ortal."

"The necklace of Senusert the Second!" I exclaimed. "I know that lovely thing, Satan."

"I must have that necklace, James Kirkham!"

I looked at him, disconcerted. If this was what he thought an easy service, what would he consider a difficult one?

"It seems to me, Satan," I hazarded, "that you could hardly have picked an object less likely to be yielded up by any—persuasion. It is guarded day and night. It lies in a cabinet in the center of a comparatively small room, in fact, and designedly, in the most conspicuous part of that room —constantly under observation—"

"I must have it," he silenced me. "You shall get it for me. I answer now your second question. How? By obeying to the minute, to the second, without deviation, the instructions I am about to give you. Take your pencil, put down these o'clocks, fix them unalterably in your memory."

He waited until I had obeyed the first part of his command.

"You will leave here," he said, "at 10:30 tomorrow morning. Your journey will be so timed that you may drop out of the car and enter the museum at precisely one o'clock. You will be wearing a certain suit which your valet will give you. He will also pick out your overcoat, hat and other articles of dress. You must, as is the rule, check your coat at the cloak room.

"From there you must go straight to the Yunnan jades, the ostensible object of your visit. You may talk to whom you please, the more the better, in fact. But you must so manage that at precisely 1:45 you enter alone the north corridor of the Egyptian wing. You will interest yourself in its collections until 2:05, when you will enter, upon the minute, the room of the necklace. It has a guard for each of its two entrances. Do they know you?"

"I'm not sure," I answered. "Probably so. At any rate, they know of me."

"You will find an excuse to introduce yourself to one of the guards in the north corridor," he continued, "provided he does not know you by sight. You will do the same with one of the guards in the necklace room. You will then go to one of the four corners of that room, it does not matter which, and become absorbed in whatever is in the case before you. Your object will be to keep as far from you as possible either of the two attendants who, conceivably, might think it his duty to remain close to such," he raised his goblet to me, "a distinguished visitor.

"And, James Kirkham, at precisely 2:15 you will walk to the cabinet containing the necklace, open it with an instrument which will be provided for you, take out the necklace, drop it into the ingenious pocket which you will find in the inside left of your coat, close the case noiselessly and walk out."

I looked at him, incredulously.

"Did you say—walk out?" I asked.

"Walk out," he repeated.

"Carrying with me, I suppose," I suggested satirically, "the two guards."

"You will pay no attention to the guards," he said.

"No?" I questioned. "But they will certainly be paying attention to me, Satan!"

"Do not interrupt me again," he ordered, sternly enough. "You will do exactly as I am telling you. You will pay no attention to the guards. You will pay no attention to anything that may be happening around you. Remember, James Kirkham, this is vital. You will have but one thought —to open the case at exactly 2:15 and walk out of that room with Senusert's necklace in your possession. You will see nothing, hear nothing, do nothing but that. It will take you two minutes to reach the cloak room. You will go from there straight to the outer doors. As you pass through them you will step to the right, bend down and tie a shoe. You will then walk down the steps to the street, still giving no attention to whatever may be occurring around you. You will see at the curb a blue limousine whose chauffeur will be polishing the right-hand headlight.

"You will enter that car and give the person you find inside it the necklace. The time should then be 2:20. It must not be later. You will drive with that person for one hour. At 3:20 you will find the car close to the obelisk behind the museum. You will descend from it there, walk to the Avenue, take a taxi and return to the Discoverers' Club."

"The Discoverers' Club, you said?" I honestly thought in my astonishment that it had been a slip of his tongue.

"I repeat—the Discoverers' Club," he answered. "You will upon arriving there go straight to the desk and tell the clerk on duty that you have work to do that demands absolute concentration. You will instruct him not to disturb you with either telephone calls or visitors. You will say to him that it is more than likely reporters from the newspapers will try to get in touch with you. He will tell them that you left word that you would receive.them at eight o'clock. You will impress it upon him that the work which you have to do is most important and that you must not be disturbed. You will further instruct him to send up to your room at seven o'clock all the late editions and extra editions of the afternoon newspapers."

He paused.

"Is all clear?" he demanded.

"All except what I am to say to the reporters," I said.

"You will know that," he replied enigmatically, "after you have read the newspapers."

He sipped from his goblet, regarding me appraisingly.

"Repeat my instructions," he ordered.

Soberly, I did so.

"Good," he nodded. "You understand, of course, that this small adventure is not the one that prompted my decision to acquire you. That will be a real adventure. This is in the nature of a test. And you must pass it. For your own sake, James Kirkham—you must pass it."

His jewel-hard eyes held a snake-like glitter. Mad as the performance he had outlined seemed, he was in deadly earnest, no doubt about that. I did not answer him. He had left me nothing to say.

"And now," he touched a bell, "no more excitement for you tonight. I am solicitous for the welfare of my subjects, even those on—probation. Go to your room and sleep well."

A panel opened and Thomas stepped from the lift and stood waiting for me.

"Good night, Satan," I said.

"Good night," he answered, "and however good it be, may your night tomorrow be a better one."

It was close to eleven o'clock. The dinner had lasted longer than I had realized. I found everything comfortable in my bedroom, told Thomas so and dismissed him. In about half an hour and two brandies and sodas I turned out the lights and went to bed hoping for Barker.

Waiting wide-eyed in the darkness I went over my amazing instructions. I was, it was plain, part of a more or less intricate jig-saw puzzle. I saw myself as a number of pieces that I must fit in at the exact moments to click the whole design. Or better, I was a living chessman in one of those games in which Satan delighted. I must make my moves at the designated times. But what would his other chessmen be doing? And suppose one of them moved a bit too soon or too late? Then where would I be in this unknown game?

The picture of the glittering-eyed, bald devil on the malachite slabs behind the two thrones came to me—Satan's double directing the hands of the Fates. Oddly enough, it reassured me. The ethics of the matter did not bother me greatly. After all, the bulk of the treasures in any museum is loot; loot of graves, of tombs, of lost cities—and what is not, has been stolen, the most of it, time and again.

But aside from all that—there was nothing else for me to do except obey Satan. If I did not, well—that was an end to me. I had no doubt of it. And Satan would go on. As for betraying him—why, I did not even know the place of my polite imprisonment.

No, if it was in the cards that I might beat Satan I must play the game with him. There was no other way.

And what was any necklace beside—Eve!

I turned my mind to memorizing my instructions. It put me to sleep. Nor did Barker awaken me.





CHAPTER ELEVEN

Before the faithful Thomas could arrive next morning, I was up and in the bath. I accepted without question the suit he laid out for me. It was one I had never known I possessed. On the inner side of the coat, the left, was a wide pocket. It was deep and across the top ran a line of tiny, blunt-edged hooks. I examined them, carefully. The pendent fringes of Senusert's necklace were about six inches long. Its upper strand could be dropped upon the hooks and the whole ornament would then hang from them freely without causing any betraying protuberance through the cloth. It was, as Satan had indicated, ingeniously made for holding that particular treasure.

He handed me, too, a superbly fitting gray overcoat entirely new to me, but I was interested to note, with my name on the inside pocket, my own soft hat and Malacca cane.

And at last he gave me a curiously shaped little instrument of dull gray steel and—a wrist watch!

"I have a watch, Thomas," I said, studying the odd small instrument.

"Yes," he answered, "but this keeps the Master's time, sir."

"Oh, I see." Admiringly I reflected that Satan was taking no chances upon his pawns' timepieces; all, evidently, were synchronized; I liked that. "But this other affair. How does it work?"

"I meant to show you, sir."

He went to a wall and opened a closet. He carried out what appeared to be a section of a strong cabinet with a sash of glass covering it.

"Try to open it, sir," he said.

I tried to lift the top. It resisted all my efforts. He took the steel tool from me. It was shaped like a chisel, its edge razor sharp, its length about four inches, broadening abruptly from the edge to an inch and a half wide handle. In this handle was a screw.

He thrust the razor edge between the top sash and bottom support and rapidly turned the screw. The tool seemed to melt into the almost invisible crack. There was a muffled snap, and he lifted the lid. He handed me back the instrument, smiling. I saw that the edge had opened like a pair of jaws and that through them had been thrust another blade like a tongue. The jaws had been raised and the tongue pushed forward by incredibly powerful levers. The combination had snapped the lock as though it had been made of brittle wood.

"Very easy to manage, sir," said Thomas.

"Very," I replied, drily. And again I felt a wave of admiration for Satan.

I breakfasted in my room and, escorted by Thomas, entered the waiting car at exactly 10:30. The curtains were down and fastened. I thought of using that irresistible little instrument in my pocket. It was an impulse my better judgment warned me not to obey.

At precisely one o'clock I walked through the doors of the museum, keenly conscious both of the empty pocket designed to hold old Senusert's pectoral, and the tool that was to put it there.

I checked my overcoat and hat and cane, nodding to the attendant who had recognized me. I went straight to the jades and spent half an hour, looking them and some rare similar objects over in company with an assistant curator who had happened along. I rid myself of him and at 1:45 to the second strolled into the north corridor of the Egyptian wing. I did not have to introduce myself to the guards there. They knew me. By two o'clock I was close to the entrance of the necklace room.

At 2:05 by Satan's watch I entered it. If my heart was beating somewhat more quickly, I did not show it. I looked casually about the room. A guard stood close to the opposite entrance, the second guard halfway between me and the central case that was my goal. Both of them scanned me carefully. Neither of them knew me.

I walked over to the second guard, gave him my card and asked him a few questions about a collection of scarabs I knew were to be exhibited. I saw his official suspicion drop away from him as he read my name, and his replies were in the tone that he would have taken to an official of the museum. I walked over to the southeast comer of the room and apparently lost myself in a study of the amulets there. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the two guards meet, whisper and look at me respectfully. They separated and resumed their places.

Satan's watch showed 2:10. Five minutes to go!

Swift glances about the room revealed a dozen or more sightseers. There were three couples of manifest respectability, middle-aged outlanders. A girl who might have been an artist, a scholarly looking, white-haired man, a man with German professor written plain upon him, two well-dressed Englishmen discussing learnedly the mutations of the Tet hieroglyphic in well-bred, low, but carrying voices, and an untidy-looking woman who seemed to be uncertain what it was all about, and two or three others. The Englishmen and the girl were standing beside the cabinet that held the necklace. The others were scattered about the room.

Satan's watch registered 2:14.

There was a scurrying of feet in the North corridor. A woman screamed, terrifyingly. I heard a shout:

"Stop him! Stop him!"

A figure flashed by the door. A woman running. Close after her darted another, a man. I caught the glint of steel in his hand.

The watch marked 2:15. I walked over to the cabinet of the necklace, my right hand clutching the opening tool.

The turmoil in the corridor was growing louder. Again the woman screamed. The people in the room were rushing toward the door. The guard from the far entrance ran past me.

I stood before the cabinet. I thrust the razor edge of the little chisel between the flange of the top and the side. I turned the screw. There was a click, and the lock had snapped.

The screaming ended in a dreadful gasping wail. There was another rush of feet by the door. I heard an oath and the fall of a heavy body.

I withdrew my hand from the cabinet, the necklace in it. I dropped it into my pocket, running its upper strand over the line of tiny hooks.

I walked to the entrance through which I had come. One of the guards was lying upon the threshold. The German was bending over him. The girl I had taken for an artist was crouched beside him, hands over her eyes, crying hysterically. From the armor room across the corridor came an agonized shrieking—a man's voice this time.

I went on, between the two black sarcophagi at the entrance to the wing, out into the great hall where the Gobelin tapestries hang, and passed through the turnstile. The guard had his back turned, listening to the sounds which, both because of distance and the arrangement of rooms and corridors, were here barely audible.

I took my coat from the attendant, who, it was clear, had heard nothing.

Walking to the entrance, I stepped to the right as Satan had bade and, leaning over, fumbled with a shoe lace. Some one brushed past me, into the museum.

Straightening, I proceeded to the steps. Down on the sidewalk two men were fighting. A group had gathered around them, I saw a policeman running up. Those upon the steps beside myself were absorbed in watching the combatants.

I passed down. A dozen yards to my left was a blue limousine, the chauffeur paying no attention to the fighters, but polishing with a piece of chamois the right headlight of his car.

Strolling to it, I saw the chauffeur jump from his polishing, throw open the door and stand at attention beside it, his alert gaze upon me.

Satan's watch registered 2:19.

I stepped into the car. The curtains were drawn and it was dark. The door closed behind me and it was darker still.

The car started. Some one moved. Some one spoke softly, tremulously eager.

"Are you all right, Mr. Kirkham?"

Eve's voice!





CHAPTER TWELVE

I struck a match. Eve turned her head quickly away, but not before I had seen the tears in her eyes and how pale was her face.

"I'm quite all right, thank you," I said. "And everything, so far as I know, has gone exactly according to Satan's schedule. I know that I have. The necklace is in my pocket."

"I w-wasn't worrying about th-that," said Eve in a shaky little voice.

Her nerve was badly shattered, there was no mistaking that. Not for a moment did I think that any anxiety about me was the cause of it. That she had thoroughly understood Satan's sinister implications the night before was certain. Probably she had had forebodings. But now she knew.

Nevertheless, for one reason or another, she had felt anxiety for me. I moved closer.

"Satan made it perfectly clear to me that my continued health and getting the necklace were closely tied up together," I told her. "I am obeying his instructions to the letter, naturally. My next move is to give the necklace to you."

I slipped it off the hooks in my pocket.

"How do you turn on the lights?" I asked her. "I want you to be sure that what I give you is what our Master is expecting to get."

"D-don't turn them on," whispered Eve. "Give me tive— d-damned thing!"

I laughed. Sorry for her as I was, I couldn't help it. Her hands crept out and touched me. I caught them in mine and she did not withdraw them. And after a time she drew closer, pressing against me like a frightened child. She was crying, I knew, but I said nothing, only slipped an arm around her and let her cry. Yes, very much like a little frightened child was Eve, weeping there in the darkness and clutching my hands so tightly. And in my heart I cursed Satan in seven tongues, a cold, implacable hatred growing within me.

At last she gave a little laugh and moved away.

"Thank you, Mr. Kirkham," she said tranquilly. "You make always a most dependable audience."

"Miss Demerest," I told her bluntly, "I'm done with fencing. You're panic-stricken. You know why—and so do I."

"Why should I be frightened?" she asked.

"At the destiny Satan promised you," I answered. "You know what it is. If you have any doubts at all about it, let me tell you that he left me with none after you had gone from the room last night."

There was a silence, and then out of the darkness came her voice, small and despairing.

"He means to—take me! He will—take me! No matter what I do! I'd kill myself—but I can't! I can't! Oh, God, what can I do? Oh, God, who can help me!"

"I can make a damned good try at it," I told her, "if you'll only let me."

She did not answer immediately, sitting silently, fighting for self-control. Suddenly she snapped on the light and leaned toward me, tear-washed eyes searching mine, and voice firm as though she had come to some momentous decision.

"Tell me, Mr. Kirkham, what made you stop after the second footprint? You wanted to go on. Satan was urging you on. Why did you stop?"

"Because," I said, "I heard your voice telling me to go no farther."

She drew a sharp breath that was like a sob.

"Is that the truth, Mr. Kirkham?"

"It is God's own truth. It was as though you stood beside me, touching my shoulder and whispered to me to stop where I was. To climb no higher. Those devilish jewels on the crown and scepter were calling me out of a thousand mouths. But when I heard you—or thought I did—I heard them no longer."

"Oh!" Eve's eyes were rapt, her cheeks no longer pale, her exclamation a song.

"You did call!" I whispered.

"I watched you from back there beyond the light, with the—others," she said. "And when the second foot shone out on Satan's side I tried with all my strength of will to send my thought out to you, tried so desperately to warn you. Over and over I prayed as you stood there hesitating —'Oh, kind God, wherever you are, let him hear me! Please let him hear me, dear God!' and you did hear—"

She stopped and stared at me with widening eyes and swiftly the color deepened in her cheeks.

"And you knew it was my voice!" whispered Eve. "But you would not have heard, or, hearing, would not have heeded, unless—unless—"

"Unless?" I prompted.

"Unless there were something outside our two selves ready to help us," said Eve, a bit breathlessly.

She was blushing now up to her eyes; and I was quite sure that the reason she had given was not exactly that which caused the blush, not the one that had been on the tip of her tongue a moment before.

My own theory of what had happened was more materialistic. Something within me had sensitized my mind, not something without. I've never run across any particularly convincing evidence of disembodied energies acting as spiritual springs to soften the bumps in a bad piece of road on this earthly tour of ours. I much preferred a good tangible Providence like the little cockney burglar with his knowledge of Satan's trick walls. However, such things may be; and if it gave Eve any comfort to believe it, then let her. So I nodded solemnly and assured her it must be true.

"But," I asked, "is there no one among all Satan's people with whom you have come in contact who might be persuaded to work against him?"

"Not one," she said. "Consardine likes me—I think he would go far to protect me. But he is tied to Satan. So are all of them. Not only by fear—you saw what happened to Cartright—but by other reasons as well. Satan does pay highly, Mr. Kirkham. Not only in money, but in other things—he has dreadful power… unholy power. Oh, it's not just money that people want! Nor all that he gives them! You can't even dream as yet…" 

"Drugs?" I suggested, unimaginatively. "You're being stupid—deliberately," she said. "You know very well what Lucifer was supposed to be able to give. And he can… and he does… and even those who have lost to him still have the hope that they may do something that will give them another chance—or that his caprice will."

"Has such a thing ever happened?"

"Yes," she replied, "it has. But don't think it was because he was capable of mercy."

"You mean it was simply a play to hold them tighter by dangling the hope of freedom under their noses?"

"Yes," she said. "So their usefulness would not be weakened by despair."

"Miss Demerest," I asked her bluntly, "why should you think I am any different from these others?"

"You did not come to him of your own will," she said. "And you are no slave to his seven shining prints."

"I came pretty close to being so last night," I said, somewhat ruefully.

"They haven't—got you," she whispered. "Not like the others. And they won't. They mustn't get you, Mr. Kirkham."

"I don't intend to let them," I told her, grimly. She gave me her other hand at that. I glanced at my watch and jumped. "There's only a little more than ten minutes left to us," I said. "We've not even spoken of any plan. We've got to meet again—quickly. And we've got to keep right on hoodwinking Satan."

"That will be the great difficulty, of course," she nodded. "But I'll take care of that. And you understand now, don't you, that it was that necessity that made me treat you so outrageously?"

"Even before Satan's confession to me, I suspected some-thing of the sort," I grinned. "And of course you understand that my equally outrageously sounding proposition to him to turn you over to me was just a following of your lead."

"Better than that," she answered softly. "I knew what you really did mean."

Again I shot a glance at my watch. Six minutes—just about time.

"Look here," I said abruptly. "Answer me truly. When did it first occur to you that I might be the one to get you out of this trap?"

"Wh-when you kissed me," she whispered.

"And when did you get the idea of camouflaging what you thought about me?"

"R-right after you began kissing me."

"Eve," I said, "do you see any necessity for camouflage at this moment?"

"No," answered Eve, ingenuously. "Why?"

"This is why!" I dropped her hands, drew her to me and kissed her. And Eve put her arms around my neck tightly and kissed me quite as whole-heartedly. And that was that uniquely satisfactory that.

"It's a coincidence," I murmured against her ear a moment or two later, "but the exact second you had that idea was the precise second I decided to stick the game out."

"Oh—Jim!" sighed Eve. This time she kissed me.

The car was going more slowly. I cursed helplessly Satan's inflexible schedule.

"Eve," I said swiftly, and thrust the necklace of Senusert in her hands, "do you know a little Englishman named Barker? The electrician? He seems to know you."

"Yes," she answered, eyes wide with wonder. "I know him. But how—"

"Get in touch with him as soon as you can," I bade her, "I haven't time to explain. But Barker's to be trusted. Tell him he must get to me in my room the first night I return. By hook or crook, he's got to. You understand?"

She nodded, eyes wider.

"Arrange it," I said, "so that you'll be there that night, too."

"All right—Jim," said Eve.

I looked at my watch. I had one and three-quarters minutes more. We put it to excellent use.

The car stopped.

"Remember Barker," I whispered.

I opened the door and stepped out. It closed behind me and the car rolled off. The obelisk was near by. I walked around it obediently. As I started for Fifth Avenue I saw a man on another path about a hundred feet from me. His overcoat and hat were the same as mine. He swung a Malacca cane. A vast curiosity struck me? Was it my double? I started toward him, and halted. If I followed him I was disobeying Satan's instructions. Less than at any time did I want to do that. Reluctantly I turned and let him go.

I hailed a taxi and started to the Club. There was a rosy light outside the windows; I felt like singing; the walkers on the Avenue seemed to skip gaily. Eve had gone a bit to my head.

Suddenly the rosiness dimmed, the song died. Reason began to function. No doubt the absence of the necklace had been soon discovered. The doors of the museum would have been closed, and none allowed to depart without being searched. Perhaps the alarm had been sounded even as I had gone down the steps. It might be that I had been the only one who had gotten out.

If that were so, then, obviously, I must be suspected. I had deliberately drawn the attention of the guards to me, not only in the corridor, but in the treasure room. They would remember me. Why had I slipped away, ignoring the disturbances, if I had not had some strong reason? What reason could I have had except making away with the necklace?

Or supposing the theft had not been discovered until after the museum had been emptied. Still, I would find it difficult to explain why I had so rapidly made my exit; been the only one to take no interest in the happenings.

Had Satan missed a move in his complicated game, made an error in his deliberate calculations? Or had he coldly planned to have suspicion rest upon me? Whether he had or not, it must.

In no easy frame of mind I dismissed the taxi and entered the Club.

"Back early, Mr. Kirkham," smiled the clerk at the desk as he handed me my keys. Quite evidently he had no suspicion that the Kirkham who had gone out a few hours before and the one who had just returned were two distinct persons. My double, I reflected, must be good indeed.

"I'm going to be almighty busy for the next few hours," I told him. "I've some writing to do that will demand my entire concentration. There's nothing, absolutely nothing, of sufficient importance to break in on me. It's very likely that there will be telephone calls and visitors. Tell everybody that I'm out. If it's reporters, tell them I'll see them at eight o'clock. Slip copies of all the afternoon papers up to me at seven o'clock. Not before. Get me the latest editions. And no matter who calls, don't let me be bothered."

"I'll put an extra key in your box," he said. "It always looks better."

I went to my room. Locking the door, I made a minute inspection. On my desk was my three-day accumulation of mail. There were not many letters, none was important; all had been opened. Two were invitations to speak at dinners. Carbon copies of notes of regret were attached to them. My signature upon them was perfect. My double's powers of imitation were clearly not limited to voice and appearance. My reason for declining, I was much interested in learning, was that I would not be in the city on the dates of the dinners. So? Where the devil, I wondered, was I to be?

Beside my typewriter was a bulky document. Riffling its pages I discovered that it was a report upon the possibilities of certain mineralized lands in China. It was addressed to that same brilliant attorney who had toasted the "near-damned" at Satan's feast of the night before. It was corrected and annotated in my own handwriting. I had, of course, no knowledge of its purpose, but I was sure that the lawyer would be able to discuss it with easy familiarity if circumstances forced it to his attention. My confidence in Satan revived. I felt much more comfortable.

I looked through the pockets of my clothes, hanging in the closet. There was not even a scrap of paper.

Seven o'clock came, and with it a discreet knock at my door. It was Robert, the night clerk, with a bundle of the evening papers. His eyes were rather wide, and I could see questions sticking out all over him. Well, he couldn't be more curious about what I had to say regarding what was in those papers than I was to know what was in them. Nor would it do to let him suspect the extent of my ignorance.

