THIRD MYSTERY—THE BATS OF MEYDUM
SALUTING each of the three in turn, the tall Egyptian passed from Dr. Cairn's room. Upon his exit there followed a brief but electric silence. Dr. Cairn's face was very stern, and Sime, with his hands locked behind him, stood staring out of the window into the palm-shaded garden of the hotel.
Robert Cairn looked excitedly from one to the other.
“What did he say, sir?” he cried, addressing his father. “It had something to do with—”
Dr. Cairn turned toward his son. Sime did not move.
“Yes,” replied the doctor. “It had something to do with the matter which has brought me to Cairo.”
“You see,” said Robert, “my knowledge of Arabic, I regret to say, is practically nothing.”
Sime now turned in his slow and heavy fashion, and directed a dull gaze upon the last speaker.
“Ali Mohammed,” he explained slowly, “who has just left, had come down from the Fayum to report a singular matter. He was unaware of its real importance, but it was sufficiently unusual to disturb him, and Ali Mohammed es Suefi is not easily disturbed.”
Dr. Cairn dropped into an armchair, nodding toward Sime.
“Tell him all that we have heard,” he said. “Of course, we stand together in this affair.”
“Well,” continued Sime, in his deliberate fashion, “when we struck our camp beside the Pyramid of Meydum, Ali Mohammed remained behind, with a gang of workmen, to finish off some comparatively unimportant work. He is an unemotional person. Fear is alien to his composition. It has no meaning for him; but last night something occurred at the camp—or what remained of the camp—which seems to have shaken even Ali Mohammed's iron nerve.”
Robert Cairn nodded, watching the speaker intently.
“The entrance to the Meydum Pyramid—” continued Sime.
“One of the entrances,” interrupted Dr. Cairn, smiling slightly.
“There is only one entrance,” said Sime dogmatically.
Dr. Cairn waved his hand.
“Go ahead,” he said. “We shall have time to discuss these archæological details later.”
Sime stared dully, but went on without further comment.
“The camp was situated on the slope immediately below the only known entrance to the Meydum Pyramid. One might say that it lay in the shadow of the building. There are tumuli in the neighborhood—part of a prehistoric cemetery—and it was work in connection with this which had detained Ali Mohammed in that part of the Fayum. Last night, about ten o'clock, he reports, he was awakened by an unusual sound, or series of sounds. He came out of the tent into the moonlight, and looked up at the pyramid. The entrance was a good way above his head, of course, and quite fifty or sixty yards from the point where he was standing; but the moonbeams bathed that side of the building in dazzling light, so that he was enabled to see a swarm of bats whirling out of the pyramid.”
“Bats?” ejaculated Robert Cairn.
“Yes. There is a small colony of bats in this pyramid, of course; but the bat does not hunt in bands, and the sight of these bats flying out from the place was one which Ali Mohammed had never witnessed before. Their concerted squeaking was very clearly audible. He could not believe that it was this which had awakened him, and which had awakened the ten or twelve workmen who also slept in the camp, for these men were now clustering around him, and all looking up at the side of the pyramid. Fayum nights are strangely still. Except for the jackals and the village dogs, and a few other sounds to which one grows accustomed, there is nothing—absolutely nothing—audible. In this stillness, then, the flapping of the bats made quite a disturbance overhead. Some of the men were only half awake, but most of them were badly frightened. They began to compare notes, with the result that they determined upon the exact nature of the sound that had aroused them. It seemed almost certain that this had been a dreadful scream—the scream of a woman in her last agony.”
He paused, looking from Dr. Cairn to his son, with a singular expression upon his habitually immobile face.
“Go on,” said Robert Cairn.
Slowly Sime resumed.
“The bats had begun to disperse in various directions, but the panic which had seized upon the camp does not seem to have subsided so readily. Ali Mohammed confesses that he himself felt almost afraid—a remarkable admission for a man of his class to make. Picture these fellows, then, standing looking at one another, and very frequently up at the opening in the side of the pyramid. Then the smell began to reach their nostrils—the smell which completed the panic, and which led. to the abandonment of the camp.”
“The smell? What kind of smell?” jerked Robert Cairn.
Dr. Cairn turned himself in his chair, looking fully at his son.
“I know that odor—it is the smell of Hades, boy!” he said grimly, and turned away again.
