Ramsa Lal did not reply.
They traversed a short tunnel; a heavy door was thrust open; and Moreen found herself standing in a small pillared hall. Through a window high in one wall, overgrown with tangled vegetation, crept a broken moonbeam. Directly before her was the carven figure of a grotesque deity. A long, heavily clamped chest stood before it like an altar step.
She staggered forward, deposited her priceless burden upon the floor, and mechanically began to raise the lid of the chest.
“Not that one, Mem Sahib!” The voice of Ramsa Lal rose shrilly—“not that one!...”
But he spoke too late. Moreen realised that there were three divisions in the chest, each having a separate lid. As she raised the one in the centre, a breath of fetid air greeted her nostrils, and she had a vague impression that this was no chest but the entrance to a deep pit. Then all these thoughts were swept away by the crowning horror which rose out of the subterranean darkness.
A great winged creature, clammily white, rose towards her, passed beneath her upraised hands and sailed into the darkness on the right. She heard it flapping its great bat wings against the wall—heard them beating upon a pillar—then saw it coming back towards her into the moonlight—and knew no more.
VI
“Mem Sahib!”
Moreen opened her eyes. She lay, propped against a saddle, at the camp beside the jungle. She shuddered icily.
“Ramsa Lal—how——”