Part 43 (2/2)

”No,” he said, ht copper cauldrons, one to each hole

”Even without rifles for the defense?”

”No,” he said

”And I have more than a thousand Mauser rifles here, and more than a et them?”

”I shall tell you that later Cos See and believe!”

She showed hih square piles

”Dynaet! Too ht them all the way from the sea, for even Muhammad Anim could not make Afridi riflemen carry loads I have wondered what Bull-with-a-beard will say when he h in there to blow theadvised her ”If somebody fired a pistol in here, the least would be the collapse of this floor into the tunnel beloith a hundred thousand tons of rock on top of it There is no other way out?”

”Earth's Drink!” she said, and he

But she looked at hiht was not new to her, and that she did not thank hian to wonder whether there was anything she had not thought of-any loophole she had left him for escape-any issue she had not foreseen

”Kill her!” a secret voice urged him But that was the voice of the ”Hills,” that are violent first and regretful afterward He did not listen to it And then the wisdo the lines laid down by Solomon

”It isn't possible to make a puzzle that has no solution to it The fact that it's a puzzle is the proof that there's a key! Go ahead!”

It was the ”Go ahead!” that Solo King ceased conjecturing and gave full attention to his guide

She showed him where eleven hundred Mauser rifles stood in racks in another cave, with boxes of ae worth its weight in silver coin-a very rajah's ransos-only in sos-very mean in others!” she told him ”They sent no medical stores, and no blankets!”

Past caves where provisions of every iinable kind were stored, sufficient for an arether with the thirty special ht with him up the Khyber

”I have five hundred others whom I dare trust to come in here,” she said, ”but they shall stay outside until I want theood for theood to keep this sanctuary; it uided hiether in the jaws of the round hole above the river, looking down into the cavern of Earth's Drink

nobody looked up at thereat jihad that was to coh in the middle, and then fired The heat careat red cloud a the stalactites Round and round that holocaust the thousands did their sword-dance, yelling as the devils yelled at Khinjan's birth They needed no wine to craze them They were drunk with fanaticisht that wood from fiftywith the river's voice, made a volcano chord ”It is a week's supply of wood! But so they are-so they will be! They will lay waste India! They will butcher and plunder and burn! It will be what they leave of India that we shall build anew and govern, for India herself will rise to help them lay her own cities waste! It is always so! Conquests always are so! Co the tunnel and through other tunnels to the throne rooain

The food had been cleared away in their absence Instead, on the ebony table there were pens and ink and paper

She leaned back on her throne, with bare feet pressed tight against the footstool, staring, staring at the table and the pens, and then at King, as if she would co to deliver it

”I said I will tell you,” she sad slowly ”Listen!”