Page:Weird Tales volume 30 number 01.djvu/73

 "As to the rest, I shall be brief. From the blood of the Oekheperkere I have come. It is to that royal lineage which I shall now return. I am to be free—to live, to laugh, to walk once more."

The voice sank to a trembling whisper of desire.

"I will be free—to conquer!"

Had I gone mad? Was all this some wild hallucination or a grim reality? The bodiless ruler continued:

"Yet I must return only as a Pharaoh; a true son of old Egypt in whose veins still flows the blood of the mother Queen. You, pale Englishman of the outer world, have the body I must own. It is"

His dark eyes turned upon me. "Are you the intruder? You are he, of whom I was told? You were not summoned, nor are you a royal one?"

For the first time I spoke to Karamour:

"My being here is through no fault of my own. The lying fiend you call Doctor Zola caused my capture as he did like-wise to my companions. We were betrayed through deceit and"

"Then what is to be said is not for your ears. It is best that you be chained and held till some near-by hour, when your fate will be decided.

"Bansura!" he called to a near-by black, take that carrion to the dungeons to be held till summoned."

"But carefully," cried the beauty from the stone bowl. "No harm must come to him if you would keep your eyes.—Fear not, man of the new land," she spoke to me. "If the eleven Gods but smile on the great experiment, your release is but a matter of hours. Truly, you have found favor in the eyes of Atma."

Why did the swarthy face of Karamour stare at me with a look of hatred?

A tall negro came forward.

"Go with him, old fellow," put in Terry, as I made ready to resist the black. "Won't do any good to try a scuffle—hundred to one against us."

"Resistance is a folly we punish severely," warned the Pharaoh.

And so it was that I submitted to be led from the golden-floored throneroom of Karamour. True, a struggle, however useless, might have been more heroic, but in the end it would have been all the same.

At the great folding doors I paused for one last look at that weird assembly, to behold all eyes upon me—the watching soldiery, the stern Egyptian monarch, and smiling Bob Terry, who waved a brave farewell.

But Atma: The eyes of the Princess had been turned toward me in an encouraging smile; a friendly beam intended to dispel any fear or foreboding that might have been mine. Yet, now as I halted and faced her, for a fleeting instant the lovely face hardened. Two exquisite brows raised slightly, and then came the one swift gesture that has ever been the world's oldest. No haughty glare, no besieging look of wordless appeal or the beguiling smile of the coquette — but a wink; a quick lowering of a long-lashed lid that needed no words to complete its apparent purpose; the meaning signal that has announced iniquity since the dawning of time; the age-old professional sign of the first Daughter of Sweetness.

in the strong hands of two stalwart blacks, I was roughly hustled down a long corridor that led to the gaping entrance of a subterranean passage. Here waited another, a dark, towering Arab of war-like visage, whose curved sword hung from a heavy belt.

As we drew nearer, the tall man smiled and spoke some unknown words to the blacks that caused them to laugh loudly. Grasping a lighted torch from a niche, the grim swordsman motioned us to