S.B.H Hurst Omnibus

Table of Contents

The Ball of Fire

Hurst is in top form in this adventure of Bugs Sinnat, of the secret service, who made several appearances in Oriental Stories. In this tale, he travels from India to the wilds of Burma in search of a giant ruby, The Ball of Fire. A ripping yarn in the tradition of Kipling and Mundy.

The King of the Jerawahs

Danger, mystery, and exotic adventure in the serach for Alexander's tomb.

People of the Fourth Dimension

A mysterious tale of mysterious India. At the behest of his young lover, an Englishman dares to stare into the saucer of ink, from which strange truths are revealed... Vague in style, but interesting.

The Spirit of France

A nice Burmese story by Hurst. A frequent contibutor to Adventure and Oriental Stories, he specialized in stories from the Asian sub-continent. (Reprinted from Adventure Trails, February 1929.)

The Ball of Fire

Oriental Stories, Summer 1931

by

S. B. H. HURST

Bugs Sinnat, ace of the Secret Service in India, trails a renegade English captain who turned thief and murderer-the story of the world's largest ruby

HE WAS known as Ben Mohamet, a powerful, fighting Afghan of the stern Durani Clan, and he swaggered, as night fell, along the bank of the river Ganges, sacred to the Hindoos, in the holy city of the Hindoo religion, Benares, which is the oldest city in the world.

He turned along a street leading from the river.

With an oath he kicked a sacred cow out of his way, paying no more attention to the shrill cries of Hindoos than he would have paid to the same number of chattering monkeys. He was a tough person with a reputation to sustain, a Mohametan who worshipped one God, and who loudly proclaimed that the other creeds of India were offal. But he was more than this, and while his tough reputation was useful, the stain on his skin and the beard on his face were absolutely necessary-if he wished to live and continue in business. For underneath it all he was the famous Sinnat of the Indian Secret Service, known to a few intimates as "Bugs."

It began to rain as he walked in the general direction of the Bisheswar. He turned to the left from this "central holiness," and walked along another street, of stone, six-story buildings, of riches. This ended among huts of the very poor.

Near one of these huts he waited. He had an appointment.

The rain and the dark had driven the wretched population of the district into their crude shelters.

There was no one in sight. Then Bugs heard footsteps, and turned, expecting to see Shir Ali, who, though a real Afghan, was Bugs' friend and associate in the Service. Instead, he saw a fat man of criminal appearance, who approached cringingly and began to beg.

"Big man, I am hungry. Bot garib, very poor am I, and my poor wife is sick. Help me, I beg of you!"

"You are fat!" sneered Bugs.

The man came closer, his pawing hands waving as he pleaded. Bugs felt like hitting the fellow, who was apparently a professional beggar, but he was waiting for important news from Shir Ali, and he had no wish to start a row in that particular quarter, where Hindoos might pour out like rats to attack one lone Mohametan! So Bugs backed away toward the door of one of the huts, swearing profusely in Pushtu. He backed into a puddle of water, and slipped. As he slipped the fat man jumped for him. At the same moment another man jumped out of the darkness of the hut. Bugs had no chance to use the gun under his arm. Before he could attempt to draw it he was struck in the face with a stone. He felt the blinding impact in a flash of agony. He fainted, for the first time in his life.

He recovered consciousness, lying on his back on the floor of the filthy hut, and tightly bound.

Someone had just kicked him.

"Outwitted you, eh, Sinnat?" sneered an English voice. "You traced me all the way from Burma to Benares. Then you disguised yourself as an Afghan. But you are not so clever as you think you are! And now you are at the end of your rope!"

Bugs, gritting his teeth in pain, did not answer.

The English voice continued, after another kick:

"You know who this is, don't you? The `renegade Englishman,' eh? Once an officer and a gentleman in the army! Rather clever, what? To get you, I mean! It has not been done before!… You are in a hut owned by professional thuggee. The fat beggar and his pal! No god, no honor and no religion-and no pity (particularly that!) is their creed! As you know! Very amusing. They will deftly dispose of you, and by this time tomorrow your corpse will be floating gracefully down the Ganges… I wonder how much you guessed about my activities in Burma. You were after me, I think, for the murder of two Buddhist monks. Did I do that or did I hire some of my friends among the wizards of Burma, who so hate the Buddhists?

Guess, Sinnat! You have a few hours to lie here, and nothing to do but guess. You pride yourself on your knowledge of Burma. Perhaps I know it better! Now I can go back there. You are out of the way. And with the help of my wizard friends I shall get what I am after-which with all your fancied intelligence you know nothing about!"

Bugs said nothing. The Englishman, once Captain Armstrong, kicked him again, saying:

"I am going now, leaving you alone with the two thugs."

Armstrong turned away. As an afterthought he kicked Bugs again. This time his foot struck Bugs' head, and Bugs again lost his senses.

BUGS awoke to hands fumbling in his clothing, and the voices of the two thugs.

"There is no money on him," growled one.

"Only this little gun under his arm."

"Better not keep that," answered the other. "If we tried to sell it it might be traced to us. This man doubtless has many friends!"

"He has!" another voice shouted.

Into the hut another man literally threw himself, like an enraged grizzly-a grizzly armed with an Afghan knife, and skilled in its quick use. The thugs, taken utterly by surprise, had no chance against Shir Ali. Their lives left them. And Shir Ali, with the same knife, was carefully cutting the ropes that held Bugs.

"Hold steady, sahib! It is dark in here, although the dawn is on its way… You have been here hours. And I waited hours, my soul in my mouth with anxiety. Into many huts did I go growling, seeking thee. But no trace of thee. My heart would beat and then stop. Many excellent husbands have thought I was after their wives this night! It was funny to hear them!… Steady, sahib. Just one more bit of rope. Ah, here it is… Yes, I waited, wondering. But so often does our business make one late that for some time I did not worry. Then I began to seek. You had told me to meet you in this street of low people. At last, as I crept cautiously, I heard these dead things making talk concerning thee. Then I knew thee for near dead and helpless.

So, I came, and attended to the business of sending two thugs to hell. Now, sahib, I will attend to thee."

Shir Ali lifted Bugs to his feet.

"Come! You are dizzy and sick. Lean on me. I will get thee to the hospital!" Bugs was able to walk, but he was terribly weak. He leaned on the big Afghan.

"Thanks, friend!" be murmured.

"Nay! Do not try to talk. See, let me lift you…

Here is the door of the damned place. And now, the street. See, the night is nearly done. The dawn is lifting. Let's hope we meet no police! Hindoo police in this part of town, thanks to the lovingkindness of the English. Why don't they leave us of Islam to settle with the kissers of sacred cows?…

Ah, in luck! There comes a ticka gharri! We will ride!"

A one-horse hack of decrepit appearance, both as to animal and vehicle, dawdled out of the gloom.

The driver slept comfortably. Shir Ali grabbed the horse. The driver woke up. He took one look at his prospective fares and reached for his whip. Shir Ali transferred his grabbing to the driver.

"Be good, heathen," said Shir Ali conversationally, "and drive us to the hospital."

"Na! Na," wept the driver. "I drive no Afghans. Mine is a decent hack! I am a Hindoo!"

"And that," grunted Shir Ali, as Bugs managed to open the door and get inside, "is meant for an insult! A Hindoo, eh? Well, so is a monkey! They are all the same breed! But I won't hurt you!"

As he spoke, Shir Ali climbed to the driver's seat. With one hairy arm he encircled the driver's body, saying, "One little shout for help, monkey, and you will never shout again! Your ribs will be powder!" With his other hand Shir Ali took the reins. He shook them and the old horse ambled slowly forward.

"Sit steady, sahib-it will not be long!" he bent down and said to Bugs. "This diseased hack is no doubt Hindoo, also, though it seems like another insult to call even such a wreck a name like that…

Keep quiet, insulter of hacks," this to the driver again. "You said this was a Hindoo hack! Why revile thine only means of livelihood? Behave, and perhaps I will pay thee for the ride! Who knows?"

The dawn broke over Benares in flashes of splendid crimson. The first rays of the sun made a glittering crown for the minarets of the Mosque of Aurangzeb, which that Mohametan emperor had erected years before as "an insult to all Hindoos."

Shir Ali called the outraged driver's attention to this fact.

"Look and weep, Hindoo. Ah, the muezzin calls to prayer! I regret that I am otherwise occupied, Caller of the Faithful! Also that I am in very bad company! Very low company! God help the morals of this poor horse! Corrupt association with a Hindoo has even deprived him of the use of his legs! He tries to trot, though, poor devil!… Sit still, driver, lest you fall off!… Ah, here is the hospital!"

The driver managed to laugh.

"This is a sahibs' hospital-not for horse thieves like thee!"

He had observed an English policeman standing at the corner.

" Shabash! " exclaimed Shir Ali. "This monkey has guts-when he sees help in uniform! Yet, Hindoo, since thou art poor and no Brahmin, I will pay thee for the ride. We have decided, my friend and I, to patronize the hospital of the sahibs…

The sun rises. Here, Hindoo of low caste, is eight annas for thee!"

"The fare is a rupee," wailed the driver, who had received double what he would have asked a co-religionist.

"The fare will be nothing and there will be nobody to drive thee to the dogs' hospital if you holler! One more word and I take back my money.

I may even take the horse! And the hack, too-as payment for my outraged feelings which riding with thee has damaged. Drive away!"

The driver obeyed… A young doctor stood at the door of the hospital watching the wonder of the sunrise.

"Ah," he saw Bugs' eye. "A nasty wound! I cannot keep you here, but I will do what I can to help you before sending you to the native hospital."

"Please tell Doctor Walters that Mr. Sinnat wishes to see him immediately," answered Bugs.

"Great Scott!" gasped the intern, startled to hear an educated English voice issuing from such an Afghan apparition.

BUGS came out from the anesthetic to find Doctor Walters smiling.

"You won't lose your eye, Bugs!"

"What! I thought it was gone!"

"So did I at first. But it's going to be all right now. It was a close call, though. Take it easy for a few days, and you'll be all right!"

"In my business," drawled Bugs, who was feeling somewhat like himself again, "one can never take it easy. Where is Shir Ali, that big Afghan who brought me here, and, incidentally, saved me from a nasty death?"

The doctor grinned.

"Just outside this room, and very suspicious of me! I think he wanted to superintend the operation.

Had to be awfully diplomatic to get him out of the operating room. He has been growling ever since, like a big dog."

"Send him in!" laughed Bugs.

Shir Ali was admitted. He looked gravely at Bugs and raised a huge hand in salute. He spoke solemnly.

"Before God, sahib, this is a hell of a place! It's so damned clean! A man is afraid to breathe here, much less spit. But God is good! You will not lose your eye! And now we will go hunting again, you and I. That fellow!"

"As soon as the doctor lets me out of this," answered Bugs.

" Shabash! Rest you, sahib!"

Shir Ali left the room. Bugs closed his eyes and thought of Armstrong. Armstrong who had personally captured Thibaw, the last king of Burma, at Mandalay. Who was with Thibaw when he died. Who then, to the surprise of his friends, resigned from the army and disappeared in the mysterious maze of Burma. A series of murders of Buddhist priests had followed. Bugs had got on Armstrong's trail, had chased him across Burma and to Benares. Then Armstrong had outwitted Bugs, as Bugs had never been outwitted before.

Armstrong had bragged that the wizards of Burma-who hate the Buddhist priests-were helping him; and he had said that Bugs did not know what he was after. Bugs did know.

Armstrong was trying to get the Ball of Fire, known also as "Thibaw's Pet," the greatest ruby in the world. But the wizards? Were they helping Armstrong? There were thousands of them, and at their head was the Devil of the Chin Hills. Bugs had visited this mysterious and powerful person.

He was the only white man who had ever done so.

He would visit him again, as soon as he could get to him. Five years before he had made a treaty with this black pope of wizardry. Yes, he would use Armstrong's bragging to defeat him.

"A HELL of a country," commented Shir Ali some weeks later. "You say we came here to visit the biggest wizard of them all." Shir Ali shivered slightly. Like all Afghans he was desperately afraid of the occult. "Well, sahib, this is the sort of country that only devils would inhabit!"

"You will go no farther," answered Bugs. "Wait here for me till I return."

"But, sahib?"

"Wait at this camp till I return," repeated Bugs.

Shir Ali saluted.

Bugs went on alone. He had had no word or trace of Armstrong, who of course believed Bugs was dead. No longer disguised as an Afghan, Bugs traveled in the guise of a "gone native," a poor white hobo… It was a long trail. No more steamy jungles, thronged by parrots and monkeys, but a desolate region which even the monkeys had abandoned. Rocks that lay scattered as if by the hand of some playful god. Towering hills crested with eternal snow.

It was night and Bugs was very tired when he began to climb out of a defile so narrow and cruel that a horse could not have passed through it. There was no sound but that of the little stones falling and the uncanny, ghost-like whining of the mountain wind. He climbed the walls of a gorge that rose a thousand feet on either side. A few stars showed through the top of the gorge, making it seem like a thin slit cut in the roof of the world.

About two-thirds of the way up this precipice he came to an opening-a tunnel worn by a small river millions of years ago. Bugs entered the tunnel.

He rested to regain his breath. Below him the gorge lay black and silent and awful as the bottomless Pit.

Bugs got to his feet, sniffing the smell of smoke.

He walked along the tunnel. Presently it showed the dim red glow of a weird inferno. Bugs followed its twisting way until he came to a fire, over which crouched a very old woman, who took no apparent heed of him. Her withered fingers poked at the fire, and she mumbled and muttered to herself. She might have been one of the witches of Macbeth, flung into this far place from the tip of the poet's pen.

"I have come again, Mother," said Bugs in the Shan dialect.

She pretended to see him for the first time. Her face was the face of a mummy, but it cracked in a smile.

"So I see!" she answered. "It was the day before yesterday when you were here last, wasn't it?"

"It was five years ago!" answered Bugs.

"Was it?" she cackled. "Well, and what are five years to one who has seen more than two hundred-as I have?"

"Just a day and a night, Mother! Just a day and a night! I have come again, Old Wisdom, for a talk with the Devil of the Chin and the Arakan," replied Bugs.

The old woman suddenly "pointed," like a dog scenting game. She was not looking at Bugs, but in the direction he had come. Bugs, startled, could see nothing. Then he heard what the old woman had heard first. The sound was something like that made by a water buffalo-a buffalo climbing a cliff! A grunting, heavy breathing. Dislodged rocks falling into the chasm. An oath in Pushtu, half suppressed. And the face of Shir Ali peering round a corner.

"Who is this?" demanded the old witch.

"My man," answered Bugs, who was half laughing, half angry.

"Sahib," grunted Shir Ali, saluting. "I know you will give me hell for this, because it almost amounts to disobeying orders!"

"Almost?" interrogated Bugs.

"Well!" Shir Ali threw back his head. "I have disobeyed thee, then-because, by Allah, I love thee! Could I sit and wait while you went alone into hell? And hell it is-this place and the trail I have followed behind thee! And with the big devil waiting for us. However," Shir Ali coughed to hide his emotion, "however, what matters it so you don't have to die alone. Damn it! Leave it to me, sahib, for I will swiftly investigate the entrails of that big devil. Have I not kept my knife sharp?" Bugs slapped him on the shoulder.

"Good man!" he said. "But take thy tongue between thy fingers. Come along!… Fare thee well, Mother of Many. When I grow old maybe I will come here again to talk with thee. Then we will sit by the fire together, and tell of what we have seen during our journey down the years!"

"Farewell, King's man," she nodded gravely.

Then she laughed shrilly. "And farewell, big dog that follows his master, even when told to stay in the kennel. Good dog! Fine dog! Ha, ha!"

THEY went deeper into the tunnel. It twisted and turned, as the ancient river had worn it.

Everywhere was the pungent smoke. As the tunnel became almost too dark for progress another fire gleamed. At the second fire crouched an old man.

As they drew near to him, Bugs saw him draw in his head like a turtle and crouch closer to the fire.

When they reached the fire he neither looked up nor moved. Shir Ali made no comment, much as he was tempted to shout the stimulating war cry of Islam. For Shir Ali had never been so scared in his life.

Presently they saw a larger fire. Bent figures of men shuffled away into the shadows, until only one crouched by the fire. The firelight flickered on his hideous mask. It was the High Priest of all the wizards of Burma, the Devil of the Chin Hills.

"You know me?" asked Bugs.

The mask nodded. It was not lawful for anyone to see the Devil's face.

A smell of unpleasant age permeated the cavern, about which huge bats flickered as if domesticated.

"I made a treaty with you!" said Bugs sternly.

"Have you kept it?"

"Yes, King's man!"

"Have your wizards killed any pongyis?"

"No, King's man!"

"Have they given aid to a white man who is killing them?"

"No, King's man!"

"You know about this white man, and what he is doing. Your words have told me you know. And I know you know all that happens in Burma. Where is this white man?"

"I am glad you came," answered the Devil of the Chin quietly. "I sit here like a spider in his web, and all news comes to me. My wizards have sent me word that this white man is you; using your name and rank! White men look much alike to careless eyes. I was puzzled, because I know you, and know you would not seek my wizards' help to kill pongyis. The word has just come in that this white man who is impersonating you is at Powingdaug!"

"Thanks, great Devil," said Bugs quickly. "I must get to Powingdaug at once. You have a secret way out of here which is nearer to Powingdaug than through the chasm. Show me that way. It will remain secret!"

The mask nodded. Out of it came a weird, highpitched shout. A powerful young hill man, a servant, appeared.

"You will guide my friend and his man," the Devil of the Chin Hills said to the young hill man.

The Devil of the Chin Hills got to his feet.

"Come," he said to Bugs. "I have been troubled.

For the Buddhist priests, who have been at war with us for centuries, are saying my wizards did the murders. I have kept my treaty with you, King's man, and given you all the information I have. Now I help you with the secret way out of here, and a guide. Be swift, friend, lest the Buddhists persuade the government to make war on my wizards. Be swift, and capture this murderer who is impersonating thee!"

Bugs and Shir Ali followed the Devil of the Chin Hills and the guide up an incline that led to a ledge on the edge of another precipice, where there was nothing but the dark and the stars. The Devil of the Chin Hills shouted again, and more servants appeared. Shir Ali, who had been growing more and more uncomfortable, raised his hand. The battle cry of Islam was on his lips, but Bugs pulled down the hand.

"Be silent!" he admonished.

"But, sahib, I did not understand a word of thy talk with that Devil. And here is the jumping-off place of the world. Here! And the whimper of a little wind, which may be the breath of the dead! It is better to fight and die like men than to-"

"Be silent!"

The men brought a large basket and a long coil of stout rope. The guide jumped into the basket and was lowered over the fear-inspiring edge of the precipice. Bugs looked out and down. He stepped back hastily, a dizziness assailing him. The wind began to blow cold. It was a dreadful place. Shir Ali could contain himself no longer. His voice rose in the familiar shout. He stood there like a giant of some distant age, a faint starlight glittering on his waving knife. The Devil of the Chin Hills laughed.

Shir Ali took a step toward him, but Bugs interposed.

"If he laughs like that again," roared Shir Ali, in Pushtu, "God will have one devil less to think about!"

