The Flying Legion Part 56

Therefore will I ask thee still another question."

"Thy question shall be answered, O Frank!"

"Is it true that the Caliph el Walid, in Hegira 88, sent forty camel-loads of cut jewels to Mecca?"

"That is true."

"And that, later, all those jewels were brought hither?"

"Even so! It is also true that two Franks in Hegira 550, digged a tunnel into the Meccan treasury from a house they had hired in the guise of Egyptian _Hujjaj_. They were both beheaded, White Sheik, and their bodies were burned to ashes."

"No doubt," the Master answered, nonchalantly. "But they had brought no rich gifts to the Meccans. Therefore, now speaking of these forty camel-loads of cut jewels, O Bara Miyan--"

"It is in thy mind to ask for those, White Sheik?"

"Allah giveth thee two hearts, Bara Miyan, as well as the riches of Karun. Surely, 'the generous man is Allah's friend,' and thy hand is not tied up."[1]

[Footnote 1: "To have two hearts" (_dhu'kulbein_) signifies to be prudent, wise. Karun is the Arabic Croesus. "Thy hand is tied up" is equivalent to calling a man n.i.g.g.ardly.]

The Olema, a quick decision gleaming in his eyes--though what that decision might be, who could tell?--put down the amber mouthpiece and with an eloquent, lean hand gestured toward a silk-curtained doorway at the right of the vast hall.

"Come with me, then, White Sheik!" said he, arising and beckoning his white-robed sub-chiefs. He raised a finger in signal to the Maghrabis, though what the signal might mean, the Legionaries could not know.

"Come, with all thy men. And, by Allah! I will show thee the things whereof thou dost speak to me. I will show thee all these things--and others!

"_Come_!"

In silence the Legionaries followed old Bara Miyan through the curtained doorway; and after them came the sub-chiefs. The Maghrabi stranglers, noiseless and bare-footed, fell in behind; a long ominous line of black human brutes, seeming hardly above the intellectual level of so many gorillas.

Stout-hearted as the Legionaries were, a kind of numbing oppression was closing in upon them. City battlements and double walls of inner citadel, then ma.s.sive gates and now again more doors that closed behind them, intervened between them and even the perilous liberty of the plain of El Barr. And, in addition to all this, some hundreds of thousands of Arabs, waiting without, effectually surrounded them, and the Maghrabi men cast their black shadow, threatening and ominous, over the already somber enough canvas.

A web, they all felt, was closing about them that only chance and boldness could unravel. Everything now hung on the word of an aged fanatic, who for any fancied breach of the Oath of Salt might deliver them to slavery, torture, death.

"Remember, men," the Master warned his men as they penetrated the dim, golden-walled pa.s.sage also lighted with sandal-oil _mash'als_--"remember the mercy-bullets. If it comes to war, none of us must be taken prisoner!"

To the Olema he exclaimed, in suave tones:

"_Dakhilak, Ya Shayk!_ (Under thy protection, O Sheik!) Let not the laws of hospitality or the Oath of Salt be forgotten!"

The Olema only smiled oddly, in the dim and perfumed obscurity of the pa.s.sageway, along which the slither of the many sandaled feet on the gold pavement made a soft, creeping sound. Nothing more was said--except for some grumbled mouthings of Bohannan--during the next few minutes.

The pa.s.sage seemed enormously long to the Master as, flanked by Leclair, "Captain Alden," and the major, he peered curiously at its smooth, dull-yellow walls all chased with geometrical patterns picked out in silver and copper, between the dull-hued tapestries, and banded with long extracts from the Koran inlaid in Tumar characters of mother-of-pearl.

Several turnings, and three flights of steps descending through the solid gold "d.y.k.e" that ran down into the bowels of the earth no one could even guess how far, served still more to confuse the Legionaries' sense of direction and to increase their conviction that, in case of any outbreak of hostilities, they would find themselves trapped more helplessly than rats in a cage.

