Page:Weird Tales volume 30 number 04.djvu/88

472 you how you may descend the sacred shaft."

"Good!" Clark exclaimed, his heart quickening with excitement. "Now if we can just get safely out of K'Lamm"

door opened, and Ephraim Quell grimly entered, followed by Clark's other four followers. Mike Shinn was fighting drunk, bawling a song, his battered face glistening. Link Wilson too was flushed with wine, but Lieutenant Morrow and Blacky Cain were sober—the first because the drink had not affected him, the second from abstinence.

"What's the lay, chief?" rasped Blacky. "Something wrong?"

"A lot wrong," Clark snapped. He told them in curt sentences of Thargo's plot. A vicious oath ripped from the gangster.

"Double-crossing us, eh? We'll go down and put the blast on him, damn him!"

"Sure, I'll choke the dirty scut with me bare hands!" raged Mike Shinn furiously.

"Listen," Clark rapped, "we'll have alt we can do to escape this trap without bothering for revenge on Thargo. We're going to get out of here, at once—and join the people of Dordona."

Rapidly he told them of the agreement he had made with Lurain. The Dordonan girl stood tense and pale as he talked.

"It's a great idea!" exclaimed Blacky. The gangster laughed. "We'll hand Thargo a double-cross, and when we get to this other burg, Dordona, we can easy lift the water from the lake below."

"How are we going to get out of K'Lamm?" Lieutenant Morrow asked quickly. "How out of this palace, even?"

"We can't go down through the palace itself." Clark said emphatically. "The guards posted out there in the corridor would give the alarm. There's the way we'll have to take out."

He pointed to one of the big, open windows, that looked out across the dark city and the starry sky.

"We'll slide down from that window on a rope of some kind," Clark said quickly. "Behind the palace I noticed a court where the horses of the palace guards are evidently kept at night. If we can sneak back there and get mounts, we'll make a dash out through the city."

"That's the idea," approved Link Wilson, his eyes lighting. "We can ride right out through these hombres."

"What if the gates of the city wall are closed?" Morrow asked.

Clark shrugged. "I don't think they will be. I doubt if they close those gates every night—this city fears no attack from Dordona."

The six adventurers acted rapidly. While Ephraim Quell listened watchfully at the door, Clark and the others tore down the wall hangings and converted them into heavy, knotted rope. They tied the end of the rope to a heavy chest, then dropped it into the darkness outside.

The men quickly shouldered their packs. Clark peered from the window. There were no sentries in the palace yard immediately beneath, though he heard movement of some at the front of the building. The walled courts in the rear of the palace were silent except for an occasional stamping of the restless horses back there.

hung for a moment, transfixed by the weird beauty of the scene. The moon was rising above the mountain wall in the east, a flood of silvery light pouring across the prisoned land. And bathed in the moon slept the city K'Lamm, a sea of dully gleaming roofs and streets and squares. Solemn and