CHAPTER XVI.

THE HOLE IN THE WALL

The position of the moon had cast the greater part of the _wâdi_ into deep shadow. There was a gap in the irregular wall nearly opposite to Barry’s tent through which a certain amount of light came, but right and left of it lay ebony darkness.

As he came out and joined Professor Blackwell:

“There’s a party of Arabs up on the caravan road!” said the latter in a low, urgent voice.

“Where is my father?” Barry whispered.

“Here I am, Barry!” came a reply out of the darkness. “Speak softly. Voices carry for miles in this place.”

Barry groped his way in the direction of the speaker.

“Is Danbazzar here?” he asked.

“I’m right here!” Danbazzar answered in a harsh whisper; then, speaking more softly: “Who fired that shot?” he demanded.

“I don’t know,” Professor Blackwell returned. “It came from high up in the mountains. It must have been one of the Arabs.”

“I wonder!” murmured John Cumberland. “I make the time half after two. The second shift comes on at four. So that no one is likely to have been moving--unless one of the watchmen may have seen something.”

“_Sssh-ssh!_” came a warning. “Look!”

High on the ridge above them, like some spirited ebony statue, the figure of a horseman appeared, a magnificent silhouette against the deepening blue of the sky! A moment he remained there. Then--no sound reaching their ears--he disappeared magically, as he had come!

“I want someone to go up to the excavation.” It was Danbazzar speaking in a suppressed undertone. “Shall _I_ go and leave you in charge, Mr. Cumberland, or----”

“I’ll go!” Barry volunteered promptly. “You may be wanted here.”

“It’s just possible,” Danbazzar went on, “that something may have gone wrong there. It is also possible they mayn’t know the Arabs are here. Order everybody to stay under cover except the guards. All work to be suspended till further instructions. Got it clear?”

“All set,” Barry replied promptly.

“Be careful, my boy,” said John Cumberland; “and don’t forget the signal, or our own men may attack you, if they are on the _qui vive_.”

A big muscular hand grasped his.

“Here,” said Danbazzar, “take this.”

He found a service revolver thrust into his fingers. Thereupon he set off, rejoicing in the adventure yet wishing that Jim Sakers could have been there to share it with him. He moved with great caution. In this desert stillness, the slightest sound was audible for miles.…

At some points in the journey, the _wâdi_ left behind, that ridge along which the caravan road ran was visible; at other points it became lost to view. But always Barry slunk in the shadows, sometimes dropping prone and wriggling for several yards, in order that he might take advantage of some narrow belt of shadow; ever conscious, when the dangerous ridge was in sight, of the possibility of being seen, or worse--of being shot.

Yet the very shadows that befriended him held their own terrors. Some spies of the fanatical Arabs might lurk there. But without sight of the band, and having heard no sound to indicate the presence of any living thing on the plateau above, he came to that midnight gully which opened out immediately above the tomb.

Peering from the end of it, he clapped his hands very softly.

An answering signal came from the top of the slope. He surmised that the guard at the lower end was out of hearing. Mentally reviewing what he knew of the course of the caravan road, he determined that from no point upon it was this valley visible.

He surveyed the rocky face of the mountain before him, his glance travelling along uninterrupted by any oddity due to Danbazzar’s screen--that miracle of camouflage. He crossed and hurried to the trap, pausing a moment before he raised it.

Very softly he clapped his hands again. An answering signal came from beyond the canvas.

Gently he lifted the shallow box of sand, turned, and groped with his foot for the first of the wooden steps below. Finding this, he stood upon it, ducked his head, and lowered the trap. He took three steps, walking backward, then turned, and stared up a little incline.

Above him, a lantern was set upon a heap of débris in the yawning entrance to the tomb. And where dim light shone upward upon his ascetic face stood Hassan es-Sugra, smiling with gentle melancholy. No sound came from the depths of the tunnel.

