde, Askern?"

"Yes, he was left behind at Tchik," the boy said hoarsely. What did it mean, he wondered? Yaunde was Flemalle's pet agent.

"You don't see how he fits in or don't want to," said Savaran harshly. "But you do get the general idea. You were to die to bring war on the Sharti and glory for someone-that's the real puzzler. The glory would naturally go to the Governor-General, and, whatever his faults, Clem Newington is white. One simply can't think of him doing that sort of thing."

"No, you can't," said Askern hoarsely, "and ne didn't. Sir Clement Newington isn't at Paronga. His health's cracked. He's been on leave for over a year."

"Then who sent you up here?" Savaran snapped.

"The Mandatory Secretary― Louis Flemalle!" said Askern.

"Flemalle!" Savaran was on his feet, his eyes blazing. "Did you say Flemalle?"

Askern, startled by Savarin 's manner, nodded. "A dark, slinking, cat-eyed Levantine."

"Cretan! He says he was born in Crete," Askern said.

He glared at Askern. "Flemalle! There aren't two. But how in the name of all the gods of decency did he get into the company of honest men?"

"You mean Flemalle Isn't straight?" Askern gasped.

"Straight!" Savaran exploded. "Why, a corkscrew would look like a plumb line beside Flemalle."

"You mean Flemalle sent me here to die?" gasped Askern. "I can't believe it!"

"Is Flemalle pleased at your triumph over the Sharti?" Savaran countered.

Askern frowned, became nervous.

"No― that is, he's queer about it. His comments are strangely ambiguous, and there are no congratulations."

"You robbed him of glory, a row of orders, promotion, and a money grant from the authorities," said Savaran. "I know Flemalle. He'd rather you poisoned him than that."

"There's something even queerer," said Askern. "There are hints in his letters― I can't make head or tail of them, but it's as though I had done something wrong. As though,. presently, I might have to face some grave charge. He says he's my friend and will stand by me."

He looked up, and was startled to see Savaran grinning. "What is it Savaran?"

"I know the working of that rat's mind like a book," said Savaran. "You had a letter from Blanche. Did she say disturbing things, too?"

"I think I'll leave my fiancée out of this," said Askern stiffly.

"By Heaven, you won't!" Savaran's face glared across the table, the glare softened. "I mean she's in it, too, if I don't mistake my man. What she says has a bearing― what does she say?"

"It's a strange letter," Askern faltered. "She doesn't say much about the Sharti business― doesn't seem to have grasped how big it is― yet the Government House crowd must have made her realise―"

"Flemalle has only given out what suits him," said Savaran. "But go on."

"Well, she's worried, too, about this mysterious 'something wrong.' She's heard whispers about me overheard talk about ugly charges. She can get nothing definite, wants me to make a clean breast of it to her―"

"And Flemalle is her only comfort in this hour of stress, eh?" Savaran asked.

"Savaran," snapped Askern, his hand flashing to his pocket, "you've read―!"

"I know Flemalle, that's all," said Savaran.

"Well, you're right," said Askern doggedly. "Flemalle is behaving splendidly. He's making a point of being seen a lot with her, to try and kill the whispers by the visible support of one in his position-and yet Blanche says that, under all his kindness, she can't help feeling he thinks me guilty."

Savaran sat back and laughed.

"He's an artist," he cried. "Plays the noble-hearted friend so that when the crash comes shell recoil from you into his arms."

Askern was standing up, eyes blazing, pistol out.

"You foul-mouthed dog!" he roared. "Come outside! I'll kill you for that!"

"YOU couldn't kill  Savaran," said the man evenly.  "And, in any case, I wouldn't if I were you. You'll need me to save you from that charge― that grave charge, Bobby, meant to wreck you, your triumph over the Sharti, and your engagement to Blanche."

"What charge?" Askern cried hoarsely. "I've done nothing I'm ashamed of in my life. There can't be a charge!" He saw a gleam of mockery― or was it pity?― in Savaran's eye. "You― you know what that charge is?"

Savaran― he never could forgo the dramatic― threw a little round tin box on to the table.

"There's the evidence!" he said.

Askern picked it up, frowned over the writing on the top. "Robert Askern, Personal Stores Only!" Said, "I don't know what this is; nothing I've ordered."

"Open it," said Savaran.

Askern tore off the paper wrapper, forced open the tin, stared down at the unmistakable contents.

"Hashish!" he cried in horror.

"Hashish!" said Savaran grimly.

"The charge against you will be 'smuggling hashish to the natives.'

"Sit down!" snapped Savaran, as Askern reeled. "Give me that gun! No, I'm not afraid of you shooting me but shooting yourself. Now answer my questions without flaring up. I only want to know what Flemalle's up to. First, as he isn't the kind to marry a girl for beauty alone, has your Blanche money?"

"No― not now, that is. But when her father, Lord Balcomb dies―"

"Oh, Lord! She has a title, too and influence?"

"She's Lady Blanche Buryon. I thought you knew― and, of course, that family has immense influence."

"The riddle's solved," said Savaran with one of his extravagant gestures and a flash of his fine teeth. "Flemalle's out to snatch his great chance. At a stroke he means to gather all the glory and rewards for subduing the Sharti, and while the world rings with his name, marry into the rich and influential family of Balcomb. when any heights in world politics or aristocracy will be his for the snatching."

"But― but haven't I spoilt that by remaining alive?" Askern faltered.

"You've taken the edge off it, but the main glory's still there. It's plain he hasn't let the world know how well you have done. It is also plain that he intends to belittle even what he was told by ascribing such success to your evil trick of winning the worst side of the Sharti with smuggled hashish. When you're broken for that, he'll come up and collect the glory."

"It's unbelievable," cried Askern. "No man―"

"No decent man," said Savaran. "But Plemalle isn't decent. He's smuggled drugs before; he put dry rot into half a tribe I was ruling with opium once. That's why I'd sworn to get Flemalle even before I knew he had a hand in the Tchik business. Oh, the hashish there was his all right. He's been making big profit in that line ever since he came to the Malaria Coast. He's the traffic you could not stamp out― of course, you couldn't with Flemalle both policeman and smuggler."

"How do you know all this?" asked Askern.

"Yaunde! You wouldn't tell me who Yaunde was; too loyal, eh? So I found out for myself. I've been nosing about a good deal― and I've had some interviews with Yaunde, and Savaran knows how to deal with such vermin.

"Yaunde, as you wouldn't tell, is Flemalle's particular agent, used by him for all matters of dirty work from spying to dope smuggling. He wouldn't tell me Flemalle's name; Just called him the big boss in the Government. That's how I didn't know― but he told almost everything else. He's been helping in the smuggling and disposal for years. It was he who planted the stuff at Tchik when you left him behind― the stuff that lost me seventy thousand dollars. But he did that for a purpose as well as for profit; that is to put the blame on you. Flemalle, no doubt, thought you might be turned back, and as he meant to out you anyhow he laid this second trap. He did it well, too. That's why I came after you wanting your blood. The villagers at Tchik told me they'd got the stuff from the white boss who marched towards the Sharti. Yaunde's been spreading the evidence against you― he's been spreading it here. He's got a case full of tins like the one I gave you all consigned to you― and I bet Flemalle's got some sort of agent coming up here now ready to find the goods on the spot."

"M, God!" cried Askern springing up. "We must do something."

"It's done," grinned Savaran. "Am I the sort to wait about? I've dealt with that consignment of dope and Yaunde."

Askern hid his face in his hands. "But what does even that matter― if Flemalle's framed a case against me what can I do?"

"Not a thing," said Savaran cheerfully. "You're just a baby in a matter like this. Fortunately you have me― and I'm Savaran! I'm going to teach Flemalle what it means to cross Savaran."

AND YET Savaran had a strange method of keeping this promise. He was captured a few weeks later at the head of a smuggling caravan.

Flemalle made a point of going to the guardroom In Paronga where Savaran had been taken. He remembered Savaran well and his threats. Flemalle never missed a chance of gloating over an enemy.

He swaggered up to Savaran, who stood indifferent amid the litter of his carrier bags, which had been searched, and Jeered:

"Well, Savaran, so they nabbed you at your old tricks, eh? What was it, gun or ivory running?"

Savaran merely muttered as though not wanting to be overheard.

"Shut up, you fool, get out of here quick!"

Flemalle's fine eyes opened wider, his thin hand reached for his neat moustache. Savaran was caught, a trapped lion, but the Jackal always fears the might of the lion. What was Savaran's game? He became a little nervous, especially as he saw the major nod an Askari sergeant to the door.

"What bluff are you trying now, Savaran?" He jeered. He turned to the major. "Let me warn you, this man is as clever as a cat. He'll attempt any tricks, lies or bluff―"

He stopped because the chill glance of the major froze him. Savaran said hoarsely in his ear:

"You fool, Flemalle! It's you who tried an impossible bluff― they know, man!"

"They know!" cried Flemalle, his nerve going. "What do they know?"

Savaran gave a little shrug of disgust at the other's foolishness. He said with a meaning look:

"The charge against me, Flemalle, is smuggling― hashish!"

"Hashish!" gasped Flemalle, and his already shaken nerve so cracked that every evidence of guilt appeared on his face. And the major was staring at him as he mopped his brow, and the major was saying frigidly:

"As you are here, Mr. Flemalle, we'd better go straight ahead. The stuff is addressed to you― the prisoner tried to cover you, but it's no good. The evidence is too strong."

"Addressed to me! Preposterous!"  shrilled Flemalle. "I am Mandatory Secretary. The mere idea―"

"Shut up!" snapped Savaran. "Wait until you hear all the evidence."

Flemalle began to speak again.

"Shut up, you fool. Yaunde bungled it! Understand, Yaunde let the cat out of the bag."

"Yaunde!" gasped Flemalle, and sat down heavily. "Yaunde, that double-crossing swine―"

The major's lips curled In disgust― the man had actually given himself away. He sat down at his desk.

"I'm sending a chit to the Law Officer, Flemalle," he said. "You'll be detained here until he decides on your case."

Flemalle sat panting, his fine eyes glazed as he looked at Savaran. He was a clever man, yes; but he was remembering that Savaran was Savaran.

Savaran was Savaran. When he did things he did them with a big gesture. He had left Flemalle no chance. He had, apparently, been caught by a white lieutenant and a file of Askari heading into the Malaria Coast from the Arab border― incidentally, at a point two hundred miles from Bobby Askern and the Sharti lands. Savaran's caravan was full of hashish― all the tins that had been addressed to Bobby Askern― which obviously he meant to deliver to someone near the Malaria Coast capital.

And there was no doubt who that "someone" was. There were many indications that the delivery was to be to Flemalle. But, above all, the authorities had captured on Savaran a long letter in Yaunde's unmistakable handwriting and that gave the game away.

How Savaran had forced that letter out of Yaunde, only Savaran ever knew; for Yaunde had in truth died, but whether of disease or otherwise again only Savaran could say.

But the facts were there and they were damning! Flemalle had not a chance. He was smashed. Honours, wealth, ambition, and Blanche were all swept away. He did make a feeble effort to incriminate Askern, but it worse than failed. It hardened public opinion against him. In a month he was proclaimed to the world as the criminal he was. He was condemned― with Savaran― to a long term of imprisonment, a longer term than Savaran both in sentence and fact.

For though Flemalle was a clever man and went to gaol, Savaran was Savaran and did not! On the night before both were to be marched away to a grim inland penal settlement, Savaran escaped from his prison.

He broke out with such ease that most people In the colony wondered why he had not done it on the very first day of his arrest.

But Bobby Askern did not wonder. He knew when the news of Savaran's capture came to him that not even for the sake of smashing Flemalle would Savaran have allowed himself to be arrested if he had not been sure of escaping.

He, too, knew Savaran was Savaran!

___________________

7: Power Of The Eyes

BOMA ALI, of whom men knew nothing save that his manners were smooth, his eyes unclean, and that he had too much money for so flat a nose, met Savaran by appointment in Bela-Bela.

There, in an inner room of The House of Shy Delights and over the bank notes of four nations, he put forward certain proposals.

What they were, history and Savaran will never tell, partly because the eagle-faced adventurer has a rooted distaste for discussing dirt, but mainly because Boma Ali left The House of Shy Delights with violence and by a window before these proposals were half disclosed.

With him went his bank notes, crammed down his throat, and that in itself is a testimonial to the nature of Boma Ali's business, for, as usual, Savaran was on his uppers and not likely to reject any reasonably illegal offence that meant cash

Boma Ali continued to be true to self even after he had picked his fat carcass from the tropic mud into which the steel-wire arms had so casually tossed him, for ridding ms mouth of both the kennel and the currency filth he gave certain orders of stealthy and malicious intent.

As a result the bizarre soldier of fortune was pulled up dead that night on his way to the discreet room where he could lie hid from the many warrants current for him in the Malaria Colony.

A cry for help came from a dark court.

Savaran being Savaran, the cry being feminine, and the door to the court open, there could be but one reaction. He leapt to the rescue.

Thereupon fifteen sinewy dogari police, waiting in the dark, fell upon him with all the ardour of men who knew that there was a reward of five thousand pounds English for the capture of so redoubtable a lawbreaker.

Major Verreker, Chief of Police of the Malaria Colony, learnt the news of Savaran's arrest in a long code telegram next morning. He was not pleased. He had other and uglier problems to grapple with just then, and Savaran as a prisoner was like having a parcel of dynamite on the point of explosion under one's chair when one wanted to give one's mind to other things.

And then, strangely, Verreker stopped swearing as he decoded the message, while his narrow, brown face became queerly still. The subaltern in charge at Bela-Bela had ended his report with these words: "Men won't talk but there's a hint that Boma Ali betrayed Savaran."

Verreker mused over that sentence for half an hour, thinking both of Boma Ali and Savaran's reputation for paying back treachery. Then Verreker went on a march which took him to Bela-Bela and Savaran...

SAVARAN, chained and in a cell certified escape proof, did the honours like a king. Savaran is of the type that makes magnificent gestures even on the guillotine. Verreker, dapper, neat, firm-eyed, met him on his own footing. He knew and respected the capacities of this gipsy genius too well to play the heavy policeman.

"Not a happy business. Savaran," he said, as he sat on the stone mastaba. "I don't like these jackal traps."

"My capture? Don't worry about it. The unhappiness won't be ours. Savaran will deal with the fellow."

"You know it was Boma Ali, then?" said Verreker, with the out-size innocence of the policeman.

"Boma Ali?" echoed Savaran, but his keen eyes gleamed. "Who is Boma Ali?"

Verreker smiled grimly. He knew that Savaran would not betray even enemies, mainly because it was not necessary: he dealt with them rather fatally himself.

"I wish I knew who and what Boma Ali was," the policeman said. "He is one of our least wholesome mysteries. He's been sneaking about Africa in a way we feel unhealthy. He has a lot of money but we don't know where it comes from He spends it freely, but we're not yet certain how."

He paused, his steady eyes on the fierce aquiline face. Savaran took another cigarette and said genially:

"But I take it that even policemen are not entirely without information."

"After Boma Ali had spent a month among the Shenzi,  white men on lonely safari began to go missing with strange regularity, perhaps from lions, perhaps— not," Verreker said. "Boma Ali stayed with the Chembu, and the Leopard Men— inactive for years— began to meet and kill again. He went among the Harami Arabs and the French began at once to pick up evidence of gun running. He visited the Mai-Malunga, a docile and contented tribe, and now the Belgians are having trouble with the young bucks while their gaols are filling with hashish addicts."

"Dope!" the lean face was fierce "That sort of filth?'

"There's no evidence, but Boma Ali's trail seems slimed with that sort of filth." the Englishman said. "And it's a queer trail. You'll have noted already that it stretches from Jannah Gaban in the Arab Hills westward to the Atlantic. Now it seems to be working east. Already there is trouble among the Kabare and the Nlazi and it looks as if the Twamba were next in line."

"A dangerous people, the Twamba," frowned Savaran. "A fighting 1 race, but vile-minded and hostile to whites."

"Still, they might still be won."

"Only by pandering to their abominations," Savaran said in so harsh a voice that Verreker wondered if some such suggestion from Boma Ali had been the reason for his flight through the window

"You think he has a power beyond money and dope?"

"Definitely. The Haran.; Arabs would have cut his throat and the Mai-Malunga would have handed him to the police if he hadn't had some means of mastering them."

"But what..? Though you'll notice that all these tribes are Mohammedan-at least in name."

"I've noticed more." said Savaran," abruptly alert. "The whole business centres on Jannah Gaban."

"I've seen that, too." Verreker agreed. "Yet what bearing can a little hill Sultanate like that have on the matter? It's pure Arab, yes, but so small, feeble and remote."

"It was founded by the Caliph Sabr Badaun, a friend and favorite of Mahomet himself," Savaran said. "The Sultans who rule there have descended in a direct line from Sabr Badaun. It is therefore a Holy Place and has thus great power over Islam in Africa. In fact, it has been the cause of many religious revivals and Holy Wars in the past."

"You mean it's a sort of little local Mecca because of this direct connection with the Prophet?" Verreker frowned.

"More than that.... I'm remembering now," Savaran said. "There is something of power there. Something that can excite the fanaticism of Africa into red war.... Let me think."

"Sound enough— only what is this mysterious power?"

"I'm trying to remember . Ah!... Have you ever heard of 'The Eye of The Prophet'?"

"I've heard Arabs swear 'By The Eye.' ls that it?"

'I don't know. Even Savaran can't plumb all secrets. But if the Sultans of Jannah Gaban have that power, it explains everything. Boma Ali is using it..."

"One moment, there's something that may upset that. There Isn't a Sultan now. The present ruler is a woman."

"A woman!" Savaran sat back his brilliant eyes agleam

"A young girl, in fact," Verreker said. "The Gerada, that is the Princess Zaidie. She succeeded her father, the Sultan Iskandar, three years ago. Why are you laughing, Savaran?"

"Everything does seem to point to me being the one white hope?" Savaran grinned.

Verreker stood up, faced his man squarely, said frankly: "We won't fence, Savaran. The thing is too big. If this swine has his way, slaughter, such as man has never known, will break loose and barbarity of the foulest kind will regain control of Africa. It's an evil outlook, Savaran, and— and I'm ready to risk anything to prevent it."

"You mean, you'll let me escape to deal with Boma Ali and this woman Zaidie, even though you may be broken for it?" said the lean adventurer softly. "You're a big man, Verreker."

"I'm a white man," said Verreker. "And so are you."

"And, you'll make terms with a— gaol bird?"

They measured each other and Verreker did not make a mistake.

"You and I," he said quietly, "don't make terms. We trust each other."

SAVARAN "escaped" in due course from his escort and as a draggled Arab vendor of charms he found the Harami Arabs cheerfully oiling new German rifles and gloating over the fact that they would soon be using them for the extermination of the Franji. That was certain. Had not the Prophet himself sent a new and wonderful mullah from Jannah Gaban with "The Eye" and "The Voice" and promises of an early slaughter and certain victory?

Always it was "The Eye and The Voice"; always it was this mysterious power from Jannah Gaban that had mastered the natives and bent them to Boma Ali's will. And though a constant hearing of such catch-words as "freedom," "white tyrants," "exploiters of downtrodden races," began to tell Savaran what Boma Ali really was, never, even by a hint, could he get a clue to this strange "Eye and Voice." It was too holy, too secret— too dangerous. The natives feared it too much to talk about it.

Or, rather, he had no hint until that night when, as a semi-prisoner in a hut of the black Twamba, he heard his hosts discussing whether it would or would not be expedient to cut his throat then and there. Most were cheerfully in favour of it, until a headman said: "We will ask the mullah of 'The Eye and Voice' at the palaver tonight. It may attract too much attention for us to enjoy the death of a stranger just now."

Savaran feigned sleep until all his guards save one had gone to the palaver— then he dealt with that guard. He should have made the most of his chance to escape, for the Twamba are murderers no man may take lightly. He followed the stragglers to the palaver Instead. Being Savaran, risk counted little beside the chance of seeing Boma Ali at work and solving the mystery of "The Eye and The Voice."

The palaver place was a clearing in the jungle surrounded by great trees. Savaran used one of these as his grandstand. Circumstances prevented his selecting quite the tree he wanted, but the one he climbed gave a good view of the massed Twamba and its foliage afforded excellent cover.

He saw at once that there was something strange about this gathering. There was too much darkness. There were none of the great fires the savage loves, only a few torches held by men round the fringes of the crowd. And the faintly gleaming mass of black bodies were strangely quiet, as though fear sat with them. That fear became a shudder of real terror as a handful of torches moved through thelr midst and Boma Ali came.

Boma Ali wore rather voluminous Arab robes and the green turban of a Mecca pilgrim, but Savaran felt that the Mongol slant of the eyes in that fat, high-cheeked, evil face spoke more of the evil face of Asiatic Russia than Arabia.

The man crossed the whole clearing and, to Savaran's annoyance, disappeared from view under the very tree in which he hld.

Savaran craned his neck all ways to get a view, but the foliage was too thick. And Just as he began to climb lower a voice shouted a command... A silence as deathly as the grave came with a darkness as deathly.

Abruptly every torch had been beaten out and the whole glade was plunged into the impenetrable blackness of the Jungle. Savaran could see not a thing, and for a minute of terrible stillness heard nothing. Then there came a vast concerted gasp of fear beneath him and a hundred terrified voices crying:

"The Eye! The Eye! Allah defend us— The Eye!"

The mystery of "The Eye" was being solved beneath him. The Twamba were beholding the terrifying "something" that mastered all Islam— and Savaran could see nothing. It was infuriating. He began to climb lower again, and again was stopped. "The Voice" spoke!

A voice boomed out, tremendous and terrific. It filled the whole darkness, the whole world, with such enormous and measured immensity that even Savaran felt a thrill of the uncanny pass through him... It was a Voice as huge and relentless as a god's... It was the Voice, it was soon plain, of that servant of God, Mahomet! And it was giving a message, a promise of war and triumph to all true sons of Islam who obeyed the power of "The Eye."

It boomed on, awful and awe-inspiring. It preached a Holy War, but it did so by calling to all that was evil and murderous in the hearts of the listeners. It promised a saturnalia of blood, freedom and wealth when the white tyrants were exterminated, the exploiters wiped out...

By that time, Savaran was smiling fiercely; he had solved, anyhow, the mystery of "The Voice." Its hugeness might be the hugeness of a god, but it spoke with the accent of Boma Ali, who was anything but a god. Even its terrible immensity was easy of understanding. Boma Ali's voluminous robes and the darkness hid a microphone, amplifier, batteries, and whatever else was necessary to turn a voice into this mighty loud-speaker booming.

Savaran had yet to solve the mystery of "The Eye," but learnt much about Boma Ali and his plans. There was, definitely, to be a Holy War— and soon. The whole central African belt from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean was to rise at a signal from Jannah Gaban the Holy and exterminate all whites. The signal was to be the apparently miraculous coming of "The Eye" to each tribe, to make it invulnerable and to lead it to slaughter in person, so to speak... But of these wonders more would be told at a great meeting of chieftains and leaders In The Forest of The Dead on the Twamba borders in three weeks' time.

SAVARAN was held in his tree until dawn, for at the end of Boma Ali's speech great fires were lit and the Twamba relieved their over-excited savagery by a blood-rite orgy that made even his cold courage sick. But with the last of the black brutes gone he was down and heading for Jannah Gaban.

In a week he was standing bewildered in a land that was a garden, in which a laughing girl sat singing a love song.

"That is the Princess' palace," an old road mender said, and he pointed to a building so beautiful and ethereal that it seemed but an extravagant blossom of the lovely garden in which it stood.

"And the Gerada Zaidle," asked Savaran, "is she there now?"

"That is the Gerada Zaidie," said the old man, and Savaran saw a girl as slim and as sparkling as a flower sitting and singing on a lawn with only two sewing women in attendance.

Savaran did not talk with heathen. He strode straight to the nearest hammam and, after a bath, spent some of the money Verreker had provided on clothes of such glory that princes might have been shy of them. Being Savaran, they suited him, and, striding as raking and magnificent as a Caliph of "The Arabian Nights," he went at sunset to her palace.

She put down her lute to smile up at him and he saw with certainty that this— this she-fiend was even more beautiful than at a distance, and young and high spirited and gentle.

"I am glad you have come to see me, O strange eagle," she said, "all Jannah Gaban already wonders who and what you are."

"And what do they say I am?" he asked on guard even though his eyes paid tribute to her beauty.

"Some the Zeb Arab you seem, others a Sheik from El Yemen."

"And you, O Wisdom in Beauty?"

"I think maybe you're English," she laughed and he blinked, for she said it In English. "I hope you are."

