“The honourable stranger has received bad news,” said the Mandarin.
Talham looked at him thoughtfully. Could he help?
“I have received very bad news,” he said, “with which I will not assail your magnificent ear. Yet I would ask you this. Where is the nearest telegraph town?”
The Mandarin considered.
“There is one at Tai Pan,” he said, looking straightly at the other. “That is the nearest. Otherwise you would have to go to Cho Sin, which is a hundred and fifty li from here.”
“I shall send to Tai Pan,” said Talham, and took his leave with a little ceremony.
All messages that went through Tai Pan would, of course, be seen by Soo. It was Cho Sin or nothing.
He got back to the compound, and found Tillizinni making an inspection of the walls.
“I’ve bad news,” he said, and with remarkable brevity told the contents of the letter.
“The girl has been lured here by Soo,” said Tillizinni; “that’s evident.”
“My God, she may be in Tai Pan now!” said Talham.
“He would have met her at one of the wayside stations on the Trans-Siberian. It’s horrible, Tillizinni, horrible!”
Tillizinni considered.
“One thing is evident,” he said after a while. “Once you have penetrated the tomb of the Emperor you must clear out quick. Why not make the attempt to-night and leave China by way of Tai Pan? You have fifty men. Make a dash upon Soo’s stronghold and take your chance of finding Yvonne there.”
Talham thought for awhile.
“That is one scheme,” he said; “but I think I know a better. I will leave twenty men to defend this place and use this as my base. We’ll go to the tomb to-night.”
Talham could have let the tomb go--but there was nothing to be gained by this. Mount Li was on the way to Tai Pan--the two expeditions could be accomplished in one night. He could reach Tai Pan before the dawn.
Soo would not be prepared for an early morning rush upon his city.
Prudence and interest dictated parallel courses.
Talham had committed to memory the instructions which the dead builders had left, some of which apparently conflicted with those upon the jade bracelet.
He had written down the words engraved upon the bracelet, and now he read them again.
“I am Shun, the son of the great mechanic, Shoo Shun, upon whom the door fell when the Emperor passed. This my father told me before the day, fearing the treachery of the Eunuchs.
“Behold the pelican on the left wall with the bronze neck. Afterwards the spirit steps, afterwards rivers of silver, afterwards door of bronze. Here Emperor… behind a great room filled with most precious treasures.”
“I guess he’s a little wrong in the bronze door part of it,” said Tillizinni. “It’s possible that there were two sets of disloyal mechanics planning to secure the Emperor’s treasure, and made provisions for entering and retiring at the proper moment.”
That afternoon his men left singly and in two’s and three’s, making for the rendezvous, and when night fell, Tillizinni and Talham, both men heavily armed, rode out into the dark streets, and the door of the compound closed behind them.
They had left twenty-three men under a trusted old officer who had been with Talham in the Northern wars, and the remainder of the party were picked up beyond the city walls.
They rode along the mud track which led to Mount Li.
It was eleven o’clock before they debouched from the road and picked a way across the rough, uncultivated land which sloped up to the Emperor’s tomb.
The party dismounted at the foot of the hill and took shelter in a little gully, and six men only accompanied the two Europeans in their climb. These carried spades and picks, a spare one each for Talham and Tillizinni, and the eight men attacked the soft earth with feverish haste.
It was easier work than even Talham had anticipated, and after an hour’s work Tillizinni’s spade struck something hard and metalled.
“It’s the door,” he said exultantly.
He cleared away a space and examined his find with the aid of a pocket lamp.
Here the hill fell sheerly, and it was at the foot of a sharp slope that the top of the door was discovered.
Although the hill fell steeply there seemed to be no place from whence a door might slide down in its grooves to block the entrance of the cave.
This was the only doubt that had been in Talham’s mind, but the explanation suddenly occurred to him.
“I see now,” he said excitedly. “It opens inward on hinges at the top.”
This probably was the case.
They continued digging for half an hour before they reached the foot of the bronze door.
Contrary to his expectations, there was no engraving upon the panel. It was of solid bronze, green with age.
The men scraped carefully away at its foot, and then Talham on one side and Tillizinni on the other, groped for the image between the two stones. It was a long time before Talham discovered his, but Tillizinni’s was soon revealed. It had deteriorated until it was little more than the thickness of a curtain ring.
Tillizinni looked at it closely. It had been shaped crudely by these old dishonest artisans, and even now its extemporised character was revealed in the imperfection of the circle.
“Got it!” he heard Talham grunt.
“Does it give at all?”
“Yes,” said the other, “but, gently! It is any odds on the connection being rotten with age.”
“Now!” said Tillizinni. “Are you ready? Now!”
He put a gentle strain upon the ring, and it gave, ever so little.
He was afraid to put his full strength upon it for fear it broke away in his hand.
“Again,” said Talham’s voice.
Tillizinni pulled gently. Suddenly, without a warning, there was a horrible squeak, which it seemed could be heard for miles, and the great door sunk as if the earth had swallowed it up, and the big black entrance of the cave was revealed.
From here on, they must depend upon their own exertions. The Chinamen declined civilly enough to assist any further. So far they had acted in accordance with their tenets. Beyond that they might not go.
Talham understood and dismissed them, telling them to wait at the bottom of the hill.
He flashed an electric torch about the entrance of the cave. It was a large spacious place carved out of a solid rock. At intervals around its grim walls were placed huge statues in fantastic shapes, extending from the dim roof to its polished floor.
Talham looked at them without awe.
