A few moments after they reached the end of the hall they were roused from their stupor by the appearance of a small black man, led between two bald white-clad Chinamen like those in the first rank. His limbs were quivering, his teeth chattered; his staring eyes regarded the awful Presence on the throne with the same helpless terror as a bird fascinated by the baleful eye of a snake. The priests of the Eye lifted him on to the pedestal in a line with the gap, and fastened his collapsing form upright to a light framework which they slid up from the base. Then they placed themselves on either side, and made three low obeisances to the venerable figure on the throne.
The man on the left uttered a few sentences in Chinese, and bowed again. His fellow followed with a word or two. It seemed to the Englishmen that they were giving testimony against the quivering figure on the pedestal above them. The second man ceased, and made his obeisance; then both took places quietly at the ends of the front row near the gap.
The Englishmen expected that the criminal, if such he was, would be called on for his answer to the charges made against him. But the old man said never a word. Amid a breathless stillness he arose slowly and majestically to his feet. Was he about to pronounce judgment? The Englishmen wondered what the punishment was to be. Recollections of the horrors of Chinese torture made them quake; but there was no sign of instruments of torture, no movement in the silent ranks, except that they turned and faced the victim. Their garments rustled, then all was still as before.
The old man moved his head from side to side, the movements being so slight that they might have passed unnoticed by any one observing him less closely than the three Englishmen. Presently all motion ceased. The silence seemed even deeper than before. Then, with startling suddenness, from a point in the old man's head-dress, immediately above the centre of his brow, a swift thin beam of bright green light flashed along the hall, over the gap, past the pedestal, and on to the wall. It was gone in a moment. A low sound like the indrawing of breath ran through the assembly. A flicker of emotion stirred the stolid faces of the Chinamen; a look of horror distorted the more expressive faces of the negrito guards. And the Englishmen were suddenly aware that the pedestal was vacant. The limp shrinking form had vanished; only a little dust hung in the air.
While the Englishmen were still in their amazement, the ranks faced about again, and the two priests who had led the victim to the spot drew near to it with the solemn gait of acolytes. One carried a golden trowel, the other a small gold-handled brush. Standing on either side of the pedestal, the one swept a quantity of dust on its surface into the trowel held by the other. The latter, holding the trowel at arm's length in front of him, bore it slowly towards the throne, and after a profound obeisance offered it to the old man, and withdrew. Lifting his skinny right arm, the old man extended the trowel towards the assembled priests, moved it from side to side, lightly sprinkling the dust on the floor, and in his cold clear voice spoke with impressive deliberateness a single sentence. Once more the assembly fell prostrate, the air above the throne quivered, and the mist gradually rose before it, blotting it and its motionless occupant from sight.
CHAPTER IX
THE MONSTER ON THE WALL
The three friends scarcely noticed what followed on the disappearance of the old man. The priests filed out quietly, each rank by a separate door. Only Wen Shih remained. He came slowly to the end of the hall, threw a contemptuous glance on the young lad his late companion, who had fallen swooning to the floor, and signed to the Englishmen to follow him. Accompanied by the negrito guards, they quitted the hall, and marched back through the vaulted corridors. They were not, however, taken to the room which they had lately left. Mackenzie was led off by himself to a somewhat smaller cell, and locked in there, Jackson and Forrester being left, meanwhile, under charge of the guards. They in their turn were separately incarcerated. None of them knew anything of the fate of Sher Jang and Hamid Gul. The scene which they had just witnessed, the climax of the series of mysterious happenings of the past few hours, had completely overwhelmed them. They were incapable of resistance, of protest, even of thought: everything was subdued to a shuddering horror.
Mackenzie found himself in a chamber differing from that which all three had previously occupied in two respects: its size, and the ornamentation of one of its walls. At first he was hardly aware of this; but recovering his composure by and by in the quiet of his solitary cell, he noticed that the wall opposite the window slit bore a representation of the strange monster which was depicted on the walls of the hall. But here again there was a difference. The hideous creature had, in addition to two eyes normally placed, a third, in the centre of the forehead, in the same position as the spot on the old man's head-dress from which the annihilating beam of light had sped. The cell was dimly illuminated by the mysterious green light, but the monster's third eye glowed brilliantly, a lozenge of vivid green.
Here, at last, Mackenzie thought, was the explanation, or rather the confirmation, of the villagers' vague statements about the Eye. It was a symbol of the power presiding over this mountain community. He remembered having noticed a lozenge-shaped ornament on the head-dress of the Old Man of the Mountain; it was from this ornament that the beam of light had appeared to shoot. But what was the origin of this mysterious light? What was the secret of its tremendous devastating force, which in a single moment had shattered the little black man into a few handfuls of dust?