The Afterglow

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 torch trembled and shook. She tried to speak, but could not. And as he faced her, there in the tomblike vault, their eyes met silently.

A deathly stillness fell, with but their heart-beats and the sputtering of the torch to deepen it.

“Oh!” she gasped, stretching out a hand. “You--we--can't--”

He licked his lips and tried to smile, but failed.

“Don't--don't be afraid, little girl!” he stammered. “This can't hold us, possibly. The chain--I broke it!”

“Yes, but the bar, Allan--the bar! How did you leave the bar?”

“Raised!”

The one word seemed to seal their doom. A shudder passed through Beatrice.

“So then,” she choked, “some air-current swung the door shut--and the bar--fell--”

A sudden rage possessed the engineer.

“Damn that infernal staple!” he gritted, and as he spoke the ax swung into air.

“Crash!”

On the metal plates it boomed and echoed thunderously. A ringing clangor vibrated the crypt.

“Crash!”

Did the door start? No; but in the long-eroded plates a jagged dent took form.

Again the ax swung high. Cold though the vault was, sweat globuled his forehead, where the veins had swelled to twisting knots.

“Crash!”

With a wild verberation, a scream of sundered metal and a clatter of flying fragments, the staple gave way. A crack showed round the edge of the iron barrier.

Stern flung his shoulder against the door. Creaking, it swung. He staggered through. One hand groped out to steady him, against the wall. From the other the ax dropped crashing to the floor.

Only a second he stood thus, swaying; then he turned and gathered Beta in his arms. And on his breast she hid her face, from which the roses all had faded quite.

He felt her fighting back the tears, and raised her head and kissed her.

“There, there!” he soothed. “It wasn't anything, after all, you see. But--if we hadn't brought the ax with us--”

“Oh, Allan, let's go now! This crypt--I can't--”

“We will go very soon. But there's no danger now, darling. We're not children, you know. We've still got work to do. We'll go soon; but first, those records!”

“Oh, how can you, after--after what might have been?”

He found the strength to smile.

“I know,” he answered, “but it didn't happen, after all. A miss is worth a million miles, dear. That's what life seems to mean to us, and has meant ever since we woke in the tower, peril and risk, labor and toil--and victory! Come, come, let's get to work again, for there's so endlessly much to do.”

Calmer grown, the girl found new courage in his eyes and in his strong embrace.

“You're right, Allan. I was a little fool to--”

He stopped her self-reproach with kisses, then picked up the torch from the floor where it had fallen from her nerveless hand.

“If you prefer,” he offered. “I'll take you back into the sunlight, and you can sit under the trees and watch the river, while I--”

“Where you are, there am I! Come on, Allan; let's get it over with. Oh, what a coward you must think me!”

“I think you're a woman, and the bravest that ever lived!” he exclaimed vehemently. “Who but you could ever have gone through with me all that has happened? Who could be my mate and face the future as you're doing? Oh, if you only understood my estimate of you!

“But now let's get at those records again. Time's passing, and there must be still no end of things to do!”

He recovered his ax, and with another blow demolished the last fragment of the staple, so that by no possibility could the door catch again.

Then for the second time they penetrated the crypt and the tunnel and once more reached the alcove of the records.

“Beatrice!”

“What is it, Allan?”

“Look! Gone--all gone!”

“Gone? Why, what do you mean? They're--”

“Gone, I tell you! My God! Just a mass of rubbish, powder, dust--”

“But--but how--”

“The concussion of the ax! That must have done it! The violent sound-waves--the air in commotion!”

“But, Allan, it can't be! Surely there must be something left?”

“You see?”

He pointed at the shelves. She stood and peered, with him, at the sad havoc wrought there. Then she stretched out a tentative finger and stirred a little of the detritus.

“Catastrophe!” she cried.

“Yes and no. At any rate, it may have been inevitable.”

“Inevitable?”

He nodded.

“Even if this hadn't happened, Beatrice, I'm afraid we never could have moved any of these parchments, or read them, or handled them in any way. Perhaps if we'd had all kinds of proper appliances, glass plates, transparent adhesives, and so on, and a year or two at our disposal, we might have made something out of them, but even so, it's doubtful.

“Of course, in detective stories, Hawkshaw can take the ashes right out of the grate and piece them together and pour chemicals on them and decipher the mystery of the lost rubies, and all that. But this isn't a story, you see; and what's more, Hawkshaw doesn't have to work with ashes nearly a thousand years old. Ten centuries of dry-rot--that's some problem!”

She stood aghast, hardly able to believe her eyes.

“But--but,” she finally articulated, “there's the other cache out there in Medicine Bow Range. The cave, you know. And we have the bearings. And some time, when we've got all the leisure in the world and all the necessary appliances--”

“Yes, perhaps. Although, of course, you realize the earth is seventeen degrees out of its normal plane, and every reckoning's shifted. Still, it's a possibility. But for the present there's strictly nothing doing, after all.”

“How about that leaden chest?”

She wheeled about and pointed at the other side of the alcove, where stood the metal box, sullen, defiant, secure.

“By Jove, that's so, tool Why, I'd all but forgotten that! You're a brick, Beta! The box, by all means. Perhaps the most important things of all are still in safety there. Who knows?”

“Open it, Allan, and let's see!”

