fusing a pretty, innocent little gift like this fruit."
"She means us no harm," Otway came to his rescue firmly. "As you say, Waring, the girl is a mere child. She has never willfully harmed anyone. God knows what her history has been—a white child brought up by some lingering, probably degenerate members of the race that built this place. But clearly she has been educated as a priestess or votary in their religion. The fresco below, you'll recall, represents a votive procession with women dancers, dressed like this one, playing upon Pan’s pipes, with the forms of monster centi—"
"Don’t!" Young Sigsbee’s boyish voice sounded keenly distressed. He had set down the tray and was reverently receiving from the girl his share of the fruit. "What we saw from the upper rim was illusion—nightmare! This girl never danced with any such horrible monster."
"TNT!"
The exclamation, shout rather, came from Waring. Under the glance of those dawn-blue eyes, the correspondent had been trying to devour a mango gracefully—an impossible feat—when he observed Tellifer strolling over toward the central pillars. That great, glowing, white mass which they supported was of a nature unexplained. Waring, at least, still retained enough discretion to be deeply suspicious of it.
"Come back here!" he called. "We don’t know what that thing is, Tellifer. May be dangerous."
The esthete might have been stone-deaf, for all the attention he gave. As he approached closer to the glowing thing, the others saw his pace grow swifter—saw his arms rise in a strange, almost worshipping gesture.
And next instant they saw him disappear, with the suddenness of a Harlequin vanishing through a trap in an old-fashioned pantomime.
A portion of the stone floor had tipped up under his weight, flinging him forward and down. They saw him slide helplessly into what seemed to be an open space of unknown depth which the eight pillars surrounded.
A faint cry was wafted up from the treacherous pit. Then silence.
Flinging the dripping mango aside, Waring dashed across the floor. The other three were close at his heels.
Unlike the massive construction of all other parts of the pyramid, the eight pillars were slender, graceful shafts of sunset-hued stone. Rising some dozen feet above the pavement, they were placed at the angles of an eight-sided pit, or opening.
The exact shape of the shining mass these pillars supported was more difficult to determine. Its own light melted all its outlines in a soft glory of pale radiance. The light was not dazzling, however. Drawing near to the thing, it appeared more definite. The lower surface, slightly convex, rested at the edges on the tops of the eight pillars. Rising from the eight-sided circumference, many smaller planes, triangular in form, curved upward to the general shape of a hemisphere.
The light of the mass issued from within itself, like that of a great lamp, except that there seemed to be no central brightest point, or focus. Looking at any portion, the vision was somehow aware that the entire mass was lucidly transparent. And yet so transfused with radiance was it that the eye could pierce but a little way beyond the outer surfaces.
Even in that excited moment, Waring had an odd, fleeting conviction that somewhere, sometime he had looked upon an object similar to this.
"'Ware the edge," he called to his companions—and himself approached it with seeming recklessness.
He was more cautious than he appeared. There were sixteen stones in the pavement around the pillars. Eight of them were pentagonal in shape, the points laid outward. These large slabs alternated with narrow oblong blocks, each based against one of the square pillars, radiating like wheel-spokes. The large slab that had thrown Tellifer might be the only treacherous one, or all the pentagonal blocks might be pivoted beneath. Should the spokelike oblongs drop, however, any one of them would fling its victim against one of the pillars, instead of into the pit.
Waring did not stop to think this out. He merely instinctively assumed that the spokelike stones were comparatively safe. Running to the inner end of one of them; he flung his arm about the pillar and bent forward, peering into the pit.
His companions had paused a little way behind him. They all knew what a really deep regard had existed between the big correspondent and the eccentric esthete, There was something pitifully tragic in seeing that great bulk of a man poised there, one arm stiffly outstretched, staring down into the abyss that had engulfed his friend.
They heard him draw a long, quivering sigh. When he spoke, his deep tones noticeably trembled:
"Like it down there? Darn you, TNT! Next time I hear your death cry—stop and smoke a cigar before I charge around any! What’s wrong? Lost your voice?"
Respect for tragedy appearing suddenly out of place, the other men followed Waring to the edge.
That is, Otway and John B., having noted the correspondent’s path of approach, followed to the edge. Young Sigsbee, less observant, merely avoided the particular slab that had thrown Tellifer. He stepped out on the pentagon next adjoining and took one cautious stride.
The archaic engineers who balanced those slabs had known their business perfectly. The pointed outer ends were bevelled and solidly supported by the main pavement. But the least additional weight on the inner half was enough for the purpose intended. Sigsbee tried in vain to fling himself backward. Failing in that, he sat down and slid off a forty-five degree slope to join Tellifer.
As he disappeared, there came a little distressed cry—the first sound of any kind which the dancer had uttered. The girl ran out along one of the oblong paths to cling round a pillar and stare down after Sigsbee.
The pit beneath the lucent mass was octagonal at the top, but, below, it curved to a round bowl-shape. Dead-black at the bottom, the upper planes shaded from brown to flame-orange. It was not over a dozen feet deep at the center.
Tellifer, it seemed, had been standing in the middle, arms folded, face thrown back, contemplating the under surface of the shining mass above him with a rapt, ecstatic interest which took no heed of either his predicament or his friend’s irritated protest. He had attention for nothing save the lucent mass. When Sigsbee in turn arrived, knocking the esthete’s feet from under him, Tellifer emerged from the struggling heap, more indignant at being disturbed, than over his badly kicked shins.
In a moment he had resumed his attitude of entranced contemplation.
Standing ruefully up beside him, Sigsbee answered several eager questions hurled by the others, with an acerbic:
"How do I know? Ask him! I can’t see anything up there but a lot of white light that makes my eyes ache. I say, you fellows, won’t you throw me a line or something and haul me out? Tellifer can stay here, if he admires the view so much. I can’t see anything in it."
He glanced down at his clothes disgustedly—inspected a pair of hands the palms of which were black as any negro’s.
