endant in two, each claiming the right to torture him first and
learn the secret. They ended up without a whole rag between them, and
had to send Juma to head-quarters for new blue dressing-gowns. The
doctor came himself--a fat good-natured party with an eye-glass and a
cocktail appetite, acting locum-tenens for the real official who was
home on leave. He brought the ingredients for cocktails with him.

"Yes," he said, shaking the mixer with a sort of deft solicitude.
"There's more than something in the tale. I've had a try myself to get
details. Tippoo Tib believes in up-to-date physic, and when the old
rascal's sick he sends for me. I offered to mix him an elixir of life
that would make him out-live Methuselah if he'd give me as much as a
hint of the general direction of his cache."

"He ought to have fallen for that," said Yerkes, but the doctor shook
his head.

"He's an Arab. They're Shiah Muhammedans. Their Paradise is a
pleasant place from all accounts. He advised me to drink my own
elixir, and have lots and lots of years in which to find the ivory,
without being beholden to him for help. Wily old scaramouch! But I
had a better card up my sleeve. He has taken to discarding ancient
prejudices--doesn't drink or anything like that, but treats his harem
almost humanly. Lets 'em have anything that costs him nothing. Even
sends for a medico when they're sick! Getting lax in his old age!
Sent for me a while ago to attend his favorite wife--sixty years old if
she's a day, and as proud of him as if he were the king of Jerusalem.
Well--I looked her over, judged she was likely to keep her bed, and did
some thinking."

"You know their religious law? A woman can't go to Paradise without
special intercession, mainly vicarious. I found a mullah--that's a
Muhammedan priest--who'd do anything for half of nothing. They most of
them will. I gave him fifty dibs, and promised him more if the trick
worked. Then I told the old woman she was going to die, but that if
she'd tell me the secret of Tippoo Tib's ivory I had a mullah handy who
would pass her into Paradise ahead of her old man. What did she do?
She called Tippoo Tib, and he turned me out of the house. So I'm fifty
out of pocket, and what's worse, the old girl didn't die--got right up
out of bed and stayed up! My rep's all smashed to pieces among the
Arabs!"

"D'you suppose the old woman knew the secret?" I asked.

"Not she! If she'd known it she'd