THE BELL BUOY
A white yacht steamed slowly through calm water silvered by the moon. Maida and I were the only passengers. We had been married that day, and the yacht Lily Maid was ours for the honeymoon, lent by Maida's newly found cousins, Sir Robert and Lady Annesley.
"Look," I said, as passing through the Downs I caught sight of two dark towers showing above a cloud of trees on the Kentish coast. "Those towers are my brother's house. To-morrow I shall be there making him eat humble pie—and my sister-in-law too."
"I don't want you to make them eat humble pie!" laughed Maida.
"Well, they shall eat whatever you like. But would you care to anchor now? It's nearly midnight."
"Let's go on a little further," she decided. "It's so heavenly."
It was. I felt that I had come almost as near heaven as I could hope to get. Maida was my wife at last, and she was happy. I believed that she was safe.
We went on, and the throb of the yacht's heart was like the throbbing of my own. Close together we stood, she and I, my arm clasping her. So we kept silence for a few moments, and my thoughts trailed back as the moonlit water trailed behind us. I remembered many things: but above all I remembered that other night of moonlight far away in Egypt, in a secret orange garden where men had dug a grave.
Why, yes, of course Maida was safe! One of her two enemies had died that night—the woman. Exactly how she died we did not know, but I and the "king of the beggars" had found her lying, face downward, in the marble basin of a great fountain, dead in water not a foot deep. The fountain was in a room whence, from one latticed window, the orange garden and the fight there could have been seen. That window was open. Doubtless Essain's sister had believed her twin brother captured or dead. She had thought that, for herself, the end of all things had come with his downfall: punishment, failure and humiliation worse than death. So she had chosen death. But the man had escaped and disappeared. The treasure hidden for thousands of years in the mummy—treasure which the Head Sister boasted to Maida had been found by Doctor Rameses—had disappeared with him.
The girl Hateb who had cared for Maida through her illness cared for her again that night, while Haroun and I guarded the shut door of their room. The next day Maida was able to start for Cairo, and Hateb (both veiled, and in Egyptian dress) acted as her maid. Had it not been for Haroun's testimony and the respect felt by the authorities for the rich beggar, the happenings of that night and the woman's death might have detained me at Hathor Set; but thanks to Haroun I was able to get Maida away. Thanks again partly to him and what he could tell (with what Maida had been told by the Head Sister) the girl's past was no longer a mystery. We knew the name of her people: and luckily it was a name to conjure with just then in Cairo. Colonel Sir Robert Annesley was stationed there. He was popular and important; and I blessed all my stars because I had met him in England.