It is no aspersion on their bravery to say that more than one among them had already begun inwardly to curse this wild-goose chase into Jannati Shahr. It all had now begun to a.s.sume absolutely the appearance of a well-formulated plan of treachery. Even the Master gave recognition to this appearance, by saying again: "Be ready for a quick draw. But whatever you do, don't be the aggressor. Watch your step!"

The pa.s.sage suddenly reached its end. Another heavy door of the yellow metal swung back, and all issued into a hall even more vast than the one they had quitted.

No windows here admitted light. The air, though pure enough as from some hidden source of ventilation, hung dead and heavy. Not even the censers, depending from the dim roof, far above, could freshen it; nor could the cressets' light make more than a kind of ghostly aura through the gloom.

By this dim half-illumination the Master beheld, there before him in the middle of the tremendous golden pavement, a strange, pyramidal object rising four-square in the shape of an equilateral triangle--just such a triangle as was formed by the locations of Mecca, Bab el Mandeb, and El Barr.

This pyramid, polished and elaborately engraved, towered some ninety feet above the floor. It was pierced by numbers of openings, like the entrances to galleries; and up the smooth face nearest the entrance to the hall, a stairway about ten feet wide mounted toward the apex.

Completely finished all save the upper part, which still remained truncated, the golden pyramid gleamed dully in the vague light, a thing of awe and wonder, grimly beautiful, fearsome to gaze up at. For some unknown reason, as the Legionaries grouped themselves about their Master, an uncanny influence seemed to emanate from this singular object. All remained silent, as the Olema, an enigmatic smile on his thin, bearded lips, raised a hand toward the pyramid.

"This thing, O Frank, thou shouldst see," he remarked dryly. "Above all, the inner chambers. Wilt thou go with me?"

"I will go," the Master answered. "Lead the way!"

The Olema beckoned one of the Maghrabis, who delivered a torch of some clear-burning, resinous, and perfumed material into his hand.

"Come," bade the old man, and gestured toward the steps of gold.

Together, in silence, they mounted toward the dim, high-arched roof. From near the top, the Master, glancing down, could see the white-robed ma.s.s of the Arabs, the small, compact group of his own men; and, behind them all, the dim, black lines of the stranglers. But already the Olema was gesturing for him to enter the highest of the galleries.

Into this, carved in the virgin metal, both made their way. The torchlight flung strange, wavering gleams on smooth walls niched with dark embrasures. At the further end of the pa.s.sage, the Olema stopped.

"Here is a new trophy, just added to all that Allah hath placed in our hands," said he, gravely. "There are some three-and-twenty places yet left, to fill. Wilt thou see the new trophy?"

The Master nodded silently. Raising the torch, the Olema thrust it into one of the embrasures. There the Master beheld a human skull.

The empty eye-sockets, peering out at him, seemed to hold a malevolent malice. That the skull had been but freshly cleaned, was obvious.

"Abd el Rahman?" asked the Master.

"Yea, the Apostate," answered Bara Miyan. "At last, Allah hath delivered him to us of El Barr."

"Thou hast used a heavy hand on the Apostate, O Sheik."

"We of Jannati Shahr do not anoint rats' heads with jasmine oil. Tell me, Frank, how many men hast thou?"

"Three-and-twenty, is it not so?"

"Yea, it is so. Tell me, Bara Miyan, this whole pyramid--"

"Skulls, yea."

"This is the Pyramid of Ayeshah that I have heard strange tales of?"

the Master demanded, feeling even his hard nerves quiver.

"The Pyramid of Ayeshah."

"No myth, then, but reality," the Master commented, fascinated in spite of himself. "Even as the famous Tower of Skulls at Jerba, in Tunis!"

"Thou hast said it, O Frank. Here be more than ten-score thousand skulls of the enemies of Islam, of blasphemers against the Prophet, of those who have penetrated the Empty Abodes, of those who have sought to carry gold from El Barr. It is nearly done, this pyramid. But there still remain three-and-twenty vacant places to be filled."

For a long minute, the eyes of the Master and of Bara Miyan met, in silence, with the torch-flare glinting strange lights from them. Then the Olema spoke.