So I took them from him with a discouragingly faraway air, and absent-mindedly closed the door in his face.

The headlines leaped out at me from the first I opened:

TRIPLE TRAGEDY AT THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM; PRICELESS RELIC MISSING
WOMAN MURDERED BEFORE EYES OF GUARDS AND
VISITORS, HER SLAYER KILLED BY ANOTHER WHO
COMMITS SUICIDE WHEN HE IS CAPTURED
EXPLORER KIRKHAM BALKS THIEVES
GIVES THE ALARM THAT CLOSES DOORS WHEN MYSTERIOUS SERIES OF FATAL STABBINGS THROWS TREASURE HOUSE INTO CHAOS—ROBBER HIDES OLD EGYPTIAN PRINCESS'S NECKLACE AND
MAKES ESCAPE——METROPOLITAN TO BE CLOSED
UNTIL SEARCH REVEALS IT.

In different words, all the rest of the headlines said about the same thing. I read the stories. Now and then I had the feeling that somebody was shooting a fine spray of ice-water between my shoulder blades. I quote from the most complete account.

An unknown woman was stabbed to death this afternoon in the Metropolitan Museum of Art before the eyes of half a dozen guards and some twenty or more visitors.
Her murderer tried to escape, but before he could get far was attacked by the companion of the woman, tripped, and a knife thrust through his heart.
The second slayer was caught after a chase. As he was being taken to the Curator's office to await the police, he collapsed. He died within a few seconds, the victim, apparently, of some swift poison which he had managed to slip into his mouth.
Both the murders and the suicide occurred close to the Egyptian room where are kept some of the choicest treasures of the museum. Taking advantage of the confusion, some one forced open the case containing the ancient necklace given to his daughter by the Pharaoh Senusert II. The necklace, a priceless relic of the past, and long the admiration of thousands of visitors, was taken. Its removal from the building was frustrated, however, by the alertness of Mr. James Kirkham, the noted explorer, who caused the doors to be locked before any one could leave the museum.
Search of everyone within the walls failed to reveal the stolen treasure. It is supposed that the thief became panic-stricken when he found that no one could get out, and tucked the necklace away in some hidden corner. Whether he did it thinking to return and recover it, or merely to get rid of it cannot, of course, be known. The museum will be closed to visitors until it is found, which, thanks to Mr. Kirkham's quick thinking, is only a matter of time.
Neither the museum authorities nor the police believe that there is any connection between the tragedy and the theft, the latter having obviously been a sudden temptation born from the opportunity-giving confusion.
Well, I reflected, I could tell them better than that. And if the museum remained closed until they found the necklace there, the door hinges would have a chance to become rusty.

But three lives the price of the bauble! I resumed the reading with cold horror at my heart.

It was shortly after two o'clock when one of the guards in the Egyptian wing first took special notice of the woman and the two men. They were talking together earnestly, discussing seemingly an exhibit of ushabtiu figures, toy-like wooden models from a tomb. The woman was about thirty, attractive, blonde and apparently English. The men were older and the guard took them to be Syrians. What had particularly drawn his attention to them was the curious pallor of their faces and the out-of-the-ordinary largeness of their eyes.
"Looked like dopes," he says, "and then again they didn't. Their faces weren't a sick white, more of a transparent. They didn't behave like dopes, either. They seemed to be talking sensible enough. Dressed top-notch, too."
He put them down finally as foreigners, and relaxed his attention. In a few minutes he noticed one of the men walking by him. It was later ascertained that this man had accompanied the woman when she entered the museum about 1:30. The cloak room attendant's attention had also been attracted by their pallor and their curious eyes. This man passed the entrance to the small room where the Senusert necklace was on display with other ancient jewels. He turned into the next corridor and disappeared.
The woman had continued talking to the second man, who, it appears, came into the Museum a little before two o'clock.
Suddenly the guard heard a scream. He swung around and saw the two struggling together, the woman trying to ward off blows from a long knife with which the man was stabbing at her. The guard, William Barton, shouted and ran for them. At the same time, visitors came running in from all directions, drawn by the cries.
They got in Barton's way, and he could not shoot for fear of hitting the woman or some of the excited spectators.
The whole affair was a matter of seconds. The knife plunged into the woman's throat!
The murderer, brandishing his red blade, burst through the horror-stricken onlookers and ran in the direction the first man had gone. As he was close to the door of the necklace room the people who had been in it came rushing out. With them was one of the two guards who keep watch there. They piled back, falling over each other in their haste to get out of reach of the knife. There was a panic-stricken scramble, which the second guard tried to quiet. In the meantime, the murderer had come face to face with the woman's companion at the turn of the next corridor. He struck at the latter and missed, and fled into the armor room with the other close behind him, a knife now in his own hand.
The pair gripped and fell, rolling over the tiled floor, and each striving to plunge his dagger into the other. Guards and visitors were piling in from every side, and the place was in pandemonium.
Then they saw the hand of the pursuer flash up and down. The under man shrieked—and the knife was buried in his heart!
The killer leaped to his feet, and began to run blindly. With the guards and others after him he darted out into the Egyptian wing corridor.
There they cornered him and brought him down.
He was beaten half into insensibility. As he was being carried to the Curator's office, his body went limp, and heavy. They put him down.
He was dead!
Either shock or some quick and powerful poison which he had taken when he had realized escape was impossible had killed him. The autopsy will decide which.
The whole tragedy had occurred in an almost incredibly brief time. Less than five minutes had elapsed between the first scream of the woman and the third death.
But it was time enough to give the necklace thief his opportunity.
Among the visitors at the museum was Mr. James Kirkham, the noted explorer, who recently brought to America the famous Yunnan jades which Mr. Rockbilt presented to the Metropolitan. Mr. Kirkham had been preparing an exhaustive report upon mining possibilities in China for a certain powerful American syndicate. He had been working on it for the last two days with intense concentration, and felt the need this afternoon of a little relaxation. He decided to spend a couple of hours at the museum.
He had strolled into the Egyptian room where the necklace was kept and was studying some amulets hi a case in a far corner when he heard the woman's scream. He saw those who were in the room running and followed them. He did not see the killings, but was a witness to the capture of the second man.
Preoccupied by the necessity of completing his report, and deciding that he had had enough "relaxation," Mr. Kirkham started to leave. He had just reached the doors of the museum when a suspicion seized him. Trained by the necessities of his occupation to keenest observation, he recalled that while he was hastening to the entrance of the necklace room, following the others, some one had brushed past him going into the room. He recalled also hearing immediately afterward a sharp click, like the forcing of a lock. With his attention focused upon what was going on without, the impressions then carried with them no significance.
But now it seemed that they might be important.
Mr. Kirkham turned back instantly, and ordered the alarm to be sounded which at once closes the doors of the Museum. As he is well known at the Metropolitan, he was as instantly obeyed.
And it was that trained observation of his and quick thinking which beyond all doubt foiled the thief of the necklace.
There followed an account of the discovery of the raped cabinet, the verification of the fact that no one had gone out of the museum either during or after the disturbances, the searching of everybody in the Curator's offices, and the careful shepherding of them out one by one so no one could stop and pick up the necklace from wherever it had been hidden. It interested me to find that I had demanded to be searched with the rest, despite the Curator's protests!

I came to my interview, substantially the same in all the papers.

"The truth is," so I was quoted as having said, "I feel a bit guilty that I did not at once realize the importance of those impressions and turn back into the room. I could probably have caught the thief red-handed. The fact is that my mind was about nine-tenths taken up with that infernal report which must be finished and mailed tonight. I have a vague idea that there were about a dozen people in the room, but not the slightest recollection of what they looked like.
"When I heard the woman scream, it was like being jarred out of sleep. My progress to the door was half-automatic. It was only when I was about to go out of the museum that memory began to function, and I recalled that furtive brushing past me of some one and the clicking noise.
"Then, of course, there was only one thing to be done. Make sure that nobody got out until it was determined whether or not anything had been stolen. The entrance guard deserves great credit for the promptness with which he sounded that alarm.
"I agree with the Curator that there can be no connection between the theft and the killings. How could there possibly be? Some one, and he can be no professional because any professional would know that there was no way of selling such a thing, had a sudden crazy impulse. His probable next thought was one of sincere repentance and an intense desire to get rid of the necklace instantly. The only problem is finding where he slipped it.
"You say it was a lucky thing for the museum that I turned back when I did," smiled Mr. Kirkham. "Well, I think it was a mighty lucky thing for me. I wouldn't like being in the position that having been the first one out of the museum—and maybe the only one, for the theft would soon have been discovered—would have put me."
At this the Curator, despite his anxiety, laughed heartily.
There was more to the story, much more; but that was all I was quoted as saying. The guard whom I had seen lying across the threshold told how he had been knocked down in the backward rush, and somebody "had kicked me in the ear, or something." The second guard had joined in the chase. One paper had a grisly "special" about the possibility of the thief having crawled into one of the suits of armor and dying within it, of thirst and hunger. The writer evidently thought of armor as an iron box in which one could hide like a closet.

All the accounts agreed that there was little chance of identifying the three dead. There was not a thing in their clothing or about them to give a single clew.

Well, there it all was. There was my alibi, complete. There were Satan's chessmen now all properly clicked into place, including the three who would never be moved again. It wasn't nice reading for me, not at all. Particularly did I wince at the Curator's amusement that my honesty could come into question.

But again my double had done a good job. It had been he, of course, who had slipped by me as I had bent to tie my shoe, smoothly taking up my trail without apparent break. And it had been he whom I had passed at the obelisk as I had slipped as smoothly back into his. No one had noticed me come down the museum's steps and enter the automobile that held Eve. The diversion on the sidewalk had made sure of that. There were no gaps in the alibi.

And the three dead people who had furnished the diversion in the museum that had enabled me to steal the necklace? Slaves of Satan's mysterious drug, the kehjt. The description of their strange eyes and their pallor proved that—if I had needed proof. Satan's slaves, playing faithfully the parts he had given them, in blissful confidence of a perpetual Paradise for their immediate reward.

I read the stories over again. At eight o'clock the reporters were sent up to my room. I restrained myself severely to the lines of my early interview. Their visit was largely perfunctory. After all, there was not much that I could say. I left the report that had "preoccupied" me so greatly lying where they could see it.

I went even further. Taking the hint from my double's remarks, I sealed and addressed it and asked one of them to drop it into the Post Office for me on his way back to his paper.

When they had gone, I had dinner sent up to my room.

But when I went to bed, hours later, it was with a cold little sick feeling at the pit of my stomach. More than at any time, I was inclined to credit Satan's version of his identity.

For the first time I was afraid of him.





CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Early next morning, the telephone rang, awakening me. The clerk at the desk was on the other end. There was an urgent message for me, and the bearer had instructions to wait until I had read it. I told him to send it up. It was a letter. I opened it and read:

"You have done well, James Kirkham. I am pleased with you. Visit your friends at the museum this afternoon. You will receive further instructions from me tomorrow. S."

I phoned the desk to dismiss the messenger, and to send me up breakfast and the morning papers.

It was a good story, and they had spread upon it. It surprised me, at first, that they had given so much more space to the theft of the necklace than they had to the murders and suicide. Then I realized, inasmuch as there was no suspicion of any connection between them, that this was sound newspaper judgment. After all, the lost lives were only three among millions. They had been—and they were not. There were many more.

But the necklace was unique.

That, I reflected, was undoubtedly the way Satan felt about it. Certainly those three lives had seemed to him nothing like so important as had the necklace. And quite plainly the newspapers agreed with him.

The three bodies remained in the morgue, unidentified. The museum, after an all-night search, had been unable to find the necklace. That was all there was new, if new it could be called.

I went downstairs, and carried on the inevitable discussions of the affair with various members of the Club. At one o'clock a messenger brought me another letter. The name on the envelope was that of an important legal firm of which the brilliant attorney was the head.

In it was a check for ten thousand dollars

The accompanying note complimented me upon my report. The check, it said, was for that and further possible services. For the latter only, of course, in the nature of a retainer. Other work which I might be asked to do would be paid for commensurately.

Again Satan had spoken the truth. He did pay well. But the "other work"?

At three o'clock I went to the museum. I had no difficulty in passing the barricade. In a fashion, I was a hero. The Curator was unhappy, but hopeful. I, when I departed, was much more unhappy than he, and, so far as the recovery of the necklace was concerned, with no hopes whatever. Obviously, I was at pains to conceal both of these states of mind from him.

The day went by without further word from Satan, or from any of his servitors. As the hours passed, I became more and more uneasy. Suppose that this one thing was all that he had wanted of me? That, now I had carried it out, I was to be cast aside! Hell might be his realm, but with Eve therein it was Paradise to me. I did not want his gates closed against me. Nor, cast out, could I storm them. I did not know where they were. What sleep I had that night was troubled indeed, swinging between bitter rage and a nightmarish sense of irretrievable loss.

When I opened Satan's letter next morning it was with the feeling that the angel with the flaming sword had stood aside from the barred doors of Eden and was beckoning me in.

"I am having a house party, and you will find congenial company. You can have your mail called for at the Club, daily. On second thought, I won't take no for an answer. A car will come for you at four o'clock. S."

On the surface, nothing but a cordial, insistent invitation to have a little holiday. Actually, a command. Even had I wanted to, I would have known better than to refuse.

My conscience abruptly ceased to trouble me. With a light heart I packed a traveling bag, gave my instructions at the desk, and waited impatiently for the hour to roll around. Precisely at four, a smart limousine stopped in front of the Club, as smartly a liveried chauffeur entered, saluted me respectfully and, in the manner of one who knew me well, took my bag and ushered me into the car.

Here I had immediate proof that I had passed my novitiate and had been accepted by Satan. The curtains were up. I was to be allowed to see where I was going.

We went up Fifth Avenue and turned to the Queensborough Bridge. We went over it into Long Island. In about forty minutes we had struck the entrance of the Vanderbilt Speedway. We did its forty-five miles to Lake Ronkonkoma in a flat fifty minutes. We turned north toward the Sound, passed through Smithtown and out the North Shore road, A little after six we swung toward the Sound again, and in a few minutes came to a narrow private road penetrating a thick growth of pine and oak. We took it. A couple of hundred yards farther on we paused at a cottage where my driver gave a slip of some sort to a man who had walked out to stop us. He carried a high-powered rifle, and was plainly a guard. A mile or so farther on we came to another cottage and the process was repeated.

The road began to skirt a strong high wall. I knew it was the one Barker had told me about, and I wondered how he had managed to evade these outer guards. At 6:30 we stopped at a pair of massive steel gates. At a signal from the chauffeur they opened. We rolled through, and they clanged behind us.

Under the high wall, on each side of the road, was a low, domed structure of heavy concrete. They were distinctly warlike defenses. They looked as though they might house machine guns. Several men came out of them, questioned my driver, inspected me through the windows, and waved us on.

My respect for Satan was steadily mounting.

Fifteen minutes more and we were at the doors of the chateau. It lay, I figured, about ten miles on the New York side of Port Jefferson, in the densely wooded section between it and Oyster Bay. It was built in a small valley, and probably little if any of it could be seen from the Sound which, I estimated, must be about three-quarters of a mile away. So extensive were the grounds through which we had come and so thickly wooded, that I doubted if the house could be seen even from the public roads.

Consardine welcomed me. I had the impression that he was curiously glad to see me. I had been shifted to new quarters, he told me, and he would stay with me, if I didn't mind, while I dressed for dinner. I told him that nothing would delight me more. I meant it. I liked Consardine.

The new quarters were fresh evidence of my promotion. There was a big bedroom, a bigger sitting-room and a bath. They were rather more than wonderfully furnished, and they had windows. I appreciated the subtlety of this assurance that I was no longer a prisoner. The efficient Thomas was awaiting me. He grinned openly at my bag. My clothes had been already laid on the bed. Consardine chatted as I bathed and dressed.

Satan, he said, would not be with us this night. He had ordered Consardine, however, to tell me that I had fulfilled his every expectation of me. Some time tomorrow he would have a talk with me. I would find an engaging lot of people at dinner. Afterwards there would be a bridge game which I could join or not, as I pleased. We did not discuss the affair of the necklace, although Thomas must have known all about it.

I wanted rather badly to ask if Eve would be at the table, but decided not to risk it. When we had reached the dining room, by three of the wall passages and two of the lifts, she was not there.

We were eighteen, all told. My companions were all that Consardine had promised, interesting, witty, entertaining. Among them a remarkably beautiful Polish woman, an Italian count and a Japanese baron, the three frequently featured in the news. Satan's webs spread wide.

It was an excellent dinner among excellent company—no need to go into detail. There was no discussion of our absent host, nor of our activities. Back of my mind throughout it was a strong impatience to get to my rooms and await Barker. Did he know of my change of quarters? Could he get to me? Was Eve in the chateau?

The dinner ended, and we passed into another room where were the bridge tables. There were enough partners for four, and two persons left over. It gave me my chance to avoid playing. Unfortunately for my plans, it gave Consardine the same opportunity. He suggested that he show me some of the wonders of the place. I could not refuse, of course.

We had looked over half a dozen rooms and galleries before I was able decently to plead weariness. Of what I saw I will not write, it is not essential. But the rareness and beauty of their contents stirred me profoundly. Satan, so Consardine told me, had an enormous suite in which he kept the treasures dearest to him. What I had seen had only been a fraction of what the chateau contained, he said.

We looked in on the bridge game on our way back. Others had drifted in during our absence, and several more tables were going.

At one of them, with Cobham for her partner, sat Eve.

She glanced up at me as I passed and nodded indifferently. Cobham got up and shook hands with great friendliness. It was plain that all his resentment was gone. While I was acknowledging introductions, Eve leaned back, humming. I recognized the air as one of the new jazzy songs:

"Meet me, darling, when the clocks are chiming twelve— At midnight, When the moonlight Makes our hearts bright—"

I needed no moonlight to make my own heart bright. It was a message. She had seen Barker.

After a moment or two, I pressed Consardine's foot. Eve was being deliberately impolite, yawning and riffling the cards impatiently. Cobham gave her an irritated glance.

"Well," she said, rudely, "are we playing bridge or aren't we? I'm serving notice—twelve o'clock sees me in bed."

Again I understood; she was underscoring the message.

I bade them good night, and turned away with Consardine. Another little group came in, and called to us to stay.

"Not tonight," I whispered to him. "I'm jumpy. Get me out."

He looked at Eve, and smiled faintly.

"Mr. Kirkham has work to do," he told them. "I'll be back in a few minutes."

He, took me to my rooms, showing me, as we went, how to manipulate the panels through which we passed and the lifts.

"In the event of your changing your mind," he said, "and wanting to come back."

"I won't," I told him. "I'll read a while and go to bed. Truth is, Consardine, I don't feel as though I could stand much of Miss Demerest tonight."

"I'm going to speak to Eve," he answered. "There's no reason for your being made uncomfortable."

"I wish you wouldn't," I said. "I'd rather handle the situation myself."

"Have it your own way," he replied, and went on to tell me that Thomas would awaken me in the morning. Satan would probably send a message by him. If I wanted the valet I could call him by the room 'phone. The 'phone gave me an impression of privacy that the bell had not. Thomas, I inferred, was no longer on duty as my guard. I was very glad of that.

Consardine bade me good night. At last I was alone.

I walked to the windows. They were not barred, but they were covered with a fine steel mesh quite as efficient. I turned out all the lights but one, and began to read. My watch showed 10:30.

It was very still. The time went slowly. It was close to eleven when there came a hoarse whisper from the bedroom:

" 'Ere I am, Cap'n, an' bloody glad to see you!"

Despite my absolute certainty that Barker would appear, my heart gave a great leap, and a load seemed to slip from me. I jumped into the bedroom and shook him by the shoulders.

"And, by God, Barker, but I'm glad to see you!" I said.

"Got your message," he grinned, his little eyes snapping. "Ain't no need to 'ide in 'ere, though. Nobody's goin' to come bargin' in on you now, they ain't. Ace 'igh, you are with Satan. A reg'ler one of 'em. Tysty bit o' work, Cap'n, you done. Tyke it from me what knows what good work is."

He took a cigar, lighted it and sat down, eyeing me admiringly.

"A tysty bit o' work," he repeated. "An' you with no trainin'l I couldn't 'ave done better myself."

I bowed, and pushed the decanter over to him.

"Not me," he waved back. "It's all right if you're goin' to sleep an' got a 'oliday. But old John Barleycorn ain't no use in our line o' work, sir."

"I'm just a beginner, Harry," I said apologetically, and set the decanter down untouched. He watched me approvingly.

"When Miss Demerest told me," he resumed, "you could fair 'ave wyved me over with a feather. Bring 'im to me, syes she, the minute you can. If I'm sleepin' or wykin' it mykes no difference, I want 'im she syes. Any hour it's syfe, she syes, but don't you let 'im run no risks. 'Ell on seein' you she is, sir."

"She just let me know she'd be back in her room by twelve," I said.

"All right, we'll be there," he nodded. "Got any plans? To squash 'im, I mean."

I hesitated. The thought in my mind was too nebulous as yet even to be called an idea. Certainly too flimsy to be brought out for inspection.

"No, Harry, I haven't," I answered him. "I don't know enough about the game. I've got to have a chance to look around. I know this though—I'm going to get Miss Demerest free of Satan or go out doing my damnedest."

He cocked an ear at me, like a startled terrier.

"And if that's the only way, I'll pick the time and place to make sure that I take Satan with me," I added.

He hitched his chair close up to mine.

"Cap'n Kirkham," he said earnestly, "that's the last plye to make. The very last plye, sir. I'd be 'ot for it if we could get anybody else to do it. An' if nobody knew we was behind it. But there ain't nobody 'ere who'd do for 'im, sir. Nobody. It's like pryin' for a mountain to fall on 'im, or the h'earth to swaller 'im, sir."

He paused for a moment.

"It's just this, Cap'n. If you do for 'im, or I do for 'im, we got to do for 'im knowin' there ain't no out for us. Not h'even a bloody 'arf-chance of us gettin' awye. The kehjt slyves'd see to that if nobody else did. What! Us tykin' their 'Eaven from 'em? Suicide it'll be, Cap'n, no less. An' if they suspect Miss Demerest knows anything about it— Gord, I 'ates to think of itl No, we got to find some other wye, Cap'n."

"I meant—only if there was no other way," I said. "And if it comes to that I don't expect you to figure in it. I'll go it alone."

"Now, Cap'n, now, Cap'n!" he said, short upper lip quivering over buck teeth and face contorted as though on the edge of tears. "You ain't got no call to talk like that, sir. I'm with you whatever you do. 'Ell, ain't we partners?"

"Sure we are, Harry," I answered quickly, honestly touched. "But when it comes to killing, well—I do my own. There's no reason why you should run any suicidal risks for us."

"Ow!" he snarled. "There ain't, ain't there? Ow, the 'ell there ain't 1 Maybe you think I'm 'avin' a 'appy 'oliday runnin' around these walls like a bloody rat? A decent, Gord-fearin' jail I wouldn't 'ave a word to sye against. But this—what is it? Just plain 'ell! An' you an' Miss Demerest like my own family! No reason, ain't there! Christ, don't talk like that, Cap'n!"

"There, there, Harry, I didn't mean it quite that way," I said, and patted his shoulder. "What I mean is to leave Satan to me, and, if the worst does come about, try to get Miss Demerest away."

"We stand together, Cap'n," he answered stubbornly. "If it comes to killin' I'll be in it"—he hesitated, then muttered, "but I wish to Gord I could be sure any honest bullet would do for 'im."