He felt something about his feet, and flashed the light down. He was treading on a little heap of bones. Further examination revealed a dozen more such pitiful relics of the long-dead artisans who had perished that they might not reveal the secret of the Emperor’s tomb.
For two thousand years they had laid thus, through all the centuries pregnant with progress and with world-shaking events; as they had fallen in death so they remained.
Talham was a curious mixture of the sentimental and the practical.
The practical side of him brushed the relics aside with his foot as he walked forward sending the gleam of his light flashing up to the roof.
Yes, there were the two silver lamps; they were black under the tarnish, but the delicacy of the workmanship was apparent.
Reaching up his hand, Talham could just clutch the dangle tassel beneath the first lamp.
“Watch that entrance,” he said, and put his lamp upon the black door at the further end of the vault.
He pulled and a chain gave slowly. Then, with a swift rush, the door before him opened in the middle and parted. As it did, from the interior of the inner chamber came a loud crash, something whizzed between the two men, passed through the opening where the bronze door had been, and buried itself in the hillside without.
“Phew!” said Talham, “that crossbow did work after all.”
He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.
“I trust nothing else unpleasant happens,” he said.
He looked round for the pelican which had been referred to on the bracelet, but could see no sign of any such ornament.
The steps leading down into the inner room were clean and smooth. They were of white marble, save in the centre was what appeared to be a carpet. On closer inspection this proved to be “treads” of jade, two feet wide and exactly in the centre of the stairway.
“Those are the spirit steps,” said Talham. “You had better keep to them.”
“What are spirit steps?” asked Tillizinni in astonishment.
“It’s an old Chinese idea, and you’ll find it in a good many temples,” replied Talham briefly. “It is popularly supposed to be the steps up and down which the spirits of the departed pass to their devotions, and is never under any circumstances used by mortals.”
“For a moment,” he said with a facetiousness which seemed to Tillizinni to be entirely out of place, “we will regard ourselves as disembodied and keep to the spirit steps.”
He walked down gingerly. Half way to the bottom were two little niches on which stood carved representations of two of the earlier Chinese deities. He stopped and looked at them thoughtfully. Then, leaning over, he lifted one down. It was a tremendous weight, and he staggered under it, but Talham was curious to see the result of his experiment.
He placed the statue upon one of the white marble steps which ran down at either side of him. For a moment nothing happened, and then the stairs opened under it and it disappeared.
In a second came the tinkle of smashing steel.
“I thought so,” said Talham. “If we had departed from the spirit steps, we should have fallen into a most unpleasant mess.”
He watched the yawning hole where the steps had been. Three had disappeared.
In a few seconds they came slowly back and jarred themselves back into their place.
“They are balanced on an arm below,” explained Tillizinni. “I saw something of that sort in Burma years ago.”
He led the way down, and so they came to the inner chamber.
“Look!” gasped Talham, and well might he be astonished, for as they put their foot upon the lower stairs the whole of the inner chamber was flooded with soft light.
It came from the cornices in the roof and was reflected down from the glittering blue firmament of an artificial heaven.
“It’s electric!” said Talham in a whisper. “I never dreamt of this.”
Whilst they stood upon the steps the light continued. When they took a step forward it went out. They returned to the lower step and the room was again illuminated.
“It was from this step, you may be sure, that the Second Emperor took his last view of his father,” said Tillizinni. “There is your river.”
They looked down in silent wonderment. There at their feet was China--China as it was known to the ancients, with little townships cunningly modelled, and the ever-moving river flowed from hill to sea. So it had been flowing for two thousand years.
“Stand on the step,” said Talham, “and let me see.”
He stepped down quickly and leant over one of the tiny streams that wandered tortuously through an artificial garden.
“It’s quicksilver all right,” he said.
At the far end of the room was a great block of polished black stone, and upon this rested a stone coffin. The pedestal was reached by three steps, but the steps were indistinguishable. They were covered with rags, and, as it seemed, little pieces of white, glittering wood.
Talham surveyed them reverently. These, then, were the unfortunate creatures of joy, who had gone down to death with their lord.
He made a rapid survey of the great stone room. At either side he saw a square pit, and flashed a light down upon the white gems that still glittered and sparkled in the light.
He was seeking something else, and presently he found it--a little box of jade, upon the roof of which was the faded remnants of an inscription. More to the point, there had been carved on its side, and was as fresh to-day as when it left the carver’s hands, two thousand years before, the words:
“This is the secret of the philosopher.”
He lifted the box and put it under his arm and made his way back to Tillizinni.
“We can’t leave yet,” said the detective, all a-quiver with excitement. He felt he was on the verge of a great discovery. “We must find by what means this room is lighted.”
Then he remembered the urgent business that waited in Tai Pan.
“Perhaps we can come back,” he said regretfully, for he knew that when they had once passed through the portals they would never again visit the last home of the First Emperor.
Talham led the way upward, and was within twenty feet of the silver door when somebody laughed, and the laugh rang hollowly through the vaulted chamber. He looked up. Before he was conscious of what was happening and before his hand could drop to the pistol at his side, a voice called mockingly:
“You have ample time to complete your investigations, Captain Talham.”
It was the voice of Soo, and it came from the head of the stairs.
Talham and Tillizinni whipped out their revolvers and fired together, and again came the laugh and something more ominous--the rumble of a moving door.
They sprang up the stairs together, but before Talham could swing himself through, the door had closed with a clang and a crash. They were trapped in the house of the dead!
