"I beg your pardon."
"I believe I have found your friend Ptahmes, Miss Ottley."
The plate slid off her lap and broke. Chicken and gravy littered the pavement. But she had no idea of it. "Impossible!" she cried.
I explained my examination of the sarcophagus and the result in detail. She sat gazing at me like a graven image. When she had finished she arose and vanished—without a word. I followed and found her standing beside the great lead coffin, my kerchief in her hand. She had reopened the chisel hole, and the cavern was already saturated with the infernal gas. I snatched my handkerchief away and once more blocked the vent. Then I exerted all my strength and with a prodigious effort placed the lid on the sarcophagus. With a woman's curiosity to reckon with, such a precaution seemed a vital safeguard. I found her standing in the pylon, breathing like a spent runner.
"You might have taken my word," I said coldly. "You'd have saved yourself an ugly headache at the least."
Her face was crimson; her eyes burned like stars. The fumes of that uncanny perfume had made her drunk. She swayed and leaned dizzily against a pillar. I went up and took her hand. The pulse was beating like a miniature steam hammer.
"Sit down," I said.
She laughed and sank at my feet in a heap. "Oh! Oh!" she cried and fell to sobbing half hysterically though tearlessly.
"Lord!" I said aloud. "What a bundle of hysterical humours it is, and how plain to look on when its resolution takes a holiday."
That is the way to treat hysteria.