That touched me on the raw. It came too close to some damnably disconcerting doubts of my own.

"Snap out of it, Harry," I said sharply. "Why, the first thing you told me was that Satan's only a man like you and me. And that a bullet or a knife would do for him. Why the change of heart?"

"I was braggin'," he muttered. "I was talkin' loud to keep my pecker up. 'E ain't exactly what you'd call human, sir, now is he? I said 'e wasn't the devil. I never said 'e wasn't a devil. An'—an'—Oh, Gord, 'e's so bloody 'uge!" he ended helplessly.

My uneasiness increased. I had thought I had an anchor in Barker's lack of superstition about Satan. And now it apparently had him by the throat. I tried ridicule.

"Well, I'll be damned!" I sneered. "I thought you were hard-boiled, Harry. Satan tells you he comes from Hell. Sure, where else could he come from, you tell yourself. I suppose if somebody told you the story of Little Red Riding Hood you'd think every old woman with a shawl was a wolf. Go hide under the bed, little man."

He looked at me somberly.

" 'Ell's behind 'im," he said. "An' 'e's got all the passwords."

I began to get angry. One reason was that in arguing against him I had also to argue against myself. After all, he was only voicing my thoughts that I was reluctant to admit were my own.

"Well," I told him, "if he's made you think that, he's got you licked. You're no use to me, Harry. Go back to your walls and creep. Creep around them and stay alive. Devil or no devil, I fight him."

I had thought to prick him. To my surprise, he showed no resentment.

"An' devil or no devil, so do I," he said quietly. "Tryin' to pull my leg, ain't you, Cap'n? You don't 'ave to. I told you I was with you, and I am. I'm through bein' a rat in the walls. That's all, Cap'n Kirkham."

There was a curious dignity about Barker. I felt my face grow hot. I was ashamed of myself. After all, he was showing the highest kind of courage. And surely it was better for him to spread out his fears in front of me than to let them ride him in secret. I thrust my hand out to him.

"I'm damned sorry, Harry—" I began.

"No need to be, sir," he checked me. "Only there's lots about this plyce an'—'im—that you don't know about yet. I do, though. Maybe there wouldn't be no 'arm in showin' you a bit. Maybe you'd be seein' a wolf or two yourself. What time is it?"

There was a hint of grimness in his voice. I grinned to myself, well pleased. There was good hard metal in the little man. It was a challenge he was throwing down to me, of course. I looked at my watch.

"Twenty after eleven," I said. "So that you keep a certain appointment at midnight—lead on, MacDuff."

"Your shirt," he said, "would look like a light'ouse in the dark. Put on another suit."

I changed rapidly into the most unobtrusive of the wardrobe's contents.

"Got a gun?" he asked.

I nodded, pointing to my left armpit. I had replenished my personal arsenal, of which Consardine had deprived me, while at the Club.

"Throw it in a drawer," he bade me, surprisingly.

"What's the idea?" I asked.

"No good," he said, "you might be tempted to use it, Cap'n."

"Well, for God's sake," I said, "if I was, there would be good reason."

"Might just as well carry along an alarm clock," said Barker. "Do you just as much good, Or 'arm. Mostly 'arm. We don't exactly want no h'advertisin' on this trip, Cap'n."

My respect for Harry took an abrupt upward swing. I dropped my gun into the casual mouth of a nearby vase. I unslung my armpit holster, and poked it under a pillow.

"Get thee behind me, Temptation," I said. "And now what?"

He dipped into a pocket.

"Sneakers," said Barker, and handed me a pair of thick rubber soles. I slipped them over my shoes. He fumbled in another pocket.

"Knucks," he dropped a beautiful pair of brass knuckles in my hand. I thrust my fingers through them.

"Good," said Barker. "They ain't got the range of a gun, but if we 'ave to get violent we'll 'ave to see it's quiet like. Get up close an' 'it 'ard an' quick."

"Let's go," I said.

He snapped off the lights in the outer room. He returned, moving with absolute silence, and took my hand. He led me to the bedroom wall.

"Put your 'and on my shoulder, an' step right be'ind me," he ordered. I had heard no sound of a panel, and could distinguish no opening in the blackness. But a panel had opened, for I walked through what a moment before had been solid wall. He halted, no doubt closing the aperture. He swung off at a right-angle, I following. I had counted fify paces before he stopped again. The corridor was a long one. He flashed a light, brief as the blink of a firefly. Before me was one of the little lifts. He pressed my arm, and guided me in. The lift began to drop. He drew a faint sigh, as of relief.

"There was dynger along there," he whispered. "Now it'll be fair clear goin'l"

The descent of the elevator seemed very slow. When it stopped, I was sure that we must be well below the floor of the great hall, somewhere down among the foundations.

"What we're goin' into is one of 'is private wyes," again he whispered. "I don't think even Consardine knows it. An' we won't meet Satan on it. 'Cause why? I'm goin' to show you."

We slipped out of the lift, and crossed what was apparently a ten-foot wide corridor, black as a windowless dungeon. We passed, I conjectured, through its opposite wall, and along another passage of eighteen short paces. Here Barker paused, listening.

Then in front of me a hair line of faint light appeared. Slowly, ever so slowly, it widened. Barker's head became silhouetted against it. Cautiously he advanced, peering out. Then he nodded, reassuringly. He moved forward.

We were in a dimy lighted, narrow corridor. It was hardly wide enough for two men to walk side by side. It was lined and paved with some polished black stone into which the light, from some hidden source, seemed to sink and drown. We were at one end of it. The floor fell in a gradual ramp for a hundred yards or more, and there the way either ceased or curved, the light was so faint and the effect of the polished stone so confusing I could not tell which.

"Looks like a h'alley into 'Ell, don't it?" muttered Harry. "Well, in a minute or two try to sye it ain't."

He set grimly forth down it, I at his heels. We came to the part that had perplexed me, and I saw that it was a curve, a sharp one. The curve was unlighted, its darkness relieved only by faint reflections from behind. I could not see its end. We moved on into the thickening gloom. The floor had become level.

Suddenly Barker halted, his mouth close to my ear.

"Lay down. Not a sound now when you look in. On your life! Don't 'ardly breathel"

I looked through the crack. I felt a cold prickling along my spine and in the roots of my hair.

A little below me and not more than fifty feet away sat Satan. And he was opening the gates of his Black Paradise to the dying souls of his kehjt slaves!

The meaning of the scene struck clear with my first glimpse of it. Satan was leaning forward from a massive throne of heavy black stone cushioned in scarlet and standing on a low broad dais. His robes were scarlet. At his side squatted the ape-faced monstrosity of an executioner, Sanchal. At his left hand stood two figures with veiled faces. One of them held a deep ewer, and the other a golden goblet.

At Satan's feet was a woman, rising from her knees. She was not old, fair haired, and must once have been very beautiful. Her body, seen through the one white robe that was her only covering, was still so. Her wide eyes were fixed with a dreadful avidness upon another golden goblet in Satan's hand. Her mouth was half open, her lips drawn tight against her teeth. Her body quivered and strained as though she were about to leap upon him.

The executioner whirred the loop of his cord, and grinned. She shrank back. Satan lifted the goblet high. His voice rolled out, sonorous and toneless.

"You, woman who was Greta von Bohnheim, who am I?"

She answered as tonelessly.

"You are Satan."

"And what am I, Satan?"

She replied:

"You are my God!"

I felt Barker shudder. Well, I was doing a little shivering myself. The infernal litany went on.

"You shall have no God but me!"

"I have no God but you, Satan!"

"What is it, woman, that is your desire?"

Her hands were clenched, and she drew them up to her heart. Her voice was tremulous, and so low that barely could I hear it.

"A man and a child who are dead!"

"Through me they shall live again for you! Drink!"

There was faint mockery in his voice, and derision in his eyes, as he handed the goblet to the woman. She clutched it in both hands, and drained it. She bowed low, and walked away. She passed out of the narrow range of my vision, stepping ever more firmly, face rapt, lips moving as though she talked with one unseen who walked beside her.

Again I felt the cold creep down my back. In what I had beheld there had been something diabolic, something that truly savored of the Prince of the Damned. It betrayed itself in Satan's cold arrogance and pride during the blasphemous litany. It was in his face, his glittering eyes, and in the poise of his huge body. Something truly of Hell that possessed him, emanated from him, hovered around him. As though, as once before I have tried to describe it, as though he were a mechanism of flesh and blood in which a demon had housed itself.

My gaze followed the woman until I could see her no more. The chamber was immense. What I could see of it through the crack must have been less than a third of it. The walls were of rose marble, without hangings or ornamentation of any kind. There were pierced openings like the mouths of deep niches over which silvery curtains fell. There was a great fountain that sent up tinkling jets of water out of a blood-red bowl. Couches of the rosy stone were scattered about. They were richly covered and on them lay, as though sleeping, men and women. There must have been dozens of these, for there were a score of them within my limited vision alone. I could not see the roof.

I thought that these curtained apertures might be cubicles or cells in which the slaves dwelt.

A gong sounded. The curtains were plucked aside. In each of the openings stood a slave, their eyes fastened upon Satan with a horried eagerness. I shivered. It was like an eruption of the damned.

Satan beckoned. A man stepped forward toward the dais. I took him for an American, a Westerner. He was tall and lanky, and in his gait something of the rocking habit of the range rider. His face was the hawk-like type that the mountain country breeds, and, curiously, it made the peculiar pallor and dilated eyes mask-like and grotesque. His mouth was thin and bitter.

Like the woman, he prostrated himself before Satan. The veiled figure with the goblet held it out to the ewer bearer who poured into it a green liquid. The cup bearer handed the goblet to Satan.

"Rise," he commanded. The suppliant sprang to his feet, burning gaze upon the cup. The unholy ritual began againl

"You, man who was Robert Taylor, who am I?"

"You are Satan!"

"And what am I, Satan?" Again the blasphemous avowal: "You are my God!"

"You shall have no God but me!"

"I have no God but you, Satan!"

"What is it, man, that is your desire?" The slave straightened, his voice lost its lifelessness. His face grew cruel as that of the executioner's own.

"To kill the man I hate… to find him… to ruin him… to kill him slowly in many ways!"

"As you killed him once—too swiftly," said Satan maliciously, and then, again tonelessly:

"Through me you shall find him whom you hate, and slay him as you desire! Drink!"

He drank and passed. Twice more I heard the clang of the summoning gong, and twice I watched the white faces of these doomed ones with their avid eyes appear through the silver curtains and disappear behind them. I heard one man ask for dominance over a kingdom of beasts. Another for a Paradise of women.

And Satan promised, and gave them the green draught. The kehjt!

The subtle, devilish drug that gave to its drinkers the illusion of fulfilled desire. That turned the mind upon itself, to eat itself. And that by some hellish alchemy dissolved the very soul.

I stared on, fascinated, Eve forgotten. But if I had forgotten, Barker had not. The crack through which I was looking closed. He touched me, and we arose. Soundlessly we slipped up the ramp through the dim, black passage. I felt a bit sick.

It had been no nice picture, that of Satan wallowing in the worship of those slaves of his, dealing them out love and hate, dark power and lust, sardonically and impartially giving each what he or she most desired.

Illusions, yes. But more real than life to the drinkers when the drug had them. But, God, their awakening!

And after that awakening the burning craving to escape reality! To return to that place of illusion to which the kehjt was the only keyl

No wonder that the three of the museum affair had gone to their deaths with such blind obedience!

And, if Satan was not what he pretended, very surely he was not disgracing that power whose name he had taken.

I had paid little attention to where we were going, blindly following Barker's lead.

"Well," he whispered, suddenly, "was I right? Wasn't it a h'alley into 'Ell? What price Satan now, Cap'n?"

I came back to myself with nerves jumping.

"A drug dealer," I answered him. "A dope den à la Ritz. That's all. I've seen opium joints in China that would make it look like a trench dugout. And the pipe hitters there would cut your throat for a pill just as quick as these would for Satan."

Neither of which assertions was at all true, but it gave me comfort to say them.

"Yes?" he said, cynically. "Well, it's a good wye to think. I 'opes you keep on thinkin' that wye, Cap'n."

I hoped that I might begin to think so.

"Soft along 'ere," he whispered. We were moving like ghosts in the darkness of a passage. I had an indistinct memory of having entered several lifts. Of even the probable location of my room I had not the slightest idea.

" 'Ere we are," he muttered, and stood for an instant listening. I thrust my hand into the pocket where I had slipped my wrist watch, that its illuminated dial might not betray us. I took a swift look. It was almost half past midnight.

Barker drew me forward. There was a faint scent in the air, a delicate fragrance.

Eve's! We were in her room.





CHAPTER FOURTEEN

"Beat her to it," I whispered incautiously.

There was a rustle, as of some one sitting hastily up in bed.

"Who's there?" came Eve's voice, softly. "I've got my finger on the alarm!"

"It's me—Jim," I answered, as softly as she, but mighty hastily.

"Jim!" A subdued light gleamed suddenly. "Where have you been? I've been worried to death about you!"

Eve was leaning forward from her pillows, brown eyes wide and luminous, silken mop of hair a bit tousled. She looked like a wakeful little girl who had been exasperatedly pulling it. She was, also, the prettiest thing I had ever seen. Every time I looked at Eve she seemed prettier. I wondered where she was going to stop. She had on some sort of a lacy pink negligee. All the rest of my life, I knew, my heart would beat faster whenever I saw a lacy pink negligee, even when it was only in a shop window.

She slipped out of bed, ran straight to me, and kissed me. It was so pleasant that I entirely forgot everything else.

I became aware of a queer noise behind me. Harry was teetering from side to side^ his hands clasped, his eyes half closed and moist, his face ecstatic, and he was crooning like an affectionate parrot. He was a sentimental little burglar, Harry.

Eve looked, and laughed.

"If you want to say 'Bless you, my children,' go ahead, Harry," she said mischievously.

He blinked, snapped out of it, and grinned at her.

"Made me think of me an' Maggie," he said. "Just like when we was courtin'. Fair warmed my 'eart, it did."

"Well," I said, "I move that this meeting comes to order. We've got a lot of ground to cover, and not much time to do it. What's the chance of us being interrupted, Eve?"

"Hardly any," she answered. "Frankly, everybody does as they like about having room parties. So everybody is extraordinarily discreet about visiting without an invitation. On the other hand, Jim, you're the one person it wouldn't do to have found here. Our aversion to each other has been so marked, darling, you know. Satan would be bound to hear about it. And the second he did—"

She didn't have to finish the sentence. I had a very clear idea of what Satan would do.

"It would be hard to explain Barker, too," she added.

"How about it, Harry?" I asked him. "Likely to be any calls for you? Any awkward searching parties?"

"Not unless something big goes wrong," he said. "If they look for me in my room, I can say I was workin' somewhere else. Satan won't be 'untin' me, that's certain."

"Well," I said, "we have to take some chances. But we'll talk low and in the dark."

Eve stepped over, and put out the lamp. She drew aside the heavy curtains from one of the windows. A faint light flickered in from the moon hidden behind a hazy sky. Barker and I moved the chaise longue to a shadowed corner. The three of us sat down upon it.

We talked. Not the slightest use of setting down a word of it. We got nowhere. A few schemes gleamed brightly for an instant, and then went glimmering like will-o'-the-wisps. The spell of what I had beheld in Satan's unholy shrine was heavy on me, try as I would to throw it off. I had to fight a sense of futility. We were like three flies in a web of the Temple of the Footsteps. If we got out of one, it was only to find ourselves in another. But steadily Eve's warm, soft body pressing against mine, her courage, her trust, armed me against the devastating sapping of my confidence. There was a way. There must be a way.

More than an hour had passed, and we had found not a solitary clew to it.

And Barker had been growing fidgety, nervously abstracted.

"What's the matter, Harry?" I asked him at last.

"I'm h'uneasy, sir," he said. "I don't know why. But I 'ave a feelin' somethin's wrong somewhere."

It struck me as funny.

"You're devilish well right there is," I couldn't help chuckling. "It's what we've been giving all this time trying to right."

"No," he said soberly. "I'm bl—I'm h'unusually h'uneasy. An' I'm never that wye h'unless somethin's bl—'orrible wrong. Cap'n, I think we'd better call it a night an' get back."

I hesitated. As I say, we had gotten nowhere. At any moment one of us might get a flash that would open up a way out. Truth was, of course, I didn't want to leave Eve. But there was no denying the little man's distress. And if he should go and not be able to return—well, then I would be in a pretty fix. I hadn't the slightest idea of where my room was, or how to get to it.

"We've decided a lot of things won't do," said Eve. "It sounds Pollyanna-ish, I know, but it really is some progress. The day may bring some new ideas. We'll meet again tonight."

"All right," I said. "We'll go, Harry."

By the involuntary breath of relief he drew, I realized how troubled he was. Eve slipped to the windows, and let drop the curtains. The room resumed its original darkness. I felt her hand touch mine, and then her arms were around my neck.

"It's going to seem a long, long time till tonight, Jim, darling," whispered Eve.

" 'Urry!" came Harry's whisper. " 'Urry up, Cap'n!"

I cautiously began to make my way toward where he stood by the wall.

"Gord!" I heard him gasp.

The word was thick with terror. I leaped forward.

The ray of the flashlight struck Barker full in the face. A hand shot out with the quickness of a snake, and caught his throat. I saw his face distorted with agony as his own two hands flew up to break that merciless grip.

The light struck me in the eyes, dazzling me. I ducked, and dived in. Before I could touch whoever it was that held it, the flash dropped to the rug and Barker's body hit me like a bag of sand hurled by an elephant. I staggered back with a grunt. The lights in the room flashed up.

Just in front of me, menacing me with his automatic, stood Consardine!

And Consardine's eyes were cold and deadly. There was death in them. They flashed from me to Eve. His face softened, as though with relief from some fear. Swiftly it gave way to bewilderment, incredulity. It grew hard and deadly again. The muzzle of the gun pointing at me never wavered. At my feet Harry gasped, and staggered up dizzily. I put an arm out and steadied him.

"What are these men doing here, Eve?"

Consardine's voice was still and flat, as though he were holding himself in check by enormous effort. I had read the thought behind those swiftly changing expressions. First, that we had crept into Eve's room for some sinister purpose. Then—suspicion of Eve herself. I must wipe that out. Keep Eve out of it. Play on Consardine's first card. I answered before she could speak.

"You're rather—impetuous, Consardine," I said in a voice as hard as his own. "But your gun makes that safe, I suppose, when you let loose on an unarmed man. I was restless, and decided to go back to the bridge game. I got lost in your cursed rabbit warren. I ran across this man here who told me that he was working around the place. I asked him to guide me back to my room. By some damned irony, he managed to make the mistake of all mistakes of getting me into Miss Demerest's. Believe me, I was quite as anxious to get away as she was for me to go. Miss Demerest, I think you will confirm what I say?"

I turned to her. It was an open lead, and it sounded plausible enough. Consardine paid no attention to me whatever.

"I asked you, Eve, what these men are doing here?" he repeated.

Eve looked at him steadily for a moment, and then walked over and stood beside me.

"Dr. Consardine," she said, "Mr. Kirkham is lying like a gentleman, to save me. The truth is that I asked him to come and see me. And I asked Barker to guide him to me. Both of them are entirely innocent of anything except courteously doing as I asked. The whole responsibility is mine."

The veins suddenly stood out on Consardine's temples, and the gun in his hand wavered. His face flushed. The cold fury had given way to hot anger. He might be just as dangerous, but I had a flash that Eve knew what she was doing, that her instinct had been truer than mine.

"So!" said Consardine thickly. "You thought you could make a fool out of me! Dupe me! I don't enjoy being fooled, and I don't enjoy being a dupe. How long have you two known each other?"

"We never set eyes on each other until you brought us together," said Eve.

"And why did you send for him?"

"To get me away from Satan," answered Eve, steadily. "What else?"

He regarded her with smoldering eyes.

"And why did you think he could do that?" he asked her.

"Because I love him! And because he loves mel" said Eve quietly.

He stared at us. Then abruptly all anger fled, his eyes softened.

"Good God," said Consardine. "You Babes in the Wood!"

Eve put her hand out to him. He took it, patting it gently. He looked us over carefully again, as though we were some new and puzzling specimens. He turned out all the lights except the shaded one beside Eve's bed, strode over to the window, and peeped out the curtains. He came back to us.

"Let's talk this over," he said. "Barker, I'm sorry I choked you. Kirkham, I'm sorry I bowled you over. I'm sorry, too, that I misjudged you. And glad I did. Eve, I wasn't spying on you from out there. You were on my mind. You have been, child, for some time. I could see how restless and disturbed you were at the game. I thought—it was something else. You were on my mind, I say. I thought that perhaps you had not gone to bed. And that a talk with me, who am more than old enough to be your father, might help. There were—some things I had to say. I stood out there for minutes, hesitating. I thought I might slip the panel a mite and see if you were up—or awake. I thought you might be crying. And just as I was about to do it, it opened and I heard Barker curse. Then the rest happened. That's all."

I gave him my hand. Barker grinned widely, and saluted.

"Had I better be goin', sir?" he asked.

"Not yet," said Consardine. "Kirkham, how long have you known Barker?"

" 'E syved my life, 'e did," broke in Harry. " 'E pulled me out o' 'Ell. An' while we're all tellin' the truth, Dr. Consardine, I'll sye I'm fair set on doin' the syme by 'im an' 'is young lydy."

I gave Consardine a brief account of my acquaintance with Barker. He nodded, approvingly.

"First," he said, "it will be well to clarify the situation by stating my own position. I am Satan's servant. I am bound by a certain oath to him. I took that oath with open eyes, fully realizing all that it entailed. I came to him voluntarily, not like you, Kirkham. I recognize that your oath was under duress, and that therefore you are entitled to act in ways that I am not. I do not break my voluntary oath nor my word. Besides that I am convinced that if I did I would not live long. I have a foolish partiality for living. I could cheat Satan of his pleasure in my torture, but—I do not believe in any existence beyond the grave, and I find life, at times, vastly interesting. Furthermore, I have certain standards of living, appetites, desires and likings which my contact with Satan insures of satisfaction. Away from him they certainly would not be satisfied. Also I was an outlaw when I came to him. Outlaw I am, but hunted outlaw I would be without his protection. First and last—there is my oath.

"Let it be understood, then, that any assistance that I can promise you will be largely negative. It will consist of warning you of pitfalls to avoid, and of closing my eyes and ears to what I may see or hear. Like this affair tonight, for instance."

"It is all we could ask, sir," I said. "And a great deal more than I had any right to expect."

"And now I say to you, Kirkham," he went on, "that I think you have little chance to win against Satan. I think that the road you have picked has death at its end. I tell you so because I know you have courage, and you should be told what is in my mind. And I say it before you, Eve, because you too have courage. And you must consider, child, whether you should allow your lover to take this almost certain risk of death, or whether you should do— something else."

I looked into Eve's face. Her mouth was quivering, and her eyes were tortured.

"What—what is the something else, Dr. Consardine?" she whispered.

"Become Mme. Satan, I supposel" I answered for him. "Not while I'm alive."

"That," he acquiesced quietly, "of course. But it is not what I had in mind—" He hesitated, shot a glance at Harry and quickly switched to another thought, or back, father, to his old one.

"Understand," he said, "I want you to win, Kirkham. In any way that does not break my oath to Satan, or threaten my prejudice for remaining alive, I will help you. At least —I will keep my hands off. But realize this—I am Satan's servant. If he orders me to take you, I shall take you. If he orders me to kill you, I shall—kill you."

"If Jim dies, I die. If you kill him, you kill me," said Eve tranquilly. She meant it. He knew she meant it, and he winced.

