“Young man,” said Mr Hicks firmly, “this is my funeral. Your turn will come to-morrow night, but as the distinguished sufferer’s medical attendant, I calculate to do my obvious duty to-night. The boss is taking a fine spell of rest just now, breathing natural, pulse regular, everything first-rate, but I must be on hand when he wakes up. Now don’t turn nasty, or I’ll sit up next night as well. I’m a peaceable man, but when I get riz, there’s likely to be unpleasantness.”
Accepting the inevitable with the worst possible grace, Mansfield prepared the supper, assisted in hanging the curtain, and finally betook himself to his couch of hair cloth, where he muffled his head in his cloak in the way he had learnt from the Arabs, and was fast asleep in two minutes. He slept until late the next day, and was only awakened by the voices of Cyril and Mr Hicks, as they expressed their heartfelt admiration of his powers of slumber, and suggested exhibiting him to the Arabs as one of the Seven Sleepers. Cyril was in the wildest spirits. The fatigue of the journey seemed to have altogether passed away, and Mr Hicks’s account of the lady at the gateway and her ungracious behaviour had filled him with delight. Mr Hicks, on the contrary, was more silent than usual, and offered presently to show Mansfield a rock-cut swimming-bath, supplied with water from the reservoir of which the Arabs had spoken, which he had discovered while exploring one of the passages branching from the cave. After a few moments’ silence, as they groped their way between the rocky walls, he turned suddenly.
“Mr Mansfield, do I look like a man that would see ghosts?”
“No, I should say not,” replied Mansfield, holding up the lamp to scrutinise his companion’s features; “but you look as if you had seen one now,” he added maliciously.
“That is so, Mr Mansfield. Or I have seen an apparition of a surprising character, any way. About midnight I was sitting on a rock beside the boss, and figuring out what I might clear by transporting to the States that whole cargo of damaged Palmyrene antiquities in the cellar back of ours, and selling them in small quantities to local museums, when I distinctly saw that curtain move that we fixed up. You bet I kept my eyes nailed on it. Well, it was drawn back slightly, and there was an old woman—a little old woman—standing in the passage, wrapped in a white sheet, like our friend at the door above, but I could see her whole face. She never saw me, for the light was between us; but she took a step forward and looked at the boss. I guess I was hasty, but I cocked my six-shooter. She heard me, and in the minutest fraction of a second she was gone. I caught up the light, and made tracks after her, but there was nothing to be seen. I searched every inch of the passage and the cave where the remains are, but she wasn’t there, and there is no means of getting out that way, unless she slithered up the roof to the hole where the light comes in, and that isn’t what you would expect of an elderly female of respectable appearance.”
“But was she a European, as you said the other one was?”
“Can’t say, Mr Mansfield. One old woman is pretty much like another. Maybe she was the ghost of the Lady Zenobia. If that is so, I’ve lost the best chance a newspaper man ever had, and I can tell you I feel real mean.”
“Well,” said Mansfield, with ungenerous exultation, “I can tell you something, and that is, it’s my funeral to-night. You haven’t said anything to the Count?”
“Do I look such a fool as all that, sir? But I’m real down. You could most trample on me. I guess I ought to shove you into the swimming-bath for your impudence, and I would do it, too, if it wasn’t that maybe you would catch cold,” and having launched this Parthian shaft, Mr Hicks departed.
When Mansfield returned to the cave, he found that Cyril was giving audience to the sheikh, who had come to announce their fate to the prisoners. They need cherish no hope of being admitted to the presence of the Princess, or even to an interview with her secretary. The doors of the fortress were irrevocably closed against them, and they would remain in their gloomy prison until they chose to return to civilisation, when they would be escorted across the desert and set down in the neighbourhood of Damascus. The sheikh’s mental discomfort as he made this announcement was very evident, and it was clear that he feared Cyril’s wrath only less than that of his sovereign; but the placid smile with which his message was received served to reassure him, and he retired puzzled but contented. Cyril remained in high spirits all day, his gaiety only increasing towards evening. It was in vain that Mr Hicks attempted to write to his paper, and that Mansfield sat down resolutely with the intention of renovating the clothes of the party, for he gave them no peace. He had a plan, which he persisted in setting before them, conceived in the regulation boys’-book-of-adventure style, for overpowering the sheikh and the guard outside the cave, and scaling the walls of the fortress by the aid of rope-ladders made of twisted strips of hair-cloth, thus literally “dropping in” on the Princess with an urgency that would admit of no denial. He seemed unable to turn his mind to anything else, and at last Mr Hicks took the matter into his own hands.