"If you hope— I am" he flashed back. "Even if it be danger."

"Danger!" she smiled, amazed. "How danger?"

"Don't you exterminate Infidels in this stronghold of Islam?" he asked.

"Where," she laughed, "do you get such old-fashioned ideas?"

Sitting on the rich divan beside her, he began to wonder himself.

"I rather like Infidels! I was sent several years ago to Constantinople to live and learn under the shadow of The Protector of the Faithful. My father did not know that the old Sultans had gone and that the Young Turks were in power, so I learnt about new ideas instead and met many English and other Europeans. I prefer them even to some True Believers, but don't tell Sidi Hafiz the Wakil of the mosque here; he would be shocked."

"Ah— he is a fanatic?"

"Sidi Hafiz! That mild old lamb!" she laughed. "He wouldn't say a harsh word even of a Benin idolater. But as Chief Priest of a Holy Place like this he naturally feels that Islam is the only Faith that matters and would like to coax the whole world into accepting the Prophet— on whom be Peace."

Coax! He stared bewildered. Was she really as lovely-minded as she seemed, or was this Eastern guile? He said boldly:

"Oh— and I came here thinking to find a Holy War."

"War!" Real disgust was in her clear eyes. "Here? How hateful. We have nothing to do with wars here and never will while I rule. I heard too much of such horrors in Constantinople."

She was genuine. She really loathed war-and yet Boma Ali with his money and filth was organising one in her name.

"But I heard it was spoken among the tribes, that a new awakening of Islam was being preached from here," he pressed.

"You mean Boma Ali's work," she said calmly, astoundingly. "But that is not war!" She smiled at his bewilderment. "Boma Ali is a holy man from Mecca who is horrified at the way Mohammedanism has degenerated into slackness and even paganism in Africa. He has been inspired to preach a great revival, a great purification, and naturally he sought our support."

"Why naturally?" he asked.

"We have that which has power among the Faithful," she said.

" 'The Eye and The Voice'?" he asked, sharply alert.

" 'The Voice'!" she was puzzled. "I don't know what you mean by "The Voice.'... But "The Eye'— that has been revered as a power since the Prophet himself gave it to Sabr Badaun, my ancestor."

"What," he asked weightily, "is The Eye'?"

"An amulet, a talisman," she said, troubled by his gravity. "Why do you ask so anxiously?"

"There is high cause for anxiety, O Princess," he told her. "Will you tell me wherein is the power of 'The Eye'?"

"It should not be told or shown to Unbelievers," she said, but hesitatingly, for his manner infected her.

"I have grave reason, O Light of Gentleness."

She looked at him steadily for a moment, then called servants Into the chamber. At her orders they began putting out the lights. As they did so she stood in front of him and, with the gestures of a queen, bared her bosom.

On the honey-gold of her skin lay an oblong jewel. It was made of some coarse greyish metal and set oddly with precious stones. The servants murmured in awe at the sight of it, but Savaran saw no reason for awe, for it was a clumsy jewel without beauty.

She read his mind, smiled, stepped back, and gave another order. At once the last lights in the room were quenched and utter darkness came--just such a darkness as had descended on the Twamba glade when the torches were extinguished. And he saw what the Twamba had seen, for he cried out, startled: "The Eye!"

A great eye glowed at him out of the darkness. A great eye of greenish-white fire. An eye so real, so uncanny, so suggestive of watching power, that he knew how savages must be awed by it. He himself felt held in a spell, waiting for the great Voice?  But all that came was Zaidie's soft laugh as she heard his breath catch and her voice saying:

"You, too, feel its power, as all men have. That is because the virtue of the Prophet is really in it— as he promised it would be when he gave it to Sabr Badaun."

She spoke again, the room blazed with light, and he found himself blinking merely at a clumsy jewel that marred the wonder of her skin.

"Some trick of phosphorescence in that strange metal plus a cunning arrangement of the precious stones?" he argued, examining it closely.

"Perhaps," she shrugged, covering it. "If you must have a material explanation. But there is no other talisman like it"

"You're sure of that?" he demanded.

"Absolutely. We are too careful of it even to let it be copied for devotional purposes. You see, even apart from its holiness it is a dangerous thing. It has caused more than one war, for my forefathers used its power among the tribes to stir up fanaticism. Think what an unscrupulous person might not do with it if it were duplicated."

"You admit that would be a great danger?"

"A hideous danger and a sacrilege— but it is impossible."

"And yet," said Savaran, grimly fierce, "I heard the black Twamba vow themselves to war before such an Eye a week ago."

"Impossible!" she cried, aghast. "And horrible— what fiend could possess and make such use of such an Eye?"

"Boma Ali!" said Savaran grimly.

Zaidie the Princess could not believe it Sidi Hafiz could not believe it.

"Then," said Savaran, genially fierce, "we can satisfy ourselves whether he has a halo or hoofs by examining his house."

A SLINK-EYED servant tried to keep them out, but at the sight of the Princess and Sidi Hafiz backing the fierce grin of Savaran he turned and bolted to the back quarters. Savaran went after him. The fellow shouted and men armed with knives came to his aid. There was a brief dogfight in which long, lean arms seemed to be mainly occupied in beating heads by couples against walls.

The men, with and without knives, lay in attitudes of peculiar indifference all over the floor and the spider-spare adventurer had whirled out of sight. But not of hearing. There came from the back rooms a sudden snapping outburst of shooting, a scream or two, and then a concerted wail for mercy followed by Savaran's voice calling cheerily for servants and bonds to tie up Jackals.

A few minutes later he appeared himself and, with white teeth flashing in his gipsy face, beckoned them to the back rooms.

"Behold Boma Ali's trade goods, O Sidi," he grinned, leading them to a stack of packing-cases.

"Rifles!" gasped the priest, but Savaran was already drawing him to a second stack.

"And what would you call this," he asked, "pious literature?"

"Hashish! May the anger of Allah smite the purveyor of such abomination," roared the old priest. "We have indeed been duped."

They had indeed. The house yielded rich details of Boma All's gigantic war plot. Not only had he used the semi-magic of "The Eye" to dominate the superstitious natives but he had found in the peaceful remoteness of Jannah Gaban the ideal clearing-house for his arms-running, drugs, letters, money, and Intrigue. Thus, snugly safe from white law, he had built up his plan for launching more than a million natives into a revolt of horror and slaughter against the whites.

"O foulness of treachery! O sink of infamy!" walled the old priest In despair. "How is such wickedness to be stopped?"

But Zaidie the Princess touched Savaran's arm and said in her soft voice: "You have proved yourself, O Eagle— and you are Savaran. You can save us from our folly."

"I believe," he said with his flashing smile, "It was the one thing Savaran was really created to do."

ON a huge, square altar stone that topped a mound in a clearing of The Forest of Death, Boma Ali stood alone (as was necessary for his trickery) looking down at massed natives. His gross lips smirked in satisfaction. His task was all but done.

Tomorrow he was travelling to Jannah Gaban to wind up the last details of his plot, send off the men with the fake amulets that were to be the signal of revolt, and take steps to secure his own safety. His planning was perfect. In thirteen days Africa would be running with blood. It was his moment of supreme triumph.

He took one last leering glance round to make sure that he could not be overlooked, noted how intent, awed, and vicious the waiting mass was, and raised his hand. The time had come. "The Voice of the Eye" was to order war!

As his hand went up every torch in the clearing was dashed out. Black and terrible darkness took the jungle and a silence as black and frightful. He heard the stir and gasp of the fearful savages before him. It was music to his ears. He lifted forward to his shoulder the microphone that was hidden in the hood of his burnoose and complacently began to open his kaftan to expose "The Eye" to the throng...

And even as he did so fingers of steel sank into his fat neck and a fiercely mocking voice whispered: "Boma Ali, my sweet, your hour has come, but not the hour you looked for!"

"Savaran!" The lips could form, but scarcely utter, the scream, and Boma Ali in a sudden sweat of terror began to kick.

But he was in the hands of a master. A lean leg locked his legs, the iron hands squeezed so sharply that he choked, shifted in a flash, and struck a blow like a hammer. Boma Ali sagged like an empty sack; as he slid to the ground his failing senses caught a whisper:

"Zaldie, O lioness of courage, now!... Stand on the altar... uncover 'The Eye'!"

Vaguely the swooning Boma All heard the rustle of silken garments, sensed a slim, swaying figure. Then a greenish gleam broke the darkness above him and he knew from the groan of superstitious fright that went up from the throng that it was looking upon 'The Eye"— but the true Eye this time on the breast of the Gerada Zaidie, the true possessor of its power.

As complete insensibility swamped Boma Ali, he felt the agile fingers of Savaran lifting the microphone, felt the eagle head bent close to his, heard the giant, god-like voice beginning to boom... but it was Savaran's voice using the microphone to undo his work.

But it wasn't easy to undo, even for Savaran. Boma Ali had stirred these savage minds up to the breaking point of frenzy. When the Voice of "The Eye" astounded them by forbidding the war, when it ordered them to disperse in peace to their tribes and live In obedience to white law, their over-excited and primitive instincts rebelled— even against "The Eye."

There were growls and snarls as though from beasts which had had blood-meat snatched from them when they were ravening with hunger. There were yells of protest cries of treachery. A great bull voice roared: A devil has taken possession of 'The Eye!' A devil is betraying us!"

Savaran, being Savaran, had anticipated this. With his lips close to the microphone he let out a roar of command so terrible that it silenced even the massed clamour.

"O impious and heedless people beware!" he shouted. "Do you dare defy 'The Eye and The Voice'? Then I call upon the Angels of Heaven to punish you... Look up, O vile dogs, the legions of Allah are about you."

The savages looked up, and a chorus of howls and yelps broke out. High up among the trees that fringed the glade they saw a multitude of replicas of "The Eye" staring down at them... well, it looked a multitude! Savaran had taken a leaf out of Boma Ali's book. He had not only hung twenty faked amulet on the breasts of certain hand-picked citizens of Jannah Gaban, but with phosphorous paint he had drawn "The Eye" on the chests of thirty others, all of whom were now perched in the branches of the trees.

Certain that they were menaced by a heavenly horde, the savages fell into confusion. Some screamed for mercy! Most of them yapped with fear, yet all the same there was an agnostic group who still craved for slaughter enough to talk of "devils".

The bull voice yelled again: "Kill the demon who has gained possession of The Eye!... Spears! Spears!"

As the voice spoke Savaran made a wild grab at Zaidie's ankles, caught her in his arms as she fell and dropped with her under the shelter of the great altar stone. Even as he touched ground that altar sparked and rang as the steel blades of a flight of spears hit the stone. Yet even as he rolled he had loosen his voice in a great shout, and the word he shouted was "Bombs! " And instantly from the trees the fifty Jannah Gaban "angels" tossed the bombs they had obtained from Boma Ali's own store into the milling mass of blacks beneath them.

"AND that," the eagle-faced adventurer grinned at Verreker two weeks later, "was the end of all war, Holy or otherwise. The tribes really thought that the prophet had sent his angels with lightning and thunder to smite them for impiety. The whole mob broke and ran like one man after the explosion."

"And spread the news of the wrath of Allah on war-makers throughout Africa," smiled Verreker. "Yes you smashed Boma Ali's war in the completest possible way--at one stroke. I don't think there will be any more trouble for generations. And— what happened to Boma Ali?"

"He died of the very spears he had hoped to launch against white civilisation," said Savaran grimly. "I thought it more fitting to leave him behind on the altar stone when we dropped to cover. It saved so much trouble. When I looked at him next he was a veritable pin cushion of spears."

"And that ends Boma Ali," nodded Verreker. "And now what about you, Savaran? You're free of all British colonies after this, of course, but— you're too good stuff to be wandering loose in Africa as you have been. Can't we find work for you? The Governorship of a province, say..."

"What is a province," said Savaran, with his flashing smile, "to a man with a taste for kingdoms?"

"A kingdom... I don't know that I can find you a kingdom," Verreker smiled, and then stopped. He saw the way the Gerada Zaidie looked at Savaran, the way her hand stole out to his, saw Savaran's genially fierce but triumphant smile.

He knew that he had no need to find the lean adventurer a kingdom. Savaran, being Savaran, had found one for himself.

______________

8: Lily of Deceit

THE DRUM that is called engoma, which is a drum of power, was throbbing upward to the point of death. The tall trees that made solid walls on either side of the jungle glade seemed to concentrate its sullen evil upon the single, brass-bright shaft of moonlight in which the ju-ju man danced.

The brazen shaft let through by careful tree-cutting broadened as the sun mounted. It touched a great bull of a black seated behind the shuffling witch-doctor. He was a negro nearly seven feet tall, enormously muscled. He wore the skin of a great ape as a helmet and cloak, the fangs of the brute curving down over his low ugly brow. This was Jadilla, Kai of the Maffatish, a human tiger in cruelty, audacity cunning, and strength.  About him stood forty picked braves of his bachelor guard protecting his back, which no other man might approach.

Engoma throbbed up and up, its sound pressing all life out of the world. Death stalked very near. The sun splash had spread so that the ground reflected it on the three victims lashed to sacrificial stakes. When the sun itself touched them, they would die... or rather, begin to die.

The three victims were white; and one was a white woman.

The man to the right of the woman stared straight before him with the queer fixity of a drug addict, and even though his face was blank it had a queer inner strain of evil. The man to her left was a youngster and good-looking with a curiously wholesome charm of good looks. His half naked body showed head wounds and he was sagging at his lashings, half-fainting from weakness.

The women was marvellous, and in a place like that doubly so. She was lovely with a still, pale beauty that made her look like a lily of innocence. Even in the face of death she maintained her downcast glance of untouchable and provocative reticence.

The brazen sun ray, by some trick of the tree cutting, leapt suddenly onto the victims. Abruptly they blazed with light. Abruptly engoma leapt to a howling note. Abruptly the ju-ju man sprang forward, his blade whining a shriller note. He sprang at the half fainting man, his arm swinging to the first of the ritual strokes that would sting the man, awake to the long drawn death the massed blacks were to gloat upon.

As he jumped something seemed to take him in mid-air, and a moment later he was but a twitching mass of limbs and panther-tails at the feet of his intended victims.

The gasping black mob stared horror-struck. Jadilla the Kai alone was on his feet bellowing a call to arms. For the first time in his kingship the blood-greedy Mafattish did not obey. A voice wailed:

"Woe! Woe! A God hath struck him dead!"

"Offal-eating dogs, came the rolling voice of the king. "It was a throwing iron. I saw it flash. No God did this--"

"Perhaps you are both right,' came a jeering voice in Swahili, "for I killed him."

There stood before the Kai, facing twelve hundred spears with a fierce unconcern, a tall and limby white man. He was eagle-faced and bright-eyed. He was also thoroughly enjoying the dramatic effectiveness of himself. A swaggering extravagant creature, yet something in those bright strong eyes sent a cold wind into the heart of the Mafattish.

"Jackal, who art thou?" bellowed Jadilla the Kai, and deliberately held his hand to his weapon bearer for a spear.

"Savaran!" said the white man, and his teeth, flared startlingly in his gipsy face when Jadilla, as though stung, snatched his hand away from his spear. The name Savaran had that reaction from Tangier to Table Bay.

"Zavarani!" cried the Kai, and all his people heard the trouble in his voice. "Why come you to my lands, Zavarani?"

"To hang you, Jadilla, after releasing the white men on whom you have dared to lay your black hands."

Jadilla took a stride forward and with a lightning gesture snatched a throwing iron from the folds of his ape skin. Savaran's wrist--no more--flicked upward as the brawny black arm swung, and the pistol in his hand cracked once. The throwing iron fell half way between the two men and Jadilla, with a yelp, was nursing a useless limb.

Savaran did not move, but at the sound of his shot well-armed askari appeared at every angle of the glade. With celerity they plumped down machine guns, fell into place behind them, and remained still, watching Savaran.

"People of the Mafattish," he said grimly, "dare you fight Savaran?"

"Only a low moan came from the tribesmen, and a rattle as the bodyguard dropped shields and spears. Savaran smiled fiercely again and pointed to a great tree over the king's hut. Half a dozen askari ran forward and led Jadilla to the reward of sixteen years of murder.

The white man with the dope-dead face said hoarsely as Savaran freed him from the stake, "Damn you and your play-acting. You cut that almost too fine."

"It wasn't play-acting, Bonny Margnan," said the eagle faced man. "I was waiting to see if that ju-ju man went to you first."

Even the deadened face came alive then: "By heaven," Bonny Margnan gulped. "You would have let him kill me?"

"I believe in all labour-saving devices," said Savaran.

"My heavens! And you a white man!"

"Charles Templeton and John Gort, to name only two, were white men, Bonny Margnan, but that didn't stop you hiring blacks to slaughter them," said Savaran fiercely. "I hold it to be a sanitary act to clean you and your clan off the Earth. Also, you double-crossed me. Where's  your precious father and cousin?"

"Find out for yourself you--you half nigger!" snarled Bonny Margnan, and fainted, not from the strain, but because he had been deprived of cocaine for weeks.

SAVARAN stood over the girl who was kneeling with the other man's head in her lap. The by was quite insensible now, and she was bathing his head with water an askari had brought. She made an almost too lovely picture of feminine tenderness, and yet Savaran, who always warmed to beauty in women, looked at her with eyes of loathing while his voice had a cutting edge as he spoke.

"Where are you father and your cousin, Lola Margnan?"

The girl said nothing, just went on bathing young Pendrych's head with a maternal loveliness that only made Savaran angrier. He knew Lola too well to be taken in by her tableau.

"I'll have an answer," he said fiercely. "I want to get at the inside of this. I, Savaran, have been tricked, as well as this boy. I'm his partner. You're robbing we as well as him. Out with it. What are your father and your reputed cousin up to now? What crooked part do you play in the game?"

Lola Margnan, daughter and bait of Max Margnan, and his family of swell crooks, looked up, her still white beauty even whiter.

"My crooked part?" she said.

"What else?" Savaran stormed. "What other could you play? Crooked from birth, you have no other instinct. Didn't you lure this boy from me with your calculated charms? Didn't you plane to beat me--ME! Savaran-- by getting me arrested at Hamattan? Isn't your whole record a string of such sweet treacheries? Beautiful you are, but vile, as Delilah was vile, Lola Margnan. And I know I mean to have the truth from you."

The girl did not answer, went on bathing the face in her lap. It stirred under her touch.

"Hallo," said Pendrych in a feeble voice. "Still unsliced, am I? Is Lola safe?"

"Safe, Jim," she said in her lovely, lying voice.

"Thank heaven," the boy breathed. "Give me your hand to kiss, darling."

"Pendrych!" snapped the eagle-faced man.

"Savaran!" cried the boy with limp gladness. "It's old Savaran. I guessed he'd do the trick. It's his way--great lad, Savaran, has the grand flair. Said as much to Lola the day these black brutes snaffled us. Said: 'Keep your pecker up, dearest, I have a hunch that Savaran is in this. Rescuing me is just the sort of miracle he does by habit.'  I felt that in my bones, didn't I, Lol?"

"Lol!" snorted Savaran, glaring hate at the girl.

"Lol," murmured the wounded boy.  "Lol here. Lola Margnan that was--my wife. Lol!"

He grinned in shaky rapture, drew the girl's hand to his lips, and blissfully fainted.

And Savaran, for once in his life thoroughly at a loss, lifted his eyes from the clean-run youngster who had won his heart, to glare at the harpy whose beauty was a synonym for rank evil throughout Africa.

Lola Margnan said nothing, showed nothing. No man ever did know what went on in her still soul. But this Savaran did know— her marriage to Jim Pendrych was monstrous.

Savaran was that form of living craziness known as a genius; that is, one never knew how his mind would jump.

Jim Pendrych was a whim. To the naked felonious eye he was merely a prize pigeon born for plucking, yet Savaran loved the boy and was ready to wreck nations to protect him.

Naturally Jim Pendrych offered several excuses for this. He was, for one, as candid, trusting and fine minded as any young thoroughbred could be. For another, he frankly worshipped the eagle-fierce adventurer. These things helped to affection, no doubt, but they did not quite explain, for Jim Pendrych represented loot to the tune of eight hundred thousand pounds English, and, in the main, hard cash counted more with Savaran than mere passing human emotions.

Jim Pendrych came to the Swamp Coast to win a fortune out of a mine and so restore the glories of an ancient and aristocratic family. He was the ten million and tenth youth to hit Africa with the same idea. Nevertheless, his case had a unique touch. There was really gold in his gold mine.

It was an odd story. The mine had belonged to Jim's uncle who had bought and worked it before the World War. It had proved a first-class proposition in those days, with but one defect-the Mafattish. Even then the Mafattish had been a rogue people, a living danger to all neighbours, white and black. Not a big tribe, they made the most of their jungle fastness, their genius in jungle war, and, above all, the fact that they straddle the only available caravan route to Port Hamattan.

Because of them Jim's uncle had made no attempt to get his gold along that road to shipboard. He had just let it accumulate in ingots until he had a fortune as big as he wanted, and which he could move in one well-protected caravan. His plan was sound, for he meant to hire a white regiment from the Swamp Coast and so defy the Mafattish.

He had collected £800,000 in ingots and was ready to put his plan into operation when the World War spoilt it.

That £800,000 now belonged to Jim Pendrych. His uncle had been killed on the Ypres front and Jim had become heir to all the Pendrych mortgages, the mine, and its secret. During Jim's minority his lawyers had made discreet inquiries about this property, only to learn that Jadilla was still rampant and the district more lethal for whites than ever.

They advised Jim when he came of age that merely to think about the mine was sheer waste of tissue, and that he had better find a job selling motors. Jim grinned, he usually did, managed to whack up another mortgage, and with it paid his expenses to Hamattan.

The first forty-five white residents of that tropics pest hole he consulted made it plain that only those men who preferred their suicides lingering ever ventured into the Mafattish bush. Jim did not consult the remaining thirty-seven whites. Before he came to them he'd had word that Savaran was in Hamattan.

He'd heard many tales about this rococo soldier of fortune— who in Africa had not?— and he felt at once that this African Robin Hood with an Alexander the Great complex was just the merchant to help him. Therefore, by means of palm-oil and stealth, he found his way to that dark and greasy house in Hamattan's cut-throat quarter where Savaran, under the name of Von Moltke, lurked. Savaran had natural causes for modesty of address. Not only was he reduced to one suit of clothes and eleven borrowed dollars, but there were five warrants out for his arrest in Hamattan.

Jim Pendrych knew all this, too, but it only seemed to make him like Savaran the more. It lent the dark and limby adventurer a glamour that led him to spill the whole of his story with a candour that made even Savaran cry:

"Shut up, you young madman. Don't you realise that this town is filled with rascals all ready to promise you safe escort to the mother lode of hell merely to rob you of that letter of credit you're flourishing under my nose?"

"Oh, quite," grinned Jim Pendrych, "but— you're Savaran."

"Hang the boy," roared the spidery man, "he's going to make me love him."

It had probably already happened.

Savaran, swift in all things, love, war and hate, had already become Jim Pendrych's father, mother, and dry nurse before the boy even spoke of partnership, for when Jim talked airily of a fifty-fifty split on any find. Savaran cried with a flash of white teeth :

"You don't seem to realise that having let the cat out of the bag to Savaran, that £800,000 is no longer yours to offer. But for some odd reason not unconnected with your pink cheerfulness, I'm going to be a darn fool and take an eighth share only."

Possibly Savaran found a heady satisfaction in demonstrating his power to create armies and dominate natives in front of a disciple so quick to admire, but the mere company of a lad so trusting, loyal, and generous was warming enough. And it is also a definite fact that the strange, harsh fellow did shield Jim from all the filth, the vileness and the treachery that African ports abound in--until the Margnans came.

SAVARAN was not to blame for the Margnans. The expedition was practically ready and its plan discussed and decided on, when the dhow smuggling their ammunition had to dodge a Swamp Coast gunboat. This not only meant a delay of ten days, but Savaran had to leave Jim in Hamattan and go to the coast to make sure of the landing of their arms. During those ten days the Margnans came, saw Jim, and Lola conquered.

Why Max Margnan brought his gang to such a swelter spot as Hamattan only the suave sly brain of Max Margnan could tell. Maybe he had heard whispers of Jim Pendrych's venture, for Max had spies everywhere, as well as an uncanny nose for loot.

Anyhow, they came, took the millionaire's suite in Jim's hotel, comported themselves as they always did, that is as super-gilt globe-trotters, and loosed the destructive loveliness of Lola at the boy's impressionable heart.

It was their usual line of attack, for the Margnans were wolves de luxe, as score upon score of dupes and the baffled police posts of all Africa knew to their cost. Old Max supplied the deep brainwork of the family— if it was one family— that enabled it to rob, nine times out of ten, inside the law.

