r
a quick draw. But whatever you do, don't be the aggressor. Watch your
step!"

The passage suddenly reached its end. Another heavy door of the yellow
metal swung back, and all issued into a hall even more vast than the
one they had quitted.

No windows here admitted light. The air, though pure enough as from
some hidden source of ventilation, hung dead and heavy. Not even the
censers, depending from the dim roof, far above, could freshen it;
nor could the cressets' light make more than a kind of ghostly aura
through the gloom.

By this dim half-illumination the Master beheld, there before him in
the middle of the tremendous golden pavement, a strange,
pyramidal object rising four-square in the shape of an equilateral
triangle--just such a triangle as was formed by the locations of
Mecca, Bab el Mandeb, and El Barr.

This pyramid, polished and elaborately engraved, towered some ninety
feet above the floor. It was pierced by numbers of openings, like the
entrances to galleries; and up the smooth face nearest the entrance to
the hall, a stairway about ten feet wide mounted toward the apex.

Completely finished all save the upper part, which still remained
truncated, the golden pyramid gleamed dully in the vague light, a
thing of awe and wonder, grimly beautiful, fearsome to gaze up at. For
some unknown reason, as the Legionaries grouped themselves about their
Master, an uncanny influence seemed to emanate from this singular
object. All remained silent, as the Olema, an enigmatic smile on his
thin, bearded lips, raised a hand toward the pyramid.

"This thing, O Frank, thou shouldst see," he remarked dryly. "Above
all, the inner chambers. Wilt thou go with me?"

"I will go," the Master answered. "Lead the way!"

The Olema beckoned one of the Maghrabis, who delivered a torch of some
clear-burning, resinous, and perfumed material into his hand.

"Come," bade the old man, and gestured toward the steps of gold.

Together, in silence, they mounted toward the dim, high-arched
roof. From near the top, the Master, glancing down, could see the
white-robed mass of the Arabs, the small, compact group of his own
men; and, behind them all, the dim, black lines of the stranglers. But
already the Olema was gesturing for him to enter the highest of the
galleries.

Into this, carved in the virgin metal, both made their way. The
torchlight flung strange, wavering gleams on smooth walls niched with
dark embrasures. At the furth