Page:Weird Tales Volume 6 Number 2 (1925-08).djvu/31

"How did he find entrance?" he asked drowzily. "Slay those who let him in."

And then he nodded again to the plump man with the spectacles, and he went on with his reading. The raja listened only half-attentively. Behind his sleepy eyes thoughts were moving slowly. After a long time he smiled to himself.

"Stay. What is the name of that book?"

The babu puffed out a little.

"It is the History of the Spanish Inquisition." He read the title in English, and then translated.

The raja grinned like one who is very drowzy.

And what was that other one, from which you read this morning?"

The babu picked up a volume which was lettered: Arthurian Legends. Truly those were strange books to be in such a place, but the white man who lay bound there, waiting to learn in what fashion he was to die, did not think of that. He was remembering tales he had heard concerning the various unpleasant things a man may endure before death comes to him. He had heard that with care an expert torturer could keep one alive for four, even five days, in torment that would make hell a haven of infinite repose by contrast.

The ranee still was silent. The raja looked at her without particular malice, but rather as one who is meditating upon some jest.

"What is your excuse, O Sahnya?" he asked mildly. "Doubtless you love the man."

"Nay, my lord. But he is a priest of the god Khayandra, and I had supplication to make of his deity."

The raja said nothing whatever, but he looked very carefully at the mark on the white man's forehead. The white man took courage and spoke loudly, threatening the raja with the wrath of Khayandra. And the raja smiled again, seemingly half asleep.

"But the priests of Khayandra," he murmured softly, "have that mark indelibly upon their foreheads, and yours is running down your face from the cold sweat of terror." He began to laugh suddenly. "O white man, you have had your skin stained brown for many months, but the nails have grown out from your fingers, and the base of your nails is like the nails of the white men. This is a jest. I shall judge you by the laws of the white men."

The white man would have groveled in the earth, then, but that he was tied. The raja laughed, rocking his body back and forth.

"The raja Arthur, with his tuans, had many strange customs. There was that notion of the ordeal. I shall put you two to the ordeal, One of you shall live. And the other . . ."

The ranee spoke very softly, and very quietly. She was pleading for her life, but she spoke very softly. The raja waved her aside.

"This white man's custom of chi—chi—." He looked at the babu, and the babu puffed out and said, "Chivalree, sar." The raja chuckled and murmured, "Chivalree. It means that a man always dies for a woman. It is very foolish. You two may decide which is to die, and which is to go free."

The white man began to plead in an agony of pleading, struggling with his fear-stiffened tongue until the froth welled from his lips, begging, imploring the raja to slay the woman with many tortures, but to let him go free.

But the woman merely said, "If he is a false priest, kill him."

The raja looked disappointed. He had perhaps looked for a comedy wherein each would beg for the other's life. This matter convinced him against his will that the woman was innocent, but he had no mind to lose his jest.