"See here, Allan!"
"Eh?"
"On the wall here--a painted stripe?"
He held the torch close and scrutinized the mark.
"Looks like it. Pretty well gone by now--just a flake here and a daub there, but I guess it once was a broad band of white. A guide?"
They moved forward again. The strip ended in a blur that might once have been an inscription. Here, there, a letter faintly showed, but not one word could now be made out.
"Too bad," he mused. "It must have been mighty important or they wouldn't have--"
"Here's a door, Allan!"
"So? That's right. Now this looks like business at last!"
He examined the door by the unsteady flicker of the torch. It was of iron, still intact, and fastened by a long iron bar dropped into massive metal staples.
"Beat it in with the ax?" she queried.
"No. The concussion might reduce everything inside to dust. Ah! Here's a padlock and a chain!"
Carefully he studied the chain beneath bent brows.
"Here, Beta, you hold the torch, so. That's right. Now then--"
Already he had set the ax-blade between the padlock and the staple. A quick jerk--the lock flew open raspingly. Allan tried to lift the bar, but it resisted.
A tap of the ax and it gave, swinging upward on a pivot. Then a minute later the door swung inward, yielding to his vigorous push.
Together they entered the crypt of solid concrete, a chamber forty feet long by half as wide and vaulted overhead with arches, crowning perhaps twenty feet from the floor.
"More skeletons, so help me!"
Allan pointed at two more on the pavement at the left of the entrance.
"Why--how could that happen?" queried Beta, puzzled. "The door was locked outside!"
"That's so. Either there must be some other exit from this place or there were dissensions and fightings among the party itself. Or these men were wounded and were locked in here for safe-keeping while the others made a sortie and never got back, or--I don't know! Frankly, it's too much for me. If I were a story-writer I might figure it out, but I'm not. No matter, they're here, anyhow; that's all. Here two of our own people died ten centuries ago, trying to preserve civilization and the world's history for future ages, if there were to be any such. Two martyrs. I salute them!"
In silence and awed sympathy they inspected the mournful relics of humanity a minute, but took good care not to touch them.
"And now the records!"
Even as Stern spoke he saw again a dimly painted line, this time upon the floor, all but invisible beneath the dust of centuries that had come from God knows where.