The
Living Mummy

BY

AMBROSE PRATT

With Four Illustrations in Color by
LOUIS D. FANCHER

SECOND EDITION

NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1910, by
Frederick A. Stokes Company
——
All rights reserved

THE LIVING MUMMY

CONTENTS

THE LIVING MUMMY

Chapter I Concerning the Son of Hap

I was hard at work in my tent. I had almost completed translating the inscription of a small stele of Amen-hotep III, dated B. C., 1382, which with my own efforts I had discovered, and I was feeling wonderfully self-satisfied in consequence, when of a sudden I heard a great commotion without. Almost immediately the tent flap was lifted, and Migdal Abu's black face appeared. He looked vastly excited for an Arab, and he rolled his eyes horribly. "What do you want?" I demanded irritably. "Did I not tell you I was not to be disturbed?"

He bent almost double. "Excellency—a white sheik has come riding on an ass, and with him a shameless female, also white."

"The dickens!" I exclaimed, for I had not seen a European for nine weeks.

Migdal Abu advanced with hand outstretched. "Excellency, he would have me give you this."

I took "this," and swore softly underbreath at the humourless pomposity of my unknown countryman. It was a pasteboard carte-de-visite. And we—in the heart of the Libyan desert!

With a laugh I looked at the thing and read his name—"Sir Robert Ottley."

"What!" I said, then sprang a-foot. Ottley the great Egyptologist. Ottley the famous explorer. Ottley the eminent decipherer of cuneiform inscriptions. Ottley the millionaire whose prodigality in the cause of learning had in ten short years more than doubled the common stock of knowledge of the history of the Shepherd kings of the Nile. I had been longing since a lad to meet him, and now he had come unasked to see me out on the burning sands of Yatibiri.

Trembling with excitement, I caught up a jacket, and hardly waiting to thrust my arms into the sleeves, rushed out of the tent.

Before me, sitting on an ass that was already sound asleep, despite a plague of flies that played about its eyes, was a little bronze-faced, grizzled old man attired from head to foot in glistening white duck and wearing on his head an enormous pith helmet. My Arabs, glad of an excuse to cease work, squatted round him in a semi-circle.

"Sir Robert Ottley!" I cried. "A thousand welcomes."

"You are very good," he drawled. "I presume you are Dr. Pinsent."

"At your service."

He stooped a little forward and offered me his hand.

"Will you not dismount?" I asked.

"Thank you, no. I have come to ask a favour." Then he glanced round him and began deliberately to count my Arabs.

I surveyed him in blank astonishment. He possessed a large hawk-like nose, a small thin-lipped mouth and little eyes twinkling under brows that beetled.

"Twelve, and two of them are good for nothing; mere weeds," said Sir Robert.

Then he turned to me with a smile. "You will forgive me?" he asked, adding quickly, "but then Arabs are cattle. There was no personal reflection."

"A cup of coffee," I suggested. "The sun is dreadful. It would refresh you."

"The sun is nothing," he replied, "and I have work to do. I am camped on the southern slope of the Hill of Rakh. It is twelve miles. I have found the tomb for which I have been searching seven years. I thought I had enough Arabs. I was mistaken."

"You may have the use of mine and welcome," I observed.

He gave a queer little bow. "He gives twice who gives quickly. The sarcophagus is in a rock hole forty feet beneath the level of the desert. I simply must have it up to-night."

"They shall start at once, and I shall go with them; I am as strong as six," I replied. Then I shouted some orders to Migdal Abu. When I turned it was to gasp. A woman had materialised from the sunbeams. I had completely forgotten that Sir Robert had a female companion. All my eyes had been for him. I swung off my hat and stammered some tardy words of welcome and invitation.

Sir Robert interrupted me. "My daughter—Dr. Pinsent," he drawled in slow, passionless tones. "My daughter does not require any refreshment, thank you, Doctor."

"I am too excited," said a singularly sweet voice. "Father's discovery has put me into a fever. I really could not eat, and coffee would choke me. But if you could give me a little water."

I rushed into my tent and returned with a brimming metal cup. "The Arabs have broken all my glass ware," I said apologetically.

She lifted her veil and our eyes met. She was lovely. She smiled and showed a set of dazzling teeth. The incisors were inlaid with gold. I remarked the fact in a sort of self-defensive panic, for the truth is I am a shy idiot with pretty women. Thank goodness she was thirsty and did not notice my confusion. Two minutes afterwards I was mounted on my donkey, and we were off on the long tramp to the Hill of Rakh, the Arabs trailing behind us in a thin ill-humoured line. We maintained the silence of bad temper and excessive heat until the sun sank into the sand. Then, however, we wiped our foreheads, said a cheerful good-bye to the flies that had been tormenting us, and woke up.

"I am immensely obliged to you, Dr. Pinsent," said Sir Robert.

"So am I," said Miss Ottley.

"The boot is on the other foot," I replied. "It's kind of you to permit me to be present at your triumph. Is it a king?"

"No," said Miss Ottley, "a priest of Amen of the eighteenth dynasty."

"Oh, a priest."

Miss Ottley bridled at my tone. "No king was ever half as interesting as our priest," she declared. "He was a wonderful man in every way, a prophet, a magician, and enormously powerful. Besides, he is believed to have committed suicide for the sake of principle, and he predicted his own resurrection after a sleep of two thousand years."

"He has been dead 3285 years," sighed Sir Robert.

"Is that his fault?" cried the girl.

"It falsifies his prophecy."

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Ptahmes was his name," said Sir Robert, turning to me. "He was the right-hand man of Amen-hotep IV; but when that king changed his religion and his name and became Akhenaten and a devotee of the old worship of Heliopolis, Ptahmes apparently killed himself as a protest against the deposition of Amen, his particular divinity."

"Read that," said Miss Ottley.

She handed me a page of type-written manuscript.

It ran as follows:

"Hearken to the orders which are put upon you by Ptahmes, named Tahutimes, son of Mery, son of Hap.

"All my ways were regulated even as the pace of an ibis. The Hawk-headed Horus was my protector like amulets upon my body. I trained the troops of my lord. I made his pylon 60 cubits long in the noble rock of quartzite, most great in height and firm as heaven. I did not imitate what had been done before. I was the royal scribe of the recruits. Mustering was done under me. I was appointed Judge of the Palace; overseer of all the prophets of the south and of the north. I was appointed High Priest of Amen in the Capital—King of all the Gods. I was made the eyes and ears of the king: keeper of my lord's heart and fan-bearer at the King's right hand. Great men have come from afar to bow themselves before me, bringing presents of ivory and gold, copper, silver and emery, lazuli, malachite, green felspar and vases of mern wood inlaid with white precious stones sometimes bearing gold at one time 1000 deben (200 pounds weight). For my fame was carried abroad even as the fame of the king, 'lord of the sweet wind.' And there was spoken of me by the son of Paapis that my wisdom was of a divine nature, because of my knowledge of futurities. Yet on the sixth day of the month of Pakhons in the 18th year I desire to rest. My lord, at the solicitation of the great royal wife and mother Nefertiti, has put off the worship of his predecessors. The name of Amen is proscribed from the country. Ra is proscribed from the country. Horus is proscribed from the country. Aten is set up in their place and worshipped in the land. My lord has even changed his name. Apiy is the high priest of the new God that is from the Mesopotamian wilderness. Amen, king of the Gods, dandled my lord and is forsaken and proscribed. I am an old man and would rest: although my lord has not forsaken me. He has appointed me overseer of all his works. Therefore, shall you carry me to the temple of Kak, and give my body to the hands of the priests of Amen who will wrap me in the linen sheets of Horus without removing my heart, my entrails or my lungs. Then you shall carry me to Khizebh and enclose me in the place prepared for me; and cover my tomb to a depth of five fathoms with the sand of the desert at that hour when no man looks or listens. Do this even as I command, and as royal scribe I trace the order with my pen. But you shall place my papyri and the sign by which I shall be known, and the stele of ivory engraved with the directions to the priests of Amen who are to wake me from my sleep at the distant hour, in the tomb that is prepared for my body in the temple of Merenptah and in such manner that I shall there appear to sleep. And all these things you shall do, or my curse shall pursue you and your children and their children for the space of four hundred lives. Nor shall you remove the endowment of my gifts nor touch them where they lie under a penalty of great moment."

I strained my eyes to catch the last words, for the darkness was already setting down upon the desert; and I was profoundly interested.

"Wonderful!" I said, as I returned her the document. "A papyrus, of course?"

"Yes, one of several. Father found it seven years ago at Dier el Batiri."

"I had not heard."

Sir Robert coughed. "No," said he, "nor anyone else. I have never published it. It did not come to me in the usual way. I bought it from an Arab who had rifled the tomb in which it was discovered."

"And the other papyri and the ivory stele?" I questioned.

"They are in my possession, too."

"They enabled you doubtless to locate the real tomb that holds the body?"

"They helped."

Then silence supervened. To me it was filled with wonder. I could not help asking myself what circumstances could possibly have induced Ottley to withhold so valuable an historic treasure for so many years from the world. Such a course of action was utterly opposed to all practice, and the unwritten but immutable laws of scientific research. It seemed strangely at odds, too, with the man's reputed character. It would have covered him with glory to have placed his discovery before the Society to which we both belonged. And a dozen incidents related of him far and wide, proved that he was not indifferent to praise and fame. He read my thoughts probably, for at length he cleared his throat and spoke.

"There were reasons why I should not blazon the find abroad," he said.

"No doubt," I observed, with unintentioned dryness.

"One papyrus speaks of a golden treasure," he went on quietly. "If published, it would have set thousands looking for the tomb. In that case the chances are that the body of Ptahmes would have been destroyed by some vandal intent solely on pillage."

"You assumed a great responsibility," I remarked. I simply had to say it, for I was angry, and his explanation appeared puerile to me.

"Do you dispute my right?" he demanded coldly.

I shrugged my shoulders. "It is not for me to say, Sir Robert. Doubtless when the time comes you will be able to satisfy the Society and the world that you have acted rightly."

"I admit no responsibility," he answered; "and permit me to observe that you are talking nonsense. I owe no duty to communicate the results of my purchases or discoveries to any Society or to the world."

"True, Sir Robert. An action for damages could not lie against you."

"Sir!" he cried.

"Father," said Miss Ottley, "how can Dr. Pinsent's foolish sarcasm affect you? Besides, we need his Arabs."

"Quite so," said Sir Robert. "We need his Arabs. How brightly the stars shine to-night, Dr. Pinsent."

The cool impudence of the pair struck me dumb. I shook with passion. For a moment I thought of calling a halt and returning the way we had come to my own camp with my Arabs. But for my curiosity to see the tomb of Ptahmes very probably I should have done so. In a few seconds, however, my rage cooled, and my uppermost feeling was admiration mixed with mirth. I had never been treated with such open and absurd contempt before. It was a refreshing experience. I burst of a sudden into a peal of laughter. Miss Ottley joined me in the exercise. But Sir Robert rode on like a hook-nosed Sphinx.

"I knew I could not be mistaken," said Miss Ottley. "You should thank God for your sense of humour, Dr. Pinsent."

"And who is benefiting from it at this moment, I should like to know?" I retorted. "The thanks are due from you, I fancy."

"Deo gratias!" she flashed. "In sober truth, we need your Arabs sadly."

"I repeat, I am glad to be of use."

"We shall use you, but not necessarily in the cause of your Society. Understand that fully."

"You mean?"

"That you must not expect to share our secrets."

"In plain words, you will not let me help you open the sarcophagus."

"Your penetration is remarkable."

"And if——"

"And if," she interrupted quickly, "you require a reward for the courtesy we asked and you accorded or have promised to accord, you have but to name a sum in cash to have it paid."

"Or——" said I, stung to the quick.

"Or," she flashed, "return! You are at liberty to make your choice. Yours are not the only Arabs in Egypt. At a pinch we can wait a day or two. It is for you to say."

I tore off my hat. "Miss Ottley—my Arabs are yours for as long as you require them!" I furiously announced. "Good day to you. Sir Robert, good day!"

Then I dragged the head of my ass round and set his face to my camp. The beast, however, would hardly budge, and I had to belabour him unmercifully to induce him to trot. Never did man make a more undignified exit from circumstances of indignity. And it did not need Miss Ottley's mocking laughter to assure me that I looked ridiculous. I could have strangled her with all the cheerfulness in life; and from that moment I have cherished an ineradicable hatred of donkeys. Sir Robert did not open his lips. He did not even return my angry salute. Almost choking with rage, I finally got out of range of Miss Ottley's laughter. Then I dismounted and told the desert just what I thought of her and her father. It was almost midnight when I reached my camp, for, to crown all, I neglected the stars in my passion, and for two hours lost my way.

Chapter II A Patient of the Desert

I spent the next two days in absolute solitude, and got through a tremendous quantity of toil. In fact, I added two whole chapters to my treatise on the Nile monuments and I arranged the details of a third. By the end of that time, however, I was ravenously hungry. I had been too engrossed in labour to think of eating anything but biscuits. And appetite at last turned me out of the tent. I looked around for my Arabs and saw sand and sky—no living thing—oh, yes, there was my donkey. The little beast had eaten his way through a truss of straw, and was asleep. Strolling over to the ruined pylon, I glanced down into the hole my Arabs had excavated. It was empty. "Gad!" I exclaimed. "They must still be working for Ottley." I had to build a fire and turn cook, willy nilly. Later, fortified with the pleasant conviction of a good dinner, I turned my telescope on the Hill of Rakh. An Arab stood on the treeless summit leaning on a rifle whose barrel glittered in the sunlight. I was puzzled. He was manifestly posted there as sentinel, but why? I watched him till dark, but he did not move. That night I shot a jackal—omen of disaster. It was long before I slept. Yet I seemed only to have slumbered a moment or two when I awoke. A voice called my name aloud. "Dr. Pinsent! Dr. Pinsent!" I started upright and listened, nerves on edge.

"Dr. Pinsent!"

"Who calls?" I shouted.

"I—May Ottley."

"Miss Ottley!" I hopped out of my bag bed like a cricket. "Just a moment." I struck a light and, grabbing at my clothes, proceeded to dress like mad. Thus for thirty seconds; then I remembered how I had been treated, and went slower. Then I thought—"Pinsent, you're a cad—she's a woman, and perhaps in trouble." So I got up steam again and called out, "Nothing wrong, I hope?"

"Yes," said Miss Ottley. Well, here was a woman of business, at any rate. She seemed to know the use of words, and valued them accordingly. Waste not, want not. I drew on my jacket and lifted the flap. An Arab rustled past me.

"Hello!" said I. "Not so fast, my man."

But it was Miss Ottley. I stepped back, bewildered. Her hair was tucked away in a sort of turban, and she was wrapped from head to heel in a burnous that had once been white—very long ago. But the costume, though dirty, was becoming. She sank upon a camp stool and asked at once for water. She seemed very tired. My bag was empty. I hurried off without a word to the barrel in the temple. When I returned she was asleep where she sat. I touched her shoulder and she started up, suppressing a scream. "Now," said I, as she put down the cup. Miss Ottley stood up. "A bad thing has happened," she began. "The sarcophagus was filled with treasure, gold and silver in bars, and other things. The Arabs went mad. My father fought like a paladin and held them off for a day and a half. But soon after dark this evening a caravan arrived. The fight was renewed and my father was wounded. The Arabs secured the treasure and fled into the desert. The dragoman only kept faith with us. He has gone by the river to Khonsu for troops. I hurried here for you. I ran almost all the way. Will you come? Father is very ill. He has lost a lot of blood. He was shot in the shoulder."

I nodded, caught up my revolver and surgical pack and rushed out of the tent. In two minutes I had saddled the donkey. Miss Ottley was standing by the door of the tent. I lifted her on the beast and we started off in silence. An hour later she spoke.

"There is one thing I like about you," she announced. "You haven't much to say for yourself, but you are a worker."

"Tu quoque," I replied. "You must have done that twelve miles in record time. It is not yet two o'clock."

"I made it in two hours, I think."

"You are an athlete, by Jove!"

"I am no bread-and-butter miss, at any rate. This donkey has a bad pace, don't you think?"

I kicked the brute into a trot and ran beside it. The Hill of Rakh soon began to loom large among the stars on the horizon. "I suppose you were pretty wild at our cavalier treatment of you the other evening," said Miss Ottley.

"Well, yes," I admitted.

"We were sorry when the fight came."

"No doubt," said I.

"It served us right, eh?"

"That is my opinion."

"Do you bear malice still?"

"I am thinking of your father's wound."

"That atones?"

"Your twelve-mile run helps."

"But you are still angry with us?"

"Does it matter? I am serving you."

"Be generous," said Miss Ottley. "We have been sufficiently punished. Not only have we lost the treasure, but there was no mummy in the sarcophagus."

"Be a lady and apologise," I retorted.

"No," said she, with a most spirited inflection. "It is not a woman's place."

"Then be silent or change the topic," I growled.

She was silent. We arrived an hour later at the mountain. I was bathed in perspiration and as tired as a dog. But Miss Ottley had no time to notice my condition. She slipped off the donkey and hurried away through the smaller of the three pylons that fronted a small temple hollowed out of the rock face of the hill. There was no sign of tent, so I concluded that Sir Robert had made his camp within the temple. I hitched the ass to a stake and cooled off, thanking Providence for a cool breeze that swept up from the placid surface of the Nile. Day was already showing signs of breaking, and a broad flight of long-legged flamingoes hurried its coming with a flash of scarlet just above the eastern horizon. The distant howling of a hyena was borne to me in fitful snatches on the wind. The earth was wrapped in mystery and melancholy. Oh, Egypt! Egypt, land of sun-lit spaces and illimitable shadows; of grandeur and of squalor without peer; of happy dreams and sad awakenings; of centuries ingloriously oblivious of glory; of sleep and sphinx-browed, age-bound silences; of darkly smiling and impotent despair. What a mistress for a man of curiosity and of imagination! Little wonder that since I had been caught in her magic and most jealous spell the face of no human being had possessed the power to threaten her supremacy or cancel my allegiance to the mystic desert queen.