"My man does not understand," said Bugs urbanely to the High Priest of wizardry. "Get into the basket," he ordered Shir Ali, as the men pulled the empty basket on to the ledge again.

"But, sahib, who remains to guard thee!"

And again Shir Ali, in the throes of an uncontrollable fear of the unseen, sent his voice pealing toward the stars.

"Get in!" said Bugs.

Shir Ali obeyed.

"There is but one God, and here on the brink of hell I proclaim Him!" he shouted as he disappeared in the basket.

The basket came back. Bugs said farewell to the Devil of the Chin Hills, and got into it. It was lowered evenly, but it was a weird sensation. Shir Ali and the young hill man waited at the bottom of the precipice.

"Come on," said Bugs. "We run as we have never run before!"

Powingdaug was two hundred miles away. The secret route would save two days' travel.

THE servant of the Devil of the Chin Hills was young and powerful, and accustomed to heavy travel through a country generally considered impassable, while Shir Ali was also a man of the hills-but Bugs gave them a taste of real going. He allowed hardly a pause through the secret trails.

Only four hours' sleep.

Shir Ali kept up gallantly, but when the rocks and barren places gave way to forest and valley the Devil's servant lagged behind. He had no interest in this curiously mad white man, and wanted to leave him.

"Go back to thy devil of a boss, weakling," panted Shir Ali, "and tell him what real men are like. And learn to worship one God, and not to quit as long as your heart beats!"

The Burmese, who did not understand one word of Shir Ali's speech, lagged further behind. Bugs waved him away, and he turned back gladly.

"Come on!" Bugs shouted to the Afghan. "We have neither time nor breath for talk."

They plunged into the mazes of animal trails of the jungle which Bugs knew so well… Bugs was raging. Armstrong impersonating him!

"Quicker! Quicker!"

"At thy heels, sahib! At thy heels! I understand thy haste! You crave Pukhtunwali! "

Bugs let out another link of his stride, and the gallant Afghan took it up.

"Faster! Faster! Good man, keep it up!"

" Atcha, sahib!"

On and on. The trail seemed endless.

"We make Powingdaug tonight. We do not rest till we get there!"

The monkeys chattered above their heads, the parrots screamed at them. Shafts of torrid sunlight, filtering through the trees, blinded them as does sunlight thrown from a mirror. A touch of jungle fever in Bugs' veins. A picture that grew into a mirage. Wavering and burning. The Ball of Fire.

Armstrong. Cruel, callous. In some way Armstrong had coaxed the dying King Thibaw into telling him that he had entrusted the Ball of Fire to one of his ten attendant Buddhist priests, when the looting British soldiers got out of control of their officers and raged through Mandalay. And now Armstrong, trying to find the one priest among the ten who had the ruby-that priceless gem!-was torturing them one by one to make them give it up; and when he realized that a tortured priest did not have the stone he killed him to prevent him telling those of the other ten who still lived. Thibaw had told him the names of the ten priests, but not the name of the one who had the gem. That was all clear now.

And the Ball of Fire, Thibaw's Pet, seemed to burn and lead the way through the forest before Bugs' feverish eyes.

"Faster! Faster! Good man! Keep it up!"

They panted forward. Their blood seemed boiling with the terrific strain and heat.

NIGHT fell as they plunged among the village paths-that ancient village of wooden houses, on stilts, with its queer school against the marvelous rock temple where the pongyis have taught the children for two thousand years!

Very quiet it was among the fireflies. Bugs and Shir Ali labored like spent horses. They reached the temple in which are five hundred thousand images of Buddha, carved out of solid teak.

At the west entrance the aged head priest was praying-alone. He looked up, staring with feeble old eyes, as Bugs and Shir Ali came up to him. He saw them, he scrambled upright and screamed like an old woman gone mad.

Fear and anger in his screaming. Then a horde of priests, streaming like hornets out of the temple, and the yells of the excited villagers of Powingdaug…

"What the hell?"

Shir Ali, dizzy and worn out, his fighting heart holding beyond his strength, asked the question through parched lips hoarsely, as he gripped his long knife.

Bugs understood. And he knew he faced death.

"Shin-byu-sin!" he shouted as loudly as he could.

"Shin-byu-sin!"

With a vast effort he scrambled to a ledge in the rock, and helped Shir Ali to his side. His revolver showed in the faint light.

"Shin-byu-sin!" he shouted again.

The villagers, men and women, encouraged by the priests, rushed to the attack. Bugs, who did not want to hurt anyone, fired over their heads.

Silence followed the shot. Bugs shouted again.

"Shin-byu-sin! Shin-byu-sin!"

A huge man who had lost his ears pushed roughly through the mob. His name was Shin-byusin. Once a highway robber, pardoned for service by the British through the instrumentality of Bugs, he had, as he said, sought surer profits and easier work, and-become a priest of Buddha. He saw Bugs on the ledge, and roared.

"What in the name… Oh, yes!… They say you tortured a priest-he who is dying in the temple. I told them you didn't… Get back, fools!" Thus rudely to the villagers. "Stand aside, brothers in God!" This to the priests. "This man is my friend. I vouch for him!"

Shin-byu-sin put his arms about Bugs and Shir Ali.

"A dying priest, you said?" gasped Bugs. "Take me to him at once!" He addressed the priests.

"Priests of the Blessed One, your dying brother shall look into my eyes, and tell you whether I am the man who harmed him. Lead me to him!"

"Yes, brothers, I know and trust this man!" growled Shin-byu-sin.

The head priest nodded gravely.

"It is just!" he said.

Into the innermost recesses of the rock temple-a huge cave, enlarged and shaped by thousands of long-dead priests and monks-lined, as it were a library, with five hundred thousand images of Buddha carved in teak black with age. Three novices lighted the way with ancient lamps, and the procession proceeded in silence along the dim and winding passages, to where the old priest, hideously mangled, waited for death.

He lay in a small chamber, his glazing eyes fixed upon a tiny shrine from where the benevolent features of the Blessed One smiled at him.

Bugs stepped forward quickly and knelt by the priest's side.

"Look at me carefully! In my eyes, friend! And tell all men that it was not I who did this to thee!"

The dying priest obeyed. He was in no pain, for Burma has known opium since before the dawn of history. Bugs took one of his frail old hands in his.

The priest smiled.

"No," he said. "It was not this man. This man has no guile! He did not do this to me!"

Bugs turned.

"Leave me-every one of you," he commanded.

"I have important words for this good man."

The priests withdrew into the gallery, Shin-byusin and Shir Ali with them.

"The man who killed thee," Bugs said gently to the dying priest, "what did you tell him? Why did he kill thee?"

The priest tried to smile.

"Thou, also!"

"Nay!" answered Bugs. "I crave not the Pet, but to arrest and punish this creature who killed thee and others!"

The priest looked at the shrine. His entire being yearned toward it. He answered softly.

"In no spirit of revenge do I tell thee, but because my heart leans to thine. That other Englishman wanted to know… about the Ball of Fire. He knew a priest had it… at Mandalay. He had tortured and killed other priests… who did not know… For a long time… I did not tell. But I am old and weak… So I told this Englishman.

For I am the priest to whom Thibaw entrusted the ruby!"

The dying man paused from weakness.

"Yes," said Bugs gently.

"I almost gloated. That is bad. One might lose Nirvana. But I was thinking of that Englishman… trying to bully the Boh Ma-gong!"

Bugs felt a thrill run along his spine.

"Mandalay," murmured the dying priest. "And the king giving me the ruby to care for. He loved it more than life. But I gave it to Ma-gong, a strong man, and one of the king's generals. He turned his regiment into dacoits, and they harried the English until the English sent no more soldiers against him-he killed so many. Ma-gong laughed, and sent a challenge to the English. The English sent one man to Ma-gong. Up that narrow river went this lone, brave Englishman. Oh, a brave man! And he talked to Ma-gong until Ma-gong `came in,' as they say, and ate the bread of the English king, and took pardon. Ma-gong has the Pet… I can… talk no more… Take my blessing… I turn my face to the wall."

WAIT here at Powingdaug," said Bugs to Shir Ali. "I go on alone."

"But, sahib?"

"I go alone," answered Bugs. "A matter of Pukhtunwali, a head for a head, as the Rajputs say.

Being a Durani, you will understand!"

Shir Ali bowed.

"God go with thee!"

BUGS traveled at top speed, and in five days came to the well-remembered creek. He had been the "brave man" spoken of by the dying priest, who had penetrated through that steamy jungle, run the gauntlet of the robber sentries, and taken the "king's bread" to Ma-gong. The hectic dacoit days.

On the right bank, among the thorns, the ruins of the palisade that had baffled a regiment. And the great teak tree from which a keen-eyed dacoit had kept watch. Bugs hurried. His present mission urged him from the memories. Morning had broken. The parrots and the monkeys waged their eternal quarrel. From the dense treetop came the cry of an old ape that had made its home in the sentry's crow's-nest.

The best trail was the center of the creek, bending and twisting. Myriads of little yellow water-snakes, harmless as minnows. Leeches.

Bugs went on cautiously, his gun ready. At the next bend was the village of Ma-gong, raised above the creek on stilts. At any moment Bugs might see Armstrong. And Armstrong was also a quick shot, and a dangerous and desperate man.

But at the bend Bugs saw only a naked ten-yearold girl who was giving her baby brother a washing, while he bitterly resented the bath. The girl saw Bugs and laughed.

"Were you as hard to keep clean when you were young?" she asked.

Bugs, tense and expecting trouble any moment, smiled.

"I have heard so!… Tell me, little lady, is there not another white man, who looks like me, here at the village of Ma-gong?"

She laughed.

"You are pleased to joke with me. Why have you come back so soon? Was it at twilight you left us the day before yesterday?"

Bugs, panting, ran into the village.

Too late! Too late! Was it too late? Armstrong had the Ball of Fire! All Asia was his in which to escape. No use to try to guard the ports of Burma-Armstrong was too clever to use them…

The lazy, smiling people, the familiar chickens, the drifting smell of teak smoke on the pungent morning.

"Ma-gong! Where is Ma-gong?"

The old general-all three hundred pounds of him-laughed from the platform of his house.

"What's wrong?" he asked huskily. "You haven't had time to see old Pagan!" Bugs clambered up on the platform.

"You have been tricked and fooled," he said quietly. "Behold me closely, Ma-gong, and learn that you have not seen me since that day, years ago, when I came through your outposts, and we talked and became brothers of the Raj. An impostor has fooled you!"

Ma-gong seized Bugs' face and stared into his eyes. He shouted with rage. He seized a club, to strike a gong to rouse his men.

"Fool! I was a fool! An easy fool-to mistake that swine for thee! But Ma-gong is still Ma-gong, and he still has his men. I will get that swine who fooled me. Then I will crucify him to a tree, as we used to do… Rest here, man I honor. Forgive me.

I will not be old and fat and careless any longer. I will go out on the trail again with my men, and that liar and impersonator shall scream and bleed from a tree, and-"

"Stay thy hand," exclaimed Bugs. "This is my affair!"

"Thine?"

"Mine! Again has my king sent me! What did you mean by `old Pagan'?"

Ma-gong laid down the club reluctantly, answering.

"Old Pagan is the other general who stayed with Thibaw until Thibaw bade us save ourselves! I became a dacoit, and feared to lose the Pet, so I gave it to Pagan to keep, until our king should send for it… The king Thibaw died. Two days ago came that thief who impersonated thee, saying that Thibaw had willed the Pet to the King of England, as a gift from one king to another. Believing the tale the swine told me, thinking he was you, I sent him to Pagan!"

"And Pagan is where?" asked Bugs.

"He has lived for many years among the dead and the ghosts and the ruins in the City of the Immortals," replied Ma-gong. That ancient place of ruins. Somewhere between the creek of Ma-gong and the City of the Immortals was Armstrong. Bugs felt he held the winning hand at last. Hurrying through the forest on Armstrong's trail-Armstrong who believed Bugs dead and drifted down the Ganges.

AMARAPURA, the City of the Immortals, built by Bodawpaya-Mentragi, the great conqueror, a place of dead glory where, among the holy men and madmen, lived the old general Pagan, dreaming of other days and heaven… In his care the greatest ruby in the world, for which a ruthless murderer lusted.

Bugs pressed on. No white man could make time through the trackless jungles as he could make it. Armstrong, after years in Burma, was good, but Bugs calculated to catch him before he reached the City of the Immortals.

Day after day, night and little sleep and on again-yet there was no sign of Armstrong. He might have taken a different trail, but Bugs did not think so-for Armstrong, the ex-army officer, would be traveling by compass and map. But there were several trails. No villages. The way was dangerous, beset by wild beasts, but after eight days Bugs had not seen a human being since leaving Ma-gong.

Not until the eighth night when, three hours after the sudden nightfall, Bugs sought a place to camp. Then, suddenly, he smelled smoke. The smoke of a wood fire, perhaps half a mile away.

It was very dark under the trees. Bugs took out his revolver and felt it over carefully. Then he went forward toward the fire, with the stealth and velvet quietness of a tiger.

A change came in the sound of the whispering of the forest. Bugs, standing stock-still, listened.

Yes, the change in the sound was… or was it a flock of restless monkeys moving their habitation in the night? Bugs went closer. He listened again.

A pang of keen disappointment shot through him.

The change in the sound was made by human voices-men talking. Armstrong would hardly be likely to be there-among some Burmese in camp.

Yet he might be. Bugs went on again, not a whit of his caution and readiness relaxed. He made no noise with his careful steps. Closer and closer to the voices. Then, from behind a large tree, he saw the fire and the camp. A dozen Burmese men, and, tied to a tree-Armstrong!

Bugs stepped quietly into the clearing. The Burmese leaped to their feet.

"Who are you people?" asked Bugs.

"The men of Ma-gong!" they shouted.

"I see," said Bugs. "And I understand now why Ma-gong took so long to find what he called my `password'-so you men could get a start on me!"

The leader bowed and laughed.

"Yes, chief! We came through ahead of you!"

Armstrong broke in. He did not recognize Bugs through the smoke of the fire.

"This man is deceiving you! I am the friend of Ma-gong!"

The Burmese took no notice of Armstrong.

Bugs showed something that glittered in the firelight. The Burmese saluted. It was the insignia of a general in King Thibaw's army.

"So that Pagan will know me!" said Bugs. "The `password' of Ma-gong."

The Burmese bowed again.

"What were your orders?" asked Bugs.

"To obey you, chief!… If you did not come in ten days we were to nail that thing over there to a tree until he died!"

Bugs nodded.

"Loose him now. He must die according to law.

I am on my way to Mandalay. I will take him there.

Since the City of the Immortals lies between here and Fort Dufferin I will pass through the City of the Immortals. Loose him, so that he may get some rest and be able to travel to where he will die according to Law!"

Then Bugs walked across the clearing to the tree where Armstrong writhed.

"We are quite a way from a thuggee hut in Benares and the dead drifting down the Ganges!" he said quietly.

Armstrong stiffened with the shock, like a man struck by electricity. His swollen eyelids opened so he could see.

"Sinnat!" he gasped.

Bugs turned away.

"Make him comfortable, but guard him closely," he ordered.

BUGS woke in the night. Armstrong was calling across the clearing.

"Sinnat! Sinnat, these chaps don't understand English! I've tried them. Listen! Take the ruby, and let me go! Not a soul will ever know. And I daren't talk! Take it, and lose me. You can get half a million dollars for it in New York. It belongs to nobody. Take it! It's not even stealing-for the army looted Mandalay and thought nothing of it!"

Bugs did not answer. Armstrong began again.

Bugs called to the leader of the Burmese.

"Give that fellow some more opium-he's keeping me awake with his crying. If the opium doesn't quiet him, knock him on the head!"

Armstrong, who had not given up hoping to escape, or, if that failed, getting clear at his trial, said no more.

"I won't walk," said Armstrong next morning.

"These men must carry me!"

Bugs turned to the Burmese leader.

"I am going on alone," he said. "Take your men back to Ma-gong. But before you go nail this white man to a tree-any tree will do so you nail him so he cannot wriggle off!"

The Burmese saluted. Bugs walked away.

Armstrong shrieked.

"Sinnat! Sinnat! You can't do that. Could you watch and see another Englishman crucified?"

Then Bugs spoke to the man for the second time.

"I have no time to waste watching! For the rest-I have been called `Bugs' because I am too easy on such as you. But there is another Sinnat, who is not `Bugs.'… Take your choice. Walk like a man with me to Mandalay and your trial, or stay here and die on the tree!"

Bugs turned away again. Armstrong made no further objection to walking.

GREEN lizards glittering in the sun, mina birds shrieking at the snakes among the ruins of a fallen palace; and a madman who gibbered.

"I seek Pagan, an old man and a general, who lives in this place! Do you know him?" asked Bugs.

The madman laughed. Then he spoke confidentially.

"Yes!" He pointed. "That way. But, remember, Pagan is mad! Be careful. He talks with ghosts and refuses to associate with intelligent people like me!"

Bugs found Pagan sitting on a pile of fallen bricks.

"Ah, good day," greeted the old general. "You see me on fallen bricks. Bricks are like peoples, nations. They stand proudly for years, then fall. All must fall in the end. Some day a conqueror will kick the bricks called England, and they will fall.

What can I do for you?"

Bugs showed him the insignia of Ma-gong.

"Ma-gong sent this to vouch for me. He told me that you are the guardian of the Ball of Fire. May I see it?"

The old general looked strangely at Bugs. Then he scrambled down from the heap of bricks.

"I will show you where it is," he said quietly.

Bugs followed him through the mystery city of the dead, along ways blocked with ruins, through narrow places between fallen palaces, until they reached that inlet of the Irrawaddy River which was once the bathing place of Bodawpaya-Mentragi and his ladies. But that was long ago. Now it was a snake-infested swamp, overgrown with torturous vegetation, a morass of deep slime and mud.

General Pagan stooped and picked up a stone. He raised his weak old arm and threw the stone into the swamp. He shook his head, dissatisfied.

"I was younger and stronger then!" he exclaimed.

"When?" asked Bugs, understanding.

"When I threw the Pet to where never again will the eye of man behold it! They told me my king was dead. I said that no other hand should caress the Ball of Fire. So, with reverence, I threw it into the depths of the swamp. I cannot throw so far now!"

The King of the Jerawahs

by

S. B. H. HURST

Oriental Stories, December-January 1930-31

The treasure of Alexander the Great, guarded by wild Jerawahs, was legend throughout India-a tale of Bugs Sinnat

A WELL built, bearded Afghan of the Durani Clan walked past the ruins of the ancient palace of the Peshwas, in Poona, India, toward the dense native quarter that spreads about the river bank where the river Mutla joins the Mutha. He entered the warrens of go-downs and huts which the police avoid. At the door of one of these go-downs a blind man sat in the hot sun in apparent comfort. From his aged mouth dribbled the juice of the betel-nut. To this one the Afghan spoke gently.

“Brother of the dust who has gazed upon so much beauty that his eyes can no longer see common things-I am Ben Mohamet of the Clan Durani! A follower of the Prophet, a worshipper of the One God… And, strange to say, considering the heat, I seek fish!”

The blind man nodded.

“What sort of fish?” he asked.

“ Bummollo mutche -the fish called bummollo, of course,” answered Ben Mohamet.

