CHAPTER XIII.

THE CLOSING OF A DOOR.

“I wonder if they expect to scare us out of the country by such demonstrations as that?” scoffed Carl.

“There is, doubtless, some reason for this demonstration,” Sam observed, thoughtfully, “other than the general motive to put us in terror of haunted temples, but just now I can’t see what it is.”

“Redfern may be hiding in there!” suggested Jimmie, with a wink.

“Go on!” exclaimed Carl. “Didn’t Mr. Havens say that Redfern was in the vicinity of Lake Titicaca? How could he be here, then?”

“Mr. Havens only said that Redfern was believed to be in the vicinity of Lake Titicaca,” Sam corrected.

“Then they don’t even know where he is!” exclaimed Carl.

“Of course they don’t,” laughed Sam. “If they did, they’d go there and get him. That’s an easy one to answer!”

“Well, if Redfern isn’t in that ruin,” Jimmie declared, “then his own friends don’t know where he is!”

“Yes, it seems to me,” Sam agreed, “that the men who are trying to reach him are as much at sea as we are regarding his exact location.”

“If they wasn’t,” Jimmie declared, “they wouldn’t be staging such plays as that on general principles!”

“Well!” exclaimed Carl. “Here we stand talking as if we had positive information that the Redfern gang is putting on those stunts, while, as a matter of fact, we don’t know whether they are or not!”

“And that’s a fact, too!” said Jimmie. “The people in there may be ignorant of the fact that a man named Redfern ever existed.”

“But the chances are that the Redfern bunch is doing the work all the same!” insisted Sam.

“The only way to find out is to go on in and see!” declared Carl.

“Well, come on, then!” exclaimed Jimmie.

The two boys darted in together, leaving Sam standing alone for an instant. He saw the illumination thrown on the interior walls by their searchlights and lost no time in following on after them.

The place was absolutely silent. There was not even the sound of bird’s call or wing. The moonlight, filtering in through a break in what had once been a granite roof, showed bare white walls with little heaps of debris in the corners.

“It seems to me,” Sam said, as he looked around, “that the ghosts have chosen a very uncomfortable home.”

“There must be other rooms,” suggested Carl.

“There are two which still retain the appearance of apartments as originally constructed,” replied Sam, “one to the right, and one to the left. There seems, also, to have been an extension at the rear, but that is merely a heap of hewn stones at this time.”

As the young man ceased speaking the two boys darted through an opening in the west wall, swinging their flashlights about as they advanced into what seemed to be a stone-walled chamber of fair size. Following close behind, Sam saw the lads directing the rays of their electrics upon a series of bunks standing against the west wall. The sleeping places were well provided with pillows and blankets, and seemed to have been very recently occupied. Sam stepped closer and bent over one of the bunks.

“Now, what do you think about ghosts and ghost lights?” asked Jimmie.

“These ghosts,” Carl cut in, “seem to have a very good idea as to what constitutes comfort.”

“Three beds!” exclaimed Jimmie, flashing his light along the wall. “And that must mean three ghosts!”

Sam proceeded to a corner of the room as yet uninvestigated and was not much surprised when the round eye of his electric revealed a rough table, made of wooden planks, bearing dishes and remnants of food. He called at once to the boys and they gathered about him.

“Also,” Carl chuckled, “the three ghosts do not live entirely upon spiritual food. See there,” he continued, “they’ve had some kind of a stew, probably made out of game shot in the mountains.”

“And they’ve been making baking powder biscuit, too!” Carl added.

“I don’t suppose it would be safe to sample that stew?” Jimmie asked questioningly. “It looks good enough to eat!”

“Not for me!” declared Carl.

While the boys were examining the table and passing comment on the articles it held, Sam moved softly to the doorway by which they had entered and looked out into the corridor. Looking from the interior out to the moonlit lake beyond, the place lost somewhat of the dreary appearance it had shown when viewed under the searchlights. The walls were of white marble, as was the floor, and great slashes in the slabs showed that at one time they had been profusely ornamented with designs in metal, probably in gold and silver.

The moonlight, filtering through the broken roof, disclosed a depression in the floor in a back corner. This, Sam reasoned, had undoubtedly held the waters of the fountain hundreds of years before. Directly across from the doorway in which he stood he saw another break in the wall.

On a previous visit this opening, which had once been a doorway, had been entirely unobstructed. Now a wall of granite blocks lay in the interior of the apartment, just inside the opening. It seemed to the young man from where he stood that there might still be means of entrance by passing between this newly-built wall and the inner surface of the chamber.

Thinking that he would investigate the matter more fully in the future, Sam turned back to where the boys were standing, still commenting on the prepared food lying on the table. As he turned back a low, heavy grumble agitated the air of the apartment.

The boys turned quickly, and the three stood not far from the opening in listening attitudes. The sound increased in volume as the moments passed. At first it seemed like the heavy vibrations of throat cords, either human or animal. Then it lifted into something like a shrill appeal, which resembled nothing so much as the scream of a woman in deadly peril. Involuntarily the boys stepped closer to the corridor.

“What do you make of it?” whispered Jimmie.

“Ghosts!” chuckled Carl.

