The car was waiting for them in the courtyard under the glass awning. A smart-looking young chauffeur in orthodox costume touched his cap and set the engine going. The gold-laced porters handed them into the two front seats, and the chauffeur effaced himself in the tonneau. Miss Brenda put one hand on the steering-wheel and the other on the first speed lever, and the car slid away, as though it had been running on ice, towards the great arched entrance.
As they turned to the left on their way westward, a shabbily dressed man and woman stepped back from the roadway on to the pavement. For a moment they stared at the car in mute astonishment; then the man gripped the woman tightly by the arm and led her away out of the ever-passing throng, whispering to her in Coptic:
"Did'st thou see her, Neb-Anat—the Queen—the Queen in the living flesh sitting there in the self-mover, the devil-machine? To what unholy things has she come—she, the daughter of the great Rameses! But it may be that she is held in bondage under the spell of the evil powers that created these devil-chariots which pant like souls in agony and breathe with the breath of Hell. She must be rescued, Neb-Anat."
"Rescued?" echoed the woman, in a tone that was half scorn and half fear. "Is it so long ago that thou hast forgotten how we tried to rescue her mummy from the hands of these infidels? Now, behold, she is alive again, living in the midst of this vast, foul city of the infidels, clothed after the fashion of their women, and yet still beautiful and smiling. Pent-Ah, didst thou not even see her laugh as she rode past us? Alas! I tell thee that our Queen is laid under some awful spell, doubtless because she has in some way incurred the displeasure of the High Gods, and if that is so, not even the Master himself could rescue her. What, then, shall we do?"
"Thy saying is near akin to blasphemy, Neb-Anat," he murmured in reply, "and yet there may be a deep meaning in it. Nevertheless, to-night, nay, this hour, the Master must know of what we have seen."
They walked along, conversing in murmurs, as far as Waterloo Bridge, then they turned and crossed it and walked down Waterloo Road into the Borough Road, and then turned off into a narrow, grimy street which ended in a small court whose three sides were formed of wretched houses, upon which many years of misery, poverty, and crime had set their unmistakable stamp. They crossed the court diagonally and entered a house in the right-hand corner. They went up the worn, carpetless stairs with a rickety handrail on one side and the torn, peeling paper on the other, and stopped before a door which opened on to a narrow landing on the first floor. Pent-Ah knocked with his knuckles on the panel, first three times quickly, and then twice slowly. Then came the sound of the drawing of a bolt, and the door opened.
They went in with shuffling feet and crouching forms, and the woman closed the door behind her. A tall, gaunt, yellow-skinned man, his head perfectly bald and the lower part of his face covered with a heavy white beard and moustache, faced them. His clothing was half Western, half Oriental. A pair of thin, creased, grey tweed trousers met, or almost met, a pair of Turkish slippers, showing an inch of bare, lean ankle in between. His body was covered with a dirty yellow robe of fine woollen stuff, whose ragged fringe reached to his knees, and a faded red scarf was folded twice round his neck, one end hanging down his breast and the other down his back. As Pent-Ah closed the door and bolted it, he said to him in Coptic:
"So ye have returned! What news of the Queen? For without that surely ye would not have dared to come before me."
He spoke the words as a Pharaoh might have spoken them to a slave, and as though the bare, low-ceiled, shabby room, with its tawdry Oriental curtains and ornaments, had been an audience-chamber in the palace of Pepi in old Memphis, for this was he who had once been Anemen-Ha, High Priest of Ptah, in the days when Nitocris was Queen of the Two Kingdoms.
"We have seen her once more, Lord," said Pent-Ah, "scarce an hour ago, dressed after the fashion of these heathen English, and seated in a devil-chariot beside another woman, as fair almost as she. It is true, Lord, even as we said, that our Lady the Queen is in the flesh again, and yet she knows us not. It may be that the High Gods have laid some spell upon her."