This time Zircon caught the wink, but Rick could see that it meant nothing to him. He raced on, praying that his sudden scheme was going to work.

"There you go, sir, forgetting them again. Why, I'll bet you even forgot to have those large rupee notes changed." He turned to the official.

"Could you change a five-hundred-rupee note?" he asked.

Rick's heart leaped as the man jumped at the bait. "Of course," he purred, and reached into his pocket.

Rick motioned to Zircon to give him the five-hundred-rupee note. The scientist took it from his pocket, c.o.c.king his head in bewilderment.

Rick handed the note to the official and then almost s.n.a.t.c.hed the paper change from the man's hand. He held it quickly to his nose and sniffed.

"I knew it, sir," he said. "Smell." He held the money up to Zircon's face.

The money was pungent with menthol.

But still Zircon looked puzzled. "What is all this, Rick?" he demanded.

"Well, sir," Rick answered, "doesn't this entry permission business look like a put-up job to you?"

Light was dawning on Zircon now. He nodded.

"Why is it that this man was able to change our five-hundred-rupee note out of his own pocket? He doesn't make enough money to carry that large a sum around with him, does he?"

Zircon stared at the official. "You mean you think he's been bribed?" he asked.

"Yes, sir. I do," Rick answered. And as he spoke the words, he saw the official edging toward the door and knew his accusation had struck home.

"Just a moment," Zircon bellowed. "Is this boy right?"

"No, sir."

Zircon took a step toward the man. "Well, I'm going to take a chance that he is and report you to your superior. He'll not only have you discharged, but he'll take every cent of the bribe from you for not splitting it with him!"

Rick realized at once that Zircon could not have chosen a more effective threat, for the man immediately began bowing and purring.

"Perhaps forgot," he said. "Perhaps overlook."

He shuffled over to his ratty little desk and opened a drawer. As he did so, a look of exaggerated surprise suffused his features.

"I make mistake," he beamed, and held out an official-looking doc.u.ment. "Now I stamp pa.s.sports." He imprinted them with a heavy seal.

Zircon s.n.a.t.c.hed them from his hand and flashed a triumphant look at Rick.

"I should have you beheaded!" he bellowed, and started from the office.

"Wait, sir," Rick called. "What about the man who gave him the bribe? And the menthol?"

"No bribe," the official demurred softly.

"The menthol proves nothing," Zircon said from the doorway. "Besides, it would take a week to wring the information from this fellow. We haven't time."

Rick realized from the look on the official's face that he realized this fact full well. With the pa.s.sports, the white men probably would be willing to go off and leave him with his loot.

Rick glared at the man and reluctantly followed Zircon out of the building.

"We'd probably save ourselves a lot of trouble if we found out who gave him that bribe, sir," he said. "And why."

"If we did find out, what could we do about it?" Zircon asked flatly.

"Yes, what could we do?" thought Rick.

But that odor of menthol. It was there, and whether Zircon thought so or not, Rick was convinced that the perpetrator of all their troubles had given himself away.

Hendrick Van Groot!

He was the man who had stolen their equipment, ordered it pushed into the sea. The man who sometimes traveled under the name of Conway. Rick felt sure of it now. But why had he done all this?

Rick followed Professor Zircon back toward the crowd at the railway station, and at the sight of the big man, the yells of the mob increased in intensity.

"Now I'll have to use my own judgment about a guide," Zircon said. He stared at the mult.i.tude of natives, all clamoring for the job as they ma.s.sed about him.

Weiss hurried to his side. "How do you get these devils quiet, Hobart?"

Zircon scratched his chin, then cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted for quiet.

They screamed louder.

Weiss yelled something first in Mongol, then in a strange gibberish.

The tone of the mob rose to a higher pitch.

Then Scotty stepped forward. "Allow me," he said. He put his fists on his hips and yelled at the top of his lungs.

The crowd hushed like a slowing victrola record and was still.

"A miracle!" Zircon exclaimed. "What did you say?"

"Not a thing," Scotty replied, grinning. "It's the face you make that counts, not the words. An old top sergeant's trick."

"I swear if we pick one of these men, the others will kill him in sheer resentment," Weiss whispered.

The bulky little men were staring at Scotty and the other three with fierce eyes.

"I wish I knew how to go about this," Zircon said.

Then his problem was solved for him. Out of the crowd, where he had been squatting unseen till this moment, stepped a huge man who towered above the other applicants. Even Zircon looked small beside him. One eyelid drooped half-shut, giving him a sly, knowing look. His tangled black hair mounted to a peak. He was almost humorous in appearance except for the stringy, black mustache that curved in a sinister parenthesis about his wide mouth.

He tapped his chest with a beefy hand, folded his arms and announced: "Me Sahmeed. Number One guide boy."

The party could not suppress grins and it seemed to amuse this hulk of a man. He grinned, too, and his teeth were like a picket fence with a few staves knocked out.