Bonny Margnan, who probably was Max's son, for he had breeding, gave to the gang that extra spurt of drug brilliance or brutishness that often meant the winning of a difficult coup. Gil Margnan, who was supposed to be a cousin, had all. the crude ferocity of the Bowery and was supreme in a rough house. And Lola— Lola was the unfailing bait.

Lola made short work of most of her dupes; she made even shorter of so innocent a proposition at Jim Pendrych. In a single day he was swept off his feet and before many days were out the skill of Max had wormed from him the whole meaning and plan of his venture, including the easy way round the Mafattish by the Panna Pass, though Jim himself would have been startled to learn how much he had blabbed.

Max Margnan knew at once that he was on big money that could be lifted easily and without great risk. It was a temptation that Max would have scorned to resist. He, therefore, made plans that were, in their way, quite as brilliant as Savaran's.

The lean adventurer only heard about the Margnans when he arrived back in Hamattan to tell Jim that they would march the next day. It was morning then and as daylight was no time for Savaran to walk about a city infested with warrants he merely swore luridly and promised to deal fiercely and finally with the Margnans when he met Jim that night.

Unfortunately, Max Margnan was a man of quick action, too. Hearing from a spy that Savaran was back, he lit a fat cigar and strolled in his elegant way to the Police Commissionaire. Here certain bills of high denomination passed and as a result ten horny-handed millah police fell in a mass on Savaran as he left his house to call on Jim.

Savaran guessed most of the Margnan plot, but only learnt the working details four days after they had set out with Jim Pendrych for the mine. There was a certain excuse for this delay. Records had it that no man ever had or ever could escape from the particular cell in Hamattan's morro in which Savaran had been chained.

Savaran gathered his facts as a friendly brass-worker cut the chain rings off his limbs, and as he listened his eagle face took on that genial savagery that meant death for someone.

He heard that Jim had been thoroughly upset by his partner's mysterious disappearance and ready to beat up the whole Swamp Coast territory to find him. The boy had refused to believe Max Margnan's urbane suggestion that Savaran had merely been true to form and had bolted, as usual, after securing all the cash possible from his victim.

In fact, so loyal had Jim been that Max had had to bribe natives to act as debt collectors for Khalid Ali, the Imam Gablan, and the rest, to convince him that Savaran had not paid a penny of the £4000 handed to him for expedition expenses, but had gone off with the lot on the very dhow that was supposed to be bringing the ammunition.

When he heard that, Savaran, who had paid every bill with the scrupulousness of a bank manager, swore so complete and terrible a vengeance on the whole Margnan clan that the brass-worker got under his counter and awaited death, dagger in hand.

In the end Jim's desperate position persuaded him against his convictions. Not only had Savaran, it seemed, smashed his chance of reaching his mine, but he had left him penniless to face big bills for men and munitions.

It was a crushing blow, but it was here naturally that Max Margnan played the splendid little gentleman. He came at once to Jim's rescue. His noble soul was outraged at such a dirty trick played on such a splendid young fellow. He put all his wealth and his experience at Jim's disposal. He and his family would join the expedition for the sheer sport of the thing.

No, he wanted no reward, not he— still, if Jim insisted, perhaps one of the ingots suitably engraved as a memento of the adventure would serve. Max Margnan was, in fact, superbly generous— as he could afford to be since the expedition was already paid for and he had Savaran's plan of campaign to work to.

And where Max Margnan's generosity might have seemed suspicious, the deadly charm of Lola covered it up. That £800,000 was going to be the biggest and easiest steal in the gang's history.

Savaran heard all, stood up unfettered and said with the grin of a panther:

"In a month these Margnans Join the legends— they'll be a legend told with shudders of what Savaran did to those who wronged him in the eyes of a boy."

"But you cannot catch them," said the brass worker. "They have too much start."

"What are four days to Savaran?" flashed the lean man. "Go thou now to Kalid Ali and the Imam Galban and say that at noon to-morrow Savaran will be at the Saint's tomb by the Mafattish trail; there he expects to find two hundred men, with stores, ammunition, and five machine-guns for his march on the Mafattish. And that if they are not there Savaran will want to know the reason why."

SAVARAN drove his two hundred forward by marches that shocked them. They were a bad-hat lot and on the third day they gathered into a sullen mob to decide how best and quickest to kill this driver of slaves.

Savaran went straight among them and when a murderous Sudan negro put a rifle to his chest he lifted the muzzle, squinted down it with calm ferocity and told the spell-bound brute that he and his weapon were so foul that if he did not clean both at once he, Savaran, would call at the next village and get the "mammies" there give him a public bath.

Savaran knew the value of a gesture. His cold audacity intimidated his men, his savage humour tickled them. They fell back from his steel wire figure and listened to his talk, and Savaran talked like a ju-ju man spurring braves to frenzy. When he had finished they had forgotten that they had objected to marching and suggested that they should do an extra trek that night

Marching them like machines, welding them into a fighting mass that would respond to his slightest gesture, Savaran carried his two hundred to the point where Margnan and his party had left the main trail and Jim and his handful had been overwhelmed by the Mafattish.

"Listen, brothers," said Savaran, grimly. "There is the voice of en-goma speaking beyond the miles. Tomorrow at dawn there will be blood rites in the big Mafattish palaver place. It is then we will fall upon them, for they will be too bemused with the wickedness before their eyes to fight. Is it not good?"

It was good. These askari that Savaran had made out of coastal riff-raff felt the lean man's genius as a dog feels a friend or an enemy through its senses. They followed and obeyed. In the jungle mists of morning they moved unseen into position around the village and so the Mafattish fell to but a single shot through Jadilla's arm and the iron glance of a born conqueror.

But Savaran, though the spirit in him demanded it, could not king it over the Mafattish. He had too few men, as the jungle brutes would see when they awoke from their bemusement. Moreover, he was here to save Jim Pendrych's gold and to exact payment from the Margnans. He was also anxious about the Margnans. Max Margnan and Gil had not left the others behind without reason. There was some sly trick in the air that had to be countered

It was best countered by pressing on to Jim Pendrych's mine. That called for all his forces, too. Max Margnan had a strong band with him— Savaran knew that, for he had hired it— and if it came to a fight it would need all Savaran's general-ship and every rifle to win.

So he moved swiftly, though Jim Pendrych, blank-minded and helpless from wounds and fever, had to be carried in a litter. Bonny Margnan had to be carried, too, but only for a day; after that he died from lack of cocaine, evil living and local privations.

He had not talked. Jim could not. Lola only answered as her still and secret mind permitted. Savaran found himself at sea. He could not even begin to get a line on Max's sly plot, though his knowledge of these crooks made it plain it must be something ugly.

There was the business of the marriage, for instance. A rushed affair. Lola told him it had happened on the day they left Hamattan, at the British consulate. Jim had wanted it as none knew the dangers that lay ahead.

"But Max Margnan prompted it, of course," said Savaran.

"Yes," the girl admitted.

"It wasn't legal, of course," he snapped.

"My wedding?" she said in her soft, still voice. "But it is."

"Good Heavens!" he cried at the mere thought of Jim bound even for a moment to such a woman. Then he sneered, "It's a waste of time lying to me, Lola, my dark angel. I'm not a Pendrych. I know of at least a dozen other infatuated fools in your career."

"Yes," she said in her unresentful voice— how she carried passivity to a deadly art. "But I've not been married before."

Lola put a damp cloth on Jim's forehead. She said nothing. Her consummate silence held even Savaran at bay.

"What's behind it?" he burst out. "What devil's game were you playing when you stayed behind? Oh, I know your yarn, but it doesn't square with your record, my dear. Jim Pendrych might have stayed to look after you or even a sick Bonny, he's a gentleman— but you, why did you stay? You and your skunk of a father and Gil knew the danger and you won't convince me you would have risked your precious skin for a moment without some good reason."

What was Max Margnan's foul game? Jim Pendrych's death, no doubt, but how had he meant to work it? Even apart from affection, if any, Max would not have risked the death of one so useful to his schemes as Lola and most certainly Lola would not have risked herself. Yet she had stayed to face the Mafattish... or had she?

Had Max Margnan heard a bush rumour that Savaran was on his heels and so arranged that Jim should be left behind to die on his partner's hands from wounds the Mafattish might have dealt— or Bonny? The presence of the girl would have given such a murder an innocent look— Jim would have died in defending his dear wife! That certainly might be it, though something had gone wrong, the Mafattish attacking too swiftly and strongly for Max's calculations, perhaps.

That was the sort of bold risk Max would take— or it might even be that Max had bribed Jadilla with the promise of half the hidden gold to stage manage Jim's slaughter. Max was quite capable of such a horror and an old enough hand In native dirtiness to bring it off. And yet...

The cork-popping of rifle shooting came to them an hour before they reached Jim Pendrych's mine. They had left the jungle for the stony plain that bordered the French zone of Tarffi and sounds carried well across such sun-arid tracts.

At the first report Savaran glared at Lola— was this part of Max Margnan's trap? But she walked beautiful and aloof beside Jim's litter showing nothing on her face, and in a minute he learnt she had no knowledge to betray.

A black scout came back to say that the Margnans' men were fighting among themselves outside the mine.

When Savaran reached the deep cut in the floor of the plain where the mine was he saw a swarm of the men he had hired for Pendrych's caravan charging up the side of the valley to where a tumble of debris proclaimed the entrance of the mine. From the mouth of this came a rattle of shots. Brisk and savage they sounded, but they did not deceive Savaran. Only two or three men were in that mine, though they shot as fast as automatic magazines let them.

Savaran thought that the carriers, inspired to robbery by the sight of so many gold ingots, had turned on their white masters. Then as their charge hesitated at the exposed slope before the mine, he saw a rat of a white man rise from cover, and, using a rock to steady his rifle, pump bullet after bullet into the mouth of the mine.

There was no mistaking either the stealth or the build of the man— it was Gil Margnan. The jackal in Gil Margnan had not been able to resist the sight of so much gold. He was attempting to murder Max Margnan as he defended the mine. Thief had turned on thief.

Savaran gave a great roar of laughter, stood up and began striding down the slope. Gil heard, leapt round and began shooting at him like a spitting cat. His carriers, thinking that the Mafattish were on them, shot, too. A wailing stream of bullets screamed about Savaran's ears and he strode on laughing.

"My children," he roared down to the carriers. "Stop wasting lead. It is Savaran, your lord, who comes to you."

All the shooting died, save Gil's, but even as he strode Savaran's right hand went up, the pistol in it cracked and Gil's sun helmet rose spinning in the air. Savaran apologised for that shot later; the sun was on his sights, and thus Gil was able to cumber the earth a little longer.

Gil, indeed, was off at once, scuttling like an evil crab amid the rocks, and the carriers crowding about the lean man prevented another shot.

Savaran waved them aside and went on to the mine, pistol ready for Max. But no shot came even when he tore the barricade of rocks way. Max Margnan was dead among the few dead men who had remained true to him against the others.

Savaran straightened as the mine entrance was blocked by shadows. Jim was being brought in on his litter

"He will be cooler and safer here," said Lola, who walked, as ever, beside it. "Gil tried to kill him."

"Gil," said Savaran, and looked at her queerly. Then: "There's blood on your shoulder."

"Gil threw his knife," said the girl quietly.

"At the lord on the litter," cried a bearer. "The white she-lion shielded him with her own body."

"Ah," said Savaran, in an odd voice. "And Gil?"

"Gil is dead," said Lola tonelessly. She lifted and looked strangely at the pistol she held In her hand, then let it drop to the ground.

"You shot your cousin?" said Savaran

"He was no relation," she said, "merely a hired brute named Tanzt."

"A just revenge, anyhow," said Savaran. "One of his shots killed your father."

He stepped aside so that she could see Max Margnan.

Lola looked at the dead man steady-eyed, only a little flush came to her white and lovely cheeks.

'You don't seem upset," said Savaran, looking curiously at her.

"No," she said, "only glad."

"Glad at a father's death?"

"I've never known who my father was," she said. "But I am certain Max Margnan was not he."

Savaran looked downward. Between Max Margnan's feet was a stout leather bag, open now and showing the papers which filled it. Savaran had been reading those papers when Lola came in. "Not your father," he said, "yet you made a will leaving all you possessed to him."

''Yes," said the girl, and seemed to go very still.

"There is another will— Jim Pendrych's— drawn up by him the day after he had married you. He leaves you all he possesses; this mine, those ingots, everything. You knew about that will?"

'Yes," she said.

"And that was what you left to Max Margnan— this mine, the ingots, everything?" said Savaran.

"Yes," she whispered

"And why, Lola?" he asked softly. "Did you expect to die, Lola?"

"No," she said with a sudden, deep passion, "I hoped to die!"

"You hoped to die?" he cried. 'With Jim Pendrych! Goodness, you loved him!"

"Yes," she said, "I love him."

She said it evenly, quietly, superbly and yet with a sense of fatality, too, as though she also said: "Yes, whatever I am, whatever I have been, I love him. That is why I married him, who married no others; that is why I stayed to die with him. Whatever I was, the woman in me conquered— and love mastered me."

Even Savaran was awed, for his quick wits saw the whole explanation of the mystery in that word love.

"You won't believe that," she said with a sort of hopeless dignity, "but it's true. I have always hated the Margnans, the life they made me lead, the things they made me do. I have tried to fight them. They were too strong for me. They crushed me. The reputations Max so cleverly created about me shut me in against any escape to— to decency. I could do nothing but obey them— like an automaton."

"Then your aloofness—" cried Savaran.

"My only defence," she said.

"Go on! Go on!" cried Savaran. "I am seeing much. Jim Pendrych was doomed?"

"From the first," she said listlessly. "But they saw that I— that he was different from the others. That was why Max would not let me marry him until the day we marched. There was to be no intimacy before then, and, after, no warning of mine could help him, for in the bush he could be killed out of hand. They were even ready to do it since he had made that will in my favour after our marriage."

"Yes. I understand. Max Margnan liked his robberies to be legal. With Jim dead he had complete control of this £800,000 in ingots through you. But they must have had a definite plot for making Jim's death look innocent."

"They built it out of something you had said to Jim," she said. "You told him that it was necessary to smash the Mafattish if the work at this mine was to be safe. Your plan, you'll remember, was for Jim and two-thirds of the carriers to attack Mafattish town directly while you and the rest worked around by the Panna Pass and took them in the rear. Max pretended to adopt the same idea, but, of course, Jim was to be left in the lurch and killed by the Mafattish when they had learnt of his presence, while Max went straight to the mine."

"The blackguard— to prostitute my plan," snarled Savaran, the military mind of him up in arms. "But to leave the Mafattish aroused in his rear— that meant death. How did Max propose to escape that?"

"With the aid of the French," said Lola. "He was going to send a runner--has, no doubt--to Tarffi imploring aid directly he got here." She saw the puzzlement in Savaran's eyes. "Don't you know there's a new military post at Umala on the border?"

"By Napoleon, I did not," cried Savaran and the instinct of self-preservation made him start for the mine entrance. But he checked and said: "No matter. Tell me what happened. The plan was altered it seems."

"Yes, Bonny became ill, could not even be moved for a few days. Max, who saw it as a way of making Jim's death look more innocent, decided to leave Bonny to die with Jim. And that gave me my chance to stay. Jim, who had unwittingly played into Max's hand by insisting that I went on ahead for safety, could say nothing against my staying to nurse Bonny."

"And Max agreed to your committing this— this divine suicide?" asked Savaran softly.

"Not at once. But I would not give way to him, and when I agreed to make a will in his favour he did not mind. It was the £800,000 that counted most, and with that secured to him he was in haste to get out of danger."

"And you stayed for love of Jim, Lola," said Savaran softly.

"It was the gladdest act of my life," she said suddenly and superbly proud.

"Yes, I see that," he said. "You would have died with Jim— thankfully."

"He was the one decent man I have ever known," she said huskily.

"It was a splendid gesture— and you were worthy of it," said Savaran, and he lifted her hand to his lips, saluting a noble soul.

"It was worth it," she said, and then her voice dropped to misery. "It would have been worth it— but I lived."

"You lived," he cried, "to make Jim Pendrych happy. As you will. I, who love the boy too, tell you that I am glad you married him and that you live."

"But--but you know what I am," she faltered.

"I know what you are," he cried, "a great lady whom Fate and the world have maligned. Live that down, Lola Pendrych. You can, for you have greatness in your soul. Go with Jim to England where you are not known and build up a new life. I will write the truth to the boy to forestall slanderers. He loves me. He will believe me."

"Savaran," she said with bright eyes. "Savaran... stay and tell Jim."

"Willingly, but— " he cocked his ear to listen to an uproar among the carriers outside the mine... "but it's plain that Max did get his runner to the French. And the French and Savaran are not quite the friends they ought to be."

An askari headman came panting to the mine.

"There are soldiers coming, Lord Zavarani. Many soldiers, riding fast across the plain. They are undoubtedly Franchi."

"They undoubtedly are," said Savaran with a flash of splendid teeth, "and Savaran must undoubtedly hurry. The Gallic mind is so rigid in the matter of executions... Good courage and good fortune, Lola... Oh, and I think I'll take one of these ingots ... by way of a souvenir. Two, perhaps... well, we'll say three..."

With his white teeth flashing over an armful of four ingots, Savaran said good-bye and vanished running.

_______________

9: Delilah's Daughter

THE Gurgur quarter of Mamee Yorga is a home from home for Hades. Its pretty name means "filth eater" and African terminology is always apt— only the denizens of the Gurgur do not stop at eating. It is a multi-race slum built on a sand spit where two jungle rivers join, and, being in a Latin colony, it nuzzles in all its vices against a "white town" that looks exactly as soft guitars playing in milk-white moonlight sound.

A pretty place Mamee Yorga proper with its dreamy palms and patios, if morally a cross between a graveyard and a garden of sleep; that is because, as an outpost town, it is right at the bottom of civilisation's bag. It is in fact so hopelessly cut off by the lowering African bush that the stern-wheel river boats can only bring it news of the outer world every three months. Between boats there is nothing for the government bulamatari to do but eat and sleep, flirt languidly with a colleague's wife and dream endlessly of the day when he will retire to Europe with a fat pension and fatter pickings.

The pickings are certainly fat, since the only reason for Mamee Yorga's existence is riches. To it by its two great rivers and its five caravan routes comes the vast and easy wealth of the African interior, and quite a lot of that wealth can be made to stick to the fingers of the intelligent. The local official knows this well, so does the African underworld— hence the Gurgur. In the Gurgur foregathers that human scum that snatches at easy money either through the medium of thieving fingers, the administration of the dagger or by encouraging trail-weary men to pleasures as expensive as they are vile.

A place to make Hades blush, the Gurgur; at the same time it was a haven of refuge for gentlemen such as Savaran, with prices on their heads. The police of Mamee Yorga could be stern enough, in their own quarter, especially where there was blood money to be gained, but being Latin they were also both indolent and wise. It was better to shut their eyes to the Gurgur than to stir up trouble that might be disastrous to white rule so far from help. Thus official Mamee Yorga ignored the Gurgur, white men were rarely seen in its cramped and smelly streets, and any sort of white woman never. It can thus be understood that even Savaran was startled when a white lady called on him.

Savaran had no liking for the Gurgur, but it was convenient. He could look after himself, he could defy the police, he had money to spend, and it was the one place where he could organise an expedition that should set all Africa ringing with his name again before many months were out... Meanwhile he halted at the end of the blind alley in which his house stood and looked with calm eyes at a mob of multi-coloured cut-throats milling about a victim.

Someone, he saw, was being robbed, probably murdered, but local habits intrigued him so little that he was about to return to Poison Charley's and drink coffee until the fracas was over, when a voice called:

"Savaran! Mr. Savaran! Help!"

The call was English. The voice was a woman's.

It was quite remarkable— and so was Savaran. In ninety seconds the snarling street was as peaceful as a tomb and rather like one. Two black figures lay very still in the filth while another crawled away on hands and knees. The rest had scattered like disturbed flies at the mere knowledge that Zavarani was among them. A slim-legged Arab boy leant against a wall holding back his panting sobs with the haik that half covered his face, and Savaran, slipping his dagger back into its jewelled sheath, twitched the haik aside. Then he laughed his harsh laugh, caught up this boy, who was no boy, in his long, spider arms and stalked towards his house. There was the form of another Arab boy lying across the door, but Savaran took it and the door step in his long stride.

"My chouach," cried a voice from his arms. "Is he hurt?"

Savaran put his burden down into the house yard and returned to the still form.

"Not he," he said with ferocious geniality. "He's got his pay for bringing a sight-seeing efferengi into the Gurgur— he's dead."

The Arab boy, who was no boy. was sitting on the gold and silk divan of Savaran's inner room, trying to tuck her slim, round, very shapely and very bare legs away from the sardonic glance of Savaran.

Savaran had eyes for her face too. She made a good boy, short-featured and gallant looking, her boldness was softened by her undoubted femininity to an alluring charm. She was young and full of fire, and browned to a glowing berry-brown by tropic sun— even her slim calves— she was handsome even as a boy. As herself she would be adorable his expert eye told him.

"Well, was it worth it?" he asked with his eagle smile; he hadn't a doubt she was a sensation-hunting globe-trotter.

"I came to see you-Savaran," she said.

"That," he grinned fiercely, "naturally makes all the difference. Yet had you only sent your photograph I should have flown straight to your hotel."

She flushed richly. She really was young and fresh and delicious. Yet she had her strengths; her good, quick, steady-glancing eyes told that.

"There are two warrants waiting for you if you step outside the Gurgur," she said quietly.

"What are two among so many?" he laughed. "And for beauty less than yours I have, before now, cut my way through armies."

"Yes," she breathed. "I know of your exploits. That is why I came. I am told you are the finest soldier in Africa; that you spend your life raising armies and fighting tribes."

"And making kings and queens!" he said with a flash of white teeth "Even rumour tells the truth at times. And, like Cleopatra, you are drawn— "

"Why," she asked coolly, "do you treat me like a flattery-hunting flapper?"

"It is a waste of precious opportunity," he smiled and sat beside her.

And at that she rose quietly, stripped the haik from her slim figure, and. shaking down the white undergarment, modern and skimpy at it was, stood revealed in a nurse's uniform.

Savaran's eyes glinted at the new. the workmanlike creature and his keen, gipsy head went back in laughter.

"You tricked Savaran," he cried. "I, Savaran, expert in women, thought you only a debutante greedy for thrills... You're the new American nurse at the Magdelena Hospital, Ruth Dacre."

"You know me?" she cried, surprised.

"You must be terribly overworked there now that young Dr. Felton is down with fever," he said, and perhaps there was a touch of irony in his tone, and perhaps she saw that he, being Savaran, knew all there was to know, for she flushed again as girls in love do, even if she said with a brave little lift to her chin:

"He has worn himself out with work, nearly killed himself... One can scarcely do less with such an example."

"And you'll have to go on doing it for months," he said, his eyes gleaming.

"Yes, Dr. Pelton will be helpless for months," she admitted and she looked at him strangely. "Three months at least. And he won't leave Mamee Yorga even if we tried to force him."

Savaran went still. Something in her tone rather than her words made him look at her with a quick, fierce grimness.

"And you want him to leave?" he asked.

'You know he ought to leave," she said, looking at him steadily. "You are Savaran, you know about the Forofangora."

He frowned savagely over harsh eyes, then shrugged in his large way.

"Naturally I know— I am Savaran. But you— how do you know, a green-horn only just come to Africa? It is but a bush whisper."

"You forget we have men from the bush in our wards," she said. "As I dressed the hurts of one of them he whispered that I must run away from Mamee Yorga because the Forofangora were coming to slay."

"And you believed him?" his eyes were keen.

"I had to believe him; he swore on the stone."

"Did he give details?"

"It is to be in three weeks' time," she said. "When the Gelem Caravan comes in. That caravan carries record loads of gold dust and ivory."

"And diamonds from a new field," said Savaran, never able to resist a gesture.

"He did not tell me about the diamonds," said Ruth Dacre. "But he is certain that the Forofangora will stop at nothing to take such rich loot; they will sweep Mamee Yorga with death. And it will hap-pen three days after the caravan comes in, two months before the steamer arrives to take the gold and ivory to the coast... Months before any sort of help can get to us." She looked at him steadily. "You know all this is true?"

"I know," he grunted fiercely. "Mamee Yorga will be a burnt-out shambles before a month has gone. The Forofangora have been saving this up for years." He sat back and regarded her with a fierce and mocking smile. "And what does His Excellency, 'The Big Vegetable,' say to it all?"

