by Robert Bloch
originally published Weird Tales, May, 1936
Dr. Stutgache is a scumbag and crook who's been cutting throats to line his pockets for years in the mideast. Word gets back to him of a potentially priceless statue half-buried in the Egyptian desert that none of the locals will touch due to its taboo nature. Having no such scruples, Stutgache tortures the location out of a poor schlob and gets himself an expedition together to go git it.
They find it, but bad news. The local bearers and guides recognize it as an idol of Nyarlathotep, and won't have anything to do with it. They run off in the night, leaving Stutgache to find his own way home.
He tries to make his way out, pursued in his increasingly-addled mind - and possibly physically as well - by Nyarlathotep...
Bloch was getting his sea legs here. This is approaching a mature story, even though its more mood piece than plot, its effective and at times unsettling.
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