“Some day,” Jimmie suggested, in a graver tone than usual, “you’ll be punished for your verbal treatment of ghosts! I don’t believe there’s anything on the face of the earth you won’t make fun of. How do we know that spirits don’t come back to earth?”

“They may, for all I know,” replied Carl. “I’m not trying to decide the question, or to make light of it, either, but when I see the lot of cheap imitations like we’ve been put against to-night, I just have to express my opinion.”

“They’re cheap imitations, all right!” decided Jimmie.

“Cheap?” repeated Carl. “Flowing robes, and disappearing figures, and mysterious lights, and weird sounds! Why, a fellow couldn’t work off such manifestations as we’ve seen to-night on the most superstitious residents of the lower West Side in the City of New York, and they’ll stand for almost anything!”

“It strikes me,” Sam, who had been listening to the conversation with an amused smile, declared, “that the sounds we are listening to now may hardly be classified as wailing!”

“Now, listen,” Carl suggested, “and we’ll see if we can analyze it.”

At that moment the sound ceased.

The place seemed more silent than before because of the sudden cessation.

“It doesn’t want to be analyzed!” chuckled Carl.

“Come on,” Jimmie urged, “let’s go and see what made it!”

“I think you’ll have to find out where it came from first!” said Carl.

“It came from the opening across the second apartment,” explained Sam. “I had little difficulty in locating it.”

“That doesn’t look to me like much of an opening,” argued Carl.

“The stones you see,” explained Sam, “are not laid in the entrance from side to side. They are built up back of the entrance, and my idea is that there must be a passage-way between them and the interior walls of the room. That wall, by the way, has been constructed since my previous visit. So you see,” he added, turning to Carl, “the ghosts in this neck of the woods build walls as well as make baking powder biscuits.”

“Well, that’s a funny place to build a wall!” Carl asserted.

“Perhaps the builders don’t like the idea of their red and blue lights and ghostly apparatus being exposed to the gaze of the vulgar public,” suggested Jimmie. “That room is probably the apartment behind the scenes where the thunder comes from, and where some poor fellow of a supe is set to holding up the moon!”

“Well, why don’t we go and find out about it?” urged Carl.

“Wait until I take a look on the outside,” Sam requested. “The man in the long white robe may be rising out of the lake by this time. I don’t know,” he continued, “but that we have done a foolish thing in remaining here as we have, leaving the aeroplane unguarded.”

“Perhaps I’d better run around the cliff and see if it’s all right!” suggested Carl. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

“No,” Sam argued, “you two remain here at the main entrance and I’ll go and see about the machine. Perhaps,” he warned, “you’d better remain right here, and not attempt to investigate that closed apartment until I return. I shan’t be gone very long.”

“Oh, of course,” replied Jimmie, “we’ll be good little boys and stand right here and wait for you to come back—not!”

Carl chuckled as the two watched the young man disappear around the angle of the cliff.

“Before he gets back,” the boy said, “we’ll know all about that room, won’t we? Say,” he went on in a moment, “I think this haunted temple business is about the biggest fraud that was ever staged. If people only knew enough to spot an impostor when they saw one, there wouldn’t be prisons enough in the world to hold the rascals.”

“You tell that to Sam to-night,” laughed Jimmie. “He likes these moralizing stunts. Are you going in right now?”

By way of reply Carl stepped into the arch between the two walls and turned to the right into a passage barely more than a foot in width. Jimmie followed his example, but turned to the left. There the way was blocked by a granite boulder which reached from the floor to the roof itself.

“Nothing doing here!” he called back to Carl.

“I’ve found the way!” the latter answered. “Come along in! We’ll be behind the scenes in about a minute.”

The passage was not more than a couple of yards in length and gave on an open chamber which seemed, under the light of the electrics, to be somewhat larger than the one where the conveniences of living had been found. The faint illumination produced by the flashlights, of course revealed only a small portion of it at a time.

While the boys stood at the end of the narrow passage, studying the interior as best they might under the circumstances, a sound which came like the fall of a heavy footstep in the corridor outside reached their ears.

“There’s Sam!” Carl exclaimed. “We’ll leave him at the entrance and go in. There’s a strange smell here, eh?”

“Smells like a wild animal show!” declared Jimmie.

Other footsteps were now heard in the corridor, and Jimmie turned back to speak with Sam. Carl caught him by the shoulders.

“That’s Sam all right enough!” the latter exclaimed. “Don’t go away right now, anyhow.”

“What’s doing?” asked Jimmie.

“There’s a light back there!” was the reply, “and some one is moving around. Can’t you hear the footsteps on the hard stone floor?”

“Mighty soft footsteps!” suggested Jimmie.

“Well, I’m going to know exactly what they are!” declared Carl.

“Well, why don’t you go on, then?” demanded Jimmie.

The two boys stepped forward, walking in the shaft of light proceeding from their electrics. Once entirely clear of the passage, they kept straight ahead along the wall and turned the lights toward the center of the apartment, which seemed darker and drearier than the one recently visited.

Besides the smell of mold and a confined atmosphere there was an odor which dimly brought back to the minds of the boys previous visits to the homes of captive animals at the Central Park zoo.

“Here!” cried Jimmie directly, “there’s a door just closed behind us!”