Near the end of the tunnel to which the cable railway mounted, she came upon three other cabins of special interest. One was evidently the Great Ram's bedroom, the next a bathroom and the last equipped with wireless apparatus.

The bedroom she did not dare to enter. A glimpse of a small altar in it on which stood a human skull that had been made into a chalice was enough to make her shut the door quickly and pass on; but in the radio room she stood for a long time, wondering if she could possibly send a message by the set. Unfortunately she was totally ignorant of everything to do with such things and had never even learned the Morse alphabet, so she was forced to abandon the idea.

However, the bathroom was a most welcome discovery, as it provided her with the means of whiling away an hour or two and, having collected from her suitcase her toilet and manicure things, she spent the rest of the morning there.

Wash and Mirkoss took barely a quarter-of-an-hour over their lunch, then hurried back to work; so she was again left to her own devices for the whole afternoon. With the idea that she might possibly suborn the Chinese cook, she visited his galley and attempted to enter into conversation with him; but she found that he did not understand a word of English, or French, which was the only foreign language of which she had a smattering. The other Chinese, she concluded, lived down below in the engine-house, and were brought up only when required for special jobs; so it seemed that there was very little chance of her getting a message out by one of them.

Nowhere could she find anything to read, even if she could have settled to it; so in desperation she returned to the bathroom where she spent a good part of the afternoon washing her hair and trying out different methods of arranging it so as to render as little conspicuous as possible the quarter inch of undyed gold that had grown up from her scalp.

Somehow she got through the hours until the early evening and when Wash and Mirkoss had bathed she joined them for dinner. The Hungarian was perforce, as usual, silent, but Wash was nearly silent too, which was most unusual for him; so Mary asked him the reason.

At first he hedged, saying that he had had a long day, and on heavy work of a kind to which he was not accustomed. But when Mirkoss had left them she pressed him further, and he said in a low voice,

'I'm having kittens, honey. The Big Chief's playing some deep game of his own. He's flat lied to me over this rocket set-up, and if he'll do that about one thing he'll do it about another. Could be that now he's gotten all the help he wanted from me, he means to do me dirt.'