“Yarghouz! Stand still!”
“Is your word then the Rampart of Gog and Magog, you young witch of Yian, that a Khan of the Seventh Tower need fear you!” he sneered, stealing stealthily westward through the feathery pines.
“I give thee thy last chance, Yarghouz Khan,” she said in an excited voice that trembled. “Recite thy prayer naming the ten, because with their holy names upon thy lips thou mayest escape damnation. For I am here to slay thee, Yarghouz! Take up thy shroud and pray!”
The young man felt the west wind at the back of his left ear. Then he began to laugh.
“Heavenly Eyes,” he said, “thy end is come—together with the two police who hide in the pines yonder behind thee! Behold the bottle magic of Yarghouz Khan!”
And he lifted the glass flask in the moonlight as though he were about to smash it at her feet.
Then a terrible thing occurred. The entire flask glowed red hot in his grasp; and the man screamed and strove convulsively to fling the bottle; but it stuck to his hand, melted into the smoking flesh.
Then he screamed again—or tried to—but his entire lower jaw came off and he stood there with the awful orifice gaping in the moonlight—stood, reeled a moment—and then—and then—his whole face slid off, leaving nothing but a bony mask out of which burst shriek after shriek——
Keuke Mongol had fainted dead away. Cleves took her into his arms.
Recklow, trembling and deathly white, went over to the thing that lay among the young pines and forced himself to bend over it.