“Naturally,” continued Sime, “I can give you no particulars on that point; but it must have been something very fearful to have affected the Egyptian native. There was no breeze, but it swept down upon them, this poisonous smell, as if borne by a hot wind.”
“Was the exhalation actually hot?” Robert Cairn inquired.
“I cannot say. But Ali Mohammed is positive that it came from the opening in the pyramid. It was not in disgust, apparently, but in sheer, stark horror, that the whole crowd of them turned tail and ran. They never stopped and never looked back until they came to Rekka, on the railway.”
“That was last night?” questioned Cairn, after a short silence.
His father nodded.
“The man came in by the first train from Wasta,” he said. “We have not a moment to spare!”
Sime stared at him.
“I don't understand—”
“I have a mission,” said Dr. Cairn quietly. “It is to run to earth, to stamp out, as I would stamp out a pestilence, a certain thing—I cannot call it a man—Antony Ferrara. I believe, Sime, that you are at one with me in this matter?”
Sime drummed his fingers upon the table, frowning thoughtfully, and looking from one to the other of his companions under his lowered brows.
“With my own eyes,” he said, “I have seen something of this secret drama which has brought you, Dr. Cairn, to Egypt; and, up to a point, I agree with you regarding Antony Ferrara. You have lost all trace of him?”
“Since leaving Port Said,” said Dr. Cairn, “I have seen and heard nothing of him; but Lady Lashmore, who was an intimate—and an innocent victim, God help her!—of Ferrara in London, after staying at the Semiramis in Cairo for one day, departed. Where did she go?”
“What has Lady Lashmore to do with the matter?” asked Sime.
“If what I fear be true—” began Dr. Cairn, and broke off. “But I anticipate. At the moment it is enough for me that, unless my information is at fault, Lady Lashmore left Cairo by the Luxor train at half past eight o'clock yesterday.”
Robert Cairn looked in a puzzled way at his father.
“What do you suspect, sir?” he said.
“I suspect that she went no farther than Wasta,” replied Dr. Cairn.
“Still I do not understand,” declared Sime.
“You may understand later,” was the answer. “We must not waste a moment. You Egyptologists think that Egypt has little or nothing to teach you. The Pyramid of Meydum lost interest as soon as you learned that no treasure could be found in it. How little you know what it really contained, Sime! Mariette did not suspect. Sir Gaston Maspero does not suspect. The late Sir Michael Ferrara and I once camped by the Pyramid of Meydum, as you have camped there, and we made a discovery.”
“Well?” prompted Sime, with growing interest.
“It is a point upon which my lips are sealed, but—do you believe in black magic?”
“I am not altogether sure that I do,” replied Sime.
“Very well, you are entitled to your opinion; but although you appear to be ignorant of the fact, the Pyramid of Meydum was formerly one of the strongholds—the second greatest in all the land of the Nile—of ancient Egyptian sorcery. I pray Heaven I may be wrong, but in the disappearance of Lady Lashmore, and in the story of Ali Mohammed, I see a dreadful possibility. Ring for a time-table. We have not a moment to waste!”
II
Rekka was a mile behind.
“It will take us an hour yet,” said Dr. Cairn, “to reach the pyramid, although it appears so near.”
Indeed, in the violet dusk, the great Pyramid of Meydum seemed already to loom above them, although it was quite four miles away.. The narrow path along which they trotted their donkeys ran through the fertile lowlands of the Fayum. They had just passed a village, amid an angry chorus from the pariah dogs, and were now following the track along the top of the embankment.
Where the green carpet merged ahead into the gray ocean of sand the desert began, and out in that desert, resembling some weird work of nature rather than anything wrought by the hand of man, stood the gloomy and lonely building ascribed by the Egyptologists to the Pharaoh Snofru, of the fourth dynasty, the predecessor of the great Cheops.
Dr. Cairn and his son rode ahead, and Sime, with Ali Mohammed, brought up the rear of the little company.
“I am completely in the dark, sir,” said Robert Cairn, “respecting the object of our present journey. What leads you to suppose that we shall find Antony Ferrara here?”
“I scarcely hope to find him here,” was the enigmatical reply; “but I am almost certain that he is here. I might have expected it, and I blame myself for not having provided against—this.”
“Against what?”
“It is impossible, Rob, for you to understand this matter. Indeed, if I were to publish what I know—not what I imagine, but what I know—about the Pyramid of Meydum, I should not only call down upon myself the ridicule of every Egyptologist in Europe, but I should be accounted mad by the whole world.”
