HARILEK

HARILEK
A Romance

BY
“GANPAT”

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1923

COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

TO
ARYENIS
SOMETIMES DELICIOUSLY
SAPIENTISSIMA
SOMETIMES ADORABLY
BABETTE

THE
STORY-TELLER’S INVITATION

I’ll tell you a tale of a far-off land,

Cliff-girt o’er the yellow desert sand,

And crowned with peaks of snow;

Of forests of pine and a garden gay,

Of shirts of mail in a steel-capped fray,

And shafts from the six-foot bow.

Of soldier-men and of maidens fair—

Of a fairy princess with red-gold hair

In a stronghold of wizards cruel;

Of a fight or two of an old-world kind—

Magazine-rifle and spear combined,

And death in a hand-locked duel.

Of men and women like me and you,

Of love old-fashioned yet ever new,

Brave eyes in a valley of fear;

Of the cold grey steel and the long warm kiss,

With a proper ending of honeymoon bliss—

Won’t you gather round me and hear?

“Ganpat”

FOREWORD

In giving this story to the world I must frankly confess that I do not know whether it is a remarkable record of actual adventure, or a fantastic romance from the pen of some one gifted with a particularly vivid imagination.

Harry Lake and I last parted in 1920 near Sorarogha in Waziristan, on the Indian frontier—I bound for home on leave, he in charge of the picketing troops, whose business it was to ensure the reasonably safe passage of wearied soldiery like me through the knife-edged hills, where the Mahsud snipers made night noisy and day sometimes dangerous.

I have known him on and off for many years. Stationed together before the war, our paths led apart in 1914—he to France with his regiment, I to East Africa with mine—to meet again in a London hospital in late 1915. With him once more in India in 1917, I then lost sight of him for over two years, till January, 1920, brought us together in a rather noisy brawl in Mahsud Waziristan, where the tribesmen were taking exception to our military promenade up their pet valley.

I know his people slightly, more particularly his sister, Ethel Wheeler, to whom he refers in his story, but she does not often favour me with letters. It was somewhat of a surprise, therefore, when in October last year, while a student at the Staff College, Quetta, an English mail brought me a bulky parcel and a letter from her, enclosing one from Lake, in which was the following passage:

I don’t know if you are still doing anything in the author line, but if you are you might amuse yourself editing this record which I have made up from my diary. You are always keen on out-of-the-way places, and in sending this off, on the very shadowy chance of it ever reaching home, it occurred to me that you might like to see it, so I am telling Ethel to pass it on to you. If you care to get it published, you are welcome, the more so since I think the world could do with such a record of simple adventure as an antidote to the kind of stuff appearing when I left civilization.

I opened the parcel that night and dipped into the stained pages. There was a good deal of work on hand, but I’m afraid it got left over, for it was past four in the morning before I turned the last pages with a rather dazed brain, but a firm determination to edit the story. The kind assistance of Miss Douie—sister of a fellow-student—enabled me to get it typed in the little spare time snatched—mostly very late at night—from a strenuous course of instruction; while the local knowledge of Central Asia of Major Blacker—another fellow-student—was of the greatest help in following Lake’s rather hieroglyphic record of his journey to Sakaeland.

Whether red-gold-haired Aryenis and her grave-eyed father, stalwart Henga and his Sake bowmen, Philos and his pretty wife and blue-eyed baby, crippled Paulos, the fiendish Shamans and the murderous brown Sakae are real living people, I cannot pretend to say, any more than I can tell whether pine-fringed Aornos, the snow-peaks of Saghar Mor, or the gloomy Shaman citadel, with its red-hot trapdoor, exist outside Lake’s brain. All I can say is that he has never told me anything but the truth all the years I have known him. Payindah I remember well, while Wrexham I met several times in 1917, and both are very accurately described.

If the story is true, then I cannot say how the letters and the manuscript reached us, save that, from the vernacular inscriptions on the original wrapping which Ethel Wheeler sent me, it has clearly been passed from hand to hand by Indian merchants on the Chinese trade route. Perhaps Lake and his friends found the missing camels, and built up a sufficient store of water at stages across the desert to enable one or two determined men to make a flying journey out and back to hand over their letters to some Indian trader. But he has given no details as to how he proposed to get their letters home.

If Lake’s record is genuine, then I envy him intensely, and hope that it will be many, many years before any explorer, even of the type of genial Sir Aurel Stein, penetrates to Sakaeland, for it and its people seem to me far too pleasing for one to wish them spoilt by the contact of twentieth-century civilization.

If, on the other hand, it is merely an invention of Lake’s to while away monotonous evenings during his explorations in unknown Central Asia, where he certainly is, then I hope that his readers will find it as interesting and realistic as I and others here have done.

“Ganpat”

Staff College
Quetta, Baluchistan
1st January, 1923

CONTENTS

HARILEK

HARILEK

CHAPTER I
I MEET WREXHAM AND FORSYTH

Most of the big things in life hinge on very small beginnings. I wonder if the people who pose as pure materialists ever reflect on that fact when they hold forth on their complete and absolute certainty that there is no guiding hand in men’s affairs or in the conception, creation, and control of that most wonderfully intricate piece of machinery, the universe.

Missing a train, accepting an invitation, having a dance cut, all may prove the turning-point in a life if you take the trouble to trace things back to their beginnings.

Take my own case, as I sit writing here with a glimpse of the twin snow-peaks of Saghar Mor through my open window, rose-red in the last light of the setting sun, above a level haze of lilac. Here am I with all I ever sought of life, all and far more. And yet, but for a chance visit to the Karachi Gymkhana Club some two years ago, I should probably to-day be smoking a pipe in my old Sussex manor farmhouse, after a day in the stubble, leading a quiet uneventful life, content—in a way—but having savoured only a fraction of what life really holds.

A gymkhana club bar does not sound the ideal starting-point for a life’s romance, for a complete change in all that life may mean, and yet it so happened to me, as doubtless it has happened before and may happen again to others.

I’ve been thinking for some time of writing down the events of the last two years, partly because they sometimes seem so unreal that the only way to bring home their concreteness—if I may coin a word—is to put them down in cold, hard black-and-white, partly because I think they may serve to show others that romance is not yet dead, and that adventure is still to be found for those who will but pluck up heart and seek.

What is that passage of Kipling’s about Truth being an undressed lady at the bottom of a well, and that if you meet her—well, as a gentleman there are only two things to do, one to look away, the other to give her a print dress? So I, being, I hope, a gentleman, choose the latter.

To begin at the very beginning, I must revert to the bar at the gymkhana club which I have mentioned, and, before beginning my tale, I suppose I had better introduce myself as I was when the story started, late in 1920.

My name is Lake, and Harry Lake is what most people call me. My father—God rest his soul—was the owner of a small place in Sussex, which he used to farm and shoot in the intervals of travelling, and which he expected me to take over when he died.

But farming—even with a certain backing of cash—did not appeal to me, and I drifted into the army. Then, much to the annoyance of my father, who wanted me to soldier at home since I would go into the service, I transferred to an Indian regiment. Travel always appealed to me, especially in the less well-known parts of the globe, and India seemed a convenient kicking-off place. One got long leave, which the army at home does not legislate for; and blessed with a little money, I was able to indulge my hobby to the full.