"Nevertheless, child, I would do it," he told her. And I knew he meant that. So did Eve.

"You—you started to—you were about to speak of another way—" she faltered.

"I do not want you to tell me your plans, Kirkham," he interrupted her, quickly. "Only this. Do any of them involve your trying to kill Satan?"

I hesitated. It was a dangerous question to answer. After all, Consardine had warned me he could be trusted only so far. What did he consider the limits of his oath?

"I perceive they do," he had interpreted my silence. "Well, it is the one thing you must not attempt. It is the one thing that is impossible. You may think you can kill him while you and he are alone. Kirkham, I tell you Satan is never alone. Always there are guards hidden about—in the walls, in secret places. Before you could fire, they would have you winged. And there is Satan's abnormal quickness of mind. He would perceive your thought before it could be transformed into action. If you tried it while others were about, they would have you down before you could fire a second shot—assuming that you managed to get in a first one. And Satan has an unhuman vitality. I do not believe one bullet or two could kill him any more than they could an elephant. The real point is, however, that you would never get the chance."

Well, Consardine did not know everything—that was clear. With that stone in the wall of the slavers' hall up half an inch instead of a quarter, and a rifle poking through the crack, I would not have given much for Satan's survival. Assuming, of course, that basically he was human.

"Furthermore," he went on, almost as in answer to my thought, "suppose you did perform what I believe the impossible—kill him. Still there could be no escape for you. Better to be slain at once. There is not a place on earth where you could hide from the vengeance of his people. For it is not only by fear that Satan rules. Far from it. As he has told you, he pays his servants well. His continuance means ease, luxury, safety, power—most of the things of life for which man commonly strives—to more people than you can imagine. Satan has his splendid side as well as his dark one. And his people are scattered over all the globe. Many of them are more highly placed than you, as yet, can dream. Is it not so, Eve?"

"It is so," she said, and the trouble in her eyes grew.

"Satan's throne does not rest upon the backs of cringing slaves," he said. "As always, he has his princes and his legions. To sum up. I do not believe you can kill him. If you try and fail, you die—horribly. And Eve is not saved. If you did kill him, you die as inevitably. Eve would be saved from him—yes. But will she have her freedom at such a price?"

"Nol No!" cried Eve, and stood in front of me, arms outstretched, despair in her face.

"Consardine," I said abruptly, "why does Satan hide his hands when the climbers go up the steps?"

"What's that? What do you mean?" He stared at me.

"I've seen him on the black throne three times," I said. "Twice with Cartright, once with myself. He pulls the lever, and then he hides his hands under the robe. What does he do with them, Consardine?"

"Are you hinting that the steps are a crooked game? That's absurd, Kirkham!" His voice was amused, but I saw his strong hands clench.

"I'm hinting nothing," I answered. "I—wonder. You must have seen many go up those steps. Have you ever seen Satan's hands in the open while they were mounting? Think back, Consardine."

He was silent. I could see him marshaling in his memory those he had beheld beckoned by the shining footprints. And his face had whitened.

"I—can't tell," he said at last. "I didn't notice. But—I don't think so."

He jumped to his feet.

"Nonsense!" he said. "Even so—it means nothing!"

I was shooting in the dark. No, not quite. I was giving substance to that shadowy thought, that nebulous suspicion, I had feared to bring out before Barker.

"No?" I said. "Do you believe, then, that Satan, with all his genius for details, his setting up of the cards, his discounting of every chance—do you believe that Satan would leave any door open through which one could come and rule him? Has crown and scepter ever been won?"

"Yes," he replied, disconcertingly. "Unfortunately for the doubt with which you nearly netted me, Kirkham, they have. I have been with Satan eight years. Three times I have seen the steps conquered!"

That was like a slap in the face. For the moment it silenced me. Not so Eve.

"What became of them?" she asked.

"Well," he looked at her, uneasily, "one of them wanted something—something rather peculiar. He died of it in six months."

"Yes," drawled Eve, "so he died of it. What about the others?"

"One of them died in an aeroplane accident between London and Paris," he said. "She was on her way to— what she wanted. Not even Satan could have helped that. Everybody was burned."

"Rather unlucky, weren't they?" asked Eve, innocently. "Both of them. But the third?"

"I don't know," said Consardine, half angrily. "I suppose he's all right. He went to Asia. I've never heard of him since then. He wanted a sort of a hidden little pocket kingdom where he could do as he pleased. Satan gave it to him."

"Two dead, and one—disappeared," mused Eve. "But don't you think that you ought to have heard something about that third one, Dr. Consardine? Couldn't you find out what became of him? Maybe—maybe, he died, too, like the others."

"As Eve says, two of them didn't last long," I said. "The third is doubtful. If you were in Satan's place, Consardine, wouldn't it occur to you that it was advisable to keep up hope in the aspirants by showing them now and then that it could be done? It would to me. And, still assuming that we thought like Satan, wouldn't we handpick our successful climbers? I would. But I wouldn't pick the kind that would be likely to live long, would you? Or if they were well and hearty, a little accident might be arranged. Like that Croydon air bus you've mentioned, for instance."

"Gorblyme!" gasped Harry. "The swine! That wouldn't be 'ard to do. An' I'll bet 'e done it!"

"What does Satan do with his hands when he hides them under his robe?" I repeated.

"And what became of that third winner?" murmured Eve.

On Consardine's forehead little beads of sweat stood out. He was trembling.

"See here, Consardine," I said, "you told us you didn't like being a dupe. You didn't like being fooled. Suppose Satan has been making a colossal mock of you—and the others. What happens?"

I saw the effort with which he mastered himself. It frightened me a bit. After all, I hadn't the slightest evidence to back up what I had been hinting. And if Consardine thought that I was deliberately deceiving him—

But I wasn't. The doubts I had raised were entirely legitimate. Satan did hide his hands. The bad after-luck of the step conquerors had been something that Consardine had known, not we.

"Barker," he turned to Harry, "have you ever looked over the mechanism that Satan tells us controls the choice of the shining footprints? Answer mel Is it what he says it is?"

Barker wrung his hands, looking first at him and then at Eve and me, piteously. He swallowed once or twice.

"Answer me," ordered Consardine.

"Gord 'elp me, Cap'n," Harry turned to me desperately, "I never wanted to lie so 'ard in my life. I want to sye I 'aven't seen it. Or that it don't work them bloody prints. But Gord 'elp me, Miss Demerest, I 'ave looked it over. An' it does work 'em, Dr. Consardine. It does, just as 'e syes it does!"

Well, that was that. It knocked, apparently, my theories clean through the vanishing point. For a moment I had hoped that the little man would be diplomatic. Say, at least, that he didn't know. But I could not deny him his right to tell the truth—if he felt like it.

"That's all right, Harry," I said cheerfully. "What we're looking for is the truth. And what you say settles everything, I suppose."

"I'd like to 'ave lied, Cap'n," he half whimpered. "But, 'ell, I couldn't."

Consardine, I suddenly noticed, was behaving rather oddly. He did not seem at all like one whose faith in Satan had been impregnably re-enforced. He seemed, indeed, more disturbed than ever.

"Barker," he said, "you'd better go now. I will see Captain Kirkham back to his room."

Harry slid over to one of the walls. He bowed to us, miserably. A panel opened, and he was gone. Consardine turned to us.

"Now, Eve," he said, "I'll tell you what brought me here tonight. I told you that you'd been on my mind. So you have. Damnably. I wanted to save you from Satan. I had a way to suggest. I stole the idea from Shakespeare. You remember the stratagem by which the honest friar schemed to get Juliet to her Romeo? And cheat their respective warring families? Their Satan, in a sense."

"The draught that would make her appear to be dead," whispered Eve.

"Exactly," nodded Consardine. "It was something like that which I was about to propose to you. To treat you, from my medical knowledge, in such a way that the health and beauty and spirit which makes you so desirable to Satan would fade—temporarily. To put you in such condition as obviously to make impossible, at least in the near future, his personal plans for you. And to keep you in that condition until he had found a substitute for his paternal impulses—or something else happened.

"There was risk to it, certainly. Great risk to you, Eve. The waiting might be too long—I might not be able to restore to you what I had taken from you. Yet you might have preferred that risk to the certainty of—Satan's arms. I was going to let you decide."

"Was going to?" repeated Eve breathlessly. "Of course I'll take the risk. Oh, Dr. Consardine—it seems like the way out!"

"Does it?" asked he grimly. "I think not—now. The original scheme from which I stole my idea came to grief, you remember, because of Romeo. Well, I was reckoning without Romeo. I didn't know there was one."

"I—I don't quite—get that," said Eve.

"Child," he took her hands, "are you willing to give up your lover? Never see him, never meet him, never communicate with him? Not for weeks or months, but for years? Kill your love for him, or live on, starving upon memories?"

"No," answered Eve directly, and shook her curly head.

"And even if you persuaded her to, Consardine, what do you think I would be doing 1" the bare suggestion stirred in me resentment and stubborn anger. "Fold my hands and turn my eyes Heavenward and meekly murmur, 'Thy will be done!' Not me!"

"I'm persuading no one, Kirkham," he replied quietly. "I'm only pointing out that it's the only way the thing could be done. If I did to Eve what I have described, what would happen? Treatment here for a time, of course, so Satan could see her failing. Then her removal somewhere, for other doctors to look after her. Her symptoms could not be feigned. They would have to be real. The medical fraternity is not wholly represented by me in Satan's entourage. He has some highly placed specialists among his dependents. And if he had not, he could call them in. And would, unless at the very outset he was persuaded that her condition would inevitably mean a faulty maternity weakness in offspring. Forgive me, child, for talking so plainly, but it's no time to be beating around the bush.

"The specialists I could take care of. Hoodwink. I could have been a very great"—he hesitated, and sighed—"well, no matter. But Satan has set his will on you, Eve. He will not lightly give up his purpose. If it were only as a woman that he desired you, it would not be so difficult. But you are more than that to him, far more. You are to be the bearer of his child. Not upon my word alone, much as he trusts my judgment, would he relinquish you as unfit. He would have to be convinced beyond all doubt—and therein lies the danger to you and possibly—death."

He paused, looked pityingly into her troubled eyes.

"Too great a risk," I said. "I'll try my way first, Consardine."

"Enter Romeo," he smiled faintly. "You'll have to, Kirkham. You've made the other impossible. You think that life would be worthless without Eve, I take it?"

"I don't think it, I know it," I answered.

"And you feel the same way about—Jim?"

"Yes," she said softly. "But—to save his life—"

"It wouldn't," said Consardine. "I know men and women. No matter what you made up your mind to do, Eve, he would be working and planning to get you away. Nor are you exactly the kind to sit down, as he expresses it, with meekly folded hands. He would be trapped, sooner or later. It might very likely follow that the trick would be discovered. Then I would have to give up my foolish prejudice for living. I won't take the chance of that. But assume that you do escape. Together. You would be two hares running around the world with the hounds constantly at your heels. Satan's hounds, always on the move. Always with his threat hanging over you. Would such a life be worth living? There might be a child. Be sure that Satan's vengeance would not spare it. I repeat—would such a life be worth living?"

"No," I said, and Eve drew a deep breath and shook her head.

"What can we do!" she whispered.

Consardine strode once across the room, and back. He stood before me, and I saw that again the veins in his forehead were standing out like cords, and that his gray eyes were hard and cold as steel. He tapped me thrice on the breast with his clenched fist.

"Find out what Satan does with his hands when he hides them!" he said.

He turned from us, plainly not trusting himself to speak further. Eve was staring at him, wondering, even as I, at the intensity of the rage that was shaking him.

"Come, Kirkham," he had mastered himself. He ran his fingers through Eve's bob, ruffling it caressingly.

"Babes in the Wood," he repeated.

He walked to the panel, slowly. Considerately.

"Tonight," I whispered to Eve.

Her arms were around my neck, her lips pressed to mine.

"Jim—dear!" she whispered, and let me go.

I looked back as I passed through the opening. She was standing as I had left her, hands stretched out to me, eyes wide and wistful. She was like a lonely little child, afraid to go to bed. I felt a deeper twinge at my heart. A strengthening of resolve. The panel closed.

In silence I followed Consardine as he led me to my room. He entered with me and stood for a moment staring at me somberly. Quite suddenly I felt dog-tired.

"I hope you sleep better tonight than I shall," said Consardine, abruptly.

He was gone. I was too tired to wonder what he had meant by that. I managed to get out of my clothes, and was asleep before I could draw the bed covers over me.





CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The ringing of the telephone aroused me. I reached out for it, only half awake, not in the least realizing where I was. Consardine's voice brought me out of my lethargy like a bucket of water.

"Hello, Kirkham," he said. "Don't want to spoil your beauty sleep, but how about having breakfast with me, and then taking a canter? We've some excellent horses, and the morning's too nice to be wasted."

"Fine," I answered. "I'll be down in ten minutes. How will I find you?"

"Ring for Thomas. I'll be waiting." He hung up.

The sun was streaming through the windows. I looked at my watch. It was close to eleven. I had slept soundly about seven hours. I rang for Thomas.

Sleep, a plunge and the brilliant sunshine were charms that sent the shadow of Satan far below the rim of the world. Whistling, I hoped half-guiltily that Eve felt as fit. The valet brought me out what Barker would have called a "real tysty ridin' rig." He convoyed me to a sunny, old-world lovely room looking out on a broad, green terrace. There were a dozen or so nice-looking people breakfasting at small tables. Some of them I had met the night before.

Over in a corner I saw Consardine. I joined him. We had an extremely pleasant meal, at least I did. Consardine did not seem to have a care on earth. His talk had a subtly sardonic flavor that I found most stimulating. So far as the conversation was concerned, our encounter in Eve's room might never have been. He made no slightest reference to it. Nor, following his lead, did I.

We went from there to the stables. He took a powerful black gelding that whinnied to him as he entered. I mounted a trim roan. We rode at a brisk canter along bridle paths that wound through thick woods to scrub pine and oak. Now and then we met a guard who stood at attention, and saluted Consardine as we passed by. It was a silent ride.

We came abruptly out of the woods. Consardine reined in. We were upon the cleared top of a low hillock. Below us and a hundred yards away sparkled the waters of the Sound.

Perhaps a quarter mile out lay a perfect beauty of a yacht. She was about two hundred feet long and not more than thirty in beam. Seagoing and serviceable, and built for speed as well. Her paint and brass shone, dazzling white and golden.

"The Cherub," said Consardine, dryly. "She's Satan's. He named her that because she looks so spotless and innocent. There is a more descriptive word for her, however, but not a polite one. She can do her thirty knots an hour, by the way."

My gaze dropped from the yacht to a strong landing that thrust out from the shore. A little fleet of launches and speed boats were clustered near it. I caught a glimpse of an old-fashioned rambling house nestled among the trees near the water's edge.

My eyes followed the curve of the shore. A few hundred feet from the pier was a pile of great rocks, huge boulders dropped by the glacier that once covered the Island. I started, and looked more closely.

Upon one of them stood Satan, black-cloaked, arms folded, staring out at the gleaming yacht. I touched Consardine's arm.

"Look!" I whispered, "Sat—" I stopped. The rock was bare. I had turned my eyes from it for the barest fraction of a second. Yet in that time Satan had disappeared.

"What did you see?" asked Consardine.

"Satan," I said. "He was standing on that pile of rocks. Where could he have gone!"

"He has a hole there," he answered indifferently. "A tunnel that runs from the big house to the shore."

He swung around to the woods. I followed. We rode along for a quarter of an hour more. We came out into a small meadow through which ran a brook. He dismounted, and dropped the reins over the black's neck.

"I want to talk to you," he said to me.

I gave the roan its freedom, and sat down beside Consardine.

"Kirkham, you've set my world rocking under my feet," he said curtly. "You've put the black doubt in me. Of the few things that I would have staked my life on, the first was that Satan's gamble of the seven footprints was a straight one. And now—I would not."

"You don't accept Barker's testimony, then?" I asked.

"Talk straight, Kirkham," he warned, coldly. "Your implication was that Satan manipulated the telltale from the Black Throne. With his hidden hands. If so, he has the cunning to do it in a way that Barker, going over the other mechanism, would never suspect. You know that. Talk straight, I tell you."

"The thought that Barker might be wrong occurred to me, Consardine," I said. "I preferred to let it occur to you without my suggesting it. I had said enough."

"Too much—or not enough," he said. "You have put the doubt in me. Well, you've got to rid me of it."

"Just what do you mean by that?" I asked him.

"I mean," he said, "that you must find out the truth. Give me back my faith in Satan, or change my doubt into certainty."

"And if I do the latter—" I began eagerly.

"You will have struck a greater blow at him than any with knife or bullet. You will be no longer alone in your fight. That I promise you."

His voice was thick, and the handle of his riding crop snapped in the sudden clenching of his strong hand.

"Consardine," I said bluntly, "why should the possibility of Satan's play being crooked move you so? You are closest to him here, I gather. His service, so you say, brings you all that you desire. And you tell me he is the shield between you and the law. What difference, then, does it make to you whether his gamble of the seven footprints is on the level or isn't?"

He caught my shoulder, and I winced at the crushing grip.

"Because," he answered, "I am under Satan's sentence of death!"

"You!" I exclaimed, incredulously.

"For eight years," he said, "that threat has been over me. For eight years he has tormented me, as the mood swayed him. Now with hint of the imminent carrying out of that sentence. Now with half-promise of its wiping out, and another trial at the steps. Kirkham, I am no coward —yet death fills me with horror. If I knew it to be inevitable, I would face it calmly. But I believe it to be eternal blackness, oblivion, extinction. There is something in me that recoils from that, something that shrinks from it with a deadly terror, with loathing. Kirkham, I love life.

"Yet if the gamble was straight, he was within his rights. But if it was not straight—then all those eight years he has played with me, made a mock of me, laughed at me. And still laughing, would have watched me go to whatever death he had decreed, unresisting, since I would have believed that by my oath I was so bound.

"And that, Kirkham, is not to be endured. Not by me!

"Nor is that all. I have watched many men and women take the steps, risking all on Satan's word. And I have seen some of them go to death, as calmly as I would have done, their honor, like mine, rooted in dishonor. And others go broken and wailing. Like Cartright. While Satan laughed. And there are more who live like me on Satan's sufferance. And all this on a cast of loaded dice? If so, then I tell you, Kirkham, it is not a thing to be borne! Nor shall it be borne!"

He plucked at his collar, gasping, as though it choked him.

"God!" he whispered. "To pay him back for that! If it is true… I would face death… singing… but I must know if it is true."

I waited until he had regained control.

"Help me find out whether it is or not," I said. "It may well turn out to be an impossible job for me—alone."

He shook his head.

"You have Barker to help you," he replied.

"I don't want to run him into any more risks." I would cover up the little man as much as I could. "There's a certain amount of prowling involved, Consardine. We might run across somebody not so well disposed as you. But the three of us ought to be able to settle matters one way or the other quickly."

"No," he said, stubbornly. "Why should I? It is up to you, Kirkham. It is you who have raised the doubt. It is you who must resolve it. One way or the other. After all, your suspicions are based upon the vaguest evidence. A triviality, and two, or it may be three, perfectly explicable happenings. The chances that you are wrong are enormously greater than those that you are right. Why should I risk my life upon them? I have already gone far. I have promised you neutrality, and somewhat more. I will go no further. Take Barker. I promise neither to see nor hear you should I meet you in your—wanderings. But at this time I will not invite certain death by joining you in them. I have been reasonably content. If you are wrong, I shall still be. If you are right—ah, then, I repeat, you will be no longer alone.

"In the meantime—Michael Consardine holds fast to his place in the sun."

He chirruped to the black gelding, and mounted it. There was no use in further argument, that was plain. We rode away, through the woods, and after a while turned back to the chateau.

I left him at the stable, and went to my rooms to change. There was a note pinned to my pillow. It was from Satan. A casual sort of message. He hoped I was enjoying myself as I deserved, and would see me about nine o'clock that evening.

The rest of the day passed uneventfully. The more I thought over Consardine's talk, the more I sympathized with his viewpoint. Also, oddly enough, the higher rose my spirits. I sat down to dinner in a pleasantly reckless state of mind.

Consardine was at the head of the board as on the previous night. I had Cobham for companion. I saw Eve toward the far end. She ignored me. It was difficult for me to do the same toward her.

Cobham had been drinking. For some reason he seemed to feel a certain responsibility for me. He paid no attention to any one else, nor would he let me. He was vastly interesting, but as the time wore on I began to feel a profound distaste for Cobham. He was expounding his theories of life as a mere electrochemical reaction. He made it clear that neither the individual nor the mass meant anything to him in terms of what is commonly called humanity. He was appallingly callous about it.

He seemed to have no more feeling about men and women than he would have about his test tubes. Rather less, I fancied. In fact, that was what men and women appeared to him to be, just a lot of animated test tubes with minute curiosity-provoking differences in their contents. And he saw no reason why they should not be broken, or emptied or the contents changed in the way of experimentation. He sketched a few rather awful experiments with gases upon the kehjt slaves. At least, I hoped that the unfortunate subjects had been the slaves. He did not say so.

Listening, I was convinced that of the two, Satan might be the more humane. Cobham kept on drinking steadily. The only effect of the liquor was to make him more coldly, inhumanly scientific.

"You've got too much sentiment in your ferment, Kirkham," he said. "You probably think that life is sacred, to use the cant word, not to be destroyed unless by dire necessity. Bosh! It is no more sacred than the current I turn on or off at will from my lamps, nor the ferments in my tubes that I end at will. Whenever did Nature give a damn about the individual? Neutralize the weakening ingredient in you, Kirkham, and you might become a great man. I can do it for you, if you will let me."

I promised to think it over.

At 8:30 Satan appeared. I had been wondering where I was to see him. Consardine yielded his place, and Satan beckoned me to sit at his left hand.

"To my new follower, James Kirkham," he raised his glass. "I am much pleased with him."

They drank to me, standing. I saw Eve pointedly set down her glass untouched. So, as she had meant him to do, did Satan.

At 8:45, as though at some signal, the company began to drift out of the room. In a few minutes there remained only Satan, Cobham and myself. It rather surprised me to see Consardine leave. Servants cleared the table, and at a nod from Satan withdrew.

"There is a ship," he said abruptly, "that sails from Havre within three days. She is the Astarte. A slow boat. She carries some things of superlative beauty which I feel it time for me to claim. There is a painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds, another by Romney. There is a ewer of rock crystal and twelve rock crystal cups, marvelously engraved and set with great cabochon sapphires and rubies. They were made, it may be, in ancient Crete for Queen Pasiphae. At least, they are immemorially old. And to them an unknown genius gave his best. They were long hidden in the Kremlin. The Communists have sold them. There is a necklace of emeralds upon each of which is graven one of the Metamorphoses of Ovid. There is nothing like it in the world."

He paused, then bent his head toward me.

"I must have them, James Kirkham. You and Cobham shall get them for me."

I bowed, awaiting further enlightenment. Cobham, I noticed, had not drunk anything since Satan's entrance. He did not show at all what he had drunk. He sat silent, eyes upon the glass with which his fingers played; cynical, a faint smile upon his full lips. Yet I felt that he was watching me covertly, as though awaiting something. Whatever Satan was about to tell me, I suspected that he had already gone over it with him.

"I have selected you as leader," Satan went on, "not only because the task may demand the exercise of unusual resourcefulness, but also that close obedience to orders which you have proved to me you can exercise. I am merely outlining the venture tonight so you may be turning it over in your mind. You will receive your detailed instructions before you sail."

Sail? That meant leave Eve! I moved restlessly. I suppose my discomfort showed in my face. At any rate, he sensed it.

