Authors: George England
In front of them, about seven feet from the floor, a rough white star
had been smeared. Directly below it a kind of alcove or recess
appeared, lined with shelves of concrete. What its original purpose
may have been it would be hard to say; perhaps it may have been
intended as a storage-place for the cathedral archives.
But now the explorers saw it was partly filled with pile on pile of
curiously crinkled parchment not protected in any way from the air,
not covered or boxed in. To the right, however, stood a massive chest,
seemingly of sheet-lead.
"Some sense to the lead," growled Stern; "but why they left their
records open to the air, blest if I can see!"
He raised the torch and flared the light along the shelves, and then
he understood. For here, there, copper nails glinted dully, lying in
dust that once upon a time had been wood.
"I'm wrong, Beta; I apologize to them," Stern exclaimed. "These were
all securely boxed once, but the boxes have gone to pieces long since.
Dry-rot, you know. Well, let's see what condition the parchments are
in!"
She held the torch while he tried to raise one, but it broke at the
slightest touch. Again he assayed, and a third time. Same result.
"Great Scott!" he ejaculated, nonplused. "See what we're up against,
will you? We've found 'em and they're ours, but—"
They stood considering a minute. All at once a dull metallic clang
echoed heavily through the crypt. Despite herself, the girl shuddered.
The eerie depths, the gloom, the skeletons had all conspired to shake
her nerves.
"What's
that?
" she whispered, gripping Allan by the arm.
"That? Oh—nothing! Now
how
the deuce are we going to get at
these—"
"It
was
something, Allan! But what?"
He grew suddenly silent.
"By Jove—it sounded like—the door—"
"The door? Oh, Allan, quick!"
A sudden, irresistible fear fingered at the strings of the man's
heart. At the back of his neck he felt the hair begin to lift. Then he
smiled by very strength of will.
"Don't be absurd, Beatrice," he managed to say. "It couldn't be, of
course. There's no one here. It—"
But already she was out of the alcove. With the torch held high in
air, she stood there peering with wide eyes down the long blackness of
the crypt, striving to pierce the dark.
Then suddenly he heard her cry of terror.
"The door, Allan! The door!
It's shut!
"
Not at any time since the girl and he had wakened in the tower,
more than a year ago, had Allan felt so compelling a fear as overswept
him then. The siege of the Horde at Madison Forest, the plunge down
the cataract, the fall into the Abyss and the battle with the
Lanskaarn had all taxed his courage to the utmost, but he had met
these perils with more calm than he now faced the blank menace of that
metal door.
For now no sky overhung him, no human agency opposed him, no
counterplay of stress and strife thrilled his blood.
No; the girl and he now were far underground in a crypt, a tomb,
walled round with incalculable tons of concrete, barred from the upper
world, alone—and for the first time in his life the man knew
something of the anguish of unreasoning fear.
Yet he was not bereft of powers of action. Only an instant he stood
there motionless and staring; then with a cry, wordless and harsh, he
ran toward the barrier.
Beneath his spurning feet the friable skeletons crumbled and vanished;
he dashed himself against the door with a curse that was half a
prayer; he strove with it—and staggered back, livid and shaken, for
it held!
Now Beatrice had reached it, too. In her hand the torch trembled and
shook. She tried to speak, but could not. And as he faced her, there
in the tomblike vault, their eyes met silently.
A deathly stillness fell, with but their heart-beats and the
sputtering of the torch to deepen it.
"Oh!" she gasped, stretching out a hand. "You—we—
can't
—"
He licked his lips and tried to smile, but failed.
"Don't—don't be afraid, little girl!" he stammered. "This can't hold
us, possibly. The chain—I broke it!"
"Yes, but the bar, Allan—the bar! How did you leave the bar?"
"Raised!"
The one word seemed to seal their doom. A shudder passed through
Beatrice.
"So then," she choked, "some air-current swung the door shut—and the
bar—fell—"
A sudden rage possessed the engineer.
"Damn that infernal staple!" he gritted, and as he spoke the ax swung
into air.