Central Asia became my playground, and, whenever I could get leave, I sped up to Kashmir and thence up one or other of the valleys into the great sleepy spaces that lie behind, the desiccated bone-dry spaces of Ladakh, or among the snow-clad mountains that fringe the north of Lalla Rookh’s country.

Then came the war, and, after frantic panics that I was going to be out of it all, tearful wires to pals at Simla, despairing appeals to every general I had ever met, I found myself in France, and entered upon a series of panics for fear I shouldn’t get away again.

After longer or shorter periods of mud, boredom, and fright, with a spell of hospital inserted, my regiment went on to that benighted back front, East Africa, a spot for which I conceived the most intense loathing, and was glad to find myself back once more in India in late 1917. A spell of dépôt work, and off again to Palestine and later to Cyprus, where, though life was uneventful, I amused myself brushing up the Greek I had learnt travelling during the holidays with my father. I am pretty good at languages, and had kept up my Greek, so that by the time I left Cyprus I spoke it as fluently as ever again.

In 1919 my father’s death led me home to settle up the estate, and then out again, with the firm intention of leaving the army within the year.

A bout of frontier scrapping in the 1920 Waziristan show was my last effort, and then I really made up my mind to go straight away. I was blessed with ample independent means—ample enough for me anyway; most of my regimental pals were dead, and so in 1920 I sent in my papers.

I had shot most things to be found about Northern India, but had never secured a tiger, and so made up my mind for a visit to the Central Provinces before going home. I wandered down to Karachi en route south to spend a few days there, and that’s where this story really begins.

The first night there I did what one always does in the East—I went down to the club bar to pass the time of day with any old acquaintances that might be there. I had known Karachi fair to middling well in the old pre-war days, and I thought I was pretty sure to find friends, but, as a matter of fact, the club was rather deserted.

So I lit a cheroot and sat down, feeling rather lonesome, as one does in a place where one has spent many cheery evenings with a crowd of good fellows, most of whom have gone west. I was thinking about going across to the Sind Club when a man entered the bar. I looked twice to make quite sure, and then walked over to him.

“Long time since we shared a flask in the Jordan Valley, John,” said I, tapping him on the shoulder.

He spun round.

“Hulloa, Harry! D——d glad to see you, old bird! What on earth are you doing here? I saw your push only last week, and they said you’d chucked it and gone home. Family acres and all that sort of thing.”

“First part’s true; for the rest, you see me here, large as life, very much at a loose end, and contemplating trying for a tiger in the C.P. before I go home. They tell me England hasn’t quite recovered from the war yet, and when it isn’t coal-striking it’s doing something equally unpleasant, so I thought I’d give it a miss for a few months.”

“Funny thing running into you here; I was just writing to your home address. I’ve been up on a globe trot Kashgar way. I’m demobbed now, too. Good thing to be one’s own master once more.”

Being on his own was a thing that would appeal to John Wrexham, independent by nature. An engineer by trade, swept up in the vortex of the war as an Indian Army reserve officer, I first met him in a particularly offensive trench Givenchy way. I met him frequently after that, always cheery, always busy, beloved of every battalion commander, to whose needs he ministered in the capacity of subaltern of a sapper-and-miner field company.

A brave soul, too, John, of the most heroic, despite his inclination to stoutness. He amassed some very pretty ribbons before the war was out, and a reputation among those who knew him worth more than all the ribbons in the world.

Later I picked him up again in Palestine, commanding a field company this time, in the most professional manner. I remember well our first encounter in Palestine, where I ran into him superintending a working party under close fire. It was such a typical picture of John. Sucking a pipe, methodical, cheerful, and utterly devoid of fear, his helmet on one side of his rather bullet head, his shrewd grey eyes taking in everything, quick and caustic comments for those who weren’t putting their backs into it, a woman’s touch and a woman’s kindly word for any one who had “taken it,” red knees over blue puttees, ruddy face with the chin puckered over a long white gash picked up in an argument with a Hun near Festubert—very much a man all over is John Wrexham.

“What were you writing about, John? It’s not like you.”

John’s inability to put pen to paper except under direct necessity was as well known as his practical efficiency at every point of his trade, or as his personal courage. In Palestine he was the despair of his C.R.E., a ponderous soul, and a lover of paper.

“Wanted to find out what you were doing. I’ve got a stunt on, and I want company. I’ve got one fellow coming along, but I want another, and I thought you might be at a loose end. Come under the fan and I’ll show you something.”

When we had installed ourselves under the electric fan in two armchairs, he pulled out his pipe, filled it methodically, lit it, and then proceeded. One never hurries John when he has something to say. It’s always worth waiting for.

“Did you ever trek into Kashgar, Harry?” he asked at last.

“No, I never got as far as that. Why?”

“I was up that way last year, and found one or two things rather interesting.”

“What were you doing? I didn’t know you were keen on Central Asia.”

“I am to a certain extent. I had a great-great-uncle who was a bit of a rolling stone. He wandered a bit in those parts, and he left a diary, written rather like I write, but you could follow it in parts. I’ll show it you later on. There’s some quaint stuff in it. But it interested me, and last year when I was demobbed after the Armistice, I toddled up there to have a look-see. I was not keen on going back to my old job in Bengal, and, as I’d saved a bit of cash, I thought I’d take a holiday, which I hadn’t really done since I left school. So I trekked off to Kashgar and then east.”

He fumbled in his pocket, pulled out a worn pocketbook, and extracted something which he passed across.

“Ever see anything like this?” he queried.

I examined the object closely. A silver coin, new-looking, but rough at the edges. On one side was a mass of Greek lettering. On the obverse was a man’s head, rather clear-cut.

I turned it over again. The names on the coin were unfamiliar, and the head was unlike any coin I knew.

“What country is it, John? It’s Greek, though the lettering is quaint, but whose is the head? It’s not from Greece. Is it one of the funny little new States that the Peace Conference of the war to end war has started to ensure war going on?”

Wrexham looked at me despondently.

“You handle a pen quickly, Harry, but you’re slow sometimes at deductions. Yes, it’s Greek; but it’s a long time since any one wrote Greek quite like that, and I think that the country it came from never heard of the Great War of 1914-18.”

“Antique, is it?” I looked at it again. “It looks fairly new-make. Is it a copy? Central Asia’s full of old Greek relics, I know. Have they started an antique mint in Kashgar in the hope of a tourist boom after the war? Where did you come by it?”

“Well, it’s a long story, but, if you’re doing nothing to-night, come over to my hotel and dine and I’ll tell you. By itself the coin isn’t much, but I’ve got two other exhibits which fit in. What is it ‘Sapper’ says? ‘Once is nothing, twice is coincidence, three times is a moral certainty.’ I think I’ve got a moral cert.”

And not another word would he say on the matter then, shifting the conversation to France and Palestine, old scraps, old friends, all the miscellany of memories that make up the wandering soldier’s life.