His son was silent for a time.
“According to the guide books,” he said at length, “it is merely an unfinished and empty tomb.”
“It is empty, certainly,” replied Dr. Cairn, “or the apartment known as the King's Chamber is now empty; but even the so-called King's Chamber was not empty once, and there is another chamber in the heart of the pyramid which is not empty now.”
“If you know of the existence of such a chamber, sir, why have you kept it secret?” asked Robert Cairn.
“Because I cannot prove its existence. I do not know how to enter it, but I know it is there. I know what it was formerly used for, and I suspect that last night it was used for that same unholy purpose again, after a lapse of perhaps four thousand years. Even you would doubt me, I believe, if I were to tell you what I know, if I were to hint at what I suspect. No doubt, in your reading, you have met with Julian the Apostate?”
“Certainly, I have read of him. He is said to have practiced necromancy.”
“When he was at Carra, in Mesopotamia, he retired to the Temple of the Moon, with a certain sorcerer and some others. His nocturnal operations concluded, he left the temple locked and the door sealed, and placed a guard over the gate. He was killed in battle, and never returned to Carra; but when, in the reign of Jovian, the seal was broken and the temple opened, a body was found hanging by its hair. I will spare you the particulars. It was a case of that most awful form of sorcery—anthropomancy!”
An expression of horror had crept over Robert Cairn's face.
“Do you mean, sir, that this pyramid was used for similar purposes?”
“In the past it has been used for many purposes,” was the quiet reply. “The exodus of the bats points to the fact that it was again used for one of those purposes last night—the exodus of the bats, and something else.”
Sime, who had been listening to this strange conversation, cried out from the rear:
“We cannot reach it before sunset!”
“No,” replied Dr. Cairn, turning in his saddle; “but that does not matter. Inside the pyramid, day and night make not the slightest difference.”
Having crossed a narrow wooden bridge, they turned fully in the direction of the great ruin, pursuing a path along the opposite bank of the cutting. They rode in silence for some time, Robert Cairn deep in thought.
“I suppose that Antony Ferrara actually visited this place last night,” he said suddenly; “although I cannot follow your reasoning. What leads you to suppose that he is there now?”
“This,” answered his father slowly. “The purpose for which I believe him to have come here would detain him at least two days and two nights. I shall say no more about it, because, if I am wrong, or if for any reason I am unable to establish my suspicions as facts, you would certainly regard me as a madman if I had confided those suspicions to you.”
Mounted upon donkeys, the journey from Rekka to the Pyramid of Meydum occupies fully an hour and a half. The glories of the sunset had merged into the violet dusk of Egypt before the party passed the outskirts of the cultivated land and came upon the desert sands. The mountainous pile of granite, its peculiar orange hue a ghastly yellow in the moonlight, now assumed truly monstrous proportions, seeming like a great square tower rising in three stages from its mound of sand to some three hundred and fifty feet above the level of the desert.
There is nothing more awesome than to find one's self at night, far from all fellow men, in the shadow of one of those edifices raised by unknown hands, by unknown means, to an unknown end; for, despite all the wisdom of our modern inquirers, these stupendous relics remain unsolved riddles set to posterity by a mysterious people of the past.
Neither Sime nor Ali Mohammed was of highly strung temperament. Neither was subject to those subtle impressions which more delicate organizations receive, as the nostrils receive an exhalation, from such a place; but Dr. Cairn and his son, though each in a different way, now came within the mysterious aura of this temple of the dead ages.
The great silence of the desert—a silence like no other in the world; the loneliness, which must be experienced to be appreciated, of that dry and tideless ocean; the traditions which had grown up like fungi about this venerable building; and, lastly, the knowledge that it was associated in some way with the sorcery, the unholy activity, of Antony Ferrara, combined to chill them with a supernatural dread which called for all their courage to combat.
“What now?” said Sime, descending from his mount.
“We must lead the donkeys up the slope,” replied Dr. Cairn, “where those blocks of granite are, and tether them there.”
In silence, then, the party commenced the tedious ascent of the mound by the narrow path to the top, until at about one hundred and twenty feet above the surrounding plain they found themselves actually under the wall of the mighty building. The donkeys were made fast.
“Sime and I,” said Dr. Cairn quietly, “will enter the pyramid.”
“But—” objected his son.