"Dr. Pinsent!"

I awoke from my reverie with a start. "This way," said Miss Ottley. I bowed and followed her into the temple, through a broad but low stone doorway, past a row of broken granite columns. A light within showed us the path. The chamber was about eighteen feet square; there was another of equal size beyond it, in the heart of the hill. An immense sarcophagus composed entirely of lead almost blocked the door. The lid, carved to represent the figure and face of a tall grave-featured man, was propped up on end against a pillar. The sarcophagus was empty. Beyond stood a trestle cot, a table and a lamp. Sir Robert Ottley lay upon the cot. He was awake, but evidently unconscious, and in a high fever. I examined his wound and prepared for action. There was an oil stove in the room. I lighted it and set water to boil. Miss Ottley watched me with an expression I shall not forget easily. Her face was as wan as that of a ghost; and her big red-brown eyes glowed like coals, and were ringed with purple hollows. She was manifestly worn out and on the verge of a breakdown. But although I begged her to retire, she curtly refused. Judging by her eyes, she was my enemy, and a critical enemy at that. When everything was ready I walked over to her, picked her up in my arms and carried her struggling like a wildcat to the door. Then I put her out and blocked the entrance with the lid of the sarcophagus. She panted—"I hate you," from behind it. Then she began to cry. I said nothing. It seemed one of those occasions wherein silence was golden. I tied Sir Robert to the cot and set to work. Half an hour later I found the bullet under his clavicle, and then dressed the wound and bound him up. He came out of the influence of the anæsthetic in his sober senses; but he was so eager to tell me all his disappointment that I gave him a hypodermic dose of morphia, and he dropped asleep in the middle of a rabid diatribe against Arabs in general and our Arabs in particular.

I found Miss Ottley reclining against a ruined pillar in an angle of the pylon. She had cried herself to sleep and was breathing like a child. I slipped out and found the Arab's store-house and kitchen. Luckily the gold had exhausted their cupidity. The stores were untouched. I lighted a fire and prepared a meal—coffee and curry for Miss Ottley and myself; beef tea and arrowroot for the invalid. By that time the sun was riding high in the heavens, but Miss Ottley still slept. Willing to assist her rest I secured a cushion from the chamber and pushed it gently beneath her head. She sighed and turned over, allowing me to see her face. I examined it and found it good. The features were well-nigh perfect, from the little Grecian nose to the round chin. But it was a face instinct with pride, the pride of a female Lucifer. And her form was in keeping. "God save her husband," was my conclusion. And I ate a hearty breakfast, watching her and pitying him, whoever he should be.

Sir Robert woke about noon, and although a little feverish, I was quite satisfied with his progress. After eating a dish of what he feelingly described as "muck" he went to sleep again. I prepared a second meal and brought it on a box to where Miss Ottley still lay sleeping. Then I sat down and coughed. Her eyes opened at once and she looked at me. It is marvellous what a woman's glance can do. I became instantly conscious of a dirty face, unkempt hair, and a nine-weeks' growth of beard. In order to conceal my appreciation of my ugliness I grinned.

"Ugh!" murmured Miss Ottley, and she got up.

"Sir Robert is asleep," I observed. "I found the bullet. He has had lunch and is going on nicely. You had better eat something."

She gave me a glance of scorn and glided into the temple. I helped her to a plate of curry, poured out a cup of coffee and made myself scarce. Returning a quarter of an hour later, I found the plate bare, the cup empty and not a crumb left on the box. I took the things away and washed them, and my own face. Then I shaved with a pocket amputation knife, using for mirror a pot of soapy water; and I brushed my too abundant locks into something like order with a bunch of stubble which I converted into a hair brush with a tomahawk and a piece of twine. Feeling prodigiously civilised and almost respectable, I strolled back to the pylon, sat down on Miss Ottley's cushion, and lighted my pipe.

About two minutes later Miss Ottley appeared.

"Patient awake?" I asked.

"No," said Miss Ottley. "What an objectionable smell of tobacco!"

War to the knife evidently. I stood up. "When you need me shout," I remarked, and strolled off, puffing stolidly. But I saw her face as I turned, and it was crimson, perhaps with surprise that I could be as rude as she, perhaps with mortification that I had dared. If ever a girl needed a dressing down it was she who stood in the pylon staring after me. I squatted in the shadow of a rock and spent the afternoon stupefying over-friendly flies with the fumes of prime Turkish. She shouted just before sundown. Her father was delirious, she said. I found him raving and tearing at his bandages. He was haunted with an hallucination of phantom cats. The whole cavern, he declared, was filled with cats; black as Erebus with flaming yellow eyes. I shooed them away and after some trouble calmed the poor old man. But it was going to be a bad case, that was plain. Luckily the cave temple was, comparatively speaking, cool. I spent the evening disinfecting every cranny, and quietly dispersing the suspicious dust of vanished centuries. When I had finished it smelt carbolically wholesome and was as clean as a London hospital, even to the ceiling. Miss Ottley sat all the while by her father's cot, and occasionally sneezed to relieve her feelings. I had very little sympathy for her distress. I said to her, "You will take first watch, I'll sleep in the pylon. Call me at midnight." Then I placed my watch on the edge of the sarcophagus and went out. She said nothing. I woke at dawn. She was sitting like a statue beside her father's bedside. Her face was grey. Sir Robert was asleep, but breathing stertorously. I beckoned her out to the pylon. "See here, Miss Ottley," I said, in a cold rage, "I'm not going to beat about the bush with you. I told you to call me at midnight. Kindly explain your disobedience."

"I am not your servant to obey your orders," she retorted icily.

"No," said I, "you prefer to serve your own prickly pride to behaving sensibly. But let me tell you this—your father's life depends on careful nursing. And that is impossible unless we apportion the work properly between us. You'll be fit for nothing today, and my task will be doubled in consequence. A little more of such folly and you'll break down altogether. You are strung up to more than concert pitch. As for me—I am not a machine, and though I am prepared to do my best out of mere humanity, I don't pretend to do the impossible. Nor shall I answer for your father's life if you force me to nurse two patients single-handed."

She looked me straight in the eye. "Very well, sir, I shall henceforth rigidly obey you."

"You must," I said and strode into the open. When I had prepared breakfast, she did not want to eat. But I had only to frown and she succumbed. Afterwards I made her lie down, and she slept through Sir Robert's groaning. It was a hideous day. The patient grew steadily worse, and so great was his strength, despite his diminutive size, that our struggles wore me out at last and I was obliged to strap him down. By nightfall he was a maniac, and his yells could be heard, I make no doubt, a mile around. And the worst of it was that my stock of bromide was gone. I had to dose him with morphia. But I had not to speak to Miss Ottley again. She woke me out of a delicious sleep at a quarter to the hour. She was quite composed, but as pale as a sheet.

"My father is going to die, I think," she whispered.

I went in and looked at him. He was straining like a tiger at his bonds. "Not to-night, at any rate," I observed. "He has the strength of six. You go straight to bed!"

She went off as meek as any lamb, and I began to talk to Sir Robert. Our conversation was somewhat entertaining. He was Ixion chained to the wheel. I was Sisyphus with a day off duty. We commiserated one another on our penalties, and bitterly assailed King Pluto's unsympathetic government. Finally we conspired to dethrone him and give the crown of Hades to Proserpine, whose putatively tender heart might be reckoned on occasionally to mitigate the anguish of our punishment. He fell into a fitful doze at last with his hand in mine, but he soon awoke, and with a yell announced the return of the imaginary plague of cats. On the whole, the night was worse than the day. And morning was no blessing. Sir Robert had shed five and forty years. He was once again at college, and if his unwilling confessions are to be relied upon, and his language, he must have been a precious handful for his masters. But now he steadily lost strength, and the flame of fever ate him up before our eyes. As the shadows lengthened into afternoon I began to look for the crisis.

Chapter III Two Lies

Sleep was not to be dreamed of that night for either of us well people. I had thought of a plan. Leaving Miss Ottley to watch the unconscious but ceaselessly babbling patient, I scoured out the sarcophagus, and then built an enormous fire before the pylon. Over this I hung the Arab's cauldron. By nightfall I had the sarcophagus nigh abrim with hot water. It formed a huge but most admirable bath. It was a heroic experiment to make; but the dark angel was in the cavern and I had little chance left. Kill or cure. It seemed a toss of the coin either way, for Sir Robert was dying fast. After the bath he slipped into a state of blank insensibility. Miss Ottley thought him asleep, and she took heart to hope. I did not deceive her. For four hours I waited, my finger continually on his pulse. It grew continually weaker. I administered nitro-glycerine every half hour, but at length even that spur failed.

"Miss Ottley," said I, "you must prepare for the worst."

She showed me a face of more than mortal courage. Pride is not always amiss in characters like hers. "I have felt it all along," she said quietly. "Will he regain his senses?"

"Yes. At least I think he will—before the end."

"Is there no hope?"

"None—unless he can be miraculously aroused. Pardon me—is he very much attached to you?"

"No—his heart and soul are wrapped up in his work. He died, to all intents and purposes, the hour he was shot. His terrible disappointment had deprived him of his best support."

"The robbery, you mean?"

"No—the knowledge of his failure. He made certain of finding the body of Ptahmes."

"Ah!" said I—and gave myself to thought. When I looked up next Miss Ottley was gazing at her father with a marble countenance, but tears were streaming from her eyes.

"You love him," I whispered.

"More than all the world," she answered simply. Her voice rang as true and unbroken as the chiming of a bell. I began in spite of myself to admire Miss Ottley.

Ten minutes passed; minutes of hideously oppressive silence. Then, without warning, Sir Robert's eyelids flickered and opened. There was the light of reason in them. I bent over him and his glance encountered mine. I pressed his hand and said in brisk, cheerful tones, "You must hurry up and get well, Sir Robert, or I shall not be able to restrain my curiosity. This Ptahmes of yours is the most extraordinary mummy I have ever seen; and I am simply dying to take him from his shroud."

The dim eyes of the dying man actually glowed. His fingers clutched at my wrist, and with a superhuman effort he gasped forth, "No—No."

"Be easy," I returned, "I'll not touch him till you are well. But you must hurry. Remember we are of a trade, you and I."

He smiled and very slowly his eyes closed. His breathing was absolutely imperceptible; but his pulse, though faint, was regular. I made sure and then put down his hand.

"He is dead," said Miss Ottley, and her voice thrilled me to the core.

"No," said I, "he is sleeping like a babe. The crisis is over. He will live."

"Oh! my God!" she cried, and fell on her knees beside the bed shaken with a storm of sobbing.

I sneaked out of the temple and smoked my first pipe in three days. I was only half through it when I felt her at my side.

"No, please continue smoking," she said, "I like it, really. I have come to try and thank you."

"You can't," I replied; "I'm not a man to overestimate his own services, but this is the sort of thing that cannot be repaid by either gold or words."

"Oh!" she said.

"You see," I went on, "I lied. It was to save his life—for your sake. The sight of your distress touched me. I am glad that he will live, of course. Glad to have served you. But the fact remains, I am a liar."

"Dr. Pinsent!" she cried.

"Oh, I daresay I'll grow used to it," I interrupted cheerfully. "Perhaps I have only shed a superstition, after all. I confess to an unwonted feeling of freedom, too. Undoubtedly I was shackled, in a sense. Yet a convict chained for years feels naked, I am told, when he gets, suddenly, his liberty. I can easily believe it. My own experience—but enough; we leave the patient too long alone."

She flitted off like a phantom and as noiselessly. I refilled my pipe. An hour later I found them both asleep, she seated on the camp-stool leaning back against the tomb. Nature had been too strong for her, poor girl. I felt towards her the brotherhood of vice. She, too, had lied—in pretending a little while before—a hatred of tobacco.

I took her quietly and gently in my arms and carried her to her own cot in the inner cabin. She did not wake.

Chapter IV The Sarcophagus's Perfume

Towards morning my mind grew much easier. Sir Robert awoke and took a few mouthfuls of liquid nourishment. But although too weak to speak, he was sensible and the fever had left him. He fell asleep again immediately. Soon afterwards my eyes fell on the sarcophagus. Its great size affected me with wonder—and its construction. Why should imperishable treasures, gold, silver, and precious stones be enclosed in lead? Why not in stone? And the sarcophagus had been hermetically sealed too, witness the chisel and saw marks on the lid, of Ottley's making. I examined them attentively, then sat down and stared at the sarcophagus again. It was coffin shaped. Why? If it had been intended for a mere treasure chest surely—I was struck suddenly by a fact and a remembrance. The sarcophagus manifestly measured four feet high at least. And I remembered that in filling it with water for Sir Robert's bath I had only had to fill eighteen inches in depth. What if underneath the treasure it contained another chamber overlaid with lead? There was room. I got afoot and measured the depth of water on my arm. Eighteen, well, certainly not more than nineteen inches. I seized a bucket and began to bail the water out, having need to be noiseless for the sleepers' sake. The task occupied the better part of half an hour. By then morning had begun to pale the lamplight, and I was weary. But I kept on, and finally mopped the interior of the huge basin dry with a towel. Thereupon I examined the bottom with the lamp. It did not show a single crevice. The lead was in a solid and impervious sheet. Curious. But the difference between the eighteen inches and the four feet remained to be accounted for. Was the interspace filled with lead? If so—why such uneconomic expenditure of a valuable mineral? The mystery interested me so much that my weariness was forgotten. I felt that at any cost it must be solved forthwith. Casting about, I found a fine-pointed and razor-sharp chisel in the drawer of Sir Robert Ottley's camp table. With this, I set to work. Climbing into the sarcophagus, I selected a spot, and using the weight of my body in place of a hammer, I forced the chisel into the lead. It bit into the metal slowly but surely. One inch. One inch and a half. Suddenly it slipped. I fell forward and was brought up by the handle. The mystery was solved. I recovered my position and wiped my forehead. Instantly a thin but strangely overpowering perfume filled my nostrils. It resembled camphor, and violets, and lavender, and oil of almonds, and a hundred other scents, but was truly like none of them. It created and compelled, however, a confused train of untranslatable reflections which might have been memories. But God knows what they were. I experienced a mysterious sensation of immeasurable antiquity. And wildly absurd as the idea appears set forth in sober language, something assured me that I was thousands of years old or had lived before—so long—so very long ago. I saw lights—the sound of chanting voices and of rushing waters filled my ears. I seemed to be assisting at a solemn ritual. Ghostly forces and dim spirit figures filled the cave. The air was thick with incense fumes. My reason rocked and swung. Just in time I realised that I was becoming mysteriously anæsthetised. I held my breath and with a powerful effort leaped to the floor. Then I carefully blocked up the chisel hole with my kerchief and staggered into the open air. Very soon I was my own man again. Returning filled with apprehension for the patient, I found nothing to alarm me. The perfume had absolutely disappeared. Sir Robert was sleeping like a babe. I took a nip of brandy and sitting down, gave myself to dreams watching the sarcophagus. What was its secret? And what the secret of Sir Robert Ottley's passionate interest in the corpse of Ptahmes that had been potent enough to call him back to life from the very brink of dissolution? But plainly I must wait to learn. For it would not do to trifle with the perfume in the cavern. In that confined space it might bring about the destruction of us all. Already it had affected me. My head ached fearfully, and I knew that my blood vessels were distended, and that my heart was still violently excited. My agitation was not all painful. There was an insidious pleasure mingled with it, an intangible titillation of the nerves; but that only alarmed me the more. The poisons that are most to be feared are those which captivate the senses; they convey no warning to the body, and betray the mind, however watchful, by effecting a paralysis of will. Perhaps—unwittingly—I had been very near death. The notion was disturbing. I began to regard the sarcophagus much in the light of an infernal machine possessing dangerous potentialities for ill. I determined as soon as possible—that is to say, as soon as help arrived—to have it removed from the sick room to the pylon. There at least it would be less manifestly perilous; having the play of the whole wide desert atmosphere in which to dissipate its noxious energies.

A rustling sound dissolved my meditations. I glanced up and saw Miss Ottley bending over her father. I slipped out and sought the Arab's quarters. Soon I had a good fire alight and water on to boil. I rather spread myself that morning. I cooked some tinned asparagus, boiled a tinned chicken, and opened a jar of prunes. Breakfast spread on the lid of a brandy box looked and smelled very good. I carried it up to the pylon and whistled "Come into the garden, Maude."

Miss Ottley appeared at once, round eyed with surprise.

"Your father has already eaten," I observed. "In all likelihood he will sleep for hours yet. Kindly sit down. You'll excuse my novel breakfast call. It is the only invitational air I am acquainted with."

She stared at me.

"May one not be lighthearted when all goes well?" I asked.

"One may," she answered. Then her eyes fell and she coloured painfully. "But not two. I slept at my post. Oh! how could I?" Her voice was quite despairing and bitterly contemptuous.

I bit at the leg of a chicken which I held in my fingers. "After all, you are a woman, you know," I commented, with my mouth full. "This chick's prime—done to a turn."

"How tired you must be!"

"I'm not complaining. Nor do I grudge you the extra rest. You look better. Hungry?"

"Y-yes," she admitted.

"Then don't be a ninny spending time in vain regrets. Fall to and repair your waste tissues. In plain English—eat."

She sat down on a ruined column and I handed her a plate.

"You look—positively merry!" she said. "You are nursing some—pleasant—or profitable reflection." She considered the words with care.

"I have discovered that I may have—told the truth to your father last night after all. By accident."

