ntury begins the world.... Anyway,
Tavor got the notion, as I have said, of an age in decay at about the
time these legends start in; with a trade moving west.

"He nosed it all out! God knows how. Of course it was only a
theory--only a notion in fact. He hadn't anything to go on that I could
see. But after two years' drifting about in the Shamo, this is how he
finally figured it:

"Northern Asia traded gold in the west; the mined product would be
molded into bricks in lower Mongolia. It was then carried over land
to the southwest coast of Arabia. There was some great center of world
commerce low down on the Red Sea about eight hundred miles south of Port
Said.

"Tavor said that when he began to think about the thing the caravan
route was pretty clear to him. Arabia seemed to have been connected,
in that remote age, with Persia at the Strait of Ormus, so there was
a direct overland route.... That put another notion into Tavor's head;
these treasure caravans must have crossed the immense Sandy Desert of
El-Khali. And this notion developed another; if one were seeking the
wreck of any one of these treasure caravans he would be more likely to
find it in the El-Khali than in the Shamo."

Barclay moved away from the fire, got a chair and sat down. He was
across the hearth from me. He looked about the room and at the curtained
windows that shut out the blue night.

"You can't sleep," he went on, "so I might just as well tell you this.
A good deal of it is what the lawyers called dicta... obiter dicta; when
the judge gets to putting in stuff on the side ... but it's a long time
'til daylight."

He had taken a small chair and he sat straight in it after the manner of
a big man.

"You see the treasure carried south across the Shamo would be 'gold
wheat' (dust, we'd call it), packed in green skins... you couldn't find
that. But the caravans crossing the El-Khali would carry this gold in
bricks for the great west trade. Now a gold brick is indestructible;
you can't think of anything that would last forever like a gold brick.
Nothing would disturb it, water and sun are alike without effect on
it....

"That was Tavor's notion, and he went right after it. Most of us would
have slacked out after two years in the hell hole of Central Mongolia.
But not Charlie Tavor. He got down to Arabia somehow; God knows, I never
asked him,--and he went right on into the Great Sandy Desert of Roba El
Khali. The oldest caravan route known r