"She came to show us the way! Follow?
I'd follow her through a thousand hells!" And with Olaf at one end, O'Keefe at the other, both of them with automatics in hand, and Marakinoff and I between them, we stepped over the threshold.
At our right, a few feet away, the passage ended abruptly in a square of polished stone, from which came faint rose radiance.

The roof of the place was less than two feet over O'Keefe's head.
A yard at left of us lifted a four-foot high, gently curved barricade, stretching from wall to wall--and beyond it was blackness; an utter and appalling blackness that seemed to gather itself from infinite depths.

The rose-glow in which we stood was cut off by the blackness as though it had substance; it shimmered out to meet it, and was checked as though by a blow; indeed, so strong was the suggestion of sinister, straining force within the rayless opacity that I shrank back, and Marakinoff with me.

Not so O'Keefe.

Olaf beside him, he strode to the wall and peered over.