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 Imans" He stopped. His eyes were fixed upon the corridor wall. With a curious fingernail he scratched idly at the two little discolored spots that marred its white surface.

"Fungus! Phosphorescent fungus! Foxfire!" he breathed. "How did this get here, Mahbub?" he asked sharply, swinging upon the trim officer. "This wall was whitewashed but three days gone!"

Mahbub shrugged.

"Servants are careless," he retorted.

"Nonsense!" the commissioner retorted impatiently. "This is a jungle fungus that grows only on rotten wood. Mahbub, what dost thou know of this thing? By the blood brotherhood between us I ask thee to speak the truth from naked heart."

Mahbub closed the grating behind his superior with a clang.

"I know only that Yar Khan, son of my mother's brother, shall not die unavenged," he answered as he preceded the Commissioner down the corridor toward the Thana office.





HIS is the story of a woman, a very beautiful woman; a woman as perfect as an orchid, as seductive as hashish. She was as tall and slender as the most graceful of the houris in. Her eyes were as black as jet in shadow; her hair was of the same intense blackness, which only served to bring out into more startling prominence the prime-ivory whiteness of her colorless cheeks.

At the tiny oasis city of Wadi-el-Gibli, far back from the coast of Tripoli, many strange, weird stories were told of the desert woman, Mes'oodeh. Some will tell of how Kasseeb, one of the richest Tuaregs of Ghadames, disappeared from the haunts of men. Then came a day, two years later, when a caravan from the far Soudan, laden with ivory, ostrich-feathers, and gold dust, brought back the broken body of the once famous Kasseeb. Mes'oodeh, on the back of a groaning camel, rode into the village, softly weeping by his side. What became of his great wealth, nobody ever knew, but many condemned Mes'oodeh.

"The woman was a friend to Kasseeb," said one, "and 'if friendship is without money, it is not equivalent to the weight of a grain.' And Mes'oodeh was a very good friend to Kasseeb."

"She has no soul," declared another. "Allah had no power over her birthplace. If her face matched her heart, it would make one shudder just to gaze upon its horror. And yet she is more beautiful than the rarest flower, a flower whose touch is poison. But the law of unity is weirdly odd; a viper's fangs may be contained in a cloth of gold."

Such were the stories which were circulated throughout Wadi-el-Gibli about Mes'oodeh, the woman of the desert, and yet nobody knew from whence she had come. She spoke French fluently, and