The passage suddenly reached its end. Another heavy door of the yellow metal swung back, and all issued into a hall even more vast than the one they had quitted.
No windows here admitted light. The air, though pure enough as from some hidden source of ventilation, hung dead and heavy. Not even the censers, depending from the dim roof, far above, could freshen it; nor could the cressets' light make more than a kind of ghostly aura through the gloom.
By this dim half-illumination the Master beheld, there before him in the middle of the tremendous golden pavement, a strange, pyramidal object rising four-square in the shape of an equilateral triangle—just such a triangle as was formed by the locations of Mecca, Bab el Mandeb, and El Barr.
This pyramid, polished and elaborately engraved, towered some ninety feet above the floor. It was pierced by numbers of openings, like the entrances to galleries; and up the smooth face nearest the entrance to the hall, a stairway about ten feet wide mounted toward the apex.
Completely finished all save the upper part, which still remained truncated, the golden pyramid gleamed dully in the vague light, a thing of awe and wonder, grimly beautiful, fearsome to gaze up at. For some unknown reason, as the Legionaries grouped themselves about their Master, an uncanny influence seemed to emanate from this singular object. All remained silent, as the Olema, an enigmatic smile on his thin, bearded lips, raised a hand toward the pyramid.
"This thing, O Frank, thou shouldst see," he remarked dryly. "Above all, the inner chambers. Wilt thou go with me?"
"I will go," the Master answered. "Lead the way!"
The Olema beckoned one of the Maghrabis, who delivered a torch of some clear-burning, resinous, and perfumed material into his hand.
"Come," bade the old man, and gestured toward the steps of gold.
Together, in silence, they mounted toward the dim, high-arched roof. From near the top, the Master, glancing down, could see the white-robed mass of the Arabs, the small, compact group of his own men; and, behind them all, the dim, black lines of the stranglers. But already the Olema was gesturing for him to enter the highest of the galleries.