Page:Doughty--Mirrikh or A woman from Mars.djvu/30

 it rolls so easily off the tongue. Levitated—that’s it, you may depend.”

“George,” said Maurice solemnly, “you are making light of a serious matter. From my remarks made awhile ago, you have a perfect right to consider me not only a super-religious sort of fellow, but a theosophist as well. Now, the fact is, I am neither one nor the other. I am simply a confirmed investigator. The truth is what I want, and what I am determined to have. Therefore I undertook to investigate Buddhism, and I was amazed at what I found in its much  misrepresented doctrines. Nevertheless, I believe only what appeals to my reason and to my senses. Levitation does neither, and yet—well, to cut it short, where the deuce  has that fellow gone to? That’s what I want to know.”

“Where did he go the night he left me at the end of the alley?” I demanded triumphantly.

“Through some secret door, I presume. There was chance enough.”

“Was there? You yourself searched and could find no such outlet, but it would not be at all out of the way to  imagine both a secret door and a hidden staircase in this  ruined pile.”

“That’s it! That’s it!” cried Maurice; “unless he is a second Elijah he can have left this tower in no other  way.”

I was looking down as Maurice made this remark; gazing into the interior court yard behind the Nagkon Wat, a space surrounded by low, crumbling stone structures, any  one of which, even if we had run down stairs at the top of  our speed, it would have taken us a good ten minutes to  reach.

Five had not elapsed since the disappearance of Mr. Mirrikh—I doubt greatly if it was more than three.

“Look! Look!” I cried, suddenly seizing Maurice by the arm. “Look! Now will you believe?”

“Great God! It is the man himself! ”

He was as pale as death as these words burst from his lips, and even I felt that strange cold thrill pass through my  frame again.

I remember hearing the voice of the singer drawing nearer—of being conscious that he was coming up the last  of the stairs and we must encounter him in a moment more. Yet I thought nothing of this now. How could it be