Writings

CHAPTER I

DR. AMBERS paused in a little clearing of the jungle and rested, wiping the reek of sweat and grime from his tanned, swarthy face. He cursed the intolerable heat, the bothersome insects, the madness which had prompted him upon this wild flight into the Cambodian jungle. But more intensely did he curse the grimly pursuing avenger who had held so doggedly to his trail from Hong Kong to the Philippines, from these islands to North Borneo where in fear and desperation Dr. Ambers had hired a tramp steamer to land him at one of the more obscure little ports of the Cambodian shore line bordering the South China Sea. And even here, young Jack Lynworth had relentlessly followed him.

Dr. Ambers’ skill as a surgeon was quite noted in Hong Kong. He enjoyed a brilliant reputation for startling innovations of surgery, several of which, however, had been condemned and suppressed by the medical fraternity. If his excellent finesse and amazing skill were the admiration of his surgical brethren, vague rumors of his inhuman disregard for the pain of others were rather disquieting. Human life mattered little to him. He thought only of more brilliant attainments.

He had had reasons for never letting the elder Lynworth revive from the anaesthetic. A slight deviation in the course of a surgical instrument had definitely assured the doctor of this. Dr. Ambers had always coveted a specimen of abnormal adrenal glands which the condition of George Cecil Lynworth had plainly suggested to his practiced eye.

In his usual ruthless manner, Dr. Ambers procured the long desired set of abnormal adrenal glands as this sudden opportunity arose before him. Suspicions of a colleague in the light of later events occasioned an exhumation of the body and a careful examination. Plainly, it was murder. Dr. Ambers had decided to travel. And swearing vengeance, the son, Jack Lynworth, had taken the trail.

Since leaving the coast many long days ago, the doctor had courted death several times. Cobras and other deadly snakes had glided away from him among the tall grasses. Once he had narrowly avoided the charge of wild elephants through a bamboo forest. The huge, striped, man eaters of the jungle had strangely enough not molested him, although several times he had seen their tawny flanks in the late afternoon of the forest aisles.

Previous travel in Africa stood the doctor in good stead. He found means of procuring both food and water. His nights in the trees, however, were often nightmares, for the lesser cats climbed the trees. He had seen them. And he killed one of them as it crept above him on a higher branch. The larger snakes occasionally curled about the lower branches.

What terrified Dr. Ambers more than the menacing dangers of nature was the faint sound of a rifle shot from the direction he had come, and this grim, prophetic sound had overwhelmed the doctor with terror. It meant but one thing. Jack Lynworth, younger, stronger, was gradually overtaking him.

The fugitive tried ruses of destroying his trail, but lost time by it. Once he crossed the feeding grounds of an elephant herd, and it was on that occasion that he nearly fell a victim of his own ruse.

That rifle shot he had heard caused him to cast away his own heavy rifle which was weighing him down and slowing his progress. Free of its encumbering weight, he still retained his pistol and hunting knife. Monkeys and other small game he killed for food. Good water was rarely found, and he used this sparingly.

He entertained a vague idea of eventually stumbling upon the Mekong River or one of its smaller tributaries, constructing a raft and floating downstream to the sea.

Had he been less a coward, his contemplations of ambushing Jack Lynworth would have found expression, but he stood in mortal fear of the other’s presence. The trials of his flight had robbed him of the cool and calculating traits he had shown in the cold blooded murder of George Cecil Lynworth.

This day, following an elephant trail, he found the heat and dampness even more intolerable than before. He wondered if he was going to be stricken with fever. He had guarded carefully against it.

Without warning the ground gave way suddenly beneath him, and he felt himself hurtling downward. He landed in soft, damp dirt uninjured and rolled over upon his side. Rising dazedly to an elbow, the doctor looked high above him to where a small, round cavity let through a shaft of light.

He stood up in the gloom around him and saw above him smaller spots of daylight covering a larger area than the hole through which he had fallen. The crossbars, loosely strewn dirt, and scattered vegetation he recalled seeing before his fall, proclaimed a man-made trap.

When his eyes were finally accustomed to the near darkness of the pit, he immediately recognized the broad dimensions as a trap for the giant pachyderms. Walking slowly around the pit, he found the walls too straight, too soft and too high for climbing out.

He was a prisoner until those who had made the trap returned. The doctor speculated upon the possibilities uneasily. This was a supposedly uninhabited region, and it was little explored, too. Sweat started out upon his forehead and his heart hammered as a new thought struck him with its devastating possibilities. He was trapped. Jack Lynworth would come and find him like the animal for which the pit had been intended. With the desperation of the caged rat, he shakingly fingered the pistol at his side.

All the rest of that day, he sat and ruminated, breaking the monotony with occasional and futile attempts to dig footholds in the soft sides of the pit, succeeding only in bringing down miniature landslides of the soft, rich ground. Most of the night he slept. He ate from a supply of fruit in his knapsack when morning came. All day he waited, expecting to hear the soft tread of the young man who had haunted his footsteps and who could have been no farther behind him than a day’s travel at the most. He wondered, too, about the builders of the pit. What would they do to him if they came first? Strangely, the possibility of an elephant falling in with him did not occur to Dr. Ambers, yet this was the first sound that he heard.

Gigantic feet plodding against the earth made the wall of the pit tremble against Dr. Ambers where he sat, sending loose clods down upon his head. Horror of being crushed by the mighty bulk stabbed through the doctor’s brain, and he screamed and yelled warnings in maniacal frenzy for the great beast to avoid the pit dug for him. The rumbling of many great feet slowed and stopped. The doctor realized that more than one elephant stood above. He hoped they would hear him, be alarmed and suspicious, in this way discovering the unnatural menace prepared for them. Recovering his breath, he continued yelling.

