Midway the gallery sprang a narrow stairway, let in the wall and once leading to the ancient armoury, but now disused and piled with rubbish. Old Malakh went up two steps of this old stairway, turned aside, and slipped away so swiftly that his amazed pursuer caught no more than an after-flutter of his dun-coloured garments. St. George, his softly-clad feet making no noise upon the stones, bounded forward and saw, through a triangular aperture in the stones, and set so low that a man must crouch upon the step to enter, a yawning place of darkness.
He might very well have been taking his life in his hands, for he could have no idea whether the aperture led to the imperial dungeons or to the imperial rain-water cistern; but St. George instantly bent and slipped down into that darkness, thick with the dust of the flight of the old man. With the distinctly pleasurable sensation of being still alive he found himself standing upright upon an uneven floor of masonry. He thrust out his arms and touched sides of mossy rock. Then just before him a pale flame flickered. The old man had kindled a little taper that hardly did more than make shallow hollows in the darkness through which he moved.
It was easy to follow now, and St. George went breathlessly on past the rudely-hewn walls and giant pillars of that hidden way. He might have been lost with ease in any of the lower processes of the palace which they had that morning visited; but he could not be deceived about the chambers which he had once seen, and this subterranean course was new to him. Was it, he wondered, new to Olivia, and to Jarvo? Else why had it been omitted in that morning's search? And was this strange guide going on at random, or did he know—something? A suspicion leaped to St. George's mind that made his heart beat. The king—might he be down here after all, and might this weird old man know where? His own consciousness became chiefly conjecture, and every nerve was alert in the pursuit; not the less because he realized that if he were to lose this strange conductor who went on before, either in secure knowledge or in utter madness, he himself might wander for the rest of his life in that nether world.
Past grim latchless doors sealing, with appropriate gestures, their forgotten secrets, past outlying passages winding into the heart of the mountain, past niches filled with shapeless crumbling rubbish they hurried—the mad old man and his bewildered pursuer. Twice the way turned, gradually narrowing until two could hardly have passed there, and at last apparently terminated in a short flight of steps. Old Malakh mounted with difficulty and St. George, waiting, saw him standing before a blank stone wall. Immediately and without effort the old man's scanty strength served to displace one of the wall's huge stones which hung upon a secret pivot and rolled noiselessly within. He stepped through the aperture, and St. George sprang behind him, watched his moment to cross the threshold, crouched in the leaping shadow of the displaced stone and looked—looked with the undistinguishing amazement that a man feels in the panorama of his dreams.
The room was small and low and set with a circular bench, running about a central pillar. On the table was a confusion of things brilliantly phosphorescent, emitting soft light, and mingled with bulbs, coils and crucibles lying in a litter of egg-shells, feathers, ivory and paper. But it was not these that held St. George incredulous; it was the fire that glowed in their midst—a fire that leaped and trembled and blazed inextinguishable colour, smouldering, sparkling, tossing up a spray of strange light, lambent with those wizard hues of the pennons and streamers floating joyously from the dome of the Palace of the Litany—the fire from the subject hearts of a thousand jewels. There could be no doubting what he saw. There, flung on the table from the mouth of a carven casket and harbouring the captive light of ages gone, glittered what St. George knew would be the gems of the Hereditary Treasure of the kings of Yaque.
But for old Malakh to know where the jewels were—that was as amazing as was their discovery. St. George, breathing hard in his corner, watched the long, fine hands of the old man trembling among the delicate tubes and spindles, lingering lovingly among the stones, touching among the necklaces and coronals of the dead queens whose dust lay not far away. It was as if he were summoning and discarding something shining and imponderable, like words. The contents of the casket which all Yaque had mourned lay scattered in this secret place of which only this strange, mad creature, a chance pensioner at the palace, had knowledge.
Suddenly the memory of Balator's words smote St. George with new perception. "He walks the streets of Med," Balator had told him at the banquet, "saying 'Melek, Melek,' which is to say 'king,' and so he is seeking the king. But he is mad, and he weeps; and therefore they pretend to believe that he says, 'Malakh,' which is to say 'salt,' and they call him that, for his tears."
Could old Malakh possibly know something of the king? The hope returned to St. George insistently, and he watched, spending his thought in new and extravagant conjecture, his mental vision blurring the details of that heaped-up, glistening confusion; and on the opposite side of the table the old man lifted and laid down that rainbow stuff of dreams, delighting in it, speaking softly above it. Had he been the king's friend, St. George was asking—but why did no one know anything of him? Or had he been an enemy who had done the king violence—but how was that possible, in his age and feebleness? Mystifying as the matter was, St. George exulted as much as he marveled; for it would be his, at all events, to place the jewels in Olivia's hands and clear her father's name; he longed to step out of the dark and confront the old man and seize the casket out of hand, and he would probably have done so and taken his chances at getting back to the upper world, had he not been chained to his corner by the irresistible hope that the old man knew something more—something about the king. And while he wondered, reflecting that at any cost he must prevent the replacing of the pivotal stone, he saw old Malakh take up his taper, turn away from the table, and open a door which the room's central pillar had cut from his view.
He was around the table in an instant. The open door revealed three stone steps which the old man was ascending, one at a time. Following him cautiously St. George heard a door grate outward at the head of the stair, saw the taper move forward in darkness, and the next moment found himself standing in the room of the tombs of the kings of Yaque. And he saw that the panel which had swung inward to admit them was set low in the monolithic tomb of King Abibaal himself.
Old Malakh had crossed swiftly to the wall opposite the tomb, and stood before the vacant niche which was to be occupied, as Jarvo had announced, by "His Majesty, King Otho, by the grace of God." There, setting aside his taper, the old man stretched his arms upward to the empty shelf and with a gesture of inconceivable weariness bowed his head upon them and stood silent, the leaping candle-light silvering his hair.