“Hang and drop,” he commanded, speaking in a whisper. “The corridor floor is eight feet down. I know a better way to climb, but, going in, it is simpler to drop....”
From the black slit an odor rose which made Roberts stiffen. He had caught a faint suggestion of it from Bowen’s clothes, but now it came to him, fetid and strong—a scent of rank, damp decay.
He snatched one last breath of desert air, knelt, swung himself down into space, and let go. As Bowen had said, the drop was short, but Roberts, in the dark, fell sidewise to the slimy bricks of the passage.
In a second he was up, shrinking involuntarily from the contact. When Bowen was lowered from the slit of light, Roberts caught him and set him down carefully. The Chinese did not follow.
“I told them to wait there,” Bowen whispered. “They’d be useless down here. There’s no sense in spoiling two brave boys.”
“But can you make it?”
“Yes, if I don’t have to cough. When we get in the third passage it won’t matter. No one is there. Come on. Hold to this rag....” He placed a shred of his tattered blouse in Roberts’ palm, plunging immediately into the blackness.
Roberts, stumbling blindly after—recoiling from each touch of the horrid, oozing walls—ran on tip-toe in order to match the silence of his barefooted guide.
They passed spots of light. These showed openings to right or left—openings to chambers lighted with flickering flames of green or yellow. Once Roberts looked, his flesh acrawl with morbid curiosity. He saw within the place three sprawling things of rags and decay, things which did not—perhaps could not—move. Thereafter he kept his eyes averted, and clenched one fist about the solid butt of his revolver.
After perhaps ten minutes of travel, Bowen, wheezing audibly now, bent forward in a silent convulsion which brought blood to his lips. Only at the last did he make a noise. Then a gasping inhalation was not to be controlled.