“‘Eureka!’ I cried. ‘All we want now is the lamps.’” I tried placing the electric lights on, or close to, the protuberances. But the glow never came to the stone. So the conviction grew on me that there were special lamps made for the purpose. If we could find them, a step on the road to solving the mystery should be gained.
“‘But what about the lamps?’ I asked. ‘Where are they? When are we to discover them? How are we to know them if we do find them? What—’
“He stopped me at once:
“‘One thing at a time!’ he said quietly. ‘Your first question contains all the rest. Where are these lamps? I shall tell you: In the tomb!’
“‘In the tomb!’ I repeated in surprise. ‘Why you and I searched the place ourselves from end to end; and there was not a sign of a lamp. Not a sign of anything remaining when we came away the first time; or on the second, except the bodies of the Arabs.’
“Whilst I was speaking, he had uncoiled some large sheets of paper which he had brought in his hand from his own room. These he spread out on the great table, keeping their edges down with books and weights. I knew them at a glance; they were the careful copies which he had made of our first transcripts from the writing in the tomb. When he had all ready, he turned to me and said slowly:
“‘Do you remember wondering, when we examined the tomb, at the lack of one thing which is usually found in such a tomb?’
“‘Yes! There was no serdab.’
“The serdab, I may perhaps explain,” said Mr. Corbeck to me, “is a sort of niche built or hewn in the wall of a tomb. Those which have as yet been examined bear no inscriptions, and contain only effigies of the dead for whom the tomb was made.” Then he went on with his narrative:
“Trelawny, when he saw that I had caught his meaning, went on speaking with something of his old enthusiasm: