Then he thrust a little linen-wrapped parcel into my hand and with his companion vanished into the darkness.
I returned to the drawing-room where the others were still discussing the remarkable performance of the two native conjurers.
“They have gone,” I said in answer to Lord Ragnall, “to walk to London as they said. But they have sent a wedding-present to Miss Holmes,” and I showed the parcel.
“Open it, Quatermain,” he said again.
“No, George,” interrupted Miss Holmes, laughing, for by now she seemed to have quite recovered herself, “I like to open my own presents.”
He shrugged his shoulders and I handed her the parcel, which was neatly sewn up. Somebody produced scissors and the stitches were cut. Within the linen was a necklace of beautiful red stones, oval-shaped like amber beads and of the size of a robin’s egg. They were roughly polished and threaded on what I recognized at once to be hair from an elephant’s tail. From certain indications I judged these stones, which might have been spinels or carbuncles, or even rubies, to be very ancient. Possibly they had once hung round the neck of some lady in old Egypt. Indeed a beautiful little statuette, also of red stone, which was suspended from the centre of the necklace, suggested that this was so, for it may well have been a likeness of one of the great gods of the Egyptians, the infant Horus, the son of Isis.
“That is the necklace I saw which the Ivory Child gave me in my dream,” said Miss Holmes quietly.
Then with much deliberation she clasped it round her throat.
CHAPTER V.
THE PLOT
The sequel to the events of this evening may be told very briefly and of it the reader can form his own judgment. I narrate it as it happened.