A scratching around the edges of the layer of earth and vegetation brought new ingresses of daylight. Small objects blotted off the light. They were heads, human heads. A strange clacking talk issued from them and rang hollowly in the pit. Dr. Ambers became quiet. Here were the pit builders. His hand stole to the revolver at his side, yet immediately he recognized the futility of it. He must first get out of the pit, and they could help him. He walked into the weak aura of light spread by the gaping hole through which he had fallen. He spoke ingratiatingly in Chinese, using also what he knew of the patois of the coastal Cambodian.

A rope was lowered, and Dr. Ambers fastened it loosely under his arms. Hauled out, an astonishing sight met his blinking eyes. Elephants carrying strangely built howdahs were his first impression. Men, nearly naked and wearing sandals, crowded up about him with javelin-like spears aimed at him in profusion, their keen and not unhandsome faces anything but friendly.

They were a type never before seen by Dr. Ambers who had traveled extensively through Asia. Medium in height, their Oriental lineage was but lightly suggested. They were brown-skinned, were possessed of smooth, black hair, and most startlingly divergent of the true Oriental were their straight, slender noses. In the howdahs of the four elephants, helmeted warriors directed the slaves. They wore bronze cuirasses and carried swords.

Dr. Ambers found himself quickly tied up and made to walk ahead of the elephants whose drivers continued to follow the game trail. Forced to take a faster pace than formerly, the doctor soon slumped down in exhaustion. Jabs from the spears of the slaves aroused him, and he stumbled on, his senses reeling from heat and exhaustion.

HE recovered to a jogging sensation, his eyes encountering a wall of slate gray which undulated and changed shape before him. Lifting his head weakly, he saw that he was tied on the back of one of the elephants behind the howdah. He found that his pistol was gone. The empty holster lay between him and the elephant.

Periods of oblivion and periods of consciousness passed as the procession moved on through the jungle to a walled city outside of which were clustered in the shadow of the wall mean, thatched hovels directly in variance to the looming turrets and towers within the city. Raising himself on one arm, Dr. Ambers gaped in stupefaction at the temples and palaces of stone he nor no one else had ever believed existed in this waste of untracked jungle.

As they passed the walls, the doctor saw that it was such a city as those which had existed in the ancient East with their markets and bazaars. People on the streets, of all walks of life, jabbered and pointed excitedly at the captive. There were many poorly dressed. Others, especially some individuals who passed in howdahs on elephants richly caparisoned, or in sedan chairs borne by slaves, were ornately and gorgeously attired. Soldiers in bronze helmets, leather jerkins and bronze curiasses were passed.

To the musical cacophony of the trotting slaves, glad to get home from the jungle, they penetrated toward the center of the city. The afternoon shadows were long. Produce in bullock carts rumbled by. Dr. Ambers could not believe his eyes, almost believing that delirium had claimed his tired senses. Yet the jogging elephant and the wounds from the spears were only too real. The huge beasts continued on through a large, arched entrance of a stone edifice, and semi-gloom replaced the waning sunlight.

They came to a stop. Dr. Ambers was roughly hustled off the elephant once the ropes strapping him on were untied, and he was pushed along through a damp, dirty alley and into a dark corridor where helmeted attendants shoved him into a dimly lit cell and slammed shut the door. A lock grated and squeaked rustily.

CHAPTER II

AT that moment, far back in the jungle on the trail of Dr. Ambers, Jack Lynworth shuddered in stiffening pain as a chemical combat raged through his system. The cobra which had bitten him lay dead from a revolver bullet. Having taken the antidote given him by native doctors on the coast before his plunge into the interior, he found that in his haste and anxiety he had taken an appallingly multiple overdose which now threatened his end almost as much as had the bite of the cobra.

His gray eyes mirrored the exquisite pains wracking his body, and his dark hair lay lank and sweaty. For more than a day, he lay helpless and in recurring spasms of pain in the rudely constructed shelter which he had constructed and slept in the night before his disastrous encounter with the snake.

Still weak, he was able to forage for food on the following day. Periods of semi-consciousness still menaced him, and for three more days he rested and grew stronger before he took up the trail of Dr. Ambers once more.

The jungle progresses rapidly, however, and the change of plant life which goes on in damp, equatorial regions had obscured and somewhat blotted the trail, making it difficult to follow. Again and again, Jack Lynworth lost it. His tanned, handsome face, however, never lost its grim determination which had spurred him on over land and sea after Dr. Ambers. His steel-gray eyes remained as hard in their purpose as though the wandering cobra had never interrupted the quest.

So it was a long time before he came to the elephant pit which had now been repaired. The difficult following of Dr. Ambers’ trail had made him more observant than usual, and Jack Lynworth at once recognized the elephant pit for what it was. He paused and made an examination.

Marks of elephants had recently cut into the doctor’s trail and had obscured it again.

He saw something glittering on the ground near the elephant pit. It was a revolver, partly concealed by leaves of a trailing vine. He knew, now, that the doctor had come that way.

Peering down into the pit, he saw only blackness. He lighted wood and dropped it down. The bottom was a veritable hodge-podge of footprints, all those of Dr. Ambers. Examination of faint, sandal prints along the game trail told how Dr. Ambers had been rescued. Jack Lynworth wondered what a caravan could be doing so deep in the jungle. He could only follow it. He must follow it. Dr. Ambers had gone that way.

The rest of that day, he traveled a long way.

HE had hardly composed himself for the night in his crude shelter constructed against the bole of a giant tree when he was suddenly leaped upon and held by many arms. He was tied up and left that way until morning. Until then, he saw little of his captors whom he could not make out in the darkness, but he listened to them talk in a language which sounded like Chinese but which he could not understand as such from the smattering of the language he possessed.

