It was a sound.  The faintest scraping and knocking without that wall.  It went through him like an electric current....  And then a roar burst from him that fairly split his ears, the reaction of his quivered nerves and racking fears of his uncertainties, his tightening terrors.

But now—­nothing.  He could not hear a thing.  A delusion?  A torture of his final hours?...  No, it came again.  More definitely now, a little grinding and scraping.

Faster and faster, a muffled, driving thud.

A jubilant reassurance sang gayly through him.  He had expected this—­this was what he had predicted.  Hamdi was no foul friend.  He was a devilish uncomfortable customer with antiquated notions of revenge, but now he had shot his wad and was going to undo his tricks.

Ryder braced himself to present a carefree jauntiness—­an air somewhat difficult to assume when one is trussed like a spitted bird, in a hot coffin space, with hair falling dankly over a steaming brow, with a collar like a string, and an indescribable pallor beneath the bronze of one’s face.

Something stirred.  One end of a brick was driven in against his chest.  Then he felt the blind working of some tool that caught it and worried it free.

It seemed to him that through that dark aperture a current of cold, delicious air came rushing in about him.  The blows sounded against the adjoining bricks and he thought of the glorious joy of seeing out again, feeling that he would welcome even the sight of Hamdi’s blond mustache and the eunuch’s hideous grin.

Now the aperture admitted a pale gleam upon his chest.  Staring steadily down he caught a glimpse of the fingers curving about a brick, and his heart that had steadied, began to race again wildly.  For they were not the fingers of the black nor yet the wiry joints of the general.

They were soft, white fingers, with a gleam of rings.

Aimee!  Somehow, somewhere, she had managed to come to him, to achieve this rescue....

“Aimee!” He breathed the name.

“S-sh!” came a warning little whisper, and impatiently he waited until that opening should be greater and permit of sight and speech.

His helplessness was maddening.  If only he could raise his hands, could get those bonds off!  He twisted, he writhed, he tried to lift his elbows and get his wrists in reach of the opening, but the coffin was too diabolically cramped for movement until the hole was very much larger.  Then with a convulsive pressure he swung his wrists within reach and after a moment’s wait he felt a thin blade drawn across the silk.

The relief was glorious.  He swung his hands free, rubbing the chafed wrists, then thrust an opened hand out into the opening, and with instant comprehension a short, pointed bit of iron was put within it.

Now he could do something!  With furious strength he attacked the bricks edging the hole and as he pried free each brick he could again get a glimpse of those white delicate fingers lifting it carefully away.