'Do not fear,' she answered calmly. 'I will not betray you. But are you mad to come, a stranger and a foreigner, to the forbidden temple of Set?'
'I'm looking for the priest Thutothmes,' he answered. 'Is he in this temple?'
'Why do you seek him?' she parried.
'He has something of mine which was stolen.'
'I will lead you to him,' she volunteered so promptly that his suspicions were instantly roused.
'Don't play with me, girl,' he growled.
'I do not play with you. I have no love for Thutothmes.'
He hesitated, then made up his mind; after all, he was as much in her power as she was in his.
'Walk beside me,' he commanded, shifting his grasp from her throat to her wrist. 'But walk with care. If you make a suspicious move—'
She led him down the slanting corridor, down and down, until there were no more cressets, and he groped his way in darkness, aware less by sight than by feel and sense of the woman at his side. Once when he spoke to her, she turned her head toward him and he was startled to see her eyes glowing like golden fire in the dark. Dim doubts and vague monstrous suspicions haunted his mind, but he followed her, through a labyrinthine maze of black corridors that confused even his primitive sense of direction. He mentally cursed himself for a fool, allowing himself to be led into that black abode of mystery; but it was too late to turn back now. Again he felt life and movement in the darkness about him, sensed peril and hunger burning impatiently in the blackness. Unless his ears deceived him he caught a faint sliding noise that ceased and receded at a muttered command from the girl.