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time.
    “Be—ready—to jump—them—”
    “But they’ll shoot, your first move—” whispered Ennis agonizedly.
    Campbell did not answer. But Ennis sensed the detective’s body tautening.
    They came to another turn, the strong, swelling chant coming loud from ahead. They started around that turn.
    Then Inspector Campbell acted. He whirled as though on a pivot, the heel-knife flashing toward the men behind them.
    Shots coughed from the pistols that were pressed almost against his stomach. His body jerked as the bullets struck it, yet he remained erect, his knife stabbing with lightning rapidity.
    One of the hooded men slumped down with a pierced throat, and as Campbell sprang at the other, Ennis desperately launched himself at Chandra Dass. He bore the Hindoo from his feet, but it was as though he was fighting a demon. Inside his gray robe, Chandra Dass writhed with fiendish strength.
    Ennis could not hold him, the Hindoo’s body seeming of spring-steel. He rolled over, dashed the young American to the floor, and leaped up, his dark face and great black eyes blazing.
    Then, halfway erect, he suddenly crumpled, the fire in his eyes dulling, a call for help smothered on his lips. He fell on his face, and Ennis saw that the heel-knife was stuck in his back. Inspector Campbell jerked it out, and put it back into his shoe. And now Ennis, staggering up, saw that Campbell had knifed the two hooded guards and that they lay in a dead heap.
    “Campbell!” cried the American, gripping the detective’s arm. “They’ve wounded you—I saw them shoot you.”
    Campbell’s bruised face grinned briefly. “Nothing of the kind,” he said, and tapped the soiled gray vest he wore beneath his coat. “Chandra Dass didn’t know this vest is bullet-proof.”
    He darted an alert glance up and down the lighted tunnel. “We can’t stay here or let these bodies lie here. They may be discovered at any moment.”
    “Listen!” said Ennis, turning.
    The chanting from ahead swelled down the tunnel, louder than at any time yet, waxing and waxing, reaching a triumphant crescendo, then again dying away.
    “Campbell, they’re going on with the ceremony now!” Ennis cried. “Ruth!”
    The detective’s desperate glance fastened on the dark mouth of one of the branching tunnels, a little ahead.
    “That side tunnel—we’ll pull the bodies in there!” he exclaimed.
    Taking the pistols of the dead men for themselves, they rapidly dragged the three bodies into the darkness of the unlit branching tunnel.
    “Quick, on with two of these robes,” rasped Inspector Campbell. “They’ll give us a little better chance.”
    Hastily Ennis jerked the gray robe and hood from Chandra Dass’ dead body and donned it, while Campbell struggled into one of the others. In the robes and concealing hoods, they could not be told from any other two members of the Brotherhood, except that the badge on Ennis’ breast was the double star instead of the single one.
    Ennis then spun toward the main, lighted tunnel, Campbell close behind him. They recoiled suddenly into the darkness of the branching way, as they heard hurrying steps out in the lighted passage. Flattened in the darkness against the wall, they saw several of the gray-hooded members of the Brotherhood hasten past them from above, hurrying toward the gathering-place.
    “The guards and robe-issuers we saw above!” Campbell said quickly when they were passed. “Come on, now.”
    He and Ennis slipped out into the lighted tunnel and hastened along it after the others.
    Boom of thundering ocean over their heads and rising and falling of the tremendous chanting ahead filled their ears as they hurried around the last turns of the tunnel. The passage widened, and ahead they saw a massive rock portal through whose opening they glimpsed an immense, lighted space.
    Campbell and Ennis, two comparatively tiny gray-hooded figures, hastened through the mighty portal. Then they stopped. Ennis felt frozen with the