At the next moment the grate was flung into place, the light whisked and vanished, a door slammed and the Stygian blackness of the cell closed once more upon the moaning heap in its midst. Basil's eyes gleamed like live coals as he turned to Maraglia, who, quaking and ashen, was babbling a prayer between white lips. "Make an end of him!" he snarled. "He has lived too long. And now, in the devil's name, lead the way above!" A flash of lightning that seemed to rend the very heavens illumined for a moment the dark and tortuous passage, its sheen reflected through the narrow port-holes on the blackness of the walls. It was followed by a peal of thunder so terrific that it shook the vast pile of the Emperor's Tomb to its foundations, clattering and roaring, as if a thousand worlds had been rent in twain. Maraglia, who had preceded the Grand Chamberlain with the taper, uttered a wild shriek of terror, dropped the light, causing it to be extinguished and his fleeting steps carried him down a night-wrapped gallery as fast as his limbs would carry him, utterly indifferent to Basil's fate in the Stygian gloom. Paralyzed with terror, the Grand Chamberlain stared into the inky blackness. For a moment it had seemed to him as if a breath from an open grave had indeed been wafted to his nostrils. But it was neither the thunder, nor the lightning, neither the swish of the rain nor the roar of the hurricane, that had prompted Maraglia's outcry and precipitate flight and his abject terror, as we shall see. CHAPTER II THE CALL OF EBLIS In the lurid flash that had illumined the gallery, lighting up rows of cells and deep recesses, Basil had seen, as if risen from the floor, a black, indefinable shape, wrapped in a long black mantle, the hood of which was drawn over its face. Through its slits gleamed two eyes, like live coals. Of small stature and apparently great age, the bent apparition supported itself by a crooked staff, the fleshless fingers barely visible under the cover of the ample sleeve, and resembling the claws of some bird of prey. At last the terror which the uncanny apparition inspired changed to its very counterpart, as, defiance in his tone, the Grand Chamberlain made a forward step. "Who goes there?--Friend or foe of the Lord Basil?"-- His voice sounded strange in his own ears. A gibbering response quavered out of the gloom. "What matters friend or foe as long as you grasp the tenure of power?" Basil breathed a sigh of relief. "I ought to know that voice. You are Bessarion?" "I have waited long," came the drawling reply. There was a pause brief as the intake of a breath. "What do you demand?"-- "You shall know in time." "In time comes death!" "And more!" "It is the hour that calls!" "Are you prepared?" "Show me what you can do!" "For this I am here! Are you afraid?" The air of mockery in the questioner's tone cut the speaker to the quick.