“Yes. It awakened me, just as it awakened you.”
“And there was no one else in the house but the persons you named. I mean you are positive that you were not a victim of any practical joke, Miss Seymour?” I asked.
“Quite certain. The door of my room was locked and bolted. It was at the head of the stairs. There were four rooms on that floor, but only mine was occupied.”
“The window? If I recollect aright, most of the houses on the Esplanade at Scarborough have balconies,” I remarked.
“Mine had a balcony, it is true, but both windows were securely fastened. I recollected latching them before retiring, as is my habit.”
“Then nobody could possibly have entered there!”
“Nobody. Yet I have a distinct recollection of having been touched by, and having actually seen, the hand being withdrawn from my pillow. I rushed out of the room and alarmed the house. In a few moments every one came out of their rooms, but when I told my story they laughed at me in ridicule, and Louise took me back to bed, declaring that I must have had a bad dream. But I could sleep there no longer, and returned home next day. I did not tell Dad, because I knew that he would only poke fun at me.”
For some moments I did not speak. Surely ours was a strange conversation in that busy modern thoroughfare, amid the café idlers seated out in the roadway, and the lounging groups enjoying the cool air from the river after the heat and burden of the day.
Strange it was—very strange—that almost the same inexplicable circumstances had occurred to her as to me.
Had I been superstitious I certainly should have been inclined to the belief that the uncanny hand—which was so material that it had left its imprint upon my flesh—was actually some evil foreboding connected with the bronze cylinder—the Thing which the papyri decreed shall not speak until the Day of Awakening. Was not the curse of the Wolf-god placed upon any one who sought knowledge of the contents of that cylinder, which had been placed for security in the tomb of the Great Merenptah, King of Kings? Even contact with the human hand was forbidden under pain of the wrath of the Sun-god, and of Osiris the Eternal.