“Apart from the fatigue of the operation,” continued the doctor, “the temperature in the lower part of the pyramid is so tremendous, and the air so bad, that in your present state of health it would be absurd for you to attempt it. Apart from this, there is a possibly more important task to be undertaken here, outside.”
He turned his eyes upon Sime, who was listening intently.
“While we are penetrating to the interior by means of the sloping passage on the north side, Ali Mohammed and yourself must mount guard on the south side of the pyramid.”
“What for?” said Sime rapidly.
“For the reason,” replied Dr. Cairn, “that there is an entrance to the first stage.”
“But the first stage is nearly seventy feet above us. Even assuming that there is an entrance there—which I doubt—escape by that means would be impossible. No one could climb down the face of the pyramid from above; no one has ever succeeded in climbing up. For the purpose of surveying the pyramids, a scaffold had to be erected. Its sides are so steep that they are quite unscalable.”
“That may be,” agreed Dr. Cairn; “but, nevertheless, I have my reasons for placing a guard over the south side. If anything appears upon the stage above, Rob—anything—shoot, and shoot straight!”
He repeated the same instructions to Ali Mohammed, to the evident surprise of the latter.
“I don't understand at all,” muttered Sime; “but as I presume you have a good reason for what you do, let it be as you propose. Can you give me any idea of what we may hope to find inside this place? I only entered once, and I am not anxious to repeat the experiment. The air is unbreathable, the descent to the level passage below is stiff work, and, apart from the inconvenience of navigating the lower passage—which, as you probably know, is only sixteen inches high—the climb up the vertical shaft into the tomb is not a particularly safe one. I exclude the possibility of snakes,” he added ironically.
“You have also omitted the possibility of Antony Ferrara,” said Dr. Cairn.
“Pardon my skepticism, doctor, but I cannot imagine any man voluntarily remaining in that awful place.”
“Yet I am greatly mistaken if he is not there!”
“Then he is trapped!” Sime observed grimly, examining a Browning pistol which he carried. “Unless—”
He stopped, and an expression, almost of fear, crept over his stoical features.
“That sixteen-inch passage,” he muttered, “with Antony Ferrara at the farther end!”
“Exactly!” said Dr. Cairn. “But I consider it my duty to the world to proceed. I warn you that you are about to face what is probably the greatest peril you will ever be called upon to encounter. I do not ask you to do this. I am quite prepared to go alone.”
“That remark was wholly unnecessary, doctor,” said Sime, rather truculently. “I suggest that the other two should proceed to their post.”
“But, sir—” began Robert Cairn.
“You know the way,” said the doctor, with an air of finality. “There is not a moment to waste. Although I fear that we are already too late, it is just possible we may be in time to prevent a dreadful crime.”
The tall Egyptian and Robert Cairn went stumbling off among the heaps of rubbish and broken masonry, until an angle of the great wall concealed them from view. Then the two who remained continued the climb yet higher, following the narrow, zigzag path leading up to the entrance of the descending passage. Immediately under the square black hole they stood and glanced at each other.
“We may as well leave our outer garments here,” said Sime. “I note that you wear rubber-soled shoes. I shall remove my boots, as otherwise I should be unable to obtain any foothold.”
Dr. Cairn nodded, and without more ado proceeded to strip off his coat—an example which was followed by Sime. It was as he stooped and placed his hat upon the little bundle of clothes at his feet that the physician detected Something which caused him to stoop yet lower, and to peer at a small, dark object on the ground with a strange intentness.
“What is it?” jerked Sime, glancing back at him. ix
Dr. Cairn, from a hip pocket, took out an electric lamp, and directed the white ray upon something lying on the splintered fragments of granite.
It was a bat, a fairly large one, and a clot of blood marked the place where its head had been; for the creature of the night had been decapitated!
As if anticipating what he would find there, Dr. Cairn flashed the ray of the lamp all about the ground in the vicinity of the entrance to the pyramid. Scores of dead bats, headless, lay there.
“For God's sake, what does this mean?” whispered Sime, glancing apprehensively into the black entrance beside him.
“It means,” answered Cairn, in a low voice, “that my suspicion, almost incredible though it seems, was well founded. Steel yourself against the task that is before you, Sime. We stand upon the borderland of strange horrors.”
Sime hesitated to touch any of the dead bats, surveying them with an ill concealed repugnance.
“What kind of creature,” he whispered, “has done this?”
“One of a kind that the world has not known for many ages—the most evil kind of creature conceivable—a man devil!”
