“I forgot to mention that to you. It was all arranged last night. Clay Levins went to Dry Bottom on a night train. He took with him a letter, which he was to mail at Dry Bottom, explaining your absence to Corrigan. Needless to say, your signature was forged. But I did so good a job that Corrigan will not suspect. Corrigan will get the letter by tonight. It says that you are going to take a long rest.”
The Judge gasped and looked quickly at Trevison. The young man’s face was wreathed in a significant grin.
“In the first analysis, this looks like a rather strange proceeding,” said Trevison. “But if you get deeper into it you see its logic. You know where the original record is. I want it. I mean to have it. One life—a dozen lives—won’t stop me. Oh, well, we won’t talk about it if you’re going to shudder that way.”
He led the Judge up a flimsy, rotted ladder to a flat roof, forcing him to look into a chamber where vermin fled at their appearance. Then through numerous passages, low, narrow, reeking with a musty odor that nauseated the Judge; on narrow ledges where they had to hug the walls to keep from falling, and then into an open court with a stone floor, stained dark, in the center a huge oblong block of stone, surmounting a pyramid, appalling in its somber suggestiveness.
“The sacrificial altar,” said Trevison, grimly. “These stains here, are—”
He stopped, for the Judge had turned his back.
Trevison led him away. He had to help him down the ladder each time they descended, and when they reached the chamber from which they had started the Judge was white and shaking.
Trevison pushed him inside and silently took a position at the door. The Judge sank to the floor of the chamber, groaning.
The hours dragged slowly. Trevison changed his position twice. Once he went away, but returned in a few minutes with a canteen, from which he drank, deeply. The Judge had been without food or water since the night before, and thirst tortured him. The gurgle of the water as it came out of the canteen, maddened him.
“I’d like a drink, Trevison.”