I slipped home and changed, and then to his hotel, where I found him awaiting me in the lounge with a tall, clean-shaven, fair-haired, blue-eyed man who seemed to carry a smack of the sea about him, though somehow I did not set him down as a sailor.

“You’ve not met Forsyth, have you, Harry?” said Wrexham. “This is Lake, Alec; you’ve heard me speak of him often enough.”

As we shook hands while Wrexham busied himself attracting a servant for short drinks, I took stock of Forsyth. Taller than me by at least three inches—and I stand five feet ten in my socks—and broad with it, he looked the epitome of fitness. His skin was clear and smooth as a girl’s, yet tanned to a ruddy brick colour that spoke of days of open air, clean fresh winds, and hot sunshine.

I couldn’t quite place him, but somehow he conveyed an idea of big open spaces, and all the breadth of clean mental outlook that sometimes goes therewith.

Wrexham handed us out sherries, and marshalled us into a cool corner.

“Three wanderers well met, I think. Here’s to us.” He turned to me.

“Forsyth knows, perhaps, more Greek than you, Harry. He describes himself as a doctor, and tags weird letters after his name. But his real amusement in life is studying ethnology and anthropology and things like that.”

“I’ve always been keen on ethnology, especially that of Eastern Europe, as a hobby; and after finishing my medical studies, I spent some months pottering about Greece on my own. It’s a fascinating mixture of people down in the Balkan Peninsula to any one keen on studying different races. Also, I was one of those freaks with a leaning to Greek, even at school, before I came over to England.”

“One of our Empire liaison links from Canada,” continued Wrexham, “ex-R.N.A.S., sometimes amateur of ethnology, specially Greek; anything more, Alec?”

“You forget the ex-R.A.F., which landed me in this country to renew the threads of your acquaintanceship from Palestine days.”

“True, O king, a somewhat murky past. But now, like me, you’ve cut adrift once more.”

“And here I am to listen to a cock-and-bull story of yours tied up with old or new coins and a ragged diary, with which baits you propose to lug me many hundred miles into the back of beyond, instead of going back and looking for a decent job to earn an honest living. You have a persuasive manner, John. I suppose Lake is another babe in your hands?”

“He will be, I hope, before we’ve done with him. However, what about food? Then we can go up to my quarters and get down to the real stuff. Finished your drinks?”

He marshalled us into the dining-room, and once again the conversation slid west and north in the old grooves of war, till we finally adjourned to his room, and stretched ourselves on long chairs in the verandah. When his servant had deposited sodas, glasses, and whiskey and departed, Wrexham went to a metal despatch-case, and produced from it a small wooden box carefully tied up, which he placed mysteriously on the table.

Then, filling his ancient pipe, he spread himself in a long chair and commenced.

“First of all, I’m going to tell you about my trip beyond Yarkand last year. When you’ve swallowed that, I’ll show you a thing or two.

“After my company left Palestine in January, ’19, and came back to India, I got myself demobbed and pondered what I should do. Home lacked attraction, I’d been away so long. There was I with a certain amount of dibs, no calls, my own master, up in Pindi at the end of the Kashmir road with the hot weather coming on, and all the earth in front of me.

“I’ve always wanted to travel up that way, and this seemed the absolute chance. If I went home or back to my old job in Bengal, I might not get another opportunity for years; my old firm in Bengal were good, but sticky in the matter of leave. So I packed my kit, dumped what I didn’t want, motored to Srinagar, and took the road for Yarkand.

“I stuck to the main road practically all the way, steady, easy marches. And as I went I read everything I could find on the country. Most of my kit was books, I think, but by the time I hit Yarkand I had a working knowledge of Kashgaria at other people’s expense.

“I moved fairly light, but I lugged the books along and also a few survey instruments. You remember that in Palestine I used to play about with survey toys.

“I stopped a bit at Yarkand to study local conditions, and work up the smattering of Turki that I’d been assimilating on the road up with the aid of a prehistoric textbook.

“From there I pushed on to Aksu, and hence towards Hami, always keeping to the main road. There’s nothing to talk about during that part of the show. But when I got Hami-way, I put aside the printed books and restudied my great-great-uncle’s diary.”

He stopped and pulled meditatively at his pipe.

“What was the great-great-uncle doing up there, John?” I asked.

“He was a bit of a rolling stone, rather like me, I fancy. He started with a commission in the East India Company’s army, got tired of it, went north, and joined the Sikh army. Then he dropped that and took to wandering. Went up into Kashmir. Thence he conceived the idea of following the old trade route into China. His library apparently consisted of Marco Polo.

“Three years later he turned up again in Ferozepur, where my great-grandfather, his brother, was commanding a regiment, and announced his intention of fitting out and going off again to Central Asia. But before he could start again he went out with cholera. However, before he died he gave my great-grandfather a diary and a bundle of old papers, and said that, if ever any other member of the family got the wanderlust, the papers were to be given to him.

“My great-grandfather, who was married, had no particular desire to travel, and, I fancy, after reading through the stuff, he locked it up and dismissed the whole lot as a traveller’s yarn, due to overmuch Marco Polo combined with fever.

“My grandfather and my father were stay-at-homes, and I’m the first of the family to come back here. I brought with me the old papers and the diary that was with them more as idle curiosities—happened to notice them when I was on leave before coming back from France to Mespot in 1916.

“Having nothing much to do, I read them through on board ship, and after that I read them fairly often, until I know bits, I think, by heart.

“A lot of them are mere scrappy notes about his journeys, rough drawings of places and types, and it’s only after he struck east from Urumchi that the real interest comes into the diary. Pass me over that box, will you?”

Forsyth reached the box across to Wrexham, who undid it, and took out a small shabby leather-covered notebook.

“I’m going to read you something,” he said, “that will tell you why I went north. As I said before, once is nothing, twice is a coincidence, three times is a moral cert. This is the ‘once’; part of the ‘twice’ you’ve both seen in the shape of that coin; the ‘three times’ I’ve got here, and will show you presently.”

He put the box on the table by him, opened the notebook—stained yellowish paper and crabbed writing in faded brown ink—and began to read aloud.

He read for a quarter of an hour, and at the end of that time both Forsyth and I had let our pipes go out, and were hanging on his words.

CHAPTER II
OLD JOHN WREXHAM’S DIARY

20th Jany. 1822

I wonder if any one who read these lines would ever believe that I, John Wrexham, am writing naught but the sober truth. When I think over the events of the last month, it seems to me as if it were all a wild dream fantasy. And yet....

Islam Akhun’s story of a king and his army engulfed in the sands and of the buried cities set me wandering, and lo! the city seems to be there after all these hundreds of years, and I, John Wrexham, am the first to have seen its gates. Or, stay, after what I saw in the valley, perhaps it were more true to say the first living man, for others less fortunate than myself would seem to have reached the entrance to the Gates, to find them only the Gates of Death.

But I must stop me musing, and set down the bare happenings ere my memory plays me tricks and fever come on anew.

It was the 2d December that I conceived my ill-fated trip, at least it was ill-fated for Islam and Arslan Bai. Was it ill-fated for me? Time alone can tell.

