Talfa obeyed silently.
“How dare you?” cried the Rajah.
“Better being bound than dead. I will leave you here on yonder couch and your slaves will release you in the morning. Then you can tell them the Black Adder knows how to be kind.”
The Rajah said nothing. Talfa brought the strip of silk to the bandit and under his direction helped to tie the Rajah’s hands behind his back.
The Black Adder stretched his arms. “I am afraid,” he said softly, “I must rob you of your pearls; and the Ruby of Tawnpore, which I have long envied, will now be mine.”
Swiftly he stripped the Rajah of his jewels, which in truth were worth a king’s ransom. Working fast, he tied the ruler of Tawnpore securely and laid him on the couch. He bound his body fast about with the crimson silk; then he stuffed a gag into the ruler’s mouth and made it fast.
As he finished, Talfa tried to steal toward the doorway and freedom, but swifter than the snake for whom he was named, the man caught her wrist. “Not so—you who are the brightest jewel of all, come with me!”
“No, no!” shrieked Talfa, as he lifted her in his arms.
“Will you come quietly?” he snarled. “Or must I silence you, too?”
Talfa made a gesture of assent. “I have no choice,” she whispered.
As he carried her out of the marble summer house that had given her such joy and such misery, Talfa reflected that perhaps it was better this way. At least she was free from the Rajah, and Boud Ali was safe. Perhaps when the Black Adder tired of her, he would set her free; or failing that, if she could find a knife—a strange sense of helplessness descended upon her.
She was conscious that the Black Adder carried her through a low doorway, for he stooped slightly. On the other side were men and horses. A man held her while the bandit mounted an animal as black as himself. Then he leaned over and threw a dark cloak over the Rajah’s golden one. She was then lifted up into his arms, and she heard him give the order to ride—and the company moved forth into the night.
They stopped only once, at the outer gates of the palace. Here a paper was given the guards, who let them pass at once. Talfa could see nothing, as the Black Adder had thrown part of the cloak over her head, but she could hear the rustle of the paper.
For a long time they rode furiously. Talfa lost track of time. The swift motion of the horse and the strength of the arms that held her were her last conscious recollections, as she sank into the deep sleep that only comes with exhaustion.
* * * *
It was light when she opened her eyes. Through the folds of the cloak she could see the sun’s rays. She stirred a little.
“Beloved, I thought you would never open your eyes,” a well-known voice vibrated in her ears.
Talfa sank back, thinking she dreamed. The cloak was pulled off. The sudden light after the darkness made her blink.
Presently her eyes became accustomed to the light, and she looked up at her captor.
“Boud Ali!” she cried, and touched his smooth face with her hand to see if he were real.
“My little love,” he murmured. Then, bending over without slackening his horse’s gait, he kissed her fiercely.
Presently they came back to earth. “But how?” asked Talfa. “Where is the Black Adder?”
Boud Ali’s free hand dangled a bit of black silk before her eyes. “Here,” he cried gayly. “I heard your song and knew the message you meant to convey. So I sought out the Rajah and bade him farewell. He gave me a pass for myself and men. Then I gave a purse of gold to the slave for a key to the garden gate, ostensibly to bid a last farewell to you. After that I waited for the Rajah to bring you to me.”
“Suppose he had chosen another?” breathed Talfa.
Her lover laughed. “He could not have, my beautiful! I had my men ready to overpower the guards, but when I heard them dismissed, I sent my men back to the horses, and waited. The rest you know.”
“Where are we going?” Talfa asked; not that it mattered, now that she was in her lover’s arms. Not even the fact that he was the Black Adder made any difference to her.
“To my home in the Hills. We are quite safe. The Rajah will never know you are Boud Ali’s, and together we will find happiness.”
“And wealth,” added Talfa, remembering the Rajah’s jewels. “Only, I shall be afraid when you are off on your expeditions.”
“I shall never leave you, now that you are really mine,” he promised.
Her laughter rang out like tinkling silver bells. “Then there is the end of the Black Adder!”
Boud Ali shrugged, “Why?”
“If you go forth no more—”
His own mirth drowned hers, “Oh foolish, one, I but played a part for one night, and borrowed a name to gain my love. If I had taken you, the Rajah would have found us out and death would have been our lot. But for the Black Adder he will not look. For my part, I shall think kindly of the bandit that all so abuse.”
“And I shall ever bless his name!” cried Talfa as she raised her lips for her lover’s kiss.
A MEAL FOR THE DEVIL, by K. Christopher Barr
Yen Sing, his oily black queue slapping his back at every jounce, climbed to the top of the mast. From its height, he surveyed dazedly this harbor of the white man, full of bustle, full of excitement, fringed by the irregular wharves and piers of busy San Francisco. Yen Sing’s slanting eyes noted everything—the plying ferry, the host of small boats, the green slime on the base of the wharf, whence rose a queer pungent odor to his sniffing nostrils.
The ship rose and fell gently on the bosom of the water. Yen Sing liked the lulling sensation. He liked the sparkle of the sun on the ocean. He liked the tang of the salt breeze in his mouth and nose, its crisp caresses on his face.
Most of all he liked his position, high above the rest of the crew. He was exalted, a god, surveying the pitiful human world, spread in a panorama at his feet. Yen Sing shivered. He had no gods. He had foresworn his gods, called them vile names, and thumbed his nose at their crafty wiles, shaken his fist at their images, and then fled, quaking, from their wrath. Why not? What had his gods done for him, save to drive him from place to place, showering upon his rebellious head distress and misery, taking from him all that life held of joy and happiness? Small wonder that he had cursed the gods of his fathers, and fled to strange lands to ease his miseries.
But they had sent after him devils, two chief devils and a number of subordinate and subservient devils. Chief among those was Mazpa, the boa constrictor, who undulated gently in his cage and darted his wicked fangs at the yellow, wizened Chinaman every time he passed him by. Yen Sing had no delusions about Mazpa. Whatever the little round bald Englishman, with the gold-rimmed spectacles said of Mazpa and the other creatures of the jungle which were being transported to England for some strange unfathomable purpose, Yen Sing knew better.
* * * *
It was not for nothing that the boa constrictor had been added to the cargo last of all, when Yen Sing himself had already signed his papers to go to foreign lands as a sailor on the jungle-ship. Mazpa was a devil—a fierce, and inplacable devil—sent by Yen Sing’s outraged gods to kill their defiant ex-worshiper, and to conduct his blackened soul to its particular hell. Yen Sing had to be very wary of Mazpa. Sometimes he could stand the worry and the terror no longer and had to escape up the mast into the fresh sweet air of the outside world, to think and rest and gather courage to face again those coal-black, hard eyes, the darting fangs, the snapping jaws, the hostile hiss of the arch-devil, Mazpa.
Nor was Mazpa alone in his glory. There were at least a half dozen other