Yet someone, somewhere, had constructed that box, and had used it to safeguard something. Perhaps they had used it as a prison, to cage a creature they could not control, an entity unknown to the science of the present. Perhaps later peoples had created legends about it—Pandora's Box. Perhaps this was really Pandora's Box that Morton had brought back from Asia Minor.
The creature had waited in that box for uncounted centuries. Now a new race had opened the door of his prison.
Now the Lord of the Silent Death was free again.
Rocks Malone kept wondering when and where he would strike.
During the whole day there was not even a whisper of the incredible silence in which men's lives were blotted out.
But when the second night came—
CHAPTER IV
At nine o'clock that night Rocks was ready to drop from exhaustion. He was not only so tired that the hieroglyphics blurred before his eyes, but he had failed. That hurt worse than anything else. Everything depended on his cracking the lost language, and he had failed.
At nine o'clock it happened.