ttle to the right in an attitude he unconsciously assumed when
listening for important words of man or wireless machine.

"It is the folly of adventurous youth," rang out the melodious and
sincere voice of the mandarin. "It is a quest for a grail which will
end in a pool of your own blood! Come into India with me!"

"But I decided--long ago--mandarin!"

"Your life is your life," said the mandarin sadly. "The City of Stolen
Lives is beyond the mountain. _Ch'ing_!"

CHAPTER XVII

A road as white and straight as a silver bar led directly between the
black, jutting shoulders of the hills to the gates of Len Yang.

Peter, with his heart beating a wild symphony of anticipation and fear,
drew rein.

The small mule panted from the long desperate climb, his plump sides
filling and caving as he drank in the sharp evening air.

Close behind the city's faded green walls towered the mountain ranges
of Tibet, cold, gloomy, and vague in the purple mystery of their
uncertain distances. They were like chained giants, brooding over the
wrongs committed in the City of Stolen Lives, sullen in their mighty
helplessness.

In the rays of the swollen sun the close-packed hovels enclosed within
the moss-covered walls seemed to rest upon a blurring background of
vermilion earth.

As Peter clicked his tongue and urged the tired little animal down the
slope, he recalled the fragment of the description that had been given
him of this place. Hideous people, with staring eyes, dripping the
blood-red slime of the cinnabar-mines--leprosy, filth, vermin--

His palace! It stood out above the carmine ruck like a cube of purest
ivory in a bleeding wound. Its marble outrivaled the whiteness of the
Taj Mahal. It was a thing of snow-white beauty, like a dove poising
for flight above a gory battlefield. And it was crowned by a dome of
lapis lazuli, bluer than the South Pacific under a melting sun! But
its base, Peter knew, was stained red, a blood-red which had seeped up
and up from the carmine clay.

The gate to the city was down, and by the grace of his blue-satin robe
Peter was permitted to enter.

And instantly he was obsessed with the flaming color of that man's
unappeased passion. Red--red! The hovels were spattered with the red
clay. The man, the skinny, wretched creature who begged for a moment
of his gracious mercy at the gate, dripped in ruby filth. The mule
sank and wallowed in vermilion mire.

Scrawny, underno