V
rs. Athelstone was not in the office when he came down the next day—she had gone to Washington on the Society's affairs, Brander said—and so he moped about, finding the place dreary without her brightening presence. In fact, when Brander went out, he slipped into the sunlit ante-chamber, for companionship, he told himself; but in his heart he knew that he did not want to be alone with that thing behind the altar. He had satisfactorily explained its mechanism to himself, but there was something else about it which he could not explain.
Naylor had telegraphed that very morning: "Get story. Come home. What do you think you're doing?" and he tried to make up his mind to end the whole affair by taking the night train to Boston. But he hated to go back empty-handed from a four days' assignment. Besides, though he knew himself a fool for it, he wanted to see Mrs. Athelstone once more.
So it happened that he was lingering on in the outer office when the postman threw the afternoon mail on the desk. Simpkins was alone at the moment, and he ran over the letters carelessly until he came to one addressed to Brander in Mrs. Athelstone's writing. The blue card of the palace car company was in a corner of the envelope.
"Why the deuce is she writing that skunk before she's well out of town?" he thought, scanning the envelope with jealous eyes. Then he held it up to the light, but the thick paper told nothing of what was within. Frowning, he laid the letter down, fingered it, withdrew his itching hand, hesitated, and finally put it in his pocket.
Simpkins went straight from the office to his hotel, for, though he told himself that the letter contained some instructions which Mrs. Athelstone had forgotten to give Brander before leaving, he was anxious to see just how those instructions were worded. Alone in his little room, he ripped open the letter and ran over its two pages with bewilderment growing in his face. He finished by throwing it down on the table and exclaiming helplessly: "Well, I'll be damned!"
The first sheet, without beginning or ending, contained only a line in Mrs. Athelstone's handwriting, reading: "I had to leave in such a hurry that I missed seeing you."
There was not an intelligible word on the second sheet; it was simply a succession of scrawls and puerile outline pictures, such as a child might have drawn.
To Simpkins' first aggrieved feeling that his confidence had been abused, the certainty that he had stumbled on something of importance quickly succeeded. He concluded a second and more careful scrutiny of the letter with the exclamation, "Cipher! all right, all right," and, after a third, he jumped up excitedly and rushed off to Columbia University.
An hour later, Professor Ashmore, whose well-known work on "Hieratic Writings" is so widely accepted an authority on that fascinating subject, looked across to Simpkins, who for some minutes had been sitting quietly in a corner of his study, and observed dryly:
"This is a queer jumble of hieroglyphics and hieratic writing, and is not, I should judge," and his eyes twinkled, "of any great antiquity."
"Quite right, Professor," Simpkins assented cheerfully. "The lady who wrote it is interested in Egyptology, and is trying to have a little fun with me."
"If I may judge from the letter, she seems to be interested in you as well," the professor went on smilingly. "In fact, it appears to be—ahem—a love-letter."
"Eh! What?" exclaimed Simpkins, suddenly serious, "Let's have it."
"Well, roughly, it goes something like this: 'My heart's dearest, my sun, my Nile duck—the hours are days without thee, the days an æon. The gods be thanked that this separation is not for long. For apart from thee I have no life. That thing that I have to do is about done. May the gods guard thee and the all-mother protect thee. I embrace thee: I kiss thine eyes and thy lips.' That's a fair translation, though one or two of the hieroglyphics are susceptible of a slightly different rendering; but the sense would not be materially affected by the change," the Professor concluded.
His words fell on inattentive ears; for Simpkins was sitting stunned under the revelation of the letter. Now that he had his story, he knew that he had not wanted it.
But he roused himself when he became conscious that the professor was peering at him curiously over the top of his glasses, and said:
"Pretty warm stuff, eh! Good josh! Great girl! Ought to know her. She's daft on this Egyptian business."
"Her letter is perhaps a trifle er—impulsive," the professor answered. "But she combines the ancient and the modern charmingly. I congratulate you."
"Thanks, Professor," Simpkins answered awkwardly, and took his leave.