“That fish does not grow in Poona,” drawled the blind man. “Is there no other fish you crave?”

“Of course! Old fish! Young fish-any sort of fish so that it is fish!” exclaimed Ben Mohamet.

“Will the spawn of a very big fish serve?” queried the blind man.

“Better still!” exclaimed Ben Mohamet.

“Spawn of Alexander-will that taste good?” asked the blind man.

“The best in the world!” exclaimed Ben Mohamet.

“Pass to where that great spawn congregate!” said the blind man politely.

The Afghan, Ben Mohamet, stooped and entered the hut, through the fragile wooden door.

He walked six paces-until he felt a rug under his bare feet. Coming into the gloom out of the light he could see almost nothing. He lifted the rug and felt for a ring of brass under it. He found the ring and raised a narrow trapdoor. It was so small that he had to squeeze his wide shoulders through it, while his feet felt their way down wooden steps. As he dropped the trapdoor over his head the blind man came in swiftly and replaced the rug.

Ben Mohamet went down a dozen steps, his hands groping against the earth walls. He came to a very solid door of heavy teak. On this he knocked twice, then once, then three times. It was opened and a fierce face looked out-another Afghan.

“Well,” asked the face, “who in Jehannum are you?”

Ben Mohamet laughed. “Jehannum-hell, eh?

So you must be Shitan [Satan]!”

“I am a better man than Shitan,” growled the other Afghan. “But answer my question!”

“My name is Ben Mohamet, of the Durani Clan!” exclaimed Ben Mohamet. “You have heard that name before!”

“A fairly common name among the Durani,” said the other. “Who was your father?”

“Alexander the Great!” snapped Ben Mohamet.

“You had an excellent father,” answered the other. “Your mother was-?”

“I never had any mother!” said Ben Mohamet.

The other Afghan threw the door wide open.

“Come in, brother Jerawah,” he said courteously.

And Ben Mohamet entered the Sanctuary of the Jerawahs, a criminal society which claimed that it was founded when Alexander the Great gave their founder permission to steal from his camp followers, over two thousand years before, when he conquered northern India.

It was a fairly large place, this underground room. Three old brass lamps showed some light, but more shadows, through stained glass and fretwork. The room was full of eager men. Fifty or sixty Jerawahs. They were waiting for their king.

Their king had sent word some days before that he was old, and getting tired, and that he would meet his subject Jerawahs in the Sanctuary, where he would appoint his successor, and give him the Key to the Great Secret. But the old king had not arrived. Ben Mohamet had hurried, afraid he would be too late. But something had apparently delayed the king. Conversation buzzed.

The day passed in anxious waiting. Then the Jerawahs grew angry. They were equal with their king in everything but authority-an authority recognized through the years by the Society as necessary to its existence, its continued success by the maintenance of some sort of discipline among such wild, turbulent, brave outlaws…

Among these men Ben Mohamet circulated. His popularity was great. To begin with, his reputation was remarkable. He was magnetic, and swayed his fierce friends easily-both by strength of mind and body. Then-and this was the crowning glory!-he could tell the smuttiest tales in the most delightful manner. In a land of sparse amusement, among such men, Ben Mohamet’s ability in this line made him as popular as a free vaudeville theater in a desert…

ANOTHER day passed, and still the king did not arrive. Three more days, and then Ben Mohamet acted.

He addressed the men in a strong talk. He told them he was going out to find the missing king, and practically ordered them to wait and do nothing until he returned. The men cheered his decision.

But when he left the go-down, and walked away from the native quarter, Ben Mohamet did what for a member of a criminal society was a most extraordinary thing. He went boldly to a row of buildings which housed certain white officials. So far nothing unusual, perhaps. But then he went directly to the private office of the coroner, and opened the door without knocking!

The coroner looked up, startled. Natives do not enter the offices of Englishmen this way. The coroner looked keenly at his visitor. He was alone, and when Ben Mohamet shut the door quickly, the coroner reached into his desk.

“Never mind the gun, doc! I won’t bite!” exclaimed Ben Mohamet, in English.

“Oh, Bugs!” the coroner laughed. “Another instance of your marvelous diversity. No one in the world would have taken you for anything but a big, tough and somewhat dirty Afghan!”

The doctor sniffed.

“And, by jingo, you have even taken on the typical Afghan stink with the stain on your skin. I congratulate you. But what’s doing?”

Ben Mohamet-Horace Sinnat, Indian Secret Service 006, Domestic, known to his intimate friends as “Bugs”-laughed.

“I licked you, doc, for far less cheek when we were at school. You old son of a gun! At school you were the dirty little fag, and it was my job, as a member of the Sixth Form, to tell you to go and wash yourself. How are the mighty fallen! Ye gods, yes! That dirty little boy, now grown to more or less man’s estate, tells me I stink… Well, he is correct! The stink is a sort of life insurance!”

“What can I do for you?” laughed the doctor.

“I want to find out about an old Afghan who seems to have disappeared. Any dead old Afghans come your way recently?”

The doctor stared.

“Gad, Bugs, you are positively uncanny. How did you know about that old chap?”

“I didn’t,” exclaimed Bugs. “I thought something had happened to him, though!… Don’t ask me too many questions, please, doc. What happened to him?”

“Can you identify the old man?” asked the doctor.

“I can,” answered Bugs.

“Come back here with me, then, and see if I have the body of the man you are looking for. I am glad you dropped in! There seems to be quite a mystery! The old fellow was murdered!”

“Murdered?” exclaimed Bugs.

“Yes! But you are the first person I have told. I just found out-did a bit of a post-mortem…

Here we are-is this your man?”

Bugs nodded. Lying in the morgue was the missing King of the Jerawahs! “Please give me all the facts,” said the secret service man. “Then have him buried without any comments. Not a word that he was murdered-that is a secret only you and I must share with the murderer. No relatives will turn up to claim the body-I know that! I was looking for the old man, remember! I will straighten out the entire affair.

Make out an order in which I assume all responsibility. I will sign it, to protect youalthough there will never be any need of that, never any investigation. And don’t say a word to a soul!”

BUGS left the morgue and went back to the sanctuary of the Jerawahs…

“The king is dead! Long live the king!” he muttered. “They don’t know it yet, but the Jerawahs are going to elect another kingaccording to the rules when a king dies without appointing his successor. And that new king will be myself!”

He went down into the sanctuary. There he called the big, fierce men about him.

“The king is dead,” he shouted.

For a moment there was silence. Then a roar that began to grow. Bugs managed to stop it.

“It is easy to find another king, and a younger and stronger king who will lead you to fresh conquests,” he shouted. “For years it has been that our king was useless to us. The new king will be your help. So I have decided to help you-by becoming your king!”

Not a word greeted this announcement. The men just stared. They liked Ben Mohamet, knew him for a strong man, a man to follow; but his sudden announcement took their breath away. Bugs followed up this advantage.

“You will take me for your king,” he spoke with authority, “because the Key to the Great Secret died with the old king, and I am the only man able to find it. And as king I will change the old law in this one way: For whereas all our kings have for more than two thousand years kept the Great Secret a secret-telling us they kept it for Alexander, who promised to come back-I will reveal the secret, and make you all rich men!”

A howl of questions answered him. How did he know what the secret was? Or where the key was hidden, and so on.

Bugs laughed at them.

“I wonder you have been content to wait so idly for so long,” he said sarcastically. “Have you turned Buddhists?”

This was calculated insult. They demanded what he meant. They were all of them good Mohametans.

“Only a Buddhist expects a man to come back to earth again for another life!” he sneered, “Yet our kings have been waiting, it seems, for Alexander to return… Oh, hell, forget it! The king is dead. And I am the administrator-of Alexander and our own old king-administrator of the dead king’s bequest! And I have the Key! I will fight any man who says I am not his king! But I obey the law! And the law of the Jerawahs says the new king must be elected if the old king does not name him before the assembly! Now, elect me swiftly, and don’t make faces when you do it.

Some faces are insults, and I will knock the face off the man who insults me!… Elect me, quickly.

And I will share this treasure with you, my subjects!”

The strong braggart whom the Afghans love!

This was Bugs as he spoke.

He was elected unanimously. Then he gathered his men around him, and gave them very careful and very positive instructions. After that he left the sanctuary.

IT was night and grown a mite cooler. Fireflies, low stars, bats and flying foxes across the face of a low moon. Bugs walked toward a small house that stood, of course, in its own compound. It was the house of a white man-rented by a white man.

It is easy to enter a white man’s house in India.

Bugs slipped into the outer corridor. The old man sitting on his haunches pulling the punkah cord was startled by a big man sitting down by his side. He was relieved when he saw the big man was an Afghan and a fellow Mohametan. But he stopped pulling the punkah for a moment.

“ Tano! ” [pull!] growled an English voice inside the house.

Bugs grinned at the punkah waller, and whispered.

“I have heard this white man is going on a hunting trip, and will need a good man to go along.

I want that job! When he asks thee if you know of a good man-which he surely will do-then tell him that your cousin Ben Mohamet is a fine, strong man. Such will be true, and I will give you eight annas for your trouble. If you don’t do what I order I may break your neck! Now, pull your cord-I go forward a space to listen about this hunting trip.

The man has a friend with him-hear them! Keep your mouth shut, punkah waller, and earn thy money!”

The scared punkah waller, cherishing the hope of eight annas in real money if he obeyed this truculent Afghan, continued to pull. Bugs crept forward, until he could hear two Englishmen talking in low tones and drinking whisky.

“The hell of it is,” Bugs was thinking, “that I haven’t got the Key to the Secret. I know what it is-every Jerawah does. But I don’t know where the Treasure is hidden-only the old king knew that! I believe this murderer in here tortured the king and made him, an old man, tell where the Secret Place of Alexander the Great is hidden. If he did, I will make him tell me-and without either torturing or killing him. But if this brute hasn’t got the Key to the Secret, well-then I will have to cease being a Jerawah. Because I won’t be able to keep my promise to my ‘subjects’! Hate to do that, because being a member of that old criminal society-about which no official in India has ever heard!-has helped me to pull off a lot of successful jobs… Now-let’s listen!”

Two Englishmen were talking.

“Well, Harris,” said one, “now we have had the drink and the preliminaries may be said to be over-what’s the great news you have been bragging about for the last ten minutes. Or are you just drunk?”

“Walters,” answered Harris, “I am not drunk, although I have had a lot. The stuff won’t take hold tonight, and I know why. You know, Walters, you and I have been partners in crime for many years, and have always trusted one another-we can trust each other, can’t we?”

“Oh hell, cut out the chatter! What’s wrong with you?” growled Walters.

“Murdering a man,” Harris lowered his voice, “murdering a man always affects me like this-so it does you!”

“Don’t use that word, you drunken fool!” hissed Walters.

“All right-anything to oblige,” answered Harris. “It was only an old native, anyhow. Funny thing. Old chap was taken sick outside my door, and my tender heart had him brought into my house. The old bird babbled quite a bit, and I listened. What he said determined me to keep him here till he-er, died! He would have died soon, anyway, being very old… Well, Walters, you have heard about the buried treasure of Alexander the Great, haven’t you?”

“Everybody in India has heard about that,” growled Walters. “Many archeologists say it must be worth twenty millions. But it never will be found, so why talk about it? Besides, looking for it-how many hundreds have hunted for it, until now everyone says it never will be found!looking for it would be hard, honest and expensive work!… What in hell are you talking about, Harris?”

“I know where it is,” said Harris softly. “And I am cold sober!”

“What!” exclaimed Walters.

“Not so loud! That old chap whom I-er, allowed to die. He talked. Oh, after his first babblings I used drugs to make him tell me all. I may have beaten him a little. Made a few mild threats, you know, too! Old men are like young men-they don’t enjoy having the soles of their feet roasted. What does it matter? I had the body taken to the proper authorities-the morgue. I said I had done all I could for him, and was complimented upon my charity. Forget that! The big thing is that I know to within a few feet how to enter the underground pleasure room of Alexander the Great, up north in the Punjaub, and how to get the stuff! It’s a desert now-where the place is!”

“But,” broke in Walters, “do you realize that you are talking about what is probably the greatest hidden treasure in the world? The historical, the archeological value! Millions! The old man was kidding you, Harris!”

“No, he wasn’t. He babbled about being the Keeper of the Secret of Alexander the Great, or words to that effect. He said he was on his way to

pass the secret to some other man before he died, because one man had always known the secret, and only one was allowed to know it. Talked crazily about keeping the Key to the Treasure until Alexander came back to use it! Sort of Buddhist rot. But he didn’t fool me about the directions. He begged and pleaded with me to let him go-so he could pass the secret on. But, naturally, I wouldn’t let him go. Then, when he realized I meant to keep him till he died, he got scared that the Key would be lost. So he gave it to me-after I swore on a brass crucifix I went out and bought in the bazar that I would not tell about it except to one man. I don’t know the man he had in mind. He was too near dead to talk coherently, but he babbled something about a Jerawah-which in some dialects means an outlaw, as you know. That’s all.

The old man is dead and buried, and no one suspects I did him in. Now, our finances will permit us hiring one husky native to fetch and carry for us. When we get the stuff under our hands we will dispose of the husky native-we can’t be too particular about this, and can’t afford to have the government step in. Treasure trove is a funny law, you know. Now, call that punkah coolie. He will know of some strong native. Then we will raise all we can on promises and bad checks. Then, ho for the golden north! Call the punkah waller!”

Walters called. His heart throbbed at the wonder of the tale he had just heard. The treasure room of Alexander was authentic-no man in India doubted that; but no man believed it ever would be found.

The years had covered it-with ruins, sand, what not. And India is a big country. But the place was- somewhere in the Punjaub, probably. Had Harris realty obtained the secret of the placesupposed to have been when Alexander the Great died unexpectedly?

The punkah stopped and the coolie entered cringing. To him Harris spoke in fluent Hindustani about a hunting trip, as Bugs had easily deduced he would do. Did the coolie know of a strong native, not a Hindoo, but a Mohametan, of course?… The coolie did know of such a one. His cousin! “Sahib, I will find my cousin, who will be honored to work for the sahib, and send him in to you!”

Presently a well-built, swaggering Afghan came in. He did not bow or cringe. He was a man of the hills…

“Did the sahibs need me?”

“We need a good, strong man who is not afraid.

We go on a shooting trip. Have you references?”

The big Mohametan had references-many of them. They were all good, even laudatory. His name was Ben Mohamet. Harris hired him.

“Do you understand or speak English?” asked Harris.

“I am sorry, but I don’t know a single word except gotohell,” said Ben Mohamet.

“You’ll do,” grinned Harris.

IT was a long journey, in terrible heat. Northward and through the country of the Rajputs, through the Punjaub, the land of the Sikhs, to a small station at the end of a spur of single line, which ended at the desert, where there was nothing but a broken down dak bungalow, and an old man who lived in the deserted place. Their belongings were dumped off the train. The train crew seemed amused. The Scotch engineer wiped his face with a piece of waste.

“I am taking my train back the now,” he said.

“It will be five days before I am back, and there is no other train. Was it to shoot jackals you came?”

He laughed.

“No!” snapped Harris.

“That’s all there is on the desert,” grinned the engineer, “except desert fever, which the doctors don’t savvy, and a few other things, including vultures. The vultures are the undertakers hereabouts! It’s a cheap burial, but not one I’d choose for myself… Scotch, am I? Well… But, thankit, I’m no maniac to go out on a blooming desert to shoot! I have heard there are ‘holy men’ to be found among the ruins. Maybe ye came here to shoot them!”

“I’ll shoot you if you don’t shut up!” shouted Harris.

The engineer put his thumb to his nose.

“Goodbye,” he said as he started his engine. “Be careful the holy men don’t eat you before the vultures get you!”

In the meanwhile Walters was inquiring of the kitmatgar regarding means of crossing the desertwas there a camel or two, or a bullock cart to be hired? “Nay, sahib.” The kitmatgar spread his hands pathetically.

“Here there is nothing like that. Just heat waves, and some jackals, who are sick, and some facquirs [holy men] who are mad. Only the sick and the mad go out on the desert-for the holy men are lepers, also!”

“Nice prospect!” growled Walters.

He walked out of the dak bungalow and met his partner returning from his unprofitable argument with the Scotch engineer. To him he told the ill news.

“Curses!” snarled Harris. “We can’t walk. What in hell will we do?”

“Search me,” answered Walters. “Looks like a lot of bad luck. There are lepers and madmen and sick jackals in the desert, and scorching heat and fever no doctor ever cured.”

“Shut up,” stormed Harris. “Or if you want to go back there is still time to flag that train! I’m going on, whether you do or not!”

“We’re partners,” responded Walters placatingly. “I’ll stay with it. But have you seen Ben Mohamet recently?”

“Why, no! I thought he was in the bungalow with you!”

“And I thought he was out there in the sun with you-giving you his immoral support against the engineer!”

They called and searched, but Ben Mohamet had gone. He had gone so suddenly and quietly that he might have evaporated.

“So!” growled Harris. “He found out what the desert was like, heard about the lepers and so on, then heard there were neither camels nor bullocks-and then he deserted. Well, I’d like to shoot him, but you can’t blame him-he has no stake in this and don’t know what it’s all about.

Let’s see what sort of a chicken the kitmatgar has for dinner. I expect it will be one Alexander did not take away with him because it was too old to eat!”

It was a very ancient chicken. The kitmatgar, who had done his best in a place where six white men in two years was a fair average, began to dislike Harris. Walters was not so bad, but Harris was not like a sahib at all. At length he turned angrily.

“The chicken was born on the same day as yourself, sahib-it was a day of ill omen!”

Harris jumped to his feet. Walters tried to restrain him.

“I’ll shoot the banchoot cabutcha! ” Harris was shouting furiously, dragging at his revolver.

The frightened kitmatgar ran-just as Ben Mohamet appeared at the door.

“Oh,” said Harris, becoming calm, for be had no wish to start trouble with this powerful Afghan.

“Oh, where have you been?”

The Afghan grinned.

“Sahib,” he said, “this place is surely Jehannum

[hell]. Behold, there is nothing for men-even the women have left it! But, back some miles, I had seen from the train a man with three camels. He was going back the way we came, but I managed to catch up with him. I-hem-I borrowed the camels!”

“You borrowed the camels?” gasped Harris.

“It is the way of my country,” grinned Ben Mohamet. “When one wants a thing-a horse or a woman or some little thing-he takes it. That is, if he is a better fighter than the owner of the woman or horse or what not. As he pays nothing he says he borrowed it-the woman of the horse, or, as in this case, camels! But let us go swiftly, sahibs. The camels are here. The man I borrowed from may find police somewhere. Such men, who can not protect themselves, usually do. So let us gowherever the sahibs desire to go!”

“My God!” exclaimed Harris enthusiastically.

“You big Afghan, you are a man after my own heart. You won’t lose by this, either. Will he, Walters?”

“I should say not,” agreed Walters.

They started an hour after sundown. Day travel in that desert was well-nigh impossible.

BEN MOHAMET seemed to know a lot about camels, which was lucky as neither Walters nor Harris did. As they ambled through the vague sheen of the moon’s reflection on the sand, the Afghan regaled them with typical Afghan storiesthe sort which would have made Boccaccio blush.

