He recovered his ax, and with another blow demolished the last fragment of the staple, so that by no possibility could the door catch again. Then for the second time they penetrated the crypt and the tunnel and once more reached the alcove of the records. "Beatrice!" "What is it, Allan?" "Look! Gone--all gone!" "_Gone?_ Why, what do you mean? They're--" "Gone, I tell you! My God! Just a mass of rubbish, powder, dust--" "But--but how--" "The concussion of the ax! That must have done it! The violent sound-waves--the air in commotion!" "But, Allan, it can't be! Surely there must be something left?" "You see?" He pointed at the shelves. She stood and peered, with him, at the sad havoc wrought there. Then she stretched out a tentative finger and stirred a little of the detritus. "Catastrophe!" she cried. "Yes and no. At any rate, it may have been inevitable." "Inevitable?" He nodded. "Even if this hadn't happened, Beatrice, I'm afraid we never could have moved any of these parchments, or read them, or handled them in any way. Perhaps if we'd had all kinds of proper appliances, glass plates, transparent adhesives, and so on, _and_ a year or two at our disposal, we might have made something out of them, but even so, it's doubtful. "Of course, in detective stories, Hawkshaw can take the ashes right out of the grate and piece them together and pour chemicals on them and decipher the mystery of the lost rubies, and all that. But this isn't a story, you see; and what's more, Hawkshaw doesn't have to work with ashes nearly a thousand years old. Ten centuries of dry-rot--that's _some_ problem!" She stood aghast, hardly able to believe her eyes. "But--but," she finally articulated, "there's the other cache out there in Medicine Bow Range. The cave, you know. And we have the bearings. And some time, when we've got all the leisure in the world and all the necessary appliances--" "Yes, perhaps. Although, of course, you realize the earth is seventeen degrees out of its normal plane, and every reckoning's shifted. Still, it's a possibility. But for the present there's strictly nothing doing, after all." "How about that leaden chest?" She wheeled about and pointed at the other side of the alcove, where stood the metal box, sullen, defiant, secure. "By Jove, that's so, tool Why, I'd all but forgotten that! You're a brick, Beta! The box, by all means. Perhaps the most important things of all are still in safety there. Who knows?" "Open it, Allan, and let's see!" Her recent terror almost forgotten in this new excitement, the girl had begun to get back some of her splendid color. And now, as she stood gazing at the metal chest which still, perhaps, held the most vital of the records, she felt again a thrill of excitement at thought of all its possibilities. The man, too, gazed at it with keen emotion.