The Greatest Sci-Fi Books of Erle Cox. Erle Cox

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СКАЧАТЬ the wonderful beauty of the place. It seemed with its exquisite soft lighting like a chapel in some cathedral. Each doorway was quite twenty feet in width, and extended almost to the roof. It was hard to believe that the light that filtered through was not the light of day.

      He was now able to inspect the remaining figures at his leisure. They were both statues of men, and were doubtless from the same hand as the one he had examined from the stairway. One was represented seated in a high-backed chair, looking down at a strange instrument he held in his hand. His face was one that blended in a high degree both intellect and benevolence. The features were perfectly regular, and the slight smile that marked the corners of the lips took away any trace of hardness. "I should say," reflected Alan, "that you were a jolly good sport in your time. Fifty if you were a day, and your heart was never older than fifteen. I should like to have had a smoke and a yarn with you, and that's more than I would wish for with the imperial gentleman beside you. Humph! Now, he was never younger than fifty." The other figure stood stiffly erect. His robe fell in straight folds to his feet. His whole attitude was one of overbearing arrogance and command. The right arm pointed rigidly before him in the superb gesture of one who has the right and the power to enforce obedience. The head was held high. It was not a cruel face, but it was haughty and pitiless, without one redeeming and softening feature, but at the same time there was nobility about it that conveyed the idea of unswerving devotion to ideals. As Alan expected, he found beneath each figure a repetition of the other inscriptions at the entrance. He looked up again at the tall, commanding figure above him.

      "By Jove!" he thought, "I'd not care to come before you for sentence, my friend; you look as if you'd give a man ten years hard for a plain drunk and disorderly. Shouldn't be surprised if you had a finger in the building of this place, the nasty parts, at any rate." He paused, and followed with his eyes the direction of the outstretched hand. "By Jove! Now I wonder–it does look as though he were ordering me to try that door first." For a long time Alan looked round the vestibule thoughtfully. It was to him a matter of indifference which door he approached first. From where he stood there was nothing to choose between them. There appeared to be no reason for preference and yet, that commanding figure seemed to speak with a voice more eloquent than words. He looked from the door to the figure. "I may seem prejudiced, but I don't like the look of you, my friend. If I try that door I may get a cracked skull or a broken neck or some other delicacy not in season. It looks too easy a solution of my choice. If you'll pardon my discourtesy I think I'll try the opposite one." He turned, and, walking round the group, went slowly towards the opposite side of the vestibule. He trod carefully, feeling each step as he went. It was well for him that he had not relaxed his guard. He was within twelve feet of the door he was approaching, when, without a sound, just as his outstretched foot touched the pavement before him, a great section of it, fully ten feet wide and as long as the width of the door, swung over as if on an axis, disclosing a black gulf below, and then as swiftly returned to its place. It made absolutely no sound or jar in its movement, and the very silence added to the shock that Dundas felt at the narrowness of his escape. He had thrown himself back at the first movement, instinctively, but even then he was scarcely able to retain his balance. How he had escaped treading on the trap as he walked from the stairway in the first place he could not conceive. He could only have missed it by a few inches. He sat down and wiped his forehead while he recovered from the nervous jolt his latest experience of the peculiarities of the vestibule had given him, and while he considered his position he delivered himself aloud of his whole-souled opinion of the originators of the scheme. He leaned forward and scrutinised the pavement carefully, but, search as he would, he could discover no trace of the line along which it had opened. Then he pressed forwards with his hand until he felt it give again. He had one fleeting glimpse of the chasm below, and drew back more than satisfied with his experiment. "Lucky for me," he murmured, "that it was adjusted so delicately; had it worked the least bit stiffly my exploring would have terminated somewhere in the dark. Whew! What a place!"

      He sat up again and looked round. "Well, I'll try the door his majesty commands me to, but I'll do it on my hands and knees. I won't be had that way again. The attitude may be ridiculous, but it's tolerably safe–if anything is safe here." He returned to the pedestal, and in a humble and lowly manner, testing each inch of the pavement before him, he approached the doors on the opposite side. He was so intent in his watch for a repetition of his former danger that he did not notice the progress he was making. His face was close to the floor, and his eyes were fixed on the glittering mosaic, when suddenly he started backward. He had heard no sound, but without the slightest warning a great brightness poured over him. It was as if the midday sun had blazed out suddenly from twilight. An involuntary cry of amazement escaped him. Of their own accord the doors had parted in the middle and swung wide open, flooding the vestibule with light, and disclosing what lay beyond.

      Chapter XI

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      Dundas rose slowly to his feet, and then stood staring straight before him. After the first cry he made no sound, remaining rigid and motionless, so that he might have appeared to an onlooker as if turned to stone. He was standing on the threshold of a great gallery fully two hundred feet in length. It was ablaze with light from end to end, and at first his confused senses could grasp no detail from the glorious mass of form and colour that confronted him. Then, out of the chaos, came slow order. With faltering, half-fearful footsteps, he went forward, oppressed with a sense of awe he had never felt before. Inside the gallery he paused again, while the real meaning of what he saw impressed itself on his mind. "My God! How wonderful! Surely they have gathered here all the beautiful in the universe." His low-whispered words echoed away in the weird silence. Turning slightly, he looked behind him. The light that poured through the open door seemed concentrated on the sculptured figure in the vestibule. With outstretched hand it seemed commanding him to go forward. The thought came to his mind that it was no effect of chance that had placed that figure where it stood. They who had fashioned the wonders around had surely set it there to speak their behest ages on countless ages after death had struck them into silence. Again Alan's eyes turned to his immediate surroundings. He realised that the gallery he had entered was indeed a gallery of art. Everywhere his eyes fell they encountered some new and unexpected beauty.

      From floor to gorgeously decorated arched ceiling the height was about forty feet. One of the first peculiarities of the gallery that struck Alan was the fact that the walls, instead of being parallel, were divergent, so that from a width of not more than twenty-five feet at the entrance, at the farther end they were quite double that distance apart. From the walls about halfway up sprang a wide balcony, which was self-supported, for no pillar broke the splendid vista. The whole floor space was taken up by tables and cabinets, arranged with gangways between them in order to give free access from every side, and each and all was the resting-place for some exquisite work of art. From the roof hung festoons and clusters of globes, each blazing with the same splendid white radiance that had flashed from the lens in the vestibule. Along the walls on every side stood statues, singly and in groups, bearing aloft jewelled vessels of exquisite design that radiated the same glorious light, and wherever it fell it was flashed back and forth from table and cabinet in a myriad splendid rays. It shone on vase and goblet, and flashed from burnished metal, and turned dull gold to glowing fire. It was reflected a thousand fold from the polished splendour of the walls of coloured marbles.

      Alan stood as one in a dream scarce knowing where to rest his eyes. On every hand were objects of untold value, the very simplest of which would have been a prize for a national museum. Then he commenced to wander aimlessly, turning as a child would in a garden from flower to flower, as some fresh, strange beauty caught his eye. Even each table and cabinet seemed to have been chosen for its own special artistic merit. Every imaginable material seemed to have been pressed into service for their composition. His eyes alighted on hundreds of articles, the use or meaning of which he could not guess, but in one respect they were all alike–all were beautiful. Once he paused long before a slender pedestal bearing a statuette. It was the reclining figure of a woman carved from a single piece of delicate СКАЧАТЬ