Northeast they pointed over the wastes of sand, and said that many days out into the desert lay a buried city, rich with treasures, in whose streets you might walk as though men left them yestereve, and gather up riches if you could but escape from the wiles of the spirits that guarded them, spirits that called you by name and bade you stay.

No; they had never seen it, but in their grandfather’s father’s time, one man, a treasure-seeker, one of the idle ne’er-do-wells that haunt the villages fringing the waste sands, had gone out with other two into the deserts in search of treasure, hoping perchance to gather in a few days wealth beyond the wildest dreams.

Many days later he returned, a ragged skeleton, gaunt eyes and blackened lips, nigh dead with thirst and fever. He died that night, and ere he died, close to the road where the story-tellers found him, he babbled a little of a gate, of armed men, of death.

None ever followed his quest: there are too many tales of hidden cities and treasures all up and down this sunburnt land, and men still fear the trackless deserts, as they did when Messer Marco Polo traversed the desert of Lop, ‘so great that ’tis said it would take a year and more to ride from one end of it to the other....’ And still talk they of the spirits that Polo mentions in his travels, which beguile men from their caravans and leave them to perish in the sands, so that ‘in making this journey ’tis customary for travellers to keep close together.’

What was it that stirred my mind, so that all night long, when men and beasts lay sleeping, I sat wrapt in my furs in the cold wind gazing out to the northeast pondering? Was it chance? Was it fate? I know not, nor shall ever know, perhaps. But, ere the false dawn’s faint light pearled the sky above me, I had made up my mind that, come what might, I, too, would face the desert and see whether it would reveal its secrets, or remain inscrutably mocking to the end.

Perchance my men thought I had been maddened by these same spirits when, next day, instead of continuing our road, I said I had changed my mind and wished to voyage northeast into the desert.

At first they refused to come, but finally, after much persuasion, they agreed on my promise that when half our water was used we would retrace our steps if naught had been found. The reward I spoke of, the chance of hidden wealth, and the guarantee of return ere our water failed, just outweighed their fears of the unknown desert of death, and of the spirits of evil that roamed in it.

Even then only Islam and Arslan would accompany me. But, indeed, I preferred a small party, since it was the less water to take. The others of our party and some of my gear we left to await our return. Not till the 11th December did we set forth—three men and three camels, one laden with food and gear, and two with skins of water.

Our way at first was easy, over sand-dunes of no immense height, though growing as we went, and we covered sixty miles in the first four days. Nothing to see but sand, sand, sand, trackless and rippled as the wild ocean’s wave. Since I possessed neither map nor guide, I marched by compass, as might a sailor in an uncharted sea. Due northeast from our starting-point was the direction I chose. The old Chinese road lay southeast, and the men spoke of a track that led northward, so that our route midway between the two should bring us into the desert’s heart.

It was on the evening of the fourth day that, far off on the northeast horizon I remarked what seemed like some faint cloud hanging in the sky. After looking at it through my glass, I pointed it out to Islam, saying, “Snow,” but he insisted it was but cloud.

But next evening again we beheld it, the same form, the same direction, and not a cloud beside in all the brazen sky.

Far mountain beyond a doubt. If there were no hidden cities, there were at least strange hills, and snow hills must mean water. Even Islam agreed now, though I saw he would liefer have found his city of gold than all the snow hills of wild Asia.

We pressed on, and on the evening of the sixth day, as the sun was sinking to his rest, perceived what I had sought all day in vain, the faint lilac haze below the white that I have noted marks always the lower hills below high snow.

The dunes were now greatly higher and more formidable, curved half-moons of sand, most wearisome to the legs, and the camels showed their distress from lack of water, since our scanty stock permitted but a mouthful for the beasts.

On the eighth day the snow-peak gleamed more clearly, and in the light of evening the low hills showed sharp and clear maybe a bare thirty miles away.

Never a sign of water so far, and I thanked Providence greatly that we had made sixteen days’ provision, though by now I felt assured that we should discover some at the foot of the hills. The next three days to the hills were in great measure easier, the dunes were daily lower, but we had perforce to give part of our water to the camels.

On the evening of the eleventh day we reached the foot of the hills, and then, alas! the foreboding that all day had clung to me was realized. The wall of hills was, indeed, a wall, almost sheer scarped cliff like the sides of an old Indian hill-fort, and many hundred feet high, with naught at foot but a short slope of tumbled rock half-buried in sand.

That night we camped below the gloomy cliffs, and I held that our earliest preoccupation in the morning must be to seek water along the foot. Surely somewhere the melting snow must find its way down, unless it drained to the northward.

Next morning we travelled twelve or thirteen miles, always under sheer scarped cliff, never a drop of water, never a sign of slope that we might climb. We moved eastward, since from far off it had seemed to me that the cliffs were lower that way. We had now but four days’ scanty water left, and the heat of the desert, even at this cold season, was causing some loss by sweating through the skins in which we carried it.

Islam prayed me to start back forthwith making forced marches, but I was sure that water was to be found. Arslan, moreover, said that unless the camels could be fully watered they would die in the desert, and with them we also should perish, leaving our bones to whiten in the wastes of sand.

So next day again we started early, and all day travelled below the unfriendly cliffs, but never finding water, until late in the evening the camels, which till now had been barely able to drag their lank limbs along, quickened their dragging pace; and presently Islam, who was on ahead, called out loudly to me.

I hastened on to where he stood on a high rock, and saw before me a narrow valley opening into the cliff, and in the bed of the valley a little stream of clear water, and men and beasts drank their fill.

The cleft at whose dark mouth we stood was narrow, a bare twenty paces wide, and with the same scarped sides of incredible height. It wound away into the cliff, already partly hidden in the evening dusk, though where we stood was yet lit with the sun’s last rays.

Reassured now by our find of water, we settled us down for the night, and in the morning refilled all water-skins. The dawn light showed a few stunted bushes and a dwarf tree or two, but no sign of human beings.

Leaving Arslan to tend the beasts, which found some scant grazing in the valley entrance, and taking Islam with me, I set about exploring the cleft. It got more and more narrow and darker and darker, until, after some three miles, we could touch the sides of smooth rock with our outstretched hands, but never, never a place that a man might climb. The cold was intense in this dark confined slit that knew the warm sun but for a brief space each day.

Then, rounding a sudden corner, came we to the end. The narrow valley opened upon a circus perhaps two hundred paces in diameter, sheer cliffs around it. But oh! the wonder of that evil place.

The valley closed again, and there before us, carved at the foot of the towering rock, was a gateway of old fashion with an inscription and a design of serpents upon it.

But even more strange was the ground at our feet. For it was covered with bones of men.

The bones were clean and white, and maybe old. But as we stood there concealed in the narrow cleft, there was a rush above us and a great white-necked vulture swept out from the cliff above, and then another and then another, circling down and down on their wide outstretched pinions.

We drew farther back into the shelter of the rock, thinking, perchance, they were spying us after the fashion these birds have in desert places where life is scarce, waiting on life for death to come.

But no, instead they fluttered down on the farther side, and gathered in ill-omened circle about something. Islam plucked my sleeve. “Come away, quick! Come away! ’Tis a place of ill-omen; these be spirits more like than birds.”

