When I had pulled the two panels to behind me I found myself in a little chamber, six feet wide, and six feet high. On each side of me were blank walls, but at the back was another bronze plaque with, as I expected, two more knobs to right and left.
I put the hand of the first dial on the figure 18. The pointer of the second had just reached 15 when the noise of tearing wood, absolutely terrifying in that dead silence, froze me from head to foot. The lower half of the immense plaque, opening horizontally about three feet from the ground, had swung forward and smashed to matchwood the heavy stool I had placed against it as I came in.
If I hadn't jumped back so smartly my feet would infallibly have been crushed.
"Excellent!" I murmured. "So their secrets are man-traps, too!"
I bent down and got into the second chamber, which was of exactly the same dimensions as the first. You can imagine that this time I took all precautions, standing carefully to the left as I put the pointer of the fifth dial on 21 and to the right as I turned that of the sixth to 4. I might have saved myself the trouble. The plaque parted in two vertically, like the first one, and the panels rolled aside on invisible hinges.
Then I passed into the third and last chamber.
It was of the same height, but twice as long and wide. The small arc of my electric torch gave a good light, but covered but a small area.
At first I could only see what looked like white splashes on the floor.
But suddenly, my friend, my very marrow froze within me. I was frightened, horribly frightened, for in the corner to my left a curious little white heap had just come into view. Drawn by some over-mastering instinct I approached it, and even as I approached I wanted to bolt, and between my chattering teeth I muttered: "It's a hallucination. I'm dreaming. I know I'm dreaming. I'm not at Hanover. This is Lautenburg. The palace. There's Doctor Cyrus Beck just round the corner working. There's the night-watchman. There's Ludwig, my servant. There's Major von Kessel, honest, kind Kessel ..."
The heap of quicklime was now at my feet. I fell, rather than knelt, before it.