Page:Weird Tales v01n02 (1923-04).djvu/111

110 Bowen leaned forward, raising himself to a sitting position.

"Look!" he cried, his voice squeaking into a cough. A touch of his tapered finger nail had caused the pendant to fall into two halves. There before Roberts lay a tiny roll of tinted silk upon which vertical rows of black ideographs were revealed.

Roberts removed the silk carefully, spreading it across his knee.

"The key to one of the treasure caches of Kublai Khan!" shrilled Bowen. "It’s mine. I found it. By using it, I managed to keep clean of body. It is the only hope for your friends—and you, if you venture in!"

Silently, and with a growing intensity of interest, Roberts deciphered the characters, The colophon furnished simple, straightforward directions, yet the tale it told was unbelievable.

"A—a cure?" he stammered shakily.

"Yes—or at least a preventive. I can answer for that."

"And is there plenty?"

Bowen cackled, raucous froth appearing on his lips.

"Forty jars!" he retorted. "Each jar with eight panels, and holding about a peck. Treasure, indeed! On those panels is carved the history of the reign of Kublai Khan!"

Roberts was on his feet.

"Let's start!" he commanded, his voice shaking with anticipation of high, terrible adventure. "There is the rim of the sun! Take one last drink of the whisky, Bowen"

LL of the Chinese save two were left behind. This pair, stolid, fat, over-muscled giants who had been with Roberts for years, made a chair of their hands, and carried Bowen back across the rim of desert toward the Great Wall. All four of the men bristled with weapons, and had their pockets crammed with loaded clips.

To Roberts' surprise, Bowen directed the course of the journey back to the east, in the direction of Dadchin.

"Three corridors run the length of the wall in this section," he explained. "One corridor is not known to the Yengi It is how I got among them first"

Over tumbled ruins of wall climbed the four. At a black aperture, scarcely wide enough to permit the passing of a heavy man, Bowen signaled.

"Hang and drop," he commanded, speaking in a whisper. "The corridor floor is eight feet down. I know a better way to climb, but, going in, it is simpler to drop"

From the black slit an odor rose which made Roberts stiffen. He had caught a faint suggestion of it from Bowen's clothes, but now it came to him, fetid and strong—a scent of rank, damp decay.

He snatched one last breath of desert air, knelt, swung himself down into space, and let go. As Bowen had said, the drop was short, but Roberts, in the dark, fell sidewise to the slimy bricks of the passage.

In a second he was up, shrinking involuntarily from the contact. When Bowen was lowered from the slit of light, Roberts caught him and set him down carefully. The Chinese did not follow.

"I told them to wait there," Bowen whispered. "They'd be useless down here. There's no sense in spoiling two brave boys."

"But can you make it?"

"Yes, if I don't have to cough. When we get in the third passage it won't matter. No one is there. Come on. Hold to this rag" He placed a shred of his tattered blouse in Roberts' palm, plunging immediately into the blackness.

Roberts, stumbling blindly after—recoiling from each touch of the horrid, oozing walls—ran on tip-toe in order to match the silence of his bare footed guide.

They passed spots of light. These showed openings to right or left—op-