Fenton agreed with this verdict, and each keeping charge of his own treasure trove, we went to bed and to sleep.
I am a champion dreamer. So much so, that I often find the life of dreamland rivalling in interest the life this side of sleep. I look forward to my dreams, as some people look forward to an interesting dinner-party; but that night I was too tired to inspect the dream-menu, before lying down to it. The first thing I knew, a handsome Egyptian god with crystal eyes, like those which Bill Bailey means to make the fashion, stood by my bedside. I asked him politely whether he were Rã or Osiris, deliberately picking the two best gods of the bunch in order to flatter him; but without answering, he pointed a bronze hand to the mat on which he stood. It was a white mat, and on it I read a word which evidently he meant me to take as his name: TAM HTAB. For an instant it seemed to me a fine name for an Egyptian god, though I hadn't met it before. Then I burst out laughing disrespectfully. "Why, you're only a Bath Mat wrong side out!" I heard myself sneering; and the god disappeared as a flash of lightning comes and is gone. In going, however, he stumbled slightly against the bed. It was a mere touch; but that, or my own voice, half waked me up.
"TAM HTAB," I mumbled dreamily; and was just reminding myself before dropping off to sleep again that I must tell Biddy about the new bath god, when I realized that he had not quite gone. No, not quite gone! It must be he who still lingered by the bed, for it could be nobody else. Anthony would not come and hover silently at my bedside in the middle of the night. Besides, I was almost awake now, and I could hear the gentle, regular breathing of a man asleep: Anthony's breathing.
"Go away, TAM HTAB," I tried to say, but I was not awake enough to speak. He was bending over the bed. His face was near to mine. I felt rather than saw it. "How could I see in the dark?" sleepily, even fretfully, I asked myself. And yet, was the tent dark?...It had been, I remembered that. I remembered that Anthony had got to bed first, and I had extinguished the two candles on the washhand-stand. Afterward, I had had to grope my way to the bed. Now, however, there was a light...a very faint, rather curious light. There seemed to be only a square of it, a square sloped off at the top. It was opposite my eyes, which really were open now, I felt sure. I couldn't be dreaming this. It was like a queer-shaped window in the blackness, a window full of starlight, but close to the floor. Then the rain must have stopped. The stars must be out. Yes, but how could I see that? There was no window in the tent.
This thought dragged the last film of sleep off my tired brain, like a veil snatched away by impatient fingers on an unseen hand.
Odd! Those very words said over themselves in my head: "Fingers on an unseen hand." And that was because a hand was being slipped cautiously, inch by inch, under my pillow. It was the Egyptian god's hand. But I knew suddenly that the dream-god had turned into a thief: that the silver-glimmering square of light was one of the tent flaps unbuttoned and turned back. That the man must stealthily have pulled up a peg or two while we slept our heavy sleep, must have crept into the tent, soft-footed over the thick rugs, and now here he was, trying to steal.
After that, I did not go on with the thought. My dull reasoning snapped off as short as a dry stick. I made a grab for the hand under my pillow, seized a wrist, held it for an instant in a grip which must have hurt, then had the shame and disappointment of feeling it slip out of my grasp, like a greased snake. There was a stifled exclamation of pain or surprise, scarcely louder than a sigh, and I was out of bed and after a shadow that ran for the low square of starlight. Something caught and tripped me as I reached the opening. What it was I did not know then and don't know now, but I had a vague impression that it was warm. If I had stumbled against a bare leg thrust out to stop me, it would have felt like that. Yet it could not have been the leg of the man running away. He was using both his, and must have used them well, for I was up and out from under the lifted tent flap which had fallen on top of me as I tumbled, before I could have counted five. Very wide awake now, I stood in the rough, sandy grass, under a sky encrusted with stars, and could see no one. Barefooted, I pattered this way and that, searching every shadow, but the whole camp seemed an abode of peace. There was not a sound or movement even in the black ring of sleeping camels. Rain had driven to shelter the roving dogs which had troubled us last night. The camp lanterns burned clear and strong, yellow and crude in the silver flood of starlight which dulled their radiance. The smell of earth and grass after the heavy shower was like the fragrance of tea roses. Could it be that an evil, stealthy presence had but just broken this sweet serenity with its vile intention, or had the whole incident been after all a singularly vivid dream? I should have believed so, if my hand which had clutched that other hand, had not been slippery with oil.
No, I had not dreamed. And suddenly a troubling thought leaped into my mind. "Biddy!" The name sprang to my lips and spoke itself aloud.
If this were for her! I had laughed at her forebodings. Sensational revenges such as she feared seemed so incongruous, so utterly unsuited to those laughing, long-lashed eyes of hers! Yet she had in her past life lived side by side with fear and tragedy for more years than I liked to count. And as she said, men such as those whom Richard O'Brien had betrayed had been known to reach out very far to take revenge. Biddy had done nothing. Surely they owed her no grudge. But she had known things. Perhaps they thought that she knew even more than she did know. Their organization was rich as well as powerful. It had many branches. Yet why should men use its power to hurt the widow of a dead enemy, now that they—or fate—had put him underground?
In a flash I remembered the chamois-skin bag, which she had forgotten under the pillow: and lifting the loosened canvas flap with its dangling pegs, I stooped to go back into the tent. Inside, I expected to find darkness, but instead I found light; Anthony up, setting a match to a candle wick, and looking a tall, dark silhouette in his pyjamas.