He crossed the room with that peculiar crooking of the spine which appears to be an ineradicable heritage of the ages to Levantines of his stamp wherever met. How well did the Egyptian sculptor of the late New Empire catch that deferential abasement of self!
Professor Ranney shook hands with Tanos. Gardiner, too, greeted him, and introduced the lady of the trio as his bride. For an instant Tanos searched his fertile brains for a suitable congratulatory quotation from the Arabian classics. Oriental etiquette demanded that he rise to the emergency. Finally, bending over Mrs. Gardiner’s hand, Tanos murmured those charming lines from Abu Selim’s poem on the love of Omar and Leila.
“Oh, Mr. Tanos! What exquisite verses. What a wonderful gift of improvisation!”
Tanos bowed again. He made a deprecatory gesture, murmuring as he did so something about the meter of the second line.
Mrs. Gardiner shot a covert glance in the direction of her husband.
The minx, thought he. He well knew that she had recognized the true authorship of the verses. Mrs. Gardiner had been a former student of her husband at the University of London, where he taught Semitics.
These small social amenities attended to, Tanos ushered his visitors into the innermost room. In another moment all four were seated about a low Turkish table. Upon this reposed two objects, a turquoise-blue goblet of ancient Egyptian pottery and a linen roll, seemingly of great antiquity, if one might judge by its condition.
Meeting the Gardiners in the tea-house of the Gardens, Professor Ranney had urged them to walk over to the shop, in order that they might see the contents of this linen roll, a papyrus scroll of greatest importance, not alone on its own account, but, more especially, for the remarkable document which it contained.
Professor Ranney carefully unrolled the frail, discolored linen in which, three thousand years before, the scroll had been wrapped. At once the air was filled with a strange, aromatic perfume.
At sight of the brightly painted vignettes which ornamented each and every page of the closely written sheets, Mrs. Gardiner burst into repeated exclamations of rapture. Even Dr. Gardiner, her husband, who may be said to have lived in an atmosphere charged with the odor of ancient parchments, could not repress his interest.