At dawn, he was aroused, his ankle bonds released, and he was pushed along the game trail he had been following. He saw only semi-naked slaves, and there were seven of them.

Less than two hours walking brought them to the walled city into which Dr. Ambers had ridden a captive strapped on the back of an elephant eight days previously. It was Jack’s turn to wonder and marvel at the unbelievable sights he saw. Soldiers in light armor took over his charge once he was led within the city walls.

King Moratk of Quandhu was in audience, and instead of being taken to a cell like Dr. Ambers, Jack Lynworth was taken directly before him. The young man gasped at the wealth and barbaric splendor of his luxurious surroundings as soldiers stood guard over him in an ante room of the palace.

Into the throne room he was escorted. Here, he saw evidence of even greater grandeur. On the throne sat a middle- aged monarch tending slightly to obesity. Jack listened idly to the strange jabber of words by the leader of his conductors. His eyes wandered about the magnificent throne room and over the richly attired dignitaries and officials who either sat or stood in attendance, according to their social status or duties. Several wore long robes and ornate headdresses. Several slaves, both male and female, were in attendance, and these were, like all the other slaves he had seen, but scantily clad, the amount of clothes worn being suggested as a barometer of caste.

One individual, more Oriental in features than the rest, stood close by the king and regarded the young adventurer critically from slanted eyelids, and pulling idly at one of his drooping mustachios.

Tal Ufieh had reason to be interested in people from the outside world who occasionally penetrated to the mystery city of Quandhu. He made no remark, however, as the king ordered Jack Lynworth into slavery and did not intervene as in the case of the older man who had preceded this newcomer eight days before. The other had understood their language, partly, and had told of his occupation in the outer world.

King Moratk had no use for the civilization he knew existed beyond the thick jungles, even as traditionally had none of his forebears for two or three thousand years past. Not even the far-flung legions of Ghengis Khan had found this stronghold. Occasional explorers from time to time down through the long centuries had stumbled upon the ancient, thriving city, but they had never left it to tell of their discovery.

Dr. Ambers had been ordered into slavery, but Tal Ufieh had stayed the order. With personal ambitions of his own to realize, the high priest had recognized a kinsman of his own caliber in the rascally surgeon and believed the latter might serve him well in some capacity or other. He asked as a favor from King Moratk that the man be given him for his personal slave, and the favor was granted.

So it was not at all surprising that from behind a set of draperies masking off a corridor to the throne room, Dr. Ambers, now attired in the more sedate habiliments of Quandhu, looked out with less trepidation than formerly, and with evil schemes of vengeance forming in his head.

Dr. Ambers was something of a favored slave, yet more like a trusted and respected aide of Tal Ufieh. Already, he had won the high priest’s lasting admiration by removing from that worthy several unsightly and disfiguring warts.

The high priest had taken the doctor into his confidence, and Dr. Ambers was aware that Tal Ufieh coveted the throne now held by King Moratk, recent founder of a new dynasty as yet none too firmly established in the eyes and hearts of the people. Only King Moratk and his little son, the Prince Lai Kom, stood between Tal Ufieh and the rule of Quandhu. It might be added that the reason for King Moratk’s slow popularity was due to the spreading of dissension among the city’s twenty thousand or more inhabitants by agents of the designing high priest.

JACK Lynworth was immediately hurried into service among the slaves of the palace, being directed by shoves and motions in the matter of his chores in lieu of understanding the jabbered orders of guards.

He was put to work carrying bales of dried flower petals with several others for what he learned by watching was a distillation of scented bath water for royal use in the palace. Dumped into a vat of prepared liquid, the flower petals were treaded and worked by the bare feet of slave girls.

One of these girls was especially attractive, yet Jack, absorbed with these new circumstances, and wondering if Dr. Ambers had been brought to Quandhu, paid her little heed in spite of the fact that several times he caught her stealing covert glances at him. Yet he did not consider this especially significant. He was a stranger from outside.

It was the second day of this work that the incident occurred which brought the girl and Jack closer together. It was her misfortune to slip and stumble against the inside of the vat just as one of Jack’s fellow carriers was undoing his bale on the edge of the vat. She struck the loosened bundle, sending a shower of dried petals to the floor in a purple and brown pattern much to the rage of the carrier who seized her by the hair and dragged her close against the side of the vat, striking her repeatedly.

Turning him around, Jack hurled a tanned fist full upon the worker’s chin and followed it quickly with a cross blow before the latter slumped to a limp heap on the strewn flower petals.

Then Jack lifted the dazed girl from the vat. Holding her in his arms, he looked down into the eyes which spoke so silently and yet so eloquently of her thanks and enduring devotion. For the first time, he really saw her as she was and gave his mind the consideration of her charm and beauty.

She was Bera. That much, from the little smattering of words he had picked up, he was half consciously aware. So much had beaten through his thoughts of vengeance and plans he had half formed. Now, he saw that by all western standards she was beautiful and charming. A wave of jet black hair cascaded away from the border of a brow the color of old ivory. Soft brown eyes spoke mutely of thanks.

A cuirassed guard came, and learning the trouble put them all back to work, hoisting the beaten workman to his feet and glaring his annoyance at Jack which it was useless to put into words. It was just one of the occasional brawls.

But when the work was over, and it came time for the slaves to eat, Bera came close to Jack and, putting her hand tenderly upon his arm, offered her thanks.

In the days which followed, Jack and Bera saw much of each other, and from her he learned the language which was not too far removed from true Chinese but what one versed somewhat as Jack was in the yellow man’s language was able to master it. He developed a true affection for her, and she became the bright light in the monotony of his labor as a slave in the palace of King Moratk. He never forgot his quest, and he asked her if another like himself, yet older, had come to Quandhu or had been brought there. Bera knew nothing of Dr. Ambers, and Jack did not confide in anyone else, choosing to watch and wait awhile.

