Adventure Magazine, March 1916 — page 190: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

188 She had kept her knowledge secret, even as I had thought she would. And I was safe— for a while. But how long that while would last I did not know. And yet there was that about the fact that the High Priestess had kept secret her knowledge thus long which seemed to whisper of some slow deep game. Lip-Plak-Tengga was playing a slow, a deep game. I was sure now, with a tre- mendous certitude, that she was playing a slow deep game. She dared not act in the open. She dared not act the informer. Still was I the King and Man-Child to the Poonan; and she dared not match her words against that of the Man-Child, her asser- tions against what I, as King, might assert. She would wait. That was her game. She would never inform the Poonan, but rather bide her time till they discovered the truth for themselves. I realized that and, in that realization, found hope. Many things might occur to put a new light on affairs; all might yet be righted ere that ter- -rible discovery was made; for we hoped— hoped with a hope which knew neither metes nor bounds—to return that accursed god back to the Stone Dodo that night. As it was, the Poonan had not the faintest glimmering of the fearful truth. Only con-. cerned were they over what had befallen old Mohong Wook. ‘To them, the binding and the captivity of the old fellow seemed quite an unaccountable, even tragic, state of affairs. They did not know why I kept old Mohong prisoner, nor could they guess what I was going to do with him. They probably feared lest old Mohong should suffer physi- cally from the length and figors of his cap- tivity, or should come to some worse harm at my hands. For these reasons they fur- tively watched my Elephant Stone. Of course it was a ticklish business, this holding the aged chieftain a_ prisoner. What of the long duration of his imprison- ment and the severity of it—bound as he was hand and foot, unable to twitch a mus- cle, and lying in the draughty corridor—there was always the chance that he might contract some illness, such as pneumonia, which to so old a man might prove fatal. But his very captivity alone, not to speak of such a fatality, spelt suspicion of us by the Poonan. That suspicion might lead them even- tually into my cave to investigate. But even though I realized we could not afford to allow any suspicions to gather about us, Adventure while the Green, Green God was in our keep- ing, I had not the slightest notion of releas- ing old Mohong from his bonds and allow- ing him to go free. - That would be foolhardy—aye, worse than foolhardy. It would be as much as self-destruction to release old Mohong ere first we returned the god to the Dobo. If old Mohong were released now he would tell all the Poonan that the god was gone from the Dobo, that they could find it in our cave. The Poonan would rise up then and whelm us over. It would mean our dis- grace, our downfall and our death. Once we returned the Green, Green God to the Dobo, however, all would be well. We could release the old chieftain, there- upon, and let him tell all the Poonan. For the Poonan, of a certainty, would look first into the Dodo to see if the god really were gone; they would find it there, and then they would laugh to scorn old Mohong as a dod- dering, whimsy-haunted old man. It still was not too late to return the Green Green God to the Dobo. As the Poo- nan did not know as yet that the god had been taken from the Dobo, they might never know. That night we would return the god, we would avert all the havoc that threatened. And never would the Poonan know that the god had been in my cave. Lip-Plak- Tengga would be robbed of the opportunity to spring her secret knowledge. For we would formulate some kind of an excuse to explain why we had held old Mohong a pris- oner; and if, even after all that, the Poonan should still entertain any suspicions of us we would live down in time those suspicions. We would live on through the years, Golden Feather of Flame and I, ‘as King and Queen of the Jallan Batoe—as King and Queen of a paradise on earth! : © the while, to pay heed to the whis- pers of the passing groups. But they all were in the trend I have told you, all save one. That one came when the Gun- ner himself pssed by, in company with three men, who were as squat and almost as muscled as himself. He looked up, did the Gunner, his Chinese eyes mere glinting slits in the sunlight. “Tt is strange that such misfortune should come to our old Adjie,”’ he said, with a shake of his bullet head. “He did nothing to THUS thinking, I did not forget, Gomichbooks (E)