Over and over he repeated the words, like an incantation, his voice rising and falling, until Coryndon could have emerged from his hiding and taken him by the throat.

The thought of coming out upon Mhtoon Pah crossed his mind, but his instinct held him back.  He wondered desperately where Leh Shin had gone, and if he would come in upon the Burman making his strange prayer.  Still Mhtoon Pah repeated the words and swayed to and fro before the image of the Buddha, and the very moments seemed to pause and listen with Coryndon.  The shop was close and the air oppressive.  Little trickles of sweat ran down his neck and made channels in the stain on his skin, and still Coryndon waited in tense suspense.

For nearly ten minutes Mhtoon Pah continued to rock and mutter on the floor, and then he got up, and, taking his lantern, went out by the door into the passage.  Coryndon waited for the sound of a scuffle and a fall, but none came, and he was in the dark, surrounded by silence once more.

Without waiting to consider, he followed across the room and saw the swinging light go down the passage and disappear suddenly.  It seemed to Coryndon that Mhtoon Pah had disappeared, as though he had gone through the wall at the end of the passage, and he followed slowly.  Silence locked him in again, the dark, motionless silence of enclosed space.

He did not dare to call out again to Leh Shin, and for all that he could tell, the Chinaman might have been an arm’s-reach away from him in the darkness, also waiting for some sudden thing to happen.  The dark passage was an ante-chamber to some event:  Coryndon’s tingling nerves told him that; and he steadied himself, holding in his imagination in a close, resolute grip.

He had no way of judging the time that passed, but he guessed that it seemed longer to him than it possibly could have been; when from somewhere far below him, he heard a cry and the noise of several voices, all raised into indistinct clamour.

“More than one man,” he thought, as his heart beat quickly. “More than two,” he added, in wonder as he strained in the effort of listening.

The noise died out, and one low wail, continuous and plaintive, filled the blank of dark silence.  Coryndon felt for his matches, and knelt on the floor, feeling before him with his hands.  The crying had ceased, and he touched the edge of a step.  A long, steep flight began just under his hand.

He leaned back and held the match-box in his hand, knowing that he could not venture the descent in the dark, and as he took out a match a new sound caught his ear.  A man was running in the dark.  He heard him stumble over the lower steps as he panted fiercely and he broke into a cry as he ran, a strange, mad, sobbing cry, and he still gasped and gave out his wordless wail as he tore past Coryndon and on along the passage and into the shop.

Coryndon heard the door bang behind him, he heard the sound of some heavy thing being dragged before it.  The footsteps and the voice were not those of Leh Shin, and Coryndon knew that Mhtoon Pah had fled like a man pursued by devils, and had barricaded himself in.