the door that King tried to open would not yield. It was the only
door in all those caverns that had refused to swing open at the first
touch, and this one was fastened so rigidly that it might have been one
with the frame for all the movement our blows on it produced. Our guide
swore he did not know the secret of it, and our letter of authority
included no permission to break down doors or destroy property in any
way at all.

It looked as though we were blocked, and the committee were all for the
air and leaving that door unopened. King urged them to go and leave
it--told them flatly that neither they nor the world would be any wiser
for anything whatever that they might do--was as beastly rude, in fact,
as he knew how to be; with the result that they set their minds on
seeing it through, for fear lest we should find something after all that
would serve for an argument against their criticism.

Neither King nor I were worried by the letter of the committee's orders,
and I went to look for a rock to break the door down with. They
objected, of course, and so did the priest, but I told them they might
blame the violence on me, and furthermore suggested that if they
supposed they were able to prevent me they might try. Whereat the priest
did discover a way of opening the door, and that was the only action in
the least resembling the occult that any of us saw that day.

There were so many shadows, and they so deep, that a knob or trigger of
some kind might easily have been hidden in the darkness beyond our view;
but the strange part was that there was no bolt to the door, nor any
slot into which a bolt could slide. I believe the door was held shut by
the pressure of the surrounding rock, and that the priest knew some way
of releasing it.

We entered a bare cavern which was apparently an exact cube of about
forty feet. It was the only cavern in all that system of caverns whose
walls, corners, roof and floor were all exactly smooth. It contained no
furniture of any kind.

But exactly in the middle of the floor, with hands and feet pointing to
the four corners of the cavern, was a grown man's skeleton, complete to
the last tooth. King had brought a compass with him, and if that was
reasonably accurate then the arms and legs of the skeleton were exactly
oriented, north, south, east and west; there was an apparent inaccuracy
of a little less than five degrees, which was no doubt attributable to
the pocket instrument.

On