“But what does he want with bats' heads?”
“The cynonycteris, or pyramid bat, has a leaflike appendage beside the nose. A gland in this secretes a rare oil. This oil is one of the ingredients of the mysterious incense which is never named in the magical writings.”
Sime shuddered.
“Here,” said Dr. Cairn, proffering a flask. “This is only the overture. No nerves!”
The other nodded shortly, and poured out a peg of brandy.
“Now,” said Dr. Cairn, “shall I go ahead?”
“As you like,” replied Sime quietly, and again quite master of himself. “Look out for snakes! I will carry the light, and you can keep yours handy in case you may need it.”
III
Dr. Cairn drew himself up into the entrance. The passage was less than four feet high, and generations of sand storms had polished its sloping granite floor so as to render it impossible to descend except by resting one's hands on the roof above and gradually lowering one's self, foot by foot.
A passage of this description, descending at a sharp angle for more than two hundred feet, is not particularly easy to negotiate, and progress was slow. At every five yards or so Dr. Cairn would stop, and, turning on his pocket lamp, would examine the sandy floor and the crevices between the huge blocks that lined the passage, in quest of those faint tracks which warn the traveler that a serpent has recently passed that way. Then, replacing his lamp, he would proceed.
Sime followed in like manner, employing only one hand to support himself, while with the other he constantly directed the ray of his pocket torch past his companion, and down into the gulf of utter blackness beneath.
Out in the desert the atmosphere had been sufficiently hot, but now with every step it grew hotter and hotter. That indescribable smell, as of a decay begun in remote ages, that rises with the impalpable dust in these mysterious labyrinths of ancient Egypt which never know the light of day, rose stiflingly. At some forty or fifty feet below the level of the sand outside, respiration became difficult, and the two paused, bathed in perspiration and gasping for air.
“Another thirty or forty feet,” panted Sime, “and we shall be in the level passage. There is a sort of artificial cavern there, you may remember, where, although we cannot stand upright, we can sit and rest for a few moments.”
Speech was exhausting, and no further words were exchanged until the bottom of the slope was reached. Here the combined lights of the two pocket lamps showed them that they had reached a tiny chamber irregularly hewn in the living rock. It was less than four feet high, but, its jagged floor being level, they were enabled to sit for a while.
“Do you notice something unfamiliar in the smell of the place?” Dr. Cairn asked his companion.
Sime nodded, wiping the perspiration from his face the while.
“It was bad enough when I came here before,” he replied hoarsely. “It is terrible work for a heavy man; but to-night the place seems to be reeking. I have smelled nothing like it in my life!”
“Correct!” returned Dr. Cairn grimly. “I trust that, once clear of this place, you will never smell it again.”
“What is it?”
“It is the incense,” was the reply. “Come! The worst of our task is before us yet.”
The continuation of the passage now showed as an opening no more than fifteen to seventeen inches high. It was necessary, therefore, to lie prone upon the rubbish of the floor, and to proceed serpent fashion. An explorer could not even employ his knees, so low was the roof, but was compelled to progress by clutching at the irregularities in the wall, and by digging his elbows into the splintered stones he crawled upon.
For three yards or so they proceeded in this way. Then Dr. Cairn suddenly lay still.
“What is it?” whispered Sime.
A threat of panic was in his voice. He dared not conjecture what would happen if either should be overcome in that evil-smelling burrow, deep in the bowels of the ancient building. At that moment it seemed to him, absurdly enough, that the weight of the giant pile rested upon his back, was crushing him, pressing the life out from his body as he lay there prone, with his eyes fixed upon the rubber soles of Dr. Cairn's shoes, directly in front of him.
But softly came a reply:
“Do not speak again. Proceed as quietly as possible, and pray Heaven we are not expected!”
Sime understood. With a malignant enemy before them, this hole in the rock through which they crawled was a certain death trap. He thought of the headless bats, and reflected that he, in crawling out into the shaft ahead, must lay himself open to a similar fate.
Dr. Cairn moved slowly onward. Despite their anxiety to avoid noise, neither he nor his companion could control their heavy breathing. Both were panting for air.
The temperature was now deathly. A candle would scarcely have burned in the vitiated air; and above that odor of ancient rottenness which all explorers of the monuments of Egypt know, rose that other indescribable exhalation which seemed to stifle one's very soul.
Dr. Cairn stopped again.
