The Flying Legion | Page 5

him in strength and comfort.
The use of this plant, containing obscure alkaloids of the katinacetate class, constituted his only vice--if you can call a habit such as this vice, that works great well-being and that leaves no appreciable aftermaths of evil such as are produced by alcohol or drugs.
For a few minutes the Master sat quite motionless, pondering. Then suddenly he got up again, and strode to one of the westward-looking windows. The light was almost wholly gone, now. The man's figure, big-shouldered, compact, well-knit, appeared only as a dim silhouette against the faded blur in the west; a blur smoky and streaked with dull smudges as of old, dried blood.
Far below, stretching away, away, shimmered the city's million inconsequential lights. Above, stars were peeping out--were spying down at all this feverish mystery of human life. Some of the low-hung stars seemed to blend with the far lights along the Palisades. The Master's lips tightened with impatience, with longing.
"There's where it is," he muttered. "Not five miles from here! It's there, and I've got to have it. There--a thing that can't be bought! There--a thing that must be mine!"
Among the stars, cutting down diagonally from the north-west, crept a tiny, red gleam. The Master looked very grim, as his eyes followed its swift flight.
"The Chicago mail-plane, just getting in," he commented. "In half an hour, the Paris plane starts from the Cortlandt Street aero-tower. And beyond Paris lies Constantinople; and beyond that, Arabia--the East! Men are going out that way, tonight! And I--stick here like an old, done relic, cooped in Niss'rosh--imprisoned in this steel and glass cage of my own making!"
Suddenly he wheeled, flung himself into the big chair by the table and dragged the faun's head over to him. He pressed a button at the base of it, waited a moment and as the question came, "Number, please?" spoke the desired number into the cupped hand and ear of the bronze. Then, as he waited again, with the singular telephone in hand, he growled savagely:
"By Allah! This sort of thing's not going to go on any longer! Not if I die stopping it!"
A familiar voice, issuing from the lips of the faun--a voice made natural and audible as the living human tones, by means of a delicate microphone attachment inside the bronze head--tautened his nerves.
"Hello, hello!" called he. "That you, Bohannan?"
"Yes," sounded the answer. "Of course I know who you are. There's only one voice like yours in New York. Where are you?"
"In prison."
"No! Prison? For the Lord's sake!"
"No; for conventionality's sake. Not legally, you understand. Not even an adventure as exciting as that has happened to me. But constructively in jail. De facto, as it were. It's all the same thing."
"Up there in that observatory thing of yours, are you?" asked Bohannan.
"Yes; and I want to see you."
"When?"
"At once! As soon as you can get over here in a taxi, from that incredibly stupid club of yours. You can get to Niss'rosh even though it's after seven. Take the regular elevator to the forty-first floor, and I'll have Rrisa meet you and bring you up here in the special.
"That's a concession, isn't it? The sealed gates that no one else ever passes, at night, are opened to you. It's very important. Be here in fifteen minutes you say? First-rate! Don't fail me. Good-bye!"
He was smiling a little now as he pressed the button again and rang off. He put the faun's head back on the table, got up and stretched his vigorous arms.
"By Allah!" he exclaimed, new notes in his voice. "What if--what if it could be, after all?"
He turned to the wall, laid his hand on an ivory plate flush with the surface and pressed slightly. In silent unison, heavy gold-embroidered draperies slid across every window. As these draperies closed the apertures, light gushed from every angle and cornice. No specific source of illumination seemed visible; but the room bathed itself in soft, clear radiance with a certain restful greenish tinge, throwing no shadows, pure as the day itself.
The man pulled open a drawer in the table and silently gazed down at several little boxes within. He opened some. From one, on a bed of purple satin, the Croix de Guerre, with a palm, gleamed up at him. Another disclosed an "M.M.," a Médaille Militaire. A third showed him the "D.F.C.," or Distinguished Flying Cross. Still another contained aviator's insignia in the form of a double pair of wings. The Master smiled, and closed the boxes, then the drawer.
"After these," he mused, "dead inaction? Not for me!"
His dark eyes were shining with eagerness as he walked to a door beside that through which the Arab had entered. He swung it wide, disclosing an ample closet, likewise inundated with light. There hung a war-worn aviator's uniform of