Out of the Silence (Sci-Fi Classic). Erle Cox
the precaution he had taken he must have met a terrible death, and his mutilated body would be lying there at the foot of the stairway in the gloomy silence. The shock to his nerves made thinking out of the question, and with shaking limbs and dazed senses he made his way upwards. Out into the dusk he went, and locked the door of the shed behind him. In his heart was a deep feeling of gratitude for his preservation.
That evening he prepared his meal in thoughtful silence. There was none of the cheerful whistling and singing that usually accompanied his last work of the day. When he had finished and set all in order, he sat down and commenced to write. He set out in clear detail every incident of his discovery, and every danger to be encountered so far as he had gone. It was far into the night when he had finished. Then he enclosed the many sheets in an envelope and wrote across it in clear, round hand: "If I am missing, the contents of this letter must be read before any search is made for me." This he signed and dated. Then he placed the envelope in a conspicuous spot on the mantelpiece, so that it could not be possibly overlooked. "Now," he thought, "if I do get bowled out, Bryce, or whoever comes to investigate, will run fewer risks." Then, satisfied that he had insured others to a certain extent, if not himself, he went to his bed thoroughly tired out with his strenuous day.
But, tired as he was, the sleep he longed for refused to come at his bidding. The wonder of his discovery had gripped his mind so that, try as he would, he could not clear his brain of the questions that clamoured for an answer. The feeling of anger which he had at first felt at the deadly trap he had escaped had given way under a quieter reasoning with himself. Whatever mystery was hidden behind those great doors was surely worthy of the care taken to guard it. He realised that every difficulty that he had encountered so far was capable of solution, and that every obstacle was one which would bar effectually an unreasoning or unintelligent intruder, and that behind it all was the evident fact that everything had been planned to prevent the secret of the place from falling into the hands of anyone who was unfitted by lack of courage or mental training to estimate it at its proper value.
Alan smiled to himself when he realised how completely the events of the past few days had absorbed him. Glen Cairn may have been a thousand miles away for all the thought he gave it. The friends he knew had been completely forgotten. It seemed years since he had last seen Bryce, instead of just one week. The next day would be Sunday, and he knew that, instead of resting, nothing could tear him from the work in hand. He felt he should have gone to see Marian, but he determined that while the mystery remained unsolved he would be chained to the spot.
At last sleep came, deep and untroubled, and the sun had risen long before Dundas became conscious of the day.
CHAPTER X
With his hands deep in his pockets and his chin on his chest, Alan paced slowly up and down the verandah of the homestead. He had abandoned his first idea of going at once to the shed because he wanted to think with his mind untroubled by the weird surroundings of the great vestibule. Obviously there were some means of passing that murderous blade. It would be easy for him to jump from the step above to the floor beneath, but the possibility of finding something as bad, or worse on landing, forced him to put the idea aside. He felt that each bar to his progress must be fairly overcome before he could safely press forward. In his mind's eye he went over the surroundings for the key of the situation, and he could see only one way out. Whatever motive force there was behind the blade could not be inexhaustible. Doubtless it was a question of mechanics, and the only means he could see was to exhaust the power that drove the flying death until he could pass unharmed.
He went to his tool shed and fastened a pair of ploughshares together with a piece of fencing wire leaving a fair length of wire over that he bent roughly into a hook. Then he took his lamp and made his way down into the winding staircase. He had become familiar now with its echoings, and smiled to think of his racked nerves on his first descent. At length he reached the bottom of the first landing, and found the remnant of the crowbar he had left there the night before. This he carried with him, and, scarcely pausing to glance at the shadowed wall, he made his way to the great vestibule. Treading carefully, he stopped above the danger mark, and sitting down, he examined the step beneath. He found, as he had expected, that the cleft that allowed the passage of the blade terminated about an inch from the end of the step near the wire bars. Holding the crowbar carefully so that it was clear of the sweep of steel, he touched the edge of the step lightly beside the wires and the touch was answered instantly by the ringing whiz of the flying metal. Even prepared as he was, Alan flinched back from the blow and released the pressure. Then he took the ploughshares he had brought with him, and adjusted the hook so as to catch the bar of the step, and let the weight fall outside. It was a simple plan that would keep a continuous weight on the step that would be out of reach of the blade, and it acted to perfection. The moment the pressure came to the step the blade flashed outward. As Alan had surmised, it was fitted to an axle set in the wall, and instead of stopping as before after one slash when the pressure had been released, it continued flashing before him with ever increasing speed. Somewhere in the wall beside him he could hear the deep drone of machinery in motion. In a few seconds the speed was so intense that it appeared as if a dazzling quadrant of burnished metal had darted out of the wall. The whizzing as it cut through the air rose from a wail to a thin, high-pitched screech, and even after retreating upwards several steps to be out of reach of possible harm, Alan could feel the displaced air pressing against his face as if driven from a blast. With his lamp turned full on the spot, he watched the whirling, flying blade with grim satisfaction. Patience was an asset in the game he was playing, but he felt sure he had found a key to the barrier before him, and he was content to wait.
Presently his eyes strayed from the shimmering quadrant to the great doors that shed their soft splendour through the dim vestibule, wondering at the mystery they guarded, and from the doors they turned to the sculptured group in the centre. On this he turned the glare of the acetylene lamp. Of the three figures only one faced him, and this he scrutinised with bated breath. It was the life-size image of a man clad in a long robe that fell almost to his feet, and under the steady white rays every detail stood out with perfect distinctness. The body was bent forward slightly with both hands resting on a short staff, and the robe showed ragged and torn as if slipping from the shoulders of the gaunt frame that supported it, but it was the face that held the gaze of the watcher. It was the face of an old man, but in its intense drawn misery could be read the premature age of pain and overwhelming sorrow. Never had Alan realised such agony as stared back at him from the blank eyes under the scarred and lined forehead, but it seemed as if the stern, set lips were fighting back any feeling of weakness or surrender that seemed struggling to find expression. On the pedestal at the feet of the figure the light gleamed on a metal tablet, and on the tablet Alan recognised a repetition of the first group of characters he had seen at the head of the first stairway. "Evidently," he thought, "the name of that monument of misfortune. Ye gods! what a face! A portrait, beyond doubt. I suppose I'll find the other two figures are labelled with the remainder of these hieroglyphics upstairs at the entrance. I wish I could see them properly." But there was no chance of a proper examination of the other two until he was able to gain the floor of the vestibule. Both were turned away from him, but he could see that one had an arm upraised and pointing directly at the gleaming splendour of the door in front of him.
The inaction of waiting with the goal in sight was exasperating beyond words, but while that screeching blade remained in motion he must possess his soul in patience. He wondered vaguely how many revolutions it was making each minute that passed. His situation was not very pleasant, sitting cramped on the step that seemed to grow harder as time went on, and, moreover, he realised with a slight shiver that the temperature of the great vestibule was very much below that of the atmosphere of the surface. At last his patience became exhausted, and he determined that rather than sit there in irritated watchfulness he would return to the surface and let that whizzing machinery wear itself out. Alan's previous trips up the winding staircase had taught him that it was not a journey to be undertaken lightly, but to face the climb was better than fretting his patience with compulsory idleness. So off he set, and forced himself to prepare his dinner. Then he selected a book, and by sheer force of will concentrated