"Crash!"
On the metal plates it boomed and echoed thunderously. A ringing
clangor vibrated the crypt.
"
Crash!
"
Did the door start? No; but in the long-eroded plates a jagged dent
took form.
Again the ax swung high. Cold though the vault was, sweat globuled his
forehead, where the veins had swelled to twisting knots.
"
Crash!
"
With a wild verberation, a scream of sundered metal and a clatter of
flying fragments, the staple gave way. A crack showed round the edge
of the iron barrier.
Stern flung his shoulder against the door. Creaking, it swung. He
staggered through. One hand groped out to steady him, against the
wall. From the other the ax dropped crashing to the floor.
Only a second he stood thus, swaying; then he turned and gathered Beta
in his arms. And on his breast she hid her face, from which the roses
all had faded quite.
He felt her fighting back the tears, and raised her head and kissed
her.
"There, there!" he soothed. "It wasn't anything, after all, you see.
But—if we hadn't brought the ax with us—"
"Oh, Allan, let's go now! This crypt—I can't—"
"We will go very soon. But there's no danger now, darling. We're not
children, you know. We've still got work to do. We'll go soon; but
first, those records!"
"Oh, how can you, after—after what might have been?"
He found the strength to smile.
"I know," he answered, "but it didn't happen, after all. A miss is
worth a million miles, dear. That's what life seems to mean to us, and
has meant ever since we woke in the tower, peril and risk, labor and
toil—and victory! Come, come, let's get to work again, for there's so
endlessly much to do."
Calmer grown, the girl found new courage in his eyes and in his strong
embrace.
"You're right, Allan. I was a little fool to—"
He stopped her self-reproach with kisses, then picked up the torch
from the floor where it had fallen from her nerveless hand.
"If you prefer," he offered. "I'll take you back into the sunlight,
and you can sit under the trees and watch the river, while I—"
"Where you are, there am I! Come on, Allan; let's get it over with.
Oh, what a coward you must think me!"
"I think you're a woman, and the bravest that ever lived!" he
exclaimed vehemently. "Who but you could ever have gone through with
me all that has happened? Who could be my mate and face the future as
you're doing? Oh, if you only understood my estimate of you!
"But now let's get at those records again. Time's passing, and there
must be still no end of things to do!"
He recovered his ax, and with another blow demolished the last
fragment of the staple, so that by no possibility could the door catch
again.
Then for the second time they penetrated the crypt and the tunnel and
once more reached the alcove of the records.
"Beatrice!"
"What is it, Allan?"
"Look! Gone—all gone!"
"
Gone?
Why, what do you mean? They're—"
"Gone, I tell you! My God! Just a mass of rubbish, powder, dust—"
"But—but how—"
"The concussion of the ax! That must have done it! The violent
sound-waves—the air in commotion!"
"But, Allan, it can't be! Surely there must be something left?"
"You see?"
He pointed at the shelves. She stood and peered, with him, at the sad
havoc wrought there. Then she stretched out a tentative finger and
stirred a little of the detritus.
"Catastrophe!" she cried.
"Yes and no. At any rate, it may have been inevitable."
"Inevitable?"
He nodded.
"Even if this hadn't happened, Beatrice, I'm afraid we never could
have moved any of these parchments, or read them, or handled them in
any way. Perhaps if we'd had all kinds of proper appliances, glass
plates, transparent adhesives, and so on,
and
a year or two at our
disposal, we might have made something out of them, but even so, it's
doubtful.
"Of course, in detective stories, Hawkshaw can take the ashes right
out of the grate and piece them together and pour chemicals on them
and decipher the mystery of the lost rubies, and all that. But this
isn't a story, you see; and what's more, Hawkshaw doesn't have to work
with ashes nearly a thousand years old. Ten centuries of
dry-rot—that's
some
problem!"
She stood aghast, hardly able to believe her eyes.