"The Big Vegetable" is a highly disrespectful term for any official big wig in that colony's officialdom. In this case it referred to the important if lethargic Adjunct Commissaire, who ruled over Mamee Yorga and all these frontier marches.

"You know I've been to him?" she cried.

"I guessed, my dear," he said, with a grin of satisfaction at his own shrewdness. "You went straight to His Excellency with your terrible news as a good citizen should— and what did he say? But no— Savaran will tell you... The fat little gentleman chucked you under your pretty chin with his fat pink hand, giggled sleepily, and said: 'There! There, my pretty flower, do not trouble your small charming head. We know all about these rumours. We have been listening to them since before you were the baby, and they signify— nothing. Nothing at all, little cabbage... and, even, they signify less in the matter of the Porofangora. We know them, those niggers. Twenty-five years ago we whipped them most severely for being naughty, and since then they have been so meek, so meek. Women-men, but most loyal subjects; glad even of our rule, never as much as grudging the collector a centime of the hut tax. No! No, little one, some bad men we know of might revolt, but the Forofangora, never. So fear not and do not listen to this silly talk: no harm will come to us.' "

Savaran's voice as he spoke took on the fat, drowsy, fatherly unction of His Excellency so marvellously that Ruth Dacre cried:

"You might almost have heard him!"

"Oh, Savaran knows the soul of that warthog in all its laziness, incompetence and folly."

"But all the officials are like him," cried Ruth Dacre. "None of them will listen to me."

"What did you expect," he said scornfully, "when they do not even listen to Savaran?"

"You have warned them!" she gasped.

"Savaran is also a white man," he grinned fiercely. "Yes, I even sent them a messenger— they thought it comic, I hear, or possibly some trick by which Savaran hoped to feather his own nest... And then they all went to sleep again."

"And yet the Porofangora will come," she cried.

"They will come," he said grimly. "Their babies of twenty-five years ago have been reared with but one thoughts— to take revenge for that defeat of twenty-five years ago. A new race has arisen since that old war, a cunning race that can pretend meekness and prepare vengeance by stealth. There are seventy-thousand fighting spears waiting but the word to slay. They will roll over Mamee Yorga and half the colony before any defence can concentrate. Be wise, obey your bushman, my dear— and run for it."

"Couldn't Mamee Yorga be defended?"

"With ease," he shrugged. "The old pioneers were real soldiers. They chose an admirable position as you can see, with the broad rivers guarding three sides. Even the old land wall could stop mere spear fighters like the Forofangora if properly defended. And the town could hold out. There is unlimited water, food in plenty and the local inhabitant is good fighting stuff--I know, I am employing him myself. A good leader could sit safe and tight here for half a year, certainly long enough for help to be rushed up to him."

"You alone can save Mamee Yorga," she cried.

"I have," he said with sardonic politeness, "another appointment."

"Another black tribe to be crushed?"

"Not precisely," he answered. "Diamonds to be collected."

"Diamonds--from this neighborhood?" she frowned.

"You forget," he smiled. "A new field has just been found. The Mbamsef in the hills to the north-west made the find. They are a race of dogs that I ought to have punished long ago for a treachery, but they were not worth the effort. But having diamonds— that is a different story."

"You could leave your diamond stealing until after you had saved Mamee Yorga," she said, contemptuously.

"Few women," he grinned, "understand the finer points of strategy. I, Napoleon and in fact all the really great conquerors get our results through swift action. The Forofangora know about these diamonds too, The mere act of their striking at Mamee Yorga, even if they only besiege it for months, will gain them the support of other tribes, the Sammo and the Laro-Laro, for In-stance, and they will use some ol those tribes to attack the Mbamsef; they will want those diamonds to buy arms. Naturally, I must get to thc Mbamsef, beat them and turn them into a practical fighting force to meet the Porofangora before they come for those diamonds. I have no time to waste if I am to triumph."

He caught her hands.

"Come, my pretty, Join me. You will be safe then and a throne await at the end of our adventure. You have Savaran's spirit, too, you can dare."

She tore her hands away, and not merely anger, but fear of his queer, compelling power, was in the gesture.

"You can stay and defend Mamee Yorga," she cried passionately. "You are already collecting your forces for the attack on the Mbamsef, you have arms. With these as the back-bone of the defence and with your genius you could hold the Forofangora until help came."

"Certainly you have charm," he smiled grimly. "You make your patients whisper too many secrets. And did you tell all this to The Big Vegetable'?"

"Am I a police spy?" she cried fiercely. "I knew what he would do to you if he heard you were here." Suddenly she put both her hands on his shoulders. "Savaran, save Mamee Yorga as only you can!"

That Francois Villon recklessness that could make him toss a crown over his shoulder for the sake of a woman's smile swung him. His arms went about her. She had won him— had she not stiffened at his touch. He laughed sardonically

"Save Mamee Yorga— but particularly young Dr. Felton, eh?" he cried. "You are no more disinterested than Savaran. Also it is impossible. You yourself have told why. You dare not tell the authorities I am here; they would clap me in gaol, even if I appeared to defend their wretched little town."

"But— you are Savaran. You could find a way?" she pleaded.

"YOU are very beautiful," he smiled, pinching her cheek. "Almost you make Savaran forget his common sense. But not quite. I know these overfed pigs, they are hopeless. I know also that unless I leave Mamee Yorga before the Forofangora can block the trail I too shall be in a plight as hopeless. So, then, within three weeks I leave. It is the only thing to do. And you— if you are wise  you will come, too. There is only death here for you, but with me there is the love of Savaran and a throne and your name, with his, in history. Yes, you had better come."

"Never," she cried fiercely. "I won't desert."

"Well," he grinned fiercely. "You have three weeks to dwell upon the thought of what death at savage hands will be like, and, remember, just one little message to me at any time during those weeks and you will be safe."

She picked up her haik, flung it about her silently, contemptuously. But Savaran only smiled his dark, hard, mocking smile. He knew human nature too well, this strange adventurer. Heroism in the abstract is so easy, but three weeks' reflection on death might beget quite another mood. He saw the beginning of it, in fact, in the ready, even the clinging willingness with which she accepted his escort through the evil stews of the Gurgur.

He was right. Ruth Dacre fought long against her fear; her courage, in fact, held out until two days before he was to march— but then it broke, and a hospital orderly crept through the streets of the Gurgur to Savaran's house with a note.

He read that note with his harsh, mocking smile. Was he disappointed in her, or was he elated at another triumph over beauty? Hard to say. Savaran in his moods was as baffling as a weather-cock in a whirl-wind. His arrangements were practically completed. His force of nearly five hundred hand-picked askari and carriers was scattered through the Gurgur and the nearby villages ready to concentrate at a single word. He had his rifles, machine-guns and ammunition stored in various go-downs under his hands. He had little or nothing to hold him back.

Her note told him plainly that, woman-like, she needed a final persuasion. She must talk to him again, she said, before he left. She would meet him that night by the tomb of the Lonely Saint in the bare piece of ground between Mamee Yorga and the Gurgur.

Well, it was all very much as he had expected, though he had felt that her gallant little face spoke of sterner stuff. Still she was coming, and Savaran, after giving precise and careful Instructions for any eventuality to Abn Zayd, his head man, robed himself in a fine silk tobi and went largely to the meeting

SHE was waiting for him in the shadow of the tomb, and he went straight to her, caught her and kissed her. A dashing attack both in war and women was his favourite method.

"No," she cried tremulously, thrusting him off. "We must talk... You are ready to leave, all your forces, everything is ready?"

"You can ride out on a silk saddled mule at any hour you like," he said, smiling down on her fiercely.

"And— and you still think the Forofangora mean to blot out Mamee Yorga?" she panted.

"Are you beginning to doubt that?" he mocked.

"No," she said huskily. "Another man has told me it is true. But— but the Commissaire laughs at it more than ever. The Forofangora have sent five chieftains' sons to him begging him to keep them in his palace and train them in European ways. He says the Forofangora would not dare attack when he holds such hostages."

"That is exactly what the Forofangora want him to think," said Savaran grimly. "They are wily people, the Forofangora, they know that some rumours of their intentions must get about, so they send these hostages to lull our fat Commissaire's fears. Those young men gave themselves willingly for that purpose. They are ready to die to help their tribe to victory."

"You're sure?"

"Even now the Forofangora are sharpening their spear blades. Even now their best marksmen are practising with the twelve hundred Belgian rifles that have been smuggled to them. Even now their women are stirring the braves to frenzy with the singing of the war vaunts."

"Then Mamee Yorga is doomed?" she said in a strangled voice.

"That is not a matter for you to worry about, for I am taking you with me," he smiled.

He stepped close and caught her up In his arms. He chuckled as she did not resist. She sighed, relaxed against him, and, as he held her high, her arms went about him, holding him tight. It was triumph. He turned to stride back to the Gurgur with his spoils, and as he turned he saw the glint of rifles pointed at his chest, and the moonlight revealed three members of the local police standing about him looking determined and grim. Then a couple of dapper white officers stepped from the shadows and they bristled with firearms, too. One blew a whistle, and from almost every angle of the compass armed men began closing in. Scores of them. Mamee Yorga knew Savaran and was not taking risks.

The spider-spare adventurer backed a step and tried to drop the girl to get at his pistol. She only clung tighter, holding his arms and crying anxiously:

"Don't fight them, Savaran. They're ready to shoot at any excuse. They mean to take you dead or alive."

Savaran stood stock still and laughed savagely.

"Delilah can boast at least one worthy daughter," he cried.

She came to him four days later. Two days after he should have left Mamee Yorga and a day after he could leave it, for already, he knew, the Porofangora were blocking the trails out.

The big Arab gaoler would not let her pass through the barred gate into the cell.

"It is not permitted, O Lioness," he said gruffly. "See, this is the mighty Zaravani. Give him but a loophole and he vanishes away."

They were taking no risks with Savaran. A double guard of newer, more businesslike askari filled the prison buildings and two armed sentinels stood each side of the door. As she grew accustomed to the gloom she saw the leg and wrist Irons that linked up to his steel girdle, saw the strong chain that stretched from that to a staple in the wall. He sat up on his stone bench with a clink of metal as he saw her, throwing his cigarette away.

"Little Delilah comes to gloat over the fallen Samson," he said fiercely. "But one so dainty should not have risked it. The fleas of Mamee Yorga's prisons are the most redoubtable of their breed."

"Savaran— don't," she cried huskily. "You know it was the only way."

"To keep a lover near you?" he mocked.

"To save Mamee Yorga," she faltered.

He deliberately jingled his Irons.

"Listen to the armour of the fighting man," he said grimly. "Could anyone but a woman have decided that the best way to save a town was by betraying into prison the one man who could do it?"

"I had to keep you back until the Porofangora came," she said. "There was no other way. Only with you on the spot is there any hope for us."

"Well, I am on the spot," he grinned. "Where is the hope?"

"You are Savaran. You will find a way," she cried desperately. .

"Count my guards," he said. "It is because I am Savaran that they mean to give me no chances."

Even as he spoke the big Arab warder touched her arms, for she had stretched them through the gate bars in a gesture of appeal.

"You must not do that, O Lioness," he said sullenly. "This is Zavarani. He is a devil. He can find ways of escaping that no other man can think of. We can take no risks. It will be the garotte for me if he gets free."

"You see," said the spider-lean man with fierce geniality. "They mean business."

She drew back shuddering; she cried frantically:

"But--tomorrow the caravan will be in, and three days after the slaughter starts."

"My latest information is that they have postponed lt until the fourth," he said, ferociously affable. "After all, they have plenty of time."

She caught the bars of the door as though it were he she wanted to clutch and shake.

"You can't convince me," she cried with a sob in her voice, "that you, Savaran, will allow yourself to be wiped out by these brutes without striking a blow."

"How can mere man fight Fate, the folly of Commissaires and the wiles of women?" he shrugged.

"You saw His Excellency?" she cried, catching at that.

"An interesting interview," he jeered. "He was practically awake; calculation of his share of the reward for my capture had given him a sleepless day."

"Don't joke," she wailed. "It is too horrible... You told him of this peril?"

"I did, with full facts and details. That made him double my guard and order this girdle and chain. He thought it was just some trick of mine for engineering an escape and robbing him of his hard-earned blood money."

The Arab gaoler touched her arm the man was nervous of every word she exchanged with his redoubtable prisoner. She must go now.

"And— we can do nothing!" she wailed.

"We can pray that our deaths will be quick," he said grimly. "Also you can send me some real American cigarettes if you, or Dr. Felton have any; this Kafir tobacco is ruining my palate."

SHE sent him cigarettes, she sent him good foods and wines. She even made the mistake of sending him a file in a long loaf; she did not realise what it meant to capture Savaran The big Arab gaoler pawing through cigarettes and food under the eye of a white officer broke the loaf and tossed the file free with a sneering snarl, while the officer laughed contempt in Savaran's face and patted the gaoler's broad back. And she heard of that, too, and read in it the fate of Mamee Yorga. Savaran would never be freed, the town was doomed. When she went to him again she was a desperate and contrite woman.

The big, scowling gaoler stood at her elbow more watchfully than ever; she turned on him fiercely.

"Stand back," she cried. "I am going away. I shall never see him again. I must speak with him alone."

The man shrank back before the fire in her tone, but he hesitated and with a splendid gesture she threw wide her arms.

"Could I carry any tools to help him?" she cried angrily. She wore a sleeveless and, to the big Arab, a shameless pocket handkerchief of a frock. It was difficult to see how she could have concealed even a penknife about her. As the man hung sheepishly, Savaran snapped at him:

"Do as you are told, black dog. it is not good for your ears to hear the farewells of white lords."

The whiplash in the lean adventurer's tone completed the gaoler's discomfiture. He turned and shuffled off, and as he went Ruth Dacre leant against the wall fanning herself with her sun-hat, overcome by the heat of the place as much as the strain. It was only as the big gaoler turned at the door of the prison to watch her that she nerved herself to go to the bars of the cell door.

"Savaran," she said hoarsely. "Kiss my hand In farewell ... It holds a pocket revolver. I brought it in my hat... Not much... but I could not bear to think of you going out without striking a fighting blow."

He bent over that fine, strong, sweet hand with the grace of kings.

"Ruth," he said softly. "You are one of the world's great hearts. I am your worshipper."

"Don't," she choked, "I have been a fool, Savaran. But I meant only to be wise. I did it for Mamee Yorga, for all these men and women and children, all my helpless hospital cases... "

"And young Dr. Pelton?" he smiled.

"Yes," she said sharply, "I love him, Savaran. And I love him, too, for the great work he is doing. I wanted to save him to do greater. It was a mean trick I played on you, but I did not know, I hadn't your wisdom. I felt that if I kept you here, even against your will, you would find a way to fight and beat the Forofangora for the very preservation of your genius."

"That, my dear, is the greatest tribute my genius has had," he said quietly.

"I always did believe in you," she said wearily, "but I did not know what these officials were... And now it is all over. The Forofangora strike the day after to-morrow, and we all die. There is little doubt about it, even the Commissaire begins to suspect it."

"And what does that mountain of sleep do?" asked Savaran.

"He can't quite admit it yet... the Forofangora are such loyal and meek people, he bleats... but he has given out that he will hang all those hostages In a row if the Forofangora do anything to annoy him."

"And then he fell asleep again," Savaran laughed grimly. "And the rest of the Government crew?"

"One or two are overhauling the armoury stores and crying in despair over them," she told him. "And some took canoes last night and slipped down river."

"Their throats are cut by now," he said cheerfully. "But I'm glad you came today, Ruth. Even I begin to find this prison and its fleas Irksome."

"But— what do you mean?" she cried. "Have you found a way?"

"I am Savaran— which, of course, is saying yes," he said; he turned to his scowling gaoler, rapped: "Is all ready Abn Zayd?"

The sullen Arab was no longer sullen. He sprang to attention, he was grinning all over his face.

"All is ready," he beamed. "We wait but the word of the lord Zavarani."

"Pass the word to the guard to muster at once," rapped the lean adventurer. "Send runners to the Gurgur to bid my men parade before Government House in fighting order and now."

The big gaoler ran from the place shouting. The sentries at the door became alive and vanished from view. There came the bustle of men gathering outside, the clang of rifle butts on sun-baked earth. The big gaoler came running back; as he put his key into the lock of the cell door he cried happily:

"Does the lord who laughs at lions need his slave's help?"

"Just a match," Savaran grinned, for he could not resist the dramatic. His hands had gone down to his chains. He shook them a little and then tossed the formidable collection aside like discarded undergarments; no man, it was to be seen, was needed to release Savaran. He strolled out of his cell cigarette In hand at the precise moment that Abn Zayd held up the match.

Ruth Dacre leant again a wall, gasping.

"You have released yourself, could have at any time?" she cried bewildered. "But this man, your gaoler— "

"Allow me to Introduce Abn Zayd,' grinned Savaran. "My headman in many expeditions."

"And— and you got him in here as your own gaoler?" she gasped. "How-how?"

"Here is Zavarani," beamed the man. "Wonders are natural to him."

"Less than a wonder here," said Savaran largely, for he was enjoying this. "The officials are so sleepy that when the real gaoler went down with fever and recommended his cousin Abn Zayd, they did not push their inquiries very deep. But let us go out and review my army."

"Even the soldiers are yours?" she laughed hysterically.

"I had five hundred men on my pay roll," he grinned. "It was a pity to let them waste their time in idleness, especially as the Government forces were eager for recruits owing to slackness in enlistments. Quite a number joined up and spread the news of Savaran through the ranks of the all-too-ready regulars, for an army will always back a real leader to a man."

They went out and five grinning ranks of hard-bitten askari came to the salute like veterans at the barked command of Abn Zayd. The two officers of the guard were sitting blinking at rifle muzzles in the little mess-room of the prison barracks.

Savaran stalked like an outsize Napoleon along the ranks. Spoke a handful of harsh words in Yorgi which sent two hundred well-oiled rifles tossing in the air as the men cheered, and called for horses. Two horses. Ruth Dacre rode with him as he marched in triumph through the sleek and sleepy streets of Mamee Yorga to Government House. But there was no sleep In Mamee Yorga once Savaran had passed. Savaran left no details unthought-of. He had even provided a band.

So behind the blood quickening scream of native instruments they swung into the huge parade ground facing the official palace. It was already full of black fighting men. Regulars of the Colonial force marshalled in companies with new machine-guns ominously trained on the Commissaire's dwelling, and masses of Savaran's even more formidable irregulars drawn up behind. A huddle of white officers stood about the palace steps uneasily fingering their pistols as Savaran strode largely up to them.

"Gentlemen," he said grimly, "draw your weapons and it is a massacre. On the other hand wait patiently a little while and I will find you plenty of use for them."

He walked straight through that little crowd, though every man of it was ready to cut him down— if he only had the nerve.

His Excellency the Commissaire was as yet only half awake to what had happened. He heaved his gross body from his chair and, blinking across his great desk, mumbled:

"What's this? Most irregular... a prisoner without an armed guard Most improper . "

"Fat one," said Savaran with ferocious geniality. "Go back to your dozing. You are temporarily deposed. Since you can neither govern nor protect Mamee Yorga an expert has been called In." He turned to two frightened secretaries. "Take away this— bundle," he said. "Savaran needs his chair of state."

THE Forofangora attacked to time table. They came out of the jungle mists Into the red sun at dawn, their great head-plumes making a sea of dancing lights, their rhino shields drumming thunder as their spear hafts beat out their war challenge. They moved In an exultant swarm tight-packed because, thanks to the two great rivers, only one side of the town could be approached. But that did not bother them. They were contemptuous of Mamee Yorga. They knew that the watch was half asleep, the defences nil.

It seemed they were right. Dawn sun showed them a broken old wall behind which drowsed a sleep-sodden town. No man stirred in it

No movement, no sound at all from Mamee Yorga until the mass of naked braves were no more than forty feet from the wall, and even then no sound from the wall— only a new sound from the Forofangora warriors...

A strange sound. A shrill outcry, a screaming. The foremost ranks were suddenly yelling and leaping and trying to twist back in a panic of pain. They hurled themselves back into the mob that hurled itself forward with a force that plied up the whole mass in a wild squirm of tangled confusion. And they screamed that the ground beneath their feet was aswarm with devils.

This was not quite correct. Savaran had merely ordered that through every door and every flat plank in Mamee Yorga there should be driven eight-inch nails sharpened to needle point. Those doors and planks had been burled m the sandy soil outside the wall so that they formed a broad band, thirty feet deep, right across the front of the wall. The Fororanga were now stepping with bare feet on those needle points set as close as cornstalks, and the effect was distressing. And as they shrieked and milled and formed themselves into a matted mob Savaran, smiling fiercely, leant outward from Mamee Yorga's wall and shot Fodi Kabba, king of the Forofangora, and three of his chiefs as fast as his remarkable pistol could spit bullets.

And even before his third shot rang out the front of Mamee Yorga was a blaze of flame. Machine guns and rifles pumped in a continuous blaze into the brown of that milling, tight-packed, helpless mob It was point-blank killing at non-stop rates. The pelt of shots blew great holes in the writhing mass, and pressure from behind Ailed up those holes ready for mort killing In time it was impossible to say how many died, so dense was the swathe of dead and living...

The shambles that the Forofangora had planned for Mamee Yorga had come to meet them. In twenty minutes there was no more war.

There was a lame, feeble sort of siege for a week or two until word that flotillas were being rushed up river finished even that. It was always half-hearted, never dangerous. The Forofangora ran from Mamee Yorga beaten.

"THOSE first twenty minutes finished them," Savaran explained to Ruth Dacre. "They taught them that a master was in command, and that there was no hope for them."

Savaran told her this as they stood on the banks of the river by the canoe that was to take him across to Abn Zayd and his expedition waiting on the frontier bank.

"Savaran!" cried Ruth Dacre huskily. "Stay to enjoy your triumph."

Savaran looked into eyes that told him how personal that triumph might be and he turned quickly to nod at the two stern-wheelers that were disembarking white regiments and artillery on to Mamee Yorga's quay

"It is wiser for Savaran to go before the official mind remembers there is a reward for his capture."

"They won't do it," she cried. "Why, all Mamee Yorga is petitioning to have you made Commissaire."

"Horrible," he grinned. "Imagine Savaran developing an His Excellency paunch!"

"That's not Savaran's way," she said, searching his eagle face with overbright eyes "You are making excuses."

"Possibly," he grinned. "You see, I still think I can get those diamonds."

"Diamonds!" she cried scornfully. 'Diamonds— Savaran, I am more than diamonds. I— I want you."

"And Dr. Felton wants you," said Savaran grimly. "And I've taken a liking to him... And you're a lovely thing, Ruth, and Savaran is an Ismael... only fit for diamonds."

He bent and kissed her and sprang into his canoe. And half-way across the stream his fierce grin broke out.

"I wonder," he asked himself, "which of us has made the luckier escape?"

_________________

10:  The Young Lion

MBOTU, the Toad, trader in saffron and ghee, secret financier of ivory smuggler and slavers. Looking from the window of his house Savaran thought there was something breathtaking in the beauty of those ship at anchor— a beauty which did not apply to their calling. Savaran had come to take big projects to this negro Rothschild of an expedition daring enough to take the breath away.

"Why are there qualms in the belly, O Toad? Do you doubt Savaran's power over the Gran Fess? Do you doubt my having my way with the Kola Ambar?"

"Who dare question the might of Fumu-Boula (The Whip of Kings) ", muttered Mbotu, but he scratched his expansive nose with a dubious finger all the same.

"You wear the air of one regretting his bargain, O Money Grubber," said Savaran. "Why? Am I not Savaran? Are not the Gran Fess ready to respond to my call, spear and shield? Wherefore fear?" He frowned "Do you doubt my having my way with the Kola Ambar?"

"Ambar of the Gran Fess is doubly fickle," said Mbotu. "She is queen as well as woman. She is reputed wayward in her fancies. Three times already she hath cried 'I divorce thee', and five other husbands knew legal separation by the sword."

"And those, knowing Savaran think he might fail her fancy?' There was a dangerous gleam in the fierce gipsy face, for here was to touch on the raw for vanity.

"Nay! Nay'' cried Mbou anxiously. "All Africa knows that Zavarani is irresistible in women as well as war "

"Also the world," corrected Savaran with a flash of strong white teeth. "Why, then, does Mbotu hold back when Savaran offers him Gran Fess ivory and easy gold?"

Mbotu squirmed uneasily. He knew that though the Gran Fess were as yet unaware that their gold and Ivory belonged to Savaran, the war-maker's word was as good as a banker's draft— or would be once he reached the Gran Fess. That was the difficulty. Would even Savaran be able to reach the land he meant to master? Afraid to say this direct Mbotu fell back on native allusiveness.

