Going to the wall, Huascar placed his hand on the coraquenque, and the massive stones rolled back; the throne shook, slipped backwards, and vanished down the Corridors of Night, taking with it the dead King, Maria-Teresa and little Christobal, both unconscious. The wall closed upon them, hiding again the secrets which only those who are ready to die may know.
The Guardians of the Temple bent their monstrous heads in obeisance before Huascar, and in their turn went out Huascar, last High-Priest of the Incas, was alone in the House of the Serpent Slowly going to the top of the porphyry steps, he sat down. His head dropped between his hands, and there he remained till dawn.
IV
Dick, clear of the House of the Serpent by what was little short of a miracle, crouched down in a niche of the palace wall, hewn out by some dead Inca hand, and there waited for Huascar throughout the night, watching the door at which he must appear. He was careless of the danger he ran, and his very boldness saved him. Not one of the passing Quichuas, dignitaries of the Interaymi, dreamed for an instant that the poor Indian wrapped in his poncho, and apparently asleep, was the sacrilegious stranger who had slipped from their clutches. The darkness, too, favored him, as it had favored his daring escape; he had merely turned his red poncho inside out, so that it looked like any other poncho, and had joined the howling crowd, stopping in it until Huascar’s order had cleared the hall.
Argue the matter as he would, the young man saw no hope. Garcia’s victory over the Federal troops at Cuzco had given the district into the hands of the Indians. The Spanish population, only an eighth of the 50,000 souls in the ancient city, had fled. Never since the Spanish Con quest had the Quichuas so completely been the masters. Garcia himself had prudently left the town, waiting for the end of the Interaymi; and the few troops he had left behind him were heart and soul with the native population, from which they had been levied, and with which they shared customs, faith and fetichism. In a word, the Cuzco was as much the home of the Incas as it had been in the heyday of their despotic rulers.
When Dick and his companions had reached the outskirts of the city they had hidden their motor in a half-deserted country inn, bribing the landlord. They had at once realized that force was out of the question. Happily, there remained Garcia’s money. The landlord, a poor half-breed who asked no better than to become rich, had listened readily, and the offer of a small fortune had set him off looking for Red Ponchos willing to betray Huascar.
He found four, the very men who were to be the Guards of the Sacrifice, in the House of the Serpent. When these men had explained their functions, the four Europeans could hardly believe their good fortune. Dick and Don Christobal were so absorbed by the idea of getting through to the prisoners somehow, that they did not stop to think how suspiciously easy their task had been. Uncle Francis, a witness of the bargain, was for once not altogether wrong when he shrugged his shoulders at their childish scheme to “take him in.”
The Red Ponchos agreed to everything, and the price was fixed, and they received half-payment. The remainder was to be handed over when the Marquis’ children were free. The traitors promised to help them escape from the sacred precincts, and moreover brought them their disguises.