"Much Number One strong," he grunted, and in two steps he was beside the equipment piled on the platform. Before anyone could stop him, he had lifted the very biggest of the boxes and with barely a s.h.i.+ver of the arms, held it high above his head, tossed it in the air as the party winced, and then caught it again. He lowered it easily to the ground and smiled.

Rick felt like applauding, but he could see that Zircon was not quite convinced.

"Do you know Tengi-Bu plateau?" he asked.

Sahmeed bobbed his head. "Much know Tengi-Bu,'" he replied.

The other strangely clad men in the mob were grumbling now. They wanted to know what decision was being made.

Then Sahmeed turned, swept his arm in a fierce gesture over the heads of the mob, and growled. Even a heavyweight champion would have ducked at the sweep of that oaklike arm.

The crowd moved back.

"I don't think they'd dare try for the job now," Weiss said.

"Well, I guess he's our man, then," Zircon decided, looking the giant up and down. He nodded to him. "But well need bearers ... and animals," he said to Weiss.

Sahmeed had antic.i.p.ated the need. He was pointing to one after the other of the gnomelike men in the crowd, and they moved to his side. When he had collected thirty of them, he grunted something in an odd gibberish and they trotted toward the railway station. Soon they were leading mules, and animals resembling oxen, toward the pile of equipment, and without orders from anyone started loading the boxes on the backs of the animals.

Rick looked at the spindly legs of the beasts. "Are those things going to carry our stuff over those mountains?" He pointed to the Himalayas.

"They're yaks," Zircon informed him. "The standard beast of burden in Tibet. Very sure-footed. The mules can take care of themselves, too."

They watched the silent, sweating men load the equipment on the backs of the beasts as Sahmeed stood over them with folded arms.

Soon only the biggest of the boxes, the one that Sahmeed had played ball with, was left. It was obvious that the bearers were waiting for him to lift it onto the back of the largest yak.

Then Zircon did a thing that made Rick's eyes open wide.

As Sahmeed stooped to grasp the corners of the box, the scientist stepped to his side and tapped him on the shoulder. The giant rose and the scientist took his place. His broad back bulged as he took the corners of the box and, to Rick's amazement, swung the load high over his head as Sahmeed had done. Then he held it there and smiled into the guide's eyes.

It was the first reaction except a smile that Rick had seen cross the giant's face. His chin dropped and stayed there.

Zircon lowered the box to the animal's back, lashed it tight. Without another look at the giant, he turned and strode back toward Rick, Scotty, and Weiss.

"Just to show him who's boss," the scientist smiled.

The animals were flogged to their feet by the bearers. Sahmeed led the way up a wide road toward the mountains and, with a last look at the civilization they would not see for many months to come, Rick and Scotty fell in behind the scientists.

If trouble were to follow, Rick decided, it would have rough going from here out.

CHAPTER XI.

Tibet

THE road stretched ahead and in less than an hour they had crossed the border into Tibet. There didn't seem to be a level inch, so far as the eye could see. The cries of the bearers, urging the animals on, echoed against the surrounding walls of earth that seemed to be narrowing like a funnel ahead.

Suddenly there began to appear strange markings on the rocks of the mountains.

"Om mani padme hum," Rick read slowly.

The inscription was everywhere now, on the lip of a gorge - the painter must have been a human fly to etch it there - again, high against a flat peak.

Rick hurried to Zircon's side and pointed to one of the painted legends. "What does it mean?" he asked.

" 'Hail, the jewel on the lotus,'" Zircon translated.

Rick scratched his head. "And what does that mean?"

Zircon laughed. "It is the way the people of Tibet gain merit in the eyes of Buddha," he explained. "They risk their lives in these painting projects to perpetuate his wisdom."

"But there are more and more of them as we go along," Rick said. "How come?"

"We're on the road to Lhasa," Zircon explained. "The holy city of the Tibetans, where sits the boy ruler ... the Dalai Lama. They pour over this road by the thousands every day, on their way to Lhasa to wors.h.i.+p him."

Scotty joined them and they laughed when he referred to the signs and the carved images as "Tibetan billboards."

In the mountains, day was with them one moment and had fled into blackness the next. There was no dusk, and before they knew it, the caravan was tramping in darkness.

Rick heard the shouts of the bearers and the orders of Sahmeed drifting back through the darkness. He almost ran into the last yak in the caravan before he realized they had come to a halt.

"We'll be pus.h.i.+ng as fast as we can," Zircon explained. "No point in stopping until we have to."

"We have to, now," Scotty said. "It's too dark to see."

"Where do we sleep?" Rick asked.

"Right here," Weiss answered. "No one travels these roads at night. They're the best place to be."

"Okay," Rick said. "Come on, Scotty. Let's unpack our gear and curl up on Tibet Highway Number One."

Scotty lifted the sleeping bags and the duffel bags of clothing off the pack yak and dumped them on the ground. As he did so, there was a crinkle of paper.

"Barby's present," he remarked. He held it up to his ear and shook it. "What do you suppose it is?"

"I could guess," Rick answered, "but I won't. It wouldn't be fair."

"You're right," Scotty agreed. "Let's see ... where can I put this ..."