Dr. Ambers, on the other hand, was not ready to strike and was also content to watch and wait awhile. He had now disguised himself so effectively as a native of Quandhu, especially in raiment and hirsute effects, that Jack did not know him one day when the doctor passed with Tal Ufieh down a corridor Jack and several other slaves were scrubbing. Dr. Ambers was satisfied. But not Tal Ufieh. He wanted action, for he felt that the time was fast becoming ripe for him to make his bid for power.

CHAPTER III

“THE time is ready when King Moratk must be gathered to his ancestors, great wart remover.”

The high priest regarded the doctor speculatively.

“And he shall die, as you wish,” Dr. Ambers promised. “And then after a suitable period of time has passed, little Lai Kom will follow his father, and no one will ever suspect us.”

Tal Ufieh parted his lips in a sly grin and rubbed his hands together in self satisfaction.

“And I shall rule, and you will be a high official.”

“With plenty of opportunity to experiment and test out my theories upon subjects of my own choosing,” added the doctor.

“Most assuredly, worker of wonders. Might I inquire the manner of the king’s unfortunate passing? Have you concocted the subtle poison I suggested?”

“No—for I have a much better idea than that, one better suited to my talents, one which will please me to accomplish,” Dr. Ambers replied. “No suspicion will be cast upon anyone. It will not be at all unseemly if the king dies from the bite of a cobra.”

“Ah! But is there not difficulty in being assured that the snake will bite the king even if we are able to successfully liberate one in his chambers? We must strike and be sure.”

“We shall be sure, for the snake will be disguised as a woman and will be readily admitted to the king’s quarters.” You are aware, of course, of the king’s weakness for feminine loveliness.”

“You speak in riddles, schemer of miracles! Whoever died from being bitten by a woman?”

“No one, as I know,” admitted the doctor, “but they would if they were bitten by such a woman as we shall turn loose upon the king.”

Tal Ufieh willfully held his patience.

“How so, wielder of little spears?”

“Her bite will be a bite of death!” the doctor exclaimed, his eyes glowing. “I shall make her so!”

Tal Ufieh was visibly impressed. He held his breath in amazement, too stupified to speak.

“I want an attractive girl,” Dr. Am

bers continued. “She must be attractive and one the king has not noticed before this. I can make her even more attractive than she already is. There are many attractive slave girls who could be made more beautiful by my skill. In fact, I have already decided on the one I want, and I know who her first victim will be—our first experiment, let us say.”

A cruel smile settled upon the doctor’s dark face, for in his mind’s eye he saw a slave girl in the arms of Jack Lynworth, the son of the man he had killed and who had sworn to kill him.

“Whatever you desire is yours, great wart remover,” Tal Ufieh offered. “I can procure for you a slave girl, any that you want. As for her first victim, let us wait for that until the time when we are ready to try her. Have you all else you need?”

“I must fashion a few more instruments from metal. That will not take long. Then I shall of course need cobras.”

BERA was pointed out to Tal Ufieh by the disguised surgeon, and the high priest brought her to the chambers where Dr. Ambers had fitted up a laboratory.

“How would you like to work for us?” the doctor asked suavely. “You will no longer have to work hard and may enjoy luxuries you have never before had.”

“I am happy enough now,” replied Bera truthfully. “I ask for no more than I have.”

“Would you be more beautiful? I can make you so.”

That spark of vanity in every woman, from Eve on down, flared up. Bera’s eyes sparkled, yet she maintained an attitude of shy distrust.

“He can do all that he says,” Tal Ufieh assured her. “Remember my warts? He removed them so that now you cannot even find where they once were. No one shall be able to resist your beauty. Any lover can be yours.”

“I would like to be more beautiful,” breathed Bera softly, modestly unaware of her present attractions. “But there is only one on whose account I would like to do this.”

“He shall be dazzled!” swore Tal Ufieh enthusiastically.

Bera looked wide-eyed at the doctor. “Why should you do this for me, a poor slave girl?”

“We would have you dance before the king. He would see new faces, beautiful faces.”

Bera was won over. From the secretions of poppy blooms and other herbs whose effectiveness for unconsciousness Dr. Ambers was well acquainted, he fashioned a makeshift anaesthetic. Bera lay unconscious on a laboratory table, and Dr. Ambers was enjoying the first fruits of satisfaction in realizing his young enemy’s bewilderment and concern over the strange disappearance of the pretty slave girl. This was but a morsel to whet the doctor’s appetite for what he further planned.

Bera knew recurrent periods of alternating wakefulness and more merciful oblivion, for these periods of wakefulness were often painful ones. The drug destroyed all balance of mental continuity, and often she did not know who she was or where she was—only that she existed and that indescribable pains wracked her, and in her vision appeared, faded and reappeared the cold, fanatical face of Dr. Ambers.

DURING the several weeks of her amazing transformation, Bera was subjected to a dual operation. True to his promise, Dr. Ambers made her more beautiful, employing all his skill and knowledge of plastic surgery. There were alterations to her eyelids which made her glance more alluring and suggestive of mysterious charm and power. Slight changes to her nostrils gave her nose a more classic touch, and the doctor raised her hairline ever so slightly to give her a higher brow. A hallucination of longer eyebrows was artfully created, and things the doctor knew how to do to the muscles around her mouth gave Bera a ravishing smile.

At the same time, Bera was being made into as deadly a killer as had ever stalked the jungle, or, to be more apt, had ever glided menacingly through the tall grasses. Dr. Ambers used many cobras in this, his crowning achievement, Tal Ufieh always ready to supply his every need. Glands from the deadly reptiles were grafted into Beta at various points of her body to give the desired effect. Improvised hypodermic needles made from long, hollowed thorns fitted with tiny wood forcers, or plungers, injected reptilian secretions in large quantity into various active glands already possessed by the girl.

