Ramey shook his head. "Well, that could have been, sir. Before the advance of medicine, plagues used to ravage whole countries periodically. The Black Death is supposed to have killed more than twenty-five million persons in Europe in the Renaissance period. The bubonic killed ten thousand a day in Constantinople during the Interregnum. Even today the Orient is swept by raging plagues—"
"I realize that, my boy. But tell me—you've heard of the Great Plague of London? What did the city look like?"
"It was a charnel-house. Death-carts ... dead bodies in the streets ... graveyards filled to overflowing...."
"Exactly! Now, listen here! In all of Angkor Thom, there are no human remains to be found!
"You will say this merely indicates that the Khmers did not inter their dead. Perhaps they had no sepulchers, no graveyards or tombs. True. But shouldn't there be human remains somewhere in or near these structures? Even if age did rot the carcasses, there should be bones! But—there are no bones in Angkor!
"Not only that, but there are no weapons, no pottery fragments, no accoutrements! If I die, one of thirty million souls simultaneously stricken by death, my body can decay, my crumbling bones may be swept away by the winds, yes! But the Khmers wore metal bracelets, belts, buckles; used utensils of metal. Their pictures tell us so.
"Yet there is not one piece of wearing apparel to be found in all Angkor! Not a single pin, not a scrap of household furniture, not one old, discarded cooking-pot! Now, how do you account for that?"
Ramey, staring at the old archeologist, slowly shook his head. "I—I can't, sir. Can you?"
Ian Aiken's eyes were strangely introspective.