"Last night, O Power Over Nations, I had a dream that was no good dream." he said. "I stood outside this town, on the trail that leads to Bemoy City, and I heard a bird calling. And I looked up And lo! I saw thee, Zavarani, striding towards Bemoy City, and the bird was fluttering against your face, crying: "Let! Let! (Back! Back!)  And I woke fearing, for the bird was the Fin bird "

Savaran's bright eyes studied the sullen man He knew that the Fin bird was a figure of ill-omen, presaging disaster, but also, being wise in Africa, he knew that Mbotu had dreamed no such dream but was merely inventing an excuse for not supplying the funds and carriers necessary to carry him to the Gran Fess.

"I see behind your dream," he said grimly. "Let it be spoken in plain words what Savaran has to fear in Bemoy?"

"Danger!" mumbled the negro, cringing before the iron in Savaran's voice. "Great danger!"

"Danger is my wine." said Savaran in his large way "And why more for me in Bemoy than in every other yard of Africa?"

"In Bemoy," croaked Mbotu, "is a white lion who lives only for the hour when he takes thee in chains to his king."

"A white man!" frowned Savaran "What sort― Man jago? Man weewee?"

The independent Sultanate of Bemoy was administered and policed by Portuguese and French.

"Inglis!" Mbotu spoke as though uttering the word of doom.

"An Englishman!" snapped Savaran. "What does an Englishman in Bemoy?"

"That is thy peril, Zavarani," said Mbotu suddenly eloquent with urgency. "He is there solely to catch thee. He is a Government man, a soldier in his own land, the Malaria Coast, with many police under him and rulership over many miles and many men. Yet, all these things he has cast aside that he may put a string about thy neck and lead thee to prison "

Even Savaran was taken aback The English hunted him while he was within their borders— what nation in Africa did not?— but to come after him outside their own sphere of influence, that was unusual

"So, he finds Savaran bigger game than hunting the lion— he is not the first."

"But he is not as the others," said Mbotu solemnly. "He does this for a woman."

"A woman! A woman has set him on to Savaran?" snapped the spider-lean man, wondering which of many it might be

"Yallah! It is more than just a woman " said the negro. "It is she whom he wills to marry. He desires thee as the young warrior desires the ostrich feather of the manslayer as a wedding offering. Wa! Listen— every night he takes her picture from his bosom and swears on it to take thee. His servants have spoken of this."

"He is young!" frowned Savaran beginning to see.

"So young that only down shines on his cheeks," nodded Mbotu. "Also he is beautiful to look on, having hair of gold and kingly features. Also he is a very new soldier who rails against the old men who stand between him and honour, crying: 'I shall be bent and without sap before I have place and possessions enough to marry this woman, therefore I must pull down glory with my own two hands'"

Savaran could not refrain from being Savaran.

"A boy of wisdom," he said largely. "He sees that he who takes Savaran is a made man. And you think that Savaran, the breaker of chieftains, must tremble because a love-sick boy hopes to use him as a short cut to promotion?"

"We have a proverb." said Mbotu "It is: 'Sooner fight the elephant with bare hands than, armed with guns, cross the path of the young lion who hunts the first meat for his mate.' "

"Savaran will make you a better." said the lean man fiercely. "What old lion fears the milk teeth of a cub?"

"But this youth, Steffi, hath teeth," protested Mbotu. "He hath the training of a soldier; he knows the ways of Africa— and he has money! See, O Zavarani, he is wise. He buys fighting askari from Za Slah of Bemoy, one hundred and twenty of them. Rifles he buys and ammunition, also carriers with skoff for a long trail. And more! He sits daily with Ntila, The Jackal, tempting him dollar by dollar to forget his fears and help in the hunt for thee."

Savaran's eagle face took on that laughing ferocity that was his when he faced real danger. No doubt of its reality. Ntila was the cleverest and wickedest bush tracker in North-west Africa. It said much for the capacity and determination of this young Englishman that he had nosed out such an expert and had stuck to his persuasion in spite of Ntila's quite natural fears of Savaran.

For a moment even Savaran knew unease

He stared reflectively at Mbotu. He asked: "Has he won Ntila?"

"Not yet," admitted the negro, "But already the dazzle of gold gets between Ntila and his fear. You see--"

"I see," cried Savaran rising to his thin, fierce height. "That I need look no more to a dream-fearing black pedlar for what I desire."

"You give up this Gran Fess venture?"

"I! Savaran give up a triumph! And for a love whimsy," mocked the lean man "Am I a woman?"

"But I will not—" blurted Mbotu cringing under the fierce eyes as all black skins must.

"Yallah! Certainly thou wilt not. Thou canst sit and shiver while Savaran shows thee how little he fears this terrible love—"

"Thou wilt go forward?" gasped Mbotu abruptly sore for lost Ivory and gold.

"Savaran goes forward as Savaran will For Savaran sees his way. And a better than thine fat slug, for it is a way that will cost me not a tikky, or an anxiety."

"Wa joga! There can be no such way with this young Steffi out to catch thee," cried Mbotu

"There is the best way of all. I will march with this Steffi himself to the Gran Fess."

"March with Steffi himself! But he hunts thee!"

"We will hunt me together," grinned Savaran "Hunt me like coupled hounds on one scent. And that scent will carry us into the Gran Fess land. It will be a hunting worthy of Savaran."

"Wa! Have fear Zavarani," cried Mbotu. "Where there is love—"

"Savaran is master of love," said the lean man largely, "as well as kings, arms and other things."

REX SEFTON clutched at the American, Lee Washington, as a drowning man grabs at a life line in a stormy sea.

Rex Sefton, one of those gilt-fair, Viking-built, thrusting youngsters, was having his bad moment. Arriving at Bemoy City heady with the optimism of youth he had abruptly been pancaked flat by one of those collapses of plan youth rarely foresees.

From the moment when he had realised that a subaltern's job in the Malaria Coast police was no high road to swift advancement and quick marriage, he had seen that his only hope for both lay in gaining renown by some big and dramatic coup. To take Savaran single-handed was quite obviously the largest item on the honours schedule.

That journeyman king and trouble-maker had again set all Africa a jig by almost founding another fighting empire, and the desire to suppress him for good and all was universal and earnest. When, therefore, word came that the eagle-faced man was making for Bemoy at precisely the moment that Rex Sefton was packing for six months' leave, the boy did not hesitate.

It was his chance of chances. Instead of heading straight, as his heart desired, for a certain Old-world mansion in England, he sailed for Bemoy.

Destiny seemed ready to work overtime for him there. The Sultan of Bemoy was eager to grant any sort of lethal permit that might lead to the extermination of Savaran, al-ready reported on his southern marches. More, he personally introduced the young Englishman to certain pious traders he should have gaoled under the Backward Races enactments of the League of Nations for traffic in arms. And Rex Sefton had money to spend with them. A year ago an uncle had left him a small nest egg, too tiny to be worth investing, but now just the thing for fitting out a useful kaum (commando) of fighting men and carriers. Certainly, he argued, Fate was dealing him all the aces.

And then, just as his plans were complete, when they only needed the crowning touch of winning Ntila, the tracker, the bottom fell out of everything. His fighters and carrier "boys" scattered in a single night, while Ntila was as if he had never been. Something had happened. Something mysterious had lifted out of the darks of Africa and struck his men into headlong panic. But none could tell him what or why.

Za Salah, responsible for "boys," muttered something about a greegree man who, coming out of the void, had read the stones and foretold naught but disaster for any who marched with Steffi. Beyond that Za Salah could say no more save that he did not intend to refund a zinc cent of what Rex Sefton had paid

Even the Sultan was a broken reed. He suddenly developed an unaccountable indifference to Rex Sefton's plans, and even took to quoting those passages of the Koran that dwell on the beauties of patience and inaction, though eyes less harassed than the boy's might have noted how readily his hand reached for his sword and how quickly he brought an audience to an end at the mere mention of Savaran's name.

Rex Sefton was too sore to notice anything save that his dreams had flopped a very bad flop indeed. And it was while he was in the midst of this bitter realisation that Lee Washington swam into his orbit.

Rex Sefton had noted the man vaguely as a large opaque body occasionally inhabiting the same fly-embattled lounge of Bemoy's one white man hotel as himself. Being British his consciousness of brother man got no farther. Being military British he was even ready to call out the guard when he saw the fellow lumbering towards him obviously intent on the crime of conversation. Lee Washington, however, had a method of approach all his own.

"Colonel," he cried, "are you needing an expert in caravans, the organising and handling of same?"

Rex Sefton gave a gulp at the very suggestion and his icy glare melted into a more human attention. He saw hugeness before him. A huge, full figure of a man; a huge beard; a huge, well-cultivated bulbous nose, plus tinted, horn-rimmed glasses, huge, too. But also he saw beyond the natural extravagance of this stranger. His kit, if frayed, was workmanlike. He had an air tough, genial, experienced and purposeful, while not even the dark lenses could quite mask the bright vitality of his eyes. Rex Sefton, trying not to show excitement, drawled: "What's the big idea?"

"You're this young Goliath hunter, aren't ye?" boomed the big man. "The local David who's going slinging for Savaran?"

Youth stiffened in all its damaged pride. Rex Sefton was about to deliver a curt and angry answer when the big man flashed a wide exposure of stained teeth.

"All right, son, I know you are. Just my way of opening the ball. An' you needn't worry about me. I don't mind you being a fool. Fact, I like a lad with spirit enough to tackle tornadoes. That's one of the reasons why I'm ready to hitch in well, as far as the Gran Fess border, anyhow."

"Gran Fess!" frowned the puzzled boy. "Why the Gran Fess?"

"Well," said the big American, "Savaran's heading that way, ain't he?"

"Is he, by heck!" snapped Rex Sefton. "How do you know?"

"And you don't," grinned the other, which was not surprising since nobody did, except Mbotu— and Savaran. "Say, you do need me as your chief of staff."

"But how do you know?" the boy Insisted.

"Me!" said the big man calmly sitting at the boy's table. "I always do, I'm just off the trail, anyhow. I'm Lee Washington, of Missouri. Mineral hunter. Broke for the moment in all but experience and a master gift for handling natives— the same being now on offer."

"I don't quite follow— " began the boy.

"Take it easy, it'll penetrate," grinned Lee Washington. "This is the way of me. I'm after metal— my career or job, understand. I've been prospecting Bemoy, down south. Found nothing there, but I did get word that there's quartz gold and diamond clay aplenty in the Gran Fess country. Awkward that, because I haven't the cash to outfit me as far as the Gran Fess. Then, hitting this bug-bitten burg in this dejected and dollarless state, I heard you are organising an outfit to catch this Savaran fellow. Well, another word I picked up down south was that Savaran was heading for the Gran Fess— don't that look like little Lady Fortune dropping luck into my lap? You've got to go to the Gran Fess to catch Savaran, I want to go. You're obviously the original babe and suckling; me, what I don't know about Africa ain't useful. Therefore we can be mutually helpful in chasing our respective moonbeams, an'— well, here I am offering to work my passage."

Rex Sefton listened first astounded then amused and taken by the man -this Lee Washington had a curious and powerful charm-and finally with an almost sickening sensation of renewed hope.

"Are you," he cried thickly, "are you offering to join me in hunting Savaran?"

"Son," said the big man genially, we'll begin as we'll go on, lying no lies. I do not hunt Savaran, nor the sabre-toothed tiger, nor anything so certainly fatal to human life. But I do submit and agree to help, labour, advise, guide, shoot for the pot, kick sense into black boys and generally prove myself indispensable to your caravan as far as the Gran Fess border— as far as that, no more. Is it a deal?"

Rex Sefton sat back, his strange fair fineness a shade whiter. He did not know whether to shout aloud at this new gift of fortune or be sicker than ever at his lost chances.

"And if we come up with, catch Savaran before the Gran Fess border," he demanded huskily. "What then?"

"No need to discuss Acts o' God or the breakdown of the natural law," grinned Lee Washington.

"You don't think I'll take Savaran then?" snapped the boy his face setting In a fighting hue.

"You're a likelier-looking proposition than I thought," said Lee Washington studying him, "an' handsomer. Savaran is undoubtedly Savaran—"

"And I'm going to get him," said the boy grimly.

"It'll be worth watching anyhow," said the American with his broad show of teeth. "But count me in as a watcher only. Is it a go?"

Rex Sefton sat back and laughed harshly.

"Three days ago I'd have been asking you instead of you me. Now—" He poured out the story of the strange collapse of his plans. Lee Washington was sympathetic but not overwhelmed by surprise.

"Too bad," he said, "but of course, that's him."

"Eh?" gasped the boy.

"Savaran," said Lee Washington.

"You think he stampeded my men?"

"Son," said the American, "he'd stampede the trained bands of Hades."

"But he's in the south you say."

"Heading north and west to reach the Gran Fess," corrected the big man. "He's probably passing Bemoy now and your bright boys got wind of him and just naturally faded away."

"And my chances of taking him with them," cried Rex Sefton bitterly.

"Such as they were," nodded Lee Washington, "on the other hand you've got me."

"You," frowned the boy, "but what can you do?"

"Miracles," grinned Lee Washington, "are among my most profitable sidelines. Just sit back and watch Lee."

REX Sefton had six weeks of Lee Washington and miracles and came to have a vast liking for both.

Lee Washington had a large and astonishing way with him. For in-stance he walked calmly into the smugly contemptuous presence of Za Salah, wholesaler in pious texts and cut-throat gunmen. He listened mildly while the Arab made it more than plain that Rex Sefton would get neither a cook boy nor a cent of his advance. Never a word said Lee Washington until Za Salah reached for his keef pipe with a gesture of final dismissal. Then he said with a strange, ferocious softness.

"A hundred and twenty fighters Steffi hired through thee-sol Well, two hundred and forty will be ready by noon to-morrow, O Mangy Mosque Rat. Also two hundred and fifty carriers. They will gather at the Hill of Crows, and they will be punctual. The price of each will be half what thou charged Steffi, and what he has already paid settles thy bill. And they will be good men, Za Salah, all of them, else thou wilt speak with me on thy swift way to death."

Za Salah shuddered back from the wolf grin on the big bearded face, yet was ready to fight, being an Arab with money at stake. The American laughed softly and lifted his tinted spectacles.... And at that Za Salah went limp and began to whimper that prayer which should give full protection against a personal visit of Satan.

"It will be as I say?" said the American, returning his spectacles to the normal.

"Wa Sidda!" wailed the Arab. "All shall be as the Feared Among Lions desires. On the Stone I swear it."

LEE WASHINGTON wasted no more words or time on him. He had other calls to make. He visited Chakula who was hugging himself at having been overpaid for food he need never supply to Rex Sefton; Nymo, The Rat, who was in the same happy mood over the matter of pack-donkeys and saddle-mules, and Patamo, gun-runner in extraordinary to all the best local revolutions. Upon each he had the same reaction, even on Patamo, whose name was terror and who called In three bhang-crazy dagger men to back his robber talents. But the dagger men as well as Patamo and the others all wilted under the ferocious and sardonic glare the lifted spectacles exposed, and when Rex Sefton rode out to the Hill of Crows next day, fully equipped for the trail, which seemed absurd to him, he reined in gasping at the sight he saw.

"Jove!" he cried to Lee Washington. "You're right— You work miracles. Why, we can march in a day or two."

"We march now," grinned the American. "You can't hang about where Savaran is concerned."

"No, by heck," nodded the boy, "but it's marvellous. No other man could have done it. Not even Savaran."

"You've a nice turn m compliments, anyhow," grinned Lee Washington. "I'm really getting to like you. Rex, my son."

Miracles continued. The caravan was still in a rough and ruffianly state, for some of the men were considerable devils and liked the world to know it. Rex Sefton, used to commanding men as he was, could do little with this criminal brood. Not so Lee Washington. He went softly among the most blood lusty, speaking gently in their native Bemoy Tok, which was a dialect too difficult for the boy to master, of violent death and pegging out among the ants, and other sedatives for rebellious temperaments.

He also put his words into practice. In a week he had moulded the worst of these rascals into a main guard of such fighting quality that, when a rezzon of Arabs made a darting attack on the caravan, they responded so beautifully that he all but nipped the raiders in a swift encircling movement from the flanks. In-deed, only headlong flight saved the wild desert men from extermination

"Jove, Lee," cried Rex Sefton in admiration, "that was dashed good work. You ought to have been a soldier. Why— why you'd be a colonel at your age."

"So I've been told," grinned the American. "That was the drawback. I've got a Field-Marshal complex."

"I know," laughed the boy. "I've had— am having some. Whatever you feel you've got in you the Service Mandarins tie you down to a subaltern's pips and a village policeman's job. And there you stay, your brain and heart drying up from sheer dullness, waiting for the old men above you to die off. Maybe you're right in remaining as you are."

"I guess I am, seeing what I mean to be," said Lee Washington. He shot a shrewd glance at the boy "But feeling like that why don't you cut loose and make a name and fortune on your own?"

"I'm a soldier," said the boy stiffly "However I grouse there's a--a sort of tradition to uphold, a duty. I've got to go on with it, even though I've got to hurry things if I can, too."

That meant taking Savaran. His determination to hunt and captun Savaran was a fanaticism. And then again Lee Washington performed miracles for him, Rex Sefton, because of his youth, his official manner, and because he knew no native language but Swahili, would have been hopeless in tracing Savaran. He could never extract a particle of news from the villages they passed or the caravans they met. Lee Washington never failed,

"You're a marvel," cried the boy. "I should never have trailed the beggar but for you. I'm beginning to feel that Savaran himself would have to be a bigger wonder than he is to beat you."

"You have discovered our secret," grinned Lee Washington. "I am the one man in the world Savaran fears."

They made first-rate partners. The American was wise, brilliant in his experience and method, and genial good company. Rex Sefton was something more than out of the rut good-looking. He was cheerful, keen, hardy, and a ready learner also, on no less an occasion than their brush with the Arabs he had interposed his big body and ready pistol between Lee Washington and a slashing scimitar.

That was the sort of thing the American could not forget, even though he repaid it by nursing the youngster through a bout of fever, sitting with him through two light headed nights. Many things indeed made him love the boy, and not the least of them was his generosity of spirit. There was no rancour even about his hunting of Savaran. He actually admired the bizarre rascal for the touch of romance he brought to a humdrum age.

"If you feel like that about him why go gunning for him?" demanded Lee Washington.

"Why go hunting lions?" smile the boy, "and Savaran is the biggest lion in Africa."

"I suppose so," grunted Lee Washington, "and anyhow the cash on his head is a small fortune."

"Hang the cash," cried the boy. "Thank goodness I can't touch it."

"What's that?" demanded the startled American.

"Government officers are barred under British rule, I'm glad to say I'm not out for rewards."

"Just the glory," Lee Washington grinned slyly.

"Promotion and— and that sort of thing," agreed the boy uncomfortably.

"A rank and a station worthy of Crystal Lind," grinned Lee Washington. "Nice girl Crystal— dam pretty."

"Crystal!" Rex Sefton was on his feet, his eye blazing. "Hang you, Washington, have you been going through my pockets?"

"Didn't have to," said the American genially. "You talked quite lot when you had fever. Also the pillow of a camp bed is no sort of hiding-place for that photo you carry about with you. It must have dropped to the floor a thousand dozen times while I soothed your heated brow."

"Well, we are engaged," said the boy, half resentful, half captivated by the strange, fierce charm of the man. "She wants to join me out here as soon as possible, and I want it even more. But you know how things are. How can a man bring a girl like that out to a pest hole like mine on pay like mine? And it'll be years before I get a step up. Years of waiting—"

"So you decided to take a short cut up by 'chopping' Savaran?"

"The man who takes Savaran is a made man," said the boy.

"Or a dead one," Lee Washington corrected grimly.

"You've got to take a big risk for a big prize, and Crystal Lind— "

"I know," jerked the American quickly. "I had all the love lays while you babbled under fever. You made her sound like a combination of Cleopatra and the Holy Grace ..." The boy scowled. "All right, son, I know she's a nice girl and the power behind your celestial idiocy.... but there's Savaran. Savaran's no lover's favour. Savaran's a hard nut— "

"We'll see about that," interrupted Rex Sefton. "For I'm going to get him— or bust."

"And that," said Lee Washington, "is going to include the whole Gran Fess nation, I suppose."

"The Gran Fess nation," frowned the boy. "What do you mean? They're at peace, and they've never given trouble to whites, anyhow."

"To whites— no," said the big man. "But along their frontiers are as fat a packet of rich tribes as ever invited conquest, and the Gran Fess are good fighting stuff. Moreover, their queen, the Kola Ambar, has lately been afflicted with such a heady draught of progress— mainly Paris jewels and frocks introduced through the Belgian Congo— that the Court cries out for money to meet her bills. As the Gran Fess resent taxes with the sword, conquest is the Exchequer's only hope."

"And Savaran means to lead them in such conquests?" frowned the boy.

"That to begin," said the big man genially, "with more to follow. Ambar the queen has signified by eight previous attempts that matrimony has become almost a settled habit with her."

"What! He'll marry a nigger?" cried the boy in disgust.

"Nigger be darned," snapped Lee Washington, strangely touched to anger. "She's pure Arab with a lineage that goes straight back to Solomon's hundred-and-fifth wife. And she's a beauty, too, as only an Arab queen can be."

"But still a native. And for a white man to marry colour," the boy shrugged In contempt. "Still, I ought to settle Savaran's hash before that happens."

"You'll follow him— even among the Gran Fess?"

"I'd follow him into the throne room of Potsdam if he was heading that way," said Rex Sefton grimly. "But it won't be so hard. He's only two days ahead of us. He'll have no time for building armies."

"Don't be so sure. This is Savaran," said Lee Washington. "He can create armies by the mere rumour of his coming."

"Even if he does, I'm going to get him," cried the boy fiercely. "I'll get him even if I have to tear him out of the very heart of his own bodyguard."

"And that'll be a sight worth watching," grinned Lee Washington, and no doubt that was why he did not leave Rex Sefton at the Gran Fess border, as he had promised, but remained with him even to the coming of the Gran Fess impis.

THE semi-Arab horde came on them two days after they had crossed the Gran Fess border, at dawn, and as they broke camp. At the first flood of tall, fierce, fuzzy-haired warriors from the bush, Rex Sefton was rapping out orders; excellent orders that should have surrounded their camp with a breastwork of saddle-packs— only his askari did not heed them. They looked towards Lee Washington instead.

Rex Sefton, suspecting nothing, shouted: "Make them jump to it, Lee. A bold front may bluff them."

"How does one bluff ten thousand spears?" asked Lee Washington. "Besides, they may not be unfriendly."

There came a rush of tall demons, a stamping halt that seemed to shake the earth, a wild upward surge of arms that filled heaven with a forest of spears.

"Jove, you're right, as usual, Lee," Rex Sefton cried. "They're friendly. Only— it's darn rum. That's a royal salute, isn't it?"

"Naturally— a royal salute," said Lee Washington's voice behind him.

"But why give me that salute?" frowned the boy.

"Why, indeed? Especially as they don't. Listen--"

Thousands of voices were roaring as one, and it was one word they roared, "Zavarani! Zavarani!"

"Savaran!" gasped the boy. "They're crazy. They think Savaran's with us."

"Oh, they're not entirely wrong," said the American. He strode forward, right hand high in a superb gesture, and at his gesture the shouting redoubled.

And Rex Sefton understood at last and gasped.

Lee Washington's huge beard had gone, his spectacles, his bulbous nose had gone, even his bulk. He stood there in the harsh sun as lean as a fighting panther, his eagle face and bright eyes ablaze at the greeting of armies--his armies!

"Savaran!" gasped Rex Sefton.

Two silk clad warriors led sleek blood mares forward.

"Mount," said Savaran crisply, "and ride by me."

"No— I'll stay," said Rex Sefton in a dazed voice.

"It's an order," snapped the entirely new American. "We ride to the queen."

"I'll see you damned," cried the boy in sudden fury. "What's more, you stay, too. You're a dead man if you move, Savaran."

Savaran laughed fiercely down at the pistol in the boy's hand; "There are ten thousand spearmen here, Rex, do you shoot them all?"

"We'll put up a fight first," snarled the boy.

"We?" mocked Savaran. "Who stands behind you?"

Rex Sefton swung a wild glance back at the askari his money had hired. They were cheering Savaran as wildly as the Gran Fess warriors.

"You've won them over, you treacherous beast," Rex Sefton cried.

"All right, then." He lifted his pistol and fired point blank at the spider-spare adventurer's breast

The pistol clicked feebly four times, no explosions came, and Savaran laughed.

