Left alone in the darkness of the tomb the two men stood motionless. Tillizinni was the first to realise the awfulness of their position. None knew the secret of the door save themselves.
The men at the foot of the hill, if they were not already destroyed by Soo’s soldiers, would wait til the morning, and then with true Chinese philosophy would report the occurrence to the Mandarin of Hoo Sin.
By that time the two pioneers would be dead.
There was very little air in the chasm, and apparently no inlet. The door itself was almost hermetically sealed; they would exhaust the supply which they had unconsciously brought in with them in less than an hour. Talham was the first to recover himself. He ran up the remainder of the steps until he came to the blank wall of the silver door and carefully examined its face with his lamp. The two edges of the door fitted in a flange, and there was no place where a lever, even if they had possessed one, could have found a purchase. As it happened, they had left all their tools at the bronze door.
“Keep to the spirit steps,” said Talham, “and go down below again. We may find something there. I think you will have plenty of opportunity, at any rate,” he added grimly, “to discover the lighting secret of this place.”
Back they went again to the chamber of the dead. The little quicksilver rivers were running merrily, as they had for two thousand years, and they might run for all eternity until through countless thousands of years the quicksilver became volatised.
There were stacks of ancient arms placed near the stone door, but none of these would be of any use to the men.
They made a diligent search for some other means of exit, but in vain. There was no time to waste in purely scientific exploration.
They had obviated the necessity for one of them standing on the lower step, by lifting thereon one of the heavy irons which stood at the four corners of the pedestal, and this weight was apparently sufficient to keep the light going.
“I’m afraid we’re caught,” said Talham at last, and Tillizinni nodded.
It was a curious end to all his extraordinary adventures, yet if an end could be attractive, surely this was one, to go down in this treasure-house of the past--to go out in the shadow of the great Emperor’s tomb.
A romancer to the finger-tips, Tillizinni found some consolation in the prospect, but Talham was devoid of sentiment.
“It isn’t the death I mind,” he said quietly; “but we ought not to have come, we should have made straight for Yvonne. We know she is in that fiend’s power; how could I have been so mad as to have neglected her for one moment--all the treasures in the world were not worth it.”
On one of the steps he had placed the jade box. He lifted it up and looked at it resentfully, and raising it above his head he sent it crashing down amongst the artificial landscape which covered one half of the floor. The box burst and a roll of parchment fell out.
“Leave it alone,” said Talham roughly, “there is only one thing in the world that counts.”
He did not say what that one thing was, but Tillizinni guessed. Another examination of the chamber offered no better result. At the foot of the bier Tillizinni found a square box, which he prised open without any difficulty. It was filled to the brim with pearls of varying sizes from that of the average pea to pearls as large as pigeons’ eggs.
If only they could make their escape from here the box would represent an enormous fortune.
If Talham despised the secret of the philosopher, here might be some compensation for all his trouble if they made their escape. The chances were very slight, but----
Tillizinni took a handful of the gems, and put them in the loose pocket of his coat. He took another and another, until the pocket bulged.
He made his way back with difficulty to where Talham stood by the lower step. The air was getting foul, and he found a difficulty in breathing; the end would come very soon--the scientist in him told him that.
“Have you found anything?”
Talham did not answer.
He was looking stupidly at one of the two ornaments which flanked the lower steps leading into the death chamber.
“What is it?” asked Tillizinni.
Talham nodded sleepily.
Tillizinni examined the object of his interest a little closer.
It was one of the two huge birds of bronze. It seemed alive as it stood there, balanced on one leg.
“I didn’t notice those before,” said Talham. Neither had the other, a fact easily explained as they stood in the shadow cast by the two great War Gods which towered left and right of the tomb’s entrance.
“I think this is where we go out,” muttered Talham. His heart was beating at a terrific rate; his head was swimming. He was affected sooner than the smaller man, and staggered, and would have fallen but for Tillizinni’s arm.
“You had better sit down,” said Tillizinni quietly.
He would take his own advice later; seated with his back to the wall he would wait for death.
But Talham shook his head; he took a step and swayed, reached out his hand to steady himself, and caught the bronze bird by the neck.
He threw his head back suddenly.
“A pelican,” he said thickly. “A pelican! my God! I didn’t see a pelican----”
There was no other word. He threw all his weight upon the neck of the bronze bird, and it bent down towards him as if working upon an invisible pivot.
There was a rumble at the head of the stairs; a draught of sweet, fresh air rushed down to the men, and Talham fell on his hands and knees and breathed it in greedily.
“So that was it,” he gasped. “Now, Soo, look out for me!” and he went reeling up the stairs like a drunken man, Tillizinni following.
They went out into the starlit night to find their patient men still sitting in the gulley waiting for orders.
Whilst the men were mounting, Talham went back to the tomb alone. He was absent for five minutes.
“Oughtn’t we do something to hide the door?” asked Tillizinni. “There will be an awful row when it is found open.”
Talham turned on his saddle.
“It will be hidden in a minute,” he said.
At that moment there was a dull, muffled roar which set the horses prancing.
“I dynamited the first chamber,” said Talham “That’s the end of the Emperor’s tomb.”
Soo stared blankly at the intruder, but he did not lose his presence of mind.
“Captain Talham, I believe,” he said. “How very interesting!”
He smiled at the stern-faced man before him.