"I beg your pardon."

"I believe I have found your friend Ptahmes, Miss Ottley."

The plate slid off her lap and broke. Chicken and gravy littered the pavement. But she had no idea of it. "Impossible!" she cried.

I explained my examination of the sarcophagus and the result in detail. She sat gazing at me like a graven image. When she had finished she arose and vanished—without a word. I followed and found her standing beside the great lead coffin, my kerchief in her hand. She had reopened the chisel hole, and the cavern was already saturated with the infernal gas. I snatched my handkerchief away and once more blocked the vent. Then I exerted all my strength and with a prodigious effort placed the lid on the sarcophagus. With a woman's curiosity to reckon with, such a precaution seemed a vital safeguard. I found her standing in the pylon, breathing like a spent runner.

"You might have taken my word," I said coldly. "You'd have saved yourself an ugly headache at the least."

Her face was crimson; her eyes burned like stars. The fumes of that uncanny perfume had made her drunk. She swayed and leaned dizzily against a pillar. I went up and took her hand. The pulse was beating like a miniature steam hammer.

"Sit down," I said.

She laughed and sank at my feet in a heap. "Oh! Oh!" she cried and fell to sobbing half hysterically though tearlessly.

"Lord!" I said aloud. "What a bundle of hysterical humours it is, and how plain to look on when its resolution takes a holiday."

That is the way to treat hysteria.

Miss Ottley sat up and withered me with a glance. "I—I am. It—it's not hysteria," she stammered, between gasps. "Besides—you—confessed—it—overcame—you, too."

Then she fainted. I sprang up, but even as I moved I heard a loud sigh in the cavern. "The sick man first," I muttered, and let the girl lie. But at the door of the cavern chamber I stood transfixed. A dark shape bent over the patient's cot, hiding Sir Robert Ottley's face from view. It seemed to be a man, but its back was presented to my gaze. "What the deuce are you doing here, whoever you are?" I cried out, and started forward. The shape melted on the instant into thinnest air. "Nothing but a shadow," I said to myself. It was necessary to say something. I was shocked to my soul. I stood for a moment shaking and dismayed. The shadow had been so thick and bodily and had fled so like a spirit that I had work to do to readjust my scattered faculties. Of course a shadow—and my eyes, dazzled by the sunlight without, had momentarily failed to pierce it. A reasonable and quite ample scientific explanation. But what had cast the shadow? Pish—what but myself? And yet: and yet: I was shivering like a blancmange. Never had my nerves used me so ill. Perhaps, however, that accursed perfume had affected them. Ah! there was a reassuring solution of the puzzle. Reassuring to my reason, be it understood, for the fleshy part of me was taken with an ague and refused for many seconds to return to its subjection to my will. Sometimes now I doubt but that the flesh has an intelligence apart from the brain cells and nerve structures that usually control it. Indeed, I have never met a man of intellect whose memory does not register experience of some occasion in which his flesh took independent fright—like a startled hare—at some bogie which made his sober reason subsequently smile; nay, contemptuously at times. "Well, well," I said at length and pushed forward—to receive another shock. Sir Robert Ottley was almost nude. The bed clothes had been pushed down past his waist. His fingers convulsively gripped the paillasse. His face was livid. His eyes were open and upturned. His whole form was stiff and rigid. A fit? It seemed so. His pulse was still. He did not breathe. But a cataleptic fit then, for at a lance prick the blood flowed. I forced him to his right side and tried massage. No use. Strychnine and nitro-glycerine equally refused to act. Finally I saturated a cloth with amyl nitrate, placed it over his open mouth and tried artificial respiration. A whole hour had passed already, but I refused to give in. It was well. In another twenty minutes my efforts were rewarded with a sigh. I kept on and the man began to breathe. When it seemed safe to leave off, I disposed him easily and watched events. First his normal colouring returned. Then his mouth closed. Finally his eyes revolved. The lids closed and opened several times, then rested closed. His pulse beat feverishly, but in spite of that he slept. I walked to the door. Miss Ottley—whom I had completely forgotten—still lay insensible where she had fallen. I picked her up and brought her into the cavern. She awoke to consciousness in transit. I forced her to drink a stiff nobbler of brandy, and very soon she was in her old, cold, bright, proud, self-reliant state—armed cap-a-pie with insolence and egotism.

"Is your father subject to fits?" I asked.

"He has never had, till this, a day's illness in his life," she responded—with a touch of indignation.

I nodded. "Well, his period of disease indemnity has passed. While you swooned he had a fit. I use the expression colloquially. You would probably have so described his condition had you seen him. As for me I don't know. The symptoms were unique. I restored him by treating him as a drowned man. He was in a sort of trance. From this moment he must never be left, even for a second."

"He was insensible?"

"He was inanimate."

"That perfume!" she cried.

I shrugged my shoulders. "No doubt."

We glanced at the sarcophagus, then at each other.

"Was there need?" she asked, colouring. Then her eyes sparkled. "Oh, for such strength!" she cried. "It took six Arabs to lift that coffin lid. You must be a Samson."

"Fortunately," I observed.

Her brows drew together and her lips. "You treat me in a way that I resent," she said. "I am as reasonable a being as yourself."

I retired to a corner and stretched myself upon the floor without replying.

"When do you wish to be aroused?" she asked.

"An hour before sunset. We must eat—that is I. You appear to thrive on air."

She bit her lips and I stared at the ceiling. I was dog-tired, but could not sleep. I counted a thousand and then glanced at Miss Ottley. Her gaze was fixed on me.

"You are overtired," she said, and her tone was pure womanly.

It irritated and amused me to find she could so unaffectedly assume it. I smiled.

She interpreted the smile aloud. "What sound reason have you for despising me?" she asked. "You pretend to be a scientist. Answer me as such, rejecting bias."

"I don't," said I.

"Then you dislike me; why?"

"I don't."

Her lip curled. "Oh, indeed." She arose and brought me a cushion. I took it and our hands touched. "I must conclude, then, that you like me?" She drew her hand swiftly away and returned to her seat.

I smiled again. "Undoubtedly, Miss Ottley."

"Thank you." The tone was instinct with sarcasm.

"Confess that you are craving for a little human sympathy."

"I!" she exclaimed and started haughtily.

"Being a woman and in a simply damnable position."

"Ah!" she cried, "you admit that."

"My dear girl, whenever I think of it your pluck amazes me."

To my astonishment her eyes closed and her bosom heaved. Then I saw such a struggle as I do not wish ever to witness again. Pride prevented her from raising her hand to hide her face. And pride put up a superhuman fight with human weakness. Her features were distorted. One could see that soul and body were engaged in mortal combat. That spectacle was poignantly fascinating. I thrilled to see it and yet hated myself for not being able to look away. Why—who knows? But at length I could stand it no longer. I got up and shook her gently. She stiffened into marble, but did not offer to resist me.

"Peace, peace," I said. "You foolish, foolish child, you are wasting forces that were given you for quite another purpose."

Suddenly her eyes opened and looked straight in mine. "What?" she questioned, and two great tears rolled down her cheeks.

"Why do you hate your sex?" I asked. "God knows it is more valuable than mine."

"Man," she muttered—and shuddered from me—bitterly defiant.

"Woman," I retorted. "And each of us with a fateful mission to fulfil, not to fight against."

"Yours to sting, to hurt, to crush."

"And yours to foster and create a better, finer-natured breed."

"Generous?" she sneered. "Is it possible?"

"My dear girl," said I, "I haven't a temper to lose; I am a sober, cold-blooded man of the world. Of thirty."

I laughed out heartily, then stopped, remembering the patient. He stirred and we both hurried to his side. But he did not wake.

I looked up and offered Miss Ottley my right hand.

"We started badly," I whispered, "but still we may be friends."

Her eyes darkened with anger. She stood like a statue regarding me, her expression sphinx-like and brooding. "Instinct says one thing and pride another!" I hazarded.

She coloured to her chin, but her firm glance did not falter.

"Ah, well," said I, and made off to my stone couch, convinced that a man who argues with a woman is a fool. And I was punished properly. She haunted my dreams.

Chapter V The Shadow in the Cave

We ate heartily, the pair of us, that evening. The effect on me was comforting and humanising. I felt well disposed to my fellow man—and woman, and inclined to sanguine expectations. Miss Ottley, however, was, as usual, impenetrable. She belonged of right to the age of iron. A female anachronism. To cheer her I suggested a game of chess. She consented, and mated me in fourteen moves. We played again, and once more she beat me. My outspoken admiration of her skill—I rather fancy my own play at chess—left her perfectly imperturbable. In the third game she predicted my defeat at the eleventh move on making her own fourth. I did my best, but her prophecy was fulfilled. "Enough!" said I, and retiring to the door way, I lighted a cigarette.

"Hassan Ali, our dragoman, should be here to-morrow," she presently remarked, "with troops."

"They will never catch our rascal Arabs," I replied. "With five clear days' start those beggars might be anywhere."

"Just so," said she, "but they will be of some use none the less—if only to drag that sarcophagus out of the temple."

"Eh!" I exclaimed—and looked at her sharply. "What is the matter with the thing—here?"

She shrugged her shoulders, then of a sudden smiled. "Do you wish to be amused?"

"Of all things."

"Then prepare to laugh at me. While you slept this afternoon——" She paused.

"Yes," I said.

"My father awoke."

"Oh!"

"And conversed."

"Good," I murmured. "He was sensible."

"I do not know. He seemed so. But he did not speak to me."

"You said that he conversed."

"Ay—but with a shadow."

Miss Ottley compressed her lips and looked at me defiantly.

"A shadow," she repeated. "I saw it distinctly. It moved across the room and stood beside the cot. It was the shadow of a man. But you are not laughing."

"Not yet," said I. "Had this shadow a voice?"

"No."

"What did your father say to it?"

"He implored it to be patient."

"And the shadow?"

"Vanished."

"And you?"

"I told myself I dreamed. I tried not to die of terror, and succeeded."

"Why did you not wake me?"

"I wished to, but the shadow intervened."

"It reappeared?"

"For a second that reduced me to a state of trembling imbecility."

"That infernal perfume has simply shattered your nerves," I commented cheerfully. "You'll be better after a good rest. Overstrain and anxiety of course are to a degree responsible. Indeed, they might be held accountable for the hallucination alone. But I blame the perfume to a great extent, because it similarly affected me."

"What!" she cried, "you saw a shadow, too?"

I laughed softly. "My own—no other. But its appearance shocked me horribly. In my opinion that coffin perfume works powerfully upon the optic nerve. How are you feeling now?"

"As well as ever in my life."

"No fears?"

"None. But I admit a distrust of that sarcophagus—or rather of the perfume it contains. Are you sure that you stopped up the chisel hole securely?"

"Quite. But pardon me, Miss Ottley, you are looking weary. Take my advice and retire now."

"Thanks. I shall," she said, and with a cool bow she went into the inner chamber. An hour later Sir Robert awoke. He was quite sensible and appeared much better. I fed him and we exchanged a few cheerful remarks. He declared that he had turned the corner and expressed a strong desire to be up and about his work again. He also asked after his daughter, and thanked me warmly for my services. Soon afterwards he dropped off into a tranquil slumber, and I spent the remainder of my watch reading a Review. As I was not very tired I gave Miss Ottley grace, and it was a quarter to one when I awakened her. She came out looking as fresh as a rose, her cheeks scarlet from their plunge in cool water and consequent towelling. She invited me to use her couch, but I declined, and sought my accustomed corner. I slept like the dead—for (I subsequently discovered) just about an hour. But then I awoke choking and gasping for breath. I had an abominable sensation of strong fingers clutched about my throat. At first all was dark before me. But struggling afoot, the shadows receded from my eyes, and I saw the lamp—a second afterwards, Miss Ottley. She stood with her back against the further wall of the chamber, her hands outstretched as if to repel an impetuous opponent; and her face was cast in an expression of unutterable terror.

"Miss Ottley!" I cried.

She uttered a strangled scream, then staggered towards me. "Oh! thank God—you were too strong—for him," she gasped. "He tried to kill you—and I could not move nor cry."

"Who?" I demanded.

"The—the shadow." She caught my arms and gripped them with hysterical vigour.

I forced her to sit down and hurried to her father. He was sleeping like a babe. I thought of the asphyxiating sensation I had experienced and stepped gently to my sleeping corner. Kneeling down, I struck a match. The flame burned steadily. Not carbonic acid gas then at all events; but I tried the whole room to make sure, also the interior of the sarcophagus, but without result. So far baffled, I stood up and thought. What agency had been at work to disturb us? I made a tour of the walls and examined the stones of their construction one by one. It seemed just possible that there might be a secret entrance to the chamber; and some robber Arab acquainted with it might be employing it for evil ends. But I was forced to abandon that idea like the other. And no one had entered through the pylon, for the dust about the doorway was absolutely impressionless. What then? I turned to Miss Ottley. She was watching me with evidently painful expectation, her hands tightly clasped.

"What made you think the shadow wished to kill me?" I inquired.

"I saw its face."

"Oh! it has a face now, eh?"

"The face of a devil; and long thin hands. It fastened them about your throat."

"My dear girl."

"Don't be a fool," she retorted stormily; "what aroused you? Did you hear me call?"

I was confounded. "Very good," I said, "I admit the hands at least, for the nonce, for truly I was half strangled. But what do you infer?"

"Can human creatures make themselves invisible at will?"

"My good Miss Ottley, no. But they can run away."

"Do you want to see the shadow's face?"

"Yes."

"Then look on the lid of the sarcophagus and see its portrait in a gentle mood."

"Ptahmes!" I cried.

"Ay, Ptahmes," she said slowly. "We are haunted by his spirit."

I sat down on the edge of the sarcophagus and lit a cigarette.

"I am quite at a present loss to explain my throttling," I observed, "but that is the only mystery. I reject your shadow with the contempt that it deserves. What you saw was some wandering Arab who hopped in here without troubling to tread through the dust in the doorway and who departed in the same fashion. Pish! There, too, is the mystery of my throttling solved."

"Perhaps," said she, "indeed I hope so." She was still trembling in spasms.

"Are you minded for the experiment?" I asked.

"What is it?"

"I wish to drive this foolish fancy from your mind." I took out my revolver and showed it to her. "Spirits are said to love the dark best. Let us put out the lamp. It's their element. How, then, can we better tempt old Ptahmes from his tomb?" I wound up with a laugh. "I can promise him a warm reception."

Miss Ottley shivered and grew if possible paler than before. But her pride was equal to the challenge. "Very well," she said.

I drew up a stool near hers, put out the lamp and sat down. When my cigarette had burned out the darkness was blacker than the blackest ebony.

"An idea runs in my head that spirits respond most surely to silent wooers," I murmured. "But I have no experience. Have you?"

"N-no," said Miss Ottley.

The poor girl was shivering with fear and too proud to admit it. I sought about for a pretext to comfort her and found one presently.

"Don't they join hands at a séance?" I inquired.

"I—I—t-think so," said Miss Ottley.

"Well, then."

Our hands encountered. Hers was pitifully cold. I enclosed it firmly in my left and held it on my knee. She sighed but ever so softly, trying to prevent my hearing it. Thereafter we were silent for very long, listening to the sick man's quiet breathing. No other sound was to be heard. But soon Miss Ottley's hand grew warm, and the fingers twined around mine. It felt a nice good little hand. It was very small, yet firm and silken-smooth, and it possessed a strange electric quality. It made mine tingle—a distinctly pleasurable sensation. I fell into a dreamy mood and I think I must have indulged in forty winks, when all of a sudden Miss Ottley's hand aroused me. Her fingers were gripping mine with the force of a vice. She was breathing hard.

"What is it?" I whispered.

"There is some—presence in the room," she gasped. "Don't you feel it?"

And as I live, I did. I struck a match and sprang afoot. Three paces off a man's face glowered at us in the fitful glimmer of the lucifer. Its characteristics were so unusual that it is not possible ever to forget them. The eyes were large, dark and singularly dull. They were set at an extraordinary distance apart in the skull, six inches, I should say, at least. But the head, though abnormally broad thereabouts, tapered to a point in the chin and was cone-shaped above the wide receding temples. The cheek bones were high and prominent. They shone in the match light almost white in contrast with the dark skin of the more shaded portions of the countenance. The nose was long and aquiline, but the nostrils were broad and compressed at the base, pointing at negroid ancestry. The mouth, wide and thin-lipped, was tightly shut. The chin was long, sharp and hairless. The ears were bat-shaped.

Recovering from my first shock of amazement, I addressed the intruder in Arabic.

"What are you doing here? What do you want?" I cried.

He did not answer. Enraged, I started forward and hit out from the shoulder. Striking air. The match went out. I lit another. The man had vanished. I relighted the lamp and carefully examined the chamber. But our visitor had not left the slightest sign of his intrusion.

I shook my head and went over to Miss Ottley. She was leaning against the wall with her eyes shut, her bosom heaving painfully.

I touched her and she started—suppressing a shriek. Her lips were trickling blood where she had bitten them. Her face was ghastly and she seemed about to swoon.

"Pish!" I cried, "there is nothing to be frightened of. A rascally Arab—knows some secret way of entering this cavern, that is all."

She swayed towards me. I caught her as she fell and bore her to a stool. But though quite overcome she was not unconscious. Yet her fortitude was broken down at last and she was helpless. She could not even sit up unassisted. Placing her on the floor a while, I made her drink some spirit and then, lifting her upon my knee, I rocked her in my arms like a child and did my best to soothe her fears. Heavens, how she cried! My handkerchief was soon as wet as if I had soused it in a basin of water, and yet she still cried on. I spoke to her all the time. I told her that I would answer for her safety with my life, and all sorts of things. And thinking of her as a poor little child, I called her "dear" continually and "darling"—and I let her weep herself into an exhausted sleep upon my breast. And when that happened I did not need anyone to tell me that science was no longer the mistress of my fate or that I, a comparative pauper, had committed the unutterable folly of falling in love with the daughter of a millionaire—whose religion was Pride with a capital P. I held her so till dawn, staring dumbly at her face, and thus when her eyes opened they looked straight into mine. She did not move, and half-unwillingly my arms tightened round her. "The bad dream is over, little girl," I whispered. "See—the golden sunlight."