Sime, having performed this journey before, knew that his companion must have reached the end of the passage, that he must be lying, peering out into the shaft, for which they were making. He extinguished his lamp.
Again Dr. Cairn moved forward. Stretching out his hand, Sime found only emptiness. He wriggled forward, in turn, as rapidly as possible, all the time groping with his fingers.
“Take my hand,” came a whisper. “Another two feet forward, and you can stand upright.”
He proceeded, grasped the hand which was extended to him in the impenetrable darkness, and, panting, temporarily exhausted, rose upright beside Dr. Cairn, and found that there was space enough to stretch his cramped limbs.
Side by side they stood, mantled about in such a darkness as cannot be described; in such a silence as dwellers in the busy world cannot conceive; in such an atmosphere of horror that only a man morally and physically brave could have retained his composure.
Dr. Cairn bent to Sime's ear.
“We must have the light for the ascent,” he whispered.
“Have your pistol ready, then,” returned Sime. “I am about to press the button of the lamp.”
A shaft of white light shone suddenly up the rocky sides of the pit in which they stood, and lost itself in the gloom of the chamber above.
“On to my shoulders,” said Sime. “You are lighter than I. Then, as soon as you can reach, place your lamp on the floor above, and mount up beside it. I will follow you.”
Dr. Cairn, taking advantage of the rugged walls, and of the blocks of stone amid which they stood, mounted upon Sime's shoulders.
“Could you carry your revolver in your teeth?” asked the latter. “I think you might hold it by the trigger guard.”
“I proposed to do so,” replied Dr. Cairn grimly. “Stand fast!”
Gradually he rose upright upon the other's shoulders. Then, placing his foot in a cranny of the rock, and with his left hand grasping a protruding fragment above, he mounted yet higher, all the time holding the lighted lamp in his right hand. Upward he extended his arms, and upward, until he could place the lamp upon the ledge above his head, where its white beam shone across the top of the shaft.
“Mind it does not fall!” panted Sime, craning his head upward to watch these operations.
Dr. Cairn, whose strength and agility were wonderful, twisted around sidewise, and succeeded in placing his foot on a ledge of stone on the opposite side of the shaft. Resting his weight upon this, he extended his hand to the lip of the opening, and drew himself up to the top, where he crouched in the light of the lamp.
Then, wedging his foot into a crevice a little below him, he reached out his hand to Sime. The latter, following much the same course as his companion, seized the extended hand, and soon found himself beside Dr. Cairn.
Impetuously he snatched out his own lamp and flashed its beams about the weird apartment in which they found themselves—the so-called King's Chamber of the pyramid. Right and left leaped the searching rays, touching the ends of the wooden beams, which, practically fossilized by long contact with the rock, still survive in that sepulchral place. Above and below and all around he directed the light of his lamp—upon the litter covering the rock floor, upon the blocks of the higher walls, upon the frowning roof.
They were alone in the King's Chamber!
IV
“There is no one here!”
Sime looked about the place excitedly as he spoke.
“Fortunately for us!” answered Dr. Cairn.
He still breathed rather heavily from his exertions, and, moreover, the air of the chamber was disgusting; but otherwise he was perfectly calm, although his face was pale and bathed in perspiration.
“Make as little noise as possible,” the physician whispered.
Now that the place proved to be empty, Sime began to cast off the dread that had possessed him in the passageway; but he found something ominous in his companion's words.
Dr. Cairn, stepping carefully over the rubbish of the floor, advanced to the east corner of the chamber, waving to Sime to follow. Side by side they stood there.
“Do you notice that the abominable smell of the incense is more overpowering here than anywhere?”
Sime nodded.
“You are right. What does that mean?”
Dr. Cairn directed the ray of light down behind a little mound of rubbish into a corner of the wall.
“It means,” he said, with a subdued expression of excitement, “that we have got to crawl in there!”
Sime stifled an exclamation.
One of the blocks of the bottom tier was missing at this point—a fact which Dr. Cairn had not detected before by reason of the presence of the mound of rubbish before the opening.
“Silence again, Sime!” whispered the physician.
He lay down flat, and, without hesitation, crept into the gap. As his feet disappeared, Sime followed.
Here it was possible to crawl upon hands and knees. The passage was formed of square stone blocks. It was but three yards or so in length; then it suddenly turned upward at a tremendous angle of about one in four. Square footholds were cut in the lower face.
The smell of incense was almost unbearable now.