A thrill of triumph vibrated through the doctor as he one day found the development of the poison sac in Bera’s throat commencing to take form, and as it grew larger, his feeling of power increased to a sense of omnipotence. Tal Ufieh came to regard the doctor almost as a genie about to deliver him magically the power and possession of Quandhu.

Nothing which Tal Ufieh had promised the doctor, however, could bring him the satisfaction realized through this master stroke of surgical genius. He was attaining his greatest desires already in the anticipation of Jack Lynworth’s exquisite death and in the dynamic realization of his surgical wizardry. The wealth and power promised him by Tal Ufieh were but secondary to his main obsession, presenting a fitting anti-climax to the fulfillment of his schemes and labor.

A bit of dentistry was required of the doctor who was not found wanting for ingenuity in the lack of the proper instruments. Again an important chemical combination was created in order that Dr. Ambers might fashion rather laboriously two tiny channels in the upper front teeth of Bera. He had no drills, but the chemical placed on the tip of a needle at regular intervals over a long period of time finally produced the proper ducts. Tincture of iron formed one important chemical constituent of the concoction employed by the doctor with his patience of a tunneling Monte Cristo.

To do the work which Dr. Ambers and Tal Ufieh desired of her required mental oblivion to the facts of her past life, with a retainment, however, of her instinctive habits and subconscious knowledge, and the doctor’s next task was more delicate and fraught with the chances of disaster, yet he never faltered in his zeal, bulged egotistically as he was with success. Fully aware of the dire possibilities, he never once doubted himself capable of the desired results. Bera’s memory had to be erased, at least temporarily.

This called for an operation on her brain, a tiny incision into the skull through which the doctor might insert a drug from time to time to maintain her forgetfulness of past events. He employed a slightly changed formula from the anaesthetic he had been using.

Bera came to her senses, nearly healed all through her body, yet in somewhat of a daze. She was weak and a bit frail from the ordeal, but Dr. Ambers, her evil recreator, saw that her physical well being did not stay long neglected. Not until Bera was her beautiful, radiant self, once more in the full glow of health, did the doctor prepare her for the fateful experiment. Patiently and artfully, Dr. Ambers refashioned her mental status and train of thought. The doctor’s rechristening of her was ironic and suggestive of a ghastly humor. To him, her name had suggested a sinister anomaly.

“Your name is Kobera,” he told her.

Tal Ufieh missed the suggestive equivalent of the English word “cobra.” It was Dr. Ambers’ grim joke alone.

The girl’s beauty was doubly enhanced by the artifices of the criminal surgeon, but she was unaware of it. She had forgotten who she was, that she had ever been anyone, in fact. The doctor and the high priest saw to it that her distinction between right and wrong was an ill-defined one, for she was to be used for murder, violent and deadly. She was virtually a prisoner and made to stay in her own quarters which were fitted luxuriously near those of the high priest and doctor in a remote corner of the great palace.

Dr. Ambers became faced with the first setback to his plans, yet he regarded it philosophically and adjusted his plans accordingly. Jack Lynworth was no longer a common slave but had been promoted to the guard of the little prince, Lai Kom. The doctor had anticipated using him as the experimental victim of Kobera’s deadly bite. He knew what would happen and had joyously lingered over the anticipations of what Kobera’s kiss of love would turn to once her emotions were aroused.

“No matter,” he told Tal Ufieh who stood in great respect of the surgical wizard’s strange and exacting means of procedure. “We shall get him after King Moratk is dead and we are ready to kill Lai Kom.”

The stage was laid for the test of Kobera’s power. Behind a curtain, the doctor and the high priest stood and watched as a strong, well-muscled slave beat a chiselled pattern with a flat hammer into the side of a large metal incense burner Tai Ufieh had recently purchased. Kobera had her instructions as she softly entered the chamber.

Out of the tail of his eye, the slave caught sight of her, and his hammer paused as his mouth fell open in mixed surprise and admiration. His eyes dropped, however, and he paid more concentrated attention to his work as his hammer beats increased slightly to a faster tempo.

Leisurely, and with luxurious grace, Kobera settled herself upon a nearby divan to watch him at his work. Discreetly, as any good slave in the presence of his betters, never once did he glance up at her.

“Stay your hammering for a moment,” Kobera bade him graciously. “I would talk with you. Be not afraid. I am a slave, too, even if richly appareled.”

CHAPTER IV

HE seemed scarcely to believe his eyes as he dropped the hammer gently into the heavy pile of a thick rug and walked dumbly to a position beside her where she had beckoned him. She slid up close to him with all the sinuous grace of a snake, Dr. Ambers was thrilled to observe, and laid one arm about his bare shoulders.

The chest of the startled slave rose to faster breathing as he felt her warm, fragrant breath upon his cheek. In her eyes, he recognized the surrender she offered, and he seized her passionately. Kobera’s lips slowly and deliberately sought his neck, and her teeth gripped him tightly, even more tightly until her teeth penetrated into the flesh.

With an exclamation, the slave shook her loose with a brief remonstrance against such extreme playfulness. He again seized her, however, and this time her bite was quick and decisive.

“Her passions are aroused!” hissed the doctor in Tal Ufieh’s ear. “See how rapid her reaction was. The first bite was because of our instructions. The second one she couldn’t help!”

The effects of the first attack were manifesting a potency on the slave who rose unsteadily to his feet, a puzzled look upon his face. He passed his hand first across his neck and then rubbed his eyes. For a moment he stood swaying. Then he fell shuddering and twisting, and his body writhed in pain upon the floor.

