“If I remember rightly—and at the time this cathedral was built I followed the plans with some care—the entrance is back of the main southern cluster of pillars over there at the transept-crossing. Come on, Beta. In a minute we can see whether thousand-year-old memories are any good or not!”
Quickly he led the way, ax and torch in hand, and as they rounded the group of massive buttresses whence sprang the pillars for the groin-vaults aloft, a cry of satisfaction escaped him, followed by a word of quick astonishment.
“What is it, Allan?” exclaimed the girl. “Anything wrong? Or—”
The man stood peering with wide eyes; then suddenly he knelt and began pawing over the little heap of vegetable drift that had accumulated along the wall.
“It’s here, all right,” said he. “There’s the door, right in front of us—but what I don’t understand is—this!”
“What, Allan? Is there anything wrong?”
“Not wrong, perhaps, but devilish peculiar!”
Speaking, he raised his hand to her. The fingers held an arrowhead of flint.
“There’s been a battle here, that’s sure,” said he. “Look, spear-points—shattered!”
He had already uncovered three obsidian blades. The broken tips proved how forcibly they had been driven against the stone in the long ago.
“What? A—”
His fingers closed on a small, hollow shell of gold.
“A molar, so help me! All that’s left of some forgotten white man who fell here, at the door, a thousand years ago!”
Speechless, the girl took the shell from him and examined it.
“You’re right, Allan,” she answered. “This certainly is a hollow gold crown. Any one can see that, in spite of the patina that’s formed over the metal. Why—what can it all mean?”
“Search me! The patriarch’s record gave the impression that this eastern expedition set out within thirty years or so of the catastrophe. Well, in that short time it doesn’t seem possible there could have developed savages fighting with flints and so on. But that there certainly was a battle here at this door, and that the cathedral was used as a fort against some kind of invasion is positively certain.
“Why, look at the chips of concrete knocked off the jamb of the door here! Must have been some tall mace-work where you’re standing, Beta! If we could know the complete story of this expedition, its probable failure to reach New York, its entrapment here, the siege and the inevitable tragedy of its end—starvation, sorties, repulses, hand-to-hand fighting at the outer gates, in the nave, here at the crypt door, perhaps on the stairs and in the vaults below—then defeat and slaughter and extinction—what a tremendous drama we could formulate!”
Beatrice nodded. Plain to see, the thought depressed her.
“Death, everywhere—” she began, but Allan laughed.
“Life, you mean!” he rallied. “Come, now, this does no good, poking in the rubbish of a distant tragedy. Real work awaits us. Come!”
He picked up the torch, and with his primitive but serviceable matches lighted it. The smoke rose through the silent air of the cathedral, up into a broad sunlit zone from a tall window in the transept, where it writhed blue and luminous.
A single blow of Allan’s ax shattered the last few shreds of oaken plank that still hung from the eroded hinges of the door. In front of the explorers a flight of concrete steps descended, winding darkly to the crypt beneath.
Allan went first, holding the torch high to light the way.
“The records!” he exclaimed. “Soon, soon we shall know the secrets of the past!”
CHAPTER VI
TRAPPED!
Some thirty steps the way descended, ending in a straight and very narrow passage. The air, though somewhat chill, was absolutely dry and perfectly respirable, thanks to the enormously massive foundation of solid concrete which formed practically one solid monolith six hundred feet long by two hundred and fifty broad—a monolith molded about the crypt and absolutely protecting it from every outside influence.
“Not even the Great Pyramid of Ghizeh could afford a more perfect—hello, what’s this?”
Allan stopped short, staring downward at the floor. His voice reechoed strangely in the restricted space.
“A skeleton, so help me!”
True indeed. At one side of the passage, lying in a position that strongly suggested death in a crouching, despairing attitude—death by starvation rather than by violence—a little clutter of human bones gleamed white under the torch-flare.
“A skeleton—the first one of our vanished race we’ve ever found!” exclaimed the man. “All the remains in New York, you remember, down in the subway or in any of the buildings, were invariably little piles of impalpable dust mixed with coins and bits of rusted metal. But this—it’s absolutely intact!”
“The dry air and all—” suggested Beatrice.
Stern nodded.
“Yes,” he answered. “Intact, so far. But—”
He stirred the skull with his foot. Instantly it vanished into powder.
“Just as I thought,” said he. “No chance to give a decent burial to this or any other human remains we may come across here. The slightest disturbance totally disintegrates them. But with this it’s different!”
He picked up a revolver, hardly rusted at all, that lay near at hand.
“Cartridges; look!” cried Beatrice, pointing.
“That’s so, too—a score or more!”
Lying in an irregular oval that plainly told of a vanished cartridge-belt, a string of cartridges trailed on the concrete floor.
“H-m-m-m! Just for an experiment, let’s see!” murmured the engineer.
Already he had slipped in a charge.
“Steady, Beatrice!” he cautioned, and, pointing down the passage, pulled trigger.
Flame stabbed the half-dark and the crashing detonation rang in their ears.
“What do you think of that?” cried Stern exultantly. “Talk about your miracles! A thousand years and—”
Beatrice grasped him by the arm and pointed downward. Astonished, he stared. The rest of the skeleton had vanished. In its place now only a few handfuls of dust lay on the floor.
