Page:Weird Tales volume 42 number 04.djvu/78

 Probably these covered the real entrance to the dromos, that which had been hidden for tens of centuries until Dragoumis pierced its age-old seals; on that fatal night it must have been crushed by the landslide that had buried his pursuers. But to the left the passage stretched on, seemingly endless, into the mountain's heart. For a little way only the lantern s light pierced it, breaking the darkness into pieces, into dancing shadows.

Did one of those shadows dart back as he looked, one a little thicker, a little blacker, than its fellows?

He did not heed it. His heart felt light, exultant, as he levelled his flashlight and walked on, toward the blackness that looked solid as a wall. He no longer even felt horror of the axe beneath his arm. If Dragoumis could have chosen, surely he would have had his dead body dismembered a thousand times rather than let his great discovery be lost again, hidden from mankind, perhaps for more centuries. For on no other terms would Anthi ever have disclosed the secret. Poor girl! Later, when her hysterical, superstitious obsession was over, she would regret this, she would be kind and gentle and fastidious again, as a woman should be. Now he must do whatever was necessary to bring her peace.

He went on into the shadows, and they retreated before him slowly, steadily. He followed them down that stone corridor that led through the earth's bowels.

Once or twice it seemed to him that he heard a faint curious rustling among those dark, wavering shapes that recoiled before his flashlight. As if someone were walking ahead of him, stealthily. He decided that it must be some trick of echoes, reverberating oddly in that subterranean place. It could not be bats, for there was never anything where the light came; throw his flashlight where he would, its beams found only great, bare blocks of stone.

Then he came at last to the black rectangle of the inner portal, the opening into that great, circular chamber Anthi had told him of. There Dragoumis had found golden vessels and golden filigree-work, and images of gods that no man had worshipped for ages. There he had found bones, and there, perhaps, be had left his own.

And there, at last, fear took Philip. It closed round his throat like an icy hand. In his inner ears a far-off voice seemed to cry: "Do not disturb the dead! Do not disturb the dead!"

He shrugged. That voice came out of his childhood, out of superstitions and conventional moralities engraved upon the young mind as a phonograph record is engraved upon wax. He thought, "I am being foolish as Anthi. I have handled many mummies, I have felt their dry, withered flesh slough off my hands. What difference is there, what real difference? A man can be as dead in three minutes as he will be in three thousand years."

He swung the flashlight forward, toward the inner chamber.

He saw the gleam of gold, he saw strange, grotesque shapes of stone. He saw carved stone larnaki, and, in the far corner, a table of red marble. Its legs gleamed under the light, like blood.

Was there something on top of the table, among the shadows? Something long and dark and still, like the outstretched form of a man?

Once again fear took him. He could not bear to throw the flashlight upon the tabletop, to see. He edged slowly into the chamber, moving cautiously, laboriously, as if through invisible barriers. There were no more echoes. In the deathly silence he heard nothing but the fierce, hard pounding of his heart.

Suddenly he stopped. He could not bear to go farther, to come within touching distance of that thing that might be lying there.

He set his teeth and his will. Slowly, as if it were a rock too heavy for him to move, the flashlight came up. Its beams touched something; something upon the table-top.

A man's hand that lay, lax and brown and leathery, upon red marble. A large hand, larger than most men's. Firm and sleek as leather it looked; and yet, in some curious and subtle way, as lifeless. None could have mistaken it for the hand of a living man. Philip's brain reeled; through it