Kobera watched him curiously and strangely impassive. Satisfied with what they had seen, the doctor and the high priest left their concealment. Dr. Ambers made a rapid examination of the dying man; then turned his professional attention to Kobera. Tal Ufieh proceeded to carry away the corpse of the slave for secret disposal.

Both Tal Ufieh and Dr. Ambers knew the time to be ripe for their attack upon the king, and Kobera was fully instructed. Every slave girl learns to dance, and this instinctive ability had been in no way impaired by the memory-destroying drug.

Through the devious and subtle means of Tal Ufieh, the master politician of Quandhu, King Moratk came to see the flaunted charms of Kobera, and he immediately wanted her. She went alone to his quarters as he had requested.

JACK Lynworth harbored thoughts of escape from Quandhu, in spite of the dangers and difficulties he knew such a move would encounter. If he escaped over the wall, there were still the people outside the wall and the outposts beyond. He had found no trace of Dr. Ambers in the city. If the doctor had ever reached Quandhu, he had evidently been killed.

Sick at heart from the loss of his only friend, Bera, he had nothing more to detain him. The girl had just mysteriously dropped out of sight, and he could discover no trace of her. Strange possibilities existed in this ancient city which knew no intercourse with the outside world. He had much time for meditation as duty in the guards of Prince Lai Kom were light.

TWO weeks had passed since the strange death of the slave within the palace grounds. Lynworth was patrolling his station directly opposite the side entrance to the young prince’s chambers. Suddenly, he caught sight of a strange figure slipping past the royal quarters stealthily receding down the corridor.

Instantly the guard challenged, and the figure froze motionless. The corridor lights were weak, but he saw that it was a woman. He advanced to where she stood and his heart gave a bound. There stood Bera whom he had missed for so long a time. How lovely she was. She seemed even more lovely than before. She was changed somehow. Where was the quick smile, the adoring light in her eyes?

“Bera! Where have you been for such a long time?”

Confusion reigned in the girl’s mind. She knew not what to say. Who was this strange person, she wondered, who spoke to her so familiarly and used her name in such a clipped fashion?

“I do not know you,” she said simply.

“You are so changed!” said Jack, looking into her eyes and finding no recognition there. “What has happened to you? Have you been sick?”

“Yes—I have been sick,” she replied in a tone suggesting uncertainty.

Something within her brain groped for explanation and found only a gray emptiness where there should have been an answer to this enigma. She seemed to know the young guard, yet she could not place him, could in fact remember nothing. The mental effort brought before her the fanatical face of the doctor as she recalled it during the painful, conscious phases of the operations, not as the kindly, instructive person she knew him to be.

“Bera, don’t you remember me?”

“My name is Kobera. No, I don’t remember you,” she replied, and then she listened in puzzlement to Jack’s efforts to recall certain events and happenings to her confused mind.

“I cannot remember—but I know that I like you.”

“There is blood on your tunic!” Jack suddenly called her attention to his discovery, pointing out a deep red splotch of color. “Are you hurt?”

“No—I am all right.”

“Bera, where are you staying? Where were you while you were sick? Are you——”

Jack never had an answer to the flood of questions, for an officer of the guard came along and gruffly reprimanded him for consorting with a woman while on duty. The captain, however, saw fit to be lenient, for he had done the same thing times before this. Kobera melted into the gloom.

THE following morning, a horrifying discovery rocked the palace and spread its stunning effects throughout Quandhu. King Moratk was found dead in his quarters fully clothed. His death had evidently occurred before he had retired for the night.

He had died from a cobra bite, bearing all the usual symptoms, yet the bite itself was a strange one, as if the snake had bitten more than once in the same spot. It appeared, too, as if King Moratk had pulled at the snake while its fangs were still sunk in his neck.

The furore was unimaginable as a grand hunt was constituted for the cobra which had somehow gained admission to the palace. Such an occurrence was not unprecedented. Snakes were known to enter public and private buildings alike, even the palace. They were usually found and killed, however.

Prince Lai Kom was too young to reign, and a regency was hastily formed. This was incidentally headed by no other than the high priest himself, Tal Ufieh, and another step in power and an advantageous position was gained.

The high priest and Dr. Ambers congratulated each other on this initial phase of their rise to power. The intensive hunt for the cobra which had killed King Moratk put an idea into the mind of Tal Ufieh.

“Immediately after the death of Lai Kom, a cobra will be found,” he told the doctor. “We cannot direct the snake to do our bidding as Kobera does, but it will make things look more natural.”

Dr. Ambers nodded agreeably and considered it a wise suggestion. Already in his mind, he was figuring their next move, and in this further step towards the realizations and ambitions of himself and the rascally high priest Jack Lynworth figured prominently. Kobera very innocently told of her meeting him while leaving the king’s chamber by the route outlined to her by Tal Ufieh as the least likely avenue of meeting anyone.

“You like him very much?” queried the doctor.

“Yes, very much,” Kobera admitted. “It almost seems as if I had known him before. Do you think I’ll ever be able to remember things which happened before I was taken sick?”

“I am sure of it, my dear,” said the doctor kindly, and that very night he gave her another application of the memory-erasing drug.

With as little attention to the circumstance as could be brought to bear, Kobera was kept in ignorance of the fact that she was a prisoner. In reply to her wonder, and the new desire to see again the young palace guard who had talked with her so familiarly, the doctor and Tal Ufieh were at no loss to recount numerous dangers existing in the palace. At such times, her lack of reasoning and the acceptance of their every word was pathetic.

THE excitement over the king’s death subsided. The cobra was never found, and it was generally accepted that the snake had slid out of the palace as quietly and mysteriously as it had come. Many of the more superstitiously inclined subjects regarded the affair as a heavenly intervention against a possible misrule by King Moratk. And Tal Ufieh did nothing to discourage such rumors. He played his hand well.