“Hassan!” said Barry. “The Hawwara Arabs are here!”

Hassan bowed gravely and extended his hand to help Barry up the slope.

“I know, sir,” he replied. “We heard the shot, and I ordered everyone to be silent.”

“Did they fire at one of the watchmen?” Barry asked, scrambling up beside the speaker.

Hassan shook his head slowly.

“No,” he said, “I do not know why the shot was fired, but everything was stopped until news came from outside.”

His gentle eyes, which were so like the eyes of a gazelle, held a curious light. Later Barry determined that it had been an indication of excitement. Now, squatting about among the débris of the excavation in the curious artificial cave created by the screen, he saw a group of workmen. Some chewed, one of them was smoking, and they all regarded him with glances in which only smiling curiosity could be read.

He stared down into the haunted depths of the shaft, and then back again to Hassan es-Sugra.

“It was written that we should succeed,” said Hassan.

“What?” Barry demanded, conscious of a new tingling in his veins.

“It was the work done last year,” Hassan continued calmly, “which made it possible. If we had known, sir, with a little more time and trouble we could have completed. The second portcullis is broken. I cannot say how it was broken. But we have made a way through.”

“Well!” Barry cried. “What’s below?”

“A small square chamber,” Hassan replied, “without any decorations. On the right is a doorway. It has been closed with square blocks and cemented up. We have removed one of these blocks without great difficulty. When the warning came I had just shone the light of a torch through the opening, sir, which the workmen had made.”

“Yes!”

Barry grasped his arm hard.

“It is the burial chamber,” Hassan went on calmly. “A great granite sarcophagus is there, untouched.”

Almost too excited for speech, Barry pointed, and Hassan, gravely inclining his head, took from beneath his robe a pocket torch.

Stooping, he led the way down the shaft.

At the side of the first portcullis was an irregular opening wide enough for a man to squeeze through. Hassan went first and then so directed the light of his torch as to assist Barry to follow.

“Now, sir,” he said, as the latter joined him in the lower part of the tunnel, “be careful here. The roof has fallen. It is this, I think, that broke the second door.”

Bending forward, and at one point going on all fours, the two pressed on. Presently, climbing through a gap not more than eighteen inches high, over a mass of broken granite which seemed to have fallen from a deep cavity in the roof, Barry suddenly remembered Professor Blackwell’s theory about the second portcullis.

The heat in the lower part of the shaft was oppressive, but having proceeded for another twenty feet the descent ceased. They found themselves in a small, square chamber hewn out of living rock, some three paces across, and perhaps nine feet high.

At first glance the wall upon the right resembled that in front and that upon the left; but the trained eye of Hassan es-Sugra had almost immediately detected the trick. It was plaster covering square blocks--in part at least. This plaster had been chipped away--it was several inches in thickness--over a space of a square yard or so. Beams of wood and all sorts of excavators’ implements lay about the apartment. And, presumably by means of these, one of the blocks had been forced into the chamber beyond. The effect was that of a small square window in a very thick wall.

“Take the torch, please,” said Hassan, “and shine it through and a little to the left.”

He passed the torch to Barry. And the latter was surprised to find that his hand was shaking slightly. Hassan es-Sugra smiled.

“Triumph is sometimes terrible, as well as defeat,” he said.

Barry grasped the light and thrust it forward into the opening. A beam shone out before him, upon a rose sandstone sarcophagus! The covering was accurately in place. Clearly no human hand had touched it for centuries.

He experienced a curious choking sensation. He turned the light slowly, so that the beam moved along the top of the sarcophagus lid and beyond, upon the wall of the chamber.

The wall was brilliantly and beautifully painted. Immediately before him, slightly to the right of the sarcophagus, the disk of white light came to rest. Barry could feel his heart thumping against the rough stone upon which he rested. He was staring at a symbol in high relief, exquisitely coloured. It was that which meant: “She Who Sleeps but Who Will Awaken.”