"Yes," he said. "The transfer will not be made on land after the Astarte arrives. I prefer to make it on the high seas. You are to engage in what the prejudiced would call piracy, James Kirkham. Ah, well, it is a romantic calling."

He eyed me, faint malice in the sparkling gaze.

"And you have your romantic side," he purred. "I admire it. For I, too, have mine. Therefore, I envy you, somewhat, this venture."

"And I am grateful," I smiled, meeting his scrutiny squarely. But the palms of my hands had grown suddenly moist.

"The Astarte," he continued, "will take the southern route. There is little likelihood of her encountering any serious storms at this time of year in those latitudes. On the day she sails, you and Cobham will set out in my yacht which I perceived you admiring today. Besides her crew, the yacht will carry a dozen of my drinkers of the kehjt. They will be for use in emergency. But it is my hope that none such may arise. The Cherub—is it not a lovely name? —the Cherub will leave ostensibly for a coastwise voyage. On the first day out, the night rather, the Cherub will cease to be her angelic self—yes, I assure you there were girl cherubs as well as boy ones. She will be cunningly changed to the semblance of the Sea Wolf, the yacht of an eminently respectable financier which at that moment will be logging along its unsuspecting way to Havana. This also in case of emergency. And, of course, the name of the Sea Wolf will replace that of the Cherub wherever the name is noticeable.

"You will circle the Astarte two days later at a designated section, keeping out of sight, of course. Her speed is fifteen knots, yours thirty. You will be able, therefore, to stop her, remove what I desire, and get back here—again the innocent, spotless Cherub—at least two days before she can arrive in port."

My heart, which had been growing steadily heavier, lightened. Satan intended no mischief to the ship then, or to its crew. Else he would not speak of her return. Cobham gave a short bark, like a suppressed laugh. The cynicism of his smile had deepened. Satan's blue stare rested upon him for an instant. Cobham moved uneasily.

"You have planned, of course, sir," I said, "how we are to stop the Astarte."

"Naturally," he answered. "I am coming to that. At this time of year, this boat would not carry more than a hundred persons. Some of the passengers she does carry will be my people. But beside that, I have arranged it so that there will be even fewer than usual. A number of staterooms have been reserved for a tourists' club. But, oddly, just before the Astarte is to sail, these reservations will be canceled. There will have been an unavoidable change of plans. The generous representative of the club will waive all claims upon the reservation money, and the line will be guaranteed indemnity. The Astarte, because of the anxiety of the owners of the objects I intend to acquire, will not delay her sailing. I think there will be not more than thirty passengers, of whom ten, at least, will be of my following.

"Very well, James Kirkham. We come now to the night of your adventure. All that afternoon you have been following the Astarte at a distance of ten miles. It is a moonless night. At nine o'clock there is a concert going on in the saloon. The few passengers are a happy little family party. They are probably all there. So are some of the officers. You have put out your lights and have steamed up to within four miles.

"There will be a signal from the Astarte which you will answer. At the moment of that signal, two men assigned to that task will hurl a few bombs into the engine room of the Astarte. The bombs will be filled with a certain gas, the invention of Mr. Cobham. Immediately thereafter the occupants of the engine room will take no further interest in their work. A third man of mine will slip into the engine room and bring the boat to a standstill."

He paused, scrutinizing me; I felt upon me again the covert glance of Cobham. By some miracle I managed to keep from my face the horror I felt in my heart; managed to make my voice indifferent and steady as I spoke:

"Well, that wipes out the engine room crew. Then what?"

For many moments Satan did not answer me. His brilliant eyes searched me. I drove from my mind the swift picture that had come into it of men choking and writhing on the floor of the Astarte's engine room. I bore his gaze, frowning as though puzzled. Whether he had found what he had been hunting I do not know, but suddenly its disconcerting intensity diminished.

"Oh, fie, James Kirkham!" he said unctuously, "it is not necessary to kill. The gas I refer to is not lethal. It is a sleep gas. Its effect is practically instantaneous. At least, it acts within five seconds. But it is harmless. Six hours, and its breathers awaken without even a headache. How bloodthirsty he thinks us, Cobham!"

Something warned me to hide my relief, even as I had hidden my dread.

"We still have the officers and the crew," I said indifferently. "What happens to them? Frankly, in all you have outlined, Satan, I seem to be nothing but an onlooker. A messenger boy. Where are my piratical thrills?"

"The venture at this point passes into your hands," he answered. "You will by this time have drawn up beside, the Astarte and will board her with Cobham and a sufficient force to take charge. Conditions may now arise which I can foresee, but must trust to your ingenuity and courage to meet. There will be much confusion on board the Astarte. You must see to it that no boats are launched, and that no one escapes from her. Before you board, the captain, and a mate or two, may have suffered some slight accident. Nothing serious. No, no. Merely disabling. Then again— they may not. You may have their resistance to overcome. Without bloodshed, if you can. But with or without—it must be overcome. Then weather conditions may complicate matters. I think you will not find it too tame, James Kirkham."

Nor did I. I had an uneasy feeling that Satan was not presenting me with the full picture.

"In your final instructions you will find definite information as to the location of what you are to bring to me," he said. "The objects are in a strong safe in a steel storeroom. So precious are the jewels that only the captain will know the combination of the safe. You need waste no time trying to persuade him to tell it to you. There will be with you an expert to whom the safe will have no mysteries. After you have recovered the things for me, you will cut loose from the Astarte and make all speed home, taking off from her, before starting, certain of my people on board her who would find it embarrassing to remain. That is all."

I considered for a moment. What he meant was that some of his agents on the Astarte would be questioned and might be recognized for what they were. Well, how about us on the Cherub?

"Have you considered the probability of some one on the Astarte identifying us later, sir?" I began.

"You will all be masked, of course," he interrupted, smoothly. Cobham moved suddenly, impatiently.

"The wireless," I suggested. "I suppose that will be disabled before the engine room attack?"

"It will not be necessary," he answered. "The yacht carries extraordinarily strong batteries. At the moment of the signal, the Astarte's radio will be blanketed, her waves strangled. There will be no message from her that can break through the barrier the able operator of the Cherub will interpose."

I sat for a moment in thought. Everything seemed to be plain. And yet—I felt a cold unease, a boding depression. There was something else, something deadly sinister hiding behind Satan's smooth phrases.

"I trust you were satisfied with the rewards of your necklace venture," he broke the current of my thoughts. "The rewards of this one will be proportionately greater, naturally. The invitation to join me cut your vacation rather short. What would you say to taking, after the affair, a six months' trip? You shall go where you please, and as you please, and do as you please. At my expense, of course. You may also spend what you please, let me add."

"Thank you, sir," I said, "but I feel no need of a vacation. And frankly, I find my contacts with you infinitely more interesting than anything I could hope to experience away from you."

His face was inscrutable as ever, but I felt that I had pleased him.

"Well," he said, "we shall see. Only continue as you have begun, James Kirkham, and you shall have no cause to complain of my generosity."

He arose. I stood up, politely; Cobham, cautiously. Satan for a moment considered us.

"How are you spending the evening?" he asked me.

"Cobham spoke of us joining the bridge game," I answered, "but if you have any other desire—"

Cobham had done nothing of the sort. He had said so much, however, that I hoped he might take it for granted that he had. I particularly did not want to be separated from Cobham just then. If Satan had thought, as I half feared, of asking either of us to accompany him, he changed his mind. He nodded, and walked toward the wall.

"It would be a good idea," he turned beside the opened panel, "to look over the Cherub tomorrow. Familiarize yourself with her. Good night."

Cobham sat silently for a good minute, staring at the point where Satan had disappeared.

"That was damned decent of you, Kirkham," he said at last, slowly. "I don't know how you guessed it, but I couldn't have stood much more of Satan tonight. Damned decent!"

He stretched out a hand to the brandy. I grinned— Cobham had remembered, then, and was aware of my maneuver. He poured his goblet half full of the liquor and drank it neat.

"Damned decent," he repeated, and I saw the brandy take hold of him swiftly. "Have a drink with me."

I poured myself a small one. Again he half filled his glass and tossed it off.

"A damned shame," he muttered, "treating you like a child. Treating a man like you as if you were in swaddles. You're a man, you are, Kirkham. You've got guts, you have, Kirkham. Why should you be coddled? Lied to? God damn it, Kirkham, you deserve the truth!"

So! It was coming, was itl That hidden, sinister something I had sensed was getting ready to crawl from Cobham's lips.

"Have a drink with me," I said, and tipped the decanter. "Who's treating me like a child?"

He glared at me, drunkenly.

"You think that gas is going to put that engine room crew to sleep, eh?" he chuckled. "Nice little lullaby for poor tired sailors? Sweet little chemical sl-slumber song composh-composed by Pa Satan and M-Ma Cobham? Well, Kirkham, you're damned well right it's going put 'em to sh-sleep. Forever!"

I poured myself another brandy, and drank it composedly.

"Well, what of it?" I asked. "A long sleep or a short one—what does it matter?"

"What's it matter? What's it matter!" he stared at me, then brought his fist down with a thump on the table. "By God, I was right! Told Satan you had the guts! Told him needn't—needn't tamper with the form-florm-formula with you! What's it matter, he asks. Have a drink with me."

I drank with him. He began to shake with laughter.

"MasksI" he said. "You wanted masks so people on Astarte couldn't ren-recognize you later. Later! Ha! Ha! Later! That's good, that is. Hell, man, there's not going to be any later for them!"

The room swam around me. What was Cobham saying now?

"Not exactly accurate. Say—twenty minutes later. Twenty minutes later— Bonk! goes nice bomb. Gentlemanly bomb. Quiet, dignified. But strong. Bonk! Out goes bottom of the Astarte. No boats. Kehjt drinkers have tended to them. Astarte sunk without trace! Bonk! Swoo-oosh! Bubbles! Finish!"

He became drunkenly plaintive.

"Don't—don't believe fooled old Kirkham for a minute. Don't believe he thought Satan would run rish-risk anybody on Astarte running across one of us. Anybody telling police about wicked pirates holding 'em up in midocean. To hell with the witnesses! That's Satan's motto. Make it 'nother unfathomed mish-mystery of the ocean. That's best way. That's Satan's way."

"Well," I said, "I'm damned glad to hear it. It was the one thing that I was uneasy about—"

The drunkenness dropped from Cobham like a cast-off cloak. His face became white and pinched. The glass fell from his hand.

Out of a darkened corner of the room walked Satan!





CHAPTER SIXTEEN

It was a crisis. And a bad one. There was no doubt about that. A time for quick thinking, if ever there was one. I cared nothing about what happened to Cobham. That callous devil could have been whisked to Hell without my turning a hair. But I, myself, was in the gravest danger of sharing his fate. If Satan thought that I had deliberately drawn his confidences he would waste no time asking for explanations. The fact that I had not accepted his word would in itself call for my punishment.

Worst of all, I had caught him lying to me. He might decide that would render me useless to him thereafter. But that was secondary. The paramount thing was that it made him, as the Chinese say, "lose face." If his ancestry was what Barker believed, that was the one unforgivable affront. Whether it was or was not, I knew that Satan's infernal intellect was clothed with as infernal a pride. And that pride had been wounded.

My only chance for escape lay in healing the wound before Satan knew that I had perceived it. I jumped to my feet and walked towards him.

"Well," I laughed, "have I passed the test?"

Instantly he caught it. Whether, at the moment, he believed me as naive as my question implied, I could not know. Still, after all, why not? It was exactly the kind of trap, or rather experiment, he had been teaching me to expect him to conceive.

Nor did I know how long he had been listening. Had he intentionally left Cobham and me together to see what would happen? And heard all? Probably. If so there had been no single word I had spoken upon which his suspicion could feed. At any rate, to follow my lead was the only way he could maintain his pride. Save his face. He followed it.

"Cobham," he said, "you were right."

He turned to me.

"Tell me, James Kirkham, when did you first suspect that you were under test? I am curious to know exactly how keen that perception of yours is."

He waved to me to be seated, and dropped into his own chair. I kept my eyes steadily averted from Cobham.

"The first thing that puzzled me, Satan," I said, "was your attitude toward the Astarte. It would certainly not have been mine. That dead men tell no tales, is a safe and sane old rule. I would have followed your instructions— but," I added, boldly, "I would not have approved of them."

His eyes never left me as I spoke. I felt his will beating against mine like a hammer, endeavoring to strike out the truth.

"When did your suspicion become certainty?" he asked.

"At the moment you appeared here," I told him.

Suddenly I let some of my anger find vent.

"I'll stand for no more such experiments upon me, Satan," I cried, with a cold fury that had none of its roots in the matter in hand,, but was real enough nevertheless. "Either I am to be trusted wholly, or I am not to be trusted at all. If you do trust me and I fail you—well, you have the remedy in your hands and I am ready to pay the penalty. But I'll not be the subject of any more laboratory experiments, like a child in a psychological clinic. By God, I won't!"

I thought that I had won. Not only won, but that I had leaped into higher regard than Satan had ever held me. If those gem-hard eyes could be said to soften, they did.

"I agree, James Kirkham," he said, quietly. "Yet I am glad that I put you to this test. Since it has fully revealed to me what dependence I can place upon you."

"I made my decision. I gave my word," I said, a little stiffly. "As long as you play fair with me, I obey your orders, Satan. Let that be understood, and you will find no more loyal servant."

"I do understand, James Kirkham," he answered.

I ventured to look at Cobham. He had regained some of his color. He was watching me, queerly.

"Cobham," I laughed, "you could be as good an actor as you are a chemist."

"Cobham—has been—very valuable to me," said Satan. "And never more than tonight."

I saw a deep shudder shake Cobham. I feigned to observe nothing. Satan arose.

"Come with me, Cobham," he said: "There are matters we must discuss. And you—" he looked at me.

"I'll turn in," I said. "I know the way."

He strode across the room, Cobham following. Once he turned and shot me a strange glance. There was gratitude in it—and there was deadly terror.

I walked over to the panel that was the beginning of the road to my room.

"James Kirkham," I turned, and saw Satan standing by the opposite wall. His bulk almost hid Cobham, now in front of him.

"Sir?" I answered.

"James Kirkham," he said, "I was never better pleased with you than I am now. Good night."

"I am glad, sir," I replied. "Good night."

The panel behind him clicked open. I pressed upon a hidden spring, the wall parted. Before me was the tiny elevator. I entered it. Satan and Cobham were passing through that other wall.

I caught a glimpse of two of the kehjt slaves, cords in hands, gliding to Cobham's side.

As my panel closed I thought I saw them pinion his arms!

And now I was in my rooms. Eve would be expecting me, but I had no desire to make further excursion that night. That Satan had taken my bait, I was reasonably sure. But Cobham was in for punishment—how severe I could not tell. The emphasis Satan had put upon that "has been" in speaking of his usefulness was ominous. Cobham had caught the threat. And there had been that swift vision of the slaves closing in on him. I would be on Satan's mind, whatever he believed. It was possible that he might summon me; might even come to me.

It was best to stay where I was. Barker would be along sooner or later. I would send him with a message to Eve.

I snapped out all the lights except a dim one in the living room, undressed, and turned in. I lay there, smoking, I felt more than a little sick, and filled with a hot, helpless rage. The affair of the Astarte would have been bad enough even as Satan had outlined it. Cobham's revelations made it hideous. I would go on with it, of course. There was nothing else to do. If I refused, it would be the end both of Eve and myself. And some one else would take my place. Cobham, in fact, had made it imperative that I should go. I must find some means of averting that ruthless destruction of the treasure ship. Obviously, the chances were that would mean the end for me also. But it had to be done. I knew that if I stood aside and let those helpless people go down, I could never more live at peace with myself. I knew that Eve would feel the same about it.

What I hoped most desperately was that we could find the way to break Satan before the time came for my sailing.

Suddenly I was aware that some one was in the outer room. I slipped noiselessly out of bed and to the curtains. It was Barker.

I beckoned to him.

"Careful, Harry," I whispered. "Come in here, and keep those ears of yours wide open. Things have been happening."

Briefly I sketched the developments of the day, from my conversation with Consardine to Cobham's drunken disclosures and his sinister shepherding by Satan. I could feel the little man shiver at that.

"Gord," he muttered. "Cobham's a proper devil, but I'm sorry for 'im. Satan, 'e'll see 'e don't no more talkin'. We got to work quick, Cap'n."

"I've an unbreakable hunch that my work is to stay right in this room," I told him. "And if you don't think that is going to be the hardest kind of work, with Miss Demerest expecting me, you're wrong."

"No," he said, "you're right, sir. An' I've got to get h'out quick as may be. 'Ere's what I come to tell you. I h'acted like a bloody dummy last night when you 'inted about Satan an' what 'e done when 'e 'id 'is 'ands. Fair took me off my feet, you did, just like Consardine. I 'adn't been away from you five minutes before I saw 'ow it could be done. 'Ell, I saw a dozen wyes it could be done."

"Right," I whispered, "but cut the explanations. How are we going to find out if he does it?"

"That's what 'as been rackin' my brains all dye," he answered. " 'Ow to get in the Temple an' look over the black throne. The gold one sinks down an' under, but the black one's built in. An' there's two of the kehjt slyves watchin' it in there h'every hour of the dye an' night. Four-hour shifts they got, an' you can bloody well wyger 'e picks proper plucked 'uns for that duty, Cap'n.

"No trouble gettin' in, there's 'arf a dozen trick entrances back of them thrones. Ten minutes, an' we'd know what was what. But 'ow the bloody 'ell to get them ten minutes? No good shootin' the paste-faced blighters. That'll bring 'em all down on us. No good killin' 'em nohow. The minute they found 'em Satan'ld know what the gyme was."

He was silent for a moment.

"Cripes!" he said at last, "if we could only get some bloomin' h'angel to drop down an' 'old a glass of the kehjt

under their noses 1 They'd follow it like a 'ungry lion would a bone! An' see no thin' else!"

I caught his shoulders, heart thumping.

"By God, Harry! You've hit it!" My voice was shaking. "Do you know where he keeps that hell brew? Can you get at it?"

"Sure I know," he said, "An' there ain't none better at my trade than me, Cap'n, as I told you. I'd sye I could get it. But then what?"

"We'll be the angel," I told him. "It works quick, I know that. How long does it keep them under?"

"I don't know," he answered. "Some longer, some shorter. We'd 'ave our ten minutes, though, an' a lot to spare—

"Cripes!" he chuckled. "What a gyme! If they wake up before the relief comes they ain't likely to say nothin'. An' if they don't, they ain't likely to get a chance to say nothin'. An' if they do get a chance either way, who the 'ell would believe 'em?"

"Get the stuff," I said. "Try to get it tomorrow. And now play safe. Get out of here. If you can manage it, tell Miss Demerest not to look for me tonight. Tell her not to worry. But take no chances. Harry, you're a wonder. If you were a girl, I'd kiss you. Scoot!"

Again he chuckled; another moment and I knew he had gone.

I went into the other room and put out the dim light. For the first time since I had fallen into Satan's hands I felt free of that damnable depression—oppression, rather— which had shadowed me. It was as though a door had begun to open. A door of escape.

I slept soundly. I awakened once in the night from a dream that Satan was standing over me, watching me. Whether it was all a dream, I do not know. Perhaps he had really entered to resolve some lingering doubt. If so, my sleep must have reassured him, for it was that of one who had not a care on his mind. I lost no time worrying about it; in another moment I was asleep again.

The next day passed quickly enough. I was up early. As I was dressing, the 'phone rang. It was Consardine. He said that Satan wished me to go out to the yacht after I had breakfasted. He, Consardine, would accompany me.

There had been no change of plans, then. I was still cast for my piratical role.

When I entered the breakfast room, Consardine was waiting for me. We ate together. I was itching with curiosity about Cobham. But I asked no questions, nor did Consardine speak of him. We walked down to the boat landing, talking of this and that. Tacitly, neither of us made any reference to the conversation of the previous day. It must have been uppermost in his mind, as it was in mine. Yet, after all, there was nothing more to say. He had made his position sufficiently plain.

A cutter was waiting for us, and took us out to the Cherub. The yacht was as beautiful inside as out. The captain was a squat, thickset, broad-shouldered Newfoundlander. He was introduced to me as Captain Morrisey. It may or may not have been the name his parents gave him. Probably not. He was a genial pirate. A hundred years back, and he would have been floating the Jolly Roger. The first mate was a clean-cut saturnine chap with the hall mark of Annapolis. The crew were as hard-boiled looking a lot as any the Marine Corps ever produced.

The discipline was military and perfect. It reached its apotheosis in the engine room. The engines, specially designed, oil-burning Diesels, were marvels. So interested was I that lunch time came around before I realized it. I had not been mistaken about Morrisey. He told us tales of smuggling and gun- and rum-running in which he had been active before he had signed with Satan. Born a hundred years too late for the Black Flag, he had done his best with the material at hand. He was a pirate, but I liked him.

When we got back to the chateau, I found a summons from Satan. With many misgivings I obeyed it. The misgivings were all wrong. I spent two of the most fascinating hours I had ever known. I was guided to that part of the great house which was Satan's own intimate domain. I cannot begin to describe what I saw there, nor the atmosphere of those dozen or more chambers, large and small, wherein that dark strange soul took its delight. Each of them was a temple in which the mysterious, indefinable and eternal spirit that humanity calls beauty and has always worshiped and sought to capture had become incarnate. A living thing.

And Satan was different. He was transformed—gentle, no mockery either in word or look. He talked only of the treasures about us. It came to me that he loved beauty even more than he did power; that he considered power only as a means toward beauty. And that, evil though he was, he knew beauty better than any one alive.

When I left him, his spell upon me was strong. I had to fight against the conviction that what I had beheld justified him as to any means he had taken to get it; that the true criminal was he who would try to thwart him. Absurd as it may seem, I felt myself hideously guilty in the plans I was harboring. It was with difficulty that I held myself back from confessing them, throwing myself on his mercy, swearing myself to him. I think that only the thought of Eve kept me from doing so.

That was, perhaps, his object. But I had to tell myself so, over and over again after I had left him, to banish the loathing I felt about going on against him. If this seems deplorable weakness, I can only say that he who thinks so would not if he had been subjected to that same sorcery, and had listened to Satan preaching in the heart of the miracle he had fashioned.

If it was a trap, I escaped it. But to this day—I do not know whether in the greater sense Satan was not right.

The company at dinner helped me to throw off the obsession. A brisk bridge game afterward did more. It was close to midnight when I returned to my rooms. I had not seen Eve all day. Consardine had mentioned, casually, as we were going in to dinner, that she had gone to town, and probably would not return that night. I took it as a hint that it would be useless for me to venture to her room.

I dropped off to sleep hoping for Barker. He did not come.

There were some truly charming people at the breakfast table next morning. Among them an Australian major, a soldierly and engaging scoundrel. We went riding together, following a different road than that which I had covered with Consardine. At one point it ran parallel to the driveway. A smart little roadster hummed by, headed for the chateau. Eve was driving it. She waved. The Australian took the greeting to himself, remarking that there went a damned nice girl. Everything seemed suddenly brighter. It meant that I would see her that night. At least, that was what I thought then.

After we had stabled the horses, I hung about the pleasant terrace. Maybe I would get another glimpse of Eve, maybe even a whispered word. About four o'clock Consardine appeared and dropped down at the table beside me.

Consardine seemed ill at ease. We had a drink or two, and talked of this and that, but it was plain that something was on his mind. I waited for him to speak, not without a certain apprehension. At last he sighed, and shook his great shoulders.

"Well," he said, "unpleasant medicine gets no sweeter while we hesitate over taking it. Come along with me, Kirkham. Satan's orders."

