He turned the handle again, angrily. Again an interval of silence.
"The telephone is out of order," he said, and we looked at each other with a question in our eyes.
"Well, I'm confoundedly glad I've found you," I said.
"We must look into this at once, Sir Thomas. I can find my way perfectly well to one of the lifts at the other end of the Square. We must summon assistance. One moment." He vanished for a minute and returned with something cool and shining which he pressed into my hand. It was a venomous ten-shot Colt automatic. "You never know," he whispered.
We hurried across the great Square, passing by the central fountain basins, though the fountains were not playing, which added to our uneasiness. Everything was deathly still until we came to the little lift pavilion. I half expected the thing to stick, but it glided down easily enough. As if my companion read my thoughts he said:
"All these small lifts are not electrical, but are worked by hydraulic power, the station for which is in the City and not below on the earth."
I shall never forget the extraordinary sight as we stepped from the lift. The mist here was nothing like so thick as it was above. This was owing to the fact that a hundred feet above our heads there was the immense ceiling of steel plates and girders upon which the City rested. As I said before, on all three sides this second service City was open to the air, but not above. Consequently the mist moved in tall white shapes like ghosts; it entirely surrounded one group of huts and left another great vista of buildings plain to the eye. Here a gaudily painted gable thrust itself out of the white sheet; there, through a proscenium of clinging wool, one saw the gray interior of a machine-room. A chill twilight brooded everywhere. There wasn't a single lamp burning, and from one end to the other lay the desolation of utter silence.
I leant against the jamb of the lift door, and, despite the cold, the sweat ran down my body in a stream.
Pu-Yi raised a thin arm over his head and it seemed to clutch crookedly at the somber panoply aloft.
A high, thin wail came from his parted lips and went mournfully away down the deserted streets and empty habitations.