It Happened in Egypt

by C. N. Williamson; A. M. Williamson

The rumbling voice ceased, as Anthony crawled round the turn of the passage. I followed, literally close on his heels, the burrow descending like a rabbit-hole. Suddenly Anthony stopped again. "I've come into a sort of chamber Corkran's scooped out," I heard him say. "It's high enough to sit up in—no, to stand up in. This is the end of the passage, I think. By Jove, look out!" He had disappeared in the darkness behind a higher arch in the roof of the gallery. As he cried out, I slipped through after him, slid down a steep, abrupt slope, and by the light of my agitated lantern saw Anthony standing waist-deep in a well-like hole, into which he had evidently stumbled.

"Let me give you a hand up," I said.

"No thank you," he answered, in a tense, excited voice. "This is where I want to be. Look!"

I looked and saw, at the bottom of the scooped-out hole, a crevice in the flat wall of rock which we had been following down the passage, after its turn from the right angle way to creep along the mountainside. Out of this crevice protruded a large iron crowbar, apparently jammed into place, the first tool we had seen anywhere.

The chamber in which I stood, was littered and piled up with hard masses of earth which had been thrown out of the hole; and on the rough floor of the latter I stepped on the spade which had done the work. It nearly turned my ankle as I jumped on to it, but I hardly felt the pain. Torch and lantern showed clearly that the crevice in the wall was not a natural crack, but a man-made opening. It was as if a slab of rock fitted roughly into grooves had first been lifted, and had then fallen heavily on to the crowbar.

I set the lantern on the earthy floor and its yellow light streamed through the crack, whence the crowbar protruded like a black pipe in a negro's mouth. It was all darkness on the other side; from behind the screen of rock, set in its deep grooves, came the strangest sound I ever heard, or shall ever hear. It was a voice, groaning, yet it was not like a human voice. The horrid idea jumped into my head that it was the howl of an evil spirit sitting in a dead man's skull.

"He's alive then," exclaimed Anthony, pale in the sickly light. "Is that you, Corkran?" he called. The only answer was another groan.

"I see the whole business now, don't you?" Fenton said. "This passage is very steep. Already it was far under ground-level, before we got to the cutting on the mountain wall, and it must have been under ground-level for many centuries. They dug deep down, to make the tomb, and then covered up the entrance with earth. When Corkran got to his portcullis, he thought he'd reached the reward of his labours. Well—so he had—the punishment. Here's the heap of stone he used as a fulcrum for his lever. The heap tumbled when he was on the other side, and the slab of rock came down to trap him. We'll have to build up his fulcrum again, before we can do anything ourselves."

Together we forced the flat end of the crowbar into the crevice, pressed a piece of rock under it, and exerted all our strength. The slab moved upward an inch or two, grating in its rough grooves. The crack, no higher than the diameter of the crowbar plus a stone or two, when we saw it first, was now twice its original height. In went another stone, and so on. We worked like demons in hell, and in an atmosphere almost as hot and breathless. Yet we could breathe. Whether all the air we got came through the long twisting passage Corkran had made, or whether there were ventilation from the other side of the rock-curtain—some opening in an unseen cave—we could not tell. All we knew was that the mountain had a secret, and that the man who had tried to rob us of our rights to it, was caught in the trap of the djinns.

Our "rights!" How fragile as spider-webs, how almost laughable they seemed down here! Rights we had bargained for with men, which they, not owning them, had gravely given! I suddenly realized, and I think Anthony realized, as sweating and silent we piled up the fulcrum of stones thrown down by the djinns, that they alone, or the sleeping queen they guarded, had "rights" in this hidden place.