latch of the secret panel.
I follow thee!"

Wes pressed the girl's hand tightly and his body tensed. Then, without
hesitation, he jerked the secret panel back. A faint glow of light lay
ahead, and he plunged into the tiny room that lay revealed.

An alarmed face stared up--the priest! Wes leaped at him, his steely
fingers thumbing into the man's throat and throttling its scream to a
gasping choke. All the American's pent-up fury went into a lunge that
the priest could not begin to stand against. He was bowled sharply
over and went down. Craig on top, and there the fight ended as
suddenly as it had begun. The priest's head thudded into the smooth
rock floor; a convulsion quivered his body; he moaned and lay still.

A grim flicker in his eyes, Craig got up and looked around for Taia.
Then astonishment and cold fear swept through him.

The secret door was closed--but she was not inside!

* * * * *

"Now what--" Wesley Craig gasped.

He did not dare finish the thought. He glared around, much as a
trapped tiger does, his brain a turmoil. His eyes fell on a ladder
that led up from the floor to a niche in the left wall--a slit about
forty feet high, a pool of darkness, shadowed from the thin tongue of
flame that lit the room. Only half realizing what the slit was, Wes
sprang forward and leaped up the ladder. A platform was built high up
inside the niche, a place for a man to stand on. The American reached
it, pressed himself forward, and peered through a tiny hole that was
in the rock ahead. He knew it ought to command a view of the Temple.

But if it did, Craig could see nothing, for there was no light in the
huge vault outside. For minutes the brooding silence was not broken,
save by an occasional scraping sound made by one of the searching line
of men. There was no hint of the girl who waited beside the hideous
figure of the god, nor of the network that gradually closed in on her.

But suddenly the silence was shattered by a shout.

"I have her!" someone yelled. Then came a multitude of sounds. The
piercing voice of Hrihor was audible above them all.

"Light the lamps! Hast thou the other, too?"

"Nay--he is not here."

"Not here? What--"

* * * * *

A spark of light made an erratic course from the Temple door: someone
was bringing a flame to light the lamps. A moment later there was a
flare of yellow light as the oil in a large wall lamp caugh