“A small square chamber,” Hassan replied, “without any decorations. On the right is a doorway. It has been closed with square blocks and cemented up. We have removed one of these blocks without great difficulty. When the warning came I had just shone the light of a torch through the opening, sir, which the workmen had made.” “Yes!” Barry grasped his arm hard. “It is the burial chamber,” Hassan went on calmly. “A great granite sarcophagus is there, untouched.” Almost too excited for speech, Barry pointed, and Hassan, gravely inclining his head, took from beneath his robe a pocket torch. Stooping, he led the way down the shaft. At the side of the first portcullis was an irregular opening wide enough for a man to squeeze through. Hassan went first and then so directed the light of his torch as to assist Barry to follow. “Now, sir,” he said, as the latter joined him in the lower part of the tunnel, “be careful here. The roof has fallen. It is this, I think, that broke the second door.” Bending forward, and at one point going on all fours, the two pressed on. Presently, climbing through a gap not more than eighteen inches high, over a mass of broken granite which seemed to have fallen from a deep cavity in the roof, Barry suddenly remembered Professor Blackwell’s theory about the second portcullis. The heat in the lower part of the shaft was oppressive, but having proceeded for another twenty feet the descent ceased. They found themselves in a small, square chamber hewn out of living rock, some three paces across, and perhaps nine feet high. At first glance the wall upon the right resembled that in front and that upon the left; but the trained eye of Hassan es-Sugra had almost immediately detected the trick. It was plaster covering square blocks--in part at least. This plaster had been chipped away--it was several inches in thickness--over a space of a square yard or so. Beams of wood and all sorts of excavators’ implements lay about the apartment. And, presumably by means of these, one of the blocks had been forced into the chamber beyond. The effect was that of a small square window in a very thick wall. “Take the torch, please,” said Hassan, “and shine it through and a little to the left.” He passed the torch to Barry. And the latter was surprised to find that his hand was shaking slightly. Hassan es-Sugra smiled. “Triumph is sometimes terrible, as well as defeat,” he said. Barry grasped the light and thrust it forward into the opening. A beam shone out before him, upon a rose sandstone sarcophagus! The covering was accurately in place. Clearly no human hand had touched it for centuries. He experienced a curious choking sensation. He turned the light slowly, so that the beam moved along the top of the sarcophagus lid and beyond, upon the wall of the chamber.