And when at last the fugitive had groped his way well back along the throat of the passage, only then dared he fumble out a match and strike it to flame.
The shadows fled at once; he, crouched and peered all about, then sighed and breathed easier; all was unchanged, the years flown between then and now had altered nothing. This was 'his' place, his secret place, where he'd come as a boy to escape the drunken wrath of a brutish stepfather. Well, that old swine was dead now, pickled in cheap liquor and undeservingly buried in the grounds of a nearby church. Good luck to him! But the sanctuary remained.
The match burned down, its flame touching the fugitive's fingers. He dropped it, swiftly struck another, pushed on along the subterranean passage.
Under a ceiling less than five feet high and arched with ancient stone, he must keep his back bowed; at his elbows the walls gave him six inches to spare on both sides. But while he could go faster now, still he must go quietly for a while yet. The follower had tracked him half-way round the world, tracked him supernaturally. And who could say but that he might track hint here, too?
Again he paused, scratched at the stubble on his chin, wondered about the Elixir. Oh, that was what his pursuer wanted, sure enough — but it was not all he wanted. No, for his chief objective was the life of the thief! A thief, yes, which was what he had been all of his miserable life. At first a petty thief, then a burglar of some skill and daring (and eventually of some renown, which in the end had forced him abroad), finally a looter of foreign tombs and temples.
Tombs and temples...
Again he thought of the Elixir, that tiny vial in his pocket. If only he had known then . . . but he had not known. He had thought those damned black Sanusi wizards kept treasure in that dune-hidden place, the tribal treasures of their ancestors; or at least, so he'd been informed by Erik Kuphnas in Tunis. Kuphnas, the dog, himself one of the world's foremost experts in the occult. 'Ah!' (he had said), 'but they also keep the Elixir there —which is all that interests me. Go there, enter, steal! Keep what you will, but only bring me the Elixir. And never work again, my friend, for that's how well I'll pay you . .
And he had done it! All of his skill went into it, and a deal of luck, too — and for what? No treasure at all, and only the tiny vial in his pocket to show for his trouble. And what trouble! Even now he shuddered, thinking back on those corpse-laden catacombs under the desert.
Straight back to Tunis he'd taken the vial, to Erik Kuphnas where he waited. And: 'Do you have it?' The black magician had been frantically eager.
'I might have it,' the fugitive had been tantalizingly noncommittal. 'I might even sell it — if only I knew what it was. But the truth this time, Erik, for I've had it with lies and tales of priceless treasure.'
And Kuphnas had at once answered:
'No use, that vial, to you. No use to anyone who is not utterly pure- and completely innocent.'
'Oh? And are you those things?'
How Kuphnas had glared at him then. 'No,' he had answered slowly. 'I am not — but neither, am I a fool. I would use it carefully, sparingly, and so dilute as to be almost totally leeched of its- power. At first, anyway —until I knew what I was dealing with. As to what it is: no man knows that, except perhaps a certain Sanusi wizard. The legends have it that he was a chief three hundred
years ago — and that now he's high-priest of the cult of the Undying Dead!'
'What?' the fugitive had snorted, and laughed. 'What? And you believe such mumbo-jumbo, such utter rubbish?' Then his voice had hardened. Now for the last time tell me: what is it?'
At that Kuphnas had jumped up, strode to and fro across the fine rugs of his study 'Fool!' he'd hissed, glaring as before. 'How may any mere man of the 20th Century "know" what it is? If s the essence of mandrake, the sweat on the upper lip of a three-day corpse, six grey grains of Ibn Ghazi's powder. It's the humor of a zombies iris, the mist rising up from the Pool of All Knowledge, the pollen-laden breath of a black lotus. Man, I don't 'know" what it is! But I know something of what it can do . .
'I'm still listening,' the fugitive had pressed.
To one who is pure, innocent, unblemished, the Elixir is a crystal ball, a shewstone, an oracle. A single drop will make such a man -- how shall we say? -- AWARE!'
'Aware?'
'Yes, but when you say it, say and think it in capitals — AWARE!'
Ah! s a drug — it will heighten a man's senses.' 'Rather, his perceptions — if you will admit the difference. And it is not a drug. It is the Elixir.'
'Would you recognize it?'
`Instantly!'
'And what will you pay for it?'
If s the real thing -- fifty thousand of your pounds!' 'Cash?' (Suddenly the fugitive's throat had been very dry)
'Ten thousand now, the rest tomorrow morning.' And then the fugitive had held out his hand and opened it. There in his palm had lain the vial, a tiny stopper firmly in its neck.
Kuphnas had taken it from him into hands that shook, held it up eagerly to the light from his window. And the vial had lit up at once in a golden glow, as if the occultist had captured a small part of the sun itself! And: 'Yes!' he had hissed then. 'Yes, this is the Elixir!'
At that the fugitive had snatched it back, held out his hand again. 'My ten thousand— on account,' he'd said. 'Also, we'll need an eye-dropper.'
Kuphnas had fetched the money, asked: 'And what is this about an eye-dropper?'
'But isn't it obvious? You have given me one fifth of my money, and I will give you one fifth of the Elixir. Three drops, as I reckon it. And the rest tomorrow, when I'm paid.
Kuphnas had protested, but the fugitive would not be swayed. He gave him three drops, no more. And five minutes later when he left him, already the occultist had been calculating the degree of dilution required for his first experiment. His first, and very likely only experiment. Certainly his last.
For when with the dawn the fugitive had returned and passed into Kuphnas' high-walled courtyard and up the fig-shaded marble steps to his apartments, he had found the exterior louvre doors open; likewise the Moorishly ornate iron lattice beyond them; and in Kuphnas' study itself —
There on the table, effulgent in the first bright beams of day, a bowl of what appeared to be simple water — and the empty eye-dropper beside it. But of Erik Kuphnas and the fugitive's forty thousand pounds, no sign at all. And then, in the corner of the occultist's study, tossed down there and crumpled in upon itself, he had spied what seemed to be a piece of old leather or perhaps a large canvas sack; except it was the general shape of the thing that attracted the fugitives attention. That and the question of what it was doing here in these sumptuous apartments. Only when he moved closer had he seen what it really was that it had hair and dead, glassy, staring orb-like eyes — Kuphnas' eyes — still glaring a strange composite glare of shock, horror, and per- manently frozen malignance!
Innocence and purity indeed!
That had been enough for the fugitive: he had fled at once, with nightmare gibbering on his heels, and with something else there, too. For to his knowledge that was when he had first become the fugitive, since when he had always been on the move, always running.