In other rooms workmen were fashioning the gold into various articles and ornaments.
In one cavern immense wheels revolved which polished precious gems, and they found many caverns used as storerooms, where treasure of every sort was piled high.

Also they came to the barracks of the army and the great kitchens.
There were nomes everywhere--countless thousands of them--but none paid the slightest heed to the visitors from the earth's surface.

Yet, although Inga and Rinkitink walked until they were weary, they were unable to locate the place where the boy's father and mother had been confined, and when they tried to return to their own rooms they found that they had hopelessly lost themselves amid the labyrinth of passages.

However, Klik presently came to them, laughing at their discomfiture, and led them back to their bedchambers.
Before they went to sleep they carefully barred the door from Rinkitink's room to the corridor, but the doors that connected the three rooms one with another were left wide open.
In the night Inga was awakened by a soft grating sound that filled him with anxiety because he could not account for it.

It was dark in his room, the light having disappeared as soon as he got into bed, but he managed to feel his way to the door that led to Rinkitink's room and found it tightly closed and immovable.