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 overswepthim then. The siege of the Horde at Madison Forest, the plunge downthe cataract, the fall into the Abyss and the battle with theLanskaarn had all taxed his courage to the utmost, but he had metthese perils with more calm than he now faced the blank menace of thatmetal door.
For now no sky overhung him, no human agency opposed him, nocounterplay 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 upperworld, alone--and for the first time in his life the man knewsomething of the anguish of unreasoning fear.
Yet he was not bereft of powers of action. Only an instant he stoodthere motionless and staring; then with a cry, wordless and harsh, heran 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 aprayer; he strove with it--and staggered back, livid and shaken, forit held!
Now Beatrice had reached it, too. In her hand the torch trembled andshook. She tried to speak, but could not. And as he faced her, therein the tomblike vault, their eyes met silently.
A deathly stillness fell, with but their heart-beats and thesputtering 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 holdus, 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 throughBeatrice.
"So then," she choked, "some air-current swung the door shut--and thebar--fell--"
A sudden rage possessed the engineer.
"Damn that infernal staple!" he gritted, and as he spoke the ax swunginto air.
"Crash!"
On the metal plates it boomed and echoed thunderously. A ringingclangor vibrated the crypt.
"_Crash!_"
Did the door start? No; but in the long-eroded plates a jagged denttook form.
Again the ax swung high. Cold though the vault was, sweat globuled hisforehead, where the veins had swelled to twisting knots.
"_Crash!_"
With a wild verberation, a scream of sundered metal and a clatter offlying fragments, the staple gave way. A crack showed round the edgeof the iron barrier.
Stern flung his shoulder against the door. Creaking, it swung. Hestaggered through. One hand groped out to steady him, against thewall. From the other the ax dropped crashing to the floor.
Only a second he stood thus, swaying; then he turned and gathered Betain his arms. And on his breast she hid her face, from which the rosesall had faded quite.
He felt her fighting back the tears, and raised her head and kissedher.
"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 notchildren, you know. We've still got work to do. We'll go soon; butfirst, 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 isworth a million miles, dear. That's what life seems to mean to us, andhas meant ever since we woke in the tower, peril and risk, labor andtoil--and victory! Come, come, let's get to work again, for there's soendlessly much to do."
Calmer grown, the girl found new courage in his eyes and in his strongembrace.
"You're right, Allan. I was a little fool to--"
He stopped her self-reproach with kisses, then picked up the torchfrom 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!" heexclaimed vehemently. "Who but you could ever have gone through withme all that has happened? Who could be my mate and face the future asyou're doing? Oh, if you only understood my estimate of you!
"But now let's get at those records again. Time's passing, and theremust be still no end of things to do!"
He recovered his ax, and with another blow demolished the lastfragment of the staple, so that by no possibility could the door catchagain.
Then for the second time they penetrated the crypt and the tunnel andonce 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 violentsound-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 sadhavoc wrought there. Then she stretched out a tentative finger andstirred 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 couldhave moved any of these parchments, or read them, or handled them inany way. Perhaps if we'd had all kinds of proper appliances, glassplates, transparent adhesives, and so on, _and_ a year or two at ourdisposal, we might have made something out of them, but even so, it'sdoubtful.
"Of course, in detective stories, Hawkshaw can take the ashes rightout of the grate and piece them together and pour chemicals on themand decipher the mystery of the lost rubies, and all that. But thisisn't a story, you see; and what's more, Hawkshaw doesn't have to workwith ashes nearly a thousand years old. Ten centuries ofdry-rot--that's _some_ problem!"
She stood aghast, hardly able to believe her eyes.
"But--but," she finally articulated, "there's the other cache outthere in Medicine Bow Range. The cave, you know. And we have thebearings. And some time, when we've got all the leisure in the worldand all the necessary appliances--"
"Yes, perhaps. Although, of course, you realize the earth is seventeendegrees out of its normal plane, and every reckoning's shifted. Still,it's a possibility. But for the present there's strictly nothingdoing, after all."
"How about that leaden chest?"
