keyring of her dead jailer to open the door leading back into the
Chamber of Mystery where Tars Tarkas fought for his life with the
great banths. Such a tiny keyhole as now defied me had opened the
way to the intricate lock in that other door.

Hastily I dumped the contents of my pocket-pouch upon the ground
before me. Could I but find a slender bit of steel I might yet
fashion a key that would give me ingress to the temple prison.

As I examined the heterogeneous collection of odds and ends that
is always to be found in the pocket-pouch of a Martian warrior my
hand fell upon the emblazoned radium flash torch of the black dator.

As I was about to lay the thing aside as of no value in my present
predicament my eyes chanced upon a few strange characters roughly
and freshly scratched upon the soft gold of the case.

Casual curiosity prompted me to decipher them, but what I read
carried no immediate meaning to my mind. There were three sets of
characters, one below another:


3 |--| 50 T
1 |--| 1 X
9 |--| 25 T


For only an instant my curiosity was piqued, and then I replaced
the torch in my pocket-pouch, but my fingers had not unclasped
from it when there rushed to my memory the recollection of the