“I bet if you rolled a cannon-ball down these corridors you’d get exactly the same sound effect,” said Fearmax at last. Campion made an irritable gesture to silence him. “Listen,” he said. They listened fervently until Mrs. Truman felt a desire to giggle — the same desire she always had during the two minutes’ silence on Armistice Day. Fearmax looked so comical with his jowl stuck out, and Campion standing on one leg.… Graecen pressed Virginia’s arm softly, comfortingly, and cursed himself as he felt her own warm answering pressure. Under his breath he whispered every opprobrious epithet he could lay his mind to. It was becoming a conspiracy — his own weakness allied with circumstances — to entrap him. He was sliding invisibly downhill in ever-increasing speeds of idiotic quixotry until … until …
They stood listening to rubbing of water at their feet, the noise of a concrete-mixer, and the harsh spotted sound of water leaking into a cistern somewhere.
The guide, for some reason best known to himself, was silent. His face looked grave and preoccupied. He was picking his teeth with a match-stick. He did not venture to comment on the sound or try to explain it. When at last he caught Mrs. Truman’s eye he merely raised his eyebrows, threw up his hands and crossed himself. Campion began to wonder whether they should go on. “Let’s go back,” he said, “I’ve had enough of this place. And when do we get to the antiquities anyway?” When indeed.
At last they felt able to relax the torment of listening for the sound. It had not repeated itself, that anguished and reverberating trump. Fearmax shook himself. “It might have been anything,” he said. “Rocks dropping into a cavern full of water. I’ve heard the same sort of noise in the workings of a disused mine.” As a matter of fact he had never been any where near a disused mine, but he felt a vague desire to raise morale by producing a mundane explanation of the sound.
They gathered themselves together and were about to debate whether they should proceed or not when the guide, who had been sitting apart resting, rose and clapped his hands for silence. “Forward,” he called again and set off towards yet another tunnel. Virginia showed some disinclination to follow, but Fearmax called out: “Oh, come along there. It can’t be much farther.” It was not.
Ducking at last through a sort of postern, they followed the guide into what at first seemed to them to be a Gothic cathedral. It was very nearly as large — a tremendous and grandiose cavern, through the roof of which shone the pure rays of the sun, falling like a spotlight through the dense atmosphere and the dust. Peering up, they saw once more a piece of the sky, a sight which banished their depression instantly.
“Now for the sights,” said Graecen, glad that the publicity of light made any further advances to Virginia impossible. “What is that? I think I see the cella.”
As they advanced through the white circle of light blazing upon the stone floor they heard once more the roar of the minotaur — but this time more remote, less unearthly. They stopped to listen to it as it banged its way into silence, however. “Seems farther away,” said Fearmax with evident relief. The guide took absolutely no notice of the sound but led the way across the great nave, his footsteps echoing like those of a verger in the crypt of St. Paul’s. High above, in the indistinguishable blue of buttress shapes, they heard the flap and chitter of bats.
Sure enough in one corner Graecen traced out a cella, and there at last, undercut into the rock, lay the chambers Axelos had described. Each was about the size of a chapel, and had four or five tunnels leading off it into the labyrinth. The first two were empty; in the third was a massively-carved plinth, fallen on its side and much rubbed. The fourth, then, must contain the bas-relief and the statues. Graecen was so excited that he completely forgot Virginia. This latter chapel also admitted light through a chink in the roof.
The guide was demonstrating the phenomenon of the echo. He threw his head back and shouted. It was as if a hand had suddenly begun to smack down over a laughing mouth; the echo was tossed backwards and forwards from the coigns and nooks in the great curved roof until it died slowly into a whisper, almost a tone above its original. Silence fell. Beyond the swirling shaft of pollen-like light, down which (as in Bible illustrations) the Holy Ghost might be expected to descend, lay the serene unclouded blue eye of the sky. They all tested the echo to their hearts’ content. Graecen heard them as he was searching for his little chemical bottle. Their talk and laughter provided him with just the cover he needed for his experiment. He stepped forward into the little chapel and found his attention arrested by the perfect detachment and purity of the statues, by the coarse yet sensitive stone-cutting of the basrelief. No, his experience had not been at fault. These were certainly not fakes: they were too weathered and lichened by damp: too self-consciously primitive and innocent to deceive. Typology was satisfied no less than experience. He stood with his mouth open and let his eyes delight in the ponderous archaic forms, their grace as they stood, big with the weight of their material stone: and yet somehow aerial like boulders learning to fly. One was a winged man, his arms raised, his belly depressed in the effort of flight. One was a boy. Campion was standing beside him smoking furiously and walking from point to point to vary the view; or reaching down to see at close quarters how the cutting had been achieved. “What do you think?” said Graecen. It came upon him suddenly that it would be an insult to mess about with chemicals here, in such a place. After all, if one was not sure the onus was on oneself. He was an expert and he was prepared to stake his whole experience upon the issue. “What do I think?” said Campion absently. “It’s grand work, isn’t it?” Graecen’s fingers pressed the rubber stopper of the bottle that Firbank had given him. Damn old Firbank with his beastly chemical tests. He turned aside and walked out into the main cavern once more. The place was honeycombed with tunnels. He once more began to trace out the cella and examine the workmanship. Where now was the inscription?
The rest of the party were standing in the side-chapel examining the statues when Graecen found them. Inscriptions? The guide would show him immediately. There was a united groan when it was found that these would involve the negotiation of a further tunnel. The guide spread his hands resignedly. What could he do?
It was a very narrow tunnel, whose walls were of a soft shaley conglomerate. Graecen realized how easily it crumbled when he put out a hand to steady himself. It did not seem safe at all. However, they managed to enter the small cave in which there stood a battered inscription in marble. Graecen saw with a thrill that it was part hieroglyph and part character. The air was so close, however, in the confined space that they could not stay long.
It was on the return journey that it happened; they had entered one of the larger of the side-chapels and were about to enter a tunnel in single file when with the noise of wet linen flapping on a line a large partridge got up from a dark corner and sailed through the roof like a comet. At once the guide began to show interest; there was possibly a nest. If so it was skilfully hidden, for though they combed the ledges in the direction from which it had come they could see no trace of a nest. Not content with this exploration, the guide hoisted himself upon a boulder and began to climb the wall. It was particularly silly and dangerous, as Campion had pointed out in acid tones, since if he broke his leg they would never find their way out. To Fearmax’s remonstration the guide, however, only turned a grinning face and waved one hand, imploring patience and confidence in his powers. He disappeared across one of the ledges and. returned into the light to show them his find — eggs; as he did so the projecting rock on which he was standing began to move.