“Yet it must be done, and not by me,” said Mattai, “or we shall have come on a fool’s errand, and go back, some of us, to a fool’s death,” and he looked towards me.
“I will not do it,” I said, answering his look, “not because I fear your gods, but my own conscience I do fear.”
“Then I will,” said the señor boldly, “for I fear neither. Give me that trinket, Maya.”
She obeyed, and presently he had caused the two halves of the talisman to fall into their ancient and appointed bed in the symbol. In the great silence I remember the sound they made, as they tinkled against the stone, struck my ear so sharply that I started.
For some seconds, perhaps twenty, we stood still, watching the altar with eager eyes, but the symbol never stirred. Then I said:
“It seems, Mattai, that you must hide your lying writing elsewhere, since yonder heart will not open, or, if it will, we have not found the key.”
“Wait a little,” broke in the señor, “perhaps the springs are rusted.” And before any of us could interfere to stop him, he placed his thumb upon the halves of the emerald and pressed so hard that the symbol trembled on its marble stand.
“Beware!” cried Mattai, and as the echoes of his voice died away all of us started in astonishment, for lo! the heart was opening like a flower.
Slowly it opened, till the severed talisman fell from it, and its two halves lay back on the marble of the altar, revealing something hidden in its centre that shone like an ember in the lamplight. We crept forward and looked, then stood silent and half afraid, for in the hollow of the heart, laid upon a square plate of gold which was covered with picture-writing, glared a red jewel shaped like a human eye, that seemed to answer stare with stare.
“If we stand like this we shall grow frightened,” said the señor roughly, glancing round him as he spoke, “there is nothing to fear in a red stone cut like an eye.”