"Good boy, Rex," he said. "I knew you had the pluck of a wild cat, that's why I took no risks." The boy choked and put his hands to his face. "Play up, man," snapped Savaran, "and mount. Can't you see I'm helping you save face. You'll ride before the queen at Savaran's side."

The boy mounted mechanically. A flutter of wild riders closed round them and they rode off between wildly cheering ranks. Savaran, his bright eyes missing nothing, cried triumphantly:

"Fine stuff, Rex. First-rate fighting material. With these I'll have an empire in a year."

"Hang you," snarled the boy. "Why did you play this filthy trick on me?"

"Trick, maybe," cried Savaran, "filthy— no! Don't you recognise the daring of a master when you meet it?" His eyes gleamed at his own brilliance. "Think of the boldness of it, son. You had not only sworn to take me, but you had blocked my road to the Gran Fess— yet it was you, my very enemy, I made carry me in safety to the Gran Fess."

"You made use of my helpless position at Bemoy—"

"Made use!" the eagle face twisted In its dry, fierce laugh. "Boy, haven't you grasped the meaning of Savaran yet? It was I who made your position hopeless. I was the gree-gree man who scared your 'boys' into bolting. It was a word from me that made Ntila run. Savaran leaves nothing to chance. I meant you to return to Lee Washington as your only hope— as, indeed, I was."

"You fooled me up to the hilt," cried the boy thickly, "actually joined me in hunting yourself."

"The best cover," grinned Savaran, "is always under the nose of the huntsman."

"Hang you, you've made me the laughing-stock of Africa," cried Rex Sefton. "All because I trusted a liar—"

"And those, Rex Sefton, are words you will eat," cried the lean man with that fleck of fury that always came when his vanity was touched. "Savaran does not lie. I told you plainly I would not join you in hunting Savaran."

"You told me plainly time and time again that you had word from natives that Savaran was heading for the Gran Fess—"

"Well, wasn't he?" cried the lean man, with a flash of white teeth. "Savaran was heading for the Gran Fess— with you. The main fact was accurate if the circumstances made me add a little romantic embroidery. I had an appointment with the Gran Fess, and Savaran never fails an appointment, no matter what redoubtable young lion stands in his path."

His bright eyes studied the misery-strained face of the youngster.

"Stiffen up, Rex," he said. "It was a big gamble in which we both risked things. You challenged Savaran, and a devilish stiff challenge, too. You barred my way, you set all Bemoy itching for blood-money. You smashed my chances of reaching the Gran Fess on my own by frightening the man I depended on into withholding carriers and money. You had me in a corner, Rex, and the only way out of it was to get you to carry me in safety through a wilderness of enemies. It was a stroke after Savaran's own heart, so I dared the gamble."

"And won," groaned the boy. "And what of me? Do you gaol me or hang me or what?"

"Not necessarily either," grinned Savaran, "I like you Rex. Also you are a good soldier. Within a month there will be campaigning here such as your service will never offer you, with promotion and rewards to match."

"I'm a soldier," said the boy fiercely, "but a British soldier, not a dirty filibuster. I'll see you in Hades first."

"You'll see me," cried Savaran, with his eagle's gesture, "on the throne beside the Kola Ambar.... I think I'll send you back then to Crystal Lind with a trunk full of Jewels to show her how magnanimous conquerors can be."

Before the boy could find the suitable venom for a reply, Savaran spurred ahead to where an old, grey Arab with an anxious face was waiting to talk with him.

After three hours riding they came to the maze of mud hutches that made the capital of the Gran Fess. Women screeched the victory vaunt from the flat rooftops and flung great tropic blossoms down at Savaran--and even more at Rex Sefton. His strange, gilt fairness seemed to intoxicate eyes used to dusky skins.

Into the great palaver place they rode amid a whirl of cheers, and across it to where, incongruous as a wart on a face, one of those tipsy cake and over-ornamented villas that French millionaires build on the Riviera stood bright amid the houses of mud.

"The Royal Palace," said the sardonic voice of the lean king-maker at Rex Sefton's side. "The Kola Ambar has a feeling for Progress. There she is on the terrace."

Rex Sefton looked quickly, said quickly: "Good heavens! She's lovely."

And indeed Ambar, queen of the Gran Fess, was. She was a slim and electric creature; golden skinned, delicate of feature. And there shone from her splendid eyes that burning ardour that tells of the quick and untrammelled passion of the tropics.

"Not bad for a nigger," grinned Savaran.

"Nigger! She's white," cried the boy thickly, "and wonderful."

Savaran looked at him with bright sardonic eyes.

"Certainly, a wonderful Arab princess— but a native all the same," he reminded. "And for a white man to admire her—!"

The boy answered nothing. He stared at the Golden Queen, who stared back at him.

"Wonderful, yes," frowned the lean adventurer, following his own thoughts. "But beware of the women of the East, my son, however wonderful. They're more devastatingly wayward and capricious than all others put together. She's even trying to play her fancy female tricks with my plans--Savaran's! She's decided she won't be queen of half Northwest Africa Just now, if you please, but will take a slap at the Belgians instead, because they give her only a ten-gun salute where her dignity demands nineteen." He grinned ferociously at the boy. "This king-making business has its trying moments, for the one thing certain about female potentates is their fundamental uncertainty."

Rex Sefton did not answer. His fine drawn pallor set In grimness he was looking straight Into the eyes of Ambar, the queen.

They dismounted, bowed before the Kola, who cried in French, of which she was rather proud:

"Welcome, Zavarani, Sword of Kings and humbler of the Belgians to be," and gave a slim hand for his wry lips to kiss. And over his shoulders she looked with a wide-eyed wonder at Rex Sefton as though she had seen nothing so marvellous before. And presently she was saying in the direct way of the Arab:

"And thy friend, who is the most beautiful of all men, how is he called and what is he, Zavarani?"

The spider-lean man looked from her to Rex Sefton, a sardonic twist on his fierce lips.

"He is Steffi, an English soldier, O queen of loveliness as well as men. And he is a riddle, too. I am yet to be sure whether I am his prisoner or he mine."

"I will solve thy riddle," said the Kola Ambar, her eyes glowing with a new fire as she stared at Rex Sefton. "He will come to my palace, for he is beautiful. I think he will be the next man I marry."

Savaran's fierce face grew grim. And as Rex Sefton, pale as marble, turned bright, strained eyes on him in a bitter smile, he began to wonder if, after all, Savaran could fight love.

SAVARAN did not like this new Rex Sefton at all. The boy stood dressed in the embroidered silks of a court dandy amid the priceless furniture, Jewelled screens cheap cuckoo clocks, and tawdry vases that made the Kola Ambar s palace such a comic blend of the splendid East and garish modernity, and yet his dignity did not suffer from such surroundings. He had a hardness and a dignity after a week's companionship with the passionate Ambar which made him formidable.

Savaran glared at him, Savaran said with harsh ferocity: "What am I going to do with you, you young jackal? You're spoiling my plans "

"I mean to," said Rex Sefton, with a strained coldness. "And what can you do?"

"Today," said Savaran grimly, "I warned the queen that you are a Roumi spy sent expressly to undermine the throne."

"She told me about it," said the boy with a sort of wretched mockery. "We both laughed over it."

He expected to see fury leap to the lean adventurer's face, was startled to see satisfaction.

"Yes, I wanted to know if she told you State Council secrets," said Savaran. "It has got that far between you, then?"

"The queen," said the boy, very red but deliberately, "is madly in love with me, and love is going to beat you after all, Savaran."

"You think so?" said the spare man savagely.

"I know it," said the boy evenly. "She is in love with me, she listens to me. She'll— she'll do anything to win me. Hasn't she already held up your military schemes while she listens to my suggestions for peace and progress?"

"Listen— just that. A mere passing fancy. With you out of the way—" Savaran considered the boy shrewdly. "I think I'll pack you off to the frontier tonight, Rex Sefton."

The boy's set face lit up with a gleam of triumph... had he been playing for that? It went blank under the searching eyes and he said doggedly:

"You know that's impossible, Savaran. She'd know. We'd— I'd be retaken before I was half way to the frontier. She won't let me slip now."

"Maybe," frowned the lean man. "Your fair prettiness acts on her like a drug." He scowled at the youngster, said urgently: "Come in with me, boy. Declare publicly that you desire to win military glory in my campaign. She won't be able to stop you, it's what Arab women expect of their men. And when we're in the field I'll manage a way of escape—"

"I've already told you I'll see you damned before I even pretend to join your filibustering game," cried the boy.

"You young fool!" snarled Savaran. "You know what your end will be. You know her way with reluctant lovers and incompatible husbands— or haven't you seen the royal graveyard?"

Rex Sefton winced, but he said evenly: "Before that happens I shall have smashed you, Savaran."

"And am I to be executed in State or merely booted across the frontier?" jeered the eagle-faced man.

"Handed over to the British police as a common felon," said the boy, "according to my first plan."

Rex Sefton seemed sure that the lean man must strike him down for that, and Savaran, the unexpected, laughed.

"I always did like you, Rex, a spirit after Savaran's own heart. And you think you can persuade the lovely Ambar to do this?"

"I am going to persuade her," said the boy.

"And pay the price?"

"The price?" asked the boy, wincing.

"Are you trying to bluff yourself as well as me?" mocked the gipsy adventurer. "But we are neither of us such fools, Rex. The lovely Ambar is infatuated with you— to my annoyance I know it. But she is an Arab as well as a love-sick woman. She will not give something for nothing. If she is to give up the glories of conquest she'll want her price, Rex Sefton— marriage."

"And you think I won't pay that?" said the boy thickly.

"I think you are a white sahib with strong views on marrying native," said Savaran with fierce amusement as the boy shivered. "Also there is Crystal Lind."

"You are a swine!" shouted the boy, his cold defence breaking down. "You use even that as a weapon?"

"That and anything, else that serves Savaran's ends— for such is the conqueror type," said the spare man largely. "I have always counted Crystal Lind my sheet anchor in the business of you and Ambar."

For a moment it seemed as though Rex Sefton would fly at the lean man's throat. Suddenly he took a leaf out of Savaran's book, relaxed— and laughed.

"I guessed that, too," he said so coolly that Savaran shot an anxious glance at him. "Amusing in its way, to see how even Savaran can make a mess of things."

"As how?" snarled Savaran, touched on the raw.

"It is you yourself who has made Crystal Lind powerless."

"Explain!" rapped Savaran.

"You have placed me in a hopeless position," said the boy in a flat dead voice. "Crystal Lind is far away— the queen is here. I am a man, Savaran, and Ambar is lovely. I am down and out, Savaran, though you and Ambar offer me wealth, power, position and opportunity for revenge. Can the mere memory of a girl I once knew stand against that? Against the ever present allure and passion of a queen? Do you think a man like me in a position like mine can hold out for long?"

Savaran scowled at him, knowing the truth of what he said.

"Where does all this lead?" he barked.

"I leave that to you," shrugged the boy. "Savaran himself had better straighten up the mess Savaran has created— if he can."

The eagle eyes flamed at the challenge.

"And that's not so hard," he said speculatively. "You can quietly and discreetly die."

"I think not," said the boy. "You like me. And I don't have to remind Savaran that I once saved his life from an Arab sword."

"You young fox," cried Savaran, "you hold that over me?"

"Certainly," the boy whipped back. "One uses that and any other weapon that serves one's end. I have learnt that much at least from the master of the art."

Savaran glared, reached for his dagger hilt— then laughed his bizarre laugh. He flung his arm about the boy's shoulders, dragged him down to a divan.

"Rex," he cried, "you have written a line that will figure in history— you have beaten Savaran!"

He scowled in his genially ferocious way. "And created the very satan of a problem into the bargain," he went on. "If I get you away I must face the fury of a woman in love— that means smash. While if I don't, you surrender to the love of the Kola Ambar— and that also means smash...."

His swift, fierce face was keen with thought for a spell, then he said with his savage whimsicality:

"No other way... Savaran must go on his march again... Pack quietly, Rex, we ride for Bemoy to-night."

"But you said I would be stopped—" cried the boy, hardly able to suppress his elation.

"You— yes! But now Savaran will ride with you, and Savaran can ride through even the armies he himself has trained to close the border. Have no fear, son, Savaran will deliver you safe back to Crystal Lind."

"But it means you leaving all— this," cried the boy in sudden awe.

"What is a kingdom more or less to Savaran?" cried the lean man, unable to resist a gesture. "Besides, this is something in my own metier... Savaran rescues the man who would put him in prison and throws away a throne to do it."

But he added a rider to that five mornings later as they stood in the Bemoy village at which he had hired carriers to take Rex Sefton to safety— and Crystal Lind.

"Mbotu was right," he said, "It is dangerous to cross the path of a young lion hunting its first meat for its mate. Even Savaran must beware of lovers."

________________

11:  The Lady Jasmine

THE Arabs rode not at their usual gallop but at a jog-trot. It was a pace calculated to give the full benefits of a last torture to their prisoner. The prisoner was not mounted. He ran amid the horsemen— had to run.

A halter stretched from his neck to the saddle-bow of one of the riders. Should he trip on the rough ground or tire in his stride, he would be jerked off his feet. Half strangled he would be dragged along the ground until his strength or nimbleness got him on to his legs again. His hands were free to help him and add to the fun. The Arabs waited eagerly on the comedy of his fall. He did not fall. The Arab with the halter tried every trick of horsemanship to bring him down. The prisoner remained upright.

A remarkable man. He was quite sure of it himself. He was also certain his captors knew it. They were wary as well as ready to enjoy his discomfiture.

The dirty shreds of a jibba revealed this man as tall, spider-spare and of that leanness of sinew that tells of a strength like drawn steel. His fiercely aquiline face was dark, darker than some of those around hint, yet despite this and the dirt on him, it had the force and distinction that belongs to a white conqueror, and an extra touch of bravado few white men have.

Across the stony pan beyond the walls of a white Arab town the party trotted until it halted near a broad and shallow stream, the Wadi Jmia, the frontier fine between the Sultanates of Durshan and Al-Zahal.

The man was cast loose, a dozen hands tightened on whips in the hope of at least a minute's pleasure as the fellow made his dash for freedom... And the prisoner stood still!

He stood easily, hands on hips, studying the faces of the escort. The big Cadi in charge sidled his horse forward, cried mockingly:

"Begone, thou conqueror of conquerors! Safety for your noble skin lieth beyond the Wadi. Why tarry, O terror of Africa? Haste ye, or I may forget the respect the Sultan, my master, has for an Inghiliz, and treat thee as the common dirt thou art."

There was a cackle from his companions at this jibe, but it was not easy laughter, for the dark eyes studied each face so coolly. Then, with fine teeth flashing in a cheerful and ferocious smile, the prisoner said in good Arabic:

"I merely mark your faces. O Cadi of Durshan, so that when I return at the head of ten thousand swords I shall know whom to hang first."

The Cadi  clucked angrily, spurred forward, slashed with his whip.

In a flash the man was submerged in a fog of dust, fluttering robes, cracking whips, snorting horses... that was the end of him, it  seemed. There was a shout! Lean arms had plucked the Cadi right out of his saddle and flung him among the hoofs.

As the Arabs wheeled to let their leader scramble to his feet, a strong, easy voice came from the middle of the Wadi.

"Get thee back to the Sultan, O Cadi. Take my message. I am Savaran, soldier of fortune, known in deeds of war from the High Atlas to the Zambesi, and I bid you tell that kusah (scant bearded man) that I, who have crushed nations and dethroned kings, will return and teach him that my sword which he has so contemptuously rejected has a sharp edge for puppet princes... Until my hangman deals with thee, O Cadi, may Allah blight thee."

The ragged fellow, standing thigh deep in water, uttered his seemingly absurd threats with the wave of a lean and contemptuous arm and went splashing towards the Al-Zahal bank.

From among the hills came tumbling a body of Al-Zahal Arabs. They fell upon Savaran with scant ceremony. Neither large gestures nor attempts to fight saved him. In a trice he was rolled in the dirt, a prisoner once more. He was tied, as before, by his neck to a saddle-bow. With bellows of laughter and the waving of friendly arms from both sides, Savaran the boaster went off as he had come, at a jogtrot amid a knot of mounted men eager to see him fall.

THE Sherif Ali Agha, fierce-eyed and young, presided over the Sultan's Court in the kasbah of Rais, the capital of Al-Zahal. He glared death at Savaran. The unconcern of this tattered ne'er-do-well added fire to his hatred of all white men.

Ali Agha, who sat in that place because a woman, his cousin, might not dispense justice to men, dreamed dreams of heaven, houris and glory to be won by sweeping the Infidel whites out of Africa. He rather fancied himself as the man for the job. He was proud in cunning, war and sheer young Arab vanity, Ali Agha.

He was therefore contemptuous of anything so degraded and ragged as this prisoner before him.

"What race of dogs art thou?" he snapped. "Franzi?"

"English," said Savaran pleasantly.

He had no personal objection to being French. He had quite often been French, and Italian, and Spanish when it suited his book. He knew it did not now. He knew all about Ali Agha's political ambitions, as he knew most things about Africa in his strange, acute way.

"And you are called Savaran," Ali growled. "I have heard of you."

"Who in Africa has not?" said Savaran with a superb shrug. "Savaran― the conqueror of the Zeb! Savaran who forced the Portuguese to free the Kardorengo..."

"Also that Savaran who deposed the Sherif of Nenussi and vanished with the pearl of his harem and all his treasure," said Ali dangerously.

"A career so comprehensive as mine naturally has human interludes," Savaran said. "A command over women obviously goes with so great a spirit as mine."

"A veritable Saladin of the kennels," said Ali, his contemptuous eyes upon his prisoner's rags and dirt. "And what brings you here, O redoubtable ragman knight?"

Savaran's face darkened. He was not liking the high-stomached Ali.

"What I did for the Zeb and the Futtra I can do for Al-Zahal."

"Lead us poor Arabs in war, lead us even against your brother Franks?" jeered Ali.

"What matter as long as it is war," said Savaran. "A soldier must use his sword."

"Are we so feeble that we turn to a thing of the gutters?" said Ali. "I hear you made the same pretty offer to the Sultan of Durshan. And I hear his opinion of you was no higher than a halter round your braggart neck, and a whipping to the border."

"His opinion will change," said Savaran, his face dark. "I am remembering Bir-Hiriri of Durshan, and the memory of Savaran is no pleasant thing."

"Then add me to your memory, offal dog," snarled Ali Agha, and slashed his face with a whip. "We Arabs need no scum of Christian dregs to teach us the art of war. Away with you. To-morrow I send you to the rock quarries of the mountains, we will see then how thy great spirit conquers the mountain sim and the overseer's lash... That is all I think the great Sava-ran is fit for, slave work."

"I think," said Savaran, with a hard light in his eyes, "you are going to change your opinion, too."

Thus did Savaran, that free-lance adventurer, that Francois Villon of Africa, whose many strange adventures on barbaric thrones and in stinking prisons, in jungle and desert, would make a book as incredible and as entertaining as the "Arabian Nights," come to Al-Zahal.

AS HE sat in a corner of the swarming, smelly gaol-yard of the careel, he kept his usual brazen front, but inside he was not so happy. Mula-Grim, brigand, his companion there, was disheartening.

"Yea, they guard us loosely enough," said Mula-Grim. "It would be easy to break one of this kasbah, but what would it avail, O spawn of Infidels? West and south are the Tauregs and their desert, and both mean death to a fugitive. North and half the border to the east are the Durshans, for the moment friendly to Al-Zahal. It will not be a halter but a knife they will apply to your throat if you return. For the remainder of the eastern frontier are the French. And I recall the French have put a price on your head."

"They, as well as others," shrugged Savaran. "What of Al-Zahal itself; are the people so friendly to Ali Agha?"

"Not so friendly, but his sword is over them. And he has given them licence to hunt Christian dogs, and that is always a pretty pastime for the Arab. He wants them to be friendly to the Durshans, whom they fear. That was a bad mistake of yours, threatening Bir-Hiriri."

"How so? I thought Al-Zahal hated him and his tribe?"

"Yea, in their hearts," grinned Mula-Grim. "Maybe with their swords, too, if Ali Agha's plan succeeds, but now they are lip-brothers. See, this young milk-eagle, Ali Agha, dreams of himself as Khalifa, the leader of a Holy War that will make him a conqueror instead of the mere mouth of a girl. Bir-Hiriri is to be the first stepping stone to it."

"That beardless girl-man!" scoffed Savaran. "How can he lead anywhere but to the sherbet cups?"

"That is it," said Mula-Grim. "Bir-Hiriri is a soft fool leading a powerful tribe. That tribe has been taxed by the French and groans for revenge. Bir-Hiriri will be forced into war, but he is not so eager. Ali Agha wants war for it will mean glory. He is trying to persuade Bir-Hiriri to war by promising the aid of the Al-Zahal. He feels that a man of his fighting craft and fire will make him the natural leader in the field. Bir-Hiriri will then be pushed into the background, presently to be pushed out of the world altogether. Ali Agha will become Sultan of both Al-Zahal and Durshan by the right of might. He will be a great man at last— not the servant of a woman."

"And will he succeed?" asked Savaran.

"It is a pretty problem," grinned Mula-Grim, "for it balances on the whim of that woman, Ali's cousin, the Lady Jasmine, who rules the Al-Zahal."

"A woman," said Savaran, his eyes brightening; he always felt happier when there was a woman in the case.

"Yea, the daughter of the old Sultan," Mula-Grim went on. "A lotus for looks, they say, yet a serpent for brains... Yea, a pretty situation. Bir-Hiriri wants her. He will link up with Al-Zahal and fight the French if he can marry her. Ali Agha is not so foolish; he knows that with the Lady Jasmine goes the mastery of the Al-Zahal, and that is what Bir-Hiriri is really after. Ali plans to marry the Lady Jasmine himself. So, suspended by a woman's hair, the plotting hangs for the moment."

"Yea, a pretty situation," said Savaran, "and the maid is .lovely, you say? A situation after Savaran's heart. I would I could get to the Lady Jasmine."

"You will get to the mountains and be dead in a month, instead," grinned Mula-Grim. "Think not of follies, but of your sins, Savaran."

"That is so," sighed Savaran, "time presses. I have only enough to plan my escape from this accursed latreen of a prison."

"And even that is a folly beyond happy issue," said Mula-Grim. "You cannot get free."

"There is no folly beyond Savaran," said the tattered conqueror. "None that cannot give him a stepping-stone to triumphs. You will see, Savaran boasts, but he makes good his boasts!"

SAVARAN felt that was true next morning as he dived out of the main street below the kasbah of Rais, into a narrow and noisome alley. He had not been able to choose his own time for his escape, yet here he was— escaping.

He was not even daunted when he found that the alley he had doubled into was a cul-de-sac, closed by a high wall at one end, the tall, windowless backs of Arab houses on either side. He stopped dead before the wall, hands on hips and his panting lips grinned.

It was an Arab wall; that is, its roughness presented no difficulties to a determined climber. Also it was the wall of some great garden, for many trees rose beyond it, and great Jamelon olives dropped masses of leaves over it. There was his hiding place. In a flash he was lying flat along the top, a thick screen of foliage hiding him from sight.

In another moment a mob of Arabs poured into the alley, still poured in when the first of them reached the wall, turned and cried: "Not this way! He is not here! He could not have come this way."

Savaran grinned as he saw how sure they were he could not have climbed the wall. He watched them suck and eddy out of the alley with complete satisfaction at his own cleverness.

"They will go down hill like a flock of sheep," he decided, "and will exhaust all their intelligence searching the bazaar quarters. In half an hour I will walk back up the hill past the kasbah and escape by the desert gate."

He had no sooner thought this than shouting broke out again down the hill. He saw men by the head of the alley stop running. Heard them catch up the shout, repeat it: "The Franzi had not gone down hill. The Sherif's guard coming up has not seen him. He is between the kobba and the kasbah."

The kobba was no more than fifty yards down the hill, so Savaran knew at once that the area of the search would be unpleasantly limited, and, with so many on the spot anxious for his blood, every inch would be examined.

Savaran looked down on the wrong side of the wall. He saw sleek sanded paths shaded by scent trees, glimpses of grass and flowers like jewels... He saw the fretted arabesques of a distant building. A Pasha's or Cadi's palace, he thought, and that meant an extra touch of the bastinado if he were caught... But what were a few bamboo cuts here or there when fanatic daggers thirsted in the alley?

He did not hesitate. He heard a blood-hungry shout:

"The wall, he might have climbed the wall!" He slid his long legs over and dropped-face to the garden and possible enemies, as was Savaran's way.

Too late did he see bright silk cushions blazing on the grass, and beside them, as though dropped by a hand tired of needlework, a saltah of velvet and silver. Only one sex wear that kind of jacket in Africa

Savaran knew he was coquetting with death in its most violent and painful form. He was entering a garden belonging to a harem.

