Rick felt a shiver run down his back. "What are we waiting for?" he demanded roughly. "Let"s get inside."
The opening wasn"t large. Zircon had to duck going in. Rick was right behind him, Chahda bringing up the rear. Just inside, they stopped, all lights going.
The cave was tremendous. The level rock floor stretched away from them, and when they shot their lights upward, a vaulted dome reflected the beams a good hundred feet overhead. Slowly they moved away from the entrance, lights busy searching the cave. There was nothing near the entrance but rock, solid and smooth. And it was so quiet Rick thought he could hear his own heartbeat. Then his light beam picked up a green reflection on the far side of the cave.
"There"s something there," he exclaimed. In spite of himself, his voice shook.
"We"ll soon see," Scotty said. Their voices rumbled through the cave, echoing and re-echoing.
Zircon gave a sudden exclamation. "Chahda! Where"s the big light?"
The Hindu boy had been playing the bright beam on the walls to one side.
Now he swung it squarely ahead, and Rick gasped.
The Black Buddha!
It seemed to crouch against the far wall, a giant, loathsome thing of dead black with live green eyes.
They went toward it, all lights on the thing, and as they made out more details, Rick shuddered. The Buddha was completely the opposite of every other Buddha he had seen. Instead of the bland, quiet look of peace, this thing had its mouth open, showing sharp ebony teeth. It leered over a nose like a pig"s, and its body was gross and misshapen. It was, Rick thought, toad-like. It quite frankly gave him the w.i.l.l.i.e.s. His imagination gave it life, so that the obscene lips smirked, and almost seemed to drool.
Something white at the base caught the light beams. In a moment they stood before a pile of bones, heaped against the statue"s left side.
Zircon"s light swept them. "Human," he said.
Rick"s scalp tightened.
Next to him, Chahda let out his breath in a sigh that was nearly a moan.
In the second that they stood silently looking at the pile of bones, there came a slight sound from somewhere behind the Black Buddha.
Instantly their lights swept in the direction of the sound, until Scotty hissed, "Put "em out!"
Blackness flooded in on them. Rick strained his eyes to see, his ears to hear. He tried to control his breathing, sure that its sound could be heard forty feet away.
Then he saw a horizontal thread of light about three feet long against the wall behind the statue. It spread upward slowly, forming a rectangle. Rick watched it, his palms wet on the rifle as he tucked the flashlight away and gripped the weapon tightly.
It was yellow light, eerie as a will-o"-the-wisp and scarcely stronger.
Then, as Rick watched, a shadow rose up in a black narrow path from the bottom of the rectangle. It rose and rose until it almost filled the frame, and the blackness was in the form of a man, almost, except that it was too long, too thin.
The four stood as though hypnotized for a dozen heartbeats, then Zircon came to life. He jumped forward with a great roar.
"Long Shadow!"
The light vanished and again blackness closed around them.
CHAPTER XIV
The Caves of Fear
Instantly all lights were directed at the back of the cave. Zircon rushed around the statue and stopped short as his light found only rock walls.
"He has to be here somewhere," the scientist bellowed. "Hunt for him!"
Rick stood for a moment estimating the direction from which the light had come. He walked to the part of the wall on which they had seen the shadow, and stood with his back to it. He flashed his light straight ahead, and it fell on the broad back of the Black Buddha.
The others had followed his line of thought and were watching.
"Look for a door," Scotty said. He hurried to the back of the statue and began examining it with his light. Rick joined him. Zircon got out a jackknife and began to probe into cracks. Chahda got down on hands and knees and felt along the base.
The back of the statue was seamed with cracks, but they ran helter-skelter without apparent order. The illumination against which the shadow was cast had been rectangular.
"There isn"t a straight line in the bunch," Rick said, disappointed.
"What now?"
"There must be a way to open the door, wherever it is," Zircon stated.
"That"s what we must look for, I think. It may be on the statue itself, on the floor, or on a wall near by. Rick, you and Scotty take the statue. Chahda and I will take the walls and floor."
"What are we hunting for?" Scotty asked.
"I don"t know. Perhaps a k.n.o.b, perhaps a keyhole. Look for anything unusual."
Rick and Scotty began at opposite sides of the statue"s back and started working toward each other, examining every inch of the black stone minutely. Zircon and Chahda started side by side on the wall behind the statue and worked away from each other. Rick used his jackknife to probe every suspicious crack or chip, but without success. He and Scotty covered the back as high up as they could reach without finding a thing.
Zircon and Chahda worked along the wall until they were thirty feet apart, then the scientist called a halt on the theory that the secret lock wouldn"t be that far from the door. The door was either in the statue"s back or near its base.
While Zircon and Chahda started examining the floor, Rick and Scotty started on the statue"s sides. There was more decoration along the sides, so they had to go more slowly and carefully.
After a while, Chahda called, "Something here."
The others stopped what they were doing and hurried to him. The Hindu boy"s light was on a tiny slot in the floor. It seemed shallow. Rick pointed out that the floor in the area was checkered, almost like a tile floor.
"There must be a reason for that," Zircon said. He knelt by the slot and peered into it. "Nothing in the slot, however. Rick, isn"t yours a scout knife?"
"Yes, sir." Rick handed it to him.
Zircon opened the screwdriver blade and pushed it into the slot. Nothing happened. He moved it from side to side, with no effect.
"There must be some reason for that slot," Scotty said. "Try again, professor. Push harder."
Zircon shoved the blade down into the hole and pushed. "There must be a special key of some kind," he said finally. "That is, if the slot has anything to do with the door. I suggest we continue the search until we"re satisfied that this is the only possibility."
Rick nodded, disappointed. He turned back to the statue and took a step forward into s.p.a.ce!
A wild yell burst from him as he felt himself falling, then Scotty had him by the jacket and was hauling him back. Rick collapsed on the stone floor, his heart pounding The others shot their flashlights into the place where he had stepped.
A section of the floor had swung upward, right at the base of the statue. It yawned open, and from its lip a flight of steps led downward.