Part 10 (2/2)

I listened, and I dared not move. The silence that followed endured for minutes, during which the seconds were punctuated by the violent beating of my heart. And, presently, I began to think. As I mastered my fears, I became capable of reasoning.

It was folly to consider ghosts. Such superst.i.tions were well enough for untutored savages, wild men of the forests, but they would never do for Richard Treadgold, who had lived his years in Suss.e.x--though, of a certainty, I had heard of more than one so-called haunted house between Beachy Head and Selsey Bill.

I was convinced that I had heard a human voice. I had been able even to distinguish words, howbeit in a language that I did not comprehend. And if that were so, it must follow that I was not the only human soul within that gloomy ruin.

I looked about me, and saw in the starlight my blow-pipe, lying on the floor. I picked it up, and placing a dart within the mouthpiece, began to explore the place, starting at the wide entrance and making a tour of the walls.

It was not long before I came upon a square hole in the ground, edged with shallow coping stones to keep out the water when the place was flooded by the rains. It reminded me of a hatchway on board a s.h.i.+p.

Below it was quite dark. I lay down upon the floor at full length with the idea of listening: for I was now sure that I was on the track of the secret of the place. But presently my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, and I saw before me a flight of narrow steps, leading downward--as it seemed--into the very bowels of the earth.

I had now mastered my fears. I was determined to be a fool no longer, but to conduct myself like the man I wished I were. I would have descended without a second's thought had it not been for two grave considerations: firstly, I had no means of striking a light; and secondly, the stairway was so narrow that I must leave behind my long Indian blow-pipe, the only means of self-defence I had.

I have set down already much by no means favourable to myself; and therefore I have the less hesitation in recording an incident which goes far to prove that there were moments when I was a worthy pupil and admirer of John Bannister himself. For I went down that black and shallow staircase, half naked as I was and quite unarmed, not knowing what would befall me at the end of it.

Half-way down, the staircase turned, when to my surprise I saw below me the dim reflection of a light. And presently I found myself in a long shallow chamber, where I stood bewildered.

In the centre of the room was a rough stone altar upon which burned an oil lamp of a quaint design and wrought in bronze. Of other such lamps, similar in all respects, I counted five, lying upon the stone flooring, each surrounded by its own pool of oil.

The whole place indeed was in great disorder. Curtains of finely woven hair had been wrenched from the walls and cast upon the ground. Benches and short-legged tables had been overturned, and in some cases broken.

Here lay a sword, and there a spear, and here again a pistol, broken at the small of the b.u.t.t. Nor was all this the worst of it, by any means; for immediately before me, lying in stiff, huddled att.i.tudes--a pathetic and a tragic thing to see--were three stone-dead men, as sure as I first saw the light of day in Suss.e.x.

Dead they were, for they neither moved nor even breathed. And when I sighed aloud at the wonder of it all, a fourth man whom I had not noticed, lying upon the floor at the other end of the room, struggled upon an elbow and cried out to me, and afterwards pointed a finger down his throat.

I was no such fool as to mistake his meaning. He wanted water to drink, and I looked about me to find it. At the foot of the altar was a pool of clear, crystal water, a spring that bubbled from out of the crust of the earth, the overflow being conducted to the far end of the chamber by means of a shallow, wooden trough. I found a drinking vessel which, to my amazement, was of gold; and this I filled in haste, and brought to the wounded man.

For wounded he was, a leg being broken at the thighbone, so that he could not move an inch without suffering the greatest pain. It was this pain I daresay, as much as loss of blood, which had thrown him in a fever; for his skin was burning to the touch.

Three times I filled the cup, and each time he emptied it; and as he drank, he thanked me with his eyes.

Then he lay back and rested, whilst I gazed upon that shambles; for a shambles it was--blood was everywhere.

I went to the dead men, to each in turn, to make sure that there was no spark of life in any. And this was the second time that I looked upon the cold face of death; for, sure enough, each one was dead. And they were shot; they had been killed by leaden bullets: one in the head, another in the heart, whereas the third, poor wretch! had died in agony, with a great wound in his stomach.

But dead though they were, I could not regard them without noticing how different they were in features and in figure from the wild men of the woods.

The savages with whom I had sojourned for so long, for whose simple kindness I shall be ever grateful, were of a Mongolian cast of countenance: they had high cheek-bones, lips thinner than a negro's, and yet thick and loose, and their eyes were almond-shaped, inclining downwards to the nose. Also, their greatly receding foreheads and chins suggested that they belonged to one of the lower and least intelligent species of mankind.

But the three dead men, as well as he who was yet alive, had aquiline noses, thin lips, and rounded eyes. Also they were fully dressed in long tunics of some woven material, open at the throat, and girdled at the waist. They wore their hair long, but cut straight, level with the eyebrows; and above this fringe a broad metal band encircled the head above the ears.

I looked from them to the altar, and saw thereon a graven disc from which rays extended to the extremities of the stone. Beyond doubt this was meant to be the sun; and of a sudden I remembered that the inhabitants of Old Peru had been wont to wors.h.i.+p the sun.

So these, perhaps, were those same Peruvian priests of whom Amos Baverstock had spoken, they who shared with John Bannister the secret of the Greater Treasure of the Incas.

And then the truth burst upon me as in a flash--I had struck the pathway traversed by the tiger. The death and destruction by which I was surrounded was the work of Amos Baverstock himself.

<script>