Dr. Cairn bent to Sime's ear.
“Not a word, now!” he said. “No light—pistol ready!”
He began to mount. Sime, following, counted the steps. When they had mounted sixty, he knew that they must have come close to the top of the original mastabah, and close to the first stage of the pyramid. Despite the deep shaft beneath, there was little danger of falling, for one could lean back against the wall while seeking for the foothold above.
Dr. Cairn mounted very slowly, fearful of striking his head upon some obstacle. On the seventieth step he found that he could thrust his foot forward, and that no obstruction met his knee. They had reached a horizontal passage.
Very softly the doctor whispered back to Sime:
“Take my hand! I have reached the top.”
They entered the passage. The heavy, sickly sweet odor almost overpowered them, but, grimly set upon their purpose, they crept on, after a single moment of hesitancy.
A fitful light rose and fell ahead of them. It gleamed upon the polished walls of the corridor in which they now found themselves—that inexplicable light burning in a place which had known no light since the dim ages of the early Pharaohs!
The events of that incredible night had afforded no such emotion as this. This ghastly light was the crowning wonder, and, in its dreadful mystery, the crowning terror of Meydum.
When first the lambent light played upon the walls of the passage, both men stopped, stricken motionless with fear and amazement. Sime, who would have been prepared to swear that the Meydum Pyramid contained no apartment other than the King's Chamber, was now past mere wonder, past conjecture; but he could still fear. Dr. Cairn, although he had anticipated this phenomenon, temporarily fell a victim to its supernatural character.
They advanced. They looked into a square chamber of about the same size as the King's Chamber. In fact, although they did not realize it until later, this second apartment, no doubt, was situated directly above the first.
The only light was that of a fire burning in a tripod, and by means of this illumination, which rose and fell in a strange manner, it was possible to perceive at least some of the details of the place. At the moment, however, the doctor and his companion were not concerned with these. They had eyes only for the black-robed figure beside the tripod.
It was that of a man, who stood with his back toward them, chanting monotonously in a tongue unfamiliar to Sime. At certain points in his chant he would raise his arms in such a way that, clad in the black robe, he assumed the appearance of a gigantic bat. Each time that he acted thus, the fire in the tripod, as if fanned into new life, would leap up, casting a hellish glare about the place. Then, as the chanter dropped his arms again, the flame would drop also.
A cloud of reddish vapor floated low in the apartment. There were a number of curiously shaped vessels upon the floor. Against the farther wall, rendered visible only when the flames leaped high, was some motionless white object, apparently hung from the roof.
Dr. Cairn drew a hissing breath and grasped Sime's wrist.
“We are too late!” he said strangely.
He spoke at a moment when his companion, peering through the ruddy gloom of the place, had been endeavoring to perceive more clearly that ominous shape which hung, horrible, in the shadow. He spoke, too, at a moment when the man in the black robe raised his arms—when, as if obedient to his will, the flames leaped up fitfully.
Although Sime could not be sure of what he saw, there came to him a recollection of words recently spoken by Dr. Cairn. He remembered the story of Julian the Apostate, the emperor who was also a necromancer. He remembered what had been found in the Temple of the Moon after Julian's death. He remembered that Lady Lashmore—
And thereupon he experienced such a nausea that, but for the fact that Dr. Cairn gripped him, he must have fallen.
Tutored in a materialistic school, Sime could not even now admit that such monstrous things could be. With a necromantic operation taking place before his eyes; with the unholy perfume of the secret incense all but suffocating him; with the dreadful oracle dully gleaming in the shadows of that temple of evil—this reason would not accept the evidences. Any man of the ancient world—of the Middle Ages—would have known that he was looking upon a professed wizard, upon an adept magician, who, according to one of the most ancient formulas known to mankind, was seeking to question the dead respecting the living.
But how many modern men are there capable of realizing such a thing? How many who would accept the statement that such operations are still performed, not only in the East, but in Europe? How many who, witnessing this mass of Satan, would accept it for verity, would not deny the evidence of their very senses?
He could not believe such an orgy of wickedness possible. A pagan emperor might have been capable of these things, but to-day—wondrous is our faith in the virtue of “to-day”!
“Am I mad,” he whispered hoarsely, “or—”
A thinly veiled shape seemed to float out from that still form in the shadows. It assumed definite outlines. It became a woman, beautiful with a beauty that could only be described as awful.
