Читать книгу Daughter of Fu Manchu - Arthur Henry Ward - Страница 13

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“What is Lafleur’s Shaft?” Weymouth asked. “And in what way is it connected with Lafleur’s Tomb?”

“It isn’t connected with it,” I replied. “Lafleur’s Tomb—also known as the Tomb of the Black Ape—was discovered, or rather suspected to exist, by the French Egyptologist Lafleur, about 1908. He accidentally unearthed a little votive chapel. All the fragments of offerings found were inscribed with the figure of what appeared to be a huge black ape—or perhaps an ape-man. There’s been a lot of speculation about it. Certain authorities, notably Maspero, held the theory that some queer pet of an unknown Pharaoh had been given a freak burial.

“Lafleur cut a shaft into a long zigzag passage belonging to another burial chamber, which he thought would lead him to the Tomb of the Black Ape. It led nowhere. It was abandoned in 1909. Sir Lionel started from a different point altogether and seems to have hit on the right entrance.”

“Ah!” said Weymouth. “Then my next step is clear.”

“What is that?”

“I want you to take me down your excavation.”

“Good enough,” said I, “shall we start now?”

“I think it would be as well.” He turned to Forester. “I want Greville to act as guide and I want you and Petrie to look after Miss Barton in our absence.”

“We shall need Ali,” I said, “to go ahead with lights.”

“Very well. Will you please make the necessary arrangements?”

Accordingly I relieved Ali Mahmoud of his sentry duties and had the lanterns lighted. They were kept in the smaller hut. And presently Weymouth and I were on the ladders....

The first part of our journey led us down a sheer pit of considerable depth. At the bottom it gave access to a sloping passage, the original entrance to which had defied all our efforts to discover it.

This was very commonplace to me, but I don’t know how that first glimpse of the pit affected Weymouth. The night was black as pitch. Dawn was very near. Outlined by the light of the lanterns Ali carried, that ragged gap far below, to reach which we had been at work for many months, looked a likely enough portal to ghostly corridors.

An indescribable smell which characterizes the tombs of Upper Egypt crept up like a hot miasma. Our ladders were fairly permanent fixtures sloping down at easy gradients from platform to platform. The work had been fenced around; and, as we entered the doorway, watching the Arab descending from point to point and leaving a lantern at each stopping place, a sort of foreboding seemed to grab me by the throat.

It was unaccountable, or so I thought at the time, but it was well founded, as events were soon to show. I glanced at Weymouth. The big man was looking doubtfully at the ladders, but:

“It’s safe enough,” I said, “even for your weight. The chief is as heavy. I’ll lead the way.”

And so we set out, descending slowly. When at last the rubble-covered floor of the tunnel was beneath our feet, Weymouth paused, breathing deeply.

“That’s the way to the original entrance,” I said, pointing, “up the slope. But it’s completely blocked fifteen yards along. There must be a bend, or a series of bends, because where it originally came out heaven only knows. However, this is our way.”

I turned to where the shadowy figure of Ali waited, a lantern swinging in either hand so that the light shining up onto his bearded face lent it an unfamiliar and mask-like appearance. I nodded; and we began to descend the tunnelled winding slope. At a point just before we came to the last bend, Ali paused and held up one of the lanterns warningly.

“There’s a pit just in front of us, Weymouth,” I explained. “It doesn’t lead anywhere but it’s deep enough to break one’s neck. Pass to the left.”

We circled cautiously around the edge of this mysterious well, possibly designed as a trap for unwary tomb robbers. Then came the sharp bend, and here Ali left one of his two lanterns to light us on our return journey. The gradient became much steeper.

“We were starting on a stone portcullis which the chief believed to be that of the actual burial chamber,” I explained, as we stumbled on downward in the wake of the dancing lantern. “He had a system of dealing with these formidable barriers which was all his own. Probably a few hours’ work would have seen us through. Here we are!”

Ali paused, holding the lantern above his head.... And, as he did so he uttered a loud cry.

I pushed past Weymouth in the narrow passage and joined the headman. He turned to me in the lamplight. His face was ghastly.

“Good God!” I clutched the Arab’s arm. A triangular opening, large enough to admit a man, yawned in the bottom left-hand corner of the portcullis!

Ali raised his lantern higher. I looked up at a jagged hole in the right top corner....

“What does this mean?” Weymouth demanded hoarsely.

“It means,” I replied, in a voice as husky as his own, “that someone has finished the job ... and finished it as Sir Lionel had planned!”