A second later he crowded back against Roberts, crouching at the side of the passage. A leap ... a dulled groan.... Bowen had brought down the butt of one of his borrowed revolvers upon the skull of a newcomer whom Roberts had neither seen nor heard!
A moment later they squeezed through another narrow opening, descended a flight of block stairs, and were in another corridor—one much more populous than the upper, to judge from the sounds. Roberts heard the subdued chattering of many voices. Here faint light showed.
Bowen led on hurriedly. At a point indistinguishable from the rest of the wall, so far as Roberts was concerned, he pushed inward a block of stone, which went to the horizontal, immediately swinging back when they had passed.
“Now we’re all right for a minute....” began Bowen. His long-repressed coughing attacked him then and he surrendered to it for the time. “Lungs ... filling up ... won’t last long....” he gasped then. “This corridor ... no way out ... get back in the other, if I am not ... with ... you....”
“We’ll manage that; don’t you worry!” answered Roberts. “Lead me first to those two men. After that, the Buddha.... I feel unclean already!”
Bowen incomprehensibly laughed at that—a shrill giggle, half-hysterical. But he led on, of a sudden turning, squeezing through to the second corridor again, and then, without warning bringing up two automatics. Two streams of fire ... four shots....
“Got ’em all!” he shrilled, laughing. “Come quick now!”
Roberts found himself dragged forward at a half-run.
Again Bowen’s two guns spoke. This time, in the light of flashes, Roberts saw two crouching things succumb. Through a black doorway they plunged. Then a faint light from a single insufficient wick lighted a chamber perhaps twenty by ten feet in size. Chained, backs outward, Porterfield and Christensen were spread-eagled against the fetid, oozing wall!