“Wait until I take a look on the outside,” Sam requested. “The man in the long white robe may be rising out of the lake by this time. I don’t know,” he continued, “but that we have done a foolish thing in remaining here as we have, leaving the aeroplane unguarded.”
“Perhaps I’d better run around the cliff and see if it’s all right!” suggested Carl. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
“No,” Sam argued, “you two remain here at the main entrance and I’ll go and see about the machine. Perhaps,” he warned, “you’d better remain right here, and not attempt to investigate that closed apartment until I return. I shan’t be gone very long.”
“Oh, of course,” replied Jimmie, “we’ll be good little boys and stand right here and wait for you to come back—not!”
Carl chuckled as the two watched the young man disappear around the angle of the cliff.
“Before he gets back,” the boy said, “we’ll know all about that room, won’t we? Say,” he went on in a moment, “I think this haunted temple business is about the biggest fraud that was ever staged. If people only knew enough to spot an impostor when they saw one, there wouldn’t be prisons enough in the world to hold the rascals.”
“You tell that to Sam to-night,” laughed Jimmie. “He likes these moralizing stunts. Are you going in right now?”
By way of reply Carl stepped into the arch between the two walls and turned to the right into a passage barely more than a foot in width. Jimmie followed his example, but turned to the left. There the way was blocked by a granite boulder which reached from the floor to the roof itself.
“Nothing doing here!” he called back to Carl.
“I’ve found the way!” the latter answered. “Come along in! We’ll be behind the scenes in about a minute.”