30
ly 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!"
CHAPTER VII
THE LEADEN CHEST
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 t