But my curiosity was awakened, and, shaking him off, I advanced. As I got close the vultures flapped heavily away, and I saw what their foul wings had hidden. It was a man’s body, of recent date, with no signs of death’s grim decay, and the birds had not yet had time to disfigure it, so that I could see clearly what manner of man he was. A young man but—white—as white as I am. And of the manner of his death there was no doubt, for driven through his throat was an arrow, and below him on the ground was a pool of blood which had not yet dried, for when I tried to move him to see his hands it showed wet still.

I say his hands, for he lay stretched face upwards, but with his arms twisted under him, and then I perceived that his hands were bound behind him.

There were no clothes to show what class of person he had been; whoever had slain him had stripped off all he had.

I considered him with care. Features clear-cut like a statue of old time, with short dark-brown curls. Then I noticed the arrow. Black-shafted and steel-barbed, with white marks upon the shaft. Writing surely in some strange tongue.

Islam by now had recovered a little of his courage and came over, but just as he reached me a sudden sound above us caused us to fly in unreasoning panic to the cleft whence we had emerged. It was but one of the heavy flying vultures, but it was some time ere we breathed easily again.

I stared out once more over the evil-smelling place of stone and sand and bone, dazzling white in the sun between the walls of black rock. Over against us the gateway loomed sinister and silent. The great stone portals were closed, nor were there windows, save on either side some arrow-slits as of an archer’s gallery cut in the rock.

“Let us go,” said Islam, “before we also are slain. Whoever killed that yonder must be within the gates.”

But curiosity was stronger in me at that moment than fear.

“Stay you here, Islam,” I said, “and if aught moves at the gate be ready to shoot.” He was fumbling with his old matchlock.

Then, despite his appeals, I returned to the body with eyes fixed on the arrow-slits, ready to flee at sight or sound. But nothing moved nor stirred.

I studied the arrow again, and then tried to pull it out. It was of unfamiliar type, and might give the key to much. But I could not draw it forth, and so was forced to put my knee upon the dead man’s chest, when presently, with some exertion of strength, I pulled it through. It had been shot from behind, and, entering to one side of the spine, stood out a foot and more beyond the throat.

As I stood holding it in my hand there was a crash like thunder, and I leapt across the open space like a deer to the cloud of smoke where Islam crouched behind a rock holding his smoking piece.

“Something moved in that slit,” he gasped, and turned to flee.

Discretion seemed the better part of valour, and I followed him down the narrow waterway, splashing through the little pools, leaping from stone to stone.

But still I wonder whether he truly saw anything, or if his fancies overcame him.

By the entrance we found Arslan, who had heard not the shot, peacefully preparing food by the camels.

Islam contrived to scare him into the same unreasoning frame of mind as himself. Although I desired much to remain, there was no staying them, nor could I continue there by myself. Also, there was some reason, doubtless, in their arguments, three men against a savage tribe; ’twas poor odds in our favour. Speedily we roped up our gear and once more set out across the desert, as I judged, in the direction whence we had come.

Ploughing through the sand, I pondered over the events of the morning, but nothing could I understand. Of one thing alone I was assured, that the dead man was of some people I had never met in Asia. There are fair-skinned people a many there, but none to compare with him I had seen. Could he, perchance, have been a European? But had such a one been in the country, I must surely have heard of him. Save for myself, no European had been known up there.

When we halted that night, I studied the lettered arrow again, for the lettering seemed familiar. Finally, I recognized the unfamiliar script—the letters were Greek. My studies had long since fled, but there was no mistaking some of the letters, for not knowing the which my father had ofttimes caned me. I was clear bewildered by now. What folk could these be in the heart of the great desert with arrows lettered in Greek?

As I write, the arrow is by me, sole token of my journey, sole witness of my tale.

The men were very silent that night, and their one thought seemed to be to put as many miles of sand as possible between themselves and the ill-omened cliff that faded behind us against the darkling sky.

Next day we started at dawn, and, as the light grew, I noticed that here and there among the sand-dunes were rock outcrops, which we had not seen coming. But the little stream had disappeared in the thirsty sand when we had gone a dozen miles, and once again there was no water save what the camels carried.

It was on the second evening that misfortune showed her ugly head. Arslan was troubled concerning one of the camels which paced very slowly. That night it refused the oil and the handful of grain we gave it, and laid its head on the sand, as these beasts do when they are sick.

The next morning it could scarcely walk, and ere evening it died. Here was, indeed, a serious loss, since we must part with either our gear or much of our water.

However, we reckoned that we had a sufficiency of water. The skins had been refilled ere we left the hills, and we had been but twelve days coming, while we had still thirteen days’ supply. Even though our present route were somewhat longer, we should reach the main road in another ten days, eleven at most.

So, next morning, abandoning the dead camel and its load, we started on again. The wind, which had hitherto been little, freshened, and ere midday we were in the midst of a blinding sandstorm, and, though it cleared by evening, we covered but a few miles.

That day the second camel sickened, and within two days was dead. Thus were we forced to abandon the most of our gear. With naught save the scantiest food for ourselves and some powder and ball, we could just load enough water for seven days on the camel. By the evening of the seventh day we should surely reach the old Chinese road.

But once more sandstorms delayed us. Then two days later our last camel sickened. We dragged it along all next day, but it died that evening.

I calculated that we were now not much more than forty miles from the road. There was nothing for it but to take as much water as each man could carry in a goatskin, with a scanty ration of food, abandon our gear, and plod on.

Whether it was that something had affected my compass, or whether in the sandstorms my computation of distance was inaccurate, I cannot say, but after traversing another thirty miles there was but a cupful of water left, and nothing in front but sand-dunes—high ones—a bad sign, since toward the desert’s edge they grow lower.

The rest of the journey was a nightmare that I cannot write. Arlsan went mad and refused to move, so that we had perforce to leave him while we struggled on seeking water and help. Two days later Islam collapsed, and I pushed on alone, and at dawn found myself among trees and fainted. When I came to, I found a wandering shepherd pouring water on my face.

When I was somewhat recovered, I had vast difficulty in getting him and his friends to come with me to search for Islam, but at last the sight of my money persuaded them. Following my tracks (by great good fortune the wind had dropped), we found Islam still breathing, but unconscious. Whether he was already weakly I cannot say, or whether the prolonged strain had been too much for him I know not, but he never recovered consciousness, and died that night. I could not induce them to go any farther, nor, indeed, was there any possibility of finding Arslan alive.

I made my way back westward, and found that I had reached the road seventy miles from where we had set out, which accounted for the extra length of our journey. I picked up my other men and the rest of my gear. Since Islam and Arslan were dead, I said naught to any man of our adventures beyond our failure to discover any ruined city, and our terrible journey back.

Some day I hope to go back and find out the secret of those unknown hills, but for the moment I feel drawn once more to look upon my kith and kin, and I shall make my way back to India and refit.

Wrexham closed the ragged diary and looked up. “Well,” he said in his deliberate way, “and that is what I call the ‘once,’ which is nothing. When I’ve had a drink, I’ll tell you about ‘twice,’ which, according to the expert, is merely coincidence. Manœuvre the whiskey, will you, Alec?”