"But—but," she finally articulated, "there's the other cache out
there in Medicine Bow Range. The cave, you know. And we have the
bearings. And some time, when we've got all the leisure in the world
and all the necessary appliances—"
"Yes, perhaps. Although, of course, you realize the earth is seventeen
degrees out of its normal plane, and every reckoning's shifted. Still,
it's a possibility. But for the present there's strictly nothing
doing, after all."
"How about that leaden chest?"
She wheeled about and pointed at the other side of the alcove, where
stood the metal box, sullen, defiant, secure.
"By Jove, that's so, tool Why, I'd all but forgotten that! You're a
brick, Beta! The box, by all means. Perhaps the most important things
of all are still in safety there. Who knows?"
"Open it, Allan, and let's see!"
Her recent terror almost forgotten in this new excitement, the girl
had begun to get back some of her splendid color. And now, as she
stood gazing at the metal chest which still, perhaps, held the most
vital of the records, she felt again a thrill of excitement at thought
of all its possibilities.
The man, too, gazed at it with keen emotion.
"We've got to be careful this time, Beatrice!" said he. "No more
mistakes. If we lose the contents of this chest, Heaven only knows
when we may be able to get another glimpse into the past. Frankly, the
job of opening it, without ruining the contents, looks pretty stiff.
Still, with care it may be done. Let's see, now, what are we up
against here?"
He took the torch from her and minutely examined the leaden casket.
It stood on the concrete floor, massive and solid, about three and a
half feet high by five long and four wide. So far as he could see,
there were neither locks nor hinges. The cover seemed to have been
hermetically sealed on. Still visible were the marks of the
soldering-iron, in a ragged line, about three inches from the top.
"The only way to get in here is to cut it open," said Allan at last.
"If we had any means of melting the solder, that would be better, of
course, but there's no way to heat a tool in this crypt. I take it the
men who did this work had a plumber's gasoline torch, or something of
that sort. We have practically nothing. As for building a fire in here
and heating one of the aeroplane tools, that's out of the question. It
would stifle us both. No, we must cut. That's the best we can do."
He drew his hunting-knife from its sheath and, giving the torch back
to Beatrice, knelt by the chest. Close under the line of soldering he
dug the blade into the soft metal, and, boring with it, soon made a
puncture through the leaden sheet.
"Only a quarter of an inch thick," he announced, with satisfaction.
"This oughtn't to be such a bad job!"
Already he was at work, with infinite care not to shock or jar the
precious contents within. In his powerful hands the knife laid back
the metal in a jagged line. A quarter of an hour sufficed to cut
across the entire front.
He rested a little while.
"Seems to be another chest inside, of wood," he told the girl. "Not
decayed, either. I shouldn't wonder if the lead had preserved things
absolutely intact. In that case this find is sure to be a rich one."
Again he set to work. In an hour from the time he had begun, the whole
top of the lead box—save only that portion against the wall—had been
cut off.
"Do you dare to move it out, Allan?" queried the girl anxiously.
"Better not. I think we can raise the cover as it is."
He slit up the front corners, and then with comparative ease bent the
entire top upward. To the explorer's eyes stood revealed a chest of
cedar, its cover held with copper screws.
"Now for it!" said the man. "We ought to have one of the screw-drivers
from the Pauillac, but that would take too much time. I guess the
knife will do."
With the blade he attacked the screws, one by one, and by dint of
laborious patience in about an hour had removed all twenty of them.
A minute later he had pried up the cover, had quite removed it, and
had set it on the floor.
Within, at one side, they saw a formless something swathed in oiled
canvas. The other half of the space was occupied by eighty or a
hundred vertical compartments, in each of which stood something
carefully enveloped in the same material.
"Well, for all the world if it doesn't look like a set of big
phonograph records!" exclaimed the man. He drew one of the objects out
and very carefully unwrapped it.
"Just what they are—records! On steel. The new Chalmers-Enemarck
process—new, that is, in 1917. So, then, that's a phonograph, eh?"
He pointed at the oiled canvas.
"Open it, quick, Allan!" Beatrice exclaimed. "If it
is
a phonograph,
why, we can hear the very voices of the past, the dead, a full
thousand years ago!"