He reached the ground with the lightness of a great cat. Gave a bare second to deciding which would be the least homicidal route of escape; then, as the mob roared close against the wall, he took a line away from it, away from the silks on the grass, doubled round a great hibiscus bush heavy with flowers and fragrance— and found his arms about a woman.

She was a slim woman, supple and superb, a rose of a woman. She was honey-skinned as became a true Arab, amber-eyed and with features as delicate and delicious as dreams. There was no evading her wonders for, safe in the privacy of her garden, she was without her burka.

And this was another reason why death promised to be certain and painful for Savaran. He had looked upon a beauty no casual eye might see.

For a half-minute he held her with his eyes; then, her silence having, as it were, linked them together as conspirators, he stepped back. It was only then that he saw that her small hand, hanging so casually amid the folds of her robe, held a jewel-hilted dagger.

He laughed, his aquiline handsomeness fiercely joyous.

"Peerless one!" he cried softly. "This is a meeting of twin souls. You would have used that without fuss. I should have squeezed that swan throat with equal certainty and calm— but we both knew greatness in the other."

He bent, lifted the empty hand and kissed it. He placed himself completely at the mercy of that dagger then, and she knew it. The dagger had gone and she was smiling when he straightened.

"Moon over Meccah," he smiled. "If I had known this to be your garden, I would have welcomed the knives outside rather than disturb you."

"You know me?" she said, still not moving.

"Only your beauty," he flashed back, "and that never before outside dreams."

The quick coquetry of the East shone in her splendid eyes, to be quenched by a howl from beyond the walls. The rabble seemed to have found where his feet had scraped,

"They mean to kill you?" she said

"Oh, surely," he answered, with an indifference that made her eyes sparkle.

"And why— who are you?" she asked

"I am Savaran," he said, as though saying "I am Alexander the Great and Napoleon in one."

"The Franzi!" She laughed softly, suddenly. "I know of you."

"All Africa knows Savaran," he smiled largely. "His fame extends from the courts of princes to—"

"To the common pen of the Al-Zahal careel," she helped with dancing eyes.

"Even from that Savaran's fame rose until it reached a moon among women."

She laughed, for she had her race's love of a quick allusive play upon words.

"You can say that though a thousand knives thirst for your life outside?" she cried, and as though responding to a cue, the mob in the alley gave tongue again.

"Others have thirsted for Savaran's life," he said, "and yet Savaran stands before you."

"It is further said," she went on, "that you promised before the whole Sultan's court to pluck the beard from Ali Agha who tried you."

"That is so," smiled Savaran, who did not recall the incident; "when he grows it— but I fear I cannot wait so long before I chastise him."

She gave way to a ripple of soft laughter. "Would that I had been there," she said. "Ali Agha so pompous and sure of himself, and you a ragged wretch under the shadow of the sword."

"Our souls," he said, not liking the "ragged wretch," "are not as our garments, and Savaran is not one to remain long under the sword."

As though to give him the lie, a bull-voice shouted from the alley: "He went over the wall.... The vide defiling dog... Into the garden of our Lady Jasmine."

Savaran turned from listening to look at the girl. She was watching him closely, a smile curving ever so slightly the quick, exquisite corners of her lips....

And already there was a loud thunder of knocking on the gate.

His hands went out sharply and caught her smooth shoulders. His eyes dropped to where the wide-cut yelek revealed the beauty of her bosom. ... It is a custom in that country, that if any man who is in danger kisses a maid of Al-Zahal on the bosom, he is safe from their swords for ever.

It is one of those safe customs which Arabs love, for so closely are the women guarded that the feat is practically impossible. But it is the word of Arabs and so it holds... and Savaran, with a maid of Al-Zahal at his mercy, knew it. And she knew it, and watched him closely with faintly mocking eyes.

Savaran lifted his glance to hers with a queer twisted smile, drew her to him— and kissed her full on her lips.

"Death is sweeter that way than life behind the skirts of a woman," he said, and turned and stalked towards the wall— a raffish but gallant figure.

She stood very still, the thunder of knocking on the gate increased, Savaran's leap took his hand to the top of the wall, then:

"Franzi," she softly called. "Franzi... behind the hangings in my tent! Quick, O man of men."

Savaran stood between silken inner and outer walls of her marquee, chuckling.... He was Savaran after all, bound to triumph.

The girl was standing before her tent, a golden burka now hiding her golden beauty. Harem women came running towards her, shrilling fear-fully at the knocking on the gate. Towards that gate a body of eunuchs armed with gold inlaid weapons and clad in rich robes went lumbering. Such flunkeys belong only to the houses of kings.

But already Savaran knew he was in the house of a queen. He had heard the mob shout her name... .

The Lady Jasmine, ruler of Al Zahal!

And he, Savaran, who had always the instinct for the right gesture, had held her In his arms, kissed her lips— and lived

"I am about to be king and more!" he smiled.

The Lady Jasmine drew herself out of Savaran's arms, smiled— said softly:

"Let us talk of war, O Prince of Men."

"It is a waste of good love," smiled Savaran with a flash of splendid teeth and a shrewdness in his eyes.

"Aie, that is so," she sighed.

I am the Mother of my people, too, and it has been made known to me that your words, O wisdom, are good words."

"Al-Zahal wants not Ali's war?" he asked, his keen face alert. He watched her cross the marble and mosaic floor to the great door to make sure that only the deaf eunuch guard was near.

"I have spoken to my sheiks," she said when she returned to his side; "not the serve-all-to-serve-self riff-raff of the town here, who fawn on Ali, but the solid chiefs of the country. It is as you say, O far-seeing eye, they like not this war talk against the Franzi. They know as you know that Al-Zahal will be eaten up as the Christian eats all tribes."

"And their attitude towards Durshan?" he asked.

"They distrust Durshan," she said. "Durshan has always been the snake that swallows the Al-Zahal frog."

"So, they are readier to fight Durshan than for Durshan?" cried Savaran, his eyes gleaming.

"Fight Durshan!" she cried, eyes flashing. "Show us but the way to conquer that land of dogs and every sword in Al-Zahal is behind you.... But what way can there be when Durshan puts in line four men to our one?"

"I am Savaran," he said largely. "I have found a way over greater odds. Cunning has an edge as sharp as extra swords.... And I, too, have sworn to teach Bir-Hiriri what it means to treat Savaran with contempt."

"You have a plan, O Fox of Cunning?" she cried.

"I have thought a little," said Savaran with a gleam in his eyes. "You are sure neither Ali nor his jackals know of me or your talk with your sheiks?"

"Nothing," she said. "My household can be trusted. The sheiks will be silent out of joy over the fall of Ali. He walks too proudly for them, treats them too scurvily, and his brain is too dangerous with this foolishness of a Holy War."

"And thou," he teased, "are you to be the willing bride of Ali— as Ali plans?"

"Ali!" she cried. "I would rather marry a dog than that vain, strutting pig of self pride.... Ali, when there is you! Besides, his love for me wanes. Bir-Hiriri presses for marriage with me as the main clause of his alliance; and for glory Ali will pass me over. Me! And to that hen-Arab!"

Savaran laughed softly.

"Pretty fellows! Pretty fellows!" he chuckled. "They plot like weasels thinking lions blind to antics. See, O fragrance of delight, Bir-Hiriri strokes his girl's face and thinks with a leer: 'I will take this girl and through her will gain lord-ship over the Al-Zahal; so they and Ali will be my tools against the Franzi.' At the same time Ali Agha's rat mind chuckles, 'I will give her to this harem Sultan, so that while he dallies with love, I, in the field, will prove myself the fighting captain that Durshan as well as Al-Zahal must honour. I will master his kingdom with the sword while he is weak with kisses.... And as a widow the Lady Jasmine will be even better than as maid, for she will bring me Al-Zahal in her own right and Durshan by right of wifehood. Thus I shall be doubly secure.' "

In fury the Lady Jasmine sprang up and stamped her small hennaed feet.

"You offend me with such talk," she stormed. "Am I not love? Am I so poor a thing that you sit meekly while I am bandied here and there like a chattel? Am I not Sultana of Al-Zahal and beautiful?"

"Thou art the beauty for which man draws his sword and risks his life and kingdom," cried Savaran, "even as I shall, O star of perfection." His teeth flashed. "And by the same token Bir-Hiriri will lose his, for Savaran's sword will give you Durshan as a love token."

She melted into his arms, this Eastern wonder-child of quick love and quick rages.

"Prince among men," she breathed, "let me proclaim thee and thy wonder to Al-Zahal now."

"Not yet," he smiled. "Let my glory be that of warriors. I would be acclaimed by a sea of swords in a kingdom I have conquered. Besides, by silence and cunning we deal with Bir-Hiriri the better."

"And All," she cried. "He dies— and now?"

"Nay," he smiled softly. "He goes to-morrow to Durshan— to arrange your marriage with Bir-Hiriri!"

"I will not be linked with Bir-Hiriri even in name," she cried passionately, struggling in his arms.

"Pearl of women," he laughed, holding her easily, "listen to the word of Savaran. It is wisdom. Can Al-Zahal master Durshan alone? No! Can it crush Durshan with an ally? Assuredly. What ally is there? Only the French, who are already suspicious of Durshan and ready to fight. But will Durshan dare the French? Never without Al-Zahal. Can we then force Durshan into war with the French? Only if you marry Bir-Hiriri. You see, O dove, all turns on your marriage. Only with the promise of you will Bir-Hiriri agree to attack the French. Only with the French on our side can Al-Zahal fight Durshan.... You, your name is but a bait, O Jewel, to catch Durshan,"

She lay back, her little hennaed fingers pleating his strong fingers, half won, half sombre.

"Tell me more of this plan," she said.

"Ali Agna will go to Durshan to negotiate this marriage. He will spend a month on it. I want a month, so difficulties must be raised now and then.... I need that month to become the friend of your sheiks, to plan, to prepare... to get in touch with the French. Besides, a month will suit Bir-Hiriri. If things are too easy, he may suspect a danger in cheapness; he must be pleased with the cunning bargain he drives. So, after that month, you will set out to Durshan and the marriage that will seal the compact."

"That is what I fear," she said, frowning anxiously. "Bir-Hiriri will commit himself to nothing until he is sure of me; Bir-Hiriri has cunning— "

"And has not Savaran?" he laughed. "Savaran knows that weasel-mind like a book, and will play it... Listen, O sun of delight..."

He pulled her down to his breast; spoke swiftly, softly, holding her tight... The frown lifted from her face, smiles broke.... She was laughing, arms about his neck.

"O king of men!" she cried, "No wonder all Africa stirs at the mere sound of your name!"

ALI Agha, wearing already the looks, speaking already in the tones of the conqueror of all Christendom, met the bridal train of the Lady Jasmine at the Wadi Jmia.

It was at the spot where Savaran had been whipped across the stream by the Cadi of Durshan. The Cadi was in the retinue of Durshan nobles sent with Ali to greet the bride, but neither he nor Ali had a thought to spare for that tattered wastrel, so full and ambitious were their hopes.

The Lady Jasmine crossed the Wadi in state. Her shugduf of pearl and ivory swaying on the back of a princely camel was but one of three score splendid litters bearing the women of her harem and the grandees of her land. With this splendid caravan rode two thousand picked horsemen, and as many foot servants also marched. Durshan, however, viewed this array with joy rather than suspicion, and saluted it with a wild festal firing of rifles into the hard blue of the North African sky.

All Durshan was glad of such numbers, for all Durshan knew of the alliance and gloried in the knowledge that, after the marriage and the signing of the pact on the morrow, these warlike fellows would march shoulder to shoulder with them against the Franzi.

The wedding was to be the signal for war.

"Good fighting stuff," cried the Cadi of Durshan, looking over the Al-Zahal men. "With them we will sweep the Franzi from the frontier in our first rush."

"And there are as good behind," said Ali exultantly. "You see how yet others camp behind the Wadi? There are seven thousand warriors there ready to march across the Jmia to Join us once the compact is signed."

There were even more than that. Thousands of Al-Zahal Arabs were  already in Durshan town, flocked thither to join in the wedding festivities as sightseers, but Ali did not know this, nor Bir-Hiriri. Ali and Bir-Hirlri had only capacities for seeing what seemed to make themselves important.

Ali had an audience with the Lady Jasmine, and was able to assure Bir- Hiriri the always-cautious, that his wife-to-be had not only arrived at Durshan, but was exceedingly complaisant.

Bir-Hiriri rubbed his effeminate hands together and leered. He had already had assurance of this from the harem women he had sent hurrying to serve the Lady Jasmine— and play spy on her. Bir-Hiriri was no fool, if he was no man either.

'I hear that she has been greatly persuaded by a new sybil she hath discovered," he said.

"It is so," said Ali. "I saw the woman, a gaunt, veiled hag from the mountains by her looks... but a woman of marvel. It was she who, when my lady doubted, won her by telling that she saw in the sand the promise of glory for her arising out of a wedding ceremony in the kasbah of Durshan. It was she who delayed the setting out from Al-Zahal until the fifth day of the fifth moon, because that day was auspicious. It was she who, when our Lady Jasmine showed maiden fears yesterday, bade her cross the Wadi for she saw her star rise higher with every step she took into Durshan."

Both men nodded wisely, eyed each other with bright, crafty eyes. Being Arabs, they believed in such utterances with all their hearts. Being foxes, each was sure these promises of triumph referred solely to himself. They added more rejoicing to the general rejoicing.

All were smiles when, at midday and no earlier— the sybil from the mountains had set the precise time— the pearl and ivory litter of the Lady Jasmine went swaying through the gates into the great court of the kasbah, a mob swarming about it with joyful shouts. If there was a fly in the ointment, it arose from the fact that the crush into that courtyard seemed to force rather more citizens of Durshan to remain outside than seemed proper.

At the entrance to the Sultan's great palace, Bir-Hiriri and his sheiks, Ali and the Cadi of Durshan, waited the moment of their triumph with bosoms swelling. They were so full of their glory that they were not greatly put out when they learnt that the old witch woman from the mountains had again poked her sybiline finger into the wheels of ceremonial.

The Lady Jasmine did not leave her litter. Indeed, word was passed to Bir-Hiriri that the pact of marriage and war must be signed before she did.

"After! After!" cried Bir-Hiriri, impatient for marriage.

"Now," said Ali, after consultation through the muffling silks of the litter. "The hill woman read the sand this morning. She saw written there that triumph can only come if the pact-signing precedes the marriage. The Lady Jas-mine refuses to disobey the order set by heaven...."

Bir-Hiriri, impatient, swayed by superstition, too, cried: "Fetch the pact!" What did it matter anyhow? He was supreme here, and the deed that meant war must be signed within an hour in any case.

A table appeared, writing materials, the heavy rolled parchment of the pact. Bir-Hiriri bent feverishly over it, wrote, lifted a triumphant face: "I have signed!" he cried.

The words were caught up by the mob within the courtyard. "Bir-Hiriri has signed!" roared three thousand voices— and two thousand had an Al-Zahal accent.

Bir-Hiriri, stirred to the core by such glad clamour, lifted the treaty in his own hands and held it to the silk curtains of the litter. As he did so, he was stirred to the core in quite a different way.... The great shouting was now not all joy.... There were yells in it-from his own people.... Yells of pain! He glanced round quickly, saw numbers of them falling, struck down by Al-Zahal men. Just as he realised how hugely he and his were out-numbered, the great gates closed with a slam like thunder and he saw a mob of Al-Zahal warriors securing them.

And at the same instant, too, a hand darted through the curtains of the litter, and took— no, snatched— the parchment of the pact out of his feeble fingers... the pact on which he had signed his declaration of war against the Franzi.

"Treachery!" he screamed. "Treachery!" and shrank back on Ali and the Cadi of Durshan. Ali, like most windbags, was hopeless in action; the Cadi, at least, was not.

"A trap!" he snarled. "We are caught.... But, by the sword, we have their Lady Jasmine. Seize her! She is our only chance of living!"

His own hands tore the silken curtains aside, his own strong body dived in to clutch the princess.... Then he backed slowly out, his eyes mesmerised by the muzzle of a pistol that goaded him. . . .

They all saw the tall, spider-spare man who stood between the parted hangings, saw the cheerfully ferocious smile on his dark aquiline face. All caught up the Cadi of Durshan's cry:

"Savaran! Savaran is here!"

"Savaran!" cried Savaran, enjoying the drama of the moment. "Savaran! He whom you whipped out of Durshan keeps his promise and returns, Bir-Hiriri! Savaran who marked you for hanging, O Cadi, is here to hang! Savaran whom you put in prison, Ali Agha, has come to take payment!... Ah, but that is stupid, Ali. Savaran is a master with the pistol as well as a master of men...."

Ali had darted both hands to his girdle, torn a dagger and a pistol from it... and Savaran's pistol spoke twice... just twice, but Ali's two arms went limp, a bullet through the forearm of each.

"Back!" cried Savaran fiercely to Bir-Hiriri and his nobles. "Your nearness is an offence; back among the other Durshan cattle..."

The menace of his weapons drove them cowering towards the remnant of the Durshan Arabs huddled under Al-Zahal guards, Bir-Hiriri, shambling with fear, could scarcely walk, until a bullet into the earth at his toes made him skip amid the harsh laughter of his foes.

Only the Cadi of Durshan had the manhood to shout defiance.

"You shall pay!" he roared. "You trap us now, but what of Al-Zahal?— only a handful of women. Durshan will rise in its thousands and blot Al-Zahal out.... Fools, to think you can dare Durshan alone?"

"Not alone," grinned Savaran. "Don't you hear? Don't you see?"

He pointed upwards. In the silence that came at that all heard the menacing, soul-intimidating drone of aeroplanes— all saw high in the air, and coming fast, three squadrons of bombing planes in battle formation.

"The French are to time," said Savaran. "But then, Savaran arranged it.... That is why the sybil fixed the hour of marriage so definitely."

The courtyard rocked with Al-Zahal laughter then. The Arab loves a shrewd joke, and every Al-Zahal warrior there knew that Savaran himself had been the sybil.

"The French," cried Bir-Hiriri shrilly. "That is the end of Al-Zahal, too, then; Al-Zahal has promised to fight the French."

"Nay, the signature of Bir-Hiriri of Durshan alone is on the pact," said Savaran. "The French know that. I am in treaty with the French whose troops march now to take Durshan while Al-Zahal holds it. I and the French understand one another."

"You," shrilled Ali, "who are you to treat with the French?"

"I am Savaran," said Savaran. "I am also commander-in-chief to the Lady Jasmine and act by her authority and desire and that of her people."

"The Lady Jasmine," shrilled Bir-Hiriri, "she cannot know the scum you are."

"The Lady Jasmine," cried Ali. "She does not know you as I know you, kennel dog."

"She knows me better than both of you," said Savaran with gusto. "I am what you, Ali, thought yourself too important to be, what you, Bir-Hiriri, were too crafty to be... I am her husband!"

He stood there glowing, conscious that he had made a superb gesture and looked his best.

A flag waved over the great gate, a sheik touched his forehead and spoke humbly to him.

"Open the gate!" he cried in a great voice. "Durshan is mine! Ho, make a way down the centre of the courtyard, guards!... Savaran receives the envoy of France!"

_____________

12: Riddle of the Devoted Sphinx

THE tall, lean shape that was but a shadow in the shadows flicked a hand. Another shadow leapt like a panther and the armed Tarbashi at the door went down without a sound. The lean shape slid over him and through the door like an eddy of smoke, two lamp-black Buckra at his heels. The Protector of the Faithful within got one glimpse of an eagle fierce face and swiped largely at it with his scimitar. The face grinned, ducked the blade and two steel arms caught the man and tossed him into a corner, where one of the Buckra with blunt knees and a sharp knife knelt on him, commanding silence.

A vast Nubian leaving a chamber at the inner court gasped at the sight of the lean man and made motions of war. A hard foot took him where he bulged most and by the time he had recovered enough to sit up the lean one had vanished into the chamber and the other Buckra stood at its door, grinning at him over pistol sights. Whereat the Nubian began to sweat cold. He had been ordered to guard what was in that chamber with his life.

The lean man had paused just long enough to straighten his turban and expose the glories of an orange kaftan— he had a neat taste in dramatic flourishes— then, with his hand on the jewelled hilt of a pistol, he swept aside the leather door curtain and entered the room.

The woman pouring out tea looked up with a certain amount of interest.

Just that.

A bizarre and dangerous gentleman with the air of a highly accomplished pirate and the look of a laughing Lucifer had just wiped out such guards as stood between her and one of the most notorious murder communities of Africa, in order to invade her presence, pistol in hand, and she merely tilted her tea-pot Just enough not to spill it, as she looked at him.

He blinked, but not even the tropic stench and heat of Taurl Massi prevented the woman's Homeric absurdity from being real. There she stood: the small, smooth, neat, earnestly "refeened" working model of all that was strictly proper in the "best" suburban wives. She even had a crochet-edged teacloth on the kerosene case that made her table

The white teeth flashed sardonically in the gipsy face as the lean man bowed.

"Your hired girl forgot to announce me." he said. "I am Savaran."

It was a name to make all Africa blench. She did not blench. She put down her teapot and gently foraged in a basket on the mud diwan beside her.

"I thought it might be you," she said in her best party voice.

"And you," he said, "are the lady who went to Port Sudan in search of me?"

"Yes... Do sit down."

"You also followed me to Korfri on the Congo, and on to Tirsherifen seven hundred miles north, and— oh, yes, you inquired for me at Mottomari on the Atlantic in between."

"Yes," she nodded and hesitated looking at him with appealing eyes.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Do you take milk— or none?" she murmured.

He collapsed on the diwan with a crack of laughter. "You are unique You stagger even Savaran."

Be gazed at her, baffled, as men since Adam have gazed at Mona Lisa, their wives, and the Sphinx.

"What is behind you?"

"I don't quite follow... Sugar? One or two lumps?"

"Four hundred," his fierce lips mocked. "I am asking why you hunt me. Why you have done this miracle, trailed Savaran through several thousand miles of jungle and swamp, shot a man or two and outfaced experiences that would give your nice, residential home circle community hysterics? What is the main-spring of you— love or hate?"

"Oh— my husband," she whispered.

"Is that really an answer or only an added complication to the riddle of the ages?" he demanded sardonically.

"I mean— I want you to rescue my husband, Mr. Savaran."

"You have dared five thousand miles of assorted hell just for— a husband?" he asked, his eagle glance kindling at a spirit so akin to his own.

"I had to. From what I've learnt you are the only man who can save him. He is in a desperate position, Mr. Savaran."

"He must be if even a woman like you cannot help him," he said largely.

"He is," she breathed. "He is a prisoner of the Ja-gna-gnana."

Even Savaran gaped at her then. The Ja-gna-gnana had that effect If she had said: "My husband is held prisoner on the seventh floor down of hell," she could not have been more disturbing. Indeed, it was held that that remote and deadly tribe exceeded hell in vileness.

"I am sorry, Madam, but if your husband ever got into the hands of the Ja-gna-gnana he is already dead."

"No," she said huskily. "He is not dead. He got a letter out to me by a salt caravan six months ago. He was alive and being kept alive. They have never had a white captive before, and they treat him as a trophy."

"I've never heard of a white getting among them. How did they take your husband?"

"He was exploring that district," she told him.

"An explorer?" he asked, surprised, for he thought he knew all the breed. "What is his name?"

"Oh!" she was taken aback. "I thought you knew. My name is Judith Marrion— Mrs. Charles Marrion."

"Charles Marrion? Never heard of him," he scowled. "What's he like?"

"Oh... oh, a big man. Not so tall as you but very strong. And— and blue eyes," she said.

"That's a drawback— I know of at least three blue-eyed big men in Africa," he said sardonically.

"Don't be funny," she shuddered, "please!"

"You're right," his face became harsh. "The Ja-gna-gnana can be no joking matter for him— or even Savaran."

"Yet who but Savaran can get him away from them?"

"I can't help sharing your views," he said with a flash of white teeth. "And yet even Savaran may hesitate before the impossible."

"If you do not go," she said blankly, "I must."

"And by the living Heaven," he said, his eyes shining admiration, "I believe you'd try."

"Something must be done. He's there, among those fiends— suffering and— and I am the only one he can turn to."

"To let you go would be signing your death warrant," he scowled. "And for nothing. He must be dead by now."

"I feel he Isn't— in my bones," she answered. "He's strong and very very tough. And even if he isn't alive I must know. Must! I have seven hundred English pounds, all I have in the world... if it isn't enough, if you won't go, then I must myself. I'm asking too much perhaps..."