"May—May," said Sir Robert's voice.

She started up, her face aflame. I followed her to the bedside. The patient was awake, and strong and hungry. Also querulous. He complained of the pain of the wound and ordered me to dress it. He had seen nothing. But I knew Miss Ottley would not forgive me on that account. I read it in her eyes. After I had dressed the patient's wound and we had fed him, she followed me to the door.

"You had no right to let me sleep—like that," she said imperiously.

There was nothing for it but to insult her or to prove myself an adventurer. I had no mind for the latter course. "Quite right," I returned, "when you behaved like an idiot I should have treated you as such and left you to recover from your own silly terror instead of acting the soft fool and losing my own rest in serving you. I'll do it, too—next time. What will you have for breakfast?"

She swung on her heel and left me.

Chapter VI Enter Dr. Belleville

While waiting for the kettle to boil I happened to glance in the direction of the Nile. A column of moving smoke at once attracted my attention. A launch, of course, and what more likely than that it should contain soldiers, Arabs, servants, and a surgeon. "I shall soon be free to return to my work, it seems!" I said aloud, and it is wonderful what a lot of dissatisfaction the reflection gave me. I came within an ace, indeed, of consigning the Nile Monuments to literary perdition. But only temporarily. For I felt that I should need as engrossing mental occupation soon. Work is a fine consoler. The party arrived a few minutes before noon. It consisted of Sir Robert Ottley's dragoman, half a company of Egyptian camel corps under command of a fussy little English-French lieutenant named Thomas Dubois, some twenty swart-faced fellaheen labourers, and two English friends of Sir Robert and his daughter. The latter were rather singular personages. One was middle-aged, short and thick and "bearded like the pard" up to his very eyes. He rejoiced in the name of William Belleville and was a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. The other one was tall and thin and marvellously good-looking. He called himself Captain Frankfort Weldon, and I soon discovered was an Honourable. Preparatory to discharging myself in toto of my responsibilities, I took charge of the entire crowd. I have been assured by my best friends that I am a natural autocrat. Those who are not my friends have sometimes described me as an arrogant and self-assertive egotist. I contend, however, that I was eminently well qualified to judge what was best to be done, in that instance, at all events, and it is not my fault that Weldon and Belleville chose to consider themselves slighted because I did not ask their advice. Within ten minutes I had sent the camel soldiers packing across the desert in the direction taken by the Arab robbers. They did not want to go in the least, but I put my foot down hard, and they went. Without losing a moment thereafter I made the fellaheen erect a large double tent in a shaded cleft in the mountain at some distance from the temple. It did not take them long, for I directed their operations personally. I then marched them to the temple. Miss Ottley was talking to the Englishmen in the pylon. I bowed and passed her, followed by the fellaheen. I gave to each man a task, the carriage of some piece of furniture. The two strongest I appointed as bearers of Sir Robert Ottley's cot. The baronet was awake. He questioned me.

"What are you doing, Pinsent?"

"I'm going to move you to a tent for better air, to hasten your recovery," I said.

He only sighed and wearily closed his eyes.

Then the procession started. When Miss Ottley saw her father being carried out, she was so surprised that she stood dumb. Turning round a little later I saw that she and her friends were conversing amiably. Arrived at the tents, I fixed the patient comfortably, then arranged the furniture in both apartments; the outer, of course, was to be Miss Ottley's room.

When all was done, I dismissed the fellaheen to other tasks and walked up to Ottley's cot. "Sir Robert," said I.

His eyes opened and he looked at me.

"You know that your friend, Dr. Belleville, has come?"

"Yes—we have had a chat."

"So. Well, I now propose to turn the case over to him. Your recovery should be rapid. You are already practically convalescent."

"You are leaving me?"

"You no longer need my services."

"How can I ever repay you, Pinsent, for your extreme kindness to me?"

"Easily; let me be present when you open the coffin of Ptahmes."

"What?"

"Ah!" said I, "I forgot." I then told him of my experiment with the sarcophagus, and the perfume. He listened with the most passionate attention. Finally he said:

"You are not certain the sarcophagus does contain the body, though?"

"Not certain, Sir Robert."

"Yet you told me, if I remember aright, that, that——"

"You were dying," I interrupted. "I had to arouse you. But, after all, I feel sure your desire will be gratified. I have no sort of doubt but that a body lies in the coffin."

"Nor I," said he. "The papyrus speaks of an essential oil the mere scent of which arrests decay. Ptahmes alone knew the secret of its preparation. But the sarcophagus must be guarded, Pinsent."

"I'll fix a watch," I said, and held out my hand. "Good-bye, sir."

"You are returning to your camp?"

"Yes."

"Then au revoir, Pinsent. I shall send for you as soon as I am well enough to investigate the coffin."

"Thank you."

But he continued to hold my hand and looked me in the eyes earnestly. "Be careful of yourself," he murmured.

"Careful," I repeated, puzzled.

"Ay," he murmured still lower, "you have incurred the curse unwittingly—but still you have incurred it."

"What curse?"

"The curse which Ptahmes directed against all desecrators of his tomb."

I thought he raved, and felt his pulse. But it was steady as a rock. "Come, come," I said with a smile. "I shall be thinking you a superstitious man, Sir Robert, presently."

"Do you believe in God?" he asked.

"Yes," I cried, astounded.

"Then are you not superstitious, too? But there, I have warned you. I'll say no more. Good-bye. Kindly send my daughter to me."

I found Miss Ottley and the two Englishmen at the door of the outer tent. "Sir Robert wants you, Miss Ottley," I observed, and passed on. I had hardly gone a dozen yards, however, when I found I had a companion on either side of me.

Dr. Belleville immediately opened fire. "You have been taking time by the forelock, Dr. Pinsent," he said softly. "I should hardly have moved the patient for a day or two. He is very weak."

"My name is Frankfort Weldon—Captain Weldon," said the handsome soldier—introducing himself. "I think you have annoyed Miss Ottley, Dr. Pinsent. Seems to me you should have consulted her before acting, at least."

I glanced from one to the other and shrugged my shoulders. "The thing is done," said I. "Gentlemen, good-day." My long legs left them quickly in the rear. There seemed no good reason to waste time in explaining myself to them. They would soon enough find out the reasonableness of my actions for themselves, if possessed of ordinary human curiosity. But a second later I stopped and turned. "Dr. Belleville," I shouted, "I shall fix a watch at the temple. Ottley wishes it maintained. Miss Ottley will tell you why."

I found the fellaheen collected in a group near the old store house. They eyed me approaching with open sullenness. I chose two among their number and directed them to stand guard before the pylon for four hours. The two I had picked moved off obediently enough, but they were stopped almost on instant by their leader, a big ruffian with a scarred, black face and wild, fiercely scowling eyes. Sir Robert Ottley's dragoman hurried to my side. "Softly, Excellency, or there will be trouble," he muttered. "Let me speak to them. Yazouk is a chief—he will not be commanded. His term of service does not start till to-morrow. He is angry."

"Silence, you," I responded in the same tone. "There is but one way to crush a nigger mutiny."

I stepped smilingly forward, looking into Yazouk's eyes. The black giant—he stood six feet four in his bare feet and was a splendid physical specimen—put his hand on the knife in his belt. But before he could guess at my intention he was sprawling on the sand. He uttered the yell of an angry wild beast and, springing up, rushed at me with bare blade. I stepped aside and kicked him in the stomach. He collapsed, howling dismally. I marched up to the rest, who were all handling their knives, and showed them my revolver. Two minutes later they were all disarmed and I was a walking arsenal. I turned to the dragoman. "I am going away, Mehemet—to my own camp. But so that you will have no trouble with this scum, I shall take their chief with me. I need a servant."

Mehemet bowed to the very ground. "Your Excellency knows best," he muttered reverently.

"Yazouk," said I, "yonder is my ass. Go saddle him for me."

Yazouk went. He returned with the ass saddled and bridled before I was half through a cigarette. I mounted forthwith and started towards my long-deserted camp. "Come, Yazouk!" I called out carelessly, and I took good care not to look back. There is no means surer of making an African obey you than to act as if you are certain he has no alternative. Perhaps Yazouk hesitated for a moment, torn with fear and hate, but he followed me. Soon I heard the patter of his footsteps on the sand. Then I said to myself, "Now, if this man is to remain with me and be my servant I must make him fear me as he would the plague. But how?" I solved the riddle at the end of five miles. I must show him that I despised him utterly. So I stopped. He stopped. Twenty paces separated us. "Yazouk," I said, "come here!"

He approached, eyeing me like a wolf. "From this day for a month, Yazouk, you shall be my slave," I observed calmly. "If you prove a good slave I shall pay you when the term ends at the rate of fifty piasters a day. If you offend me by so much as winking an eyelash I shall not only pay you nothing, but I shall ask Poseidon to transform you into a hyena. Will you like that?"

Yazouk did not remark on my dreadful threat, but there was murder in his eyes. I smiled at him, and, always looking him full in the face, I took one by one the knives I had taken from his fellows, from my belt and cast them on the sand at his feet. "It is not fit for a lord to carry such trash when he has a slave," I said. "Pick up those knives."

Yazouk obeyed me. When he stood upright again there was a great doubt in his eyes. I thought to myself, it would be quite easy for this ruffian to murder me at any time in my sleep, and already I am a wreck for want of sleep. I threw my revolver on the sand. "Carry that, too!" I commanded loftily—and spurred my ass on. Probably a volume might be written on the state of Yazouk's mind as he trudged along behind me to my camp—a whole compendium of psychology. But I cannot write it, because I never once glanced at him, and, therefore, I can only guess at the turmoil of his thoughts. But the event justified my expectations. I was so mortally wearied when I reached my camp that I had no heart left even to discover whether my precious manuscripts had been disturbed by some chance wayfarer of the wilderness. It sufficed me that my tent was standing and that it contained a cot. I cast myself down, without even troubling to remove my boots, and I slept like the dead for sixteen solid hours. When I awoke it was high noon. A steaming bowl of coffee stood upon my table and a mess of baked rice and fish. Beside the plate lay my revolver, and every one of the knives I had given Yazouk to carry. Yazouk himself stood at the flap of the tent, a monstrous, stolid sentinel. When I arose he bent almost double. I swept the armoury into a drawer and attacked my breakfast with the relish of a famished man. Then I set to work with the energy of a giant refreshed; and with short intervals for meals, sleep and exercise, I toiled at my book thereafter till it was roughly finished. So twenty days sped by. Throughout Yazouk waited upon me like the slave of Aladdin's lamp. I had not a fault to find with him. Indeed, he was a perfect jewel of a servant, and he stood in such abject terror of my every movement, nod or smile or frown, that I could have wished to retain his services for ever. But that was not to be. On the twenty-first morning he accidentally dropped a cup and broke it. I heard the smash and looked up. It was to see Yazouk flying like a panic-stricken deer into the desert. I shouted to recall him, but he only sped the faster.

Chapter VII The One Goddess

I spent the rest of the day covering up the stele I had unearthed with sand. There was no use thinking of attempting to transport it to Cairo under existing circumstances. But I had no mind to be deprived of the credit attached to its discovery. So I hid it well. Afterwards I gathered up my portable possessions, including my tent, and packed them in a load for my ass's back ready for the morrow. For I had resolved to set out on the morrow for the Hill of Rakh. Surely, I thought, Ottley will be quite recovered by this. I wondered why he had not sent for me before—in accordance with his pledge. Had he forgotten it? The desert was exceptionally still that evening. There was a new moon, and although it gave but little light, it seemed to have chained the denizens of the wilderness to cover. I lay upon the sand gazing up at the stars and listening in vain for sounds, for hours, then, at length, I fell into a quiet doze. The howling of a jackal awakened me. It was very far off, therefore I must have slept lightly. A long sleep, for the moon had disappeared. The darkness that lay upon the land was like the impenetrable gloom of a rayless cave. But the heavens were spangled with twinkling eyes, that beamed upon me very friendly wise. I had lost all desire to repose, but I had found a craving for a pipe. I took out my old briar-wood, therefore, charged it to the brim and struck a match. "My God!" I gasped and scrambled afoot. The tall Arab who had terrified Miss Ottley in the cave temple at Rakh stood about three paces off intently regarding me. I struck a second match before the first had burned out, then felt for my revolver.

"Tell me what it is you want," I cried in Arabic, "and quickly, or I fire."

He did not speak, but very slowly he moved towards me. I raised the pistol. "Stop," I said. He did not stop. "Then have it!" I cried, and pulled the trigger.

He did not flinch from the blistering flash of the discharge. It seemed to me that it should have seared his face and that the bullet should have split his skull. I had a momentary glimpse of a ghastly, brownish-yellow visage and of two dull widely separated eyes peering into mine. Then all was dark again and I was struggling as never I had struggled in my life before. Long, stiff fingers clutched my throat. A rigid wood-like form was pressed against my own and my nostrils were filled with a sickly penetrating odour which I all too sharply recognised. It was the perfume that had issued from the sarcophagus of Ptahmes when I drove my chisel through the lead. At first I grasped nothing but air. But clutching wildly at the things that gripped my throat, I caught hands at last composed of bone. There was no flesh on them, or so it seemed to me. Yet it was good to grip something. It gave me heart. I had a horrible feeling for some awful seconds of contending with the supernatural. But those hands were hard and firm. They compressed my windpipe. Back and fro we writhed. I heard nothing but my own hard breathing. I was being slowly strangled. It was very hard to drag those hands apart. But I am strong, stronger than many men who earn their living by exhibiting to the vulgar feats of strength. Impelled by fear of death, I exerted my reserve of force, and driving will and muscle into one supreme united effort I tore the death grip from my neck and flung the Arab off. Uttering a sobbing howl of relief and rage, I followed him and caught him by the middle. Then stooping low, I heaved him high and dashed him to the ground. There came a sound of snapping wood or bones, but neither sigh nor cry of any sort. "We'll see," I growled, and struck a match. The sand before me was dinted, but deserted. The Arab had vanished. My senses rocked in horrified astonishment. My flesh crept. A cold chill of vague unreasoning terror caught me. I listened, all my nerves taut strained, peering wildly round into the dark. But the silence was unbroken. Nothing was to be heard, nothing was to be seen. Were it not for the dinted sand and the marks of feet other than my own where we had stepped and struggled, I could have come to the conclusion I had dreamed. After a while spent in soothing panic fears, I sneaked off to my baggage and extracted from the pile a candle lamp. This I lighted and, returning, searched the sands on hands and knees. The stranger's footprints were longer than my own and they were toe-marked. Plainly, then, he had stolen on me naked-footed. Looking wide around the dint made by his falling body I came presently upon some more of them. They were each a yard apart, and led towards the Hill of Rakh. Yet only for a little while. Soon they grew fainter and fainter. Finally they disappeared. Tortured by the mystery of it all, I halted where the footprints vanished and, putting out the lamp, squatted on the ground to wait for dawn. It came an hour later, but it told me nothing fresh. Indeed, it only rendered the riddle more intolerably maddening. Where had my Arab gone? And how had he come? For there was not a single footprint leading to the camp. Of course he might have thrown a cloak before him on which to walk; and thus he might have progressed and left no trace. But wherefore such extraordinary caution? And why should he be so anxious to conceal himself? It was hard to give up the riddle, but easier to abandon than to solve it. Calling philosophy to my aid and imagination, I determined that my Arab was some mad hermit upon whose solitude Ottley had intruded in the first instance, and I in the second. And that he had conceived a particular animosity for some unknown reason against my humble self and wished to kill me. Without a doubt, he had some secret hiding-place and feared lest I should seek to discover it. Perhaps he had found some treasure of which he had constituted himself the jealous guardian. I felt sure, at any rate, that he was mad. His actions had always been so peculiar and his speechlessness so baffling and astonishing and crassly unreasonable. But he or someone had killed my donkey. I found the poor beast lying in a hollow, dead as Cæsar. A knife had been employed, a long, sharp-pointed knife—perhaps a sword. It had searched out the creature's heart and pierced it. I made a hasty autopsy in order to be sure. The circumstance was most exasperating. It condemned me to the task of being my own beast of burthen. And the load was not a light one. I made, however, the best of a bad job, and having fortified myself with a good breakfast, I started off laden like a pack-horse for the Hill of Rakh. Having covered four miles, I stopped. Miss Ottley and Captain Frankfort Weldon had suddenly come into view. They were mounted. I sat down on my baggage, lighted a cigarette and waited. Common elementary Christian charity would compel them to offer me a lift. It was a good thought. It is not right that a man should work like a beast. And, besides, it was cheering to see Miss Ottley again. She came up looking rather care-worn and a good deal surprised. I arose and doffed my hat like a courtier. Captain Weldon touched his helmet with his whip by way of salute. He might have just stepped out of a bandbox. I felt he did not like me. The girl looked at me with level brows.

"Sir Robert well and strong again?" I asked.

"Quite," said Miss Ottley.

"We were on our way to pay you a visit," observed the Captain.

"Sir Robert wants me," I hazarded.

Miss Ottley shrugged her shoulders. "Does he?" she asked, then added with a tinge of irony, "You seem content to be one of those who are always neglected until a need arises for their services. Does it appear impossible that we might have contemplated a friendly call?"

"I have no parlour tricks," I explained.

Her lip curled. "You need not tell me. You left without troubling to bid me as much as a good-day. How long ago? Three weeks. Why?" Her tone was really imperious.

