Part 7 (2/2)

'I wonder if that could have been Tarascus who fuo?' er!' she whispered, pressing soers closed on an object fah yonder door, turn to the left andthe cells until you come to a stone stair On your life do not stray from the line of the cells! Climb the stair and open the door at the top; one of the keys will fit it If it be the will of Mitra, I will await you there' Then she was gone, with a patter of light slippered feet

Conan shrugged his shoulders, and turned toward the farther grille This ing headlong into a snare was less abhorrent to Conan's te irl had given hiht be, she was proven by that dagger to be a person of practical intelligence It was no slender stiletto, selected because of a jeweled hilt or gold guard, fitted only for dainty ht poniard, a warrior's weapon, broad-bladed, fifteen inches in length, tapering to a diarunted with satisfaction The feel of the hilt cheered hilow of confidence Whatever webs of conspiracy were drawn about him, whatever trickery and treachery ensnared hiht arm swelled in anticipation ofwith the keys as he did so It was not locked Yet he reure, then, had been no jailer seeing that the bolts were in place He had unlocked the door, instead There was a sinister suggestion about that unlocked door But Conan did not hesitate He pushed upon the grille and stepped froht, the door did not open into another corridor The flagged floor stretched away under his feet, and the line of cells ran away to the right and left behind him, but he could not make out the other limits of the place into which he had come He could see neither the roof nor any other wall The rilles of the cells, and was almost lost in the darkness Less keen eyes than his could scarcely have discerned the diray patches that floated before each cell door

Turning to the left, he eons, his bare feet lanced briefly into each dungeon as he passed it They were all elirio when Belverus was a fortress rather than a city But evidently their uessed

Ahead of hi sharply upward, and knew it ht Then he whirled suddenly, crouching in the deep shadows at its foot

So bulky and stealthy that padded on feet which were not hu row of cells, before each one of which lay a square of diht that was littlethese squares What it was he could not tell, but it was heavy and huge, and yet it liray, then lost it as it ed in the expanses of shadoeen It was uncanny, in its stealthy advance, appearing and disappearing like a blur of the vision

He heard the bars rattle as it tried each door in turn Now it had reached the cell he had so recently quitted, and the door swung open as it tugged He saw a great bulky shape liray doorway, and then the thing had vanished into the dungeon Sweat beaded Conan's face and hands Now he knehy Tarascus had come so subtly to his door, and later had fled so swiftly The king had unlocked his door, and, soe that held so fro up the corridor, its round It paid noout his trail He saw it iant anthropoirth than any h it stooped forward, and it was grayish and shaggy, its thick coat shot with silver Its head was a grisly travesty of the huround

Conan knew it at last--understood the eon, and recognized the haunter of the pits It was a gray ape, one of the grisly man-eaters from the forests that wave on the mountainous eastern shores of the Sea of Vilayet Half oblins of Hyborian legendry, and were in reality ogres of the natural world, cannibals and hted forests

He knew it scented his presence, for it was co on its short,stair, but knew that the thing would be on his back before he could mount to the distant door He chose to meet it face to face

Conan stepped out into the nearest square of e of illumination that he could; for the beast, he knew, could see better than hireat yellow tusks gleamed in the shadows, but it ray apes of Vilayet were voiceless But in its dim, hideous features, which were a bestial travesty of a huhastly exultation

Conan stood poised, watching the onco monster without a quiver He knew he must stake his life on one thrust; there would be no chance for another; nor would there be ti away The first blow must kill, and kill instantly, if he hoped to survive that awful grapple He swept his gaze over the short, squat throat, the hairy swagbelly, and the iant arches like twin shi+elds Itdeflected by the heavy ribs than to strike in where a stroke was not instantly fatal With full realization of the odds, Conan ainst the brute ht and ferocity of the man-eater He must meet the brute breast to breast, strike a death-blow, and then trust to the ruggedness of his fra that was certain to be his

As the ape ca wide its terrible ared in between them and struck with all his desperate power He felt the blade sink to the hilt in the hairy breast, and instantly, releasing it, he ducked his head and bunched his whole body into one corasped the closing arms and drove his knee fiercely into the rapple

For one dizzy instant he felt as if he were being disrip of an earthquake; then suddenly he was free, sprawling on the floor, and theout its life beneath him, its red eyes turned upward, the hilt of the poniard quivering in its breast His desperate stab had gone ho conflict, tre in every limb

Some of his joints felt as if they had been dislocated, and blood dripped from scratches on his skin where the monster's talons had ripped; his ely wrenched and twisted

If the beast had lived a second longer, it would surely have disth had resisted, for the fleeting instant it had endured, the dying convulsion of the ape that would have torn a lesser man limb from limb

6

The Thrust of a Knife

Conan stooped and tore the knife from the monster's breast Then he went swiftly up the stair What other shapes of fear the darkness held he could not guess, but he had no desire to encounter anywas too strenuous even for the giant Ci fro like panic pursued hih of relief when he reached the head, and felt the third key turn in the lock He opened the door slightly, and craned his neck to peer through, half expecting an attack from some human or bestial enehted, and a slender, supple figure stood before the door

'Your Majesty!' It was a low, vibrant cry, half in relief and half in fear The girl sprang to his side, then hesitated as if abashed

'You bleed,' she said 'You have been hurt!'