“Well, I’ll be—” the man exclaimed. “Even that does the trick, eh? H-m! It would be a joke, now, wouldn’t it, if the records should act the same way? Come on, Beta; this is all very interesting, but it isn’t getting us anywhere. We’ve got to be at work!”
He pocketed the new-found gun and cartridges and once more, torch on high, started down the passage, with the girl at his side.
“See here, Allan!”
“Eh?”
“On the wall here—a painted stripe?”
He held the torch close and scrutinized the mark.
“Looks like it. Pretty well gone by now—just a flake here and a daub there, but I guess it once was a broad band of white. A guide?”
They moved forward again. The strip ended in a blur that might once have been an inscription. Here, there, a letter faintly showed, but not one word could now be made out.
“Too bad,” he mused. “It must have been mighty important or they wouldn’t have—”
“Here’s a door, Allan!”
“So? That’s right. Now this looks like business at last!”
He examined the door by the unsteady flicker of the torch. It was of iron, still intact, and fastened by a long iron bar dropped into massive metal staples.
“Beat it in with the ax?” she queried.
“No. The concussion might reduce everything inside to dust. Ah! Here’s a padlock and a chain!”
Carefully he studied the chain beneath bent brows.
“Here, Beta, you hold the torch, so. That’s right. Now then—”
Already he had set the ax-blade between the padlock and the staple. A quick jerk—the lock flew open raspingly. Allan tried to lift the bar, but it resisted.
A tap of the ax and it gave, swinging upward on a pivot. Then a minute later the doo
r swung inward, yielding to his vigorous push.
Together they entered the crypt of solid concrete, a chamber forty feet long by half as wide and vaulted overhead with arches, crowning perhaps twenty feet from the floor.
“More skeletons, so help me!”
Allan pointed at two more on the pavement at the left of the entrance.
“Why—how could that happen?” queried Beta, puzzled. “The door was locked outside!”
“That’s so. Either there must be some other exit from this place or there were dissensions and fightings among the party itself. Or these men were wounded and were locked in here for safe-keeping while the others made a sortie and never got back, or—I don’t know! Frankly, it’s too much for me. If I were a story-writer I might figure it out, but I’m not. No matter, they’re here, anyhow; that’s all. Here two of our own people died ten centuries ago, trying to preserve civilization and the world’s history for future ages, if there were to be any such. Two martyrs. I salute them!”
In silence and awed sympathy they inspected the mournful relics of humanity a minute, but took good care not to touch them.
“And now the records!”
Even as Stern spoke he saw again a dimly painted line, this time upon the floor, all but invisible beneath the dust of centuries that had come from God knows where.
“Come, let’s follow the line!” cried he.
It led them straight through the middle of the crypt and to a sort of tunnel-like vault at the far end. This they entered quickly and almost at once knew they had reached the goal of their long quest.
In front of them, about seven feet from the floor, a rough white star had been smeared. Directly below it a kind of alcove or recess appeared, lined with shelves of concrete. What its original purpose may have been it would be hard to say; perhaps it may have been intended as a storage-place for the cathedral archives.
But now the explorers saw it was partly filled with pile on pile of curiously crinkled parchment not protected in any way from the air, not covered or boxed in. To the right, however, stood a massive chest, seemingly of sheet-lead.
“Some sense to the lead,” growled Stern; “but why they left their records open to the air, blest if I can see!”
He raised the torch and flared the light along the shelves, and then he understood. For here, there, copper nails glinted dully, lying in dust that once upon a time had been wood.
“I’m wrong, Beta; I apologize to them,” Stern exclaimed. “These were all securely boxed once, but the boxes have gone to pieces long since. Dry-rot, you know. Well, let’s see what condition the parchments are in!”
She held the torch while he tried to raise one, but it broke at the slightest touch. Again he assayed, and a third time. Same result.
“Great Scott!” he ejaculated, nonplused. “See what we’re up against, will you? We’ve found ‘em and they’re ours, but—”
They stood considering a minute. All at once a dull metallic clang echoed heavily through the crypt. Despite herself, the girl shuddered. The eerie depths, the gloom, the skeletons had all conspired to shake her nerves.
“What’s that?” she whispered, gripping Allan by the arm.
“That? Oh—nothing! Now how the deuce are we going to get at these—”
“It was something, Allan! But what?”
He grew suddenly silent.
“By Jove—it sounded like—the door—”
“The door? Oh, Allan, quick!”
A sudden, irresistible fear fingered at the strings of the man’s heart. At the back of his neck he felt the hair begin to lift. Then he smiled by very strength of will.
“Don’t be absurd, Beatrice,” he managed to say. “It couldn’t be, of course. There’s no one here. It—”
But already she was out of the alcove. With the torch held high in air, she stood there peering with wide eyes down the long blackness of the crypt, striving to pierce the dark.
Then suddenly he heard her cry of terror.
“The door, Allan! The door! It’s shut!”
