by Van Powell
Chapter 16 THE IMAGE SPEAKS
With an abrupt change the atmosphere seemed to be charged withelectricity. Of course, thought Roger, trying to remain cool, it wasmerely his fear of the outcome that made his nerves tingle.
There was no time for any choice of action.
Rising, the old man moved toward an arched opening at one side of thestone chamber. Tip, fierce-eyed, loyal, beside Roger, realized as hetugged at his empty holster that in some clever way he had beendisarmed. A glance behind him showed the mocking lama, holding his ownweapon. Tip gauged the chances of a leap, shrugged. It was useless.Monastery attendants were at all the open doorways.
"Buck up!" he whispered.
"It may not be so bad," Roger tried to reassure them both.
They followed, as follow they must, down a long, echoing, emptycorridor. Far away, low, weird, they could hear male voices, deep,rather disturbing in tone, chanting some uncouth succession of notes.
Their slow walk behind the aged conductor brought them constantly nearerto the chant, for the voices grew louder.
At a doorway, heavily shrouded in lustrous woven velvet or otherdrapery, the guide swung, and an attendant, bowing, moved the cloth toone side. The chanting swelled suddenly.
Resistance was futile. As the guide moved aside, motioning, Roger, andTip after him, passed under the great stone door-lintel, into a largesquare chamber full of the chanting lamas.
And at the end, in a niche, on a sort of raised dais, sat the hugecarved wooden image or statue of the Meditating Buddha or prophet oftheir religion, and in its forehead glowed, in the flickeringtorchlight, the great, green duplicate--it appeared--of the Eye of Om.
At first it flashed through Roger's mind that this was strange; but atonce he realized that, of course, they would have replaced the gem witha substitute or an imitation, and would not tell many of the loss.
Thrust forward by the lama who had brought them there, Roger and Pottswere ushered down the aisle between rows of kneeling,low-and-mocking-voiced monks or lamas, to the space below the greatfigure.
Words in Tibetan, answered by hoarse responses from the crowd, seemed tobe some ceremony or invocation of judgment, in which, they sensed, thetwo white people were the sacrifice or center of the rite. Standingsilently, Tip was watchful but helpless. Roger, too, kept an alert mindbut saw no means of escape.
"You seek to hear the Voice. You wish to know the secret."
The venerable man who appeared to be some sort of super-lama, to whomeven their former captor deferred, knelt and pronounced some low, weirdand long-winded invocation.
At his gesture they both knelt, submissive if not willing, and he bowedhis head to the floor and stayed that way.
All the rest were in similar positions.
And then, blood-curdling in its startling suddenness, after an intervalof suspense, there came, but not softly or in small volume as in theirrecordings it had been, a scream that was as weird as the howl of a soulin torment; and after it followed, louder, but duplicating, thedecreasing pitch and growing volume of the howl, roar and groan, thatceased abruptly on a hoarse note.
Apparently, and they all seemed to believe it, the Image had spoken.
Certainly, to Roger, still able to be alert enough to trace sound, itissued from the head or face, possibly the small, slitted mouth of thatstatue.
"The Doom has judged," the old man told them in precise English, but ina very formal and cold tone, "the judgment is pronounced. I am to showyou our secret and allow your science to prove its worth."
A mocking twitch took the place of a smile as he added:
"Or, from our viewpoint, its worthlessness."
As he spoke, with no sound an orifice opened in the wall behind theidol. In its cavernous depths, dark and forbidding, Roger guessed thatthe stone had withdrawn up or sidewise, or had turned on a pivot.
He and Tip, hesitating, were prodded gruffly forward.
Into the decreasing light they moved--were forced to move.
The darkness became abruptly intense. The noiseless door had closed!
Echoing still to their last footstep, the silence slowly becamecomplete.
"Science!" grunted Tip, "Without no scientific impediments."
"Implements." Roger spoke from habit, still too dazed to feel, withcompleteness, the horror that must soon come.
And far away, the last exhalation of the "s" he had spoken was flungmockingly back by echo, a hiss of multiplied duration, fainter as itechoed to and fro.
Trying to hold calm, Roger felt an impulse to scream, to beat on thecallous stone, to beg for mercy.
Instead, feeling that Tip also must feel the dread he felt, he nervedhimself to be not only calm, but matter-of-fact.
"Well," he remarked, "We've heard the Voice and found the secret way.And that's that!"