Once in the street, he plunged along, head down. It was worse than he had suspected. He had felt all along that the boy's surmises about Brander were correct; now he knew that his suspicions of Mrs. Athelstone were well founded. But he would keep her from that hypocrite, that hawk, that—murderer! Simpkins stopped short at the intrusion of that word. It had come without logic or reason, but he knew now that it had been shaping in his head for two days past. And once spoken, it began to justify itself. There was the motive, clear, distinct and proven; there were the means and the man.
Next morning Simpkins was earlier than usual at the Oriental Building, where he found the youth waiting for Brander to come and open up the inner office.
"Parson's late, eh?" he threw out by way of greeting.
"Always is," was the surly answer. "He's de 'rig'nal seven sleepers."
"Puts you behind with your cleaning, eh?"
"Naw; youse ought to know I don't do no cleanin'."
"You don't? I thought you tended to Mrs. Athelstone's rooms and—Mr. Brander's storeroom."
"Aw, go wan. I'm no second girl, an' de storeroom's never cleaned. Dere's nothin' to clean but a lot of stones an' bum mummies an' such."
"Brander can't sell much stuff; I never see anything being shipped."
"Oh! I don't know! We sent a couple of embammed dooks to Chicago last week."
"And last month?"
"Search me; I only copped out me job here last mont'; but seems as if his whiskers did say dere was somethin' doin'." And just then Mr. Brander came along.
Simpkins had found out what he wanted to know, and he decided that he must bring his plans to a head at once. Mrs. Athelstone was expected back the next day; he must search the storeroom that very night. If—well, he thought he could spoil one scoundrel.
He worked to good advantage during the day, and at nine o'clock that night, when he was back outside the Oriental Building, there were three new keys in his pocket.
He unlocked the door noiselessly, tiptoed up the staircase, and gained the friendly blackness of the ante-chamber quite unobserved. The watchman was half a block away, sitting by the only street entrance kept open at night.
Simpkins took off his shoes and found his sandals without striking a light, and then felt his way to the door leading into the hall. The knob rattled a little under his hand. All that evening he had been nerving himself to go in there alone and in the dark, but now he could have turned and run like a country boy passing a graveyard at night.
The hall was not utterly black, as he had expected. Light from the electric lamps without flickered through the stained-glass windows. Ghastly rays of yellow played over the painted faces on the walls and lit up the gilded features of the mummy by Mrs. Athelstone's desk. There were crimson spots, like blotches of blood, on the veil of Isis. And all about were moving shadows, creeping forward stealthily, falling back slowly, as the light without flared up or died down.
Step by step Simpkins advanced on the black altar, his muscles rigid, his nerves quivering, his eyes staring straight ahead, as a child stares into the dark for some awful shape which it fears to see, yet dares not leave unseen. Once past that altar he would be safe at the door of the storeroom.
How his heart was beating! He was almost at it. Steady! A few steps now and he would gain the storeroom. Good God! What was that!
In the blackness behind the altar two eyes flamed.
Simpkins stopped; he was helpless to turn or to advance. Perhaps if he did not move, it would not. A moment he stood there, tense with terror, then—straight from the altar the thing flew at his throat. But quick as it was: the involuntary jerk of his arm upward was quicker, and it received the blow. Snarling, the thing fell to the floor, and leaped back into the darkness. It was Mrs. Athelstone's cat.
So strong was Simpkins' revulsion of feeling, so great his relief, that he forgot the real cause of his terror, and sank down on the very steps of the altar, weakly exclaiming over and over again: "Only the cat! Only the cat! Great Scott! how it frightened me!"
He had been sitting there for a few minutes when he heard a soft click, click, just to his right. Some one was turning a key in the door leading from Mrs. Athelstone's apartments. As he jumped to his feet, he heard a hand grasp the doorknob. He looked around for a hiding-place, ran a few steps from the altar, doubled like a baited rat, and dove into the blackness behind the veil of Isis. There had been no time to choose; for hardly was he safe under cover and peeping out from between the folds of the veil than the door swung open slowly.
