"Baby, you've got what it takes!" he muttered thickly, clapping a hot. sweaty hand down on her smooth back. "No, it's easy to see you ain't got that dragon hid on you." He grinned wickedly as one hand started to move lower. She shrieked and slapped him resoundingly, and instantly regretted her indiscretion. He grabbed her in a bear-like embrace and his ardor wasn't lessened a bit by the glassy stare of the dead man in the chair.
He was carrying her, squirming and fighting, toward the camp-cot in the corner when he stiffened.
Outside the door sounded a faint babble of approaching voices. He blew out the candle and turned through an inner door, clapping a big paw over Marianne's mouth when she tried to scream, and hissing: "Shut up, you little fool! Do you want your throat cut? That's Ahmed's men!"
He seemed to know his way about the warehouse, even in the dark. He stooped, fumbled at the floor, raised a trap-door, whispered: "If I hear one peep out of you, I'll come down there and twist your head off! I'll get you out later—if you're a good girl!"—and dropped her.
SHE was too scared to yell, even if she'd had breath for it. She did not fall far till she hit on her feet on a slimy floor. She heard the trap-door settle back in place, and then the creak of the stairs. Evidently Davies was taking refuge in the loft. She thought she heard an outer door open, and a mumble of voices, but forgot it the next instant at the sight of small red eyes winking fiercely at her from the gloom. Rats!
She had all a woman's natural fear of rodents, and she had heard horrifying tales about the ghoulish wharf-rats. But they made no move to attack her and she began to explore her prison, shivering in her near nudity. The stone floor stood in several inches of water, and she found no opening in the slimy walls. She had been dumped into a cellar and the only way out was up through that trapdoor above her head.
She squealed as a rat ran across her foot, and jumped back against the wall, bruising her hip and tearing her panties on a broken plank.
"This is what I get for associating with people like Bill Clanton," she told herself bitterly, and then the rats started fighting in a corner. Their hideous racket snapped her taut nerves. She screamed. She yelled. She was too panicky to care for Davies' threat. Having her head twisted off seemed preferable to bring devoured by rats in in that black well. She didn't care who heard her, just so somebody did, and got her out of that damnable cellar. She didn't care much what they did to her afterward.
And almost instantly her shrieks were answered by sounds overhead. The trap was lifted and she blinked in the glare of a lantern. But it was not Davies' bearded face which was framed in the opening. It was a dark, saturnine, handsome face—the face of Sharref Ahmed!
"Well, our little guest didn't run away, after all!" he commented satirically. "Help her up, Jum Chin."
A tall, gaunt Chinese reached his long arms down, caught her lifted wrists and swung her up lightly and easily. The trap-door fell again and she found herself standing before Ahmed, whose dark eyes devoured her from head to foot. Four Malays with krises in their belts together with the Chinaman feasted their hot eyes on her semi-nudity. They were marked generously from Clanton's fists, from that fight in the dark room.
"A curious interlude!" smiled Ahmed dangerously. "You enter the building fully clothed, with that dog Clanton. Apparently you escape in the mêlée. But less than an hour later we find you imprisoned in the cellar, half-naked! His eyes went to the white hip exposed by the accident. She flinched, but did not reply nor resent the indignity. She was scared as only a girl can be who knows herself to be in the power of men absolutely merciless and cynical in their attitude toward women.
"Where is the Kao Tsu dragon?" Ahmed demanded peremptorily.
"I haven't got it!" Her wits were working like lightning on a scheme.
Ahmed's eyes were poisonous.
"You must have it! Ram Lal stole two dragons out of my house. Clanton dropped one in his flight." He displayed it. "But it is not the right one. You must have it. Ram Lal must have stolen them for you, otherwise Clanton, who came here with you, would not have had this one. You have the other, or know where it is. Must you be persuaded to talk?"
"I had it," she said hurriedly, as the Malays moved toward her, grinning evilly. "But Bull Davies came while you were chasing Clanton—"
"Davies?" It was a snarl from Ahmed. "Has that dog of General Kai's been here?"
"He is here—hiding upstairs. He took the dragon from me."
"Search the upper floor," snapped Ahmed, and his men made for the stair, soft-footed as weasels, with naked blades glimmering in their hands. Marianne breathed in momentary relief. At least she'd saved herself from torture for the moment. Ahmed was watching the stair, and she essayed a sneaking step toward the other door. But he wheeled and caught her wrist.
"Where are you going? Nowhere, apparently."
She flinched at his sarcasm. "Please, you're hurting my wrist. Why, the body's gone!"
"We threw it in the river after we returned from pursuing Clanton," said Ahmed absently, gazing at her half-exposed breasts. "I meant to take Ram Lal alive and make him talk. But he attacked my faithful servant, Jum Chin, who traced him here, and Jum Chin was forced to kill him. I arrived with the rest of my men just after he had killed Ram Lal. We had just completed a fruitless search of the body when we heard you and Clanton approaching. Why did you come here when you already had the dragon?"
"I came to pay Ram Lal," she lied, afraid to admit the truth, now that she had already professed to have had possession of the dragon.
"Forget the dragon for a space," he muttered; his eyes were like flames licking her sleek body. "My men will capture Davies and get it for me. Meanwhile—you and I..."
Realizing his intentions she sprang for the nearest door, but he was too quick for her. He was slender but his thews were like steel. She yelped as he reached for her—squealed despairingly as she realized how helpless she was. She clenched a small fist and struck him in the face, and in return got a slap that filled her eyes with stars and tears. He picked her up, fighting and kicking, and started toward the other room with her, when upstairs a shot banged, blows thudded, men yelled and heavy boots stampeded down the stair.
Ahmed dropped Marianne sprawling on the floor and turned to the stair door, drawing a pistol. An instant later Bull Davies, plunging through the stair-s, brought up short at the threat of that black muzzle. In an instant the five Orientals who were tumbling down the stair after him had fallen on him from behind, borne him to the floor, and had him bound hand and foot. Swift hands ransacked his garments, and then Jum Chin looked at Ahmed and shook his head. Ahmed turned on Marianne, who rose from the floor, rubbing her hip.
"You slut! You said he had it!" Ahmed grabbed a pink-white shoulder and squeezed viciously.
"Wait!" she begged, assuming a Venus de'Medici pose as he started to go even further in his third-degree methods. "He must have hidden it!"
This was going to be just too bad for Davies, she knew, but it was his hide or hers. Maybe she'd get a chance to slip away while they were giving him the works.
At a word from Ahmed. Jum Chin slipped Davies' shirt off. A Malay applied a lighted match to his hairy breast. A faint smell of singed hair arose and Davies bellowed like a bull.
"I tell you I ain't got it! She's lyin'! I dunno where it is!"
"If he's lying, we'll soon know," rasped Ahmed. "We'll try a test that will unlock the jaws of the stubbornest. If he still persists, we must conclude that he's telling the truth, and the girl's lying."
Jum Chin stripped off the prisoner's socks, and Davies broke into a sweat of fear. Intent on the coming torture, Ahmed relaxed his grip on Marianne's wrist—or maybe it was a trick to trap her into a false move.