"Is your mistress in?" enquired the Colonel, speaking Tamil.
"Within, sahib, and she waits," was the reply in Anglo-Saxon.
Immediately following these few words Towton was led into the inner room, and the attendant closed the door after him, leaving the client alone with Diabella. The room was decorated much in the same tomb-like fashion as the other one, but there were mummies standing round the wall at intervals in their richly adorned coffins, and the two windows looking on to Bond Street were draped with rich Eastern stuffs to entirely exclude the light of day. But several lamps, burning perfumed oil, dangled from the ceiling, and the room was filled with a mellow radiance, eminently suited to the object for which it was used. Towton shrewdly surmised that the peculiar decorations, the exclusion of daylight for the use of artificial illumination, and the highly-scented atmosphere which prevailed even more strongly here than it had done in the outer room, were all meant to daze the senses of Diabella's clients so that they might more readily credit her assertions. It was all cleverly conceived and carried out.
The woman herself was seated at the end of the room under a kind of canopy on an uncomfortable ebony-wood chair inlaid with ivory. Before her was a tiny square table of the same sombre wood, with twisted legs, and on this stood a large crystal the size of a small orange. Diabella was seated in a hieratical attitude with her hands on her knees, like some stone god, and wore a stiff straight robe of mingled black and yellow, which made her resemble a viper. But her face struck Towton most, as she apparently wore an entire mask modelled in wax from some actual Egyptian mummy. This was surmounted by the well-known head-dress of harsh black ringlets, combed straightly to the shoulders. The mouth of the mask was partially open, so that the fortune-teller could speak easily behind it. With her dead-looking face and motionless attitude, Diabella looked exactly like the mummies which flanked her right and left. And right and left also, in tall iron tripods, flamed some spirits, which cast weird lights on her uncanny appearance. Nothing better could have been designed to impress the weak-minded; and in that Temple of Illusion and from the lips of such a strange creature the boldest might be excused for believing the impossible. Even Colonel Towton felt an unaccustomed shudder, as though he were in the presence of the Unseen.
"You wish to consult those who dwell in darkness about the future?" asked the sorceress in a strange, metallic voice, as unhuman as were her looks.
Towton smiled scornfully and twisted his moustache. He had quite recovered his momentary obsession by that perfumed atmosphere, and sat down with a cool air. "You should speak Egyptian to be perfect," he scoffed.
Diabella disdained to notice the jeer. "Would you have me look in the crystal, or spell the cards, or read the hand."
"None of the three, thank you," said Towton drily. "Do you really possess the power of reading things?"
"I can read the past, the present, and the future;' I can tell all that is permitted to be told by the Powers. You are an unbeliever."
The Colonel chuckled. "Wrong, first shot. Having seen a good deal of this sort of thing; although," he glanced round the room, "scarcely so dressy a place, I believe that some gifted people have certain senses at command, if not under control, with which they can foretell things. I quite appreciate your remark about the Powers permitting and forbidding, as I am aware that such is the case."