Page:Weird Tales volume 32 number 05.djvu/15

Rh guard to Egypt's last Ptolemaic Queen?"

"Yes, that is true."

A wild joy leaped to her eyes. "Then there is still time," she murmured half to herself.

"But is it not also true that Manuel De Costa has arranged to meet you here on the morrow to discuss plans for organizing an expedition to search for the tomb your parchment mentions?" she demanded an instant later.

It was the first question that surprised me most. I knew the Egyptian, Kharmes, had been an army man of some sort, but as to his exact station, I was in doubt. How this information could have been gained was beyond me, and so it was but mutely that I nodded an answer.

A reading-table was all that separated us. Now, at my silent affirmation, two bejeweled hands were leaned upon its surface, and I could see a real intensity in her eyes.

"You must not go. No; you must not go with him. To accompany that man to the Sahara is to sign your own death warrant. Oh I know him of old, and speak only the truth when I tell you that from Igidi's sands to the Libyan desert, Manuel De Costa is known as 'The Wolf of the Sahara.' Tales of his cruelty are told by the Arabs around the campfire—tales of death and tortures so fiendish that to repeat them would pollute the very air around us.

"It is not hard to imagine your fate once he and his followers have put a hundred miles between them and the coast, not difficult to foretell the lot of one that can be but similar to the many others whose bones now dot the Sahara. Perhaps they may bide their time. It is even possible they will wait till your chart has guided them to the very tomb they seek. But once you have served their purpose and ceased to be of importance, the hours will be few before a strangler's noose is dropped around your neck, or a thin blade buried into your heart."

The last words were almost a whisper.

"But why do you warn me?" I asked. "Why have you come here at all?"

"To offer you the help and funds of one whose resources are unlimited; to offer you the guidance of one who knows every vale and hillock in the Sahara as no other living human—myself."

"You!"

"Is it as astounding as all that?" she demanded. "Does it so surprise you that I should know that dreary world of sand?"

Then, as I hesitated: "Yes, I assure you of my ability to lead you to the tomb your parchment mentions, though it be in the very heart of the Hot Lands. Meet me in Dakar three weeks from now, and I will prove it. Believe me when I tell you it is the one sane course to follow. Once you have landed you can show me the scroll, and be taken by the most direct route to that forgotten vault and the treasures that lie waiting."

She paused, then added slowly: "Treasures that I promise will be given to you alone."

was more—much more—that might have been said in the next few minutes, but I cannot recall it. The mystery of it all, the sudden appearance of this strange beauty, had so bewildered my mind, I could neither act nor think clearly.

True, I had agreed to meet another on the morrow, but that was before I had heard the soft voice of The Midnight Lady. It was as though a sudden