Forsyth got up and opened the bottle and some sodas.

“Your old great-great-uncle either ought to have been a journalist, or else he found something d——d quaint. Have you got the arrow at home?”

“No. I suppose it was stolen from his kit. He evidently had it with him all right, unless, as my great-grandfather seemed to think, he invented the whole yarn under the influence of fever.”

I filled my glass. “It’s the queerest tale I’ve heard for years. Of course, all deserts are full of fables, and I remember reading of the one your great-great-uncle mentions of the king and his army who were buried in the sand.”

Wrexham sipped his drink. “Well, now, I’ll get on with the second part, which is where I come in.”

CHAPTER III
WREXHAM’S STORY

We relit our pipes and settled back in our chairs, and Wrexham began:

“As I told you, when I got near Hami last year, I pulled out the old diary and read it again, especially the part I’ve just read to you two fellows.

“I won’t go into details of how I found the tiny village, which, from certain entries in the diary, I am sure must have been my great-great-uncle’s starting-point. I found the place, and there I decided to stop a bit. I can’t tell you why I should want to stop in a tiny little hole like that with nothing to see, not even any old ruins in the neighbourhood; but somehow my old relative’s story had taken hold of me, and I wanted to reconstruct it on the spot.

“You know how traditions linger in the East, more especially in those parts of it that are as yet untouched by the railway. Well, I made a few discreet questions, and sure enough there was a yarn of a white man who years before had gone out into the desert seeking old cities, and had come to grief owing to losing his way. The story was not too coherent, needless to say: sometimes he found a ruined city, sometimes he and all his people had died, and one particular version went on to the effect that he had found much gold, and got safely back, but was carried away by the spirits who watched over the treasure, and who were very wroth at its having been touched. It was a lot of trouble to get out the story—you know how difficult it is to get ignorant people like that to talk to strangers.

“But it was clear enough that some wandering white man had been there ages before, and, further, the local people seemed pretty afraid of wandering into the desert. I did not let on about the old man having had anything to do with me. It’s not a good thing to talk about bad luck being in the family, and certainly the old man did not hit it lucky that trip.

“I hung about prospecting and smelling out the ground, which, by the way, is very little known directly you get off the main route. Northeast you come slap on to the desert practically at once.

“The maps of it are quite useless, compiled from hearsay of wandering Indian or Chinese merchants, I think. I had the most up-to-date ones I could get from the Survey of India. Got hold of old Jones, who was our mapping expert in Palestine; you remember him, Harry.

“He sent me the best he had before I went off, but he wrote to the effect that I would be wise not to rely too much on anything north of the Hami-Urumchi road, barring the triangulated peaks.

“If you look at that atlas on the table there you will see that there is a big stretch of nothingness northeast of Kashgaria labelled Gobi Desert. It is part of the Gobi. For over three hundred miles in every direction it’s got not a single name on it, not even a track. Northward there are two lakes shown with fifty miles of river leading nowhere; and, although I’ve not been there, I’m prepared to make a modest bet that they’re not within one hundred miles of their proper location, even if they do exist. North again of that is Chinese Mongolia, almost unknown even now, and very vaguely mapped.

“So that between known Kashgaria and Mongolia there’s a piece of country much bigger than England, almost unmapped, without even a known road in it. The southern edges of it are known to be desert; of the rest we know just nothing. And the northern side may be—as shown—some three hundred miles from the southern, or, on the other hand, it’s just as likely to be five hundred or six hundred miles away.

“You could hide a country almost as big as Wales in it and never know of its existence, even if it were full of high snow mountains. So you see, although my old namesake’s story may be the result of a fever-stricken imagination, it’s no ways impossible.

“Well, somehow, that country drew me more and more, but I saw that to try and explore it would require a good deal of preparation, and I had no idea of taking it on by myself if I could get another fellow or two to come along. So I decided to come back to India, and see if I could get hold of some one with globe-trotting tastes. I had you two in my mind’s eye, and then I found Forsyth, and later on heard that you’d gone home, Harry.

“I stayed on up there a while just to get a bit more local knowledge, and the last week I came across that coin, and the finding of that is what I call ‘twice’ in my deduction series.

“Some miles from the village there’s a bit of a rise where the sand-dunes on the desert’s edge are rather big. One in particular is noticeably high: it’s by a deserted building of sorts, quite a modern outfit, been abandoned perhaps twenty or fifty, at most a hundred, years. It bears northeast, and must be more or less the direction my great-great-uncle started from. I took rather a fancy to the place, and rode out there two or three times to study the country. A few extra feet elevation make a lot of difference in the desert.

“My men were accustomed to my going out there, and as a rule I took one or other to hold my horse while I did a bit of map-work, to try and get something more or less accurate.

“One particular day, the air being very clear—we’d had rain twice in the week, an uncommon phenomenon at that time of year—I thought I’d go and make a final visit to have a last check of the map.

“I rode out by myself that day on my old Kara Tagh mare. She was very quiet, and if you knee-haltered her loosely would stay for hours without trying to stray. I climbed up the high dune, and sat looking out over the desert, thinking about my old relative’s tragic journey. It was warm in the sun, and I had not slept well the previous night—an uncommon thing for me, as you know.”

I have seen Wrexham sleep quietly in the most noisy, disturbing places, when circumstances prevented him doing any work, and he had a little sleep to make up, or thought a reserve would be handy the next night or two. He is a most extraordinarily imperturbable person.

“It may be that I dozed for a few minutes and probably dreamt a bit. You see, I’d been reading my old great-great-uncle’s diary during the night when I couldn’t sleep. But I seemed awake all right. Well, presently a most extraordinary feeling came over me, of some one trying to attract my attention, some one very anxious that I should hear him.

“I really can’t explain what it was, but it got stronger and stronger. It was as though some one out in the desert was calling and calling to me, although, mind you, there was no sound.

“I sat staring out over the dazzling sand, and then, despite the peculiar sensation, I suppose I really did sleep, for the next thing that happened was that I saw a man in the desert, plodding through the sand. How far he was from me I could not say, but the impression was exactly the one you get looking at a fellow through a very high-power telescope. You can see him apparently only a few feet away, and yet you know—although you can make out the buttons on his coat and almost see the colour of his eyes—that he’s really quite a long way off.

“You remember that Hun sniper you showed me through a signal telescope one day in France, Harry: seemed as if he was six feet away instead of nearly a hundred yards? Well, that was the impression.

“This fellow was plodding drearily through the sand, dragging his feet as though dead beat. His face was grey and haggard, and his lips black and swollen, and his eyes all red. I didn’t see his clothes clearly at all, and have no recollection of what they were like, although, I remember the absolutely done-in appearance of his whole figure.

“As I watched him staggering on, he fell, and lay still a minute. Then he pulled himself up on one arm—he gave me the impression, by the way, of having only one arm—and looked my way, and his lips seemed to be working. Then again I got that inexplicable sensation of some one trying to make me hear over great spaces.

