ugh to come with me?"

I gathered the living spirit within me and looked him in his eyes.

"Yes," I said steadily.

"Allah! but here is a woman a man may serve without shame to his
beard!" quoth The Jinnee, wagging his old white head. And with Boris
stretched beside him he resigned himself to wait with the tireless
patience of the East.

If the other passages had been narrow, that which we now entered was
worse. It was so narrow that the wall on each side seemed about to
close in and crush us, like those frightful sliding walls that
became a living coffin for the victims of medieval cruelty. Always
one was confronted by solid brick walls; and to turn back was to
meet others seemingly risen to cut off all escape. For this passage
follows the simple and yet intricate pattern of the Greek key. Thus:

[Illustration: Plan of Passage and Secret Chamber]

I fancied myself doomed to spend a frightful eternity of burrowing
through brick wormholes which led nowhere. I lost all sense of
location, time, and direction. I wasn't even sure of my own identity
any more: things like this couldn't happen to a woman named Smith!
Just when I reached the stage where I was ready to drop down and lie
there unmoving until I died, he turned his head and gave me a
comradely smile of assurance and trust. I plucked up heart of grace
and staggered on. Of a sudden he stopped. The pale circle of the
flash-light moved up, inch by inch, steadied, and stayed on one
spot.

I found myself staring fixedly at the old and familiar enough symbol
of the rayed eye within the triangle. It was not commonplace or
familiar set up there in that secret and awesome place and seen by a
pale light. There was about it a stark and stern solemnity, such as
suggested the winged circle of immortality carved above the
rock-hewn doors of the tombs of Egyptian kings. Higher than a tall
man's head, it was painted on bricks of a lighter hue than the
surrounding ones, and when the light touched it it seemed to leap
out of the dark like a thing alive, a thing that watched with an
unwinking and terrifying intensity.

I remembered Shooba's savage chant of the One Eye that his Snake had
shown him; and the doggerel verse on the frayed paper in Freeman's
diary.

"The Watcher in the Dark!" I stammered; "the Watcher in the Dark!
Why--why, that paper was the Key itself!"

"Exactly. And a very simple key, though it took me a heartbreaking
length of time to turn it. The ciph