There was one about an interesting Sultan of Swat, at which Walters protested, but which Harris enjoyed.

“But,” said Ben Mohamet with marvelous surprise, “I expected the sahibs would require entertainment in this dry march. However, if Walters sahib does not enjoy my tale-and he is the only man I ever met who did not-then will I talk of other things… That old rock lying over there! It must be an ancient burial place. The sahibs know, of course, that this midnight moon-sheen, near graves, is the best place to see ghosts!”

“Shut up!” growled Harris.

Ben Mohamet stopped the camels suddenly.

“See there!” he hissed.

The two Englishmen looked, and shivered. On the rock-a fallen piece of vast masonry-an apparition leaped in the light of the moon. It looked like a skeleton at its religious devotions…

“He is worshipping Shitan!” exclaimed Ben Mohamet in awed tones.

“Worshipping Satan!” echoed Harris.

“Yes,” answered Ben Mohamet in a matter-offact way, although his yoke seemed to indicate that, brave and tough man though he was, he would rather be somewhere else. “Yes, he worships Shitan. Would the sahibs like to go and join him?”

“What the hell do you mean?” both sahibs asked the question.

“Oh, I thought the sahibs came out into the desert maybe to study the things of the desert!” apologized Ben Mohamet. “That is not a ghost over there! No, only some devil-worshipper with leprosy. Quite harmless!”

“Drive on!” growled Harris. “Our ideas of what is harmless differ!”

Ben Mohamet urged the camels forward, but that night ride was a ride through the dead of ages, and the Afghan, with all his country’s love and dread of ghosts and djinns could not help talking about it… The sand stirred by the camel’s feet was the dust of dead men-the dust of an army of long ago, the dust of many armies! “What armies?” asked Harris.

“All of them,” answered Ben Mohamet with historical generosity. “From the time of Adam and Eve, from the time the sons of Abraham came hither to spy out the land!”

Walters coughed sarcastically.

“But what does it matter to a ghost, what army he fought in?” asked Ben Mohamet. “That mess of ruins, lying so black in the moonlight, let us rest there!”

“We will not rest until dawn!” growled Harris.

“As the sahib commands,” grunted Ben Mohamet.

Spectral shadows of monuments of lost faces.

Fragments of forgotten peoples. Old when Alexander crossed the Indus. Matters of deep speculation when Buddha dreamed under the Boh tree. Bits of the beginnings of the world. Stained by blood and tears, scorched by the same old sun…

And, as Ben Mohamet kept muttering, the air was so full of lost souls that breathing was difficult! “And the devil-worshippers and lepers eat snakes and rock toads-else they would starve,” added Ben Mohamet in the tone of a moonshe

[teacher].

“Will you shut up- choop row, toom! ” shouted the exasperated Harris.

Ben Mohamet laughed.

“Surely if the sahib commands! But be not afraid, for I am with you!… Yet it is strange that ye are more afraid than I-for the English did certainly beat hell out of us Afghans in a couple of wars!”

Harris started to swear. His band was on his revolver. Walters restrained him.

“Don’t be a fool, and don’t let him see you reach for that thing! We are helpless without him to drive the camels. Don’t you know what talkers all these Pathans are? Take it easy, old man-he still obeys and will continue to obey, but he must talkhe can’t help it any more than he could help stealing a camel or a horse or a woman that looked good to him!”

“Men came to India forty thousand years ago,” muttered Ben Mohamet. “They drove the monkeys before them and took their cities-also adopted some of the monkeys’ customs. But a Chinaman was here before them. He wrote in his book, ‘…

The desert bleaches souls and faces, and is terrible always, especially at night.’ So, when he went back to China his face had turned yellow, and the Chinese faces have been yellow ever since!”

Walters laughed.

“Some day a man, or a hundred men, will collect the notions of the Afghans in a book,” he said. “They are wonderful beyond education!”

“Get along, you spawn of filth,” Ben Mohamet urged the camels.

And so the dreadful night passed. Ended in heat and sand. Clothes, eyes, ears, hair-all filled with sand. A horrible, clinging sand.

“Blood in it!” said Ben Mohamet cheerfully.

They made a weary camp among some ruins, so lonely and deserted that it might have been an apex of the world never reached by men-the ruins the broken toys of young gods… They were too tired to eat. Ben Mohamet tethered the camels, but there was neither drink nor food for them. Then the three men sank into uneasy sleep.

But before sleeping Ben Mohamet faced in the direction of Mecca and said his prayers.

THEYstarted again that night. That desert has never been properly explored, and India is so filled with ancient ruins and buried cities and onuments to the great dead-King Asoka alone erected sixty-nine thousand monuments all over the country to Gotama Sidartha-that the archeologists had never troubled the desert ruins, merely classifying them, more or less correctly or incorrectly, with certain periods. To Walters these wrecks of empires were intensely interesting, but they were not there to explore.

“I am coming back here some time,” he whispered to Harris.

“You’ll come alone, then,” stuttered Harris as his camel put its foot into a yawning hole, which Ben Mohamet explained, with his usual air of knowing all about the world’s horrible things, was the grave of a woman who was never properly married! “No grave of such woman ever closes,” he said, “because the ghost of the woman who did not obey the Law ever tries to crawl out to go and get married properly-then slips back and crawls out and slips back for eons, until the time appointed!”

But they saw neither jackals nor holy men, which was a relief, and on the dawn of the fourth day Harris checked up and told Walters that the place was only a few miles ahead.

“If that old man you, er-hum,” growled Walters, who was tired and nervous.

“If he what?” snapped Harris, who was equally worn out.

“If he really knew what he was talking about, and wasn’t kidding you,” Walters replied.

“He wasn’t kidding me,” answered Harris. “He believed I would keep my promise and carry the Key to the Secret to his friend. I swore I would, you know, on that crucifix! Unfortunately, the old man was unable to tell me the name of his friend!

He only managed to babble about a Jerawah, which means an outlaw. Otherwise, of course, I would have taken the Key to whoever the old man desired me to!”

“Of course!” laughed Walters. “By the way, it’s a damn good job you made certain that Ben Mohamet does not understand English!”

“He’s a good man,” replied Harris, “and should be able to dig well. There may be quite a bit of digging, you know!”

But when they reached the spot which, according to the Key given by the King of the Jerawahs, was the entrance to the pleasure room of the great Alexander, Harris got a surprise. Ben Mohamet positively refused to dig! “I am a Durani. I am a fighter. It is beneath a Durani to work,” he said shortly.

“But-” began Harris.

“Dig yourself,” said Ben Mohamet insultingly, and one must know India to appreciate what an insult it was, coming from an Afghan to an Englishman. “I knew you were lying when you said you wanted to hunt! Men don’t hunt with little revolvers and shovels. But dig! I will sit here at my ease and watch you!”

Harris dragged out his revolver. Walters shouted at him not to shoot, but Harris aimed at Ben Mohamet and pulled the trigger. There was a click.

Ben Mohamet laughed. Harris screamed: “There are no shells in it!”

Ben Mohamet laughed again.

“Of course not,” he gibed. “I extracted them! I even threw away the extra ones you had! I did that when I discovered you were liars! Such liars might get angry with me, and try to shoot me! Well, I may be shot some day, or more likely, be hangedas you will be. But if I am shot I want to be shot by a man-not by a liar!”

Astounded by the sudden turn of events, Harris could only gasp. Here was the servant he had expected to make do the heavy work of digging first refusing to dig and then reviling both Walters and himself, after carefully making their revolvers harmless.

Ben Mohamet was thinking: “Now, while eventually I intend to let these dirty crooks know who I am, I must be careful not to let them suspect I am a friend of certain members of a criminal society. The existence of the Jerawahs must remain unknown to them. Quite an interesting job!

Because, also, I have to be very careful that the Jerawahs don’t even imagine I am a secret service man!”

Aloud he drawled: “Go ahead and dig, sahibs! I won’t stop your digging! All I will prevent is your shooting me! And as that is already accomplished-I will now rest and watch you dig!”

“You traitor!” stormed the helpless Harris.

“Not that,” laughed Ben Mohamet. “You hired me to go hunting, not to dig. Had you told me all the truth there would have been no trouble.”

Walters broke in with: “Wait till evening. We’re all hot and tired now, and don’t feel like doing anything. Wait, and keep quiet. We will find a way to handle this damned Afghan!”

So they waited through the heat of the day, until the dusk began etching fantastic shadows among the ruins-rains of monoliths of the Dawn Men showing strangely among fallen facades of bits of Buddhist temples and palaces of dead and forgotten kings and empires-with an early moon lending a ghostliness to it all.

“You won’t dig, Ben Mohamet?” asked Harris.

“Digging is for coolies!” drawled Ben Mohamet. “I will watch!”

There was nothing for Harris and Walters to do but dig. And the sand was loose and difficult, and the night was hot. But to their surprise the way was not long. A few feet below the surface of the spot so carefully marked on Harris’ chart-made from the feeble lines drawn by the fingernail of the dying King of the Jerawahs-their shovels struck wood.

Exultantly they tore into their digging. The delighted exclamations rang oddly in broken English phrases among the ruins, where the dark lay like black pools edged with silver.

“Someone has been here not so very long ago!” panted Harris.

“The boards proved that!” gasped Walters as he tugged at the end of one of them. “And they also prove that it was not robbers. Robbers would not have troubled to cover the place again after getting the loot!”

Ben Mohamet, apparently indifferent, watched eagerly…

The boards were lifted, disclosing a short flight of old stone steps.

“So,” thought Ben Mohamet, “the kings, or some of them, who preceded me came here to see that everything was in order.” He chuckled, “But I’ll bet they didn’t have two Englishmen to dig for them! Had to do it themselves!”

But Harris and Walters had dashed down the steps, and were trying to open a door of heavy brass-a beautifully wrought thing, green with the patina of twenty-two hundred years. They could not budge it. They sweated and pushed and tried to pull it open. They were tired with digging, and the door defied them.

The powerful form of Ben Mohamet came down the steps.

“I do not mind opening the door,” he drawled, “Digging in the sand is different. But what in hell is this place? Tell me that!”

Walters answered, after a warning touch on Harris’ elbow.

“An old tomb,” he said. “We may find some little gold or other treasure there. Help us with the door, and you shall have some of the gold!”

Ben Mohamet laughed.

“I would open a lot of doors for gold,” he said.

“But I will not allow you to give me any. No! If I see anything I want I will take it-as I did the camels!”

“Let’s jump him! There are two of us!” whispered Harris.

“Let him do the heavy work first,” cautioned Walters, while Bugs grinned. He grinned, and then, as the swaggering Ben Mohamet, he cried out: “One side, weaklings! Let a man do this thing!”

Bugs was an unusually strong man, with the gift of being able to release every pound of energy at a given moment. He applied himself to the door strongly. The door moved slightly. Bugs gathered himself and went at the door like a halfback making a touchdown through the line. Next moment he was sprawling in the stuffy darkness of the Pleasure Room of Alexander of Macedon. The door lay under him. He had broken it down, not opened it!

Astonished at such athletic force, Harris and Walters ceased for the moment to be crooks. They applauded as at a football game.

“Bring the lamps!” ordered Ben Mohamet, and the two Englishmen hastened to obey.

What did it matter? Nothing mattered now they had the place! So they tried to comfort themselves as they ran to obey their servant, the Afghan!

EAGERLY, with trembling fingers they lit the lamps and carried them down the ancient seeps-steps once trodden by Alexander, his court, his slaves, his dancing girls. The brief movements of the acrid desert air stirred faint whisperings in the sand, until even the callous crooks felt awed by a feeling of the supernatural, a sense of something beyond the senses… At the doorway Ben Mohamet waited.

“I can hear, smell and see ghosts,” he said hollowly. “And we had better wait a few minutes for the air in there to clear!”

“You afraid?” snarled Harris.

“Much afraid,” answered Ben Mohamet, calmly and without shame. “Go in there in the dark-one may breathe but not easily-go in there in the dark, and maybe you will see what I saw! If you do you will… but go in, in the dark!”

“Hell,” growled Walters. “The air’s all right.

Ghosts are the bunk. Come on, Harris, let’s go in, with the lamps, of course!”

But Harris hesitated. The fear that comes to the murderer had gripped him.

“I’m just as eager as you to see what’s inside, but let’s wait a moment,” he gasped.

Walters had better nerves. He laughed.

“What was it you saw in there that scared you, Ben Mohamet?” he asked.

“The ghost of an old man,” answered Ben Mohamet, with an excellent shiver. “That ghost motioned me to go away. Its lips moved. I thought it was the guardian of the tomb-you said it was a tomb! But I was mistaken. Because the ghost tried to tell me that he had been a king when alive! I could not understand what country he was king of, but he did manage to make me understand that he had been murdered. So, I came out quickly, and very much afraid. All men know that the ghost of a murdered king is the most dangerous sort of ghost.”

Harris felt sick. But the word “king” somewhat reassured him. He did not know that he had killed the king of the Jerawahs.

“King?” he asked.

“He said so!” exclaimed Ben Mohamet.

And then he very accurately described the old king whom Harris had so cruelly murdered…

“My God!” Harris leaned against the wall.

“Oh hell, come on in!” sneered Walters.

“What’s eating you? Scared of ghosts! Well, no ghost shows under lamplight, and we have three lamps! Come on!”

He went through the doorway, and Harris got hold of himself and followed. And what he saw dispelled any fear of ghosts he might have had. The Treasure of the Conqueror! The place of his many loves. The hidden sleeping room and banquet hall of Alexander the Great, heaped high with the loot of conquered cities of India, which he had left there before he crossed the river Indus for the last time.

The treasure he had left in charge of a criminal!

And which the kings of the criminals had guarded ever since!

The marvel of this faithful care was, of course, lost to the two crooks, who knew nothing about the Jerawahs, but to the secret service man it was a greater wonder than the treasure itself.

Two pillars of gold, carved with ancient Greek inscriptions. The two crooks only cared that the pillars were gold, but Ben Mohamet was more interested in the inscriptions.

“Hollow!” exclaimed Harris, tapping the pillars.

“But worth thousands!”

“Sayings of Aristotle engraved in gold!” thought Bugs. “Very fitting! Aristotle was Alexander’s first teacher, of course! By Jove, Oxford University did teach me something besides football!”

“Those old lamps!” Harris’ voice cracked.

“Solid gold!”

Bugs noticed that the lamps had been left trimmed and ready-as if Alexander had gone hunting and was coming back there to his home to sleep.

Then suddenly the marvel of the place got Walters, who had some poetry in his soul and no recent murder on it.

“That little silver slipper in the corner there,” he exclaimed. “The slipper of a slave girl. Lovely as a flower! The slipper dropped from her foot a few moments ago! She was scared by our coming in, and ran away in a hurry! See! There! She is watching us from over there, in the shadows!”

“Oh, cut it out!” growled Harris. “Do your playacting on a stage when we get out of this with the stuff! Attend to business now! How are we going to get it all away from here? It will require a couple of motor trucks. More than that… Never mind seeing girls among the shadows!”

He walked toward the shadows.

“My God!” he exclaimed.

“What?” Walters almost squealed.

He might well cry out. For the shadow in which he had pretended to see the dancing girl was thrown by what has been called “The Legend of India.” The magnificent bed of Alexander. Even the working coolies, the lowest castes, have been told the story of that bed by their mothers when they were children… That great bed of ivory, of perfect elephants’ tusks, a marvel of arrangement, interlaced and bound together by bands of gold…

That was the bed-all India knew of the bed! But the story-and all India knew the story!

For on the great bed, among the fragments of her tattered finery, lay the skeleton of the favorite dancing girl of Alexander… And the simple, pathetic tale. She had danced her best for the king, but he had been-as he often was at that time, when he was beginning to claim that he was a god-he had been irritable. He had not meant to hurt her, but he had said that her dancing was not pleasing to him. And the girl had flung herself on

the great bed and thrust a dagger into her own heart, and died there. So grieved that her dancing did not please… The fallen slipper was hers. The two crooks did not know the story. They were merely Englishmen, and the mothers of India do not tell their prettiest stories to the conquering race.

But Bugs, Ben Mohamet, knew the tale. How Alexander had gone away from the place, leaving the body of the girl on the bed. How sudden remorse had overtaken him.

“Close the door,” he had ordered. “The place shall be her tomb!”

One of his generals had suggested they remove the enormous treasure, but Alexander had turned savagely on him.

“Close the door!” he commanded.

Then he had placed the criminal Jerawah in charge of the tomb of the dancing girl.

“Guard it until I return!”

Then he had gone, leaving the dead girl amid the gold of a hundred cities. So, just as the Taj Mahal was the tomb of Mumtaz Mahal, the favorite wife of Shah Jehan, so was the ancient pleasure house of Alexander the tomb of a little dancing girl, whose name was quite unknown.

Harris had turned away from the skeleton, and Walters was saying, “Now, who do you think that was when it was alive?”

He spoke callously, sneeringly. He little dreamed that Ben Mohamet, who of course knew no English, had to hold himself, to control his anger with all the self-control he had so long cultivated-lest he, too soon, betray his identity as Horace Sinnat by thrashing Walters, as such sacrilege deserved.

Harris was shouting. The old walls echoed to an alien language. Never before had they heard English.

“Urns! Urns! Golden urns!”

“Wine urns!” exulted Walters. “Open one and see if there’s a drink in it!”

Harris tore the top off a magnificent Grecian urn. The light showed some little red mud at the bottom of it-the wine had dried to that. But even to such gluttonous crooks the sight of so much gold became oppressive. They began to wonder how they were going to get it across the desert; how they would sell it to the best advantage… They were discussing this when Harris noticed that Ben Mohamet was not in sight.

“Where the hell has that swine gone?” asked Harris.

He learned quickly. Ben Mohamet came running through the doorway from outside. He was plainly scared.

“The robbers of the desert, sahibs!” he said.

“And the big fool I was-throwing away the shells for your revolvers. The robbers come. They will kill us all! We cannot fight them. They are terrible men. Let us run quickly, sahibs!”

“But the loot?” snarled Harris painfully.

“If we run quickly the robbers will not find us,”

Ben Mohamet spoke hurriedly. “We may close the entrance, and they may not find the place. But if we stay here they will hear and find us… Let us run.

We must, to save our lives. Quick, let us close the entrance!”

The robbers were very close! The two crooks hurried. They had laid down the planks-to lift the great door would have taken too long-and were trying to hide the planks with sand, when Ben Mohamet pointed with a trembling finger. And Harris and Walters saw!

Stalking among the ruins, the moonlight that glittered on their weapons making them seem gigantic, was a body of men.

“Quick!” Ben Mohamet gripped an arm of each of his employers. “Run! This way!”

Fear took possession of the two crooks. They ran, stumbling through the sand and over fallen stones of antiquity-Ben Mohamet guiding them they ran-northward. They ran until the Englishmen could run no farther. Harris and Walters threw themselves down, choking with fatigue; and even Bugs was tired. But the loss of the loot rose in agony in them.

“I can never find my way back among those twisting ruins,” sobbed Harris. “My compass and the chart are with our things in camp-and the robbers must have them. If this swine hadn’t stolen our shells we might have shot it out with the robbers!”

“He’s just a cowardly boaster,” gasped Walters.