"But I left a benediction on the doorstep," I responded. "You looked cross and I was in a hurry."

Her eyes blazed; they were beautiful to see. "Where are you going?" she demanded.

"To call on your father."

"You have a load," observed the Captain.

"A mere nothing."

"Is not that a tent?"

"I am shifting camp."

"That nigger chap—Yazouk—came along last evening. But he vanished during the night. We fancied something might have happened."

"Oh, Yazouk. He broke a cup and feared I would turn him into a hyena, so he ran away."

"What!" shouted the Captain.

"A superstitious creature," I shrugged.

The Captain shook with laughter. "We wondered how you had tamed him," he chuckled presently—"after the bout. 'Pon honour, you served him very prettily. Straight from the shoulder and savate, too. The dragoman declares you have the evil eye."

"Have you lost your donkey, Dr. Pinsent?" demanded Miss Ottley.

"He expired suddenly last evening."

Captain Weldon frowned and sat up very straight in his saddle.

"Eh?" he said and looked a question.

"I had an Arab visitor. My visitor or another killed my donkey with a knife. I should like to have caught him in the act."

"My dream," said Miss Ottley, and caught her breath.

"By Jove," said the Captain, "it is really wonderful—but wait—you had a visitor, Doctor?"

"I believe it."

"Did he offer to attack you?"

"The spirit of the cavern!" cried the girl.

"A lunatic of an Arab," I retorted, "and so little of a spirit that I had hard work to prevent him throttling me."

"But the face. Did you see the face?"

"Our friend of the cavern," I admitted.

Miss Ottley glanced at the Captain, then back at me. She was as white as a lily.

"I knew it," she said. "I saw him kill the donkey and steal upon you—in a dream. His hands were bloody—and, look, there is blood still on your throat."

"My cask was empty, so perforce I could not wash," I murmured. The Captain looked thunderstruck. "It's the most wonderful thing," he kept repeating, "the most wonderful thing in the world."

"And I never thought of looking in the mirror. It was packed up," I went on. I took out a rather grimy kerchief and began to rub at my neck.

"Has that wretched Arab—worried you at all—since I left, Miss Ottley?"

"I have seen him twice—and once more" (she shuddered) "in my dream."

"And where did you see him out of dreams?"

"Once in the cavern and once in my father's tent. Each time at night. Each time he vanished like a shadow."

"Did anyone else see him?"

"My father and Captain Weldon."

"The most hideous brute I ever saw," commented the Captain; "you could put a good-sized head between his eyes. And such eyes. Dull as mud, but horribly intelligent."

"Well, well," said I. "We'll know more about him some day soon, perhaps, that is, if we stay long enough at the Hill of Rakh. He has a hiding thereabouts—without a doubt. Your father is pining to open the tomb of Ptahmes, I suppose, Miss Ottley?"

"He has opened it," she answered.

"Oh!" I exclaimed—and stopped dead in the act of naming Sir Robert a thankless perjurer.

The girl was looking at me hard. "You are surprised?"

"Curious," I growled. It was hard to say, for I was furious.

"I cannot enlighten your curiosity," she said.

"No?"

"He permitted no one to be present to assist him. It took place the day before yesterday in the cave temple. And the tomb is now closed again."

"You are then unaware what is discovered?"

"Perfectly."

"And Sir Robert?"

"You will find my father greatly changed, Dr. Pinsent."

"Indeed."

"He seems to be quite strong, but he has aged notably, and he will hardly condescend to converse with anyone, even me. Moreover, the subject of Ptahmes is tabooed. The very name enrages him. Dr. Belleville has forbidden it to be mentioned in his hearing."

"Humph!" said I. "If my donkey were alive I should go to Kwansu straight. But as it is I shall have to trespass for a stretch on your preserves at Rakh. I hate it, too, for your father has broken faith with me."

"Ah!" cried the girl. "He promised that you should help him open the tomb."

"Exactly."

"You must not be hard on him. I believe that he is not quite himself."

"Oh! I am accustomed to that sort of treatment from the Ottleys," I replied.

It was brutal beyond question, but I was past reckoning on niceties with rage. Captain Weldon turned scarlet and raised his whip. "Dr. Pinsent," he cried, "you forget yourself. For two pins——" then he stopped—having met my eyes. I laughed in his face. "Why not?" I queried jibingly. "It would be not only chivalrous—a lady looking on—but safe. Have you ever seen a St. Bernard hurt a spaniel?"

He went deathly and slashed me with his whip. Poor boy. I never blamed him. I'd have done the same myself. As for me, the blow descended and cooled my beastly temper, which was an unmitigated blessing. I took his whip away and gave it back to him. Then I laughed out, tickled at the humour of the situation, though it only told against myself. "I had intended accepting your offer of your mule for my belongings," I chuckled. "You haven't offered him, but that's a detail. And now I can't." I shook with laughter.

Weldon leaped on instant to the ground. "Do, do!" he almost groaned.

He was a generous youngster. "And forgive me!" he said. "If you can—it was a coward blow."

"Gladly I'll forgive you," I replied, and we clasped hands.

"I'll help you load the beast," said he.

But I put my foot on my baggage. "That mule," I said, "belongs to Sir Robert Ottley. I'll not risk the breaking of his back."

We looked at one another and I saw the Captain understood me. He turned rather sheepishly away, but did not mount immediately.

Miss Ottley was gazing over the desert. "You must know you are behaving like a child," she cuttingly remarked.

I shook my head at the Captain. "That means you are keeping a lady waiting," I observed.

He smiled wrily in spite of himself. "Scottish, are you not?" he asked.

"From Aberdeen."

He climbed on the mule's back. "I'm thinking Dr. Pinsent would like to be alone," he said.

Miss Ottley nodded and they rode off together. I picked up my swag and trudged after them. It was dry work. About twenty minutes later Miss Ottley rode back alone. She did not beat about the bush at all.

"I want you to put your things on my donkey," she said; and slipping afoot, she stood in my path.

"Not to-day," said I.

"But I'm in trouble, I need your help," she muttered.

"With such a cavalier as Frankfort Weldon?" I inquired.

She coloured.

"And Dr. Belleville. Old friends both, I am led to fancy."

She bit her lips.

"And both of them in love with you," I went on bluntly.

"Dr. Pinsent," said Miss Ottley, "it is my opinion that my father is not quite right in his mind."

"Dr. Belleville is a F. R. C. S.," said I.

"I am afraid of him—my own father," she said, in a tragic tone. "I have a feeling that he hates me, that he wants to—to destroy me."

"Captain Weldon would lay down his life for you, I think," said I.

She put a hand on my breast and looked me straight in the eye. "I could not tell this to Dr. Belleville, nor to the other," she half whispered.

I thrilled all over. "All right," I said, cheerily. "Just stand aside till I load your little beastie, will you?"

Her whole face lighted up. "Ah! I knew you would not desert me," she said.

But we did not speak again all the way to the Hill of Rakh. We were too busy thinking; the two of us. When we arrived she flitted off, still silent. Captain Weldon came to me. "I want you to share my tent," said he. "I have a tub for you in waiting, and some fresh linen laid out, if you'll honour me by wearing it."

"You are a brick," I replied, and took his arm. But at the door of the biggest tent in the whole camp to which he brought me I paused in wonder. It was a sort of lady's bower within. The floor was laid with rugs, and the sloped canvas walls were hung with silken frills; and women's photographs littered the fold-up dressing-table. They were all of the same face, though, those latter; the face of Miss Ottley.

"Sybarite!" I cried.

He winced, then squared his shoulders. "Well—perhaps so," he said with a smile.

"But your gallery has only one goddess," I commented, pointing to a picture.

He gave a shame-faced little laugh. "You see, Doctor, I have the happiness to be engaged to marry Miss Ottley," he explained. Then he left me to my tub.

Chapter VIII Ottley Shows His Hand

The Captain's linen he had laid out for my use on his damask-covered cot was composed of the very finest silk. Even the socks were silk. I was positively ashamed to draw my stained and work-worn outer garments over them; and I thought, with a sigh, of my two decent suits of tweed lying, like the Dutchman's anchor, far away—in a Cairo lodging-house, to be precise. I shaved with the Captain's razor and wondered why I did not in the least mind resting indebted to his courtesy. The removal of my beard laid bare the weal the Captain's whip had raised. Perhaps that was the reason. He came in just as I had finished and he saw the weal on instant. "I wish to the Lord you'd just blacken one of my eyes," he said remorsefully. "The sight of that makes me feel an out-and-out cad. Not ten minutes before it happened Miss Ottley had been telling me the angel of goodness you had been to her."

I sat down on the edge of the cot and grinned. "It gives me quite a distinguished appearance," I replied, "and, say, didn't it give me back my temper nicely, too."

"Little wonder you were wild," said he. "But why didn't you break me up while you were about it? You could have, easily enough. Lord! how big and strong you are."

"And ugly," I supplemented.

He flushed all over his face. "You make me feel a silly girl-man by comparison," he cried. "A man ought to be ugly and strong-looking like you. I'd give half my fortune to possess that jaw."

"What a boy it is!" I said delightedly, for I was proud of my jaw, and I love flattery.

"I'm having a cot made now; it will be put over there for you. You'll share my diggings, won't you? I want us to be friends," beamed the Captain.

There was something so ingenuous and charming in his frankness that I assented at once.

"It's funny," he said afterwards. "But I detested you at first. Have a cigar. This box of Cabanas is for you. They're prime. I've more in my kit when they are finished. Lie down and rest while you smoke one, won't you? Lunch won't be ready for an hour yet, and you must be fagged."

I wasn't a bit, but I lay back and puffed a mouthful of delicious smoke with a long-drawn sigh of luxury.

"You needn't talk. Miss Ottley says you don't like talking," said the Captain. He lit a cigar and sat down on his kit box. "I'm a real gabbler, though," he confessed. "Do you mind?"

"No, fire away, sonny!"

He fired. It was all about himself and Miss Ottley: how they had been brought up together, predestined sweethearts: how they had quarrelled and made up and quarrelled again: how really and truly in their hearts they adored each other: and how—if it had not been for the girl's intense devotion for her father, they would have been married long ago. He characterised Sir Robert as an extremely selfish man, who, ever since his wife's death, had used his daughter as a servant and secretary because he could get no other to serve him as well and intelligently. "But he doesn't really care for her a straw," concluded the Captain. "And he would sacrifice her without remorse to his beastly mummy hobby for ever if I'd let him. But I won't. I'm going to put my foot down presently. I've waited long enough. He has done nothing but drag her all over Europe translating papyri for him for the last six years. And she has worked for him like a slave. It's high time she had a little peace and happiness."

"Translating papyri," I repeated. "A scholar, then?"

"Between ourselves," replied the Captain, "Sir Robert's fame as a scholar and an Egyptologist rests entirely upon his daughter's labours. Without her he would be unknown. She did all the real work. He reaped the credit. She is three times the scholar he is, and I know a Frenchman who regards her knowledge of cuneiform as simply marvellous. He is a professor of ancient languages, too, at the Sorbonne, so he ought to know."

"Queer she never mentioned a word of it to me," said I.

"Oh!" cried the Captain, "she is the modestest, sweetest creature in the universe. I sometimes think she is positively ashamed of her extraordinary ability. Whenever I speak of it she apologises—and says she only learned the things she knows to be a help to her dear old father. Dear old father, indeed! The selfish old swine ought to be suppressed. He loathes me because he fears I'll persuade her to leave him. If she wasn't so useful she could go to the deuce for all he'd care. But it's got to end soon or I'll know the reason why. Don't you think I'm right? We've been engaged now seven years."

"I consider you a model of patience," I replied.

"Besides," said the Captain, starting off on a new tack, "the old man is positively uncanny. It's my belief he has an underhanded motive in his love for mummies, especially for his latest find, this Ptahmes. He's a spook-hunter, you know—and he told me one day in an unguarded moment that he expected to live a thousand years."

"What's a spook-hunter, Captain?"

"Oh! I mean a spiritualist. He has a medium chap, he keeps in London—a rascally beggar who bleeds thousands a year out of him. They have séances. The medium scamp pretends to go into a trance and tells him all sorts of rubbish about the Nile kings and prophets and wizards and magicians and the elixir of life. It is dashed unpleasant for me, I can tell you. There's always some wild yarn going round the clubs. And as I'm known to be Ottley's prospective son-in-law, I have the life chaffed out of me in consequence. The latest was that the medium chap—Oscar Neitenstein is his name—put Ottley in the way of finding an old Theban prophet's tomb—this very Ptahmes, don't you know. And though he has been underground 4000 years, Neitenstein has fooled Ottley into expecting to find the prophet still alive. It's too idiotic to speak seriously about, of course; but on my honour the yarn drove me out of England. It got into the comic papers. Ugh! you know what that means. But I'm not sorry in one way. So I've come here to have it out with Ottley. And I'm going to—by Gad."

"You haven't spoken to him yet?"

"I have, but he treated me like a kid. Told me to run away and play and allow serious people to work. I stormed a bit, but it was no use. It made him so angry that he nearly took a fit—and I had to leave. Since then he has been shut up with his infernal mummy, in that cave temple over there—and he won't even let his daughter go within yards of the door. That's curious, isn't it?"

"Very."

"And there's that business about the mysterious Arab," went on the Captain. "The ugly horror that tried to throttle you and has been frightening Miss Ottley. She thinks it's a ghost. But I reckon not."

"Ah!"

"I reckon Sir Robert knows all about that Arab, though he pretends he does not know. In my opinion it's another of those spook mediums of his, and he is keeping the ugly beast hidden away somewhere. Probably the fellow is some awful criminal who has got to hide. Sir Robert would shelter Hill or even that Australian wife-murderer Deeming if he said he was a medium."

"You extend my mental horizon," I remarked. "The Arab mystery is clearing up."

The Captain simply beamed. "So glad you catch on," he said. "Do you know, I am depending heaps upon you in this business."

"How?"

The monosyllable disconcerted the Captain. He stuttered and hawed for a while. But, finally, he blurted out, "Well, you see, she won't leave her father under existing circumstances on any account, that's the trouble. But I'm hoping if we can convince the old man he is being fooled by a pack of scoundrels he will return to his sober senses and live Sensibly, and then——" he paused.

"And then—wedding bells," I suggested.

"Exactly," replied the Captain. "And see here, I have a plan."

"Ah!"

"It's to lay for that Arab, as a first step—and catch the brute."

"And what then?"

The Captain looked rather foolish. "Well," he said, "well—oh!—we'd be guided by circumstances then, of course. We might induce him to confess—don't you think?"

I could not help laughing. "If you want to know what I think," I said, "it is, that you are in the position of a man who knows what he wants but does not in the least understand how to get it. Still count on my help. If we can lay the Arab by the heels we shall not harm anyone deserving of consideration, and we will put Miss Ottley's mind at rest, at all events; I hate to think that she is worried by the rascal. What do you propose?"

"I thought of hiding by the temple to-night. I passed it late last evening, and though Sir Robert was ostensibly alone, I could swear I heard voices. What do you say?"

"Certainly."

"Shake," said the Captain. We shook. "Now let's go to lunch," said he. We went.

"That's Belleville's shanty," observed the Captain, pointing to a neighbouring tent. "I don't like the fellow, do you?"

"I don't know him."

"He's a spook-hunter like Sir Robert."

"Ah!"

"The beggar is in love with Miss Ottley."

"Oh!"

"He had the impudence to tell her to her face one day that she would never marry me. He declared that it was written—by spooks, I suppose. One of these days I'll have to break his head for him. But he is not a man you can easily quarrel with. You simply can't insult him. He comes up smiling every time."

"An unpleasant person."

"A bounder," said the Captain with intense conviction. "Lord, how hot it is!"

We entered the eating tent as he spoke. The table was already laid. Dr. Belleville stood near the head of it talking to Miss Ottley. A couple of Soudanese flitted about affecting to be busy, but effecting very little. At sight of me both shuddered back against the canvas and stood transfixed. One held a spoon, the other a plate. They looked extremely absurd. I told them in Arabic that only the dishonest had occasion to fear the evil eye, and took a seat. Instantly both rushed to serve me. My companions, not possessing the evil eye, were forced to wait. Miss Ottley became satirical, but I was hungry and her shafts glanced off the armour of my appetite. When I had finished my first helping of currie she sat down. "There's no use waiting for father," she sighed. "I shall take his lunch to him by-and-by."

Dr. Belleville echoed the sigh. "My dear young lady," said he, "permit me now," and he vanished a minute later carrying a tray.

"You see," said the Captain, sotto voce, to me.

"More currie," I said, addressing, not the Captain, but the tent. Immediately one of the Soudanese slipped and sprawled on the floor in his eagerness to serve. The other leaped over his fellow's prostrate body and whisked away my plate. He returned it loaded in about five seconds. Miss Ottley broke into a half-hysterical laugh. It kept up so long that at last I looked at her in surprise. She had a knife and fork before her, but nothing else; also the Captain. "What is the matter?" I demanded.

"Look," she gurgled. Following her finger I turned and saw both Soudanese standing like statues behind me. "Wretches," I cried, "have you nothing else to do?"

They uttered a joint howl of terror and fled from the tent. But the joke had staled. I took after them hot foot, caught them and drove them back to work, to find that my companions in the meanwhile had helped themselves. Dr. Belleville, however, entered a moment later, and at a nod from me the trembling Soudanese became his abject slaves.

Dr. Belleville had something to say. "The negroes are frightened of you," he began.

"They fancy I have the evil eye."

"Humph!" cried the Doctor. "Talk German—they understand English. It's not that."

"What then?"

"Sir Robert Ottley sent one of them to you—with a message—last night. He returned this morning with three ribs broken. He is lying in the hospital tent now—in a high fever."

