"Don't you think we've had polemics enough for one little dinner, Dad? There's a lovely moon, so we'll have our coffee on the verandah, and you and Mr van Huysman can settle the affairs of the universe comfortably over your pipes. Give Lord Leighton and Mr Merrill something to smoke, and we will join you when we have got some wraps."
When they got back from Nitocris's rooms Mrs van Huysman elected to take her coffee in a big, deep-seated armchair by the drawing-room window. She said that she had felt the sun a little, and might possibly indulge in forty winks—which she did within a few minutes of getting comfortably arranged in it. Then Nitocris took Brenda by the arm and walked her half-way down the lawn.
"I want to take possession of Lord Leighton for about half an hour, dear, if you don't mind. I've got something very serious to say to him. Dad, with the characteristic cowardice of his sex, has left it to me to say. It's—well, it's about a mummy: a female mummy, or, at least, I suppose I ought to say a mummy that was once a female—about five thousand years ago."
"My dear Niti——"
"No, no, don't interrupt me, for goodness' sake. It's too serious. It is really. We've had something like a tragedy here in the last few days, and things seem to have been, as you would say, a good deal mixed up ever since. I don't understand it a bit; but they have been."
"But, my dear Niti, what on earth can you have to say to Lord Leighton about a—a female mummy? What possible interest can a five-thousand-year-old corpse have for him?"
"Don't, Brenda, don't—at least not just now! Wait till I've told you, and then you'll see," said Nitocris, pressing her arm closer to her side. "Lord Leighton is, as I think you know, an enthusiastic student of Egyptian antiquities. He was also, or thought he was, in love with my unworthy self. He found this mummy in a royal tomb at Memphis. He—well, I suppose, stole it—of course under the usual licence from the Khedive—and sent it home to Dad. Now comes the mystery. That was the mummy of Nitocris, the daughter of the great Rameses, and it was the dead image of my living self."
"Oh, but, Niti—what do you mean?"
"I don't know, Brenda. I wish I did. All I do know is that it was stolen that very night out of Dad's study in the Old Wing, and that I've got to tell Lord Leighton all about it. I'm sure Dad could have told him much better, only somehow he seems afraid."
"Oh, is that all—just the stealing of what was perhaps a very valuable relic? They try to steal much fresher corpses than that in the States if there are dollars in the business."