APTER I

A MYSTERIOUS DEATH

"He is dead!"

Johnny Thompson felt the grip of the speaker's hand on his arm and started
involuntarily. How could this strange fellow know that Frank Langlois was
dead--if he was dead? And was he? They were surrounded by inky blackness.
It was the thick darkness of a subterranean cavern, a mine. This was a
gold mine. Three minutes ago their electric torch had flickered out and
they had been unable to make it flash again.

"C'mon," said the other man, "Pant," as the laborers called him, "we don't
need that thing."

To his utter astonishment, Johnny had felt himself urged forward by this
Pant with the easy, steady, forward march of one who is certain of every
step. Twice they had turned to avoid mine-props. They had gone back into
the mine perhaps a hundred feet. Now, with not a spark of light shining
out of the gloom, they had paused and his companion had uttered those
three words:

"He is dead."

Was the man they had come to seek really dead? If he was, who had killed
him? How did Pant know he was dead? Surely in that Egyptian midnight no
man could see.

As Johnny threw an involuntary glance to the spot where Pant's face should
be, he gasped. Had he caught a yellow glow from one eye of the man? He
could not be sure about it, for at that instant the electric torch flashed
on again as suddenly as it had gone out.

Johnny's eyes followed the yellow circle of light. Then with a low
exclamation he sprang forward. There, not ten feet before them, lay the
form of Frank Langlois. To all appearances he was dead. Again through
Johnny's mind there flashed the telegraphic questions:

"Who killed him? How did Pant know?"

Thrusting the torch into Johnny's hand, his companion leaped forward and,
with a cat-like motion, dropped down beside the prostrate form. Tearing
away at jacket and shirt, he bared the breast and placed his ear close
down upon the cold flesh.

"Dead all right," he sighed at last. "Wonder what killed him?"

He still crouched there, as a cat crouches beside its kill. As if he
searched for the answer to his last question, his eyes roved about the
floor.

This moment of silence gave Johnny time to study Pant, to recall what he
really knew about him.

He was a strange chap, this Pant. He never bunked with the other laborers
of the outfit, but had a private little pup-tent affair that he had made
of long-haired deer skin and canvas. In this he slept. He was slight of
b