The Talbot Mundy Megapack. Talbot Mundy

in that predicament he did not think with any approval of the prospect of swift death for the iblis. He wanted facts first; after those let come what might.

      Jim has altogether peculiar qualities that some consider cold-blooded; it never gave him the slightest twinge of satisfaction to see a criminal land in jail at the end of a long battle between wits, nor yet to see a murderer hung. What interested him at the moment—and so deeply that he would rather die than fail to unearth the lowest root of it—was the scheme behind the criminal. He had a sort of sporting admiration for the man himself, provided only he was game, much as a real hunter has a friendly feeling for the animal that does its fighting utmost.

      Nevertheless it amused him to imagine the iblis fool enough to wait there in the tomb and be discovered by Narayan Singh. Narayan Singh knew no such nice distinctions; his was the direct, unwavering desire to get his man, with death as the only logical and satisfying finish to a criminal career.

      The iblis would likely learn quite a lot about physical pain if he should fall into the Sikh’s hands and refuse to give information; with his own wrist aching like a tooth that thought did not exactly make Jim worry.

      Unless you kill outright a man who can amuse himself in that way, thinking of other things in spite of his predicament while captors hurry him helpless toward an unimaginable fate, you never can have the best of him. For he is not mesmerized by circumstance. Fear gets no chance to do its paralyzing work. Though the fact seems exactly the reverse, the odds are really in his favor.

      Jim’s captors were obsessed by the knowledge that they had a prisoner who must be disposed of in some way; and the longer they put him off the less simple and convenient the solution was going to seem. Jim, on the other hand, was thinking of anything except that prospect, so that when the next development was staged he faced it quite unconvinced of desperation.

      Most captors imagine they had imprisoned a man’s wits when they have tied his hands, and many prisoners believe it too; but the wise man when he is bound thinks of “Shakespeare and the musical glasses” until his moment comes. Jim began to consider the probably past history of that cavernous tomb he had left, while they hustled him through the darkness and worried one another with horse whisperings.

      * * * *

      They crossed the railway at last, for he tripped twice on the metals, which meant that they had turned from the west or thereabouts to very nearly due east. Ten minutes’ hurry after that brought them to some sort of stone building, where they let him lean against the wall while one of the party wrestled with a rusty lock and key.

      He tried to work his hands loose by rubbing the thong against the stonework, but made small progress because of the pain in his wrist, and only succeeded in working off his scarab ring.

      The door swung open at last on creaking hinges. Two men took him by the shoulders and thrust him forward. He tripped on a stone still, and they jeered as he landed face downward on a rough stone floor. A second later the door slammed shut behind him and he heard the scream of the complaining key.

      He lay still and listened for several minutes to discover whether he was alone or not. Hearing nothing, he scrambled to his feet and, backing until he reached the wall, began to feel his way along it, hunting some projection against which he might chafe the leather thong. The room he was in was circular, which set him thinking.

      Part way around the circuit he felt some steps, and a rusty iron rod supporting the handrail. There were better tools that that for cutting rawhide, but the rawhide was eating into his wrists, and necessity sharpens patience.

      First against the edge of a stone step, then against the rusty iron, then against the step again, he chafed and sawed, injuring his own skin almost as often as the leather, and without any means of measuring progress. During a pause while he strained at the thong to test it he heard a sound that seemed familiar.

      In a flash his thought went back to the entrance of the tomb and the dry, peculiar noise that had induced him to enter. It sounded like the same cough or belch or whatever it was. Yet he could hear no breathing.

      He changed the order of proceedings then and knelt, working his face up and down against the step to get the gag off, and succeeded after several minutes in forcing it down over his chin, where it hung loose. But it was not so simple to get the bag off his head. He managed that finally by bending his head downward and shaking it until the blood surged up behind his eyes and the universe seemed like a sea of fire with purple stars in it.

      It was a minute after he had got rid of the sack before he could see at all, although the circular room in which he found himself was not absolutely dark. Faint moonlight filtered through a small iron-barred window set twelve feet above the floor, and dimly illuminated the bare walls.

      He stared about him for another minute before his eyes recovered sufficiently to make out a shadowy shape beneath the window. Little by little, as he grew accustomed to the dim light, he made out the outline of a man, who sat so still as to seem dead, although it was an uncommon posture for a dead man, squatting Moslem-fashion, elbow on knee. He was about to approach to investigate when the man moved, and then he recognized the iblis.

      The movement was in character. He had been sitting shrouded in a brown cloak, but threw it back now from his shoulders and sat naked, eyeing Jim with scornful curiosity, much as he might have watched the antics of a beetle on a pin. Jim set his back against the steps and resumed his labor at the thong, pressing hard and rubbing with as little noise as possible.

      “I can deal with you with your hands free,” said the iblis after a minute or two.

      “Try it,” Jim suggested, and threw caution to the winds.

      Pretending to chafe more violently at the thong, measure the distance with his eyes meanwhile, he went for the iblis with a sudden run and jump, intending to land feet foremost on him. But without any obvious muscular effort, the iblis shifted his position just as suddenly half a yard to the right, and Jim’s feet hit the wall.

      He made a prodigious effort to recover balance and jump again, but fell on his back, and having lost his Arab headdress when he shook the bag free, contact with the stone floor nearly stunned him. So he lay still, and the iblis leaned down to peer into his face, with that unchanging, curiously scornful smile that was half-sneer, half-amusement.

      “I can deal with three—or thirty—or three hundred of you.”

      Jim did not answer. With his hands free, half-stunned or not, he would have taken his chance in a free-for-all fight, though the iblis was as strong as two of him; but to tempt providence in his present position would have been sheer lunacy. He was constitutionally unable to believe himself down and out as long as consciousness remained, so he lay and wondered whence his opportunity would come and what form it would take.

      The iblis provided it. He was evidently of an economical turn of mind, for he produced from a pocket in the discarded cloak the self-same stub of candle that had served his purpose in the tomb, and lit it. Jim set his teeth, thinking at first that torture was to be the next item on the program; for in the fingers of an expert a lighted candle can do as much mischief as a red-hot iron. But the iblis only looked about for a place to set the light on, and leaned over finally to drip wax on the floor and stick it there out of reach.

      So Jim scrambled to his feet again. The iblis looked up at him and laughed.

      “See what is upstairs,” he suggested.

      “Untie my wrists!” said Jim.

      The iblis did it, not troubling to get to his feet but turning Jim around and unknotting the thong with fingers that were strong enough to have unraveled wire. Standing, chafing his wrists to restore circulation and get some of the pain out of the swollen one, Jim realized how utterly helpless he would be if he tried to fight. It was true that he had boots on and could kick, but unless you are very certain of your aim, and equally sure of surprising your adversary, one blow wins no battle.

      So he decided to try the stairs and see. But the iblis sprang across the room in front of him and prevented him by sitting on the bottom step.

      “Not now,” he