"A tall, thin man—the eyes set far apart in the skull?" I asked.

Dr. Belleville shook his head. "No. Short, thick-set, snub-featured, but a giant in strength."

"How did he explain his accident?"

"That unwittingly he angered you."

"The man is a liar," I declared indignantly. "I had a set-to with a skulking rogue last night. That is true enough. But the fellow I encountered and threw was taller than myself."

The Doctor shrugged his shoulders. "It was a dark night, I believe." Then a minute later—"Ottley is much annoyed. This Meeraschi was an excellent subject. Ottley was experimenting with him."

"How?"

"Hypnotically."

I glanced at the others, but they were talking apart.

"Ottley sent me a message?" I asked, returning to the Doctor.

"Yes," replied Belleville between mouthfuls. He was gulping down his lunch like a wolf in a hurry. "He wants you," he went on.

"Needless to say I received no message."

"Needless?" repeated Belleville. "And you here?"

The tone was so insulting that I arose and walked quietly out of the tent. The sun was blazing hot. I thought of the cool cave temple and wandered towards it. Why not see Sir Robert at once? Why not, indeed. Two black sentinels guarded the middle pylon, skulking in the shadow of a column. When I approached they stood bolt upright. They were armed with rifles. They barred the way.

"Ottley!" I shouted. "Ottley!" and once again "Ottley!"

At the third the little baronet's face appeared in the stone doorway.

"Oh! Pinsent," he said, and stared at me. I read doubt in his glance, some fear and anger and uneasiness. But there was much else I could not read. His skin was as yellow as old parchment, and he did not look a well man by any means.

"It is roasting—here," I observed.

He swallowed audibly, as a woman does recovering from tears. "Ah, well," he said. "Come in—here."

The blacks vastly relieved, it appeared, lowered their arms and gave me passage. Sir Robert, however, still blocked the door. I traversed the pylon and stood before him. "We can talk here," said he.

But I had no mind to be treated like that. I looked him in the face and talked to him like this: "I am not welcome. I can see it. But it matters nothing to me. I have rights. I gave you back your life. You made me a promise. You broke your promise. That relieves me of any need to be conventional. I am curious. I intend to satisfy my curiosity. Invite me into the cavern and show me what you have there to be seen. Or I shall put you aside and help myself. I can do so. Your blacks do not frighten me, armed or unarmed. As for you, pouf! Now choose!"

"Dr. Pinsent," said Sir Robert. (He was shaking like an aspen.) "In about ten minutes my dragoman is setting out for Cairo. If you will be good enough to bear him company he will hand you at the end of the journey my cheque for a thousand pounds."

"I ought to have told you," I murmured, "that it is a point of honour with me to keep my word."

"Two thousand," said Sir Robert.

"At all costs," said I.

"Five thousand!" he cried.

"You rich little cad!" I growled, and looked into the muzzle of a revolver.

Sir Robert's eyes, seen across the sights, glittered like a maniac's. "Go away!" he whispered. "Go—or——"

I thought of an old, old policeman trick and assumed an expression of sudden horror. "Take care," I cried. "Look out—he will get you."

The baronet swung around, gasping and ghastly. In a second I had him by the wrist.

"What was it?" he almost shrieked.

"A policeman's trick," I answered coldly, and disarmed him.

"Curse you! Curse you!" he howled, and doubling his fists, he rushed at me, calling on his blacks the while. The latter gave me momentary trouble. But it was soon over. I propped them up like lay figures against the columns, facing each other, afterwards, and extracted the charges from their guns. Looking over the sand, I saw Miss Ottley and Dr. Belleville and the Captain walking under umbrellas towards the tanks. I felt glad not to have disturbed them. Sir Robert had disappeared within the cavern. I followed him. He had put on a large masque which entirely covered his face, and he was fumbling with the screw stopper of a huge glass jar at the farthest corner of the cavern. The sarcophagus had been overturned. It now rested in the centre of the cavern, bottom upwards. And on the flat, leaden surface of the bottom was stretched out, stiff and stark, the naked body of a tall, brown-skinned man. The body glistened as if it had been rubbed with oil. It was almost fleshless, but sinews and tendons stood out everywhere like tightened cords. One might almost have taken it for a mummy. It had, however, an appearance of life—or rather, of suspended animation, for it did not move. I wondered and stepped closer to examine it. I looked at the face, and recognised the Arab who had attacked me on the previous night, the Arab who had frightened Miss Ottley and myself more than once. His mouth was tight shut; his eyes were, however, open slightly. He did not seem to breathe. I put my finger on his cheek, and pressed. The flesh did not yield. I ran my eyes down his frame and uttered a cry. Three of his ribs were broken. Then I felt his pulse; it was still. The wrist was as rigid as steel—the arm, too—nay, the whole man. "He is dead," I exclaimed at last, and looked at Sir Robert. The little baronet was re-stoppering the glass jar, but he held a glass in one hand half filled with some sort of liquid. Presently he approached me—but most marvellously slowly.

"This man is dead," I said to him. "He attacked me last night. I threw him and perhaps broke his ribs. But I did not kill him, for he fled. How comes it he is dead?"

Sir Robert, for answer, threw at my feet the contents of the jar. Then I understood why he wore the masque. The cavern was filled with the fumes of the deadly perfume of the sarcophagus on instant. One sniff and my senses were rocking. I held my breath, but in spite of that the cavern swung round me with vertiginous rapidity.

It seemed best to retire. I did so, but how I hardly know. Somehow or another I reached the pylon, passed the blacks and stepped upon the sand. About fifty paces off I saw a beautiful grove of palm trees suddenly spring up out of the desert. Such magic was most astonishing. I said to myself, "They cannot be real, of course. I am merely imagining them." But their shade was so deliciously inviting that I simply had to accept its challenge. I entered the grove and sat down beside a little purling stream of crystal water. It was very pleasant to dip my hands in it. Presently a lovely Naiad rose up out of the pool, seized my hands and pressed them to her lips. That was pleasant, too. Then she came and sat quite near me on the banks of the rill and drew my head upon her lap and stroked cool fingers through my hair, crooning a tender love song all the while. That was pleasantest of all. But her crooning made me drowsy. Like the Lorelei's song, it charmed away my senses, and I slept.

Chapter IX A Cool Defiance

Of course, I had swooned, and equally, of course, not on the bank of a rivulet and under the cool shade of palm trees, but in the full blaze of the mid-day sun and on the smooth, unprotected burning surface of the desert. It was the accursed sarcophagus perfume that had worked the mischief. Fortunately Miss Ottley saw me fall; otherwise I might have had a sunstroke. Belleville and the Captain carried me between them to the shade of one of the pylons, and Belleville opened a vein in my left arm—a proceeding I am prevented from commenting on by considerations of professional etiquette. Happily, I recovered consciousness in time to save a little of my precious blood. I told Belleville my opinion of him in one comprehensive scowl, which he interpreted correctly, I am glad to say, and then got up. I bandaged my arm myself and made off for the Captain's tent. That gentleman followed me. There arrived, I cast myself upon the cot and swore at ease. Weldon listened in spellbound admiration. He afterwards assured me that he had never before encountered such proficient fluency in objurgation and invective. I was madder than a hatter, and the more because I was as weak as a cat, and I wanted to be strong, with all my soul. Yet, five days passed before I felt well enough to be able to attack the task in front of me. Meanwhile, I told the Captain very little and Miss Ottley nothing. How could I let her know I knew her father to be a confounded old rascal? She was very good. She visited me every day and spent hours reading aloud by my bedside, while the Captain and I watched her face and thought much the same thoughts; though I took care, for my own part, not to let my features reflect the fatuous devotion of the Captain's. On the sixth morning I found I could lift that young man shoulder-high with one hand without wanting to sit down and pant afterwards, so I got up. It was just after daylight. The Captain wanted to accompany me, but I thought differently. He was annoyed, but I let him watch me from the tent flap. I found Sir Robert talking to Dr. Belleville at the door of the cave temple. His greeting was quite affectionate. "So glad you are better again, my dear young friend," he said, and he warmly invited me into the chamber. It was almost empty. The jar of perfume had gone; the sarcophagus had disappeared. It contained only a table and a cot. "Sit down," said Sir Robert.

"Where is the sarcophagus?" I demanded.

The old rascal grinned. "I had it quietly transferred last night on a truck to a punt," he replied, "while you were enjoying your beauty sleep. Dr. Belleville and I have not been to bed at all. It is now on the road to Cairo—and England."

I sat down on the cot. "And the dead Arab?" I questioned.

Dr. Belleville choked back a laugh. Sir Robert smiled.

"The dead Arab you saw was the mortal casket of Ptahmes," said he. "I am not surprised at your mistake. The body is in a perfect state of preservation. It is not a mummy in any sense of the expression. I regret very much that your sudden indisposition prevented you from examining it closely and me from explaining the circumstances of its preservation and discovery on the spot. However, I can tell you this much now. We found it steeped in an essential oil which an hermetic process had defended from evaporation. The oil began to evaporate immediately it was exposed to the air: but I contrived to save a certain quantity with which, later, I purpose to experiment in London. The Egyptian authorities have been very good to me. They have given me all necessary powers to deal with my discovery as I please. I tell you this lest professional jealousy should lead you to attempt any interference with my actions."

"In plain words, Sir Robert, you wish me to understand that your discovery is for you and not for the world."

"Hardly that, my dear Pinsent. Merely that I propose to choose my own time for taking the world into my confidence—and that of Dr. Belleville," he added, bowing to his friend.

"An unusual course for a professed scientist to adopt."

"I have very little sympathy with conventionality," cooed Sir Robert.

"And I," said Belleville.

"The point of view of two burglars," I observed. I scowled at Belleville.

"You shall be as rude as you please. You saved my life," said Sir Robert.

Dr. Belleville cleared his throat. "Ahem—Ahem," said he, "the discourtesy of the disappointed is—ahem—is a tribute to the merits of the more successful."

In my rage I descended to abuse. "You are a nasty old swindler," I said to Sir Robert, "but your grey hair protects you for the present. But, as for you, sir," I turned to Belleville, "you black bull-dog—if you dare so much as to open your lips to me again, I'll wring your flabby nose off."

The baronet turned scarlet; the Doctor went livid; but neither of them said a word.

I strode to the door intending to quit, but there rage mastered me again. I swung on heel and once more faced them. "One word more," I grated out; "you're not done with me yet, either of you. I'm a peaceful man by nature, but no man treads on my toes with impunity. Spiritualists or spirit-summoners you are, I hear. Weldon calls you spook-hunters—a very proper term. You'll need all the money you possess between you and all the spirits' help you'll buy from your rascal spirit-rappers to keep me from your trail. Looking for the elixir of life, I'm told. It will go hard if I don't help you find it. The elixir of public ridicule, that I'll turn upon you, will hand your names down to posterity. I'll help you to that much immortality, at least, and gratis, too. Good-day to you!"

"Dr. Pinsent!" shouted Ottley.

I paused and glanced at him across my shoulder. He gazed at me with eyes that simply blazed.

"Be warned," he hissed, "if you value your life, let me and mine alone. I'll send a cheque to your tent to-day; keep it, call quits, and I'm done with you. I owe you that consideration, but no more."

"And suppose, on the other hand——"

"Cross me and you shall see. You sleep sometimes, I suppose. My emissary will not always find you wakeful. He never sleeps."

"Your rascal Arab!" I shouted.

"Pah!" he cried.

"Murderer, it was to you I owe that rough and tumble a week ago at my own camp in the desert."

"To me," he mumbled. "To me. Whom else? My agents are spirits and invisible. They do not love you for despising them. They have tortures in reserve for you when you are dead and you, too, are a spirit. But I would be merciful—I shall send you a cheque. Return it at your peril. Now go, go, go."

On a sudden I was cold as ice. The man was evidently insane. He seemed on the brink of a fit. He was frothing at the mouth.

"Softly, softly, Sir Robert," I said soothingly. "No need for excitement. Calm yourself; after all this is a business transaction."

"Oh!" he gasped, then broke into a wild laugh. "A mere matter of price. I should have known it; a Scotchman!"

"Exactly," said I. "And my price is a million. Good-morning."

The whole camp was astir. The negroes' tents were all down and rolled. The mules and asses were being loaded heavily. Evidently Sir Robert was about to flit after the corpse of Ptahmes. I found Miss Ottley and the Captain talking over the apparent move. The girl was agitated. She had not been consulted. It was not a time to mince matters. I told her frankly everything that had passed between her father and myself, and hardly had I finished, when she rushed off hot foot to visit him. The Captain went with her. I made a passably good breakfast.

Chapter X The Capture of the Coffin

About noon—I saw no one but blacks in the meanwhile—the Captain came with a letter. "From Sir Robert—catch!" said he. I tore it open. A single sheet of note enclosed a cheque signed in blank. "Dear Dr. Pinsent," ran the letter. "You will find that my signature will be honoured for any sum it may please you to put upon my life in your esteem. Permit me to express a hope that you will not hurt my vanity in your selection of numerals.

"Sincerely yours, Robert Ottley."

I handed the note to Weldon. He read it and whistled loud and long.

"You might beggar him!" he cried. "The man is stark mad."

"Either that or he has made a truly wonderful discovery," I rejoined. "And there is Belleville to consider. That man, I fancy, is a rascal—but also a sane one."

"It has me beat," said the handsome Captain. "The whole thing from start to finish. Ottley is up there now spooning his daughter like a lover. He was as sweet as pie to me, too. I feel like a stranded jelly-fish. What will you do?"

I enclosed the cheque in a blank cover, sealed it and gave it to the Captain.

"Will you be my courier?"

"Of course," said he, and swung off.

He returned at the end of my third cigar, with a second letter. It ran, "My dear young friend, Your refusal has deeply pained me. The more, because it deprives me of the pleasure of your company on the road to Cairo. I beg you, nevertheless, to choose from my stores all that you may require that may serve you during your continued sojourn at Rakh. We start at sunset for the Nile and north.

"Ever yours attachedly,
"R. Ottley."

When the Captain had mastered this precious effusion, he collapsed upon a stool. "He intends to leave you here alone in the desert. It's—it's marooning, nothing less!" he gasped.

I lighted a fourth cigar and lay back thinking hard. In ten minutes I had made up my mind. I sat up. The Captain was anxiously watching me. "See here, my lad," I said, "in that bundle yonder is the manuscript of a book I have been working hard upon for three years and more. It is the very heart of me. Take good care of it. One of these days—if I live—I'll call for it at your diggings in London. I have your address in my notebook."

"Oh! Oh! Oh!" said the Captain. "But what's the game?"

"Diamond cut diamond. I'm going a journey. But I'll say no more. Mad or sane, you are eating Ottley's salt, and are beholden to him for his paternity of the exceptionally gifted young woman you propose to marry. Good-bye to you."

I held out my hand. He sprang up and wrung it hard. "You are sure you are doing right?" he asked.

I filled my pockets with his cigars. "I am sure of nothing," I replied, as I did so, "except this—I have been abominably ill-used by a man who under Heaven owes his life to me—and this—I resent it."

I put on my helmet, nodded and left the tent.

The Captain cried out, "Good luck!" Five minutes later I turned and waved my hand to him. He was still standing by the tent flap gazing after me. I thought to myself, "He is as honest as he is good to look upon. He will make May Ottley a gallant husband." I am a reasonably bad Christian, and quite as selfish as many worse, but somehow or another the reflection brought no aftermath of bitterness. The handsome, happy-hearted boy—he was little else for all his three and thirty years—had crept into my heart, and I felt somehow the chamber he occupied was next door to that wherein May Ottley's visage was enshrined. But I had work to do; so I turned the key on both. The sun was so hideously hot that I was forced to hasten slowly. But I reached the Nile under two hours, and found, as I expected, Sir Robert Ottley's steam launch moored to the bank. Her smoking funnel had been the beacon of my march. She was in charge of an old French pilot, a Turkish engineer, and four Levantines, piratical-looking stokers, mongrels all. I stalked aboard with an air of paramount authority. The Frenchman came forward, bowing. He wore a sort of uniform. "Steam up, Captain?" I asked.

"Since morning, monsieur!" he replied.

"Then kindly push off at once. I must overtake the punt that started last night without delay."

His mouth opened. "But monsieur," he protested, "I——"

"You waste time," I interrupted.

He rubbed his hands nervously together. "But monsieur is unknown to me. I have my written orders from Sare Roberrrrt. Doubtless monsieur has authority. But monsieur vill perrceive——"

"That you are a punctilious old fool," I retorted. "Here is my authority!" What I showed him was a revolver. He jumped, I vow, two feet in the air, and hastily retreated. But I followed more quickly still, and forced him to the bridge. There he became very voluble, however; so much so, indeed, that I was constrained to cock my pistol. That settled him. He thundered out his orders and we were soon racing at ten knots an hour down stream. When rounding the nearest bend to the Hill of Rakh the temptation was very strong in me to sound the steamer's whistle. But I am proud to say that I refrained. It would have been a little-minded thing to do. About midnight, feeling weary, I ran the steamer's nose gently into a mud bank, drove the captain down to the deck and locked him with the rest of the crew in the engine-house. Then I foraged round for eatables, made a hearty supper and snatched about five hours' sleep. When morning came I awoke as fresh and strong as a young colt. After bath and breakfast, I released my prisoners, made them eat and then push off the bank. We lost an hour at that job, but, at length, it was accomplished, and our race for the punt recommenced. We overhauled it about four o'clock the same afternoon. It was just an ordinary flat-bottomed Nile abomination, towed by a tiny, panting, puffing-billy, with twenty yards of good Manilla. Twelve Arabs squatted round the sarcophagus. Seated on the sarcophagus, under a double awning, was a burly-looking Englishman. He was smoking a pipe, and one look at his face told me exactly why he had been entrusted with Sir Robert Ottley's priceless treasure. He was, as plain as daylight, a gentleman if one ever lived, a brave man, too, shrewd and self-reliant and as incorruptibly devoted to his duty as a bull-dog with a thief's hand between his jaws. I wondered if I would get the better of him. As a first step towards that desideratum, I assured the French captain that I entertained too much regard for him to put him to a lingering death should he disobey me. I had previously locked the rest of the crew in the engine-house. Then we bore down on the punt and I shouted for the tug to be stopped. This was done. As it lost way, we nosed up, going easy until we were alongside the punt. Then I ordered half speed astern until we, too, were stationary. Some power of suction or attraction began immediately to draw the two crafts together. The tug, however, continued to remain, say thirty feet off. The Englishman ordered out rope fenders and asked me what the blazes I was doing. I answered that I had come after him from Sir Robert Ottley—which was in a sense perfectly true—and that he could hardly expect me to shout out urgent private business before listeners, which was also a reasonably veracious statement of the facts. The Englishman—I never learned his name—observed, with some heat, that he would not leave his charge for a second for any man living except Sir Robert Ottley; and that if I had something to tell him I must go aboard the punt.

