Adventure Magazine Cover, October 30, 1924 — page 118: what you’re looking at

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

f ~~. XP » ‘ X bY TALBOT MUNDY y SIPart SF tory ~ Parti Author of ‘“‘Mohamed’s Tooth,” “The Nine Unknown,’’ etc.' The first part of the story briefly retold in story form HEN Cottswold Ommony, forester in the Civil Service of India, drifted into the die-hard club at Delhi the members straightway began to gossip about him. They recalled that Jack Terry, the M. D., married Ommony’s younger sister Elsa twenty years before; that an American pork packer named Marmaduke persuaded Terry to become medico at the Buddhist mission which Marmaduke had established at Tilgaun; that Ommony was co- trustee with a red-headed American spinster named Hannah Sanburn who was head of the mission and with a Tibetan Ringding Gelong Lama whom Ommony had never seen; that his enemy, Jenkins, had just been appointed head of the forestry depart- ment and that Ommony had resigned. As for Ommony, he said nothing; but pretty soon he got up and went to sce his friend, John McGregor, his giant Irish wolf-hound Diana at heel. McGreg- or was head of the Secret Service. Their conversa- tion developed interestingly. Jenkins had had Elsa hypnotized by the black-art swine Kananda Pal, robbed her of her mind and used her mental malad- justment as an excuse to break the engagement between them. ‘Terry married her to save her and took her to a sacred place in the upper Abor country to have her cured. There the ‘Masters’ live; there also is a sacred stone with magic properties. Terry and Elsa disappeared. That was twenty years ago. McGregor also told Ommony that Miss Sanburn’s adopted daughter had been robbed of a piece of crystal jade, the thief being murdered and the jade, as well as the adopted daughter, disappearing. Tin Lal, a Secret Service operative, recovered the jade and tried to sell it to Chutter Chand the jewel- er. Through Chutter Chand’s agency McGregor recovered the jade and since then had been impor- tuned by a mysterious somebody to give it up. He thought that the jade might have something to do with the disappearance of the Terrys. Suddenly hopeful of rescuing his sister, Ommony determined to inspect the Buddhist mission at Til- gaun as a pretext, then slip away on the desperate “Om,” copyright, 1924, by Talbot Mundy. 108 chance of penetrating the perilous unexplored upper Abor country, whence no stranger had ever returned. Before starting he took the jade to his friend Chutter Chand, the jeweler. Chutter Chand said that in his opinion the jade had been broken off from a much larger piece and sensitized in very ancient times by a prehistoric race of superscien- tists, with the result that the stone reflects the whole of the holder’s thought and character from the very day he was born.’ The jeweler added that he thought the ‘‘Masters”’ of the upper Abor guarded the forgotten secrets of the superscientists with the idea of letting them out a little at a time as the world was prepared to receive them. He was in abject terror, for a mysterious visitor had threatened him with death if he did not return the stone. Just then an old Tibetan lama entered with his young c/ela or disciple in quest of the jade. He didn’t get it. Ommony sent his wolf-hound Diana to trail them to their quarters when they left and himself made friends with the Hillman whom they had posted to shadow him. The Hillman said that his name was Dawa Tsering and that he came from Spiti, where they practise polyandry. The old lama, he said, was Tsiang Samdup, a name which startled Ommony. The disciple was Samding; “some call him San-fun-ho.” Then he suddenly waxed uncommunicative and disappeared. The dog Diana returned and led Ommony to the Jamas’ hiding-place, where Dawa Tsering tried to knife him in the dark. Diana bit the Hillman in the neck; Ommony took the knife away from him, and the Hillman cursed the lamas. “They told me I could come to no harm if J obeyed them and said my prayers,” he added. “Their magic is useless. Give me my knife and I will go back to the Hills.”’ Ommony gave Dawa Tsering the address of Mrs. Cornock-Campbell, where he was to be a guest at dinner, and told the Hillman to report there between ten and eleven that night, when the knife would be returned. Then he drove to McGregor’s office, wrapped up the jade, addressed the package CoOMmiclbooks