“What is that?” asked Harry, startled.  “Who moved the stone?”

“Can it be,” flashed Chick, “that Hobart Fenton has found the keys?”

“That remains to be seen!” from the doctor.  “Come—­we must find out what has happened!”

Within a minute they knew.  As they came out of the private door on the now emptied floor of the great temple, they saw the senior queen, the Nervina, coming down the great stairway from the Spot of Life.

“What is it?” called Harry, apprehensively.

“The Aradna!” she replied.  Her voice was curiously strained.  “Something happened, and—­she has fallen through the Spot!”

XLVI

OUT OF THE OCCULT

“How did it happen?”

“I scarcely know.  We went up to play with the dog.  It was unwilling to leave the place, and Aradna teasingly tried to push her off on to the steps.  She succeeded, but—­well, it was all over that quick.  The Aradna was gone!”

But the Spot had by this time lost a good deal of its terror.  Knowing what was on the other side, and who, made a great difference.  As the doctor said later in a private consultation with Chick and Harry: 

“It’s not so bad.  That is, if Hobart Fenton is at work there.  I think he is.  Really, I only regret that we didn’t know of this beforehand; we could have sent a message through to him.”

And the professor went on to explain what he meant.  At the time he spoke, it was twenty-four hours after the Aradna’s going; another twenty-four hours would see the evening of the Last Day—­the sixteenth of the sacred Days of Life—­what the Rhamdas alluded to as “the Day of Judgment.”  And the Mahovisal was a seething mass of humanity, all bent upon seeing the fulfillment of their highest hopes.

“Bear in mind that if the Spot should not open at the last moment, you and I are done for.  We will be self-condemned ‘False Ones’; our lives will not last one minute after midnight tomorrow night if we fail to get through!

“That Prophecy means everything to the Thomahlians.  There was a time when they accepted it on faith; now it is an intellectual conviction with every last one of them.  And one and all look forward to a new and glorious life beyond the Spot—­in the occult world—­our world!

“Now, the ticklish part of the job will be to open the Spot just long enough to permit us to get through, yet prevent the whole Prophecy from coming to pass.  We’ve got to get through, together with that black case of mine, and then shut the door in the face of all Thomahlia!”

Nothing more was said on the subject until late the following afternoon, as the doctor, Harry, and Chick sat down to a light meal.  They ate much as if nothing whatever was in the wind.  From where they sat, in one part of a wing of the temple, they could look out into the crowded streets, in which were packed untold numbers of pilgrims, all pressing towards the great square plaza in front of the temple.  No guards were to be seen; the solemnity of the occasion was sufficient to keep order.  But the terrific potentiality of that semi-fanatical host did not cause the doctor’s voice to change one iota.