She wheeled about and pointed at the other side of the alcove, wherestood the metal box, sullen, defiant, secure.
"By Jove, that's so, tool Why, I'd all but forgotten that! You're abrick, Beta! The box, by all means. Perhaps the most important thingsof 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 girlhad begun to get back some of her splendid color. And now, as shestood gazing at the metal chest which still, perhaps, held the mostvital of the records, she felt again a thrill of excitement at thoughtof all its possibilities.
The man, too, gazed at it with keen emotion.
"We've got to be careful this time, Beatrice!" said he. "No moremistakes. If we lose the contents of this chest, Heaven only knowswhen we may be able to get another glimpse into the past. Frankly, thejob of opening it, without ruining the contents, looks pretty stiff.Still, with care it may be done. Let's see, now, what are we upagainst 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 ahalf 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 beenhermetically sealed on. Still visible were the marks of thesoldering-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, ofcourse, but there's no way to heat a tool in this crypt. I take it themen who did this work had a plumber's gasoline torch, or something ofthat sort. We have practically nothing. As for building a fire in hereand heating one of the aeroplane tools, that's out of the question. Itwould 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 backto Beatrice, knelt by the chest. Close under the line of soldering hedug the blade into the soft metal, and, boring with it, soon made apuncture 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 theprecious contents within. In his powerful hands the knife laid backthe metal in a jagged line. A quarter of an hour sufficed to cutacross the entire front.
He rested a little while.
"Seems to be another chest inside, of wood," he told the girl. "Notdecayed, either. I shouldn't wonder if the lead had preserved thingsabsolutely 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 wholetop of the lead box--save only that portion against the wall--had beencut 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 theentire top upward. To the explorer's eyes stood revealed a chest ofcedar, its cover held with copper screws.
"Now for it!" said the man. "We ought to have one of the screw-driversfrom the Pauillac, but that would take too much time. I guess theknife will do."
With the blade he attacked the screws, one by one, and by dint oflaborious patience in about an hour had removed all twenty of them.
A minute later he had pried up the cover, had quite removed it, andhad set it on the floor.
Within, at one side, they saw a formless something swathed in oiledcanvas. The other half of the space was occupied by eighty or ahundred vertical compartments, in each of which stood somethingcarefully enveloped in the same material.
"Well, for all the world if it doesn't look like a set of bigphonograph records!" exclaimed the man. He drew one of the objects outand very carefully unwrapped it.
"Just what they are--records! On steel. The new Chalmers-Enemarckprocess--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 fullthousand years ago!"
With trembling fingers Stern slit the canvas wrappings.
"What a treasure! What a find!" he exulted. "Look, Beta--see whatfortune has put into our hands!"
Even as he spoke he was lifting the great phonograph from the spacewhere, absolutely uninjured and intact, it had reposed for tencenturies. 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 thisbuilding September 28, 1918, by the Philavox Society, to be opened inthe year 2000.
Non Pereat Memoria Musicae Nostrae.
"Let not the memory of our music perish!" he translated. "Why, Iremember well when these records were made and deposited in theMetropolitan! A similar thing was done in Paris, you remember, and inBerlin. But how does this machine come _here?_"
"Probably the expedition reached New York, after all, and decided totransfer this treasure to a safer place where it might be absolutelysafe and dry," she suggested. "It's here, anyhow; that's the mainthing, and we've found it. What fortune!"
"It's lucky, all right enough," the man assented, setting themagnificent machine down on the floor of the crypt. "So far as I cansee, the mechanism is absolutely all right in every way. They've evenput 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 wethought? It was no child's play to invade the ruins of New York,rescue all this, and transport it here, probably with savages doggingtheir heels every step. Those certainly were determined, vigorous men,and a goodly number at that. And the fight they must have put up inthe cathedral, defending their cache against the enemy, and dying forit, must been terrifically dramatic!
"But all that's done and forgotten now, and we can only guess a bit ofit here and there. The tangible fact is this machine and theserecords, Beatrice. They're real, and we've got them. And the quickerwe 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 oncemore--human voices--the voices of the age that was!" she cried,excited as a child.