“There’s one other angle to this matter,” put in the captain. “Whoever rifled this tomb had some other way of getting into it and getting out of it than by the way we came in. We know that they didn’t use that, or the stone would have been down when we got to it. And if there is another entrance or exit, we have our chance of finding it.”
“Is there anything in the inscription bearing on this tomb of Horum-Aleb?” asked the professor.
“Not by name,” replied Phalos. “I have pored over the manuscript so often that I know it by heart, and that name does not occur in it. But the diagram that I have worked out from the veiled descriptions of the whole group of tombs gives an estimate of their length and width that may be of help to us in this instance.”
“Will you lend us your flashlight again, Frank, while we look it up?” asked the professor.
Somewhat to his surprise, the captain hesitated.
“We’ve got to be exceedingly careful of this flashlight,” he observed. “I have only one extra battery with me, and if we have to stay here long our lives may depend upon our having light enough to see our way about. But I have plenty of matches, and we’ll use torches and small fires as far as possible.”
“You always think of everything, Frank,” was the tribute the professor paid him. “Very well, then, we’ll use one of these splintered pieces of coffin lid as a torch.”
He lighted one end of the resinous wood, which burned with a bright though flickering light.
“While we’re looking this over, Frank,” the professor suggested, “suppose you take the measurements of this room with your tape.”
The captain complied, and found that the mortuary chamber was thirty-three feet long by twenty-two wide.