I remembered vividly his declaration that if his master commanded him, he would unhesitatingly take me prisoner. I felt a distinct shock.

"Does that mean that I am under arrest?" I asked.

"Not at all," he answered. "There is something—some one—Satan wishes you to see. Do not ask me his purpose. I do not know it. I might guess, but—ask me no questions. Let us go."

I went with him, wondering. When he finally stopped we were, I thought, in one of the towers, certainly we had gone far above the ground floor. We were in a small, bare room. More a crypt, in fact, than a room. One of its walls was slightly curved, the bulge toward us. Consardine walked over to this wall, and beckoned me beside him. He touched a hidden spring. An aperture about a foot square, like a window, opened at the level of my eyes.

"Look through," he said.

The place into which I peered was filled with a curiously clear and palely purplish light. It was distinctly unpleasant. I became aware of a thin droning sound, faint but continuous, upon one note. I was not enough of a musician to place the note, but it was quite as high as that made by the rapid vibration of a bee's wings. That, too, was unpleasant. Light and droning had a concentration-shattering quality, a blurring effect upon the mind.

At first glance I thought that I was looking into a circular place in which was a crowd of men, all facing a common center. Then I realized that this could not be so, since all the men were in exactly the same attitude, crouching upon one knee. There seemed to be thousands of these crouching men, line after line of them, one behind the other, growing smaller and smaller and vanishing off into immense distances.

I looked to right and to left. There were the kneeling men, but now in profile. I raised my eyes to the ceiling of the place. And there they appeared to hang, heads downward.

I stared again at those facing me. It was strange how the purplish light and the droning clouded one's thought. They held back, like two hands, the understanding from fulfillment.

Then I realized abruptly that all those thousands of faces were—the same.

And that each was the face of Cobham!

They were the face of Cobham, drawn and distorted, reflected over and over again from scores of mirrors with which the place was lined. The circular walls were faceted with mirrors, and so was the globed ceiling, and all these mirrors curved down to a circular mirrored slab about seven feet in diameter which was their focus.

Upon this slab knelt Cobham, glaring at the countless reflections of himself, reflected with sharpest accuracy by that clear and evil purplish light.

As I looked, he jumped to his feet and began to wave his arms, crazily. Like regiments of automatons, the reflections leaped with him, waving. He turned, and they wheeled as one man in diminishing rank upon rank. He threw himself down upon his face, and I knew that unless his eyes were closed his face still stared up at him, buoyed, it must have seemed, upon the backs of the thousands reflected upon the slab from the mirrors in the ceiling. And I knew that no man could keep his eyes closed long in that room, that he must open them, to look and look again.

I shrank back, trembling. This thing was hellish. It was mind-destroying. There could be no sleep. The drone rasped along the nerves and would not permit it. The light was sleep-killing, too, keying up, stretching the tense nerves to the breaking point. And the mimicking hosts of reflections slowly, inexorably, led the mind into the paths of madness.

"For God's sake… for God's sake…" I turned to Consardine half-incoherent, white-lipped. "I've seen… Consardine… a bullet would be mercy…"

He drew me back to the opening.

"Thrust in your head," he said, coldly. "You must see yourself in the mirrors, and Cobham must see you. It is Satan's order."

I tried to struggle away. He gripped my neck and forced my head forward as one does a puppy to make him drink.

The wall at this point was only a couple of inches thick. Held helpless, my head was now beyond that wall. Cobham had staggered to his feet. I saw my face leap out in the mirrors. He saw it, too. His eyes moved from one reflection to another, striving to find the real.

"Kirkhaml" he howled. "Kirkham! Get me out!"

Consardine drew me back. He snapped the opening shut.

"You devil! You cold-blooded devil!" I sobbed, and threw myself upon him.

He caught my arms. He held me as easily as though I had been a child, while I kicked and writhed in futile attempt to break the inexorable grip. And at last my fury spent itself. Still sobbing, I went limp.

"There, there, lad," he said, gently. "I am not responsible for what you've seen. I told you it was unpleasant medicine. But Satan ordered it, and I must obey. Come with me. Back to your rooms."

I followed him, all resistance for the moment gone from me. It was not any affection for Cobham that had so stirred me. He had probably watched others in the mirrored cell from that same window. If the necessity had arisen, I would have shot Cobham down without the slightest feeling about it. Nor had the ordeal of Cartright shaken my nerve at all like this. Bad as that had been, it had been in the open, with people around him. And Cartright, so it seemed, had been given some chance.

But this torture of the many-mirrored cell, with its sleep-slaying light and sound, its slow killing, in utter aloneness, of a man's mind—there was something about that, something not to be put in words, that shook me to the soul.

"How long will he—last?" I put the question to Consardine as we passed in to my rooms.

"It is hard to say," he answered, gently again. "He will come out of that room without memory. He will not know his name, nor what he has been, nor anything that he has ever learned. He will know nothing of all these hereafter —ever. Like an animal, he will know when he is hungry and thirsty, cold or warm. That is all. He will forget from minute to minute. He will live only in each moment. And when that moment goes it will be forgotten. Mindless, soulless—empty. I have known men to come to it in a week, others have resisted for three. Never longer."

I shivered.

"I'll not go down for dinner, Consardine," I said.

"I would, if I were you," he said gravely. "It will be wiser. You cannot help Cobham. After all, it is Satan's right. Like me, Cobham had taken the steps and lost. He lived at Satan's will. And Satan will be watching you. He will want to know how you have taken it. Pull yourself together, Kirkham. Come down, and be gay. I shall tell him that you were only interested in his exhibition. What, lad! Will you let him know what he has made you feel? Where is your pride? And to do so would be dangerous—for any plans you may have. I tell you so."

"Stay with me till it's time to go, Consardine," I said. "Can you?"

"I intended to," he answered, "if you asked me. And I think both of us can stand putting ourselves outside of an extra-sized drink."

I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror as I poured. The glass in my hand shook and spilled.

"I'll never want to look in one again," I told him.

He poured me another drink.

"Enough of that," he said briskly. "You must get it from your mind. Should Satan be at dinner—thank him for a new experience."

Satan was not at dinner. I hoped that he would receive a report, as no doubt he did, of my behavior. I was gay enough to satisfy Consardine. I drank recklessly and often.

Eve was there. I caught her glancing at me, puzzled, now and then.

If she had known how little real gayety there was in my heart, how much of black despair, she would have been more puzzled still.





CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I sat late at dinner, with a few others who, like me, had declined the bridge game. It was close to twelve when I returned to my room. I had the feeling that I would see Barker this night, whether or not he had been successful in getting hold of the kehjt.

Alone, the memory of Cobham and the mirrored cell swept back on me with full force. Why had Satan willed me to look upon the prisoner? Why to see myself in those cursed glasses? And why had he decreed that Cobham must see me?

To the first two questions there could be but one answer. He meant it as a warning. He was not, then, wholly satisfied with my explanation. And yet, if he were not, would he not have used harsher measures? Satan was not given to taking chances. I decided that he was satisfied, but nevertheless wished to give me a warning of what might happen to me if he should ever become not so.

Why, if Cobham's memory was to be destroyed, he should have wished him to take note of me peering in upon him, I could not tell. There seemed no answer to that, unless it was one of his whims. But, again, Satan's whims, as he called them, were never without reason. I gave it up, reluctantly and uneasily.

It was twelve-thirty when I heard a jubilant whisper from the bedroom.

"Got it, Cap'n!"

I walked into the bedroom. My nerves had suddenly grown taut, and there was a little ache in my throat. The moment had come. There could be no withdrawing now. The hand was ready to be played. And, without doubt, Death in a peculiarly unpleasant mood was the other player.

" 'Ere it is!" Barker thrust a half-pint flask into my cold fingers. It was full of that green liquor which I had watched Satan give to the slaves in the marble hall. The kehjt.

It was a clear fluid, with an elusive sparkle as of microscopic particles catching the light. I uncorked the flask and smelled it. It had a faintly acrid odor with an undertaint of musk. I was about to taste it when Barker stopped me.

"Keep awye from it, Cap'n," he said earnestly. "That stuff was brewed in 'Ell, it was. You're close enough."

"All right," I recorked the flask. "When do we go?"

"Right awye," he answered. "They chynged the blighters in the Temple at midnight. Syfe to start now as at anytime. Oh, yes—"

He fished down in a pocket.

"Thought I'd best bring along some of the scenery," he grinned.

He held out a pair of the golden cups into which the veiled figure with the ewer had poured the kehjt.

"Did you have a hard time getting the stuff, Harry?" I asked.

"It was touch an' go," he said soberly. "I 'ate to think of gettin' them cups back. I 'ates to think of it, but it's got to be done. Still," he added, hopefully, "I'm good."

"I'll say you are, Harry," I told him.

He hesitated.

"Cap'n," he said, "I won't 'ide from you; I feel as if we was h'about to slip into a room what's got a 'undred snakes in every corner."

"You've nothing on me, Harry," I answered cheerfully. "I think maybe it's got a snake carpet and scorpion curtains."

"Well," he said, "let's go."

"Sure," I said, "let's go."

I snapped off the lights in the outer room. We passed through the wall of the bedroom into a dimly lighted passage. A little along it and we went into one of the lifts. We dropped. We came out into a long passage, transverse to the first; another short drop, and we were in a pitch dark corridor. Here Harry took my hand and led me. Suddenly he stopped and flashed his light against the wall. He pressed his finger upon a certain spot. I could not see what had guided him, but a small panel slid aside. It revealed an aperture in which were a number of switches.

"Light control," Barker's mouth was close to my ear. "We're right be'ind the chair you set in. Lie down."

I slipped to the floor. He dropped softly beside me. Another panel about six inches wide and a foot high opened with the noiseless swiftness of a camera shutter.

I looked into the Temple.

The slit through which I was peering was at the level of the floor. It was hidden by the apparatus in which I had been prisoned when Cartright climbed to his doom. By craning my neck, I could see between its legs a horizontal slice of the whole immense chamber.

A brilliant light poured directly upon the black throne. It stood there empty—but menacing. About a dozen feet on each side of it was one of the kehjt slaves. They were tall, strong fellows, white robed, with their noosed cords ready in their hands. Their pallid faces showed dead-white under the glare. The pupilless eyes were not dreaming, but alert.

I caught a glitter of blue eyes behind the black throne. The eyes of the Satan of the pictured stone. They seemed to watch me, malignantly. I turned my gaze abruptly away from them. I saw the back of the Temple.

It, too, was illumined by one strong light. It was larger even than I had sensed it to be. The black seats ranged upward in semicircles, and there were at least three hundred of them.

The slit through which I had been looking closed. Barker touched me, and I arose.

"Give me the dope," he whispered. I handed him the flask of the kehjt; he had kept the golden cups.

Again he flashed his light upon the switches. He took my hands and placed them upon two.

"County sixty," he said. "Then open them switches. It puts out the lights. Keep your 'ands on 'em till I get back. Start now like this—one—two—"

He snapped out the flash. Although I had heard no sound, I knew he was gone. At the sixtieth count I pulled open the switches. It seemed a long time, standing there in the dark. It was probably no more than three or four minutes.

As noiselessly as he had gone, Barker was back. He tapped my hands away, and pressed the switches in place.

"Down," he muttered.

We slid to the floor. Once more the observation panel flew open.

The two guardians of the black throne were standing where I had last seen them. They were blinking, dazed by the swift return of the glaring light. And they were nervous as hunting dogs who had sensed a quarry. They were quivering, twirling their noosed cords, peering here and there.

I saw upon the black throne the two golden cups of the kehjt.

The slaves saw them at the same moment.

They stared at them, incredulously. They looked at each other. Like a pair of automatons moved by the same impulse, they took a step forward, and stared again at the glittering lure. And suddenly into their faces came that look of dreadful hunger. The cords dropped. They rushed to the black throne.

They seized the golden cups. And drank.

"Gord!" I heard Barker mutter. He was gasping and shuddering like one who had taken an icy plunge. Well, so was I. There had been something infinitely horrible in that rush of the pair upon the green drink. Something infernal in the irresistible tidal rush of desire that had swept their drugged minds clear of every impulse but that single one. To drink.

They turned from the black throne, the golden cups still clasped in their hands. I watched first one and then the other sink down upon the steps. Their eyes closed. Their bodies relaxed. But still their fingers gripped the cups.

"Now!" said Barker. He shut the slit, and closed the panel that hid the switches. He led me quickly along the dark corridor. We turned a sharp corner. There was the faintest of rustling sounds. Light streamed out in my face from a narrow opening.

"Quick!" muttered Barker, and pushed me through.

We stood on the dais, beside the black throne. Below us sprawled the bodies of the two guardians. The seven shining footprints glimmered up at me, watchfully.

Barker had dropped upon his knees. The lever which Satan had manipulated to set at work the mechanism of the steps lay flat, locked within an indentation in the stone cut out to receive it when at rest. Barker was working swiftly at its base. A thin slab moved aside. Under it was an arrangement of small cogs. He reached under and moved something. The telltale globe swung down from the ceiling.

Barker released the lever, cautiously. He brought it to upright, then pressed it downward, as I had seen Satan do. I heard no whirring, and understood that the little man had in some way silenced it.

"You got to go down and walk up, Cap'n," he whispered. "Make it snappy, sir. Tread on every one of them prints."

I ran down the steps, turned, and came quickly up, treading firmly on each of the shining marks. I turned at the top of the stairs and looked at the telltale globe. From the pale field three symbols shone out, from Satan's darker field gleamed four. My heart sank.

"Cheer up," said Harry. "You look fair crumpled. No need. It's what I expected. Wyte a moment."

He fumbled around among the cogs again, lying flat, his head half hidden in the aperture.

He gave an exclamation, and leaped to his feet, face sharpened, eyes glittering. He ran over to the black throne, pawing at it like an excited terrier.

Suddenly he threw himself into it and began pressing here and there at the edge of the seat.

" 'Ere," he beckoned me. "Sit where I am. Put your fingers 'ere and 'ere. When I tell you, press 'em in 'ard."

He jumped aside. I seated myself on the black throne. He took my hands and placed my fingers in a row about five inches long. They rested upon seven indentations along the edge, barely discernible. Nor did what I touched feel like stone. It was softer.

Barker slipped over to the cogs and resumed his manipulation of them.

"Press," he whispered. "Press 'em all together."

I pressed. The indentations yielded slightly under my fingers. My eyes fell upon the telltale. It had gone blank. All the shining marks upon it had disappeared.

"Press 'em now, one at a time," ordered Barker.

I pressed them one at a time.

"The swine," said Barker. "The bloody double-crossin' swine! Come 'ere, Cap'n, and look."

I dropped beside him and peered down at the cogs. I looked from them up at the telltale. And stared at it, only half believing what I saw.

"Got him!" muttered Harry. "Got him!"

He worked rapidly on the cogs, and closed the slab upon them. The telltale swung back to its resting place in the ceiling.

"The cups," he said. He ran down the steps and took the golden goblets that had held the kehjt from the still resisting fingers of the dreaming guardians.

"Got him!" repeated Harry.

We swung back of the black throne. Barker slid aside the panel through which we had entered. We passed out into the dark passageway.

A wild jubilance possessed me. Yet in it was a shadow of regret, the echo of the afternoon's hours of beauty's sorcery.

For what we had found ended Satan's power over his dupes forever.

Dethroned him!





CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

We had reached the dimly lighted corridor wherein lay the entrance to my rooms. Barker halted with a warning gesture.

"Listen!" he breathed.

I heard a noise, faint and far away; a murmuring. There were men moving somewhere behind the walls, and coming toward us. Could they have found the drugged slaves so soon?

"Get into your room. Quick," whispered Harry.

We started on the run. And halted again. Ten feet ahead of us a man had appeared. He had seemed to melt out of the wall with a magical quickness. He leaned against it for a moment sobbing. He turned his face toward us—

It was Cobham!

His face was gray and lined and shrunken. His eyes were so darkly circled that they looked, in that faint illumination, like the sockets of a skull. They stared vaguely, as though the mind behind them were dimmed. His lips were puffed and bleeding as though he had bitten them through time and time again.

"You're KirkhamI" he staggered forward. "Yes, I remember you! I was coining to you. Hide me."

The murmuring sounds were closer. I saw Barker slip the brass knuckles over his fingers and make ready to leap upon Cobham. I caught his arm.

"No use," I warned him. "They'd find him. The man's more than half mad. But they'd make him tell. I'll take him. Hurry! Get out of sight!"

I seized Cobham's arm, and raced him to the panel that opened into the bedroom. I opened it, and thrust him through. Barker at my heels, I slipped in and closed the slide.

"Get in that closet," I ordered Cobham, and shoved him among my clothes. I shut the doors and moved quickly with Barker into the outer room.

"Good!" he muttered, "but I don't fancy this."

"It's the only way," I said. "I'll have to figure some way to get rid of him later. I don't believe they'll come in here. They won't suspect me. Why should they? Still—there's the chance. If they found you here, then the fat would be in the fire. Is there any way you can dig right out without too much risk?"

"Yes," the little man's voice and eyes were troubled. "I can myke the getawye all right. But, Gord, I don't like leavin' you, Cap'n!"

"Beat it!" I said brusquely. "Get to Consardine. Tell him exactly what we found. Tell Miss Demerest what's happened. If anything does go wrong, it's all up to you, Harry."

He groaned. I heard a faint noise in the bedroom. I walked over to the door and looked in. It was Cobham, stirring in the closet. I tapped upon it.

"Be quiet," I told him. "They may be here any minute."

I snapped all the lights on, full. I went back to the other room. Barker was gone.

I threw off my coat and vest, and piled some books on the reading table. I fixed myself comfortably, lighted my pipe and began to read. The minutes passed slowly. Every nerve was tense, and every sense alert. But I flattered myself I was giving an excellent impersonation of one entirely absorbed in what I was reading.

And suddenly I knew that eyes were upon me. That some one was standing behind me, watching me.

I went on reading. The silent scrutiny became intolerable. I yawned and stretched, arose and turned—

Satan stood there.

He was cloaked from neck to feet in scarlet. At his back were half a dozen of the kehjt slaves. Two more were standing by the open panel in the bedroom.

"Satan!" I exclaimed, and the surprise I put into the words was genuine. Whatever the possibilities I had admitted, that Satan himself would head the manhunt had not been among them.

"You are startled, James Kirkham," there seemed a hint of solicitude in the expressionless voice. "I, too, was startled when, knocking at your wall, you failed to answer."

"I did not hear you," I said, truthfully. Had he really knocked?

"You were, I see, deep in your book," he said. "But you wonder, perhaps, why your silence should have disturbed me? I am in pursuit of a fugitive, a dangerous man, James Kirkham. A desperate man, I fear. The trail led us by here. It occurred to me that he might have attempted to hide in your rooms, and that resisting him you had come to harm."

It sounded reasonable enough. I remembered the extraordinary favor he had shown me that afternoon. My doubts were lulled; I let myself relax.

"I thank you, sir," I told him. "But I have seen no one. Who is the man—"

"The man I seek is Cobham," he interrupted me.

"Cobham!" I stared at him as though I had not understood. "But I thought that Cobham—"

"You thought that Cobham was in the room of the mirrors," he interrupted. "You have wondered, without doubt, why I had put him there. You thought that he was one of my trusted aides. You thought him most valuable to me. So he was. Then suddenly that Cobham whom I trusted and who was valuable—ceased to be. Another spirit entered him, one that I cannot trust and that therefore can never be other than a menace to me."

With a sinking heart I saw the cold mockery in the hard bright eyes, realized that he had raised his voice as though to let it carry throughout the rooms.

"That poor departed Cobham," he intoned, "shall I not avenge him? Yea, verily. I will punish that usurping spirit, torment it until it prays to me to loose it from that body it has stolen. My poor, lost Cobham! He will not care what I do with that body that once was his—so he be avenged."

There was no mistaking the mockery now. I felt my throat contract.

"You say you saw nothing?" he asked me.

"Nothing," I answered. "If anyone had come in the rooms I would have heard them."

Instantly I realized the error of that, and cursed myself.

"Ah, no," said Satan, smoothly. "You forget how immersed you were in your reading. You did not hear me. Either when I knocked or when I entered. I cannot let you run the risk of him being hidden here. We must search."

He gave an order to the slaves attending him. Before they could move, the closet door in the bedroom flew open. Cobham leaped out.

His first jump took him halfway to the opened panel. I caught the gleam of steel in his hand. In an instant he was at the two slaves guarding the opening. One went down gurgling, his throat slit. The other stumbled back, hands holding his side, blood spurting through his fingers.

And Cobham was gone.

Satan gave another curt order. Four of the six behind him raced away and through the panel.

The other two closed in on me, pinioning my arms to my sides with their cords.

Satan considered me, the mockery in his eyes grown devilish.

"I thought he would come here," he said. "It was why, James Kirkham, I let him escape!"

So that, too, had been a web of Satan's weaving! And he had snared me in it!

Suddenly an uncontrollable rage swept me. I would lie no more. I would wear a mask no more. I would never be afraid of him again. He could hurt me, damnably. He could kill me. He was probably planning to do both. But I knew him for what he was. He was stripped of his mystery and—I still had an ace in the hole of which he knew nothing. I drew a deep breath, and laughed at him.

"Maybe!" I said cynically. "But I notice that you couldn't keep him from escaping this time. The pity of it is that he didn't slit your damned black throat as he went, instead of that poor devil's yonder."

"Ah," he answered, with no resentment, "truth begins to pour out of the stricken Kirkham as water poured for Moses from the stricken rock. But you are wrong once more. It is long since I have enjoyed a manhunt. Cobham is an ideal quarry. It was why I left the panel open. He will last, I hope, for days and days."

He spoke to one of the two kehjt drinkers guarding me. I did not understand the tongue. The slave bowed and slipped out.

"Yes," Satan turned to me, "he will probably last for days and days. But you, James Kirkham, equally as probably will not. Cobham cannot escape. Neither can you. I shall consider tonight with what form of amusement you shall furnish me."

The slave who had gone out entered with six others. Again Satan instructed them. They massed about me, and guided me toward the wall. I went, unresisting. I did not look back at Satan.

But as I passed through the wall I could not shut my ears to his laughter!





CHAPTER NINETEEN

A day had gone and another night had come before I saw Satan again. Before, in fact, I saw any one except the pallid-faced drinkers of the kehjt who brought my food.

I had been taken, I conjectured, to one of the underground rooms. It was comfortable enough, but windowless and, of course, doorless. There they had unbound my arms and left me.

And then, my rage swiftly ebbing, hopelessness took possession of me. Barker would make every effort to get to Consardine. I was sure of that. But would he be able to get to him in time? Would Consardine accept his word for what we had discovered? I did not think so. Consardine was of the kind that has to be shown. Or, supposing he did believe, would his own hot wrath lead him to some hasty action that would set him with Cobham and myself? Leave Satan triumphant?

And what of Eve? What might she not do when she heard from Harry what had happened to me? For I had no doubt that the little man would soon find a way of finding out what had occurred.

What deviltries upon me was Satan hatching for Ins— amusement?

My night had not been an exactly hilarious one. The day had dragged endlessly. When I faced Satan I hoped that I showed no signs of those hours.

He had entered unannounced, Consardine with him. He wore the long black cloak. His eyes glittered over me. I looked from him to Consardine. Had Barker seen him? His face was calm, and he regarded me indifferently. My heart sank.

Satan sat down. Without invitation, I followed suit. I pulled out my cigarette case, and politely offered Satan one; a bit of childish bravado for which I was immediately sorry. He paid no attention to the gesture, studying me.

