need is a bit of luck and the ivory's ours!"

"I'll sell you my share now for a thousand dollars--come--come across!"
grinned Yerkes.

There was a rough-house after that. He and Fred nearly pulled the old
attendant 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