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“No, no.” Albright was now up off the step and standing. “No,” he mumbled once again, this time at the pair of seals before them. “I just need some sleep. When do we start again?” Halstead bit off the end of the cigar purchased in Cairo, and spit the tip out on the ground before the sealed door. Not seeing Albright’s horrified look, he casually replied, “At sundown. I expect we’ll be hearing from the Brits tomorrow, today being Sunday and not a gentelman’s workday and all. One ‘hard day’s night,’ and then we’re all through.” Halstead struck a match on the lowest step and leaned over to light his smoke. “I had better get some sleep,” Albright muttered as he ascended the same step. “You do that, Doctor Albright,” Halstead called out behind his back. “Tonight shall be the night of your dreams.” He laughed once more before dragging hard on his tobacco.
############The heat of the following day was stifling like the heat of many days previous, though on this day Halstead and his excavation party were protected from the glare of the sun by the thirty foot tunnel that separated the first doorway from the second, a tunnel cleared of its dark flint and surrounding clean white chip by the forty workmen who had labored all night and morning. By the time the sun reached its zenith in the sky above Hess’s head, who was now the one standing guard over the stairway with a carbine at the ready, Halstead and Albright were contemplating the exact replica of the first doorway that was the second doorway. “Two more seals, Mister Hitler, for a total of five,” Albright whispered aside in the lamplit darkness. Halstead placed a palm and all five fingers on the new barrier of plaster-covered stones. “Note taken, Doctor.” All but the index finger pulled away from the plaster, and that remaining digit traced the border between the differing shades of the plaster that signaled an opening and reclosing of the doorway. “There were others here before us.” |