“I suppose I woke up then, for suddenly the man disappeared, and there was only the bare empty desert before me once more. But stronger than ever was the sensation of some one far off calling and calling in a silent voice.

“Well, I sat there a bit, and sometimes the feeling was stronger and sometimes fainter, but always there, rather like when you’re listening to a distant sound across a valley, and sometimes the wind almost sweeps it away, and then suddenly there it is again clear and sharp.

“Well, eventually I went back to camp.

“I’m not a fanciful bloke, and I don’t believe in spooks or all this spiritualistic tosh, most of which is faked. But I am ready to admit that there are lots of things we don’t understand, things like telepathy and so on; and do what I could, I could not get rid of the feeling that some one was calling to me out in the desert.

“Although I tried to put it down to the aftermath of a vivid dream, I could not rid myself of it; and further, something seemed to keep on reminding me that I hadn’t really been to sleep, and the reasonable part of me that insisted on the dream theory couldn’t say that I had either.

“Eventually I decided that I would do something—for me—quite mad. I would push out a little into the desert. I had chagals[1] and things to take enough water for myself and a couple of men for four days, and the camels could do without any for that time. That meant about thirty miles out and back.

“So I told Sadiq, my head camel fellow, and another man that I wanted to look at the desert a bit, and left old Firoz—you remember him in my company in France: he’s with me now as sort of orderly since he left the army—to look after the camp.

“We went out two days in the direction I figured out that my old relative must have taken.

“By the way, the most extraordinary thing was that the moment I gave my orders to Sadiq, the feeling of some one wanting me suddenly vanished.

“We found nothing either day, absolute dead desert. The third morning, while the men were roping up things for our return, the feeling suddenly came on again. Only this time, for some unaccountable reason, it seemed as if the thing or person were close at hand. It worried me a lot. I couldn’t go on, of course; we had only enough water to see us back.

“There was a particularly high dune about six hundred or seven hundred yards from the camp, and finally I said to myself that I’d go up and have a last look from the top with my glasses. I told the men to finish loading up and then wait for me.

“The feeling was very strong as I trudged over the sand, and then, just as I got to the top, it absolutely disappeared again. It never came back either.

“But as I looked down from the top I knew why the feeling had left me. There, in the dip of the sand below me on the far side, lay a man, curled up as though asleep. I knew then that I had not been asleep that first day.

“I ran down the dune to his side hoping that he was only asleep, though somehow at heart I doubted it. Then, as I bent over him, I knew he was not sleeping, or rather that he had gone to sleep for good and all.

“There was nothing much in that; one had seen plenty of dead men before. Besides, it was the ’flu-time still in those parts, and I had picked up people dying or dead along the roadside more than once. But the point was that this was not the roadside, and it puzzled me as to what the man could have been doing in this out-of-the-way corner miles and miles away from any road, even what Central Asia calls a road.

“I examined him closely, and then I sat down and thought quick and hard. Remember that at that time I had been reading the old diary rather a lot, and this man was a shock to me apart from the way I had located him.

“He was gaunt and haggard, and by the look of him had suffered from hunger and thirst before he pegged out; in fact, I rather thought he had died of thirst.

“But that was nothing much; it was first his colour, for as I lifted his arm the loose sleeve slipped back, and the arm was nearly as white as mine. I don’t think he can have been dead more than a couple of days at most. And his type of features was quite unlike the average man in those parts, far too straight and regular. However, fair-skinned people are common enough in North Asia, though not as a rule quite as fair as this man.

“But the next thing I noted was that his wrists were all chafed, as though his hands had been bound recently. Remember I had been reading that diary. I looked at them very carefully for fear I might be imagining things, and the marks were more noticeable on the other arm than on the one I first touched.

“I pulled his clothes open to see if there were any marks or papers, and then I got the shock of my life. Around the shoulder was a blood-clotted bandage that had slipped to one side, and below it showed an open wound in the muscles just below the joint. There was a similar wound at the back.

“It was the sort of wound a sharp shell-splinter makes, or, if you like, the sort of wound that would be made by a steel-shod arrow that had passed right through the top of the arm, and then perhaps been pulled through or broken off.”

Wrexham paused and refilled his pipe. I think he was waiting for us to say something, but we both were silent. I’ve known Wrexham pretty intimately for some years, and he does not invent things, nor does it intrigue him to pull people’s legs with fairy stories. He is, moreover, a most matter-of-fact person, rather sceptical as a rule, and not inclined to believe anything that he cannot see himself. His reports in the field, albeit painfully written and laboriously compiled, used to be masterpieces of accurate information.

Seeing neither of us ventured any remark, he went on:

“Then I started hunting through his kit. His clothes were rather unfamiliar in type: there was a short skin outer garment, much like the poshtin[2] common to most of the cold parts of Asia, though the embroidery on it was of unfamiliar pattern. Under that he wore a sort of short pleated smock of very fine cloth though worn, a fawn-coloured linen it seemed to be; and around the throat, and at the skirt edges, it was embroidered, again in the same unfamiliar pattern in green.

“He had long drawers of the same material as the smock, gartered in below the knees with thin strips of fineish green leather, and on his feet twisted leather sandals of a pattern quite new to me, not unlike Kashmiri chaplis, but with far more intricate plaiting.

“Round his waist was a twisted leather girdle, from which hung a short knife and a leather wallet. I opened the wallet and found some coins—you’ve seen one of them, and as you can imagine they, too, set me thinking—and there was something more besides that I’ll show you presently. There was nothing else of note. But while searching him I came to the conclusion that, if he hadn’t died of thirst, he might have died from sepsis from his wound. I had to bend pretty close, you see.

“Well, I did some pretty quick thinking. The coincidence between this fellow and what old John Wrexham wrote was too marked not simply to stick out. I felt sure then that the old man wrote cold, sober truth. Now for many reasons I didn’t want my men to see this body. They might start thinking too much and making up yarns that would queer my pitch if I managed to start an expedition. I can tell you, the sight of this man made me absolutely resolved to set out across the desert as soon as I could fix up a show that would give some chance of success.

“So I straightened him out and left him, but, before doing this, I cut the straps of his wallet and pushed it and the short knife into the big haversack I was carrying.

“Then I went back to the top of the sand-dune and got out my mapping stuff—not that I had any intention of doing much: I was too busy wondering about it all and trying to evolve theories, but I didn’t want my men to notice anything unusual. I expect, if they looked up at me at all, they thought I was carrying on in the usual way with my map spread out all businesslike.

“That night, when the men had dossed down, I sat up studying the contents of the wallet, and the next day made up my mind to come back to India as fast as I could travel and set about finding one of you two and going north again.”

“‘Once is nothing, twice is coincidence,’” quoted Forsyth. “You’ve got hold of the queerest kind of story, but as yet I see no light, save that it seems to substantiate your ancient uncle’s yarn. But why in hell you should find a man in practically the same circumstances as he did one hundred years ago has me cold. If I didn’t know you, I should say you were pulling our legs.”

“Then you can just imagine how much I wondered that night and many after. The coincidence was too absurdly striking, too close to be real, it seemed; and yet there it was, hard, undeniable fact. But before I go on I’ll show you what I call ‘three times,’ the ‘moral cert.’”