“I had intended coming to-morrow to find your unhappy bodies”--he saw Tillizinni at the entrance and nodded in a friendly way--“and incidentally to help myself to such of the treasures of the great Emperor’s. May he dwell in the seventeenth heaven for a million years”--he bowed his head in mock reverence; “but that one pleasure, at least, is deferred.”
“All your pleasures are deferred,” said Talham sternly. “You will never again discover the tomb of the dead Emperor--neither you nor any other man. The outer chamber has ceased to be.”
Soo lifted his eyebrows.
“Indeed!” he said incredulously.
“I have dynamited the entrance,” said Talham in his thorough way. “That ends the business of the Emperor’s tomb, and----”
Then it was that he saw the bottle. The room was in half darkness as he had entered; only one faint light showed, and this was beside the place where Soo had sat.
The reflection of the light upon the polished face of the glass prevented him from seeing its interior. He took a step forward.
“My God!” he said. “Yvonne!”
He turned and pointed the revolver at the other’s head. His face was white and drawn.
“Damn you!” he said.
“She is not dead--she is alive,” said Soo quickly.
“Alive!” Talham dropped his revolver.
“For the moment, yes,” said Soo, and clasped his hands.
Talham heard the shriek of the girl, saw the wild agony in her face, and realised that this was a signal for some act of treachery. But it was Tillizinni who saw the dangling rope, and heard the rustle of a heavy body moving on the floor above. It was Tillizinni who saw the wedge-shaped head with the cruel, cold eyes peep down through the hole and stretch out its sinuous body towards the rope.
He knew instantly the significance of that dangling cord.
“Quick!” he cried, and threw the whole of his weight against the bottle. It slid over the polished floor a dozen paces.
“Stop him!” said Tillizinni.
Soo was making for the door. He turned when the revolvers were levelled, and lifted his hands.
“There will be no trouble,” he said.
Even in that moment of his deadly peril he did not lose his nerve. He seemed to take a delight in recalling the suavities of his Western veneer.
“I am quite prepared to stand my trial before the Imperial Court for anything I have done,” he said. “In the meantime, will you allow me to summon my men to assist your friend from her distressing position?”
“We will do without the servants,” said Tillizinni. “Get some of those cushions, quick!”
They laid three thicknesses of down cushions before the bottle, the way it would fall.
Then Tillizinni deftly wedged the front and the two men threw their weight on it. It fell over unbroken, and the girl dragged her way out.
“Take her outside,” said Tillizinni, and Talham lifted the half-fainting figure and bore her from the room along the deserted corridors to the little courtyard behind, where his men were waiting.
The Yamen was wrapped in slumber; Soo had given orders that he was not to be disturbed that night, and beyond a watchman who had been at the gate, but who was now no longer in a position to hinder the party, there was none to say them nay.
Tillizinni confronted Soo T’si, and if ever there were two men in the world competent to deal with one another in that extreme crisis, they were those two, who now stood face to face.
Ever and anon, Tillizinni’s eyes would go up to the little round hole in the roof. He had recognised the head the moment he had seen it, and knew that the python was searching for food in the room above, until, in his desperation, he took the more desperate step of descending the rope.
“Soo T’si,” said Tillizinni gently, “you will find it much easier to get into the bottle than, I gather, did Miss Yale.”
“It is possible,” said the Chinaman coolly; “but it is not an experiment that I care to make.”
“It is an experiment,” said Tillizinni in the same tone, “which I shall ask you to make, for if you do not do as I tell you, I shall most certainly shoot you.”
Soo shrugged his shoulders.
“You should have been a Chinaman,” he said.
“I am of the race,” said Tillizinni carefully, “which produced the Borgias, and some of the most refined torturers of the Holy Inquisition. Enter your bottle, my friend!” he said. “I wish to see you bottled up in reality. You will find the place cramped, but you will probably be able to bear the indignity of it much easier than the delicate and refined English lady whom we have just released.”
“I will do anything,” said Soo, “save sacrifice my dignity.”
His eyes followed the other to a little aperture in the roof. The head of the python was hanging down now; his hateful eyes surveyed them.
“I see your idea,” said Soo pleasantly. “I think I know a better way. A Chinaman must ‘save face,’ you know!”
His hands were concealed under his silken jacket. Tillizinni could not see the man searching for the razor-like knife which he carried at his waistband, nor the firm fingers of the suicide feeling for the little place under the heart which, skilfully pierced, brings an easy death. Only he saw the face go suddenly grey.
“Au ’voir,” said Soo in French. “I like this way better.”
He fell in a heap on the ground, and looked up with a smile.
“Pardon--me!” he said, smiling faintly--and died.
So Tillizinni left him, with the head of the python looking hungrily down on the quiet figure below. So Tillizinni thinks of this man now, and often sees him at night--a smiling, fearless figure of a villain.
And when all the lights are lit upon the Embankment, and Tillizinni leans out of his window watching the dark river and the flaming lamps of London, he looks westward and tries to picture Captain Talham a happy, domesticated man in his Surbiton home, with his motor-cars and his race horses and all the good things of life which the Emperor’s pearls had brought to him.
Somehow Tillizinni fails to reconcile those two men. The Talham who held the fort of Hoo Sin against the armed soldiery of Tai Pan come to avenge their lord; the Talham who made the wild flight across China to the link of civilisation which the Siberian railway afforded, with the Talham who now discusses poultry and pigs with such earnestness and volubility.
“For my part,” wrote Tillizinni in his diary, “I would as lief be buried alive in the tomb under Mount Li, as be buried alive in a suburb of London.”
