Page:Weird Tales Volume 37 Number 01 (1943-09).djvu/88

 when he said, "It is more expedient to save our necks and live as patriots, than to continue our pursuit of Chung Kuo and die as traitors from a cause as unknown as the back of the moon."

Later that day, they left the inn and took separate paths, but they were all but one of one purpose. The one was Fan Lee who took a circuitous route and returned to the inn.

The old servant was waiting for him. He had cooked turnips and roast young pig for a celebration.

"Welcome home, General Chung Kuo," he said, bowing low.

"It is good to return quietly to rest," replied Fan Lee. "I haven't been sleeping well lately. But with Colonel Nagai neatly disposed of without any effort on my part, there will be less reason for unease. As to Pang Hao, Tsan Yen? and Hu Liang, they are unwittingly doing me a favor. Yet my future would be at an end if they ever discovered I was really Chung Kuo. Nevertheless, I shall find a place for them, swinging from a pear tree, suspended by a red cord bound about their throats. They always prided themselves that they walked with catlike quietness, nor will they make any sound on their last creep."

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Press it against your ear; Listen! and you will hear Echo of deep-sea bell Ringing in belfry beneath the brine, Where mermaidens, scaled with tourmaline, Toll a dolorous knell. Tis the voice of a city beneath the sea! Gold-eyed fishes stare endlessly At turrets and ramparts of porphyry Drowned in a gold-green well. Who built that city forlorn? What was its perilous fame That tymbal and gong and horn Blared from the torch-lit wall? When did its doom befall? What was the reason it came Crashing down over palace and keep, A sea that rose like a mountain steep, Quenching the living flame? Hark! do the sea-shell's echoes tell The name of that city before she fell? Ah, no! I can hear its cry, its bell, But never its fabulous name!