He and Dr. Ambers waited for a reasonable time to elapse before they made their attempt on the life of little Lai Kom. It was here that the doctor inserted a personal interest, urging Tal Ufieh to wait until Jack Lynworth’s turn came to stand duty in a certaln passage leading into the little prince’s bed chamber.

“I want to see what happens to him,” said the doctor, his eyes taking on their fanatical glow, “when Kobera gives him her love.”

“We shall go by way of a closed and little-used corridor which is quite dark,” said Tal Ufieh. “In fact, I now know of no other one who has keys to it other than myself.”

Their patience eventually bore fruit. The circumstances they awaited reached a zenith. Kobera was told that she might now see her lover and that afterward she was to do their immediate bidding.

“Just as soon as she has disposed of the guard, I shall watch while you take her in and have her bite the little prince before her passions and desire to bite have receded,” instructed the doctor.

Tal Ufieh nodded wisely. “It shall be even as you say, great creator of sudden death.”

NOW that he knew Bera was somewhere in Quandhu, Jack Lynworth had decided against escaping, at least not without Bera.

Kobera. It was strange she had not told him the full name before. But it was just a trick of the amnesia which affected her, he believed. She had been sick, yet she now looked to be in perfect health. Something was decidedly wrong somewhere.

No one but Jack Lynworth held a slight suspicion regarding the girl and the dead king. She had come from the direction of the king’s chambers that night on which he had been bitten by a cobra. Had she been there and seen the snake bite him? Had she tried to help him, only to realize that he was fast dying, and had she fled in terror? There was the blood staln on her tunic to account for.

Again she dropped from sight, and this second disappearance became more of a mystery to him than ever. He wandered about the city in his off hours, yet he never found the slightest trace of her. Dr. Ambers was taking a less important place in his mind. He commenced to believe that vengeance had been taken from him already.

IT was nearly a fortnight after the death of the king that Jack saw Bera once more, and even as on the other occasion she came like a ghost into the corridor. This time, however, she advanced straight to him before his wondering gaze.

“Bera! You’re back again!”

“I have wanted to see you so badly,”

she told him, “but they wouldn’t let me.”

“Who wouldn’t?”

“Tal Ufieh and the great healer who brought me to health once more.”

“Tal Ufieh! So it is he who has kept you hidden!”

“They have been very kind to me,” she reproached his bitter tone, laying her head against his shoulder in the old way she had been accustomed to do.

His arms crept around her, and he looked down into the beautiful face which looked adoringly into his own. No sickness could have made her so much more classically lovely than she had been. He detected the traces of plastic surgery and wondered.

“Bera—think hard! Can’t you remember anything which happened before your illness?”

The girl struggled mentally, her forehead wrinkling with the effort, yet she remained bewildered. From the shadows of a dark corridor whose little doors had opened inward, Dr. Ambers watched, a satisfied expression on his saturnine face. At his elbow, Tal Ufieh waited, a box beneath his arm, a box with a fine grating across several small openings.

CHAPTER V

CAN’T you remember me, Bera?” they heard the young man plead. “All those happy hours together?”

“Oh!” she shuddered. “All I can remember is an awful face filling my sight! How it hurt! I remember now, because sometimes my throat hurts, and there’s a bitter taste, and I breathe with difficulty! He did something to my throat!”

Kobera was breathing hard in excitement as she clutched her lover tightly at the recurrent memory of the frightful ordeals of the operations.

“Who did something to your throat?” Jack demanded.

“The doctor! Tal Ufieh’s doctor! Oh, Jack, don’t let me go back there! It comes back to me now, more and more! Of all that is clear to me, I remember you best of all! I loved you!”

Jack was tenderly embracing her as her breath came pantingly. He kissed her and felt her freeze against him in uncontrolled frenzy. Then suddenly her warm, passionate lips were gone from his and he felt them against his neck which she seized quickly in her teeth and bit viciously.

He exclaimed in sudden pain and surprise as she flung herself from him and staggered back. Blood started out upon his neck. He did not hear the gleeful chuckle of Dr. Ambers nor see the unholy joy on his face. Holding the caged cobra, Tal Ufieh looked on in grim satisfaction.

Her back to the two conspirators, Kobera stood like a statue, her eyes wide in horror upon the involuntary handiwork of her fatal power. She knew what had happened, what she had done, and she knew that her lover was doomed. A strange stupor crept over her, a spell in which dumb misery and a wild groping for substantial facts dulled her faculties.

She saw the man she loved still unaware of the fact that he was soon to die. Unbelieving and uncomprehending of her wild and uncontrolled instinct, he passed a hand to the wound on his neck as he struggled to speak.

“Bera—what made you—do that?”

She saw strange expressions change in his eyes, and she saw him sway dizzily against the wall to which he groped for support.

A realization of powerful forces at work in his bloodstream broke suddenly in upon Jack’s chaotic thoughts as a weakness assailed him. Pain gripped at him, the old familiar pain back in the jungle when the cobra had bitten him and he had worked feverishly at the antidote given him on the coast and had mixed too much of it. This time, he had no antidote. He realized this much before oblivion swept away his thoughts and he fell heavily to the floor of the corridor.

A moan of despair escaped the lips of Kobera, and for a moment she was unaware that Tal Ufieh was shaking her arm, whispering that there was important work to be done that night.

Admonishing Dr. Ambers to keep a watch for the captain of the guards from his point of concealment, Tal Ufieh, with the box under his arm, urged the dazed girl toward the bedchamber of Lai Kom. They passed slowly through two rooms before coming to the bedside of the sleeping prince. Peacefully, little Lai Kom, scarcely past his eighth year, lay sleeping, his head lolled to one side facing them, his neck fully exposed for the teeth of Kobera.

