d probably less, to make
his escape. His eyes rested for a moment on the holster at Boolba's
belt, and he side-stepped.

"Where are you going?"

Boolba's heavy hand rested on his shoulder.

"Not out of the doorway, my little pigeon. I am blind, but----"

So far he had got when Cherry turned in a flash, so that his back was
toward Boolba. He stooped, and made a sudden dash backward, colliding
with the Commissary, and in that second his hand had gripped the gun at
Boolba's waist. There was a strap across the butt, but it broke with a
jerk.

Then followed a duel without parallel. Boolba pulled his second gun and
fired, and, shooting as blindly, Cherry fired backward. He heard a groan
over his shoulder and saw Boolba fall to his knees. Then he ran for the
main door, stumbled past the state-bedroom of the monks, and into the
chapel. It was his one chance that the priest had returned to his
devotions, and he found the man on his knees.

"Percy," said Cherry, "unfasten that strap."

The priest understood no language but his own. But a gesture, the strap
about the wrists, blue and swollen, and the long revolver, needed no
explanation. The strap fell off and Cherry rubbed his wrists.

He opened the breech of his gun; he had four shells left, but he was
alone against at least twenty men. He guessed that Boolba had made the
monastery his advance headquarters whilst he was waiting for news of the
fugitives, and probably not twenty but two hundred were within call.

He reached the road and made for the place where the car had been left.
If the others had escaped they also would go in that direction. He saw
no guard or sentry, and heard no sound from the walled enclosure of the
monastery. He struck against something in the roadway and stooped and
picked it up. It was stitched in a canvas cover and it felt like a book.
He suddenly remembered the scraps of conversation he had overheard
between the girl and Malcolm.

This, then, was the "Book of All-Power."

"Foolishness," said Cherry, and put it in his pocket. But the book
showed one thing clearly--the others had got away. He had marked the
place where they had stopped, but the car was gone!

It was too dark to see the tracks, but there was no question that it had
been here, for he found an empty petrol tin and the still air reeked of
rubber solution.

He had need of all his philosophy. He was in an unknown country, a
fugitive from justice, and that country was teeming