“Good place for spooks!” Bud whispered jokingly.
A steep draw led upward among the rocky slopes. A hundred feet on, Tom’s group found the black yawning mouth of a cave. The yellow beams of their flashlights revealed a tunnel leading downward inside. Tom checked with a pocket detector. Its gauge needle showed no field force caused by electrical equipment in operation.
“Okay, let’s go in!” Tom murmured.
Cautiously they moved into the tunnel. Then suddenly ahead of them a powerful dazzling light burst on, nearly blinding the searchers!
CHAPTER XIX
A FIENDISH MACHINE
A CHILL of fear gripped Tom and his companions as they blinked helplessly in the glare! Had the enemy detected them the first moment they had set foot on Balala Island? Had they walked blindly into a trap?
Gradually Tom’s eyes and those of his friends adjusted to the dazzling radiance. A door, blocking the tunnel just ahead, had slid open and the light was pouring out of a room beyond.
“What happened?” Arv gasped.
Tom pointed downward to a pedallike plunger inserted in the tunnel floor.
“This must be a switch,” he explained. “When I stepped on it accidentally, it must have opened the door and flashed on the lights.”
Bud whistled. “Wow! Let’s be thankful it wasn’t a booby trap!”
“Maybe it is,” murmured Hank grimly.
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A FIENDISH MACHINE 167
Steeling their nerves, and with every sense alert, the searchers advanced into the secret room.
Tom suddenly gave a cry of amazement. “The earthquake machine!”
A huge hydraulic device, with massive steel bed and supporting pillars, looking somewhat like the enormous body presses found in automobile plants, stood embedded in a recess in one wall.