And there stood the lingam on its altar at the foot of the stairs, and there were the doors just as we had left them, looking as if they had been pressed into the molten stone by an enormous thumb.

I thought we were going to be able to prove something of our story at last.
But not so.

The priest opened the first door by kicking on it with his toe, and one by one we filed along the narrow passage in pitch darkness that was broken only by the swinging lantern carried by the man in front and the occasional flashes of an electric torch.

King, one pace ahead of me, swore to himself savagely all the way, and although I did not feel as keenly as he did about it, because it meant a lot less to me what the committee might think, I surely did sympathize with him.
If we had come sooner it was beyond belief that we should not have caught those experts at their business, or at any rate in process of removing the tools of their strange trade.

There must have been some mechanism connected with their golden light, for instance, but we could discover neither light nor any trace of the means of making it.
Naturally the committee refused to believe that there had ever been any.
The caverns were there, just as we had seen them, only without their contents.