I said "Very well," and as the crafts touched I helped myself to the punt with a rope.

"Well, what is it?" he demanded, and he eyed me most suspiciously, one hand in his breast. Doubtless he had there a revolver. Had he been warned? And of me? It is a thing I have still my doubts about. But I looked him frankly in the eyes and told him the truth to the very best of my ability.

"It has lately come to Sir Robert Ottley's knowledge," I began, "that one of his guests—a man named Pinsent" (he started at the name) "has conceived a bold design of relieving you of this very charge of yours, which you are guarding with such praiseworthy solicitude."

"Oh!" said the Englishman, "and how would he go about it?" The idea appeared to tickle him. He laughed.

"He would follow you and attack you," said I.

The Englishman put his hands on his thighs and simply roared. "He would have to swim after me," he chuckled. "There is not another launch save these two between here and Ham!"

"I am honestly glad to hear it," I replied, and, indeed, I was.

"It's a mare's nest," declared the Englishman.

"Oh!" said I. "This Pinsent is a desperate fellow and resourceful. Do you know, he actually tried single-handed to seize that launch."

"The Swallow!" cried the Englishman. "Impossible."

"On the contrary!" I retorted. "He succeeded. He stands before you. My name is Pinsent. Permit me!"

He was a trifle slow-witted, I fancy. He still looked puzzled, when his face emerged above the Nile water, after his dive. But I would not let him return to the punt. Immediately I discovered that the Arabs were only armed with knives. I had taken the trouble to throw overboard all the firearms that I could find on the Swallow; so I just drove them aboard the launch and ordered the Frenchman to sheer off and return to Rakh. He was charmed at the permission.

The Englishman fired at me twice from the water, but he had to keep himself afloat, so he naturally missed. When he was well-nigh drowned I hauled him up with a boat hook. It was easy to disarm him in that condition. I had intended to put him on the tug, but I waited too long. The tug cut the tow rope before my eyes and without so much as by your leave puffed after the Swallow. The Englishman and I were thus left lonely on the punt; in middle stream. The current was fairly strong at that point and making towards a long, low-lying sweep of reedy flats. I had no mind to land there, however, so after tying up the Englishman neck and crop, I contrived to hoist a sail and steered for the opposite bank.

The Englishman and I had nothing to say to each other. No doubt he recognised the futility of conversation in the circumstances; as for me, I never felt less inclined to talk. About five o'clock we grounded under the lee of a pretty little promontory. It was populated with crocodiles. Nice companions—at a distance—crocodiles—musky-smelling brutes.

Chapter XI Good-bye to the Nile

The Englishman was evidently something of a gourmet. I found foie gras, camembert cheese, pressed sheep's tongues and bottled British ale in his private locker. But he was as sullen as a sore-headed grizzly. He sourly declined to eat even though I offered to free his hands, and he strove to make my dinner unpleasant by volunteering pungent information on the punishment provided by law for the crimes of piracy, robbery under arms, burglary, assault and battery, and false imprisonment. Those, it seems, were the titular heads of some of my delinquencies. He felt sure that I would get ten years' hard labour, at least. I did not argue the point with him. After dinner I examined the sarcophagus. The lid was fastened on with crosswise-running bands of hinged steel, padlocked in the centre. But it was, strange to say, wedged at one end with iron bolts about an inch ajar, as if on purpose to allow air to pass into the coffin. After a little search I discovered a toolbox in the shallow hold of the punt; and I attacked the bands with cold chisels and a mallet. Ten minutes' work sufficed. I tossed the broken bands aside and levered off the lid. My heart beat like a trip-hammer as I looked into the coffin. I was prepared for a surprise. I received one. My Arab gazed up at me. The mysterious Arab with the three broken ribs, who had frightened Miss Ottley and tried to throttle me and whom I had last seen lying—a corpse—in the cave temple at Rakh. Of course, Sir Robert Ottley had declared the corpse in the temple to be identical with that of Ptahmes, the four thousand years dead High Priest of Amen-Ra. But that was ridiculous. I had only had time to make a cursory examination of the dead Arab in the cave temple, it is true, but I am a surgeon, and I had convinced myself that the fellow, so far from being a mummy, had not been long dead. I had yet to discover an essential error in my cave temple investigation. My very first impression had been not death, but suspended animation. And I must have been right. The later speedy diagnosis had, in sober truth, misled me. The man was not dead. It had been a case of suspended animation. The Arab lying in the sarcophagus before me was alive. His broken ribs were neatly set and bandaged. Otherwise he was swathed from head to foot in oiled rags. He was lying in an easy position on his back—upon a doubled feather tick. He was breathing softly but unmistakably. And he was awake. His extraordinary eyes—they were set fully five inches apart in his abnormally broad skull—were wide open and staring at me in a way to make the flesh creep. They were horrible eyes. The whites were sepia-coloured, the pupils were yellowish, and the iris of each a different shade of black flecked with scarlet spots. His cone-shaped forehead was moist and glistening with oil or perspiration. His mouth was held open by two small rubber-tipped metal bars joined together, against which his teeth—great brown fangs—pressed with manifest spasmodic energy.

Now what was Ottley's purpose in taking such extraordinary pains to transport a living Arab in a dead man's coffin from Rakh to Cairo, and, perhaps, London?

Perhaps the Arab could tell me. Burning with curiosity, I stooped down and took from his mouth the mechanical contrivances which held the jaws apart. The Arab uttered on the instant a deep, raucous sigh. His eyeballs rolled upwards and became fixed. He appeared to have fainted. I rushed away to procure some water. That water was in the hold. Seizing a dipper, I sprang down the steps, hurried to the cask and filled it. The whole business occupied only a few seconds. I certainly could not have been away from the deck half a minute, but when I returned the sarcophagus was empty. The Arab had disappeared. Utterly astounded, I gazed about me. Had the whole thing been a dream? It appeared so, but no—I caught sight of a tall, dark figure making off hot foot across the promontory. He had leaped ashore, a distance of twelve feet or more, and was running towards the desert. In a second I was after him. I thought of the crocodiles while in mid air; but it was too late to turn back at that juncture. My feet landed in a patch of oozy sand. I scrambled out of it and up the slope among the reeds. A loud rustle and a stink of musk warned me of a saurian neighbour. I gave a mighty leap and cleared the reeds. Then I ran as I had never run before, for my Arab was in front, and a hungry monster came hard upon my heels. A log lay in my path. It was another crocodile. I cleared it with a bound and gained the desert. I was hunted for some seconds, I believe, but I never looked back, so I do not know at what point the saurian gave up the chase. The Arab was a marvel. He had a lead of one hundred yards and he maintained it. He had three broken ribs and I was as sound as a bell. Yet, at the end of twenty minutes not his breath but mine gave out. I was forced to pause for a spell. He ran on. His lead doubled. Setting my teeth, I resumed the chase. But I might have spared myself the trouble. He gradually grew farther and farther away from me. I did my best, but at last I was compelled to admit myself beaten. The Arab's tall form grew less and less distinguishable against the stars. Finally it melted into the mists of the horizon. I was alone on the desert. I sat down to rest and took counsel with myself. I had turned pirate and committed, technically, a number of other atrocious crimes for absolutely nothing. Plainly I could not return to the punt.

First of all, in order to reach it I should have to face the crocodiles. And even should I escape their jaws again, what could I do on the river? Sooner or later I should be caught. And I had a very strong suspicion that Sir Robert Ottley would not hesitate, once I was in his power, to plunge me into an Egyptian prison. He had evidence enough to get me a long term of hard labour, and I felt little doubt but that he would go to a lot of trouble for that, and con amore after the way that I had served him. It did not, therefore, take me long to resolve to risk the desert rather than rot in an Egyptian gaol. I had spilt a lot of milk. I was foodless, waterless, and Gods knows where. Also, I was as thirsty as a lime kiln. But no use crying. What to do? That was the question. For a start, I lay down and pressed my cheek against the ground. The horizon thus examined showed a faintly circled unbroken level line in all directions except the northwest. There it was interrupted for a space by a mound that was either a cloud-bank or a grove of trees. It proved to be the latter. I found there water to drink and dates to eat. Next morning I took my bearings from the sun, and giving the river a wide berth I pressed on north for two days and nights on an empty stomach. Then I shot an ibis with my revolver in a reedy marsh and ate it raw. Next day I climbed into the mountains and looked back on Assuan and Philæ. But it is not my purpose to describe my wanderings minutely. It would take too long. Suffice it to say that I changed clothes with an Arab near Redesieh and entered Eonah dyed as a Nubian a week later, after crossing the river at El-Kab in a fisherman's canoe. The Nile was still ringing with my doings, so I judged it best to proceed on foot to Luqsor. But there I got a job in a dahabeah that was conveying a party of French savants back from Elephantine to Abydos. I stayed with them three weeks, hearing much talk, meanwhile, of a certain rascally Scotch doctor named Pinsent. It was supposed he had perished in the desert. One day, however, hearing that Sir Robert Ottley, who had been lying at Thebes, had been seen at Lykopolis, I deserted from my employ, and walked back to Farschat. There I bought a passage on a store-boat and came by easy stages to Beni Hassan. Thence I tramped to Abu Girgeh, where I lay for a fortnight, ill of a wasting fever, in the house of a man I had formerly befriended. A large reward had been offered for my arrest, but he was an Arab of the better sort. So far from betraying me to outraged justice, he cashed my cheque for a respectable amount and procured me a passage to Cairo on a river steamer. I entered the ancient city of Memphis one day at dusk, a wreck of my old self and as black as the ace of spades. Not daring to reclaim my goods at my lodging-house, I proceeded forthwith to Alexandria with no wardrobe save the clothes upon my back, and so anxious was I to escape from Egypt that I shipped as stoker on a French steamer bound for Marseilles. I could find none that would take a negro as passenger. The dye pretty well wore off my face and hands during the voyage, but the circumstance only excited remark among the motley scum of the stokehole, and I was permitted to land without dispute. Heavens! how beautiful it was to dress once more as a European, to eat European food, to sleep on a European bed, and not to be afraid to look a European in the face. In Europe I did not care a pin for Sir Robert Ottley and all that he could do to hurt me. In Egypt his money and influence would have left me helpless to resist him; but I felt myself something more than his match in the centre of modern civilisation. He had the law of me, of course, but I had a weapon to bring him to book. I could hold him up to public scorn and ridicule. Were he to prosecute me I could put him in the pillory as a wretch ungrateful for his life saved by my care and skill, a promise-breaker and something of a lunatic. On the whole, I decided he would not venture to put me in the dock. And so sure did I feel on that head that I proceeded to London as fast as steam could carry me.

Chapter XII The Meeting

Whenever in London my practice for years had been to put up at my friend Dixon Hubbard's rooms in Bruton Street. We had been schoolfellows. He was one of the most fortunate and unfortunate creatures in the world. Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he had inherited from some cross-grained ancestor a biting tongue and a gloomy disposition. He was an incurable misanthrope and unpopular beyond words. At college he had been detested. Being a sickly lad, his tongue had earned him many a thrashing which he had had to endure without other reprisal than sarcasm. Yet he had never spared that. His spirit was unconquerable. I believe that he would have taunted his executioners while they burned him at the stake. I used to hate him myself once. But one day after giving him a fairly good hammering I fell so in love with the manly way in which he immediately thereafter gave me a sound excuse for wringing his neck that I begged his pardon for being a hulking bully in having lifted hand against a weaker body but a keener brain and more untamable spirit than my own. That conquered him. From that moment we were inseparable chums, and on an average the privilege cost me at least two hard fights a week, for my code was—hit my chum and you hit me. His gratitude lay in jibing at me if I lost the fight, and if I won informing me that I was a fool for my pains. But we understood each other, and our friendship bravely withstood the test of time and circumstance. I found him nursing an attack of splenitic rheumatism before a fire in his study, and we were still only in the middle of July. His man, Miller, had just broken a Sévres vase, and Hubbard was telling Miller in a gentle, measured way his views of clumsiness in serving-men. Miller—a meek, dog-like creature usually—stood before his master glowing but inarticulate with rage. His fists were clenched and his lips were drawn back from his teeth. Hubbard was evidently enjoying himself. He watched the effect of his placid exhortation with a sweet smile—and he applied his mordant softly uttered gibes with the pride of a sculptor at work upon an image. Each one produced some trifling but significant change in Miller's expression. Probably Hubbard was experimenting—seeking to discover either how far he could go with safety or exactly what it would be necessary to say in order to make Miller spring at his throat. They were both so engrossed that I entered without disturbing them. I listened for a moment and then created a diversion. Miller's tension was positively dangerous. I walked over, took him by the collar and propelled him from the room. "You'll find my bag downstairs," I said. "I've come to stay."

Miller gave me the look of a dog that wants but does not dare to lick your hand. His gratitude was pathetic. I shut the door in his face.

Hubbard did not rise. He did not even offer to shake hands. He half closed his eyes and murmured in a tired voice: "The bad penny is back again, and uglier than ever."

I crossed the room and threw open a window. Then I marched into his bedroom, seized a water jug, returned and put out the fire.

"You've been coddling yourself too long," I remarked. "Get up and put on your hat. It's almost one. You are going to lunch with me at Verrey's."

"I have a stiff leg," he remonstrated.

"Fancy! Mere fancy," I returned.

The room was full of steam and smoke. Hubbard said a wicked thing and got afoot, coughing. I found his hat, crammed it on his skull and crooked my arm in his. He declined to budge and wagged a blistering tongue, but I laughed and, picking him up, I carried him bodily downstairs to a cab. He called me forty sorts of cowardly bully in his gentle sweetly courteous tones, but before two blocks were passed his ill-humour had evaporated. He remembered he had news to give me. We had not met for eighteen months. Of a sudden he stopped beshrewing me and leaned back in the cushions. I knew his ways and talked about the weather. He endured it until we were seated within the grill-room. Then he begged me very civilly to let God manage His own affairs.

"I am very willing," I said.

He impaled an oyster on a fork and sniffed at it with brutal indifference to the waiter's feelings. Satisfied it was a good oyster, he swallowed it.

"I am no longer a bachelor," said he. "I have taken unto myself a wife."

"The deuce!" I cried.

"Exactly," he said. "But the prettiest imp imaginable."

"My dear Hubbard, I assure you——"

"My dear Pinsent, you have blundered on the truth."

"But——"

He held up a warning finger. "It occurred a year ago. We lived together for six weeks. Then we compromised. I gave her my house in Park Lane and returned myself to Bruton Street. Pish! man, don't look so shocked. Helen and I are friends—I see her once a week now at least, sometimes more often. I assure you I enjoy her conversation. She has a natural genius for gossip and uses all her opportunities. She has already become a fixed star in the firmament of society's smartest set and aspires to found a new solar system. I allow her fifteen thousand pounds a year. She spends twenty. My compensation is that I am never at a loss for a subject of reflection. We shall call on her this afternoon. A devil, but diverting. You will be amused."

"Do I know her, Hubbard?"

"No; you are merely acquainted. Her maiden name was Arbuthnot."

"Lady Helen Arbuthnot!" I cried.

He smiled and shrugged his shoulders. "You will find her changed. Marriage has developed her. I remember before you went away—was it to Egypt?—she tried her blandishments on you. But then she was a mere apprentice. Heaven help you now—if she marks you for her victim."

"Poor wretch!" I commented. "I suppose you can't help it. But you ought to make an effort, Hubbard, really."

"An effort. What for?"

"To conceal how crudely in love with your wife you are."

He bit his lips and frowned. "Children and fools speak the truth," he murmured. Then he set to work on the champagne and drank much more than was good for him. The wine, however, only affected his appearance. It brought a flush to his pallid cheeks and made his dull eyes sparkle. He deluged me with politics till three o'clock. Then we drove to Park Lane. Lady Helen kept us waiting for twenty minutes. In the meantime, two other callers joined us. Men. In order to show himself at home Hubbard smoked a cigarette. The men looked pensively appalled. They were poets. They wore long hair and exotic gardens in their buttonholes. And they rolled their eyes. They must have been poets. Also they carried bouquets. Certainly they were poets. When Lady Helen entered they surged up to her, uttering little artistic foreign cries. And they kissed her hand. She gave their bouquets to the footman with an air of fascinating disdain. Their dejection was delightful. But she consoled them with a smile and advanced to us. Certainly she had changed. I had known her as a somewhat unconventional and piquant débutante. She was now a brilliant siren, an accomplished coquette and a woman of the world. Her tiny stature made her attractive, for she was perfectly proportioned and her costume ravishingly emphasised the petite and dainty grace of her figure. Her face was reminiscent of one of those wild flowers of torrid regions which resemble nothing grown in an English garden, but which, nevertheless, arrest attention and charm by their bizarrerie. It was full of eerie wisdom, subtle wilfulness and quaint, half-humorous diablerie. In one word, she was a sprite. She greeted her husband with an unctuous affectation of interest which would have made me, in his place, wish to box her ears. Hubbard, however, was as good an actor as herself. He protested he was grateful for the audience and claimed credit for introducing me. Lady Helen looked me up and down and remembered that I had owed her a letter for nearly thirty-seven months. She gave me the tips of her fingers and then rushed away to kiss on both cheeks a lady who had just entered. "Oh, you darling!" she twittered. "This is just too lovely of you. I have longed for you to come."