“He was worse scared than we were!”

He stopped talking suddenly-horrified. Harris gripped him in terror. Ben Mohamet seemed unmoved.

Soft footsteps in the sand. And a horrible sound-men with broken mouths trying to talk, mewing like strange, sick cats…

“The lepers!” said Ben Mohamet shortly.

They came forward cringing, those poor outcasts. The moon showed their hideous deformity, their starved and wasted bodies, the horror of their fell disease. They came and crowded about the horrified Englishmen. But Ben Mohamet waved them back gently. He turned to the two crooks.

“Find some small coins in your pockets,” he commanded. “Then I will get rid of these.

Otherwise they will crowd so close that they will touch us-and you know what that will mean!” he concluded significantly.

Harris and Walters thrust their hands into their pockets and searched. They found altogether three rupees and six annas. They gave them to Ben Mohamet. Ben Mohamet waved the lepers farther back, and spoke sonorously.

“In the name of Allah the Compassionate Compassioner!” he intoned. “In the name of the One God and His Prophet Mohamet. In such great Names, and of the Charity ordained by the Kuran, do I give thee these alms. Take them, brothers of pain, and go thy ways, for, behold, it is all we have.

In the name of Allah, the One God whose compassion for His children never dies-take these poor alms, and go in peace!”

He threw the money to the poor fellows. They picked it up painfully with broken and withered fingers. They bowed like shadows and went. The three rupees six annas was a small fortune to them…

“My God,” exclaimed Walters. “Ben Mohamet spoke like a Mohametan Mullah-with the voice of an English bishop of Oxford!”

“Forget the talk,” growled Harris. “I am dying of thirst, and when I get a drink I shall be starving!”

“We need food and drink badly,” Walters spoke to Ben Mohamet. “You gave all our money to those sick beggars. We have left millions behind us!

What are we to do?”

Ben Mohamet laughed.

“That is easy,” he said. “Money would not help you-there are no bazars on the desert. But I will get food and drink. You stay right here, so that I may find you easily when I come back with the food!”

“How will you get it?” Walters was incredulous.

“As I got the camels,” laughed Ben Mohamet.

“Steal, of course. Those damned robbers will be in our camp. They will have food of their own, too. I will go back and take what we need-all I can carry-from those robbers. Steal it!”

Ben Mohamet walked away.

“The fellow is the most wonderful bunch of contradictions I ever saw,” said Walters.

“Are you fool enough to think he will come back?” asked Harris.

“We’ll wait and see, anyhow!” exclaimed Walters.

BUGS walked away from the two crooks. He walked fast, but he did not have to go all the way back to the treasure room of Alexander. Half a mile from where Harris and Walters waited, two “robbers of the desert,” Jerawahs of course, met him with both food and drink.

“You obeyed orders well, Coomer Ali,” said Bugs as he took the stuff. “Now act in my place, and guard the treasure until I come for it. The others will obey me, of course, even if they did not realize that they would be helpless trying to dispose of the gold. The British Raj is not so hard on poor men, and the Raj will pay us very well for the gold-better than anyone else. The Raj will claim some of it-that is the law-for getting us money for it that we can use. But be at peace. We are just poor wandering men who found the treasure, and reported the finding honestly. The government will never know we are Jerawahs!”

“What did the white men know?” asked Coomer Ali.

“Just as I thought, and told you when you brought the camels,” answered Bugs. “They were doctors in the hospital where the king died. They gave our king a talking drug, and got the Key of the Place from him! But they told no one else. They dare not tell. They won’t tell now, because they hope to come back some day-when it will be too late. And if they did tell they know that no one would believe them-because they are both known to be awful liars!”

“They must die!” exclaimed Coomer Ali.

“Don’t worry,” said king Ben Mohamet grimly.

“They will both die!”

He made a significant gesture about his throat, and walked back to Harris and Walters with the food…

“We are near the edge of the desert, to the north,” he told them as they ate eagerly. “We will walk a few more miles. You must walk, or you will never have a chance to come back for the loot, because the robbers will miss the food and follow my tracks and find us and kill us! Hurry, now!”

They walked, painfully. As they walked they whispered a plot to turn and kill Ben Mohamet.

“We can’t let this fellow get away with the secret of the place,” said Harris. “See, the sand is getting firmer. We are at the edge of the desert, and soon will be at some town. When you are ready, say so. Then we will jump this damned Afghan!”

“Ready!” whispered Walters a few moments later.

The dark hour before the dawn was paling to the coming sun. Harris and Walters jumped suddenly at Ben Mohamet. With a swift movement he eluded them, laughing as he dodged. Then his voice grew stern, and he said grimly, in English: “That’s enough!”

And so quickly that neither Harris nor Walters could see where he got if from, Bugs pulled his automatic from under his clothes… The two crooks were staring with open mouths. Then Walters gasped brokenly: “You… talk… English?”

“Naturally!” drawled Bugs in that language.

“But… but… who are you?”

“My name is Sinnat… of the secret service!” drawled Bugs.

“My God!” Harris cried. “The one man every crook in India fears!”

The day came with its usual suddenness.

Walters was pointing as he shivered. Three menthree splendid Sikh policemen on horses-were cantering toward them.

Harris was babbling. He had lost his head entirely.

“Sikh police!” he gasped. “But… we don’t want them!”

“No,” answered Bugs. “But they want you! You are wanted-for murder! And you, Walters, as an accessory! Probably there are many other crimes!

Stand up now. You are a couple of rotters, but try to remember that you were born white, and don’t act the coward before these Sikhs!”

People of the Fourth Dimension

by

S.B.H. Hurst

Adventure, September 3, 1921

Author of "The Padre of Paradise Street," "The Mending," etc.

BUT does my lord really love me?"

Sesson, striving for eloquence, became feverishly inarticulate, after the manner of men more accustomed to the silences of vast spaces than the babble of crowds.

The girl, who was fifteen in age but ancient in wisdom and with a subtle understanding of life which few Western women can hope to attain, laid a bangled arm about the man's neck and drew his face down gently. The greatest of sculptors, banished again to earth, might have carved her out of old ivory, giving form and existence to the memory of his spirit love, lest he forget and the wonder of her be lost forever.

"And the old one," she whispered, simulating an easy indifference to disguise a burning curiosity,

"what does he say?"

"Er, well-" Sesson fought his limited bump of language. "You see, light of the world, men of my race do not talk to one another about their love affairs."

"So. But of course I know you forget all about me when you leave my house."

With the lack of originality of men of all races, Sesson tried to tell her that he could not forget, that she was never out of his mind. Listening, she suddenly realized that her smile was betraying her feelings and she began to laugh playfully.

"But is my lord-who is so big and strong-afraid to tell the old Sinclair sahib about his home with me?"

"No, not afraid-but what good would it do?

Besides, I don't want-I mean I-that is-"

"It is, my lord, and I am proud you hold me so sacred." Coming into the wind easily, she shot off on another tack, without Sesson, who had been a sailor, being at all aware of her evolution.

They sat in the cool of the evening on the top of the house Sesson had rented for the girl with all the care and secrecy at his command. He knew only too well how news travels among the natives of India, and he had no desire to have his love affair become a joke in the bazaars.

Rising and falling, the roar of Calcutta flowed beneath them like a river; and in the still air the smoke of cooking fires lazily waved. The early bats were beginning their evening's gambol. Hanging like the sign of the girl's faith, the faintest crescent of a moon seemed more like an ornament than a satellite, and there were no stars.

"Looks as if the monsoon were about to break,"

Sesson remarked irrelevantly.

"Thinkest thou of the weather when with me?" she chided.

"It was but my tongue speaking," he apologized.

"My soul is dumb in thy presence-like a devout in the temple of a goddess."

"Very good, my Sesson," she applauded. "Give me more. I like it, for it is good talk."

He did his best and while she listened she wondered; coming to the conclusion that she loved him as well as she could allow herself to love any man-but, after all, what was love? Besides, when one is young and lovely love is an easy thing to get.

When one grows old, money is very useful. When she was old she might be fat. She shuddered slightly and Sesson, thinking she was cold, drew a shawl about her.

Adventure "Yes," she thought, "and he will marry some mem sahib, anyway, so what matters it? Still, if I could only be sure. Bah, one is sure only of old age and death."

"My Sesson," she roused herself with sudden decision, "didst thou ever look into the ink pool?"

"Of course not."

"Why not?"

"Oh, because it's silly, I suppose."

"So is all play, if you will. But I like to stare into the ink. Sometimes I see all sorts of things.

Besides, I always look to see if thou art true to me."

And she laughed lightly.

"Why?" Sesson was lovingly indignant. "How can you doubt me?"

"Did I say I doubted thee?"

"No. But you said you looked into the ink to see if I were faithful."

"Does that not prove I love thee? If I didn't care, would I trouble to be jealous? How little dost thou understand a woman, my lord!" And there was just enough of plaintiveness in her voice to make Sesson ashamed of himself. "Let us play, then," she suggested.

Sesson hesitated. While not exactly a clever man, he had had certain experiences which had taught him much. Also, he had one of the best teachers in the world, for his employer, Sinclair, knew the native as few men had ever done, without consideration of race or creed. Therefore, he hesitated, although he cursed himself-knowing his hesitation implied a doubt of the girl. Queer things have happened to those who have stared into the saucer of ink. But the girl loved him-she would rather die than do him an injury.

"All right-perhaps I will-some time," he parried weakly.

The women of India have a certain birdlike quality which is only faintly approximated by women of other lands. They can also rise gracefully from cushions laid on a flat roof. Doing this, the girl reminded Sesson for all the world of a small and very indignant canary.

"I go to look into the ink-perchance I may discover in what way I have caused my lord to doubt my faith."

"Did I say that I doubted?"

Sesson also rose from the cushions, but no one would have accused him of doing it gracefully.

"There is no need to say."

"But- But-" Sesson attempted to put his arms round her.

"Let not my lord touch one so unworthy-he may contaminate himself." She avoided him disdainfully.

"Oh, well, I'll look into the-ink."

"There is no-ink. But such as it is thou shalt not look into it."

"Eh?"

She had gone too far-intentionally. Now she played her winning card-throwing herself into his arms, sobbing so violently that she scared him, as well as making him thoroughly ashamed of himself.

"It is always thus," she panted. "A woman gives herself to a man and worships him as a god, while he but regards her as a toy. This is bad, but when a woman loves a man with her whole soul and then finds he does not trust her-that is too bad to be borne. I will die!"

"Come, come." Sesson did his best to soothe her.

"Why-why didst thou fear the ink? Did my lord think that I, his slave, would play him some trick?" This was exactly the suspicion that had been in Sesson's mind, although it had not quite risen to the surface where words would have given it form.

Thus, being an intangible thing, the girl's distress had blown it away, leaving in its place a feeling that he had treated her brutally. Besides, he knew that while he looked upon ink and crystal-gazing as merely aids to auto-hypnosis, methods of reflecting pictures in the subconscious and thus bringing them into conscious view, the girl considered everything so revealed as objective truths-believed them to be glimpses into the future, warnings, divine messages, and what not.

That is, the average girl of her sort did so believe, and he had no reason to think that Laulee was different from her species. All this being so, Sesson was in the unhappy situation of one who sneers at or doubts the religious belief of his sweetheart; while he had betrayed a doubt of her fidelity to himself.

"LIGHT of my life," he whispered fondly to the trembling bundle of white linen, bangles and emotion, "I did but jest with thee."

A long-forgotten story came to his aid.

"Thou knowest that whither thou goest I will go, and whatsoever thou takest pleasure in will surely be my delight. Let us together look for pictures in the ink. I promise thee that thou wilt see nothing but thine own sweet face in my dreams."

She disengaged herself, clapping her hands like a delighted child.

"Oh, my Sesson, thou art a poet," she chirped.

This he doubted, annoyingly conscious of being a fool. At the same time the shadow of a fear, a premonition of danger obtruded itself into his emotions. Manlike, however, he felt committed to his promise-in addition to disappointing Laulee, it would be dishonorable if he did not stare into the ink.

"But," he joked tenderly as they descended from the housetop, "what, if when we look into the ink, I should see all the men who have loved thee?"

" Ai, and if thou didst! Such a mob! You would think it an army-of fools. Would it not be more interesting to thee to see a picture of every man I have loved-which is very different?"

"Would that be an army, too?" he retorted with ready jealousy.

"Ay, my lord. Indeed, a host in himself. And that"-she lighted the lamp-"you may see without ink. Behold!" She laughed saucily and pointed to his photograph. "You may say the ink can lie, but I have heard that the camera cannot."

Sesson grinned, contented and comfortable.

Here, in this house, he was as absolute as some feudal baron. The outer door was barred and no one could enter without fighting the old soldier, his gatekeeper. For privacy in India is sacred. What a crank he had been to make a fuss about the ink. As if any harm could come to him in such a sanctuary, even if the girl did not love him; and he felt sure she did. Why shouldn't she?

Lighting a pipe, he sank lazily into a soft couch and watched Laulee making ready for the experiment. To the dimming of the light he made no objection, nor yet to the preparations which told him he would be compelled to sit more upright; but he did complain when the girl decided it was necessary to stop the electric fan-a modern usurpation of the age-old punkah which made for greater privacy, and relished even by those who considered a punkah coolie as being merely furniture-because its spinning would irritate the placid surface of the ink saucer. But the girl soothed his objections with a pretty authority, finally surveying her arrangements with complacent satisfaction.

"Now, my lord, all things being in readiness, wilt thou condescend to allow the gods to open the veil?"

"So the gods have charge of this business, eh?" asked Sesson as he took up the position assigned to him.

"Who knows, sahib?"

"Don't call me sahib," he protested.

"Don't make fun of what I do, then," she retorted.

"I am all obedience," he avoided the argument.

"You must not," she protested as he slipped an arm about her waist. "This matter must be approached without any idea of levity."

"Wherein is the levity?" He imitated a reproved schoolboy, and sat very straight.

"Nay," she begged, "please, my Sesson, do thou fall into my mood. Who knows what will happen?"

"If I don't fall asleep, I will keep on staring at a pool of ink until you grow tired of watching me do it-that's what will happen. Now!" And Sesson, to please Laulee, imitated her every move-or, rather, lack of movement.

For some minutes they stared, and Sesson was conscious of nothing more than an overwhelming desire to blink his eyes. Presently, this passed and he became sleepy. Then, suddenly, he stared intently-very wide awake! For, deep in the ink apparently-so deep that it seemed impossible that the saucer held less than an inch of the liquid, he saw!

What he saw at first were certain things he did not like to look at. Events in his life about which he could never think without a shudder of disgust, of shame-the skeletons which every man keeps hidden from the world and as far as is possible from himself. He rubbed his eyes, hoping that what he saw had no objective existence and would disappear. But it persisted. He saw himself, deep in the ink, doing again what he wished he had never done.

It was exactly as if some unseen moving-picture camera had recorded his every move-years before; and with a rare feeling of horror Sesson lifted his eyes from the damning record of his past to look at Laulee. Was she, too, witnessing the same scene?

She was not. In that small saucer of ink, she was seeing very different pictures, and the incidents of Sesson's life which he had seen were hidden from her. This he knew in a glance. For the girl's face was flushed with delight. She hardly breathed.

Adventure Whatever she saw, it was entrancing. Relieved and lured by a horrible fascination, Sesson stared again at the ink.

But the unpleasant picture of his past was no longer there to trouble him. There was nothing there, but the placid pool of ink; and warned by his previous experience Sesson felt that it would be the wiser part to stare no more with intentness. Laulee would be none the wiser if he pretended to look deep.

As a matter of fact, she was so absorbed in her visions that she had apparently forgotten he existed.

If she asked him afterward what he had seen, he could invent something. To tell her the truth, as far as his experience had gone, would be impossible.

It was curious, very curious-this seeing the record of one's past. Of course he had heard of such experiences, but he had never experimented.

In a vague way he understood why he could not see what the girl saw, and vice versa. He began to theorize on the how and why of the visions-his eyes still fixed on the saucer, so that if Laulee happened to look at him she would be deceived into believing he was seeing things.

CURIOUS stuff-ink! In some way it caught all the light in the room. Of course, the light was dim-Laulee had seen to that-just enough to see the ink properly. That, no doubt, was the reason the ink had changed both in color and appearance. That cloudy, steamy, vapory stuff, now rising like a fog over a marsh-that must be due to some chemical peculiarity of ink.

Sesson's knowledge of chemistry was trifling, but he gravely tried to explain to himself why he no longer saw a saucer of ink. As a matter of fact, he hadn't the remotest idea what he saw; but what he did see reminded him of the interior of a tunnel, just after a train has gone through it.

That was it. He remembered now. Funny why he had had any difficulty. Simple, when you knew how to figure it out! But, now he came to think of it, it was-strange his being able to stand in the way of an express train without getting hurt. He must have been standing in its way, because the train had just gone through the tunnel, and there was only one set of rails.

No, it wasn't so strange, after all. Very dimly, but nevertheless positively, he remembered that, for many, many years, nothing had been able to hurt him-that is, hurt him physically. He could, also, fly. That, as a matter of fact, was his natural gait.

He moved his legs something like walking, swinging his arms ever so little-much less than when swimming. And, by Jove, the air held him up much better than water did. How perfectly delightful this easy motion through space. He felt like a bird. No, not a bird, exactly. What did he feel like? Oh, well, it didn't matter. He could decide some other time.

It was lonely, though. And where was he? With a great effort, Sesson took hold of himself, as one can sometimes do in a dream, and realized that something exceedingly curious had happened to him.

He was not dreaming-in some way he was sure about that-but he certainly was not where he ought to be. But, where was that? Where should he be?

For what seemed like several centuries, Sesson struggled desperately to remember where he should be-where he had been before he found himself floating like a feather in a silent void. It was no use-he knew he was himself, but what that self was he did not know; and where he had come from was equally inexplicable.

The fear and horror peculiar to nightmare began to assail him and the only answer to all his questioning was that he was lost, utterly lost, in limitless space.

He struggled to awake, illogically because he still felt he was not dreaming, but it was the only course of action he could think of. He believed himself to be screaming, praying, begging. Then something deep in his consciousness told him to open his eyes. This he did, easily and naturally, finding, to his utter astonishment, that he was sitting where he had been before his awful experience, before the saucer of ink, while Laulee was still staring into the pool, with the same ecstatic smile. She, evidently, had had no such unpleasant experience.

"No more for me," he exclaimed involuntarily.

As if pulled by some invisible hand, the girl's head jerked back from its attitude of staring. She frowned at him.

"Why didst thou waken me? See, there is nothing-all is gone. Oh, why didst thou do it?"

"Don't blame me," he said contritely. "What I saw caused me to yell out loud. It was not my fault."

"Oh, yes it was," she answered with some

The People of the Fourth Dimension asperity. "For if there is no evil in our memories, no evil thing can happen to us in the ink. In all the universe there is nothing that can harm the good."

With one of her rapid changes of mood she began to pet and soothe him.

"Poor boy, did all the bad devils of thy past rise up to haunt thee? It had to be, but next time maybe the good spirits will take thy hand and lead thee to Paradise instead of Jehannum."