He reached over for the box on the table, opened it, and pulled out just such a leather wallet as he had described, and then a short knife of unusual shape, which he laid beside it under the light.

“Ever seen a knife like that?” he asked.

I shook my head. It was unusual in shape, short, rather broad-bladed with curved hand-guard, obviously a stabbing dagger, but of what nationality I could not say. But what held my eye more than its shape was the faint filigree of silvery metal lines hammered or welded into the bluish steel of the blade. They seemed to form letters of a kind, though not easily decipherable.

Forsyth picked it up and examined it. “I have, but”—he looked at us both—“they were in a museum, and labelled ‘Scandinavian—old,’ and they didn’t have this filigree stuff.”

“I thought you’d say something like that,” said Wrexham. “I looked up a book on old weapons as soon as I got back to India. Now for exhibit No. 2, as the policeman calls it.”

He opened the wallet and took out a flat object wrapped in folds of soft cloth, which he unrolled.

“I don’t think you’ve ever seen things like that in any museum,” he said as he laid the object down.

We both bent over it and simultaneously exclaimed.

It was a little portrait of a girl, painted on what seemed to be a sort of matt-stone or very hard plaster. The colours were fresh and vivid, and the art was of a high standard. But the face held us more then than the fashion of its depicting.

It was a girl looking slightly downward, as though at something she was holding in her hands. Masses of heavy brown hair with a glint of gold, eyes of deepest blue with a violet tinge screened with long lashes, under finely pencilled dark-brown eyebrows, and a skin of rose and ivory with faint blue transparent shadows down the graceful curve where the neck entered the filmy garment that swathed the outlined shoulders.

“I’d cross a good many deserts to meet a girl like that at the far side,” said Forsyth, as he laid down the picture. “Do you mean to say that that was in the wallet?”

“It was,” said Wrexham; “but you’ve not seen all there is to see.”

He turned over the picture, and pointed to some words written on the back, in unmistakable Greek, a clear-cut delicate writing, in vivid black.

“Tell me what that means, either of you?”

We bent over it again. Some of the letters differed slightly from the usual type of classic Greek, but the meaning was quite clear, though the word-endings were unusual.

The long Canadian was the first to speak.

“It’s Greek of a semi-classical type, I should say. I’ve seen stuff not unlike it before, though there are unusual points about it. It runs: ‘God keep my brother safe where’er he go. Euphrosine.’ You agree with that, Lake?”

“Absolutely. It’s perfectly easy to read, though the terminations are neither modern nor quite classical.”

I turned to Wrexham.

“Read us the riddle, John. I think you’ve found the ‘three times,’ the ‘moral cert,’ though God knows what it all means.”

CHAPTER IV
THE GREAT DECISION

Wrexham refilled his pipe and settled back in his chair once more. Then he went on:

“I’ll give you first of all my reading of the things I’ve just told you, and you can tell me whether you think I’m on the right lines.

“In the first place, what do we know for certain? That somewhere in the west corner of the Gobi Desert, a large unknown bit of country, a man of apparently white race has been found. Also, a hundred years ago, my great-great-uncle says he found these unknown mountains, an old gate, and a dead white man.

“Further, that the weapons and other things found on my man are of old type. Then these strange people use Greek, or a form of it. As probably you both know, there was a lot of Greek intercourse with Central Asia about the dawn of the Christian era, and before it. There are races in Afghanistan and the north of India with unmistakable Greek characteristics to this day, and numerous legends of the days of Alexander still survive all up and down the Indian border.

“Now, to my mind all these facts are capable of but one explanation—namely, that hidden in that desert is some isolated settlement of fair-skinned people, perhaps from the old days of Greek domination in Central Asia. Since there is not even a legend about them in the local countryside, it is pretty clear that they have been cut off for a good many centuries. Possibly at some remote period they crossed the desert, which, perhaps, was not so extensive then, before the dry area which has buried so many towns in that part began to form. Or perhaps they were driven out by one of the succeeding waves of invasion from China, and fled northward until they came upon this hidden refuge.

“Whether they are all still of pure white type is not clear, though the two individuals seen seem to be. My man certainly was. The picture of the girl further points to at least some of them having retained all their original racial characteristics.

“I take it both of you agree with this part of my theory?”

“I can think of nothing else that fits the facts,” said I. “What has Forsyth got to say about it?”

“I agree entirely with Wrexham. The writing on the back of the picture is certainly recent. I’ve done a bit of research work with old manuscripts and so on—rather a hobby of mine one time—and I’ll take my oath that that writing is not more than a few years old, judging by the ink, although the type of script must go back hundreds of years. It’s impossible that any of the present Turki or Chinese inhabitants could or would write stuff of that sort. And how could they imagine or invent an old Greek name like ‘Euphrosine’? Unless some daft European, with a gift for forgery and a knowledge of old Greek script, is faking antiques in the middle of the Gobi Desert, there’s only one reading, and that’s the one Wrexham has given us.”

“Well, since you agree with the first part of my thesis, I shall go on with the second,” continued Wrexham. “The first part establishes, as far as one can, the probability of some forgotten Greek settlement to be found beyond the northeast corner of Kashgaria. If so, it’s more than worth looking for. But before I go on, are either of you prepared to come with me? It’s an eighteen months’ job at the very least, and possibly longer. But it’s worth it, I think. Think of the old scientific blokes in Europe if we come back with an authentic account, complete with photos, and records, and perhaps with some of the inhabitants of an old Greek settlement probably much as it was in the days of Alexander.

“Whether or not there’s money in it, I don’t know. You, Harry, are probably not out for money, having enough for your wants. I am personally, but not much. I’m rather a wanderer, and nothing would please me more than a life of exploration. If we can pull this off, we shall be made men in the exploring world, and can be sure of getting sufficient financial support in future to make further expeditions.”

I’ve said that I’ve always had a taste for travel, and have spent not a little time and money on gratifying it. And here was Wrexham not only holding out a prospect of exploring an entirely unknown bit of the world, but gilding the lily with what looked like very good presumptive evidence of living survivals from past centuries. There was nothing much to draw me home. My only close relative was my sister, made a widow by Loos, who, with her two boys, kept the old manor-house farm warm for me. I had settled part of my income on her, and with that and her own little bit of money, she could keep the manor-house home up comfortably and pay for the boys’ schooling. On chucking the service, my idea had been to spend the summers at home and the winters globe-trotting.

So my mind required no making up.

“Count me in,” I said to Wrexham. “Central Asia’s called me ever since I first came East, and here you are with a whole lot of extra attractions.”

“And you, Alec? You weren’t certain before,” said Wrexham.

Forsyth leaned across the table, took up the picture, and gazed at it again.

“No, but you’d only told me part of the story. I’ll start to-morrow if you like.”

“Good! I thought you would both come. Then, now I’ll go on with the second part of my thesis as to how my great-great-uncle and I found two men under such very similar circumstances. You admit that the coincidence is more than strange.

“You remember that the old man came upon a small enclosed space at the end of the valley full of bones, and among them a new corpse killed by an arrow under the entrance gates.