Westphalen was about to return to the dais and threaten the priest when he noticed simple sliding bolts securing the grate to rings in the stone floor at two of the corners; on the far side along one edge was a row of hinges.
As Westphalen freed the bolts it occurred to him how odd it was to lock up a treasure with such simple devices. But his mind was too full of the sight of those jewels below to dwell for long on bolts. .
They raised the grate and propped it open with an Enfield. Malleson arrived with the rope then. At Westphalen's direction he tied it to one of the temple's support columns and tossed it into the opening. Westphalen was about to ask for a volunteer when Tooke squatted on the rim.
'Me father was a jeweler's assistant,' he announced. 'I'll tell ye if there be anything down there to get excited about.'
He grasped the rope and began to slide down. Westphalen watched Tooke reach the floor and fairly leap upon the nearest urn. He grabbed a handful of stones and brought them over to the sputtering lamp. He righted it, then poured the stones from one hand to the other in the light.
'They're real!' he shouted. 'B'God, they're real!'
Westphalen was speechless for a moment. Everything was going to be all right. He could go back to England, settle his debts, and never, never gamble again.
He tapped Watts, Russell, and Lang on the shoulders and pointed below. 'Give him a hand.'
The three men slid down the rope in rapid succession. Each made a personal inspection of the jewels. Westphalen watched their long shadows interweaving in the lamplight as they scurried around below. It was all he could do to keep from screaming at them to send up the jewels. He could not appear too eager. No, that wouldn't do at all. He had to be calm.
Finally they dragged an urn over to the side and tied the rope around its neck. Westphalen and Malleson hauled it up, lifted it over the rim and set it on the floor.
Malleson dipped both hands into the jewels and brought up two fistfuls. Westphalen restrained himself from doing the same. He picked up a single emerald and studied it, outwardly casual, inwardly wanting to crush it against his lips and cry for joy.
'C'mon, up there!' said Tooke from below. 'Let's 'ave the rope, what. There be plenty more to come up and it stinks down 'ere. Let's 'urry it up.'
Westphalen gestured to Malleson, who untied the rope from the urn and tossed the end over the edge. He continued to study the emerald, thinking it the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, until he heard one of the men say:
'What was that?'
'What was what?'
'A noise. I thought I 'eard a noise in the tunnel there.'
'Yer daft, mate. Nothing in that black 'ole but stink.'
'I 'eard something, I tell you.'
Westphalen stepped up to the edge and looked down at the four men. He was about to tell them to stop talking and keep working when the priest and the woman broke into song. Westphalen whirled at the sound. It was like no music he had ever heard, the woman's voice a keening wail, grating against the man's baritone. No words, only disconnected notes, none of which seemed to belong together. No harmony, only discord. It set his teeth on edge.
They stopped abruptly.
And then came another sound. It rose from below, seeping from the mouth of the tunnel that terminated in the pit, growing in volume. A grumbled cacophony of moans and grunts and snarls that made each hair on the nape of his neck stand up one by one.
The sounds from the tunnel ceased, replaced by the dissonant singing of the priest and priestess. They stopped and the inhuman sounds from the tunnel answered, louder still, in a litany from hell.
Suddenly the singing was joined by a scream of pain and terror from below.
Westphalen looked over the edge and saw one of the men—Watts, he thought—being dragged by his legs into the black maw of the tunnel, shrieking.
But what had him? The tunnel mouth was a darker shadow within the shadows. What was pulling him?
Tooke and Russell had him by the arms and were trying to hold him back, but the force drawing him into the dark was as inexorable as the tide. It seemed Watts's arms would be pulled from their sockets when a dark shape leaped from the tunnel and grabbed Tooke around the neck. It had a lean body and towered over the man. Westphalen could make out no details in the poor light and dancing shadows of the pandemonium below. But what little he saw was enough to make his skin tighten and shrink against his insides, and set his heart to beating madly.
The priest and the woman sang again. He knew he should stop them, but he couldn't speak, couldn't move.
Russell let go of Watts, who was quickly swallowed by the tunnel, and rushed to Tooke's aid. But as soon as he moved, another dark figure leaped from the shadows and pulled him into the tunnel. With a final convulsive heave, Tooke too was dragged off.
Westphalen had never heard grown men scream in such fear. The sound sickened him. Yet he could not react.
And still the priest and the woman sang, no longer stopping for an answering phrase from the tunnel.
Only Lang remained below. He had the rope in his fists and was halfway up the wall, his face a white mask of fear, when two dark shapes darted out of the darkness and leaped upon him, pulling him down. He screamed for help, his eyes wild as he was dragged twisting and kicking into the blackness below. Westphalen managed to break