She wore upon her brow the uraeus of ancient Egyptian royalty. Her sole garment was a robe of finest gauze. Like a cloud, like a vision, she floated into the light cast by the tripod.
A voice—a voice which seemed to come from a vast distance, from somewhere outside the mighty granite walls of that unholy place—spoke. The language was unknown to Sime, but the fierce hand grip upon his wrist grew fiercer. That dead tongue, that language unspoken since the dawn of Christianity, was known to the man who had been the companion of Sir Michael Ferrara.
In upon Sime swept a swift conviction—that one could not witness such a scene as this and live and move again among one's fellow men. In a sort of frenzy, then, he wrenched himself free from the physician's detaining hand, and launched a retort of modern science against the challenge of ancient sorcery.
Raising his Browning pistol, he fired shot after shot—at that batlike shape which stood between himself and the tripod.
A thousand frightful echoes filled the chamber with a demon mockery, booming along those subterranean passages beneath, and bearing the conflict of sound into the hidden places of the pyramid which had probably known no sound for untold generations.
“My God!”
Vaguely he became aware that Dr. Cairn was seeking to drag him away. Through a cloud of smoke he saw the black-robed figure turn. Dream fashion, he saw the pallid, glistening face of Antony Ferrara. The long evil eyes, alight like the eyes of a serpent, were fixed upon him. He seemed to stand amid a chaos, in a mad world beyond the borders of reason, beyond the dominions of God; but to his stupefied mind one astounding fact found access.
He had fired at least seven shots at the black-robed figure, and it was not humanly possible that all could have gone wide of their mark; yet Antony Ferrara still lived!
Utter darkness blotted out the evil vision. Then there was a white light ahead; and, feeling that he was struggling for sanity, Sime managed to realize that Dr. Cairn, retreating along the passage, was crying to him, in a voice rising almost to a shriek, to run—run for his life—for his salvation!
“You should not have fired!” he seemed to hear.
Unconscious of any contact with the stones—although afterward he found his knees and shins to be torn and bleeding—he was scrambling down that long, sloping shaft.
He had a vague impression that Dr. Cairn, descending beneath him, sometimes grasped his ankles and placed his feet into the footholes. A continuous roaring sound filled his ears, as if a great ocean were casting its storm waves against the structure around him. The place seemed to rock.
“Down flat!”
Some sense of reality was returning to him. Now he perceived that Dr. Cairn was urging him to crawl back along the short passage by which they had entered from the King's Chamber.
Heedless of hurt, he threw himself down and pressed on.
There came a blank, like the sleep of exhaustion which follows delirium. Then Sime found himself standing in the King's Chamber, with Dr. Cairn, who held an electric lamp in his hand, beside him, and half supporting him.
The realities were suddenly reasserting themselves.
“I have dropped my pistol!” muttered Sime.
He threw off the supporting arm, and turned to the corner behind the heap of débris, where was the opening through which they had entered the satanic temple.
No opening was visible!
“He has closed it!” cried Dr. Cairn. “There are six stone doors between here and the place above. If he had succeeded in shutting one of them before we—”
“My God!” whispered Sime. “Let us get out! I am nearly at the end of my tether!”
Fear lends wings, and it was with something like the lightness of a bird that Sime descended the shaft.
“On to my shoulders!” he cried, when he reached the bottom.
Dr. Cairn lowered himself to the foot of the shaft.
“You go first,” he said.
He was gasping, as if nearly suffocated, but he retained a wonderful self-control. Once over into the borderland, and bravery assumes a new guise. The courage which can face physical danger undaunted, melts in the fires of the unknown.
Sime, his breath whistling sibilantly between his clenched teeth, hauled himself through the low passage with incredible speed. The two worked their way arduously up the long slope. They saw the blue sky above them.
V
“Something like a huge bat,” said Robert Cairn, “crawled out upon the first stage. We both fired—”
Dr. Cairn raised his hand. He lay exhausted at the foot of the mound.
“He had lighted the incense,” he replied, “and was reciting the secret ritual. I cannot explain; but your shots were wasted. We came too late—”
“Lady Lashmore—”
“Until the Pyramid of Meydum is pulled down, stone by stone, the world will never know the true story of her fate. Sime and I have looked in at the gate of hell. Only the hand of God plucked us back. Look!”
The physician pointed to the companion of his nocturnal adventure. Sime lay, pallid, with closed eyes—and his hair was abundantly streaked with white.