muscles of the negro's huge body bunched in
readiness for the signal as tensely he watched the flaxen-haired head
close to him.

Suddenly it nodded.

The door swung wide and white man and black went charging out.

And immediately there burst in their ears the furious clanging of a
general alarm bell, sounding throughout the whole building!

CHAPTER XI

_Trapped in the Laboratory_

In his carefully welded plot-chain, Ku Sui left one weak link, though he
was not aware of it at the time. For it would not appear save by the
testing of it, and he had not expected it to be tested. Carse acted
recklessly; perhaps, if cold reason be applied to his move, senselessly.
Dr. Ku had not thought he would dare make the break he did. But the
adventurer did dare, and the loophole, the weak link, was exposed.

The Eurasian had a paranoic's vanity, and with it a lust accumulated
over years to exact the most terrible vengeance he could from the
adventurer who had frustrated his schemes time and time again. His
arrangement for subtly forcing Carse to watch the operation was part of
his vengeance; but he planned more. He wanted his old foe, broken by the
living death of Eliot Leithgow, to die slowly later; wanted to crumple
that will of steel utterly; wanted to watch and pleasantly mock him
during the slow death agonies he had contrived for him. Therefore--and
here lay the weak link--Dr. Ku left orders for Carse to be kept alive.

If he had not instructed his coolie-guards to wound, and not kill, in
case of a break for freedom, Carse and Friday could never possibly have
gained the corridor alive. The four waiting ray-guns would have burned
out their lives within three seconds. But, as it was, the barrage of
shots from the ray-guns was directed at their legs, with the intention
of bringing them down--and their legs were moving very rapidly. And so,
reckoning up the caliber of the two comrades, their wild fighting start,
their fatalistic resolve to get as many as possible of the enemy before
they died, the result of that first hectic scramble in the corridor was
more or less inevitable.

* * * * *

With a savage war-whoop that rose, ear-shattering, above the clanging of
the alarm bell, Friday flung his two hundred and twenty pounds of brawn
and muscle after Carse into the thick of the guards, taking no more
notice of the spitting streaks of orange light that laced past his legs
than i