“Do what you are supposed to do,” came the sibilant whisper of the high priest as he pushed Kobera gently toward her intended victim. “Do as you did to King Moratk, his father.”

In a daze, Kobera stood above the sleeping child, her mind a tangle of fighting emotions. She realized and felt the urge to bite that unprotected neck, yet more insistent instincts rose up in revolt to counterbalance the horrible urge. The firm and compelling insistence of Tal Ufieh drowned momentarily her natural instincts in favor of those acquired by the skilled surgical hand of Dr. Ambers. She knelt before the slumbering child who lay in dreamless sleep.

Suddenly a terrible loathing seized her, and she trembled as with the ague. Forcing herself away from the bedside, she fell in a half faint stretched out upon the floor.

Tal Ufieh muttered a curse, yet he was not at a loss to cope with the unforeseen situation. He fumbled at the catch of the box which held the cobra, standing so as to release the excited snake upon the inert body of little Lai Kom. Slowly he lifted the lid.

A darting, reptilian head arose, beady eyes flashing cold anger at so much bumping and jogging in its confined cage. Tal Ufieh took a step toward the bedside, but as he did so a haggard figure lurched and staggered into the room.

His face a deathly white, Jack Lynworth lunged desperately for the high priest, tipping him sideways away from the bed. Out of the box flew the startled cobra upon the floor of the bedchamber, and upon the snake fell Tal Ufieh as the gaping jaws closed angrily into the high priest’s shoulder.

Kobera rose to her knees to see Jack looking down at the little prince who had become restless. She also saw Dr. Ambers come into the room with a knife upheld in murderous anticipation. She screamed a warning and leaped to stay the wicked blade from its downward plunge into the half turned body of the prince’s guard. The diverted blade clashed harmlessly against the bronze cuirass he wore.

Kobera saw before her the same fanatical face she remembered in her semi-conscious moments during the pains of the surgical operations. With all the hatred in her soul, she seized with her teeth the hand which strove to force her back out of the way. Like the striking cobra which the doctor had fashioned her to emulate did she seize the hand which had made her what she was, and her teeth grated against bone.

The doctor screeched in pain and anger, aiming a blow at her with his free hand. A hard fist smashed into his face as Jack Lynworth recovered balance, and he went down.

The doctor, who had scarcely believed his eyes when he had seen the supposedly dying youth rise valiantly to his feet in the corridor, lay unconscious beside the high priest who was suffering the pains of the cobra’s venom. The snake had retreated to a corner where it waved and bobbed menacingly, ready to defend itself.

Little Lai Kom arose as from a nightmare, screaming lustily in fear. Excited voices and many footsteps approached from every direction.

Unmindful of the hubbub, Jack held Bera close to him and stared fascinatedly into the face of the doctor on the floor whom he now recognized for the first time. The mystery of Bera and her strange bite became less mysterious, yet there was much that he could not understand. He did realize, however, that the overdose of antidote he had taken back in the jungle had saved him from Kobera’s bite, for the excess medicine which had made him sick for so long was still potent.

With his sword, he slashed the reptile to bits as palace officials and attendants quieted the shrieking prince. Guessing Kobera to be the innocent killer of King Moratk, Jack knew that it would never do for the truth to be known about the unfortunate girl.

He told of a swift attack by Tal Ufieh and the doctor and how he was hit over the head in the corridor and left laying there while the two conspirators brought in the caged snake with which to kill Lai Kom like they had killed King Moratk, his father. He had recovered in time to prevent them from their design, and in the fight which followed the liberated snake had bitten them both.

Kobera’s presence he explained as a clandestine love affair in which she came and met him secretly while he was on duty. The captaln of the guard substantiated this fact by having seen her on the previous occasion. This trifling irregularity was overlooked in the wild acclaim and hero worship accorded Jack Lynworth for his defense and saving of little Prince Lai Kom, the future sovereign of Quandhu from the murderous designs of Tal Ufieh.

Jack was glad to find that Kobera had been kept hidden by the conspirators since her transformation, for recognized association with Tal Ufieh and the doctor would have occasioned embarrassing investigation and questions. Jack Lynworth was offered anything he wanted in gratitude for what he had done. He was offered wealth and high positions in Quandhu, but he declined, asking instead that he and Kobera be allowed to return to civilization. He was sworn to secrecy never to tell of the existence of Quandhu, and having done this he was given his wish.

IN howdahs on lumbering elephants, Jack and Kobera were taken even beyond the outposts past which none of the natives of Quandhu had penetrated for several centuries. Not until they reached the Mekong River did the escort stop, and then they constructed a large raft with a comfortable cabin into which was stocked all manner of provisions and necessities for their journey. After seeing them on their way, the escort turned back again to the forgotten city of Quandhu still pursuing happily its ancient ways and content to remain unmolested and free from the progress of the outer world.

The last hails of farewell still rang in their ears, and the leafy jungle still swayed gently to the passage of the slate-backed elephants as Jack and Kobera looked down the tropical river. Jack maneuvered them into midstream with the steering paddle at one end.

“When I get you back to my world,” he promised her, “a surgical operation inside that lovely neck of yours will make you Bera again instead of Kobera.”

“No—no!” she protested, clutching him wildly. “No more cutting!”

“But this won’t hurt, you’ll never know anything about it, and it will all be over easily and quickly inside a big hospital which will have everything for your comfort,” he told her. “Then we can be married, and you’ll be my wife.”

A perplexed frown momentarily replaced the terror on her lovely face, and then the frown relaxed. She looked up at him trustingly and smiled, and in her eyes shone an infinite and enduring love.

“To be your wife, Jack, I guess I’d even be willing to go through once more all I have gone through already.”