Her recent terror almost forgotten in this new excitement, the girl had begun to get back some of her splendid color. And now, as she stood gazing at the metal chest which still, perhaps, held the most vital of the records, she felt again a thrill of excitement at thought of all its possibilities.

The man, too, gazed at it with keen emotion.

“We've got to be careful this time, Beatrice!” said he. “No more mistakes. If we lose the contents of this chest, Heaven only knows when we may be able to get another glimpse into the past. Frankly, the job of opening it, without ruining the contents, looks pretty stiff. Still, with care it may be done. Let's see, now, what are we up against here?”

He took the torch from her and minutely examined the leaden casket.

It stood on the concrete floor, massive and solid, about three and a half feet high by five long and four wide. So far as he could see, there were neither locks nor hinges. The cover seemed to have been hermetically sealed on. Still visible were the marks of the soldering-iron, in a ragged line, about three inches from the top.

“The only way to get in here is to cut it open,” said Allan at last. “If we had any means of melting the solder, that would be better, of course, but there's no way to heat a tool in this crypt. I take it the men who did this work had a plumber's gasoline torch, or something of that sort. We have practically nothing. As for building a fire in here and heating one of the aeroplane tools, that's out of the question. It would stifle us both. No, we must cut. That's the best we can do.”

He drew his hunting-knife from its sheath and, giving the torch back to Beatrice, knelt by the chest. Close under the line of soldering he dug the blade into the soft metal, and, boring with it, soon made a puncture through the leaden sheet.

“Only a quarter of an inch thick,” he announced, with satisfaction. “This oughtn't to be such a bad job!”

Already he was at work, with infinite care not to shock or jar the precious contents within. In his powerful hands the knife laid back the metal in a jagged line. A quarter of an hour sufficed to cut across the entire front.

He rested a little while.

“Seems to be another chest inside, of wood,” he told the girl. “Not decayed, either. I shouldn't wonder if the lead had preserved things absolutely intact. In that case this find is sure to be a rich one.”

Again he set to work. In an hour from the time he had begun, the whole top of the lead box--save only that portion against the wall--had been cut off.

“Do you dare to move it out, Allan?” queried the girl anxiously.

“Better not. I think we can raise the cover as it is.”

He slit up the front corners, and then with comparative ease bent the entire top upward. To the explorer's eyes stood revealed a chest of cedar, its cover held with copper screws.

“Now for it!” said the man. “We ought to have one of the screw-drivers from the Pauillac, but that would take too much time. I guess the knife will do.”

With the blade he attacked the screws, one by one, and by dint of laborious patience in about an hour had removed all twenty of them.

A minute later he had pried up the cover, had quite removed it, and had set it on the floor.

Within, at one side, they saw a formless something swathed in oiled canvas. The other half of the space was occupied by eighty or a hundred vertical compartments, in each of which stood something carefully enveloped in the same material.

“Well, for all the world if it doesn't look like a set of big phonograph records!” exclaimed the man. He drew one of the objects out and very carefully unwrapped it.

“Just what they are--records! On steel. The new Chalmers-Enemarck process--new, that is, in 1917. So, then, that's a phonograph, eh?”

He pointed at the oiled canvas.

“Open it, quick, Allan!” Beatrice exclaimed. “If it is a phonograph, why, we can hear the very voices of the past, the dead, a full thousand years ago!”

With trembling fingers Stern slit the canvas wrappings.

“What a treasure! What a find!” he exulted. “Look, Beta--see what fortune has put into our hands!”

Even as he spoke he was lifting the great phonograph from the space where, absolutely uninjured and intact, it had reposed for ten centuries. A silver plate caught his eye. He paused to read:

METROPOLITAN OPERA HOUSE,

New York City.

This Phonograph and these Records were immured in the vault of this building September 28, 1918, by the Philavox Society, to be opened in the year 2000.

Non Pereat Memoria Musicae Nostrae.

“Let not the memory of our music perish!” he translated. “Why, I remember well when these records were made and deposited in the Metropolitan! A similar thing was done in Paris, you remember, and in Berlin. But how does this machine come here?”

“Probably the expedition reached New York, after all, and decided to transfer this treasure to a safer place where it might be absolutely safe and dry,” she suggested. “It's here, anyhow; that's the main thing, and we've found it. What fortune!”

“It's lucky, all right enough,” the man assented, setting the magnificent machine down on the floor of the crypt. “So far as I can see, the mechanism is absolutely all right in every way. They've even put in a box of the special fiber needles for use on the steel plates, Beta. Everything's provided for.

“Do you know, the expedition must have been a much larger one than we thought? It was no child's play to invade the ruins of New York, rescue all this, and transport it here, probably with savages dogging their heels every step. Those certainly were determined, vigorous men, and a goodly number at that. And the fight they must have put up in the cathedral, defending their cache against the enemy, and dying for it, must been terrifically dramatic!

“But all that's done and forgotten now, and we can only guess a bit of it here and there. The tangible fact is this machine and these records, Beatrice. They're real, and we've got them. And the quicker we see what they have to tell us the better, eh?”

She clapped her hands with enthusiasm.

“Put on a record, Allan, quick! Let's hear the voices of the past once more--human voices--the voices of the age that was!” she cried, excited as a child.