"I intend to strike out from Qum, the holy city," he said. "I'll try to get hold of a motor-truck there—and one of these desert men to drive it. They're rotten drivers though," he added, "and next to a dead loss on a trip like this." Then he sighed. "But I'm getting used to 'em."
"What do you expect to find up there?" I asked.
"The usual thing," he answered, as if that ought to explain everything. "This country is full of ruins. It's so old, in fact, that sometimes I think that everything that can happen has already happened here, at one time or another. Take Qum, for instance. A few years back there were twenty thousand ruined and deserted buildings still standing. These walled towns are like coral islands, surrounded and upheld by the dust and decay of their own past. But I'm looking for something farther back—much farther back."
He paused, then suddenly his eyes brightened. "There's one thing, though. I may have a try at finding the Ice Stone."
"The Ice Stone?" I echoed. "And what's that?"
"Perhaps just a legend. It isn't likely you would ever have heard of it. It's supposed to be a black stone, a huge, square block, set in the side of a mountain. If a man touches it, his hand sinks in, and he can get loose only by amputating. The queer part is, there seems to be some basis for the legend. All down through Iran's history there are disconnected references. The thing keeps cropping up. Vague reports from wandering tribes, with one or more cripples, minus an arm or leg, to verify the yarn. So, I may take a shot at locating the Ice Stone."
Queer stories like that are quite common in Iran. Ordinarily I'd have laughed and forgotten it. But as I say, I'd taken a sort of liking to this serious-faced little Dr. Champ Chadwick. And when you like a man you're bound to think twice before discrediting what he believes in.
"So you'll be taking a ride over this crazy railroad," I remarked thoughtfully, somewhat later.
He nodded. "What makes you call it crazy?"
Well, I told him. Of course he already knew quite a lot about Iran's new railroad—the many-million dollar toy of the "Brother of the Moon and Stars," as the fancy-tongued Iranians like to call their shah. This road writhes and twists and climbs through eight hundred miles of queer, mountainous country—a country of mud and rocks and salt-swamps—and carefully avoids all the important towns. You see, the "King of Kings"—another pet name for Shah Pahlavi—is afraid some of his neighbors might get control of the road and use it against him. These same neighbors sneeringly refer to it as the road that leads from "nowhere to nowhere."