ve the signal and
down we go; and we'll either bring back what we're going after, or
we'll all come back and report ourselves dead!"

"Just a minute, Major," the Master answered. He had opened a small
door of the box containing the apparatus he had just clamped to the
rail, and had taken out a combination telephone earpiece and receiver.
With this at mouth and ear, he leaned over the rail. His lips moved in
a whisper inaudible even to those in the lower gallery with him.

An astonishing change, however, swept over the infuriated mob in the
Haram and throughout the radiating streets. One would have thought a
bolt from heaven had struck the Moslems dumb. The angry tumult died;
the vast hush that rose to _Nissr_ was like a blow in the face,
so striking was its contrast with the previous uproar. Most of the
furious gesticulation ceased, also. All those brown-faced fanatics
remained staring upward, silent in a kind of thunder-struck amazement.

CHAPTER XXXI

EAST AGAINST WEST

The major, peering down through the trap, swore luridly. Leclair
muttered something to himself, with wrinkled brow. "Captain Alden's"
eyes blinked strangely, through the holes of the mask. The others
stared in frank astonishment.

"What the devil, sir--?" began the major; but the chief held up
his hand for silence. Again he spoke whisperingly into the strange
apparatus. This time a murmur rose to him; a murmur increasing to a
confused tumult, that in an angry wave of malediction beat up about
Nissr as she hung there with spinning helicopters, over the city.

The Master smiled as he put up the receiver in the little box and
closed the door with a snap. Regretfully he shook his head.

"These Arabic gentlemen, _et al_," he remarked, "don't seem agreeably
disposed to treat with us on a basis of exchanging the Sheik Abd el
Rahman for what we want from them. My few remarks in Arabic, via this
etheric megaphone, seem to have met a rebuff. Every man in the Haram,
the minarets, the arcade, and the radiating streets heard every word I
said, gentlemen, as plainly as if I had spoken directly into his ear.
Yet no sound at all developed here."

"The principle is parallel to that of an artillery shell that only
bursts when it strikes, and might be extremely useful in warfare,
if properly developed--as I haven't had time, yet, to develop it. No
matter about that, though. My proposal has been rejected. Peace having
been declined, we have no alterna