CHAPTER XLVII
A WAY OUT?
The woman stood pointing into a black recess at the far end of thecrypt. All that the Master could discern there, at first, was adarkness even greater than that which shrouded the corners of thevault.
"Light, here!" he commanded. Ferrara swung a lamp, by its chain,into the recess. They saw a low, square opening in the wall of dull,gleaming metal.
"A passage, eh?" the Master ejaculated.
"Maybe a _cul-de-sac_," she answered. "But--there's no telling--it maylead somewhere."
"By Allah! Men! Here--all of you!"
The Master's voice rang imperatively. They all came trooping withnaked or slippered feet that slid in the wet redness of the floor.Broken exclamations sounded.
Seizing the lamp, the Master thrust it into the opening, whichmeasured no more than four feet high by three wide. The light smokilyilluminated about three yards of this narrow passage. Then a sharpturn to the right concealed all else.
Whither this runway might lead, to what peril or what trap it mightconduct them, none could tell. Very strongly it reminded the Masterof the gallery in the Great Pyramid of Gizeh, which he had seentwelve years before--the gallery which in ancient days had served as adeath-trap for treasure-seekers.
That gallery, he remembered, had contained a cleverly hidden stonein its floor which once on a time had precipitated pilferers down avertical shaft more than a hundred feet, to death, in the bowels ofthat huge, terrifying mausoleum.
Was this passage of similar purpose and design? In all probability,yes. Oriental ways run parallel in all the lands of the East.
Nevertheless, the passage offered a means of escaping from the crypt.And there, with the dead Maghrabi mudirs, the Legionaries could notstay. In a few minutes now, at most, the men of Jannati Shahr would beupon them.
"Faith, what the devil now?" exclaimed Bohannan, now seeming quiterational, as he peered into the cramped corridor. "Where to Hell doesthis lead?"
"Just where you've said, to Hell, it's far more than likely," theMaster retorted. "Come, men, into it! Follow me!"
He stooped, lamp in one hand, simitar in the other, and in a mostcramped posture entered the passage. After him came Leclair, thewoman, Bohannan, and the others.
The air hung close and heavy. The oppression of that stoopingposition, the lamp-smoke, the unusual strain on the muscles, therealization of a whole world of gold above and all about them, seemedto strangle and enervate them. But steadily they kept on and on.
The turning of the passage revealed a long, descending incline, thatsloped down at an angle of perhaps thirty degrees. A marked rise intemperature grew noticeable. What might that mean? None could imagine,but not one even thought of turning back.
The walls and floor in this straight, descending passage were now nolonger smooth, arabesqued, polished. To the contrary, they showed arough surface, on which the marks of the chisel could be plainly seenas it had shorn away the yielding metal in great gouges. Moreover,streaks of black granite now began to appear; and these, as theLegionaries advanced, became ever wider until at last the stonepredominated.
The Master understood they were now coming to the bottom of part ofthe golden dyke. Undeviated by the hard rock, the tunnel continued todescend, with here and there a turn. Narrowly the Master scrutinizedthe floor, tapping it with the simitar as he crept onward, seekingindications of any possible trap that might hurl him into bottomless,black depths.
Quite at once, a right-angled turning opened into a small chamber notabove eight feet high by fifteen square. In this, silent, listening,the sweating fugitives gathered.
The temperature was here oppressive, and the lamps burned blue withsome kind of gas that stifled the lungs. Gas and smoke together, madebreathing hard. A dull, roaring sound had begun to make itself vaguelyaudible, the past few minutes; and as the Legionaries stood listening,this was now rather plain to their ears.
"This is a devil of a place for a multi-millionaire, I must say!"Bohannan exploded. Simonds laughed, with tense nerves. One or twoothers swore, bitterly cursing the men of El Barr.
The Master, "Captain Alden," and Leclair, however, gave no heed.Already they were peering around, at the black walls where now only anoccasional thread of gold was to be seen.
Five openings led out of this singular chamber, all equally dark,narrow, formidable.
"This seems to be a regular labyrinth, my Captain," said Leclair, inFrench. "Surely a trap of some kind. They are clever, these Arabs.They let the mouse run and hope, then--_voila_--he is caught!"
"It looks that way. But we're not caught yet. These infernalpassageways are all alike, to me. We must choose one. Well--this is asgood as any." He gestured toward an aperture at the left. "Men, followme!"
The passage they now entered was all of rock, with no traces whateverof gold. For a few hundred feet its course was horizontal; then itplunged downward like the first.
And almost immediately the temperature began to mount, once more.
"Faith, but I think we'd better be getting back!" exclaimed the major."I don't care much for this heat, or that roaring noise that's gettinglouder all the time!"
"You'll follow me, or I'll shoot you down!" the Master flung at him,crouching around. "I've had enough insubordination from _you_, sir!Not another word!"
The stooping little procession of trapped Legionaries once more wentonward, downward. The muffled roar, ahead of them, rose in volume asthey made a final turning and came into a much more spacious vaultwhere moisture goutted from the black walls. A thin, steamy vapor wasrising from the floor, warm to the bare feet.
A moment the Legionaries stood there, blinking in the vague lamplight,glad of the respite that permitted them to straighten up and easecramped muscles.
"No way out of _here_!" Bohannan grumbled. "Sure, we're at the end o'nowhere. Now if we'd only taken another passage--"
Nobody paid him any heed. The major's exhibition of irrational greedhad lost caste for him. Even Lebon, the orderly, curled a lip of scornat him.