Whether the girl's explanation was correct or otherwise, Sesson was deeply moved by his experience. It was altogether different from anything he had ever known. Of course, one may dream of time and space, and feel that years are passing; but when one wakes one realizes that it was but a dream and probably lasted only a few seconds. The experience can then be dismissed, as not being real.

But, to his surprise, Sesson found that he could not so casually dismiss the effects of his inkgazing. On one hand, he felt certain that he had never moved from the place where he had been sitting; on the other, to believe that he had not moved seemed absurd. The experience, the sense of motion-all this had been too real, too tangible.

Indeed, compared with the events of everyday, Sesson was compelled to admit that one was as real as the other.

If what had happened to him while he apparently sat by Laulee's side had not been real, then he had not eaten his dinner that evening. Yet, logically, this conclusion was absurd. Thinking, the puzzled sailor remembered the words of an old fakir: "There is a realm where logic is transcended, where things are real."

Naturally, then, Sesson wanted advice. The experience had scared him. Could a man leave his body and go wandering, without regard to what we call time, and careless of what we call space? But who was there to advise him? Laulee? Hardly! And yet, why not? Was it the egoism of the male, hesitating to seek advice from the female?

No. Truthfully, Sesson could answer "no" to that. Then did he not feel confident; did he doubt her knowledge? That was better, but, still, not the whole truth. He felt that he might as well own up to it-that he wished thoroughly to understand the girl, but could not. Men in love feel this bafflement.

And the need of consulting someone was pressing. Calling himself a baby that could not keep its mouth shut failed to ease the urge. To talk, to confess, if you will, to someone, he must. And who was there but Sinclair?

Yet, he balked. To tell Sinclair about his adventure in the ink meant at least hinting about Laulee; and while he knew that the elder man would not ask questions and would never even dream of trying to supervise his morals, he hated to mention that his extraordinary experience had taken place while apparently in the presence of a woman.

Troubled this way he put off speaking to Sinclair; but the weight on his mind was so pressing that he went about his duties like a man in a dream and everyone he met knew he was bothered.

This of course he knew and because his confounded experience came between his work and himself, he worried the more. That he should worry at all was another problem and a weighty one. But how should Sesson know that he had dipped into the immeasurable sea?

In the end he developed a fixed idea-he wanted to tell Sinclair, but he would not. He would fight the wish. But "the suppressed wish" is the fulcrum of psychology and its effects are known to men of far less wisdom than Sinclair, the unofficial guardian of India. Being what he was, he disliked to question Sesson. Thus he compromised, one morning, with:

"You are not looking yourself-better take a few weeks' leave. Go up to Darjeeling, or some place where its cooler."

And Sesson, who was forty years the younger, blurted out the whole tale and felt better when he had blurted.

AS HE told it, he did not look at Sinclair and when he did look up he was startled by the expression of gravity on the face of the elder man, who said:

"It's too late to ask you why you stared, and I won't. You are living in a country where queer things happen, I mean, things which would be called queer in England, but which are everyday events in India."

He paused for a few minutes, then continued:

"In my many years here, to quote Newton, I have felt myself, as it were, walking by the shore of a boundless sea, picking up small pebbles. Each pebble means so much more knowledge-but what is a ton of such to all the knowledge hidden by the sea? It appears that you, unwittingly, have taken a plunge into the sea itself. Once, and only once, I myself wet my hand in it. Well, whatever their reason, they did not allow it for mere amusement."

And Sinclair finished speaking almost as if he were talking to himself.

"Who," Sesson stammered, "who do you mean by they?"

"I do not know," said Sinclair very simply.

"Eh?" Sesson might well be surprised.

"No. I have discovered society after society. I found the gang which wishes to hypnotize the world, and may, because the silly world does not believe it possible! As if the western world knew anything about hypnotism! Yes, I have unearthed clique after clique-knowing all the time that behind all these manifestations lurked a power, a power which seemed as far beyond my reach as the fourth dimension, a power beyond me, which I was almost content to admit as my master. I believe that power is interested in you."

Sesson was dumb. Not because he had heard about a mysterious power, which appeared to be interested in himself, but because Sinclair had admitted there was something in India which he was content to let alone, if not consider his superior. This was more than extraordinary; it was hardly believable.

"My explanation may be miles from being correct," Sinclair continued, as if soliloquizing,

"but it's the best I have been able to build up in all these years. To make my idea easier of understanding, suppose we call this they who appear to be interested in you, `The People of the Fourth Dimension.' Then, remember how almost everything pertaining to the so-called "Occult" has its origin in India.

"Sect after sect has arisen, book after book has been written, mahatma after mahatma-so-called-has said his little say and passed on. But all of these were perhaps but the echo of the they I speak of: the sects, the wise men, the books were maybe but gropings for the truth of this mysterious people, although, being human, these gropers pretended to have the truth, and lived by peddling it.

"Few of them knew more than you do today-everyone was trying to explain, and is trying to explain an experience similar to your own. That is why India is the home of occultism-because it seems to be the home of this unseen people of fourth dimensional space.

"I am a materialist, but not in the narrow sense in which the term is generally understood. I am so because the material is constantly showing us new wonders and until we are certain that the marvels of the material are exhausted-which will never be-I see no reason to speak of the spiritual. For what we call spiritual is only matter refined. Therefore, this unseen people are as physical as you and me. They are invisible to us because they occupy four dimensions of space instead of three.

"Even if we admit a common evolutionary basis-I speak, of course, of some basis of which undifferentiated protoplasm is a product-why should not one branch of life have evolved in a space of four dimensions, while our branch evolved in three? If we admit the possibility of this-and I see no reason and no consistency in denying it-then the evolution of man in fourth-dimensional space must have resulted in a super-being, a being who grew beyond us for millions of years, in the ratio of as four is to three, with all the added possibilities of that added space.

"That we can not see them is to be expected, since we can not even imagine fourth space, verbally intelligible though it may be. But the theory is big. That these people exist you will, I think, soon have greater proof than I have. I suggest that you go on with your ink experiments, and if you tell the lady what I have told you, she will be apt to confirm it. If she doesn't, you will have an inexhaustible source of argument. But perhaps you had better not tell her that you confided in me.

"Every native is suspicious of me, and will close up like an oyster if my name is mentioned.

"But, remember-for this is serious-that you are playing with something far too powerful for you to control. Nevertheless, I should like you to go through with the thing. We may learn something tangible-that is, if you are not afraid of the consequences to yourself?"

Naturally, this suggestion made Sesson all the more anxious to continue his ink experiments; if only to show Sinclair that he was not afraid of even the inhabitants of fourth-dimensional space. Yet no doubt he would have gone on without the dare-the lure of the thing being easily understood by anyone.

And so, that twilight, going to the house, he was conscious of two pulls. There was, of course, the charm of the girl; but Sesson paused in the narrow street, to wonder if, after all, the bugle call, crying "fight," were not the more alluring. The something The People of the Fourth Dimension to be done was beginning to thrill.

His devotion to Sinclair was stronger than that of son to father, more overpowering than the subject's loyalty to his queen or king. It was a subtle fealty, born of kindness and nurtured in friendship and understanding. And to risk himself, body and soul, to aid, in his weak way, Sinclair's researches, to assist the great man to solve what appeared to be his one unsolved problem! Why?

"To crush the Moslem in his pride" could not have more greatly stirred a crusader to action.

But the task would need all of his not tooremarkable intelligence. For Sesson was under no delusions concerning his mental status. His was the average mind of the average ship's officer, and he had the bulldog courage of the breed. And that type is neither introspective nor fond of dallying with abstraction; neither is cold logic a hobby. To dare and do his best was a conviction more soul-binding than a religion. And to do this for Sinclair carried the additional force of an emotional stimulus.

The mind of the sailor set itself, as he stood between the high, old walls of the street. Just as years before it would have set itself to the task of squaring the yards had the wind drawn aft.

Automatically he again walked slowly. Haste is agitating and this thing must be approached calmly and with unwinded lungs-no hurting pantings when the clash came, be that clash weird beyond a mortal's imagining. It was a fight to be fought. He must be at his best. To think about the end would be folly, weakness. To fight, and do his best-this must be his one continual mental picture. The man in his fine determination was doing himself an injustice. He needed no such mental reminder.

LAULEE was fascinatingly melting. Her loving was of the custard-apple sort, which she knew to be Sesson's favorite fruit. So overwhelmingly subtle is mind of woman when it wishes to be. To have played the mango, with its wonderful taste but hard center, would have been a mistake. That girl could become things, and she instinctively knew the correct thing to imitate.

All the core, the jarring center of their last meeting, had been changed into lusciousness. In that sweetness he could feel that her love was real, was abandonment. And surely, if there were any doubt of her, wise old Sinclair would have warned him.

She was a mere child, playing, through the ink, with the underlying occultism of India. And she did not know the danger of her toy. So, they were only lovers again and the world was a wealth of sweetbriar in late Spring.

They went up to the roof and, like two children, tried to count the flying foxes crossing the low moon. Like children, they pretended to quarrel about their counting. And both were very happy. So it was Sesson, feeling the call to self-abnegation, the urge to do what seemed his duty, who suggested, playfully, that they again seek pictures in the ink. Laulee was surprised, puzzled, but her answering laugh was light and lilting.

"Why, my Sesson, wouldst thou become a holy man and live in rags and with his beggar's bowl?"

He laughed back:

"No, my sweet one, I crave no fakir's austerity.

To be strictly truthful, I hope, in the ink, to see thee-when thou dost not know me to be watching!"

He looked at her long and silently, put in doubt by her words and the hidden sparkle in her eyes.

Her answer was the answer of the woman of India. Men, reputed wise men, have wrangled over the possibility of telepathy; yet only an ignorant fool denies the power of suggestion. The two are one and the same, made slightly variant by the distance bridged. Whosoever does not believe this-from the lips of an agnostic-let him stain his face and body, learn language, and live as a native of India with the natives-if he has the wit not to be discovered-for twelve months. Chances are he will become as superstitious as a devotee of juju.

Again the preparations, the lowering of the light-protracted tonight, however, almost as if the actors were late and the stage and curtain must be kept back for them, by loving interruptions, which Sesson found very soothing. He even asked for more, but the lady became suddenly firm, smiled, pointed to the ink, pouting delightfully.

"Seek me there as thou didst tell me."

And Sesson-feeling like a boy caught in a lie-stared, pretending his best, after a long kiss.

Hardly had he concentrated upon the saucer, when his eyes closed and he believed himself elsewhere, and he found it very pleasant. His sensations were those of lying upon a bank of flowers, by a small stream in that delightfully lazy condition only possible to healthy tiredness, perfect nerves. Besides, he was content to let the voice talk to him. It was a fascinating voice, which rose and

Adventure fell with the strangely soul-stirring sounds of an aeolian harp. As a chorus, there was the faint sob of the wind among the trees, with the whispered comments of the birds.

But, presently, Sesson knew that the voice was telling him something important-was not merely entertaining him with its beauty. So he listened carefully until, among the music of the many sounds, he came to distinguish what was meant for him. It thrilled him with memories and echoes of religion. And the theme was obedience.

But no man had ever preached or written upon obedience in the wonderfully alluring manner in which the subject was now imparted to Sesson. His soul seemed to become in tune with the voice and to answer back with emotional fervor that obedience was the whole duty of a man. In his ecstasy, it never occurred to Sesson to ask whom he should so utterly obey. It was enough for him, then, to absorb with intense enjoyment the lesson-obey, and all things thou delightest in and seekest shall be given unto thee.

Surely, he thought, the voice must be that of some old prophet of the Bible. He became imbued with religious enthusiasm to which he had ever before been a stranger. To obey! What a wonderful, soul-entrancing Creed! To obey, obey, obey, obey.

He sat up on the flowers, anxious to begin the path of obedience. He tried to hear more, but the voice was failing. Into the scenery about him he stared, seeking the owner of the voice. He used his eyes as he would have done picking up a buoy on a dark night at sea, and-saw Laulee staring at him, her lips parted.

His experience he told to Sinclair in detail, not forgetting to mention his standing in the narrow street with the call to fight coming over him and his decision to go through with the thing, "like having trouble with the crowd forward."

But at this Sinclair frowned and shook his head.

"That's like you, of course, and I admire it. But you cannot approach this affair in that frame of mind. Think! How can you? Imagine wrestling with a being who occupied four-dimensional space.

Try to picture your efforts to get a toehold on him!

Won't do! Impossible. No, there is only one way for you to go into this thing, and if that way dismays or annoys you, why, we will drop the whole affair.

"The way is-as in your last experience-absolute and entire obedience. You must subjugate your will to their intentions, or nothing worthwhile will happen. You must become a mere automaton in their hands, or there will be no result. I know it sounds unattractive, if not worse; but I can promise you that you will suffer no injury. You may be somewhat inconvenienced, but only for a few days, or so. Permanent effect there will not be. You know me and can trust me. I am banking on a natural law.

Will you go through with it on these terms?"

For the first time since he had known the man, Sesson was aware of what was nothing else but a pleading note in his voice. This was remarkable.

Why was Sinclair so tremendously interested in this vague people? Sesson gave it up. It was beyond him. But Sinclair pleading! That was unnecessary.

Of course he would go through with the thing. To oblige Sinclair he would go to hell.

He did not say this. That, also, was not necessary. The men parted in full understanding.

But Sinclair spent most of the night making plans.

The matter involved great consequences and not a single inch of the track must be allowed to be out of line.

NEXT evening, Laulee's greeting savored of irony.

"My high priest of the ink must thou to thy duties at once- ek dum -or hast thou a tiny moment to waste on such utter uselessness as I?"

Veiling his eyes with a smile, Sesson studied her as keenly as he could; in reality, for the first time. From some hitherto nebulous intuitive faculty a truth came to him, cold and solid as a steel bar.

Or, again, it may have been the sudden repulsing of an atavism. Leaving the argument, he knew with a stinging clarity that an ironical woman is worse than dangerous, passes understanding and is false.

Love cannot stoop to irony-that is, and mean it.

But, did she mean it?

"Lady of my life," his voice had never been more lover-like, "if it pleases thee, thy slave will never again stare into ink but will spend every moment of his hours away from his work-and he needs must work, for thee-in proving to thee his utter and changeless devotion."

This, of course, in Hindustani, which he spoke well, while Laulee caught her breath. Then, before she meant to answer-emotion-driven-"But I would not ask thee to give up thy amusements, my lord."

"Thou art more to me than any play, any

The People of the Fourth Dimension reward-more indeed, than my honor! What a small thing is it for me to cease to stare into ink which seems to displease thee."

"Nay, my Sesson-"

He interrupted, with a careless gesture-"Hush, sweet one, let us forget such little things, for what is a dish of black fluid?"

He was surprised at himself. Could that be Sesson, talking so incisively to Laulee? A doubt dragged him from the heights. He loved her, too greatly. Reaction came, and he felt almost as if he had struck her. With one of her lightning-like flashes-she was cobra-like in her rapidity and singleness of purpose-she struck back, one small, bare foot indicating indignation with a single stamp.

"So, that is it!" Her eyes met his, flashing venom. "In the first play thou didst doubt me, fearing I would do thee some small meanness.

Then thou didst pretend to play. Now thou tirest of this pretense. It is all of a part. Thou hast all along believed me faithless. Maybe the old one told thee and like a calf thou didst bleat belief! And now, careless, thou hast as good as called me traitor!"

Her voice trailed off into heartrending plaintiveness.

"When, my lord, all I wanted in my little game was thy strengthening presence by my side."

She was in his arms, sobbing like a child wakening from nightmare.

A very cold-blooded, logical, perhaps inhuman, man might have resisted Laulee in that moment, provided he had not the slightest interest in her, did not love her. But, what chance had Sesson, pulsing passion, with five million reds, the normal bloodcount of a healthy man-and the girl's willing slave? He forgot everything; the doubt so recently roused vanished like a jet of steam. Besides, Sinclair had asked him to go through with this thing. Sesson became slightly bewildered. So the affair progressed.

But the molding was slow, and Sesson became irritated at the lack of tangibility in his inkexperiences. Nothing now but voices in a void reiterating lessons he felt he knew. This for a month. What was it all about? Why didn't something happen? The man began to doubt, but kept it to himself, that there was anything behind these weak manifestations-that it was all selfinduced hypnosis. Yet Sinclair, who could not make mistakes, had asked him to go through with it? Laulee was a dear girl, who did not know what she was playing with.

The tangibility came with an overwhelming suddenness.

During the usual preparations, he found himself thinking that Laulee must have penetrated his reason for this nightly performance. Then he dismissed this thought-she, with the patient, eternal curiosity of her sex and India, was willing to continue seeking ink-truths all her life. And she did but ask his nearness as a sort of support. She had never asked him a question regarding his experiences. Remembering this last, he felt sure of her and comforted. Why comforted he did not seek to know.

OF COURSE by this time Sesson had merely to look at the ink with a momentary intentness to drift off into dreams or whatever his condition was.

This night was no exception, but hardly had he reached his usual void, when the voice said loudly and with certainty-spoke in such a way that Sesson never even thought of doubting what it told him-"Sinclair has been murdered!"

In that state, with every faculty and emotion suspended and waiting to be influenced, the words-to Sesson as truthful as if from the lips of God-swung every fiber of the man into frantic, clamoring, revengefulness. Sinclair murdered!

Then there was only one thing in life for Sesson to do, and that was to get the murderer. Further, the law should throw no protecting mantle over him.

Neither would he have the easy death of hanging.

But at this the voice protested. The murderer was too clever. He had even impersonated Sinclair, deceiving, for that day, even Sesson himself, the stout babu, Sinclair's personal servant, the Sikh gatekeeper. If Sesson tried long-drawn-out killing, he would fail. Thinking he had gone mad, Sinclair's men would grapple with him. Revenged he should be, but caution must be the mother of success.

His consuming anger was natural and admirable, as for a murdered father, but a clever villain must be beaten by cleverness. No other way could win. The voice was as greatly angered as Sesson, but knew better than to act rashly.

But Sesson was in the throes of a man bound, who sees all he loves violated. He struggled to free himself, to reach, in some way, that murderer.

Adventure But a month of suggestion-the work of a master-had made Sesson pliable, obedient. The murder must be at once avenged but there must be no chance of failure. A revolver, a shot at close quarters-the only sure way. Sesson was only vaguely conscious of his surroundings. He was steady enough on his legs, but his brain-swayed and guided by the voice, by the man he felt was his friend, who held his arm-groped, as if under the influence of some powerful drug.

He knew he was leaving the house with this friend, but it never occurred to him that no man but himself had any right in the privacy of that room.

And this was not only due to the utter confidence he placed in the vague figure by his side-white or black, native or European, was something Sesson never considered-but to his having lost all interest in life, except to avenge Sinclair.

He neither saw nor thought of Laulee who, wrapped in a whirl of conflicting emotions, crouched in a corner, watching. Neither was he conscious of guiding his friend to that carefully hidden house. Yet here, he felt that, his friend knew the house, but needed Sesson's presence to gain admission. (The student of this subject will note conflicting theories, impossible of discussion here).

