atch. Zoraida put her hand to the nearest
latch and opened the door cautiously. Kendric saw only a long, very
narrow and dark passageway.

"Listen," commanded Zoraida.

He heard nothing.

"Toss something down into the passage," said Zoraida. "Anything, a
coin if you have no other useless object upon you."

So a coin it was. He heard it strike and roll and clink against rock.
Then he heard the other sound, a dry noise like dead leaves rattling
together. Despite him he drew back swiftly. Zoraida laughed and
closed the door.

"You know what it is then?"

He knew. It was the angry warning of a rattlesnake; his quickened
fancies pictured for him a dark alleyway whose floor was alive with the
deadly reptiles and he felt an unpleasant prickling of the flesh.

"If you went on," she told him serenely, "and you chose any door but
the right one--and there are twelve doors--you would never come to the
end of a short hallway. And, even though you happened to choose the
right door, it were best for you if Zoraida went ahead. Come, my
friend."

She opened another door and stepped into the narrow opening. Though he
had little enough liking for the expedition, Kendric followed. Once
more he heard a rustling as of thousands of dry, parched leaves, and
was at loss to know whence came the ominous sound. Again Zoraida
laughed, saying: "I have been before and prepared the way," and they
went on. Then came another door with still other bars and locks.
Zoraida unlocked one after the other, then stood back, looking at him
with the old mischief showing vaguely in her eyes.

"Open and enter," she said.

He threw back the door. But on the threshold he stopped and stared and
marveled. Zoraida's pleased laughter now was like a child's.

"You are the first man, since Zoraida's father died, to come here," she
told him. "And never another man will come here until you and I are
dead. It is a place of ancient things, my friend; it is the heart of
Ancient Mexico."

The heart of Ancient Mexico! Without her words he would have known,
would have felt. For old influences held on and the atmosphere of the
time of the Montezumas still pervaded the place. He forgot even
Zoraida as he stepped forward and stopped again, marveling.

Here was a chamber of colossal proportions and more than a chamber in
that it gave the impression of being without walls or roof. And in a
way the impression was correct for straight overhead Kendri