"That is how you conquer Savaran," he said with his large gesture. "Such a devotion, daring the very stars, is what makes such great natures as yours and mine akin. I will go to the Ja-gna-gnana, and, if your husband is alive, I, Savaran, will bring him back."

THE SPIDER-SPARE adventurer's journey through jungle, swamp and lever belt to that remote fastness of iron-flanked hills where the race of carbon-black, stork-shanked demons dwelt matters little. It was merely infernal. He lost half his carriers from bushman arrows before he had gone a third of the way, and the remainder of his men bolted one night at the sound of an attacking tribe's war drums, leaving him half dead with fever. It was only by staggering in on the drummers and cowing them with his fierce eyes and more terrible pistol that he escaped from the would-be murderers. He did it by forcing their king and his cabinet to act as bearers of the carrying-chair in which he rested until he was strong enough again to be really dangerous. But the journey was full of trifles like that, and such incidentals were, after all, merely everyday to a man like Savaran; besides, the real unpleasantness of the trip began when he got among the Ja-gna-gnana.

He would not have lived among them five hours, for they have a prompt and fearful resentment of all strangers, had he not adopted the only two roles that make a man reasonably safe among such fiends. He went among them as a madman and a fakir.

The more primitive a people are the more awed they are by insanity. A lunatic is one who has been touched by the finger of Allah, and whose mind is what it is through constantly hobnobbing with spirits. There never was so mad a madman as Savaran, and added to it he clothed his lean, dark figure in a tattered jibba, plus all the wondrous filth of sacred bones, snake skins, monkey tails and amulets proper to a holy seer.

It was not the prettiest form of living. If the Ja-gna-gnana let him live for fear of the demons he might loose on them, they saw no reason why he should not pay for it by amusing them. They therefore made him court jester to hell. When there was lack of people to torture and life was dull, they would drag him forward to gibber and dance.

Savaran, being Savaran, lived through it all, but at times it was only the memory of Judith Marrion's great love and sublime devotion that saved him from becoming suddenly sane and, plucking his automatic from its hiding place among the amulets, wiping out as many of these fiends as possible in one grand, Savaranesque attempt to level up their cruelty.

Being Savaran, however, he never did forget the woman who was waiting so loyally on his pledged word. Not for a moment did he cease to hunt for Charles Marrion, and the mowing and fanatic figure that seemed to drift aimlessly about the iron valleys was following a set plan. And in time his genius had its reward. He found Charles Marrion— alive and in the salt gangs.

High up in the hills of Ja-gnagnana was a big saline lake that was the chief wealth of the tribe.

The one defect of this source of riches is that to keep pace with the demand is killing work. The lake is remote, the conditions of life ghastly, and the harsh, bare mountains trap the sun so ferociously that no man can work there continuously and live for more than a few years. The Ja-gna-gnana overcome these defects by using their prisoners on the work, its deadliness giving it an additional charm for this purpose in their eyes.

Savaran, learning in the plains that the famous white roumi captive was a member of the salt gang, set out for the lake. He was led to the man at once. This mad fakir with his frantic hatred of infidels— and that was why Savaran had spouted hate of infidels— promised a new line of torment for a prisoner who had become weak and unresponsive to the usual tortures.

Charles Marrion, because of his white skin, was a pampered prisoner. That is, when the horrible work brought him close to death he was taken off it and allowed to lie up in the sleeping camp until he was strong enough to be slowly killed again. He was undergoing such a spell of rest now, and Savaran, in the midst of a mob of his tormentors, found him lying under the tattered rag that was the only protection the slaves had against the elements.

He lay so limp and ill that not even the kicks of the Ja-gna-gnana could stir him, and presently Savaran had to pretend to give way to a frenzy of rage, bending over him and cursing him in a score of languages. But one of the languages was English, and he said: "Marrion! Marrion!... Keep your nerve... Oh, stench of infidel sin . . . Marrion, do you hear?... I'm white... Keep your nerve now... Oh, spawn of Iblis... I've come to save you..."

The man heard. He rolled over, groaning as though to confront a new tormentor, blinked at Savaran with dazed eyes-then opened them wide.

"Savaran!" he screamed. "God in Heaven— Savaran!"

But Savaran was already on top of him, clawing and mowing in crazy fury. And as the Ja-gna-gnana screeched in brutish laughter at such sport he was snarling ferociously:

"Keep your mouth shut, Rod Barstow! Do you hear? Give nothing away! Your very life depends on it..."

His own did, too. Something queer had happened to his knight errant search. He knew Judith Marrion's husband after all— but not as Marrion.

He was Rod Barstow, a crook whom Savaran had most solemnly promised to shoot on sight at their next meeting.

The Ja-gna-gnana, fearing for the life of their show captive, dragged him off the swooning Barstow at last, and Savaran spent an evening being baited by the salt guards and asking himself whether the discovery absolved him from further heroic folly or whether his word to Judith Marrion was still binding.

Charles Marrion, or Rod Barstow, was the last man he wished to save from anything. He was one of the world's meanest efforts; a big, genial man who would stop at no filth to steal a dollar. It was for rotting a tribe Savaran had been interested in, with dope, that the bizarre adventurer had sworn to kill him.

He was, in fact, better dead. On the other hand there was Judith Marrion. Obviously she did not know what her husband was, how could so sweet and simple a creature even guess? And then, hadn't the brute married her under another name? No, he was probably at his best with her, all that a husband should be, therefore what he actually was had no bearing on her. All she wanted was her apparently decent husband safe and back with her, and he, Savaran, who never broke his promise, had given his word to restore that husband. That clinched it.

Barstow might have altered things by betraying him; he was quite cap-able of it, but he didn't. He clutched at the slender chance of freedom despite his fear of Savaran. When the mad fakir came to revile him next day he snarled: "What's your game, Savaran?"

"How mere truth puzzles a crook," the lean man mocked amid curses in seven languages, for the benefit of the Ja-gna-gnana. "The game is precisely as stated yesterday. I'm here to get you away."

"Don't lie to me," the man quavered. "Is this some trick of revenge?"

"Would Savaran risk his neck on such a trick, knowing that the Ja-gna-gnana were doing all that was needed?"

"No... that's what I've been thinking," mumbled the man. "But— but you swore to shoot me?"

"The pleasure is postponed. Perhaps indefinitely. I have also sworn to rescue you."

"Sworn! Someone paid you?" Barstow gasped. "Who? The Trevarter gang?"

"Do I work in the sewers?" spat the eagle-fierce man. "Would mere money sway Savaran to dare so much? It was something nobler than you'll ever understand, Barstow— your wife!"

"Ah! Of course— you called me Marrion!" the man said, and lay still, watching Savaran with queer, questioning eyes. Savaran asked, guessing the man might be playing fox: "Are you too weak to walk?"

"How far? I'm pretty weak."

"To the hill road above the workings. It's the nearest I can hide mules."

"I might— if you could get me food," the man shuddered. "And a shot of millet spirit... and give me a day or two."

"I mean to," Savaran said. "You've got to watch me, Barstow, pick up my tricks. I'll be coming here all hours. Study my antics so that you can mimic me."

He leapt up with the abruptness of the madman, aimed a fanatic kick at Barstow and then shambled gibbering away. But he kept his word. He came back at all hours. Even during the night, to the anger of the other slaves whose sleep he disturbed.

It was as though the mad fakir was drawn by a very magnetism of hate for this infidel. But there was cunning in his method. Not only was he able to slip food he had stolen to the weakened man, his irresponsible comings and goings became a commonplace.

But as he leant over to curse the infidel, Savaran dropped his jibba and turban with fierce injunctions to Barstow to get into them. Then he passed a stiff shot of native spirit, and, when it had steadied the man's shaking nerve, he handed over his whole collection of amulets.

"Tie these about you," he hissed. "When I give you my usual farewell kick I will stumble and fall. Spring up at once and take my place. Go gibbering off through the camp like me. You'll find two mules tethered between the first two big rocks on the left of the hill path. Wait by them until I come. Keep your nerve. It will be all right once you reach the mules."

He did all as said. Barstow, in his robes and amulets and acting his mad movings excellently, went off unchallenged. He gave the man ten minutes, then with the stealth of a woodsman slid through the camp after him. All went well. He got by the salt guards without a hint of suspicion. It was only when he was clear of immediate danger and running towards the mules that something went wrong.

He heard the clatter of hoofs ahead of him, caught a glimpse of two mules speeding up the path while the man on the back of one flailed both to a gallop.

Barstow was bolting, leaving his rescuer in the lurch.

That was Barstow always, treacherous and cowardly in any crisis. Savaran found him two miles along the trail, lying where his mule had thrown him, snivelling in fear.

"I thought they'd got you," he whined. "You seemed so long and... and I could feel them coming after me."

"They won't even know you've gone until dawn tomorrow," Savaran said curtly, and yanked him to his feet.

"That's what I've been thinking," Barstow snuffled. "You can still get me back before they know. I'll be safe then... Darn you, do you hear? I won't get on that mule. If they catch me it will be worse than ever... I'm going back."

Savaran did not argue. He hit with a terrible swing to the brute's chin and then tied the insensible body across the mule. When Savaran promised to rescue a man, Savaran did it, even if he had to do it by force.

It was only when Savaran had once more accomplished the impossible and got them out of the Jagna-gnana country that Barstow began to see a ray of hope ahead and quietened down. Yet more than ever he took to studying his rescuer with that queer, speculative glance of his, and one day he asked:

"Why did Judith come to you?"

"Because she is a remarkable woman," the fierce smile flashed back. "Who else in all Africa could she have gone to?"

"She might have tried bribery through someone in a salt caravan," Barstow mumbled.

"And never seen you or the man or her money again," shrugged the lean adventurer. "There are a score of ways she might have tried, but she had the instinct beyond ordinary women to know the only one that was sure."

"Ah, you were impressed by her cleverness?"

"By something bigger— her divine devotion."

"Devotion?" sniggered the man. "Devotion, eh?"

"Barstow," said Savaran grimly. "The balance between my twisting your neck, as I promised, and saving your life, as I also promised, depends on a featherweight. One sneer at that noble lady, your wife, and not even my word to her will save that neck."

Barstow cringed under the death in the bright eyes. Yet presently he said: "I wonder... She didn't tell you my real name was Barstow?"

"Obviously— am I not here? Would I have given my word to save a rat like you even to such a woman as your wife? Does she even know that your name is Barstow?"

"She may," he frowned. "You never do know what she knows."

"If she knew would she have withheld it from me— a woman as simple and guileless as that?"

"That's the puzzler," scowled Barstow. "That's why I'm wondering."

He became very quiet and docile after that--and dangerous. When they reached the Yanni people and Savaran was able to use the money in his body-belt to hire carriers and gather stores for a caravan, Barstow spent much time hobnobbing secretly with the local medicine man. Also on the night before they marched he showed both a curious elation and an eagerness to press drink on Savaran by way of celebration. Or rather he did until after the third drink. Then he sprang up, swaying on his feet, his face green.

"My Heavens!" he shouted. "What have you given me?"

"You know best," said Savaran with ferocious geniality. "What did the ju-ju man give you for me— that's what you've drunk."

Barstow fell to the floor, his limbs curiously rigid, and the spider-spare man bent over him. "What was it— a poison?"

Barstow's lips framed a hoarse negative.

"Oh, I thought as much— the-vine-that-kills-a-man's-legs-for-a-week... Just long enough to let you get away from me, eh? Very fortunate really, it'll prevent you being a nuisance on the march... Oh, and next time you plot with medicine men make sure they haven't daughters. This one has, a pretty little thing, and talkative."

Barstow continued the march helpless in a litter, yet Savaran overlooked one thing: that is, that years of practice under the eyes of slave-drivers had made the man a master in malingering. One day rather more than a week later, the lean adventurer left him in camp, sure that he was still unable to stand upright. When he returned at night-fall he knew better. Barstow had vanished with all the carriers, arms and stores save for what Savaran and his two hunters had on them.

"They left an hour after we started on our hunt," said one of the hunters studying the tracks. "The other white bwana hurried them. See how his booted feet move here and there as he drives them. And he knows where he is going. This track leads to the Ba Lee River, and, reaching it, he can get canoes to take him up to Gongoda or down through the Riad country to MeQuala on the Keef Coast, or even to the British Malaria Colony, which would be the way a white man would go."

"Not this white man," said Savaran grimly. "He goes to Gongoda."

He knew that for certain, knowing Barstow. Gongoda would be a haven of refuge for the fellow, because, thanks to the hate of its king, death waited for Savaran there. Also it was the nearest bolt hole by several weeks.

Once again Savaran stood and asked himself if it was worth risking a painful and protracted death for such a fellow. Reason said no, reason said that even Judith Marrion would be better rid of such a cur... But Savaran was never a creature of reason. He had a vision of that quiet, trusting woman waiting with her sublime patience in MeQuala...

"We go to Gongoda," he said grimly.

ON the Ba Lee River he found that Barstow had gone upstream to hide among his deadly enemies as he had thought. Savaran paused only long enough to buy a canoe and a Hazramut trader's outfit, and went after him.

The Gongoda border line on the river was aswarm with canoes waiting to massacre him, for Barstow had passed word of his coming. Grinning fiercely he steered slap for where they were thickest, and standing up roared boldly:

"Way!— Way for Shentunt the Hazrami. I have news for the king. Zavarani is trying to creep up to the Kingtown disguised. Ho, let me by to warn the king of his enemy."

Such audacity could not even be questioned. The guard boats let him through, the warriors in them even cheered him on his way. And Savaran's hand-picked paddlers made record speed upstream.

Time fought against them and nearly beat them when they reached the Kingtown, for Barstow, having brought news of a hated enemy, was being banqueted by the king.

The eagle-fierce face grinned. Savaran did relish impossible situations, they gave such opportunities for magnificent gestures. Walking round to the kitchens he waylaid a serving man he had marked, and, slipping money into his hand, said:

"As you serve the white bwana, whisper to him to beware, since he who led him from the Yanni country is already in Gongoda town..."

He knew that would be enough. Barstow would know it meant Savaran.

No native can resist a spice of intrigue with money attached. The message was delivered to Barstow with the next dish, and Savaran watched the fellow shudder and go green. Then, as he had expected, the fellow's nerve cracked and, heedless of anything but his own safety, he chose a moment when a swirling mob of dancers came between him and the king to slip away... An oily and cringing Hazramut met him outside.

"It was I, bwana, who sent you news of Zavarani. Your men saw him in the town half an hour ago. Come quickly, I can take you to a good hiding place— for money."

"Yes, get me out of this, quick," said the drunk and fearful Barstow. "I'll pay you well."

In his panic he suspected nothing until they reached the waterside and he saw the canoe— with its bows pointing down stream. Then he jerked alert, turned on his guide with a screeched: "Who in the devil's name are you?"

"Who else but Savaran?" grinned the lean man and flung him into the canoe.

They travelled down stream all night in safety, for the Gongoda prefers to leave the darkness to devils. Barstow lay under the awning amidships, sullen and unspeaking. It was only when dawn brought a sudden tension and a reaching for and a placing handy of weapons that he turned and looked ahead to where war canoes dotted the bosom of the river.

"The border?" he asked of Savaran.

"In fifteen minutes well be through— and safe," said the lean man. "The Gongoda dare not follow us into Riad waters."

"Will they let you by?"

"With cheers. I'm the gallant Hazramut who carried news of that terror of Empires, Savaran, to their king. They won't have had time to have learnt the truth about me."

"And when we're through, what then?"

"Straight on to your wife."

"But where is she?"

"At MeQuala, on the Keel Coast," said Savaran, and Barstow jerked abruptly to a sitting position.

"MeQuala! By Heavens!" he gulped, and then: "Why MeQuala? Why not the Malaria Colony?"

"It seemed to us the more likely place."

"Us!" the man said quickly. "You mean my wife? It was she who fixed on MeQuala?"

"Does it matter? She's there waiting for you now."

"It matters; by Heaven it matters. Did she arrange it— did she?"

"Yes," shrugged Savaran. "Sensibly she thought— "

He stopped because Rod Barstow had thrown back his head in a long yelping laugh. Savaran cursed him. The Gongoda war canoes were very close.

"Stop that, you fool," he snarled "It's death for both of us."

"Death!" shouted Barstow, and he laughed again Then he sprang to his feet and screamed in Swahili: "Savaran is here! Savaran is the Hazramut in this canoe! Up Gongoda and slay Savaran."

The lean adventurer's quick-shot foot landed Barstow windless in the bottom of the canoe, but the damage had been done. With a roar of war cries and a flash of paddles the Gongoda canoes came at them.

Savaran's eagle glance flamed as he shouted his own paddlers to furious effort. His pistol swept up and spoke, and the steersman of the nearest canoe fell. The craft yawed and they were by. It spoke again twice and again helmsmen among four canoes hurled forward in a bunch, dead, so that the four craft crashed together and dropped astern in inextricable confusion.

Arrows and hammered slugs from trade rifles came screaming over. A paddler fell forward with a shaft through his heart, Savaran tossed the corpse overboard and kicked another man to the paddle. A slug took the lean adventurer himself in the shoulder with the blow of a club, flinging him on his face. Barstow making signs of surrender leapt for the steering sweep, but Savaran was up, had smashed the traitor into the bottom of the canoe, and was in command again in a flash.

A canoe swerved to lay alongside Savaran also swerved, lunging a grinding, glancing blow along the side of the other and sinking her before her crew could leap. A minute later a canoe did come into them, Savaran having only time to swing his own boat so that she touched bow on instead of broadside--at once hand-to-hand fighting raged

It was nearly all Savaran. His tall, spidery figure had leapt into it like a demon. He had snatched a long Riad sword from one of the paddlers and with this he fought like a man inspired. Neither shield nor spear parry seemed able to check the vicious swing and hack of that terrible blade. Like a berserker the bizarre fighter carved his way through the warriors who had gained his canoe, until those who had not died leapt into the river to save themselves from a living demon. With one foot on the nose of the enemy canoe he drove its men stumbling back. Then he roared: "Paddle! Paddle!" and heaved downwards with his foot. The nose of the enemy went under and sank as his own craft rushed clear.

Then Savaran, half fainting, dropped beside Barstow.

"We're through," he shouted "We've won!"

"No!" Barstow cried with a thin cackle of laughter. "She's won... my wife has won I'm a dead man!"

Savaran steadied his reeling wits and looked at the man, saw the wound a shovel-headed spear had made in his chest— Barstow was, indeed, a dying man.

"She's won," Barstow croaked again. "Clever Judith— you'll be able to tell her I am definitely dead."

Savaran, dizzy with pain, mad with rage, cursed him.

"You mean-gutted dog! If you'd only played straight I'd have had you alive and safe with her in two weeks."

"How she would have hated that," jeered the dying man.

"You fool! Can't you even yet realise the wonder of a woman like your wife...?"

"I am!" Barstow scoffed. "For the first time. I never could make head or tail of Judith before, but now I do. She's as clever as a snake. What other woman could have taken so much pains to make certain of my death?"

"She'd hardly have picked on the one man in all Africa who could save you if she wanted that," scoffed Savaran.

"She sent the man who had sworn to kill me," said Barstow.

"How was she to know I had sworn it?" the fierce man asked, narrow-eyed. "Or did she?"

"Who knows what she knows or what goes on behind that smooth, sphinx face of hers," shrugged Barstow, and Savaran scowled at this echo of his own first impression. "But she didn't tell you my name was Barstow... and that's queer."

Savaran glared at that. That was queer--if Judith Mannion had told him he would never have gone, and she'd never have learnt whether her husband was alive or dead. That is, if she had known--but even Barstow was not certain she knew his name... And even if she had, for what end would she deceive?... in the hope of his shooting Barstow? Unthinkable! He could see her now— calm sweet, gentle, negative... suspicion of such a creature was absurd

"It's your rat's mind working," he snarled. "Vicious yourself, you can only think evil of others. The devotion of that noble woman is wasted on you. You can't see that it is her very womanliness that made he risk all to save you and bring you back to her side ..."

"In— MeQuala," Barstow gasped. "Darn— queer— idea of safety— making you bring me to— MeQuala

"What's wrong with MeQuala?" demanded Savaran.

"I'm— I'm— wanted for murder in MeQuala," panted the man. "If you— if all else— failed her— I was bound— to be hanged in MeQuala!"

Savaran's mouth dropped open. He stared in amazement. Barstow's head was sagging sideways, his breath dying. In a sudden fury Savaran gripped his shoulders, cried:

"But, does she know that? Does she know MeQuala means hanging for you?"

"Know— " panted the dying man. "Know— who knows what Judith knows? Ask of the— Sphinx yourself— she— she may tell—"

Savaran shook him again. It was no good. He was dead.

SAVARAN was a prey to fierce doubt until he sat with Judith Marrion at the secluded end of her hotel veranda in MeQuala, telling all that had happened. Watching her he regained confidence in his knowledge of woman's nature.

Impossible to credit even a thought of violence to so typical a suburban wife. She was so still, so sweet, so entirely negative. She was too emotionless even to feel anything save what she considered her "duty to her husband."

She listened to his story of peril and death with the same staring blankness with which a commuter's wife hears of her husband's adventures in a subway breakdown. Only at the end did she touch her eyes with her handkerchief and say:

"Terrible... terrible... so close to the end, too..."

"Don't grieve too much," said Savaran. "You did all you could— and I too... And perhaps it was all for the best. Barstow was a broken man. His life, had he lived, would have been a misery."

"Yes," she said, holding out her hand. "It ends... perhaps for the best. I can't thank you enough, Mr. Savaran."

He took her hand, but he was looking at her queerly. He realised that he had called her husband Barstow and not Marrion, and that she had shown no surprise. His keen eyes frowning, he said:

"Did you know that your husband's name was Barstow?"

She looked at him with her smooth, reticent glance and not even he, Savaran, could read whether surprise, fear, cunning, knowledge or sublime innocence was behind it.

And then, just as she was about to speak, and he waited breathless on the brink of knowing her secret, a step sounded on the veranda behind him. She took her hand very gently from his, moved softly past him and with a murmured: "Harry! Harry, my dear!" sank into the arms of a man who had come out of the hotel.

Savaran stood blinking. He recognised the man. He had been pointed out that morning as an American millionaire travelling apparently for his health.

And Judith Marrion had taken refuge as by right in his arms.

What in the name of all riddles did that mean?

Was she the highly virtuous woman she seemed, determined to clear up the mystery of her husband's life or death even by heroic means before consenting to marry "Harry"? Or was Barstow right? Was her choice of the man who had sworn to kill her husband and MeQuala deliberate? That is, had she done all she could to make sure of her husband's death so that she could marry "Harry"?

Was she Messalina at heart— or mere middle-class morality?

Savaran watched as, very gently and chastely, she allowed Harry to lead her into the hotel. He felt as baffled by her as even ordinary men had been baffled by Mona Lisa, their wives and the Sphinx. Like Barstow he felt that no man ever would know what passed in the mind of Judith Marrion— no, not even Harry.

___________

The stories in this volume are taken from The Australian Women's' Weekly as follows:

1: Moonbeam of Pearl 29 May 37

2: Blade of the Spear 8 May 37

3: Proud Beauty 15 May 37

4: Pawn to Check a Queen 5 June 37

5: Song of the Siren: 19 Jun 37

6: The Wandering Gentile:  3 July 37

7:  Power of the Eyes: 31 Jul 37

8: Lily of Deceit: 14 Aug 37

9: Delilah’s Daughter:  16 Oct 37

10: The Young Lion:  2 Oct 37

11: Jasmine 13 Nov 37

12: Sphinx 15 Oct 38

The first publication of the stories was in the magazine "The Passing Show", in a different order. I couldn't find all of them:

Moonbeam of Pearl: #208, March 14 1936

The Wandering Gentile:  #209, March 21 1936

Proud Beauty:  #211, April 4 1936

Blade of the Spear: 213, April 18 1936

Lily of Deceit: #216, May 9 1936

The Lady Jasmine #219, May 30 1936

Pawn to Check a Queen #222, June 20 1936

Song of the Siren: #231, August 22 1936

Power of the Eyes: #235, September 19 1936

Delilah’s Daughter: #239, October 17 1936

The Young Lion Cuts His Teeth : #243, November 14 1936

Table of Contents

- Introduction
- 1: Moonbeam of Pearl
- 2: Blade of the Spear
- 3: Proud Beauty
- 4: Pawn to Check a Queen
- 5: Song Of The Siren
- 6: Wandering Gentile
- 7: Power of the Eyes
- 8: Lily of Deceit
- 9: Delilah's Daughter
- 10: The Young Lion
- 11: The Lady Jasmine
- 12: Riddle of the Devoted Sphinx