“I believe it’s working loose. Lend a hand,” hissed Phil.
The two men strained, twisted, pulled, pushed. At length the rock budged slightly on one end. The other was firmly anchored.
“If we keep it up long enough there’s a chance,” agreed Forbes.
There followed hours of sweating labor. The obstinate rock seemed malevolently intelligent in its resistance. The men nipped their fingers, tore nails loose, groped, pushed, pulled, sought for a finger hold. And, at length the rock slid back. They pushed it out, heard the thud with which it fell to the floor.
Phil was first through the opening, worming and twisting, aided by such pressure as Forbes could apply. Then Arthur Forbes, tired, almost exhausted, slipped his feet through the opening, felt Phil’s fingers clutching his ankles.
The mortar on the inside of the wall had set until it was like cement. The hard particles scraped their flesh as they wormed through the hole, accounted for the hours of final effort.
“Seems to be a blind room without a single window,” remarked Phil, keeping his voice in a whisper.
“Wish we had matches,” agreed Forbes, his tone worried. “We haven’t the faintest idea of whether it’s a dungeon, or a snake pit, and we’ve got to hurry — there’s the wedding.”
“There’s the wedding,” agreed Phil. “We can’t be particular about the room. And no matter what’s here it can’t be any worse than what we’ve left. Let’s go.”
“Easy, old chap. This is India, you know, and that whole room with its crumbling mortar and all may be nothing but a trap. These fellows like to get prisoners to kill themselves trying to escape. Let’s make sure. It’s just a little queer, you know, that that diamond ring should have turned up so opportunely. Let’s keep our arms interlaced, and then feel cautiously. There may be a pit in the center of the floor for all we know.”
“Good idea,” agreed Phil. “But we’ve got to work fast. They’ll be coming in to look us over any minute now. And that stone from the wall is as good as written directions telling them where to go to look for us. They know the place, and we don’t.”
With arms interlocked, feeling with outstretched fingers, shrouded in pitch darkness, the men groped their way about the room.
Of a sudden Phil felt his companion stumble, draw back.
“Just as I suspected. There’s a pit in the center of the floor here. Watch out. I nearly fell, would have if it hadn’t been for your arm. Let’s see how far it goes, what it’s like.”
Phil came forward, cautiously, finger tips scraping the floor. Abruptly his arms swept off into black space. He continued to grope about the edge.
“Circular,” he said at length. “Let’s keep working around it. I’ll tear off a bit of cloth from my shirt and leave it here so we’ll know when we get back to the starting point.”
There was the sound of tearing cloth, and then the noise of garments rasping along stone as the two men explored the pit. It was Phil whose exploring fingers found the stairs. They were stone stairs, rounded by years of use. Moving in the darkness, not knowing what was below, their ears attuned for the scraping rustle which would mean the presence of a deadly snake, the two men descended.
Chapter 6
The Halls of Hanuman
For some thirty feet they went down. The stairs circled the pit, swinging in a spiral. At the bottom began the game once more of finger-tip exploration. This time it took them but a matter of seconds to become oriented. They were at the entrance of a walled passageway, arched at the top, some eight feet wide, leading on a gradual slope. Water had oozed through the stones until a green slime had formed over the rocks. There was a damp, dank, stagnant smell, and the darkness teemed with the suggestion of living things.
But only once did they hear the scraping of a scaled body moving over the stones, and that noise grew less, terminated in a long-drawn hiss. The men pressed on, knowing that death lay behind, not knowing what was ahead.
A regular throbbing of the atmosphere seemed to pulse in their blood before their ears became directly conscious of it as sound.
“Tom-toms,” remarked Forbes. “You never hear ’em but what you know you’ve been listening to ’em long before you first heard ’em.”
“Where are they?” asked Phil, turning his head in the darkness, this way and then that, after the manner of a bird listening to a whistle.
“Have to keep going to tell. It’s the hardest sound in the world to locate.”
As they progressed, the sound of the tom-toms grew louder, seemed to come from above them. Phil touched his hand to the side of the passage, and noticed that the walls were now dry and free from the green slime.
“We’ve been underground for a while. Now we’ve climbed back up,” he announced.
“And we must have covered at least half a mile,” said Forbes. “You know I’m wondering—” He broke off and lapsed into silence.
They went for some hundred feet farther, and then a current of air, striking Phil’s left cheek, caused him to stop and investigate.
A door led from the stone passageway. That door had been left slightly ajar, and through the crack came a current of drier air.
Phil thrust his hand into the opening, pulled. Slowly the heavy door creaked back. Ahead was a flight of stairs, and from the top came the first faint light the men had seen since they entered upon the passageway. As they started up, walking cautiously, a sound from above caused them to stop abruptly.
The faint slithering of rhythmic sound could come only from feet descending the stairway. The men exchanged glances in consternation. Perhaps their escape from their cell had been discovered. In that event the searchers might have decided to cover both ends of the passage. Or, on the other hand, the approaching feet might merely belong to some of the priests of Hanuman, who were using the passage as a means of communication with other parts of the temple buildings.
The stairs offered no place where they could conceal themselves, unless they trusted to chance that the others would walk past them in the darkness. And the same was true of the passageway.
Now they could see the feet approaching, faint shadows outlined against the dim light from above. No word was spoken; by faint pressures of the hand alone Nickers conveyed to his companion the idea that but two approached, that they would take their chances on a hand-to-hand encounter in the darkness. It was better to surprise them and attack them than to play fugitive and run into a trap.
They crouched, bracing themselves. The feet of the figures who descended the stairs were now more plainly visible. And Phil’s eyes detected the hairy legs as soon as Arthur Forbes’s hissed warning penetrated the darkness.
One of those who descended was an ape!
Of necessity that changed the plans of the two who crouched in the darkness. They would be no match for the ape. They dropped back, cautiously, a step at a time, feeling their way, trusting to luck that they should make no noise.
As they regained the passage, the darkness above them was split by the beam of an electric flashlight which cut through the darkness, illuminated the arched passageway, the stairs, the dancing shadows.
The men braced themselves for an uneven conflict. In close quarters the great strength of the giant ape would make their own efforts puny by comparison.
And then a voice purred and rippled through a guttural dialect which was strange to the listeners. But they recognized the sound of the voice. It was Murasingh, talking to the ape-man as one would chat with an intimate friend.
Was it pose or could the ape-man understand the language? The men glanced at each other, and then stiffened. For the light flickered its beam at their very feet. The sound of shuffling feet was upon them, and the strange pair literally brushed past.