All eyes were eagerly searching for some exit from this ultimate pit.Panting, reeking with sweat, fouled with blood and dirt, the doomedmen shuffled round the vault, blinking with bloodshot eyes.
No outlet was visible. The vault seemed empty. But all at once,Bristol uttered a cry.
"Wine-sacks, by the living jingo!" he exclaimed.
"Wine-sacks--in a Moslem city?" demanded the Master. "Impossible!"
"What else are these, sir?" the Englishman asked, pointing.
The Master strode to the corner where he stood, and flared his lampover a score of distended goat-hides.
"Well, by Allah!" he ejaculated.
"Sacrificial wine," put in Leclair, at his elbow. "See the red seals,with the imprint of the star and crescent, here and here?" He toucheda seal with his finger. "Rare old wine, I'll wager!"
"Wine!" gulped the major, whose excitable nerves had been frayed tomadness. "Wine, by God! Faith, but it's the royal thirst I have on me!Who's got a knife?"
The Master thrust him back with such violence that he slipped on thewet floor and nearly fell.
"You'll get no knife, sir, and you'll drink no sacrificial wine!" hecried, with more of anger in his voice than any of the Legion had yetheard. "The jewels--yes, I gave you your fool's way, on those. But nowine!
"We of the Flying Legion are going to die, sober men! There'll be nodebauchery--no tradition handed down among those Moslem swine thatthey butchered us, drunk. If any of you men want to die right now,broach one of those wine-sacks!"
His simitar balanced itself for action. The glint in his eye, by thewavering lamp-shine, meant stern business. Not a hand was extendedtoward the tautly distended sacks.
Bohannan's whispered curse was lost in a startled cry from Wallace.
"Here's something!" he exclaimed. "Look at this ring, will you?"
They turned to him, away from the wine-bags. Wallace had fallen to hisknees and was scraping slime from the wet floor--the sl
ime of ages ofdust mingled with viscid moisture from the steam that, thinly blurringthe dark air, had condensed on the walls and run down.
Emilio thrust down the lamp he held. There on the stone floor, theysaw a huge, rust-red iron ring that lay in a circular groove cut inthe black granite.
This ring was engaged in a metal staple let into the stone. And now,as they looked more closely, and as some Legionaries scraped the floorwith eager hands, a crack became visible in the floor of the vault.
"Look out, men!" the Master cautioned. "This may be a trap that willswing open and drop us into God knows what! Stand back, all--take yourtime, now! Go slow there!"
They heeded, and stood back. The Master himself, assuming all risks,got down on hands and knees and explored the crack in the floor. Itwas square, with a dimension of about five feet on the edge.
"It's a trap-door, all right," he announced. "And we--are going toopen it!"
"One would need a rope or a long lever to do that, my Captain," putin Leclair. "It is obvious that a man, or men, standing on the trap,could not raise it. And it is too large to straddle."
The Master arose, stripped off his tunic and passed it throughthe ring. He twisted the tunic and gave one end to the lieutenant.Himself, he took the other.
"Get hold, everybody!" he commanded. "And be sure you're not standingon the trap!"
All laid hold on the ends of the coat. With a "One, two,three!" from the Master, the Legionaries threw all their muscle intothe lift. "Now, men! Heave her once more!"
The stone gave. The Legionaries doubled their efforts, with pantingbreath, feet that slipped on the dank floor, grunts of labor.
"Heave her!"
Up swung the stone, aside. It slid over the wet rock. There, in itsplace, gaped a black hole that penetrated unknown depths.
Steam billowed up--or rather, vapor distinctly warm to the touch. Andfrom very far below, much louder boomed the roar of rushing waters.The Legionaries knew, now, what had caused the dull, roaring sound.Unmistakably a furious cascade was boiling, swirling away, down thereat undetermined distances of blackness.
The boldest men among the little group of fugitives felt the crawl andfingering of a very great dread at their hearts. Behind them lay thelabyrinth, with what pitfalls none could tell and with the JannatiShahr men perhaps already penetrating into the crypt. Around themloomed the black, wet walls of this lowest stone dungeon with but oneother exit--the pit at their feet.
The Master threw himself prone on the slippery floor, took one of thelamps and lowered it, by the chain, to its capacity. Smoke and vaporarose about his head as he peered down.
"Well, what is it?" demanded Bohannan, also squinting down, as he bentover the hole. "What do you see?"
"Nothing," the Master answered. "Nothing definite."
He could, in fact, be sure of nothing. But it seemed to him that, veryfar below, he could make out something like a swift, liquid blackness,streaked with dim-speeding lines of white that dissolved withphantasmagoric rapidity; a racing flood that roared and set the solidrock a-quiver in its mad tumult.
"Faith, an underground river of hot water!" ejaculated the Irishmanwith an oath. "Some river!"
"Warm water, at any rate," the Master judged, getting up again. Astrange smile was in his eyes, by the smoky lamplight. "Well, men,this is our way out. The Arabs are not going to have any slaughterof victims, here. And what is more, they'll capture no dead bodiesof white men, in _this_ trap! There'll be at least ten skulls missingfrom that interesting golden Pyramid of Ayeshah!"
"For God's sake!" the major stammered. "What--what are you goingto--do, now? Jump down that shaft?"
"Exactly. Your perspicacity does you credit, Major."
"Sure, you'll never catch _me_ jumping!"
"Gentlemen," the Master said, in a low, quiet voice, "I regret tostate that we have one coward among us."
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