"None comes down this stair by night, Kurd; speak quickly!"
"Of what shall I speak?" demanded O'Donnell guardedly, for the knife was still at his neck. It was an eery experience, ringed by bodies and knives he could not see, with menacing voices whispering out of the gloom like disembodied spirits.
"I will refresh thy memory," muttered the voice of Baber Khan. "A week ago we rode down the valley, with the riders of the Turkomans, behind Orkhan Bahadur, to take this city of Shahrazar from Shaibar Khan and his Uzbeks. Orkhan greatly desired this city, because somewhere in it he knew there was a great treasure—the treasure gathered long ago by Muhammad Shah, king of Khuwarezm. When the Mongols of Genghis Khan hunted the Shah-im-shah to his death across the world, his emirs bore to forgotten Shahrazar his great store of gold, silver and jewels. Here it remained hidden until Shaibar Khan discovered its hiding place. Then came we, with Orkhan Bahadur, and slew all the Uzbeks and took the city and set up Orkhan Bahadur as prince of Shahrazar."
"All this is well known to me," impatiently answered O'Donnell.
"Aye, for thou wert Shaibar Khan's slave!"
"A lie!" exclaimed O'Donnell, starting with amazement. "The Khan was my enemy—"
"Soho!" hissed the voice venomously. "Be still, thou!" The wire-edge just touched the skin of his throat, and a tiny trickle of blood started. "In a chamber below the palace we found Shaibar Khan dead, and with him Yar Akbar the Afridi, likewise dead. But nowhere was the treasure to be found. Nor has Orkhan Bahadur found it, though he is lord of Shahrazar.
"Now it was known that certain men had the care of the treasure in their hands, to guard it and protect it with their lives. They were twelve in number, and were called the emirs of the Inner Chamber. Eleven of these men we found dead, and we knew them by reason of a gold emblem each wore on a gold chain about his neck—an oval of gold, with a Khuwarezm inscription—so!"
A glow dazzled O'Donnell; in it a great hairy hand snaked out of the dark and tore at the garments over his breast—wrenched out something that glimmered in the dull light. Breath hissed from between teeth in the dark about him. In the gnarled hand lay an oval of beaten gold, carved with a single cryptic character.
"You are the twelfth man!" accused Baber Khan. You were an emir of the Inner Chamber! It was you who hid the treasure!"
"I am no Uzbek!" snarled O'Donnell.
"Nay, but Shaibar Khan had men of many races among his ranks. You were found in the palace when we took the city, the only living fighting man in the palace. I have watched you closely, and today I spied the symbol among your garments."
O'Donnell cursed mentally for not having disposed of the damning emblem.
"I know nothing of the treasure," he said angrily. "This gaud I took from the neck of a man I slew in a dark alley." And that last was the truth.
"Thou art stubborn," muttered Baber Khan; "but the steel shall teach thee. Grip him!"
Fierce hands clamped over the American's mouth, and others held him hard, stretching him out. O'Donnell's body was a knot of wiry thews, but with his hands bound, and three hairy giants grasping him, he was helpless. He felt Baber Khan's fingers clutching at his ankle, lifting his foot; then the sharp agony of a knife point driving under the nail of his great toe. He set his teeth against the hurt, then it was withdrawn, and he felt blood trickling over his foot. The hand released his jaws.
"Where is the treasure?" hissed the savage voice out of the darkness.
"Let me up," mumbled O'Donnell. "I'll lead you to it."
A gusty sigh of satisfaction answered him. He was hauled to his feet.
"Lead on," Baber Khan directed. He did not promise O'Donnell his life in return for the secret of the treasure; the American knew that the treacherous Ghilzai had no intention of letting him live, in any event.
"We will go to the chamber in which was found the bodies of Shaibar Khan and Yar Akbar," said he, and with a satisfied grunt, they allowed him to lead the way, grasping his arms, with their knives at his ribs.
They went on down the stair, through a tapestried door and down a short corridor. This corridor, lighted by Baber's wavering torch, seemed to terminate against a blank marble wall. But all the palace knew its secret, since the invasion of the Turkomans, and the Ghilzai thrust against the wall with a burly shoulder. A section swung in, working on a pivot....
THE END
The 'Black Vulmea' Saga:
Table of Contents
Black Vulmea's Vengeance
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 1
Table of Contents
OUT of the Cockatoo's cabin staggered Black Terence Vulmea, pipe in one hand and flagon in the other. He stood with booted legs wide, teetering slightly to the gentle lift of the lofty poop. He was bareheaded and his shirt was open, revealing his broad hairy chest. He emptied the flagon and tossed it over the side with a gusty sigh of satisfaction, then directed his somewhat blurred gaze on the deck below. From poop ladder to forecastle it was littered by sprawling figures. The ship smelt like a brewery. Empty barrels, with their heads stove in, stood or rolled between the prostrate forms. Vulmea was the only man on his feet. From galley-boy to first mate the rest of the ship's company lay senseless after a debauch that had lasted a whole night long. There was not even a man at the helm.
But it was lashed securely and in that placid sea no hand was needed on the wheel. The breeze was light but steady. Land was a thin blue line to the east. A stainless blue sky held a sun whose heat had not yet become fierce. Vulmea blinked indulgently down upon the sprawled figures of his crew, and glanced idly over the larboard side. H e grunted incredulously and batted his eyes. A ship loomed where he had expected to see only naked ocean stretching to the skyline. She was little more than a hundred yards away, and was bearing down swiftly on the Cockatoo, obviously with the intention of laying her alongside. She was tall and square-rigged, her white canvas flashing dazzlingly in the sun. From the maintruck the flag of England whipped red against the blue. Her bulwarks were lined with tense figures, bristling with boarding-pikes and grappling irons, and through her open ports the astounded pirate glimpsed the glow of the burning matches the gunners held ready.
"All hands to battle-quarters!" yelled Vulmea confusedly. Reverberant snores answered the summons. All hands remained as they were.
"Wake up, you lousy dogs!" roared their captain. "Up, curse you! A king's ship is at our throats!"
His only response came in the form of staccato commands from the frigate's deck, barking across the narrowing strip of blue water.
"Damnation!"
Cursing luridly he lurched in a reeling run across the poop to the swivel- gun which stood at the head of the larboard ladder. Seizing this he swung it about until its muzzle bore full on the bulwark of the approaching frigate. Objects wavered dizzily before his bloodshot eyes, but he squinted along its barrel as if he were aiming a musket.
"Strike your colors, you damned pirate!" came a hail from the trim figure that trod the warship's poop, sword in hand.
"Go to hell!" roared Vulmea, and knocked the glowing coals of his pipe into the vent of the gun-breech. The falcon crashed, smoke puffed out in a white cloud, and the double handful of musket balls with which the gun had been charged mowed a ghastly lane through the boarding party clustered along the frigate's bulwark. Like a clap of thunder came the answering broadside and a storm of metal raked the Cockatoo's decks, turning them into a red shambles.