If his volition, if his "free-thought" had been dammed and diverted, as is a stream, there was still the ever-living effort to burst through and again flow free. And Sesson felt his right hand on the automatic in the pocket of his coat. The Sikh gatekeeper admitted them, acting as if he neither saw nor sensed anything unusual, and as Sesson and his companion walked slowly across the small compound, the keeper of the gate closed his charge and turned to watch the two men, clearly visible in a streak of moonlight. Out of the forest of hair covering his face his teeth showed whitely for an instant, in what might have been a grin or a snarl.

Then a scratching, a feeble knocking on the gate drew his attention.

He switched on the powerful light which showed what was outside and opened the lookout.

What he saw brought again the show of teeth, but this time there was no mistaking the snarl.

"So, it is thee, hellcat!" And he turned aside, to spit loudly.

"Water-buffalo!" Laulee's intense emotion had lifted her above any sort of fear or thought of self.

"No doubt thou thinkest thyself a brave and clever man, and at times that may be true. But I am all that can save my sahib and thy sahib this night! Let me in, big man. Surely thou art not afraid of a woman, and such a little one?"

With her usual cleverness, the girl had made no appeal based on Sesson's love for her. But the Sikh knew of that fact, and he thought the world of Sesson. Also, he had his country's idea of women.

Their place in the scheme of things was the place of toys. They belonged to the lower side of life. Yet a Sikh or a high-caste Hindu often adores his mother!

They were neither to be trusted nor treated as responsible beings. But to hurt the woman a man loves is like taking cubs from a tigress. And Sesson sahib was a man.

"Come in, spawn of Satan," he announced blandly, opening the gate a trifle.

As the girl slipped through, he gripped her, hurtfully. Then he closed and barred the gate.

"About thee? Is it a knife, a gun, or maybe a trained sister of thine-another snake?" he asked.

For a moment she twisted in his grip, then she gave up, and bore it.

"A knife!" She produced a curved, deadly blade.

"Hum! Keep it! Because of the honor I bear my Sesson sahib, neither will I search thee. Think not that this is due to any honor of thee! But, try to be the traitor thou art, and thy head falls-very swiftly!"

He drew his sword significantly.

"And while thou swellest thy chest, mouthing the brave things thou wilt do to a child, thou art preventing me from saving my sahib."

The Sikh laughed softly.

"Thinkest thou this is a hive of fools?"

Nevertheless, with his hand on her arm, he went with her towards the door of the house-sufficiently believing to leave his gate without authority.

They entered quietly. All seemed quiet. The small elevator was not running. A tiny light in a red globe showed the stairs. Against his wish, the urging of the girl caused the Sikh to hasten.

Making no more sound than two drifting feathers, they began swiftly to climb the wide staircase. They reached the first landing. Into the quiet-startling even the Sikh-the noise of a shot broke. Although he grabbed at her with the rapidity of a wrestler, and even cut at her flying legs with his sword, the girl squirmed out of his grip and fled like a streak of white up the last stairs soundless, for Laulee had left all her many bangles at home.

The People of the Fourth Dimension So swiftly had she moved that it seemed to the Sikh that the noise of breaking glass came to him after she had gone!

Flashes of half-light, shadows, trick of circumstance, the unexpected, the unguessable tide of human emotion, the touch of self-denial, the craving for the thing loved, the carefully planning mind of a great man-and chance.

HAT Laulee glimpsed through her haze of feeling, at the open door of that curiously light-dark room, was, first, Sesson standing alone, staring vacantly at what seemed to be the shattered remainder of a large mirror, his empty hands hanging at his side-an attitude that was half terror, half not understanding. In the unbreakable grasp of the two ex-dacoits, whom Sinclair employed for rough work, stood the "voice," the "friend."

But Laulee, also, saw something else and to her distraught soul the hideous danger to Sesson was magnified a thousandfold. If she made any sound at all, it was a hiss. Then she sprang, as the panther springs, at the back of the "friend," plunging the knife deeply into vital parts.

The unexpected shock of her spring loosened the dacoits' grip. Clinging, even with her teeth, to the writhing body of the "voice," her added weight dragged him from the astonished Burmans, and as she fell to the floor with her enemy she did her utmost to make the stab of the knife more deeply piercing and mortally wounding.

All this in moments. Then, as the astonished and maddened dacoits plunged again to hold the struggling but dying "friend," that person managed to scratch lightly the girl's throat with a large ring on his first finger. In a dialect understood by Sinclair alone he shrieked out some words. When the Burmans gripped him, there was no longer need of their gripping.

Sesson-feeling like a man emerging from a partial anesthetic, during which he has been helpless but always on the verge of complete consciousness-sank weakly on a couch. Laulee, gropingly but surely, crawled to his knees-upward, until he grasped her in his arms, and careless of onlookers held her head to his breast.

She sighed like a tired child, content.

In the doorway stood the Sikh, observing all things with complete understanding.

Sinclair's voice spoke from the gloom. The Burmans removed the dead "friend." The Sikh and others of Sinclair's men left the room, shutting the door. Laulee and Sesson were alone with Sinclair.

She was afraid of only one thing-that she might not be able to speak what she wished so wildly to say. And she was very tired, growing weak, and the humility of India's women was upon her.

"My boy," Sinclair's voice was very gentle. "I was sorry to put you to all this, but I saw no other course. I spoke truly when I told you that this matter was my only problem and that I did not know with whom you were dealing. Now I do know-the words my enemy spoke as he died having told me-told me what I never guessed at, would not have credited.

"For some years I have felt an obstacle in my work and gradually it came to me, partly by intuition, that this unknown obstacle was a very clever man, or men, with but one object in life-my death. Far too cunning to chance a shot at me in the street or to employ any of the usual methods of the assassin, this obstacle was always near and I knew that some day he, or they, would find what appeared a sure way of killing me.

"It was not so much the danger of death that annoyed me-it was the eternal nuisance of having to take this obstacle into account whenever I planned anything at all. Before undertaking any task I had carefully to guard against the sudden cessation of all my work.

"If I could have obtained a tangible sign, the evidence of a single overt act, I felt capable of grappling with the man. But there was nothing I could come to grips with. The entire danger was as vague as the fourth dimension.

"I admit it began to get on my nerves, for I am not a young man. With all the power-no slight power, as you know-I command, I began to institute countermeasures against this unseen, unknown enemy, but as I said, it was like trying to put handcuffs on a mathematical X. Then, to my intense surprise-for, as you also know, I never allow any reports to be brought to me concerning the private affairs of my friends-you told me of your weird experience. Then, relieved, I knew that at last the battle was opening. I felt easily capable of winning.

"Much as I disliked doing so, I had to trick you with my `people of the fourth dimension.' Since the enemy was keeping your mind from the truth I was compelled to take the same stand. You can see why.

Adventure "To use you against me was the best card he could have played. And it was all so subtly clever.

He knew of my deafness to all reports of your acts when not actually on duty. When on duty it is necessary to know what you are doing, in the event of your needing sudden support. He banked on my knowing nothing of, er, the lady. I didn't know until you told me.

"Then he knew our racial horror of discussing such a private matter. He had reasons for feeling quite safe. It was hardly to be expected that you would say anything to me. But a certain distrust of-never mind the name-nullified the early suggestion given you. You have forgotten, but you were ordered, when `in the ink,' not to mention either the ink or the lady to me. You broke through this inhibition-an unusual feat-and told me.

"You were no doubt asked seemingly light questions in the beginning. Had you spoken to Sinclair?

"Slowly he became sure of you and of his revenge. The thing had to be gone through with to the bitter end An old arrangement of mirrors-don't you remember the living woman, showed in little theaters when you were a boy, whose existence apparently ended at her waist? All mirrors, cleverly arranged, made it appear that I lay facing you when he whom you believed to be your friend ordered you to shoot-to avenge me, likely as not?"

Sesson groaned an affirmative.

"Don't let it trouble you. It's all over and I am in your debt. You sacrificed yourself and your pride to help me. It was a big brave thing to do.

And, oh yes, as he died he told me- Back to the Mutiny this thing goes. Years ago, as you know, I found where the British women and children had been incarcerated-underground Calcutta.

"We smashed that den, and as I believed caught every person affiliated with its rulers, in every city in India. But one man escaped us and I did not know it. He hated everything British with a hatred we can not understand. Eh, well-was he responsible? I doubt it. I think this tells you all.

Boy, we touched history tonight, and the breed will trouble us no more.

"That dead man, as well as hating me for what I was and what I have done and am doing, had further cause for vindictiveness. He was the only living son of Nana Sahib!"

At this Sesson stiffened suddenly, and Laulee gave a little cry.

"If there is something you wish to tell her,"

Sinclair spoke even more gently than before, "I will leave the room, while there is time."

"Eh?" Sesson voiced his lack of understanding.

THEN the girl spoke, her voice faltering:

"Do not go, burra sahib, for how can my lord mind kissing me goodbye in thy presence? Art thou not his father and his mother? And I want to tell you all. For in thy great wisdom it may seem well to thee, during the years that are yet to come, to tell my lord and my love that I was not all a traitor."

"Traitor?" Sesson held her more closely, not troubling to wonder why he knew so clearly that her one desire in life had always been for his love, for him.

"Little one, if it tasks thee, do not strain to tell. I think I know, and-I will tell."

"Nay, wise sahib, it were better for me to tell.

Remember this lies heavy on my soul and it has such a little while to clean itself."

She sighed and nestled, still graceful.

"It began-my lord remembers-such a wonderful love. I was never bought! We saw, we loved-there was nothing else required. If sometimes I found myself fearing age, his tiring of me, his finding a woman of the white-log and making her his wife-all this I would forget in his arms!

"Like a girl I had played with the ink and the ink began to whisper to me-`He will grow tired; thou wilt grow old, maybe fat; he will leave thee, forget thee and marry one of his own kind.' This, I swear by Allah, I did not believe at first. But, as thou knowest, burra sahib, such fancies grow like weeds after rain. Money, much money, was offered to me-rupees for my age, when there would be no longer any love, no longer my Sesson. But I loved, and money was not enough.

" Ai, I was tempted, but I would not. I fell, but dared to deny my promise. But the ink-the-ink, sahib -it makes one worse than drunk! Then was offered me love-for all my life-love and my Sesson, for all mine own, forever! What woman, loving, would have refused a small deceit-coaxing to the ink-for such as that? For it was told me that there was a sahib whom all sahibs knew for an evil man, whom every sahib wished to see dead, but who was protected by the sahibs' law, which

The People of the Fourth Dimension protects evil and good alike.

"It was told that the sahib who killed this evil one would be a hero and benefiter of all sahibs. But because of the law he would have to hide. `He will be brave, sacrificing himself for his own kind; but he will have to flee from his own and become one of us-a native. His face stained, he will live safely among us, with money secretly given by the sahibs.

Never able to leave us. Never to speak to the memlog! Dost thou not see, little sparrow, that he will be thine all thy life? Is such love, for all thy life, not worth so small a matter with great deeds in hand?' "That was why I-foolish, love-dazed, thoughtless-became what seems like a traitor, burra sahib -and oh, my lord, my love, my life!"

She sobbed weakly.

"I would not call thee traitor"-Sinclair's voice was husky-"neither will thy Sesson. I would say that thou hadst loved too greatly for thy soul's peace."

"To love my lord too greatly were not possible!" An echo of the old, audacious lilt crept into her voice. "But, I must end. This night, being a woman who loved, I suspected treachery and, thank Allah, followed. Before the gate was reached I knew and felt the knife in my bosom speak to me.

Burra sahib, didst thou not see that that dead spawn of Shitan was wearing boots?"

"I saw, and guessed the poison needle at his toes: But, loyal little lady, had he lifted a foot to scratch he would not have reached thy Sahib.

Nevertheless, in what thou didst do, thou didst show thyself a princess, a woman worthy of all love."

She tried to laugh.

"A little fool even in my dying," she gasped and choked slightly.

"Nay, but a great lady who gave her life to save her love. We honor such an one above all others!"

"Then"-she could scarcely whisper-"I die content."

There had been no suggestion of a doctor, of an antidote. Both Sinclair and Sesson knew the futility of such, knew that any attempt to save life would only make life's last moments more unhappy. Had there been pain, Sinclair had an anodyne at hand.

But the poison was as painless as it was deadly-a poison unknown to Western toxicology.

There was silence in the room. Sesson could not speak; Sinclair did not wish to. The younger man could only hold Laulee as tightly yet as gently as he could as if feeling that all he loved were slipping away from him, he would try to prevent the going.

"My lord, I was and am unworthy. Forget me and find a woman of thine own race to be the mother of thy children. Yet," her voice trailed off until Sesson had to bend his ear to her lips, "yet-yet-my love-and my lord-for this last moment-love me and forget the mem-log -and kiss me-a long kiss-farewell."

The Spirit of France

by

S. B. H. Hurst

Ace-High Magazine, First February Number, 1931

MERGUI is a dirty and most immoral town.”

Father Murphy, the stout, kindly missionary paused dramatically. “But hitherto we have been spared this-a white girl dancing for Mohammedans and Chinamen! You must do something, Bailey!”

The youthful English magistrate, who, with ten Sikh policemen and one white clerk, was administrator of the affairs of the little town and the district adjoining it on the Tenasserim strip of the coast of Burma, looked through the window of his office at the mud of low tide in the harbor. A puff of wind brought the reek of it. He sniffed, then answered testily: “You know as well as I do, Padre, that I can do nothing. Until the girl commits a crime I cannot have her arrested. English law does not infringe on the rights of people to live where they wish. If she wants to live among the colored population, that’s her business. Let her dance! I have received no complaints about her. If you are worried about her morals, well-that’s in your department, not mine!”

The priest sighed.

“Yes,” he answered. “But the girl won’t listen to me.

She politely avoids discussion. Admits being a Catholic, too! Orphan. Daughter of some Frenchman who died up Indo-China way. I don’t know how she drifted down here.”

“Well, I can’t help you, Murphy. I detest having a white woman of her occupation in the town-liable to stir up any sort of trouble. But you can find ‘em all over Burma. We must bear our burdens, Padre. Good morning!”

The priest left the magistrate’s office. The heat weighed heavily upon his huge figure. He felt, both physically and spiritually, depressed. This pretty childfor she was little more-who politely refused to worry about her soul’s welfare! Father Murphy clenched his fists.

“If I have to use force,” he said firmly, “I’ll do it! I will break the law if need be-the law that protects vice from the assaults of decency! I will break through that ring of Mohammedan and Chinese brutes who leer at her dancing. I may have to hit a few ugly faces, for which Bailey could have me arrested; but I will-for the good of that young woman’s soul. It’s my duty, and by the living God I’ll do it! I’m Irish, and before I got so fat I could use my hands for other things than blessing people!”

He was spared this necessity. His walk had brought him to the tiny church he himself had designed and helped to build. In its quiet he would compose himself.

He took off his large solar hat and wiped his streaming forehead. Then he dropped the hat in joyful astonishment. For the girl he had thought apostate was kneeling there, praying! “Oh, Father, I thank Thee!” he murmured.

The girl looked up and saw him. She was vaguely disturbed. The priest, that massive man of intuitions, felt that she had timed her visit to the church to correspond with his absence. No doubt there were other visits.

“Daughter,” he said, “I do not understand this!”

She smiled, mischievously.

“My Father, there is, ah, so veree mouch that ees hard to ounderstand!”

His voice became hard.

“I do not understand why you have refused to talk with me. I do not understand why you have come here when you knew I was away. And… I have known other women like you. But the others did not avoid the priest.

Instead, they sought absolution!”

She shrugged her shoulders. The flash of her smile was of pearls. Her eyes were violet lakes in which dwelt mystery and delight.

“Perhaps they needed it!” she answered.

For a moment the priest was so angry at her pert reply that he could not answer her. She went on. But she no longer smiled, and the lids covered her provocative eyes.

“But I, what am so small, joost come ‘ere because, maybe, God ees ‘ere! Onnyways, if He is anywhere in Mergui, He will be ‘ere! And you know, Father, that there is times when every woman feel lonelee for God.

So I do not come when you are here. Becos’ I do not want to talk about my sins. Eet would take too much time. And the time I come ‘ere is the time I ‘ave give to God!”

Her eyes met his defiantly.

Murphy mastered his anger.

“Do you realize that God sees you when you are not in His church-when you are dancing and-and living with those horrible heathen men?”

She raised her small head proudly.

“I do not ‘live’ with any man!” Her eyes blazed, her little hands clenched. “For what you ‘ave said, but that you are a priest, I would strike you! I live with no man! I ‘ave never lived with any man! And I have never even kissed any man but my father-what is died!”

The flash left her eyes. Her head drooped. She sank down upon the wooden bench and sobbed.

Father Murphy was deeply distressed. He could not believe her, but…

“My child! My poor child!” He laid a hand gently upon her shoulder. “But you must realize how your dancing for such creatures seems!”

“To dance is all I know,” she sobbed. “I ‘ave tried to dance for the white men, but they do not want me. They want women who will kees after dancing-who will kees and love for money. I must live! Mohamet Ali and his nasty bearded men ‘ave never tried to kees me.

Mohamet looks cruel, but he treats me square! And the Chinamen are afraid of him. The men for whom I dance know that if they try to kees me they will ‘ave a long knife in their ribs. Mohamet is ‘eathen, you say. Yes.

But I would razzer dance for heem than for white men who do not want dancing as mouch as they want something else!”

“Some other way of making a living may be found,” began the baffled priest.

She interrupted fiercely. “To scrub floors, eh! I ‘ave a right to live my own life. I love to dance!”

“I know you are French, of course, and you said you were an orphan; but you have not told me your name,” the priest conciliated.

She answered with proud mischievousness: “When I was leetle girl, my father called me ‘Leetle Spirit of France,’ because eet is the spirit of France to dance and sing-and to fight! So now I call my name, ‘Spirit of France!’ But you will say I am conceit-is it not?”

And she laughed and bowed and went out into the glaring morning.

Murphy sighed. A bit of human thistledown!

THE Mergui day dragged its festering way through the hours. Night came over the place with the stars peering dubiously through a velvet pall, with the bats and huge moths winging like evil souls visiting friends still incarnate, with phallic music throbbing feverishly.

Sikh policemen stalked here and there, daintily contemptuous of the filth of it all.

In a small, low-lit courtyard danced the Spirit of France. Avid eyes glowed at her beauty, wondering how long Mohamet Ali would continue to bestow upon her his quite unusual protection. There were no Burmese there; only Mohammedan traders, adventurers from Northern India, with their co-religionists of Mergui.

The music throbbed and the girl whirled to it, abandoned to a sheer ecstasy of physical rhythm, borne upon the swell of the poetry of herself.

But this night the mood of her audience was different. Its sensuous absorption of her was sporadic.

Piqued, she danced the more enticingly. The shadows of the place were gathered and twisted and festooned about her, but her audience was far from paying her its customary attention. Mohamet Ali and his nearest friends paid no attention at all. In vain she danced closer to him. If he looked at her at all it was an abstracted look that did not see her. Matters of great moment seemingly engaged him. He talked in undertones to his friends.

They smoked and drank their coffee, but the sensuality of their faces was sublimated to a fierce interest in the affair of their conversation.

The Spirit of France danced on, puzzled, irritated, vastly curious. About what thing were they talking?

