“Loosen these bonds!” cried Rekh-marā in fury, “before I blast you with the seven secret curses of Amen-Rā!”
“We shouldn’t be likely to loose them after,” Robert retorted.
“Oh, don’t quarrel!” said Anthea desperately. “Look here, he has just as much right to the thing as we have. This,” she took up the Amulet that had swallowed the other one, “this has got his in it as well as being ours. Let’s go shares.”
“Let me go!” cried the Priest, writhing.
“Now, look here,” said Robert, “if you make a row we can just open that window and call the police—the guards, you know—and tell them you’ve been trying to rob us. Now will you shut up and listen to reason?”
“I suppose so,” said Rekh-marā sulkily.
But reason could not be spoken to him till a whispered counsel had been held in the far corner by the washhand-stand and the towel-horse, a counsel rather long and very earnest.
At last Anthea detached herself from the group, and went back to the Priest.
“Look here,” she said in her kind little voice, “we want to be friends. We want to help you. Let’s make a treaty. Let’s join together to get the Amulet—the whole one, I mean. And then it shall belong to you as much as to us, and we shall all get our hearts’ desire.”
“Fair words,” said the Priest, “grow no onions.”