tly. Those
vibrations that had beaten him down had done this: some unlocking
mechanism within each case had been actuated when the vibrations
reached the proper pitch. Then the thoughts were driven from his mind
by a more thrilling conviction: The caskets were open! The treasure!
Who could know what some of them might contain? He took one quick step
toward the nearer of the two.

One step!--and his reaching hands stopped motionless above the open
case. The contents of the box were plain before him--and he stared in
horror at the black, half-naked figure of a man as silent and unmoving
as its counterpart upon the wall.

Black as a carving in ebony, it was the face that held Garry's eyes.
He saw the pointed head, the thin lips half-drawn from snarling teeth,
the expression of brutal savagery that even this frozen stillness
could not conceal.

The eyes were closed; Garry saw their slitted lids. He was looking at
them when they quivered and twitched. The lids opened slowly, drew
back from staring eyes that were cold and dead--eyes that came
suddenly to life, that turned and stared unwinkingly, horribly, into
his.

* * * * *

Garry's lips were moving as he drew back in slow retreat, but he heard
no sound of his own voice, only a husky whisper that said over and
over again: "Mummies! Caskets of mummies! And they're coming back to
life!"

Suspended animation. He had heard of such things. Dim, fleeting
remembrance of what he had read came flashingly to him--toads that had
lived a thousand years sealed up in rock--but this, a human thing, a
man!--no, no!--it couldn't come to life; not after all this time!

The pointed head, the ugly, menacing face and the body of dead black
that rose slowly within the casket gave his argument the lie. In
dreadful, living reality he saw the thing before him as it stretched
its corded neck, extended and flexed its long, black arms and breathed
deeply through lips drawn thin. Then, with a bound of returning
energy, it leaped out and down to stand half-naked and black, towering
threateningly above his head.

And Garry, too stunned to feel a sense of fear, looked first at the
living face before him and then at the carvings done in stone. There
was too much here for instant comprehension; his reason could not
follow fast enough where facts were leading, and his mind seemed
groping for some certain, proven thing.

"It's the same one that's on the wall," he ex