As I rolled over the wall onto those steps, the hilt of my rapier struck the metal stairway with a loud jar. Appalled, I lay tense for minutes, but there was no sound to indicate the guards had heard, and we could hear their marching footsteps dying away below. I rose to my feet, then, breathing hard. "A near shave, that," I told Lantin, who was also struggling to regain his breath. "If those guards had caught us on the stair, it would have been all up with us." Untying the rope from the wall, I again wound it round my body, and stepped up to where Lantin awaited me. He was looking back the way we had come, peering into the darkness. As I stepped up toward him he cried suddenly, "Look out, Wheeler!" and as I instinctively threw myself flat on the stairway, a heavy knife hurtled out of the air behind me and passed over me, striking the wall. I jumped to my feet and turned, ripping out my sword. Five steps down the stair from us a guard was standing, a tall, dark-faced fellow whom I could just see in the nightmare blackness of the shaft. In a flash, I knew that the clang of my rapier on the stairway had been heard, by this fellow at least, and that he had come back to investigate and had found us. The man below me uttered a hoarse cry, and ran straight up toward me, his long spear aimed at my heart. But by now my own rapier was out, and avoiding the spear by a quick sidestep, I thrust with my blade at his throat, where no armor protected him. The stab was a true one, and he sank to the stair with a choking, terrible cry that rang out eerily there in the vast dark shaft. From far below his cry was answered. There was no time to lose, and we pressed on up the stair. But now there were cries from below, and a bugle peal came up toward us. It was evident that the alarm had been sounded by the cry of the guard I had killed, and that we were being pursued. I knew that we were very near to the stair's top, by then, but although we knew the metal cover of the shaft was not in place, there was no light from the great opening above us, the great temple being as dark as the shaft below it. "Pray God there are no guards at the top of the stair," I cried to Lantin, as we sped upward. He did not answer, and from his agonized breathing I knew that he was out of wind from our long, torturing climb. And, away across the shaft now, there was a chorus of shouts as the guards beneath raced after us. Their cries halted for a moment, and by this I knew that they had found the body of the man I had killed. Then, with yelps of rage, they sped on after us. * * * * *