Their hairy faces were grouped together. They had even laid aside their pipes… The Spirit of France changed the rhythm of her dancing. She moved like a leaf before vagrant puffs of wind… slowly. Pausing, and bending, and moving again. In sleepy cadence she danced before Mohamet Ali and his lieutenants…

Fragments of words came to her straining ears. But she could not linger there. Burning with curiosity, she dared not wait for more. She whirled into allegro again, and the music caught her mood and ran with her.

But again and again she floated like a lazy leaf before Mohamet Ali, and the fragments of their words wove themselves into a baffling tapestry-a picture blurred, and without outline, yet vividly colored with significance. Significance of what?

They were laughing now, those bearded men from the North. Grimacing, rather, much as tigers grimace.

The Spirit of France shivered. But she fought the fear in her gallant heart and killed it before it could grow to terror. And she danced on.

But what were they planning? It did not seem to concern herself; they had hardly glanced at her for an hour. The Mohammedans of lesser parts had been beckoned into conference. The girl felt a premonition of death touch her soul heavily. Neither was it a new thing they planned. She felt intuitively that these fierce men were discussing something done before that was to be done again. Their minds were running in old, well-loved grooves.

Mohamet Ali was looking at her! The Spirit of France danced the more merrily. He beckoned her towards him.

“Little sparrow,” he said, “dance no more this night.

Go and sleep.”

“And I will dance for you tomorrow night?”

The heavy lids of the man flickered. The eyes of his companions became blank-a blankness that seemed overdone.

“Yes, you will dance for me again,” said Mohamet gravely, “because you are under my protection. Sleep now. I will send for you when I want you. Here is your money.”

SHE was dismissed. And she was racked with a problem. There had been something terrible about those men. Never before had they been like that. But Mohamet had not been lying-he really meant she should dance for him again. But what were they planning? Pirates, robbers, fierce men of the North.

What did they plan? The few words she had gleaned made darkness-darkness fraught with something terrible. It was three hours past midnight.

As she began to undress she heard footsteps along the narrow street. There were two men. One spoke to the other as they passed her window. His voice was like the hiss of a snake.

“Let them cry for help! We have cut their talking wire!”

“And the girl?” muttered the other.

“Nay, Mohamet Ali says that he himself will slay the man that so much as touches a hair of her head!”

They passed on. But the Spirit of France knew!

Crouched on her bed, shivering, hardly breathing, she knew.

The disconnected words. The cruel grimaces.

Religious fanaticism, like burning oil, was to be poured upon the Christians. Four white men and ten loyal Sikhs in Mergui-and the telegraph wire to Rangoon had been cut!

But she would not be harmed. She had no doubts about that. Her safety was assured. Mohamet would rather die than break his word. And the man who touched her would surely die. Mohamet and his men had treated her decently. To do so was a queer freak in their cruel natures. But they had done so, and would continue to do so. And the white people-had reviled her. They had tried to make a prostitute of her. And the fat priestShe writhed on her bed at the memory of it-at the memory of all her treatment at the hands of the Christians. She fought the problem. If she stayed in her room she was safe. If she warned the unsuspecting white men her doom was certain. It would be better, far better to kill herself than to fall into Mohamet’s clutches again.

If she warned the white men!… And what would the white men do for her if she did warn them? Continue to revile her, to offer cheap pay for her lovely body? She smothered a bitter laugh. For there would be no white men left to revile her, and she would be worse than dead.

What chance had four Englishmen, with their ten fighting Sikhs, against five hundred Mohammedans, every one believing that Paradise waited the man who died fighting against an unbeliever?

She walked up and down the floor. This was agony.

It was horrible to think of those men being killed! But she was safe! And if she warned the Christians her fate would be more horrible than theirs! But-she might die!

The Spirit of France. Her little pet name of childhood. And the brave things her father had told her about the spirit of France-about the gallantry of that distant homeland she had never seen! The history of a nation seemed to be watching her…

How would France face such a problem?… How would the glorious national spirit of France respond to such a situation?…

She was walking stealthily to the door, cursing herself. Valuable time was wasted while she dwelt upon her own safety.

“I am a disgrace,” she muttered.

She crouched in the dark doorway. More men were coming along the street. She held her breath, her soul damning these men for detaining her from her duty.

They passed, and her light feet were flying as they had never flown before. Like a leaf still, but now like a leaf before a hurricane, the Spirit of France was running through the streets of Mergui.

A SCANDALIZED Father Murphy woke to her tearing away his mosquito curtains, to her fierce shaking of his arm.

“What! What are you doing here? Go away.

George!”

He called for his servant-converted, and baptized with that familiar name.

The Spirit of France sneered. But she continued to pull fiercely at the furious priest.

“Your servant!” she laughed shrilly. “He weel ‘ave run away-with all your other made-Christians!”

She pulled at the priest, swearing like a cat. And, somehow, she told her story.

“But such a thing cannot happen in Burma anymore!” the priest exclaimed.

“Come! Come and see, foolish man!” she stormed.

“They ‘ave cut the telegram!”

“Go away while I put on some clothes!”

“There is not time!”

“Wait outside! I will not run through the streets in pajamas to save my life!”

She waited, feverishly biting her fingernails. Then, the hour before the dawn saw a heavily panting Father Murphy doing his utmost to run with the Spirit of France through the streets of Mergui towards the fairly stout jail and the magistrate’s office.

“Hurree! Hurree!”

“The doctor!” panted the priest. “We must wake Doctor Pelham!”

They roused the doctor, a calm and cynical person.

“I’m safe,” he drawled. “I’m an infidel, and these chaps, you say, are out to kill the Christians!”

“Don’t jest at this terrible moment,” said Murphy severely.

“Not jestin’. How many times have you called me an infidel, Murphy? But I’m accustomed to being woke up at ghastly hours to go on unpleasant business. I’ll go with you.”

“Hurree!” cried the girl. “I ‘ear ‘em!”

“So do I,” replied the doctor. “But there is time to get my bag. Somebody will need surgical aid-most of us, probably.”

They reached the jail. In the yard were all the Sikhs.

They had just wakened the magistrate, reporting “some sort of disturbance.” The Spirit of France shrilled out the truth. The magistrate was skeptical. He could not know that this was the beginning of the riots of 1897.

“Telegraph Rangoon immediately,” the magistrate told his white assistant.

The Spirit of France laughed wildly. Then she sat down weakly.

“Wire’s down, sir!” reported the operator.

“Now you know I tell truth,” the Spirit of France cried indignantly. “They are going to keel every Christian in Mergui. I ‘ear them when I dance, but am not sure till they pass my window after cutting the telegram wire.”

“So,” said the young magistrate cheerfully. “Then we’ll have to fight it out alone. Have to anyway, because it would be days before Rangoon could get help to us.

But I would like to let the boss know who did this thing.” He turned to the Spirit of France, and bowed.

“I-I’m much obliged to you for what you have done.

And now you had better go.”

“Go!” She jumped to her feet. “M’sieu, many times ‘ave I fired a gun. I fight joust so well as onybody!”

“Don’t doubt it,” responded the magistrate. “It isn’t that. The point is that if you leave us now Mohamet Ali will not hurt you. He will just regard you as a frightened woman-liable to do anything. Run along, now. Cry, and say the noise has terrified you! Don’t suppose Mohamet knows you roused Father Murphy and the doctor; so, goodbye-and thank you!”

He held out his hand.

“I stay ‘ere and fight for you!” she answered firmly.

“Do you realize,” he said gently, “that there is little chance of any of us seeing the sunset-that we’ll do well to last until noon? Do you know that if you stay here and help us Mohamet will give orders to his men to take you alive? Do you realize what horrible things will be done to you then?”

She laughed.

“Do you realize that my father was a Frenchman? He call me for pet name ‘Little Spirit of France!’ Do you realize Spirit of France-what eet mean? Give me a gun, please!”

The magistrate beckoned to Sergeant Ruttan Singh.

“Give the mem sahib a gun, Sergeant.”

Then he turned to the Spirit of France. His voice shook somewhat. Trying to honor her, he spoke in such awful French that she was hard put to it not to laugh. But his words more than excused his accent.

He turned to the still heavily breathing priest.

“Padre, have you any scruples about pulling the trigger when the sight’s on another human being?”

“Not a one-in this case!” responded Father Murphy cheerfully and with perfect conviction.

“Good! We will divide. You will take three Sikhs and defend the northwest corner.”

“I was Irish before I was a priest. Give me a rifle!” answered Murphy.

“They are coming!” whispered the Spirit of France.

“We will be ready,” replied the magistrate quietly.

“Take the southeast corner, will you, Doctor? It’s liable to be hot there while it lasts, but you’re a first-class shot.”

“Very good, General,” drawled the doctor. “But won’t my friends laugh when they hear of this! Old Pelham, the infidel, killed in a religious war!”

The magistrate grinned.

“All right, then. I will command at the northeast, and Mason and Ruttan Singh shall have the southwest corner. Now we are ready. Good thing we have lots of ammunition. Here they come! Steady now! Don’t waste a shot! If they get over the wall, shoot; and keep on shooting as long as any of ‘em are in the yard! And if a head shows let it have it!” He walked across the room and whispered to the doctor, “If I go first, Pelham, and you see that we’re done in, and the girl is still alivekeep a bullet for her.”

The doctor nodded.

“And I’ll tell Ruttan Singh to tell his men to do the same,” the magistrate added. the magistrate added.

AS it grew light the raging hundreds beyond the circling wall began firing their first broadside-of verbal filth, that hymn of hate which has sounded down the years, that way of honoring God peculiar to religious enthusiasts. Some scattered shots were fired which did no damage, and Mohamet Ali could be heard shouting to his followers.

“We have days of time, oh men of the True God!

Haste not! Let the infidels shudder a while as death stares them in the eye. Let them die slowly!”

A mocking voice answered him.

“That hellcat pet of thine was seen warning the fat mullah of the infidels, oh Mohamet Ali!”

“So, the woman, eh! A snake in my bosom!”

Mohamet foamed down his beard, but realizing the probable effect on his followers, controlled himself “So it was written, then, that she should furnish amusement for the Faithful! See that she is not killed! Catch the cat alive and unhurt. She asked me if she should dance for me again! She shall! But it will be such a dance as she has never dreamed of!”

He followed with unprintable threats. He gesticulated and raved about the fun to follow the killing of the white men. But he showed a little too much of himself. The doctor took a snap shot at him, and Mohamet Ali lost the greater part of one of his ears.

“Damn rotten miss,” muttered that sarcastic medico.

“Must have lost my temper at hearing such an awful creature call me an infidel. Can’t shoot straight when my trigger hand itches to punch a chap’s nose.”

“Magistrate Sahib.” Ruttan Singh saluted. “It is sunrise and the flag has not been hoisted. Will the sahib give the order?”

“Rutah Singh, you know it is certain death to venture out of here into the yard?”

The big Sikh grinned.

“Death is at our elbows, sahib!”

“Yes, and there’s something about the old rag that makes it more enjoyable to fight when it’s flying; but we can’t afford to lose a man. Sorry, Ruttan Singh, but we must fight this fight with the flag lying on the table yonder.”

“Very good, sahib,” replied Ruttan Singh regretfully, saluting and returning to his post.

The sun rose, and the besieging horde became suddenly quiet. It turned as one man towards Mecca, and said its morning prayer.

“Can’t we rush ‘em?” muttered the priest to the magistrate.

“No! It’s tempting, but we’ve got to hold the fort!

Never can tell what may turn up, you know; but if we rushed out on those praying people we’d all be killed in short order!”

“Religion is a fearful and wonderful thing!” remarked the doctor.

“I wish they’d hurry,” whispered Mason.

“So do we all,” answered the doctor. “But let’s not show it.”

The praying ended.

“Ready, everybody!” shouted the magistrate.

Forgetting, of course, Mohamet Ali’s cautious suggestion that they let the Christians die slowly, and stimulated to paradisiacal ardor by their prayers, the followers of the prophet leaped shrieking at the wall, and went over it like a brown wave.

THEN for some minutes there was very warm work.

Rapid firing did not stem the wave. It broke it, but those unhit dashed with a truly terrible bravery at the bars of the jail windows. Shrieks, groans and monstrous blasphemies made a frightful din as they charged. The defenders were for the most part grimly silent. Only the doctor muttered encouragingly.

“A little lower, young lady. These birds are flying low.”

But the Spirit of France never heard him. Her mind was set on the fearful hairy faces against whom her soul raged, while a mockery of memory wondered why she had danced for them. She fought joyously. In her blood a long line of heroes surged. As she dashed the sweat from her eyes she saw with surprise that the yard was filled with dead men.

Such a stout defense was too much, even for such fanatics. The canny Mohamet saw that he was not getting value for his dead. He called his men.

“Lot of wounded out there,” remarked the doctor casually. “But I have two minor casualties to attend to in here. Ruttan Singh has a bullet in his shoulder, although he won’t admit it; and one of his men is hit. Ah! Hullo, General; close shave that!”

A bullet had grazed the magistrate’s forehead, and he was bleeding freely.

“You attend to the men! Give me ze plaster for ees head!”

And the Spirit of France began deftly to bind the magistrate’s wound.

“It may be inhuman,” said the young man, “but those chaps out there will have to attend to their own wounded, Doctor. Do you think I should let them carry them off under a flag of truce?”

The doctor gave him a searching look. The magistrate’s wound had shaken him badly.

“Take a big drink and don’t be an ass,” advised the doctor. “Good work, young lady. Now, before the charming enemy tries another charge, please help me bandage this fine sergeant of Sikhs.”

But Mohamet Ali had thought of a better and more entertaining plan of campaign than charging across that death-strewn yard. And the one redeeming feature of a Mergui morning, the brief breeze from the sea, would aid the new plan. Mohamet disclosed his new and brilliant plan to his lieutenants behind the wall. It was hailed with shrieks of approbation, delighted yells. It gratified the lust for cruelty of a mob maddened by primitive emotion. Hence there was a pause in the conflict.

“What now?” said the doctor. “Are the brutes saying their prayers again?”

“Not at this hour!” answered the priest.

“Well, I don’t pretend to be an authority,” retorted the doctor. “But I wish we could see over the jail wall!

They are up to some deviltry! And they could bring up a dozen batteries along the side of the hill while we couldn’t see them doing it!”

“There is no artillery they can get,” said the distressed magistrate.

“That’s right-there isn’t,” soothed the doctor.

The wait was nerve-racking-the wait and the impossibility of seeing what the enemy was doing. But the doctor had more than his suspicions. The yells of delight could mean only one thing. Yes, that would be it.

A whiff of sea breeze confirmed his deduction.

“But I won’t tell the others,” he muttered grimly.

“Bad enough when it comes, without having ‘em suffer the dread of waiting for it.”

The enemy had become silent. Then there was some chuckling borne on the breeze. It was followed by a great yell. The breeze became pungent.

“They are trying to smoke us out!” shouted the priest gamely.

“Yes,” drawled the doctor. “Better tie wet towels over our faces!”

He turned away. He was very pale now. Should he tell his friends? What a mercy they didn’t realize. But a short-lived mercy. Better let them know-they were brave men. He beckoned the priest and the magistrate.

“May as well tell you,” he whispered. “They are rounding up cases of oil from the Chinese stores. They will pour the oil over the wall, and the fires will do the rest! The delay is caused by the Chinks. They don’t want to supply oil for which they know they won’t be paidand they don’t want to be mixed up in their affair. The Mohamet Ali gang can run up country, having no property here to leave when our people get here-but the Chinks have stores they don’t want to lose!”

He whispered this very gently: “Hadn’t we better shoot the girl and then rush out on them and end it?” said the magistrate now, with full hold on himself, as calm as the doctor.

“But… who will… shoot her?” whispered the priest. No one answered.

“Oh, hell, let’s stick it out!” said the doctor. “The oil isn’t here yet!”

THE wounded Ruttan Singh reeled to the magistrate.

He saluted stiffly.

“Sahib, there is a steamer coming into the harbor!”

“Thank you, Sergeant!” the magistrate answered.

“Don’t tell anyone! It’s probably one of those native owned coast boats, Mohammedan crew. There is one due here today. And while they perhaps would not help the enemy, they certainly won’t help us. They couldn’t, anyhow. When they see the row, they will run out of the harbor without discharging the cargo!”

The smoke became worse. The defenders peered through it as best they could, guns ready, but the Mohammedans kept their heads behind the wall.

Coughing, the doctor turned to the window.

“Hullo!” he muttered. “That isn’t a native coast boat.

Damn the smoke-I can’t see!”

He wiped his eyes carefully, and looked again. The breeze blew more strongly. The doctor clenched his fists.

“No,” he said, and his voice sounded far away to him, and like an excited girl’s. “No.” His voice rose so that all heard him. “No! It’s a small cruiser-flying the American flag!”

The magistrate gasped. He clapped his hands excitedly.

“Of course!” he shouted. “I forgot. The Florida, going to Rangoon for the governor’s big tomashe! I had word she would call here. But-she’s two days ahead of time! Hurrah! We’re saved!”

“No chance,” snapped the doctor. “Look! The oil!”

“But the Americans will help us!” the magistrate screamed.

“How’s her captain to know we need help? Until it’s too late? He’ll find our ashes when he comes ashore!

They are starting the oil! The captain will see the fire and hear the fuss, but how will he know what’s going on? Unless he knows what’s happening- It isn’t his business to land on British territory to put out fires!”

“Oh, God,” groaned the priest, “is there no way we can let that American captain know we need help?”

“Of course there is!”

IT was the Spirit of France who shouted. It was the Spirit of France who seized the flag lying on the table and dashed for the jail door. Understanding, the men tried to stop her-to do the work themselves. But she eluded them.

She dashed out into the yard-a Joan of Arc, undaunted among the flames and smoke. Mohamet Ali saw her.

“Don’t shoot!” he screamed to his men. “Does she come to me for mercy? Don’t shoot her-my mercy waits!”

The girl turned and dashed for the flagpole. Swiftly ran the Spirit of France. Her nimble fingers were at the flag halyards. The smoke beat about her. The red flame of the oil creeping across the yard struck at her like tongues of snakes. But-a long moment-and she was hoisting the flag! Half mast and Union down-a signal of distress everywhere! And Mohamet understood. Of the volley that broke around the girl he fired the first shot.

She was hit. She was hit again. But she managed to stagger into the doctor’s arms, and he lifted her into the jail.

“Tear it down! Down with that signal!” screamed Mohamet Ali.

But his men could not obey! The flaming oil made a barrier of safety for the flag which even their fanaticism could not pass. And the flag stiffened in the morning breeze, and sent its message seaward.

The yelling besiegers redoubled their efforts. They were shooting the Chinese who wouldn’t give them oil.

Was there time? Surely, the American captain would understand! But was there time? If Mohamet Ali could get more oil quicklyA shell from the American cruiser shrieked over the jail. A messenger!

A messenger of comfort and hope to tell the defenders their signal had been seen-for of course a bombardment of the enemy would have been dangerous to the defenders of the jail.

“American bugles coming up the hill!”

“The girl?” asked the magistrate. “Is she dead?”

“No,” said the doctor gruffly. “No. Badly wounded, but we’ll pull her through!”

The Spirit of France opened her eyes.

“You won’t die,” said the doctor gently.

She smiled.

“The Spirit of France will never die!” she answered.

THE END