"I am not angry with you, James Kirkham," Satan spoke. "If I could feel regret, I would feel it for you. But you, yourself, are wholly responsible for your plight."

He paused. I made no answer.

"You would have deceived me," he went on. "You lied to me. You attempted to save from my justice a man I had condemned. You put your will against mine. You dared to try to thwart me. You have endangered my venture regarding the Astarte, if indeed you have not negatived it. You are no more to be trusted. You are useless to me. What is the answer?"

"My elimination, I suppose," I replied, carelessly. "But why waste time justifying one of your murders, Satan? By this time, I should think, murder would be second nature to you, no more to be explained than why you eat when you are hungry."

His eyes flickered.

"You deliberately invited Cobham's confidences, and you would have attempted to prevent the sinking of the Astarte, knowing that I had decreed it," he said.

"Right," I agreed.

"And you lied to me," he repeated. "To me!"

"One good lie deserves another, Satan," I answered. "You began the lying. If you had come clean with me, I'd have told you not to trust me with that job. You didn't. I suspected you hadn't. Very well, the man who lies to me in one thing will lie in another."

I shot a swift glance at Consardine. His face was as indifferent as ever, imperturbable as Satan's own.

"The minute Cogham let the cat out of the bag, I lost all faith in you," I went on. "For all I know, your assassins on the Cherub might have had their orders to do away with me after I had pulled your chestnuts. As I once heard another of your dupes say—blame yourself, Satan. Not me."

Consardine was watching me intently. I was feeling pretty reckless by now.

"Father of Lies," I said, "or to give you another of your ancient titles, Prince of Liars, the whole matter can be summed up in two short sentences. You can't trust me, and I know too much. All right. For both of those conditions you have only yourself to thank. But I also know you. And if you think I'm going to beg you for any mercy —you don't know me."

"Consardine," he said, tranquilly, "James Kirkham had such good material in him. He could have been so useful to me. It's a pity, Consardine. Yes, it is a pity!"

He regarded me benevolently.

"Although, frankly, I do not see how the knowledge can profit you," he said, "I feel that you should know the error that betrayed you. Yes, I wish to help you, James Kirkham," the great voice purred, "for it may be that there is a land to which we go when this mortal coil is cut. If so, it is probably much like this. You may even find me or my counterpart there. You will not care to repeat your mistakes."

I listened to this sinister jesting silently; after all, I was curious.

"Your first error was your reference to the bridge game. I noted the surprise it caused Cobham. You were too precipitate. You could just as well have waited your time. Remember, then, if you should reach that next world, never to be precipitate.

"Obviously, you had a reason. Equally obviously, it was my cue to discover that reason. Lesson two—in that world to which you may shortly be traveling, be careful to give to your opponent no cue to eavesdrop.

"When I re-entered, you ingenuously forbore to notice Cobham's very apparent consternation. You studiously kept your eyes from him during the ensuing conversation. That was too naive, James Kirkham. It showed you underestimated the intelligence you were seeking to convince. Your proper move was complete and instant indignation. You should have sacrificed Cobham by accusing him to me. In that bright new world in which you may or may not soon find yourself, never underestimate your opponent.

"But I gave you still another chance. Knowing Cobham, I knew that after my careful—ah—treatment—his mind would fasten upon you as a refuge, his only refuge. He was given the treatment, he saw you, and then he was allowed to escape. He came, as I thought he would, straight to you. If, at the moment he entered your rooms, you had caught him, sounded the alarm, again—sacrificed him, perhaps I would still have believed in you. It was weakness, sentimentality. What was Cobham to you? Remember, then, in your new sphere, to eschew all sentimentality."

Out of that cynical harangue two facts apparently shone clear. Satan did not know that I had gone out of my rooms, nor that I had encountered Cobham outside them. I took some comfort from that. But—had Cobham been caught? Would he tell?

"By the way, how is Cobham?" I asked, politely.

"Not so well, not so well, poor fellow," said Satan, "yet he was able to give me an enjoyable afternoon. At present he is lying in the darkness of a crypt near the laboratory, resting. Shortly he will be given an opportunity to leave it. During his carefully guided wanderings thereafter, he will have the chance to snatch a little food and drink. I do not wish him to wear himself out in his efforts to amuse me. Or, to put it another way, it is not my intention to allow him to die of exhaustion or famine. No, no, the excellent Cobham will provide me with many merry hours still. I shall not send him back to my little mirrors. They have drawn his fangs. But at the last I will inform him of your interest, since, I am quite sure, you will be unable."

He arose.

"James Kirkham," said Satan, "in half an hour you shall be judged. Be ready at that time to appear in the Temple. Come, Consardine."

My hope that he would leave Consardine with me went crumbling. Desperately I wanted to talk to him. He followed Satan out. The wall closed behind him. He had not even turned his head.

I remembered Cartright. Consardine had brought him in, stood beside him before he had begun the ordeal of the Steps. Probably he would return for me.

But he did not. When the half hour had elapsed four of the kehjt drinkers came for me. Two in front of me, two behind me, they marched me through long corridors and up steep ramps of stone. They halted. I heard the sound of a gong. A panel opened. The slaves would have pushed me in, but I struck aside their hands and stepped through. The panel closed.

I stood within the Temple.

I was within the semidarkness beyond the ring of brilliant light beating down upon the steps. I heard a murmuring. It came from my left where the amphitheater circled. I caught movement there, glimpses of white faces. The seats seemed full. I thought I heard Eve's voice, whispering, vibrant—

"Jim!"

I could not see her.

I looked toward the dais. It was as it had been when I had watched Cartright stumble up toward it. The golden throne gleamed. On it glittered the jeweled scepter and crown.

Upon the black throne sat Satan.

Squatting beside him, fiend's face agrin, twirling his cord of woman's hair, was Sanchal, the executioner.

Again the gong sounded.

"James Kirkham! Approach for judgment!" Satan's voice rolled out.

I walked forward. I paused at the foot of the steps, within the circle of light. The seven glimmering prints of the child's foot stared at me out of the black stone.

Guarding them, seven upon each side, stood the white-robed slaves of the kehjt. Their eyes were fixed upon me.

The thoughts went racing through my brain. Should I cry out the secret of the black throne to those who sat silent, watching me from the circled seats of stone? I knew that before I uttered a dozen words the cords of the kehjt slaves would be strangling me. Could I make one swift dash up the steps and grapple with Satan? They would have me before I had reached halfway.

One thing I might do. Take the steps leisurely. Make my fourth and final one the sixth of the shining prints. Their arrangement was irregular. The sixth was not far from the black throne. Closer than the seventh. I could leap from it upon Satan. Sink fingers and teeth into his throat. Once I had gripped I did not believe it would be easy for any to tear me away, were I alive or dead.

But Barker? Barker might have his plan. It would not be like the little man to lurk hidden, and supinely let me pass. And Consardine? But did Consardine know?

And Eve!

The thoughts jostled. I could not think clearly. I held fast to my last idea, fixing my gaze upon Satan's throat just below the ear. There was where I would sink my teeth.

But was I to be allowed to take the steps?

"James Kirkham," Satan's voice rolled forth, "I have set upon the throne of gold the crown and scepter of worldly power. It is to remind you of that opportunity which your contumacy has lost to you, forever."

I looked at them. For all that I cared they might be bits of colored glass. But I heard a faint sighing from the hidden seats.

"James Kirkham, you would have betrayed me! You are a traitor! It remains now but to decree your punishment!"

He paused again. In all the Temple there was no sound. The silence was smothering. It was broken by a sibilant whirring, the twirling of the noose in the talons of the executioner. Satan raised a hand, and it was stilled.

"Yet I am inclined to be merciful,"—only I, perhaps, caught the malicious glint in the jewel-bright eyes. "There are three things which man has to which he clings hardest. In the last analysis, they are all he has. One is contained in the other—yet each is separate. They are his soul, his personality and his life. By his soul I mean that unseen and not yet accurately located essence upon which religion lays such stress, considers immortal, and that may or may not be. By personality I mean the ego, the mind, that which says—I am I, the storehouse of old memories, the seeker of new ones. Life I need not define.

"Now, James Kirkham, I offer you a choice. Upon one side I place your soul, upon the other your life and your mind.

"You may join my drinkers of the kehjt. Drink it, and your life and your ego are safe. From time to time you will be happy, happy with an intensity that normally you would never be. But you lose your soul! You will not miss it— at least not often. Soon the kehjt will be more desirable to you than ever that usually troublesome guest—somewhere within you."

He paused again, scrutinizing me.

"If you do not drink the kehjt," he continued, "you take the steps. If you tread upon my three, you lose your life. Slowly, in agony, at the hands of Sanchal.

"If you tread upon the four fortunate ones, you shall have your life and your soul. But you must leave with me your ego, that which says I am I, all your memories. It will not be dangerous to you, it will not be painful. I will not give you to the mirrors. A sleep—and then a knife, cunningly cutting here and there within your brain. You will awaken as one new-born. Literally so, James Kirkham, since from you will have been taken, and taken forever, all recollection of what you have been. Like a child you will set forth upon your new pilgrimage. But with life—and with your precious soul unharmed."

And now I heard a whispering behind me from the dark amphitheater. Satan raised his hand, and it was stilled.

"Such is my decreel" he intoned. "Such is my will! So shall it be!"

"I take the steps," I said, with no hesitation.

"Your guardian angels," he said unctuously, "applaud without doubt your decision. You remember that they have no power where Satan rules. I thought that would be your choice. And now, to prove how little strained is the quality of my mercy, I offer you, James Kirkham, a door for escape—escape with life and mind and soul, all three of them, intact!"

Now I stared at him, every sense alert. Well I knew that there was no mercy in Satan. Knowing, too, the secret of the steps, the diabolic mockery of that offer of his was an open page to me. But what blacker diabolism was coming? I was soon to learn.

"The roots of this man's offense against me," he turned his gaze toward the amphitheater, "were in sentiment. He placed the welfare of others before mine. Let this be a lesson to all of you. I must be first.

"But I am just. Others he could save, himself he could not save. Yet there may be one who can save him. He gives up, it is probable, his life because he dared to stand between me and the lives of others.

"Is there one who will stand between me and his life?"

Once more there came a murmuring, louder now, from the hidden darkness of the Temple; whisperings.

"Wait!" he raised a hand. "This is what I mean. If there is one among you who will step forth and take but three of the steps in his place, then this is what shall happen. If two of the shining prints are fortunate, both shall go forth free and unharmed! Yes, even with rich reward.

"But if two of the steps are mine—then both shall die and by those same torments which I have promised James Kirkham.

"Such is my decree! Such is my will! So shall it be!

"And now, if such person there be, let him step forth."

I heard a louder murmuring. I believed that he suspected I had not been alone. It might even be that this was a trap for Barker. I did not know to what lengths the little man's devotion might take him. At any rate, it was a line thrown out for the unwary. I walked hastily forward to the very base of the steps.

"I can do my own climbing, Satan," I said. "Set your game."

The murmuring behind me had grown louder.

Satan's immobility dropped from him.

For the first time I watched expression transform the mask of his face. And that transformation was at first utter incredulity, then a rage that leaped up straight from the Pit. Plainly, as though that heavy face had melted away under it, I saw the hidden devil stand forth stark naked. I felt a touch upon my arm.

Eve stood beside me!

"Go backl" I whispered to her, fiercely. "Get back there!"

"Too late!" she said, tranquilly.

She looked up at Satan.

"I will take the steps for him, Satan," she said.

Satan raised himself up from the black throne, hands clenched. He glanced once at the executioner. The black leaned forward, loop whirling. I threw myself in front of Eve.

"Your word, Satan," came a voice from the amphitheater, a voice I did not recognize. "Your decree!"

Satan glared out into the darkness, striving to identify the speaker. He signed to the executioner, and the black dropped the whirling cord. Satan sank into his throne. With dreadful effort he thrust back the freed devil that had snatched away the mask. His face resumed its immobility. But he could not banish that devil from his eyes.

"It was my decree," he intoned monotonously, but there was something strangled in the voice. "So shall it be. You offer, Eve Demerest, to take the steps for him?"

"Yes," she answered.

"Why?"

"Because I love him," said Eve, calmly.

Satan's hands twisted beneath his robe. The heavy lips contorted. Upon the enormous dome of his bald head tiny drops of sweat suddenly sprang out, glistening.

Abruptly, he reached forward, and drew back the lever; the shining prints glimmered out as though touched with fire—

I heard no whirring of the hidden cogs!

What did that mean? I looked at Satan. Either I had been mistaken, or else in the rage that ruled him he had not noticed. I had no time to speculate.

"Eve Demerest," the rolling tones still held their curiously strangled note, "you shall take the steps! And all shall be according to my decree. But this I tell you—none who has ever taken them and lost has died as you shall die. What they went through was Paradise, measured against that which you shall undergo if you lose. And so shall it be with your lover.

"First you shall see him die. Before he passes, he will turn from you with loathing and with hate… that ever he knew you. And then I shall give you to Sanchal. But not for him to slay. No, no! Not yetl When he is through with you the drinkers of the kehjt shall have you. The lowest of them. It shall be after them that Sanchal shall possess you again… for his cords and his knives and his irons… for his sport… and for mine!"

He pulled at the neck of his cloak as though it choked him. He signaled to the slaves who stood on the bottom steps. He gave them some command in the unknown tongue. They slithered toward me. I tensed my muscles, about to make one despairing rush upon the blazing-eyed devil in the black throne.

Eve covered her face with her hands.

"Jim, darling," she whispered swiftly, under their shelter, "go quietly! Barker! Something's going to happen—"

The slaves had me. I let them lead me over to the chair from which I had watched Cartright mount to his doom. They pressed me into it. Arm and leg bands snapped into place. The veil dropped over my head. They marched away.

A whisper came from below and behind me:

"Cap'n! The clamps don't hold! There's a gun right be'ind the slide. It's open. I'm in a 'ell of a 'urry. When you see me next, grab it an' get busy."

"Eve Demerest!" called Satan, "the steps await! Ascend!"

Eve walked forward steadily. Unhesitating, she put her foot upon the first of the shining prints.

A symbol leaped out in the fortunate field of the swinging globe. I heard a murmur, louder than before, go up from the darkened amphitheater. Satan watched, immobile.

She mounted, and set her foot in the next gleaming mark of the child's foot—

I saw Satan bend suddenly forward, glaring at the telltale, stark disbelief in his eyes. From the amphitheater the murmuring swelled into a roar.

A second symbol shone out in the fortunate field

She had won our freedom!

But how had it happened? And what was Eve doing—

She had mounted to the third point. She pressed upon it.

Out upon the telltale sprang a third symbol to join the other two!

Satan's face was writhing. The roaring at the back of the Temple had become a tumult. I heard men shouting. Satan was fumbling frantically under his robe—

And now Eve sped up the intervening steps between her and the dais. As she passed them, she trod upon each of the gleaming prints. And as she trod, out upon the fortunate field appeared, one after the other, a shining symbol.

Seven of them—in the fortunate field!

None in Satan's!

The roaring had become deafening. Satan leaped from the black throne. The wall behind him opened. Out sprang Barker, automatic in his hand.

Now he was at Satan's side, the barrel of the gun thrust into his belly. The tumult in the Temple stilled, as though a cloud of silence had fallen upon it.

" 'Ands up!" snarled the little man. "Wye up! Two ticks an' I scatter your guts h'over the map!"

Up went Satan's hands, high over his head.

I threw myself forward. The clamps of the chair gave so suddenly that I slipped to my knees. I reached back into the slit, and felt the barrel of a pistol. I gripped it—the executioner Sanchal was crouching, ready to spring. I shot from the floor, and with an accuracy that gave me one of the keenest joys I had ever known, I drilled Sanchal through the head. He fell sideways, flopping half down the steps.

The kehjt slaves stood dazed, irresolute, waiting command.

"One move o' them bastards, an' you're in pieces," I heard Harry say. "Tell 'em, quick!"

He jabbed the muzzle of the gun viciously into Satan's side.

Satan spoke. The voice that came from his lips was like that which one hears in nightmare. To this day I do not like to remember it. It was a command in the unknown tongue, but I had a swift, uneasy suspicion that it held more than the bare order to remain quiet. The slaves dropped their ropes. They slid back toward the walls.

I took the steps on the jump. Eve was beside Barker. I ranged myself at Satan's other side. She slipped behind him, and joined me.

The tumult in the amphitheater burst out afresh. Men were struggling together in the semidarkness. There was a rush down from the seats. The edge of the brilliant circle was abruptly lined with figures.

Out from them stepped Consardine.

His face was chalk-white. His eyes burned with a fire that matched Satan's own. He held his hands before him with fingers curved like talons. He stalked forward like a walking death. And his eyes never left Satan.

"Not yet," whispered Barker. "Stop 'im, Cap'n."

"Consardine!" I called. "Stop where you are."

He paid no heed. He walked on, slowly, like a sleepwalker, the dreadful gaze upon Satan unwavering.

"Consardine!" I called again, sharply. "Stop! I'll drop you. I mean it. I don't want to kill you. But another step, and I drop you. By God, I will!"

He halted.

"You… will not… kill him? You will… leave… him for me?"

Consardine's voice was thin and high. It was Death speaking.

"If we can," I answered him. "But keep those others back. One move against us and Satan goes. And some of you with him. We've no time to pick friends from foes."

He turned and spoke to them. Again they were silent, watching.

"Now then, Cap'n," said Barker, briskly, "stick your gun in 'im, and move 'im over 'ere. I'm goin' to show 'em."

I thrust the automatic just under Satan's lower ribs, and pushed him toward the throne of gold. He moved over unresistingly, quietly, almost stolidly. He did not even look at me. I studied him, the vague apprehension growing stronger. He was intent upon Consardine. His face had regained all its impassivity. But the Devil looked out of his eyes, unchained. It came to me that he believed Consardine to be the archtraitor, that it was he who had set the snare! That we were Consardine's tools!

But why this apparently passive resignation? Even with our guns at his belly, it was not what I would have expected of Satan. And it seemed to me that besides the murder in his gaze there was a certain contempt. Had he, also, a final ace in the hole? My uneasiness increased, sharply.

"Now look, all o' you. I'm goin' to show you what the double-crossin' swine 'as been doin' to you."

It was Barker speaking. I did not dare turn my eyes from Satan to see what he was doing. But there was no need. I knew.

"Promisin' you this an' that," went on the cockney drawl. "Sendin' you to 'Ell! An' all the time larfin' up 'is sleeves at you. Larfin' fit to die, 'e was. An' you like a parcel o' trustin' h'infants. I'm goin' to show you. Miss Demerest, will you please walk down an' then walk up them prints again?"

I saw Eve go down the steps.

"Wyte a second." She halted at the bottom. " 'Ere I am sittin' in 'is throne. I pull the lever. But h'after I've pulled it, I press on the h'edge of the seat. Like this. Now, Miss Demerest. Walk up."

Eve ascended, stepping upon each of the shining prints.

I could see, out of the corner of my eye, the telltale. Nothing appeared upon it. No symbol, either upon darkened field or lighted.

There was no sound from the watchers. They seemed dazed, waiting what was to come next.

"Didn't make a damned bit o' difference where you trod," said Barker. "It didn't register. 'Cause why? When I pressed on the h'edge of the throne, a little plate slipped down under there where the machinery is. An' at the same time, the cogs what myde the contacts what flashed the signals on the globe got moved over to another set o' contacts. The steps'd work all right when 'e wanted 'em to. They was always set right when 'e was off 'is throne. But after 'e'd set 'imself on 'is bloody black chair 'e'd 'ide 'is 'ands an' press an' disconnect 'em. 'Ell, a flock o' elephants could o' walked up 'em then an' they'd never give a blink!"

The tumult broke out afresh; men, and women, too, crying out, cursing. They surged forward, farther into the ring of light.

"Backl" I shouted. "Hold them back, Consardinel"

"Wyte!" yelped Barker. "Wyte! That ain't 'arf what the swine's done to you!"

The uproar died. They stared up at us again. Consardine had moved to the very bottom of the steps. His face was, if possible, whiter. His eyes glared upon Satan from rings, black as though painted. He was panting. I wished Harry would hurry. Consardine was near the end of his restraint. I didn't want to shoot him.

All of this I had seen incompletely. Suddenly I had the thought that Satan was listening, listening not to anything within the Temple, but for some sound far away. That he was willing, willing with complete concentration of all his unholy power for some certain thing to happen. And as I watched I seemed to see a flicker of triumph pass over the marble face.

"Now," came Barker's voice, "I'm goin' to show you. 'Ere on the syme h'edge is seven little plyces. Rubber, set in the stone. After 'e'd disconnected the contacts from the steps, 'e put 'is finger tips on each o' them plyces. Three of 'em was linked up to the contacts so's they'd flash the marks on 'is side the telltale. The other four was rigged up to flash 'em on your side. When any o' you tread on a print 'e'd press the button 'e wanted. Up'd go the mark, of the one 'e'd picked. You didn't make them marks show up. 'E did!' 'E 'ad you goin' and comin'.

"Wyte a minute! Just a minute!" Clearly Barker was enjoying himself. "I'm going to sit in 'is chair an' show you. Goin' to show you just what blinkin' bloody fools he myde out o' you."

"Jim!" there was alarm in Eve's voice, close to my ear. "Jim! I've just noticed. There were seven of the kehjt drinkers along that wall. Now there are only six. One of them has slipped away!"

At that instant I knew for what Satan had been listening and waiting. I had been right when I had sensed in his command to the slaves something more than an order to be quiescent. He had bade them watch for an opportunity that would let one of them creep away and raise the alarm.

Loose upon those who threatened him the horde of those soulless, merciless devils to whom Satan was a god since he, and only he, could open to them their Paradise

In the absorption of us all in the drama of Satan's unmasking, a slave had found that opportunity. Had been gone—how long?

The thoughts flashed through my head in a split second.

And at that same instant the Hell which had been piling up slowly and steadily in the Temple like thunder heads broke loose.

Without warning, swiftly as the darting of a snake, Satan's arm struck down. It caught my arm. It sent my automatic hurtling, exploding as it flew. I heard Eve scream, heard Barker's sharp yelp.

I saw Consardine leaping up the steps, straight for Satan. Abruptly the whole Temple was flooded with light. Like an image caught between the opening and shutting of a camera shutter, I had a glimpse of Bedlam. Those who would have followed Consardine and those who were still faithful to Satan struggling for mastery.

Satan's hands swept in to catch me, lift me, hurl me against Consardine. Quicker than he, I dropped, twisting, and threw myself with every ounce of my strength against his legs.

He tottered. A foot slipped upon the edge of the dais. He reeled down a step or two, swaying in effort to regain his balance.

Consardine was upon him!

His hands gripped Satan's throat. The mighty arms of Satan wrapped themselves around him. The two fell. Locked, they went rolling down the steps.

There was a howling, like packs of wolves. At the back of the Temple and at the two sides, the panels flew open. Through them seethed the kehjt slaves.

"Quick, Cap'n!"

Barker spun me around. He pointed to the throne of gold.

"Be'ind it!" he grunted, and ran.

I caught Eve's arm and we raced after him. He was on his knees, working frantically at the floor. Something clicked, and a block slid aside. I saw a hole down which dropped a narrow flight of steps.

"Go first," said Barker. "Quick!"

Eve slipped through. As I followed I caught a glimpse of the Temple through the legs of the throne. It was a seething place of slaughter. The knives of the kehjt slaves were flashing. Men were shooting. From side to side was battle. Of Satan and Consardine I saw nothing. There were a dozen of the slaves rushing up the stairs toward us—

Barker shoved me down the hole. He jumped after me, landing almost on my head. The slab closed.

