"Hah!" Ptah stiffened. Once more he pursed his lips, and then rising, he took up a metal hammer and struck with it upon a gong which Croft now perceived to be let into the substance of the door.
Casting the hammer aside he waited until the man with the leathern apron appeared.
"Go," he commanded then; "fetch me a suckling tabur and the knife of augury from the hall of sacrifice where it is stored."
Returning to his seat he waited, his eyes never shifting from the shape of the woman before him until the man reappeared bearing the little creature he had named, and a massive knife of copper with a weighted blade.
Rising, he received both and held them until the attendant had disappeared.
"Oh, Bel—thou Strong One—show us thy pleasure in the matter before the nation and in the case of Naia of Aphur's suckling. Speak to us through the life of this creature I, Ptah, am about to sacrifice to thee," his heavy voice rumbled.
Seizing the tabur by the hind legs, he poised the copper blade, and with one muscular sweep of his mighty arm, struck off his head, and laid the carcass down.
"Let me, O Ptah!" cried Kalamita, seizing the reeking knife from the hands of the priest and kneeling to slit open the quivering belly of the tabur, so that the entrails were exposed. Plunging her pink-nailed hands into the quivering mass, she wrenched them forth and spread them writhing on the blood-stained floor.
Ptah bent above them, marking the fall of them closely. The woman still knelt before him, watching his every change of expression out of questioning eyes, holding forth toward him, palm upward, her crimson-dripping hands.
For a time while Croft sickened both at the sight of the uncouth male and the physically lovely woman—the spectacle of beauty and the beast sunk in the unclean orgy of a filthy rite, and at the decision resting upon it. Ptah said nothing, and after a time he straightened and lifted his hands toward the ceiling. "Bel, I, Ptah, thy servant, hear thee," he intoned hoarsely.