"Barker!" a sharp voice came from the open door. "Barker Harrison!" His wife came into the room. "For goodness sake, what are you shouting about? What is the matter?"
The Professor turned on her with a savage roar.
The impudent slave woman, he said to himself—for weeks she had been behaving as no woman should behave to her master—and now she had entered, unbidden, the tent of warriors!
He raised his right arm, about to strike her, Then he reconsidered. No, he would not sully his hand.
He turned to one of the many slaves whom he imagined about him.
"Urbeck!" he said majestically. "Have this impudent slave woman well beaten with knotted ropes!"
Mrs. Barker Harrison swooned dead away. The Professor looked at her huddled figure unmoved. Again he commenced his barbarous chant.
But suddenly it seemed to him that all the others had disappeared. Where were they, those yellow-skinned, high-cheeked men? And chiefly the two—his brother Kublai Khan, the great drinker whom he would send to conquer the farthest East, and
