Across the shelf stood a solid wall of masonry flanked at either side by great, round towers pierced by long, narrow embrasures. In the center of the wall was a lofty gateway which was closed by a massive and handsomely wrought portcullis behind which Blake saw two negroes standing guard. They were clothed precisely as his captors, but held great battle-axes, the butts of which rested upon the ground.
“What ho, the gate!” shouted Paul Bodkin. “Open to the outer guard and a prisoner!”
Slowly the portcullis rose and Blake and his captor passed beneath. Directly inside the gateway and at the left, built into the hillside, was what was evidently a guardhouse. Before it loitered a score or so of soldiers, uniformed like Paul Bodkin, upon the breast of each the red cross. To a heavy wooden rail gaily caparisoned horses were tethered, their handsome trappings recalling to Blake’s memory paintings he had seen of mounted knights of medieval England.
There was so much of unreality in the strangely garbed blacks, the massive barbican that guarded the way, the trappings of the horses, that Blake was no longer capable of surprise when one of the two doors in the guardhouse opened and there stepped out a handsome young man clad in a hauberk of chain mail over which was a light surcoat of rough stuff, dyed purple. Upon the youth’s head fitted a leopard skin bassinet from the lower edge of which depended a camail or gorget of chain mail that entirely surrounded and protected his throat and neck. He was armed only with a heavy sword and a dagger, but against the side of the guardhouse, near the doorway where he paused to look at Blake, leaned a long lance, and near it was a shield with a red cross emblazoned upon its boss.
“ ’Od zounds!” exclaimed the young man. “What hast thou there, varlet?”
“A prisoner, an’ it pleases thee, noble lord,” replied Paul Bodkin, deferentially.
“A Saracen, of a surety,” stated the young man.
“Nay, an I may make so bold, Sir Richard,” replied Paul—“but methinks he be no Saracen.”
“And why?”
“With mine own eyes I didst see him make the sign before the Cross.”
“Fetch him hither, lout!”
Bodkin prodded Blake in the rear with his pike, but the American scarce noticed the offense so occupied was his mind by the light of truth that had so suddenly illuminated it. In the instant he had grasped the solution. He laughed inwardly at himself for his denseness. Now he understood everything—and these fellows thought they could put it over on him, did they? Well, they had come near to doing it, all right.
He stepped quickly toward the young man and halted, upon his lips a faintly sarcastic smile. The other eyed him with haughty arrogance.
“Whence comest thou,” he asked, “and what doest thou in the Valley of the Sepulcher, varlet?”
Blake’s smile faded—too much was too much. “Cut the comedy, young fellow,” he drawled in his slow way. “Where’s the director?”
“Director? Forsooth, I know not what thou meanest.”
“Yes you don’t!” snapped Blake, with fine sarcasm. “But let me tell you right off the bat that no seven-fifty a day extra can pull anything like that with me!”
“ ’Od’s blud, fellow! I ken not the meaning of all the words, but I mislike thy tone. It savors o’er much of insult to fall sweetly upon the ears of Richard Montmorency.”
“Be yourself,” advised Blake. “If the director isn’t handy send for the assistant director, or the camera man—even the continuity writer may have more sense than you seem to have.”
“Be myself? And who thinkest thee I would be other than Richard Montmorency, a noble knight of Nimmr.”
Blake shook his head in despair, then he turned to the soldiers who were standing about listening to the conversation. He thought some of them would be grinning at the joke that was being played on him, but he saw only solemn, serious faces.
“Look here,” he said, addressing Paul Bodkin, “don’t any of you know where the director is?”
“ ‘Director’?” repeated Bodkin, shaking his head. “There be none in Nimmr thus y-clept, nay, nor in all the Valley of the Sepulcher that I wot.”
“I’m sorry,” said Blake, “the mistake is mine; but if there is no director there must be a keeper. May I see him?”
“Ah, keeper!” cried Bodkin, his face lighting with understanding. “Sir Richard is the keeper.”
“My gawd!” exclaimed Blake, turning to the young man. “I beg your pardon, I thought that you were one of the inmates.”
“Inmates? Indeed thou speakest a strange tongue and yet withall it hath the flavor of England,” replied the young man gravely. “But yon varlet be right—I am indeed this day the Keeper of the Gate.”
Blake was commencing to doubt his own sanity, or at least his judgment. Neither the young white man nor any of the negroes had any of the facial characteristics of mad men. He looked up suddenly at the keeper of the gate.
“I am sorry,” he said, flashing one of the frank smiles that was famous amongst his acquaintances. “I have acted like a boor, but I’ve been under considerable of a nervous strain for a long time, and on top of that I’ve been lost in the jungle for days without proper or sufficient food.
“I thought that you were trying to play some sort of a joke on me and, well, I wasn’t in any mood for jokes when I expected friendship and hospitality instead.
“Tell me, where am I? What country is this?”
“Thou art close upon the city of Nimmr,” replied the young man.
“I suppose this is something of a national holiday or something?”
