Page:Weird Tales Volume 14 Issue 2 (1929-08).djvu/61

Dead March roared from the throat of the mugger.

Paradise birds dancing on tall tree-tops in the early sun of dawn soared like living jewels. Lorries flashed furious color, squawking raucously as they winged from this procession. Captain McTeague looked down on river shores blazoned with profusion of monstrous scarlet flowers whose hot perfume seemed potent as chloroform. His senses reeled, his body was limp as a rag when the ape swung down and dropped him like a sack on a clearing walled by dense dark jungle. His breath rasped like dead husks, but he was aware that the gray ghouls had arrived with their human burdens and the swampy stream now ran limpid and green-shining through gardens, and was arched by red lacquered bridges that glowed in the moist heat like jewels. Against the hot blueness of a sky sailed by cloud argosies, towers stood like candles, dripping reflected light from plaques of porcelain and lacquer. Green bushes ablaze with bloom shielded its lower story.

A moment later an exhausted, sweating Tai Hoong came from his ape captor to McTeague.

"N'Yeng Sen," he announced.

Gourds were passed, and McTeague swigged thirstily and knew the beneficence of wine dulling fear, rousing courage; and he needed courage. For a company of apes came from the direction of the temple, jacketed in shining metal tunics, swinging with the precision of soldiers, althoiigh they flew rather than marched, but their flight did not disarrange the long stream of ghouls that stretched from the surrounding gardens to the jungle edge where McTeague and his company waited.

"Now, Captain McTeague, you take command," said Tai Hoong. "Your hand——"

"Lord," breathed McTeague, involuntarily lifting the strange hand to have a look himself at this member which Tai Hoong had called "Demon's Doom." And the oncoming gray ghouls saw. A yelp from the leader and they halted, their stormy gray lines up-ended with the tail of the line swinging forward to enclose the jungle crowd.

Standing beside Captain McTeague, Tai Hoong spoke words that McTeague could not understand, and from the arms of one ape a flgure dropped, toddled a feeble step nearer and disclosed under the limp skin of an orang-outang he wore as a cloak, an aged yellow man clad in jewel-embroidered robe. His eyes were on the uplifted hand of Jock McTeague on which the symbolic ring caught sunfire and glowed. He spoke, and Tai Hoong bowed from the waist.

McTeague did not learn what passed between these two men of the East, but between wheeling lines of the ape army of N'Yeng Sen they were escorted to the temple gates, guarded by apes who fell back at their approach, and Captain McTeague was aware that the ring on his strange hand opened these gates, and the shaven priest who met them at the lower step foimd in that hand-grip which McTeague could not change or control, some "Open Sesame" which cleared the way.

The next hour was one of such relief that McTeague neither knew nor cared whether he had fallen into a death trap or the trail of life. He was bathed, his body anointed and massaged. He was fed and clothed in robes of blue silk embroidered with designs of gold thread and gems. And he slept. The moon shone through the round windows of the room where he lay on a satin-padded floor mattress, and a white-robed attendant was setting sparks alight on incense, and offering him a cool drink.

Somewhere, there was murmuring sound pulsing like music. He ate curried chicken and rice, drank deeply of the tart, cool liquid offering in a gem-encrusted chalice, and was pres-