CHAPTER VII
THE LEADEN CHEST
Not at any time since the girl and he had wakened in the tower, more than a year ago, had Allan felt so compelling a fear as overswept him then. The siege of the Horde at Madison Forest, the plunge down the cataract, the fall into the Abyss and the battle with the Lanskaarn had all taxed his courage to the utmost, but he had met these perils with more calm than he now faced the blank menace of that metal door.
For now no sky overhung him, no human agency opposed him, no counterplay of stress and strife thrilled his blood.
No; the girl and he now were far underground in a crypt, a tomb, walled round with incalculable tons of concrete, barred from the upper world, alone—and for the first time in his life the man knew something of the anguish of unreasoning fear.
Yet he was not bereft of powers of action. Only an instant he stood there motionless and staring; then with a cry, wordless and harsh, he ran toward the barrier.
Beneath his spurning feet the friable skeletons crumbled and vanished; he dashed himself against the door with a curse that was half a prayer; he strove with it—and staggered back, livid and shaken, for it held!
Now Beatrice had reached it, too. In her hand the torch trembled and shook. She tried to speak, but could not. And as he faced her, there in the tomblike vault, their eyes met silently.
A deathly stillness fell, with but their heart-beats and the sputtering of the torch to deepen it.
“Oh!” she gasped, stretching out a hand. “You—we—can’t—”
He licked his lips and tried to smile, but failed.
“Don’t—don’t be afraid, little girl!” he stammered. “This can’t hold us, possibly. The chain—I broke it!”
“Yes, but the bar, Allan—the bar! How did you leave the bar?”
“Raised!”
The one word seemed to seal their doom. A shudder passed through Beatrice.
“So then,” she choked, “some air-current swung the door shut—and the bar—fell—”
A sudden rage possessed the engineer.
“Damn that infernal staple!” he gritted, and as he spoke the ax swung into air.
“Crash!”
On the metal plates it boomed and echoed thunderously. A ringing clangor vibrated the crypt.
“Crash!”
Did the door start? No; but in the long-eroded plates a jagged dent took form.
Again the ax swung high. Cold though the vault was, sweat globuled his forehead, where the veins had swelled to twisting knots.
“Crash!”
With a wild verberation, a scream of sundered metal and a clatter of flying fragments, the staple gave way. A crack showed round the edge of the iron barrier.
Stern flung his shoulder against the door. Creaking, it swung. He staggered through. One hand groped out to steady him, against the wall. From the other the ax dropped crashing to the floor.
Only a second he stood thus, swaying; then he turned and gathered Beta in his arms. And on his breast she hid her face, from which the roses all had faded quite.
He felt her fighting back the tears, and raised her head and kissed her.
“There, there!” he soothed. “It wasn’t anything, after all, you see. But—if we hadn’t brought the ax with us—”
“Oh, Allan, let’s go now! This crypt—I can’t—”
“We will go very soon. But there’s no danger now, darling. We’re not children, you know. We’ve still got work to do. We’ll go soon; but first, those records!”
“Oh, how can you, after—after what might have been?”
He found the strength to smile.
“I know,” he answered, “but it didn’t happen, after all. A miss is worth a million miles, dear. That’s what life seems to mean to us, and has meant ever since we woke in the tower, peril and risk, labor and toil—and victory! Come, come, let’s get to work again, for there’s so endlessly much to do.”
Calmer grown, t
he girl found new courage in his eyes and in his strong embrace.
“You’re right, Allan. I was a little fool to—”
He stopped her self-reproach with kisses, then picked up the torch from the floor where it had fallen from her nerveless hand.
“If you prefer,” he offered. “I’ll take you back into the sunlight, and you can sit under the trees and watch the river, while I—”
“Where you are, there am I! Come on, Allan; let’s get it over with. Oh, what a coward you must think me!”
“I think you’re a woman, and the bravest that ever lived!” he exclaimed vehemently. “Who but you could ever have gone through with me all that has happened? Who could be my mate and face the future as you’re doing? Oh, if you only understood my estimate of you!
“But now let’s get at those records again. Time’s passing, and there must be still no end of things to do!”
He recovered his ax, and with another blow demolished the last fragment of the staple, so that by no possibility could the door catch again.
Then for the second time they penetrated the crypt and the tunnel and once more reached the alcove of the records.
“Beatrice!”
“What is it, Allan?”
“Look! Gone—all gone!”
“Gone? Why, what do you mean? They’re—”
“Gone, I tell you! My God! Just a mass of rubbish, powder, dust—”
“But—but how—”
“The concussion of the ax! That must have done it! The violent sound-waves—the air in commotion!”
“But, Allan, it can’t be! Surely there must be something left?”
“You see?”
He pointed at the shelves. She stood and peered, with him, at the sad havoc wrought there. Then she stretched out a tentative finger and stirred a little of the detritus.
“Catastrophe!” she cried.
“Yes and no. At any rate, it may have been inevitable.”
“Inevitable?”
He nodded.
“Even if this hadn’t happened, Beatrice, I’m afraid we never could have moved any of these parchments, or read them, or handled them in any way. Perhaps if we’d had all kinds of proper appliances, glass plates, transparent adhesives, and so on, and a year or two at our disposal, we might have made something out of them, but even so, it’s doubtful.
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