" 'Urryl" gasped Barker. "Gord! If 'e gets us now!"

The stairs led into a bare and small chamber of stone. Over our heads we could hear the tumult. The feet of the fighters beat on the ceiling like drums.

"Watch the stairs. Where's your gun? 'Ere, tyke mine," Barker thrust his automatic into my hand. He turned to the wall, scrutinizing it. I ran back to where the narrow stairs entered the chamber. I could hear hands working at the block.

"Got it I" cried Barker. " 'Urry!"

A slab had opened in the wall. We passed through. It shut behind us. I could see no place in the wall to mark where it had been.

We stood in one of those long and dimly lighted corridors that honeycombed Satan's house.

Clearly to us came the turmoil of the fighting above us.

There were five quick sharp explosions.

And, then, abruptly, as though at some command, the turmoil was stilled.





CHAPTER TWENTY

The effect of that abrupt silencing of the tumult overhead was disconcerting, to put it mildly. The five sharp reports had been less like pistol shots than those of a rifle. But who had been shooting, and how could so few bullets have ended such a melee as I had glimpsed?

"They're quiet! What does it mean?" whispered Eve.

"Somebody's won," I said.

"Satan—you don't think Satan?" she breathed.

Whether Consardine had done for Satan or Satan for him, I had no means of knowing. Desperately I hoped that Consardine had killed him. But whether he had or had not, my betting upon the general battle was with the kehjt drinkers. They swung a wicked knife, and they didn't care. If Consardine had choked Satan's life out of him, the kehjt slaves had in all probability sent Consardine's life after Satan. I didn't tell Eve that.

"Whether Satan has lost or won, his power is gone," I told her. "There's little to fear from him now."

"Not if we can get out of this blinkin' 'ole without gettin' scragged, there ain't," said Harry, gloomily. "It's only fair to tell you I'd a lot rather be 'earin' that Bank 'Oli-day goin' on up there."

"What's the matter with you?" I asked.

"It'd keep their minds off us, for one thing," he looked askance at Eve. "But that ain't the 'ole of it."

"Will you kindly not regard me as a sensitive female, Barker," said Eve with considerable acerbity. "Never mind considering my feelings. What do you mean?"

"All right," said Barker. "I'll tell you stryte then. I don't know where the 'ell we are."

I whistled.

"But you knew your way here," I said.

"No," he answered, "I didn't. I took a long chance on that, Cap'n. I knew about the trap be'ind the gold throne an' the room under it. It's where 'e stows it, an' I been there, from up above. I took a chance there was another wye out. I was lucky enough to find it. But 'ow to get from 'ere—I don't know."

"Hadn't we better be moving along, somewhere?" said Eve.

"We sure had," I said. "We've only got one gun. Those slaves may come piling in any minute."

"I move we tyke the right 'and," said Harry. "We're somewhere close to Satan's private quarters. I know that. You keep the gun, Cap'n."

We moved along the corridor, cautiously. Barker kept scanning the walls, shaking his head, and mumbling. Something had been puzzling me ever since Eve had walked forth from the dark amphitheater to take my place at the steps. It seemed as good a time as any to satisfy my curiosity.

"Harry," I asked, "how did you work it so that all the prints registered only on that one side of the globe? What kept Satan from doing his double-crossing as usual from the black throne? He was trying hard enough. Did you get back into the Temple again after we'd left?"

"I fixed it before we went, Cap'n," he grinned. "You saw me fussin' with the machinery after we'd tried it out, didn't you?"

"I thought you were readjusting it," I said.

"So I was," he grinned more broadly. "Settin' it so the steps threw all the contacts on the lucky side o' the telltale. Settin' it so 'is little arryngement in 'is chair wouldn't myke no contacts at all. Took a chance, I did. Thought mybe the next Temple meetin' would be on account o' you. Only thing I was afryd of was 'e'd miss the noise when 'e pulled the little lever. I couldn't 'elp that. Thank Gord, 'e didn't. 'E was too mad."

"Harry," I took the little man by the shoulders, "you've surely paid me back in full and more for whatever I did for you."

"Now, now," said Barker, "wyte till we're out—"

He halted.

"What's that?" he whispered.

There had been another sharp explosion, louder than those we had heard before the silence had dropped upon the Temple. It was closer, too. The floor of the corridor trembled. Quick upon it came another.

"Bombs!" exclaimed Barker.

There was a third explosion, nearer still.

"Cripes! We got to get out o' here!" Barker began questing along the walls like a terrier. Suddenly he grunted, and stopped.

"Got something," he said. "Quiet now. Stand close be'ind me while I tyke a look."

He pressed upon the wall. A panel slid aside revealing one of the small lifts. He drew a long breath of relief. We crowded in.

"Down or up?" he closed the panel on us.

"What do you think?" I asked him.

"Well, the Temple's on the ground floor. We're just under it. If we go down, we'll be somewhere around that slyves' den. If we go up, we got to pass the Temple. If we can get by, an' keep on goin' up—well, it's 'ardly likely there'll be as many slyves over it as under an' around it, Cap'n."

"Up we go," said Eve, decisively.

"Up it is," I said.

He sent the lift upward, slowly. There was a fourth explosion, louder than any of the others. The frame of the elevator rattled. There was a sound of falling masonry.

"Getting close," said Eve.

"If we could bryke into Satan's rooms, we'd 'ave a chance o' findin' that private tunnel of 'is," Barker stopped the lift. "It's somewhere close by. It's our best bet, Cap'n. With any luck at all, we could come out syfe on the shore."

"I'll bet that by now everybody on the place knows what's going on, and is somewhere around here," I said. "We could lift one of those speed boats and get away."

"I smell something burning," said Eve.

"Cripes!" Barker sent the lift up at the limit of its speed, "I'll sye you do!"

A crack had opened in the wall in front of us. Out of it had shot a jet of smoke.

Suddenly Barker stopped the lift. He slid aside a panel, cautiously. He peered out, then nodded to us. We stepped into a small room, paved and walled with a dull black stone. On one side was a narrow door of bronze. It was plainly an antechamber. But to what?

As we stood there, hesitating, we heard two more explosions, one immediately following the other. They seemed to be upon the floor where we were. From below us came another crash, as of a falling wall. The lift from which we had just emerged went smashing down. Out of the open panel poured a dense volume of smoke.

"Gordl The 'ole bloody plyce is on fire!" Barker jammed the panel shut, and stared at us, white faced.

And suddenly I thought of Cobham.

Cobham, with his gentlemanly bomb that was to blow the bottom out of the Astarte. Satan had said that he had been driven into hiding near the laboratory. Had Cobham seen his chance to escape during the rush of the kehjt slaves to aid Satan? Had he found his way clear, gone straight to the laboratory, and was he now strewing in crazed vengeance the death and destruction he had garnered there?

I tried the bronze door. It was unfastened. Gun ready, I slowly opened it.

We were at one end of that amazing group of rooms, that shrine of beauty, which Satan had created for himself. That place of magic whose spell had so wrought upon me not so long ago that I had gone forth from it, half-considering the giving up of Eve, the placing of my whole allegiance in Satan's hands. There was a thin veil of smoke in the silent chamber. It dimmed the tapestries, the priceless paintings, the carvings of stone and wood. We crossed its floor, and looked into a larger treasure room. At its far side where were its doors, the smoke hung like a curtain.

From behind the smoke, and close, came another explosion.

Through the curtain stumbled Satan!

At sight of him we huddled together, the three of us. My mouth went dry, and I felt the sweat wet the roots of my hair. It was not with fear. It was something more than fear.

For Satan, stumbling toward us, was blind!

His eyes were no longer blue, jewel-hard and jewel-bright. They were dull and gray, like unpolished agates. They were dead. It was as though a flame had seared them. There was a red stain over and around them, like a crimson mask.

He was cloakless. Black upon the skin of his swollen neck were the marks of strangling fingers. Consardine's.

One arm hung limp. The other clasped to his breast a little statue of ivory, an Eros. Of all those things of beauty which he had schemed and robbed and slain to possess, that statue was, I think, the thing he loved the best; the thing in which he found the purest, perfect form of that spirit of beauty which, evil as Satan was, he knew and worshiped.

He stumbled on, rolling his great head from side to side like a blinded beast. And as he came, tears fell steadily from the sightless eyes and glistened on the heavy cheeks.

Through the curtain of smoke, following him, stalked Cobham.

A bag was slung over his left shoulder. It bulged, and as he emerged he dipped a hand within it. In his hand when he drew it out was something round, about as big as an orange, something that gleamed, with a dully metallic luster.

As Cobham walked, he laughed; constantly, even as Satan wept.

Cobham halted.

"Satan!" he called. "Stop! Time for a rest, dear Master!"

The stumbling figure lurched on, unheeding. The jeering note in Cobham's voice fled; it became menacing.

"Stop, you dog! Stop when I tell you. Do you want a bomb at your heels?"

Satan stood still, shuddering, the little statue clasped closer.

"Turn, Satan," jeered Cobham. "What, Master, would you deny me the light of those eyes of yours!"

And Satan turned.

Cobham saw us.

The hand that held the bomb flew up.

"Walter!" cried Eve, and leaped in front of me, arms outstretched. "Walter! Don't!"

I had not tried to shoot. To be honest, I had not thought of it. The paralysis with which the sight of Satan had touched me still held me. Eve's swift action saved us more surely than a bullet would have.

Cobham's arm dropped to his side. Satan did not turn. I doubt even if he heard. He was past all except his agony and the voice of his tormentor, and that, it came to me, he obeyed only to save from destruction the thing he was clasping.

"Eve!" some of the madness was swept from Cobham's face. "Who's with you? Come closer."

We moved toward him.

"Kirkham, eh? and little 'Arry. Stop where you are. Put your hands up, both of you. I owe you something, Kirkham. But I don't trust you. Eve, where do you think you're going?"

"We're trying to get away, Walter," she said gently. "Come with us."

"Come with you? Come with you!" I saw the madness fill his eyes again. "I couldn't do that. There's only a part of me here, you know. The rest of me is in a room full of little mirrors. A part of me in every one of those mirrors. I couldn't go away and leave them."

He paused, seemingly to consider the matter. The smoke grew thicker. Satan never moved.

"Disintegrated personality, that's it," said Cobham. "Satan did it. But he didn't keep me there long enough. I got away. If I'd stayed a little longer, all of me would have gone into the mirrors. Into them and through them and away. As it is," said Cobham with a dreadful, impersonal gravity, "the experiment remains unfinished. I can't go away and leave those bits of myself behind. You see that, Eve?"

"Careful, Eve. Don't cross him," I muttered. He heard me.

"Shut up, you, Kirkham. Eve and I will do the talking," he said, viciously.

"We could help you, Walter," she said, steadily. "Come with us—"

"I went to the Temple," he interrupted her, speaking quite calmly, the shattered mind abruptly taking another path, "I had my bombs with me. I distributed a few of them. I used the sleep gas. Consardine was at the bottom of the steps. His back was broken. Satan was just getting up from him. He covered his mouth and nose and ran. I caught him. A little spray across the eyes with something I was carrying. That was all. He made for here like a rat to his hole. Blind as he was—"

The mood had changed. He roared his crazy laughter.

"Come with you! Leave him! After what he's done to me? No, no, Eve. Not if you were all the angels in Heaven. We've had a nice long walk, Satan and I. And when we go, we go together. With all the little bits of me in his damned mirrors going, too. A long, long journey. But I've arranged it so we'll have a swift, swift start!"

"Cobham," I said. "I want to save Eve. The tunnel to the shore. Will you tell us how to find it? Or is the way to it blocked?"

"I told you to shut up, Kirkham," he leered at me. "Everybody used to obey Satan. Now Satan obeys me. Therefore everybody obeys me. You've disobeyed me. Walk over to that wall, Kirkham."

I walked to the wall. There was nothing else to do.

"You want to know how to get to the tunnel," he said when I had reached it, and turned. "Go into that anteroom. Through the right wall there—listen to me, you 'Arry," he shot a malicious look at me. "Six panels left along the corridor. Through again into another passage. Go down the ramp to the end. Through it at the last panel, right. That's the start of the tunnel. So much for that. Now, Kirkham, let's see whether you're going with them. Catch."

He raised his arm and threw the bomb at me.

It seemed to come to me slowly. I seemed to have plenty of time to think of what would happen to me if I missed it, or dropped it, or caught it too roughly. Luck was with me. I did none of the three.

"All right, you go," grinned Cobham. "Keep it in case you meet any of the slaves. I think I cleaned them all out in the Temple. Gas bombs, Kirkham, gas bombs. They're lying up there asleep and toasting."

Again he roared with laughter.

"Get outl" he snarled suddenly.

We walked back through the other room. We did not dare look into each other's faces. At the door, I glanced back. Cobham was watching us.

Satan had not stirred.

We passed through the door, and closed it.

We got out of the little antechamber as quickly as we could. It was pretty bad with the smoke, and rather too much like a furnace. The first corridor was uncomfortably choky, too. The second was entirely clear. When we reached its end, Barker had a bit of trouble with the panel. Finally it swung open, like a door.

Before us was not, as I had expected, the entrance to the tunnel, but a bare, stone room about twenty feet square. Opposite us was a massive steel door closed with heavy bars. On each side of it was a kehjt drinker. They were big fellows, armed with throwing cords and knives. In addition to these they had carbines, the first guns I had seen in the hands of the slaves.

I had thrust Cobham's bomb in my pocket. For an instant I thought of using it. Then common sense told me that it might bring the place crashing down about us, at any rate seal the tunnel entrance. I dropped my hand on my automatic. But by that time the guards covered us with their rifles. The only reason that they had not shot on sight, I suppose, was that they had recognized Barker.

" 'Ullol 'Ullo! What's the matter with you?" Barker stepped toward them.

"What are you doing here?" one of the slaves spoke, and by the faint accent in the deadened voice I thought that he had been Russian before be had become—what he was.

"Satan's orders," answered Harry brusquely, and gestured to the guns. "Put 'em down."

The slave who had spoken said something to the other in that unfamiliar tongue I had heard Satan use. He nodded. They lowered their carbines, but held them in readiness.

"You have his token?" asked the slave.

"You got it, Cap'n," Barker turned his head to me quickly, then back to the guard. "No, you 'aven't. I 'ave—"

I had read the message in his eyes. My hand was on the automatic. I shot from the hip at the second guard. His hand flew up to his breast and he toppled.

At the instant of the report, Barker hurled himself at the legs of the challenging slave. His feet flew from beneath him, and down he crashed. Before he could arise I had put a bullet through his head.

I felt no compunction about killing him. The kehft drinkers had never seemed to me to be human. But whether human or not, I had killed far better men for much less reason during the war. Barker dropped upon the guard he had tripped, and began to search him. He arose with a bunch of small keys and ran to the steel door. It could not have been more than a minute before he had the bars down and the door open. The tunnel lay before us, long, cased with stone and dimly lighted.

"We've got to tyke it on the double," Barker jammed the heavy valve shut. "I didn't like what 'e said about 'im an' Satan goin' awye together quick. I think 'e fixed it to blow up the lab'ratory. An' there's enough stuff there to move the northeast corner of 'Ell."

We set off at a run down the tunnel. After we had gone about a thousand feet we came to another wall. It closed the way, making of the passage apparently a blind alley.

Barker worked feverishly at it, going over it inch by inch with nimble fingers. A block dropped suddenly, sliding downward as though in grooves. We passed through the opening. And ran on.

The lights blinked out. We halted, in darkness. The ground quivered under our feet. The quivering was followed by a deep-toned roar like the bellow of a volcano. I threw an arm around Eve. The floor of the tunnel heaved and rocked. I heard the crash of stones falling from its roof and sides.

"Gord! There goes Satan!" Barker's voice was hysterically shrill.

I knew it must be so. Satan had—gone. And Cobham. And all those, dead and alive, in the chateau—they, too, were gone. And all the treasures of Satan, all the beauty that he had gathered about him—gone. Blasted and shattered in that terrific explosion. Things of beauty irreplaceable, things of beauty for which the world must be poorer forever—destroyed for all time. Wiped out!

I had a sensation of sick emptiness. My very bones felt hollow. I felt a remorse and horror as though I had been party to some supreme sacrilege.

Eve's arms were around my neck, tightly. I heard her sobbing. I thrust away the weakening thoughts, and held her to me close, comforting her.

The stones ceased falling. We went on, picking our way over them by the gleam of Barker's flashlight. The tunnel had been badly damaged. If ever I prayed, I prayed then that no fall of stone or slip of earth had blocked it against us. If so, we were probably due to die like penned-in rats.

But the damage lessened as we drew further away from the center of the explosion, although now and again we heard the crashing of loosened stones behind us. We came at last to a breast of rocks, rough hewn, a formidable barrier that closed the tunnel, and must be, we knew, its further end.

Barker worked long at that, and I, too, and both of us at times despairingly, before we found the key to its opening. At last, when the flash was dying, a boulder sank. We breathed cool, fresh air. Close to us we heard the ripple of waves. Another minute and we stood upon that pile of rocks where I had seen Satan looking out over the waters of the Sound.

We saw the lights of the Cherub. She had come closer to shore. Her searchlight was playing upon the landing, sweeping from it along the road that led through the woods to the great house.

We crept down the rocks, and began to skirt the shore to the landing. At our right, the sky was glowing, pulsing. The tops of the trees stood out against the glow like the silhouettes of trees in a Japanese print.

Satan's funeral pyre.

We reached the pier. The searchlight picked us up. We went forward boldly. Barker dropped into a likely-looking launch that was fastened to the landing. Those on the yacht must have thought we were making ready to come to them. They held the light steady upon us.

The engines of the launch started to hum. I lowered Eve into it, and jumped after her. Barker threw the propeller into first speed, and then into direct drive. The launch shot forward.

There was no moon. A mist was on the waters. The glow of Satan's pyre cast a red film on the sluggish waves.

Barker steered for the yacht. Suddenly he swung sharply to port, and away from her. We heard shouts from her decks. The mists thickened as we sped on. They dimmed the beam. And then it lost us and swept back to the pier.

Barker headed the launch straight for the Connecticut shore. He gave me the wheel, and went back to nurse the engines. Eve pressed close to me. I put my arm around her and drew her closer. Her head dropped upon my shoulder.

My thoughts went back to the burning chateau. What was happening there? Had the great explosion and the glare of the flames brought outsiders to it as yet, volunteer firefighters from the neighboring villages, police? It was not likely. The place was so isolated, so difficult of access. But on the morrow, surely they would come. What would they find? What would be their reception? How many had escaped from the chateau?

And those who had been trapped in Satan's house? Those who had fallen before his slaves and Cobham's bombs? Among them had been men and women of high place. What an aftermath their disappearance would have! The newspapers would be busy for a long time about that.

And Satan! In the last analysis—a crooked gambler. Betrayed at the end by the dice he himself had loaded. Had he but played his game of the seven footprints straight he would have been unconquerable. But he had not—and all his power had rested on a lie. And his power could be no stronger than that which upheld it.

It was Satan's lie that had betrayed him.

Crooked gambler—yes, but more, much more than that—

Would his vengeance follow us, though he was gone?

Well, we would have to take our chances.

I shook off the oppression creeping over me, turned resolutely from the past to the future.

"Eve," I whispered, "all I've got is what's left of sixty-six dollars and ninety-five cents that was my sole capital when I met you."

"Well, what of it?" asked Eve, and snuggled in my arm.

"It's not much for a honeymoon trip," I said. "Of course, there's the ten thousand I got for the museum job. I can't keep that. It'll have to go back to the museum. Marked 'Anonymous Donor.' "

"Of course," said Eve, indifferently. "Oh, Jim, darling, isn't it good to be free!"

Barker moved forward, and took the wheel from me. I put both arms around Eve. Far ahead of us the lights of some Connecticut town sparkled. They evoked a painful memory. I sighed.

"All those treasures—gone!" I groaned. "Why didn't I have the sense to snatch that crown or scepter off the gold throne when I had the chance?"

" 'Ere's the crown, Cap'n," said Barker.

He fished down into a pocket. He drew out the crown and dropped it into Eve's lap. Its jewels blazed up at us. We stared at them, and from them to Barker, and from Barker back to them—unbelievingly.

"Crown's a bit crumpled," remarked Barker, easily. " 'Ad to bend it to stow it awye. Grabbed the scepter, but it slipped. 'Adn't time to pick it up. Picked up a few other tysty bits, though."

He poured a double handful of rings and necklaces and uncut gems over the glittering crown. We stared at him, still speechless.

"Split 'em two wyes," said Harry, "so long as you an' Miss Eve's goin' to be one. I only 'opes they're real."

"Harry!" whispered Eve, breathlessly. She leaned over and kissed him.

He blinked, and turned back to the wheel.

"Reminds me o' Maggie!" muttered Harry, forlornly.

I felt something round and hard in my pocket. Cobham's bomb! With a little prickling of the scalp, I dropped it gingerly over the side.

The shore lights had crept nearer. I scooped the jewels from Eve's lap and thrust them into Barker's pocket.

I clasped Eve close, and turned her face up to mine.

"Just like me an' Maggie!" whispered Harry, huskily.

I put my lips to hers, and felt hers cling. Life was very sweet just then.

Eve's lips were sweeter.





The End

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FACE IN THE ABYSS

by A. Merrit


CHAPTER I

Suarra

 NICHOLAS GRAYDON ran into Starrett in Quito. Rather, Starrett sought him out there. Graydon had often heard of the big West Coast adventurer, but their trails had never crossed. It was with lively curiosity that he opened his door to his visitor.
	Starrett came to the point at once. Graydon had heard the legend of the treasure train bringing to Pizarro the ransom of the Inca Atahualpa? And that its leaders, learning of the murder of their monarch by the butcher-boy Conquistador, had turned aside and hidden the treasure somewhere in the Andean wilderness?
	Graydon had heard it, hundreds of times; had even considered hunting for it He said so. Starrett nodded.
	"I know where it is," he said.
	Graydon laughed.
	In the end Starrett convinced him; convinced him, at least, that he had something worth looking into.
	Graydon rather liked the big man. There was a bluff directness that made him overlook the hint of cruelty in eyes and jaw. There were two others with him, Starrett said, both old companions. Graydon asked why they had picked him out. Starrett bluntly told him-because they knew he could afford to pay the expenses of the expedition. They would all share equally in the treasure. If they didn't find it, Graydon was a first-class mining engineer, and the region they were going into was rich in minerals. He was practically sure of making some valuable discovery on which they could cash in.
	Graydon considered. There were no calls upon him. He had just passed his thirty-fourth birthday, and since he had been graduated from the Harvard School of Mines eleven years ago he had never had a real holiday. He could well afford the cost. There would be some excitement, if nothing else.
	After he had looked over Starrett's two comrades- Soames, a lanky, saturnine, hard-bitten Yankee, and Dancret, a cynical, amusing little Frenchman-they had drawn up an agreement and he had signed it.
	They went down by rail to Cerro de Pasco for their outfit, that being the town of any size closest to where their trek into the wilderness would begin. A week later with eight burros and six arrieros, or packmen, they were within the welter of peaks through which, Starrett's map indicated, lay their road.
	It had been the map which had persuaded Graydon. It was no parchment, but a sheet of thin gold quite as flexible. Starrett drew it out of a small golden tube of ancient workmanship, and unrolled it. Graydon examined it and. was unable to see any map upon it-or anything else. Starrett held it at a peculiar angle-and the markings upon it became plain.
	It was a beautiful piece of cartography. It was, in fact, less a map than a picture. Here and there were curious