Tony said not a word. Very slowly, very carefully, he bent Zadah’s hand back. The latter’s finger was still on the trigger. The gun pointed at last at the killer’s heart.
Then Tony smiled—and the muscles of his hand contracted.
The report was shatteringly loud in the desert stillness.
Tony let the limp body slide down, and turned back to Jimmy. The boy was dead. Zadah’s bullet had made a neat little hole in the brown shirt.
After a moment Tony carried the body of his brother to the plane and put it aboard. He followed. He sent the gyro winging up over the desert.
Beneath him the Sahara stretched, a white wilderness under the flaming heat of the Sun. To the north could be seen an encampment, the troopers that had arrived, too late, at the mouth of Sub-Sahara. Tony set the controls and fled beyond them.
The desert gave place to the Mediterranean, and that, in turn, to the Pacific Ocean. The cool blueness of night folded down. Moonlight silvered the waves.
Tony opened a trap-door in the floor and let the body of his brother slide through. Phil rested in the temple of Osiris—and Jimmy would lie beneath the waves that hid Atlantis.
He went back to the controls, staring ahead at an empty horizon. Westward lay New York. He could go back there now; the motive for keeping hidden had vanished. No one would know who the Merlin was. Some men might guess, might be convinced that either Phil or Jimmy had stolen the Earth Star—but they would never dare make an accusation, and Seth Martell would need make no compromises with his honor and his ideals.
Only Tony would know that the Merlin had been his brother Phil.