"_Wallah_, you put a premium on slayers! Now what award do you give me, seeing that I was unarmed when I slew Shirkuh?" Hassan regarded him admiringly for a moment. "_Billahi_, but you do belong to us! Not as a hasheesh-besotted fool to slay and be slain, but as an Associate, and finally, an Initiate. It is such as you that we seek, and seek in vain." A fierce light flamed in Hassan's eyes. "Yet your victory over my will is your doom. In the fullness of your effort to deny the illusion, you finally spoke your negation aloud. _And you spoke in English!_" For an instant Farrell was dazed by the horror that had been heaped on the soul-racking triumph he had just won. Doom was at hand--doom inescapable, else that old man would not dare confront him alone. With a cry of rage, Farrell sprang to throttle Hassan despite what unseen allies he might have. But the floor sank beneath his feet as Hassan, smiling and unmoved, fingered a knob near the jamb of the arch. Farrell clutched at the edge of the opening through which he was dropping. His fingers sustained him for a moment, but the momentum of his body swinging free into vacancy broke his slender hold. He fell into the impenetrable blackness below. _8. Monsters of the Pool_ Instead of an interminable drop to the bottom of an abyss, Farrell landed in less than a second, and feet foremost, on slippery flags. He noted that the air was not as stagnant as one would expect in an oubliette. "Plenty of circulation ... just put me in temporary storage until they get around to organizing a committee to finish me with pomp and ceremony," he muttered as he struck a match. Farrell saw that the walls of the dungeon were curved. He strode toward the center, and by the light of a second match saw a massive column of masonry which rose from floor to ceiling. He remembered the pool he had seen on the floor above, and concluded that the pillar before him was a hollow shaft which led to some subterranean spring in the heart of the knoll on which Bayonne was built. "All in one piece, unhurt, and no enemy in sight--yet!" he reflected as he skirted the column. Among the inevitable rubbish with which the dungeon would be littered Farrell hoped to find some fragment of rock, scrap of wood, anything, in fact, which would give him the means of meeting the enemy with more than bare hands. But before he could strike his next match, Farrell saw a glow of light at a considerable distance to his right. It faintly outlined a low archway, and suggested possible escape from the dungeon into which he had been dropped by Hassan. That same light, however, betokened the immediate presence of the enemy, and perhaps an armed sentry. Farrell therefore crept on in darkness until he was well out of line with the source of light, then left the column and progressed toward the wall.