Chandra Dass had watched impassively. Ennis, staring dazedly, noted that
the Hindoo wore on his breast a different jewel-emblem from the others,
a double star instead of a single one.

Ennis' dazed eyes lifted from the blazing badge to the Hindoo's dark
face. "Where's Ruth?" he asked a little shrilly, and then his voice
cracked and he cried, "You damned fiend, where's my wife?"

"Be comforted, Mr. Ennis," came Chandra Dass' chill voice. "You are
going now to join your wife, and to share her fate. You two are going
with her and the other sacrifices through the Door when it opens. It is
not usual," he added in cold mockery, "for our sacrificial victims to
walk directly into our hands. We ordinarily have a more difficult time
securing them."

He made a gesture to the two hooded men with pistols, and they ranged
themselves close behind Campbell and Ennis.

"We are going to the Cavern of the Door," said the Hindoo. "Inspector
Campbell, I know and respect your resourcefulness. Be warned that your
slightest attempt to escape means a bullet in your back. You two will
march ahead of us," he said, and added mockingly, "Remember, while you
live you can cling to the shadow of hope, but if these guns speak, it
ends even that shadow."

Ennis and Inspector Campbell, keeping their hands elevated, started at
the Hindoo's command down the softly lit rock tunnel. Chandra Dass and
the two hooded men with pistols followed.

Ennis saw that the inspector's sagging face was expressionless, and knew
that behind that colorless mask, Campbell's brain was racing in an
attempt to find a method of escape. For himself, the young American had
almost forgotten all else in his eagerness to reach his wife. Whatever
happened to Ruth, whatever mysterious horror lay in wait for her and the
other victims, he would be there beside her, sharing it!

The tunnel wound a little further downward, then straightened out and
ran straight for a considerable length. In this straight section of the
rock passage, Ennis and Campbell for the first time perceived that the
walls of the tunnel bore crowding, deeply chiseled inscriptions. They
had not time to read them in passing, but Ennis saw that they were in
many different languages, and that some of the characters were wholly
unfamiliar.

"God, some of those inscriptions are in Egyptian hieroglyphics!"
muttered Inspector Campbell.

The cool voice of Chandra Dass said, behind them, "There are
pre-Egyptian inscri