Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1912-02-18

save only for an enormous, green painted
steel safe that stood in corner, seeming
strangely incongruous among its voluptuous
surroundings.
"The papers are here said The Shoulder
softly, indicating the safe. @Be seated while
I get them
Belmont sat on big, luxurious couch, the
padding of which seemed soft and yielding
as down.
@Smoke, if you WILL said The Shoulder.
passing box of cigarettes. They were not
Arabian, but Egyptian, fiat things.
dangerously heavy with opium, aromatic
sleep compelling. Such cigarettes were
sheer luxury to 1egionnaire, and Belmont,
lulled and drowsy from the heavy, languor-
Gus scented atmosphere of the house, the
soft comfort of the COUCH and yearning for
deep, dreamless sleep, took a cigarette CRATE
fully. Drenched with WEAKNESS though he
was, he wondered mistily why the eyes of
The Shoulder burned so red. He lighted the
cigarette, leaning back dreamily. The
heavy, blue smoke curled up about his face
like some slow, stealthy, poisonous thing.
The Shoulder opened the safe and took
therefrom bundle of letters and handful
of gold. Il will be generous" he said softly,
cropping in the safe, looking sidewise on the
Englishman. Here are the letters-here is
money-I-will-g ive-them- freely
Hepaused; for Belmont's eyes were closed,
the cigarette had slipped from his fingers.
Then The Shoulder took long, thin
bladed knife from the safe and moved
noiselessly across to the couch.
BELMONT was drifting swiftly down to
- the seas of sleep, sliding TRANQUILITY, Sc
renely, into the deep and profound uncon-
sciousness that follows prolonged physical
effort. The present was passing out of his
understanding; swiftly the faces slid by be-
fore his inner vision, shadowy, dim, unreal,
the face of The Shoulder, sinister and
malign; of Perdita, beautiful but wet with
tears; of the Colonel, hard and twisted with
rage and alarm; of the Sergeant in the cell
at midnight, brutal, greedy, and cunning;
of the Arab gendarmes who had captured
him in the desert; of their horses, and then
the shadowy forms and the eyes of the desert
beasts, the hyenas and jackals that had
scuff1ed about him out there in the darkness,
their eyes little points of yellow light
Belmont was dreaming now. And he
dreamed that one of the desert beasts, hum
grier and holder than the others, was edging
in and in upon him, nearer and nearer. He
shouted to scare it away; but instead it
leaped at him, burying its teeth in his thigh.
And Belmont woke suddenly with little
stifed scream and sprang up from the couch,
every muscle strung like steel wire, every
nerve alert and tense with the horror of the
thing and the sudden mad exa1tation of self
defense And in that one keen, winged mo-
ment he saw not yard from him a man
with knife swung far back over his shoulder
to strike, a man whose right shoulder was
hunched, whose face famed with murder.
And Belmont, superhuman for brief Sec
ond from the horror of his dream, struck like
lightning. For an instant of time, no more,
he was invincible, invulnerable His
clenched fist smashed full into the horrid
face before him-and The Shoulder dropped
like dead thing.
1t was over!
Belmont stood over the form at his feet,
his eery exaltation ebbing. He became con-
scious of a little pain at his thigh-and
smell of burnt cloth. He looked down, and
saw that the cigarette that had slipped from
his fingers had fallen on his thigh and burnt
a hole through the cloth of his uniform and
touched his flesh.
He had dreamed the pain to be the teeth
of wild animal: it proved to be no more
than a smoldering cigarette. But it had
saved his life, and lay on the carpet still
giving up its thin fume of heavy, aromatic
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