It was May Ottley. She did not see me at once. Lady Helen utterly engrossed her. I had, therefore, time to recover from the unexpected shock of her appearance. I was ridiculously agitated. I slipped into an alcove and picked up a book of plates. At first my hands shook so that I could hardly turn the pages. Hubbard glided to my side. I felt his smile without seeing it. "I smell a brother idiot," he whispered.

I met his eyes and nodded.

"In Egypt, of course?"

"Yes."

"She marries a guardsman next month, I hear."

"Indeed."

"The poor man," murmured Hubbard. "Come out and let us drink his health."

"No, thank you."

"You'd rather stay and singe your wings, poor moth."

"And you?"

"Mine," said he, "were amputated in St. James Church. She is a lovely creature, Pinsent."

"Which?"

He chuckled without replying. A footman pompously announced: "Mrs. Carr—Lord Edward Dutton."

"Bring the tea, please," said Lady Helen's voice.

"She is staring this way at you," murmured Hubbard. "She recognises your back. No, not quite, she is puzzled."

"She has never seen me in civilised apparel," I explained.

"Are you afraid of her, my boy?"

"Yes."

"Well, you are honest."

I began to listen for her voice. The air was filled with scraps of conversation.

"Three thousand, I tell you. He cannot go on like that. Shouldn't wonder if he went abroad. Like father, like son. Old Ranger had the same passion for bridge."

"You can say what you like, names tell one nothing. In my opinion the man is a Jew. What if he does call himself Fortescue? Consider his nose. I am tired of these rich colonials. I have no time for them. Heaven knows what they are after."

"She will spoil her lower register completely if she keeps on. Her voice is a mezzo and nothing else. You should have seen the way old Delman sneered when he listened to her last night."

"My test of a really fine soprano is the creepy feeling the high C gives one in the small of the back. Delicious. She never thrills me at all."

"Oh! Lord Edward, how malicious. What has the poor man done to you?"

"He plays billiards too well to have been anything but a marker in his youth. I believe he kept a saloon somewhere in the States."

"They say it will end in the divorce court. That is what comes of marrying a milkmaid. And, after all, she did not present him with a son. Ah, well, it's an ill wind that blows nobody any good. Young Carnarvon is his heir still, and his chances of succeeding grow rosier every day."

"My dear Mrs. Belvigne, if it was not for her red hair, she would be as commonplace as—as my dear friend Mrs. Sorenson. What you men see in red hair——"

"Conscience, Lady Helen, is a composition of indulgences. It is a marriage de convenance between the conventional instinct and the appetite."

"Dr. Pinsent," said Miss Ottley, "is it really you?"

I turned and looked into her eyes. They were all aglow and her cheeks were suffused with colour. She gave me both her hands. The room was already crowded. People entered every minute. Hubbard pointed significantly at the tea-cups. Miss Ottley and I drifted to the divan. We watched the crowd through the parted curtains, sipping our tea. We might as well have been in a box at the theatre watching the play.

"I knew you would escape," she murmured, presently. "The others believe you to have perished in the desert."

"They consoled themselves, no doubt?"

"My father especially."

"Did he recover his Arab?"

"What Arab?"

"The creature he had imprisoned in the sarcophagus."

"The mummy, you mean. The body of Pthames? Oh, yes, that was safe enough, but he was in a fearful state until we found the punt. He feared that you would either steal or destroy the mummy, I believe."

"Miss Ottley!" I cried.

"You must not blame him too much," she murmured; "you know how he had set heart——"

"Look here!" I interrupted. "Do you mean to tell me that you found the mummy in the sarcophagus?"

"Certainly. Why?"

"Did you see it?"

"Yes."

"The mummy?"

"Why, of course."

"A dead body, a mummy?"

"Dr. Pinsent, how strangely you insist."

"I'll tell you the reason. When I opened the sarcophagus——"

"Yes."

"It contained not a mummy, but a living man."

"Impossible."

"You think so? The Arab was the very man who frightened you so often in the temple at the Hill of Rakh."

"Dr. Pinsent!"

"When I removed the lid he leaped out of the sarcophagus, sprang ashore and fled to the desert. I followed him for several miles. But I could not catch him. I was compelled to give up the chase. And now you tell me that you afterwards found a mummy in the coffin which I had left empty."

"One of us is dreaming," said the girl.

"What was this mummy like?"

"A tall man—with a curious conical-shaped head—and eyes set hideously far apart in its skull—but you have seen the Arab who frightened me—and indeed he attacked you at your camp. His mummified counterpart."

"And some of his ribs were broken?"

"I do not know."

"But his body was bandaged. Otherwise he was almost nude."

"Good heavens!" she exclaimed. She put down her cup. "You make me very unhappy. You force me to recall my horror—in the cave temple. The wretched uncanny sense of the supernatural that oppressed me there. You make me remember that I was tortured into a fancy that the mummy was a ghost—that we were haunted—that—oh! oh! And father has been so kind to me lately, kinder than ever before."

"He is in London?"

"Yes."

"And the mummy?"

"Yes."

"And Dr. Belleville?"

"He is staying with us."

"Captain Weldon?"

She turned aside her head. "He is in London, too."

"You are shortly to be married, I am informed."

She stood up. "I must really be going," she observed constrainedly; then she held out her hand. I watched her pick her way through the crowd to our hostess. It was a well-bred crowd, but it stared at her. She was worth looking at. She walked just as a woman should and she bore herself with the proper touch of pride that is at the same time a personal protection and a provocative of curiosity. Some people call it dignity. Hubbard materialised from the shadow of a neighbouring curtain. "My wife has invited me to dinner," he announced. "You, too. I have made her your excuses because I have a money matter to discuss that should not be postponed."

"You have my deepest sympathy," I answered, and left him as puzzled to know what I meant as I was. Something was whispering over and over in my ear—"Work! work! work!" and whispering in the imperative mood. I determined to call upon Captain Weldon and procure from him my manuscript, at once. I remembered he lived in Jermyn Street. I walked thither as fast as I was able.

Chapter XIII Hubbard Is Jealous

I encountered the Captain on his doorstep. He was just going out, hatted and gloved, but on seeing me he abandoned his intention. His delight was that of a child, and so manifestly genuine, so transparently sincere, that it warmed my heart. He dragged me into his sitting-room and wrung my hands again and again, expressing his pleasure in tones that made the windows rattle. One cannot help liking a man so simple and at the same time so kind. There are too many complex people in the world. He had grieved for my supposed loss more than at his own brother's death, he said, and I believed him. Very few men care much for their brothers. Then he told me all about his approaching marriage. It was to take place in five weeks and he was dreading the ordeal already. He had just finished furnishing his Wexford country house from top to bottom. They were to settle there after a honeymoon in Italy and adopt the life and manners of country magnates, only coming to town for the season. It was Miss Ottley's desire; she did not care for London smart society, it seemed, and although he did, he was quite willing to give it up or anything else indeed to please her. It was pleasant to hear him rhapsodise concerning her and to watch his happy face. Its spirit made him ten times handsomer, and although his speech was boyish it did not detract him from his exuberant virility. He was a man from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet,—a splendid animal, with just enough brains to be a force to command respect, and a heart big enough to fill the whole world with his affection. There was not a single bitter drop in the cup of his happiness. He was about to marry the woman he adored. He was enormously wealthy, and his wife-to-be was the only daughter of a millionaire. His plans for the future were Utopian. He dreamed of enlarging his estates and providing for at least the welfare of a hundred families. Wealth was given one in trust for others, he declared, and he was resolved to make every one around him happy and contented. As a wedding present to his tenants he had already ordered the rebuilding of their homes and cottages on a scale of almost lavish grandeur. Each farmhouse would be a model of luxury; each labourer's cottage would be a miniature castle with tiled walls, and hot and cold water attachments. Other landlords were annoyed with him and had not hesitated to express their resentment. He was spoiling his own tenants and making them dissatisfied, they said. But the Captain asked me with eyes aglow how could one want to keep all the good things of life to benefit a single class? It was monstrous, impossible, absurd. He only wished he could at one stroke make all the poor in the world comfortable. "You ought to hear May on the subject," he cried out in a burst of confidence. "You'd think she was a socialist. But she is only an angel." Thence he wandered to her father. Sir Robert had given up all his old stupid ways. He had reformed and was as sane as any man in England. He had repudiated his ancient attachment to "spooks" and spirit-rapping, and Mahatmas, and had sent his famous medium, Navarro, to the right about, much to that gentleman's disgust and indignation. Sir Robert was now engaged with Dr. Belleville in compiling a history of the dynasty from papyri they had found in the tomb of Ptahmes. The Captain still thought that Ottley had treated me very badly, but he begged me to forgive the old man as he had evidently not been quite in his mind at the time. "You excited his professional jealousy, don't you know, old chap," said Weldon. "Sir Robert has one fault—he is dreadfully vain and he wanted to get all the credit out of his discovery. He told me so himself. He quite opened up to me on the voyage home."

A vision of Sir Robert Ottley "opening up" to the Captain occurred to me. The little, old, inscrutable, shut-in face of the baronet peering slyly into the frank and unsuspicious countenance of the handsome, simple-minded guardsman and making a confession of his faults the while! For why? I could not guess, but I had a feeling that it was for no straightforward purpose. We dined together, and while we ate I questioned him about Dr. Belleville. For the first time I saw a shade on his face. He did not like the doctor. I pursued the investigation. For a while he fenced with my questions but finally it all came out. "I have an idea," said he, "that Belleville annoys May. He is in love with her. Of course one can't blame him for that, but as a guest in her father's house and her father's closest friend, he has opportunities to force his attentions, and I believe the brute abuses them. She does not complain and will tell me nothing—but all the same I have my opinion. You see, she worships her father so much that she will run no risk of hurting his feelings. She would put up with almost anything rather than distress him, and Belleville knows it. He has Sir Robert under his thumb far more than I like. I hate to think I may be wronging the fellow—but upon my soul I cannot help distrusting him."

"But you have nothing definite to go upon?"

"Nothing—except this: One day about two weeks ago I went in unannounced and found her—in tears. I had passed Belleville in the hall a second earlier. He looked as black as night. And she—well, she told me, weeping, that she would marry me when I pleased. Up till then she had always put off naming the day. What would you make of it, Pinsent?"

"What did you?"

"I concluded that he had been persecuting her and that—well, that she felt safer with me than with her father. Don't rag me for being vain, old chap. If you'd seen her cry. She is not that sort of a girl either. It was the first time I ever knew her to break down, and I've known her all my life."

"Did you speak to Belleville about it?"

"She forbade me to—but all the same I did. I behaved like an idiot, of course. Lost my temper and all that sort of thing. He was as cool as a cucumber. He denied nothing and admitted nothing. He pretended to think I had been drinking, and that enraged me the more. I was fool enough to strike him. He got all the best of it. He picked himself up smiling sweetly and said that nothing could induce him to resent anything addressed by a person in whom Miss Ottley was interested. The inference was that he loved her in an infinitely superior way to me. I felt like choking him for a bit. And would you believe it—he actually offered to shake hands."

"A dangerous man, my lad. Beware of him."

"He gives me the creeps," said the Captain. "But let's talk of something else pleasanter."

We talked of Miss Ottley, or rather he did, while I listened, till midnight. Then he strolled with me to Bruton Street and we parted at Dixon Hubbard's doorstep as the clocks were striking one.

I found Hubbard seated before the fire, smoking, and staring dreamily up at a portrait of his wife that rested on the mantel.

"I've found out why I married her, Pinsent," he said slowly. "It was to benefit a Jew named Maurice Levi—the most awful bounder in London. She had been borrowing from him at twenty-five per cent. to pay some of her brother's gambling debts. Levi wanted to marry her, and would have, too, if I had not stepped in to save him. She is the dearest little woman in the world. She shed some tears. They cost me about a thousand pounds apiece."

"Good-night, Dixon," I said gently.

"Tears, idle tears," he murmured. "The poet, mark you, did not speak of woman's tears." Then he closed his eyes and heaved a deep sigh. "You find me changed, Pinsent?"

"A little."

"For better or worse? Be frank with me."

"For the better. This afternoon for the first time in our acquaintance I beheld you in a lady's drawing-room. You are growing tolerant of your kind."

"I am no longer a misanthrope, but I am rapidly becoming a misogynist. Yes, I am altered, old friend, greatly altered. At the bottom of my former misanthropy was a diseased conviction born of vanity that I was the only person in the world really worth thinking badly about. But marriage has compelled me to think more badly still of somebody else. The less selfish outlook thus induced has broadened my mind. I begin to look forward to a time when my perversion will be complete and I shall be able without blushing to look any woman in the face and acknowledge her superiority in innate viciousness."

"I begin to pity your wife, Dixon."

"A waste of sentiment. She has married five and twenty thousand pounds per annum, and she would be the last to tell you that the institution is a failure. Few women contrive to dispose as advantageously of the sort of goods they have to sell. Lady Helen would have made a fortune as a bagman. But there, I do not want to prejudice you against her. She likes you, I believe. Perhaps—who knows—but there—good-night."

I was glad to get away.

Chapter XIV The Pushful Man

A day or two afterwards, while spending an hour in the rooms of the Egyptology Society I was introduced to a new Fellow, who had been appointed during my absence from England. His name was Louis Coen. He was in private life a broker, but his heart and soul were wrapped in the Cause. He evidently spelt it with a capital, in sympathy, perhaps, with the vast sums in cash he had already put at the disposal of the Society for exploration work. He was intensely entertaining. He took me aside and confided that it was his ambition to transform the Society into a sort of club. We needed a liquor license and more commodious premises, it seemed. Then we would boom. He offered to provide all the money requisite and he begged me to use my influence with other members to get his views adopted. He was one of those men whose mission in life is to "run" every concern into which they can manage to insinuate themselves. I was afraid I disappointed him, although I did my best to be polite. But he was nothing daunted. He declared he would galvanise the "old fogies" into fresh activity and make us see things from his point of view or die in the attempt. We might be as serious as we pleased, but he would force us to be sociable. He had a nose like a parrot, and was already on the committee of management. He even proposed to change our name. The Royal Egyptian Club seemed to him a "real smart monniker." He saved me from an impending mental and physical collapse by mentioning the name of Sir Robert Ottley. Ottley, it appeared, was his latest convert. Ottley agreed with him that we wanted new blood, that our methods were too conservative. Ottley thought it was ridiculous that everything a member did or discovered should have to be reported to, and judged about, by a lot of old fossils. What right had those old "stick-at-homes" to appropriate the credit of the exertions of the energetic? "Would you believe it," cried Mr. Coen, "they have had the impudence to demand from him an account of his recent find—the tomb of an old johnny named Ptahmes—which he unearthed at his own expense entirely! They have had the 'hide' to insist that he shall immediately hand over the mummy to the British Museum and place the papyri before them—them—them—for the purpose of translation, et-cetera! I never heard a more cheeky proposition in my life. My friend Ottley would act rightly if he told them to go to the deuce!"

"What has he told them?" I inquired.

"Oh, he is temporising. He has written to say that he will place his discoveries at their disposal when he has satisfied himself of their authenticity, et-cetera. Of course that's all 'gyver.' The mummy is genuine enough, so are the papyri. But he naturally wants to have first 'go' at them, and he is fighting for time. Meanwhile, I am organising the progressives. We can never hope to get this show properly on the move till we shake things up and reform on sound commercial lines. I tell you, sir, before I've done with it, I'll make this Society a power in the land. I'm going to take it up in both hands and chuck it right in the eyes of the B. P., that means the British Public. And you take it from me, it's going to stay there. Good-day to you. I'm glad to have met you. You are a bit antiquated in your notions; but you're a young man yet, and you'll find you'll have to join my crowd. S'long!"

He shook my hand very energetically and bustled off. I sank into a chair and began to fan myself. A moment later the president, Lord Ballantine, entered the room. The poor old gentleman was purple in the face, spluttering: "Has-has-has that man Coen been can-can-canvassing you?" he thundered.

I nodded.

"I-I-I'll resign—by God!" cried Lord Ballantine. "It-it-it's too much. I-I-I," he stopped——gasping for a word, the picture of impotent rage and misery.

But I felt no sympathy for him. "Why did you let him in?" I asked.

"We-we-we were short of funds."

"And now?"

"He's bought us, or thinks he has, body and soul."

"Who nominated him?"

"Ottley."

I was not surprised to hear it. "He—he's Ottley's broker. Ottley and he are running the market-change—together. Have you heard. They have cornered South Africans. They made half a million between them yesterday. All London is talking about it. And they want to turn us into a beer garden."

"You'll have to turn them out."

"How can we? We owe them, Lord knows how much."

"Then if you cannot," I said calmly, rising as I spoke, "you'll have to grin and bear the infliction you have brought upon yourselves. After all, it's a question of voting."

"You'll stand by us, Pinsent?" he implored.

"My resignation is at any time at your disposal, Ballantine. All the same, I don't pity you a scrap. You are getting little more than you deserve. I have been working for three years for the Society without remuneration, and I am a poor man. Many of your older members are as rich as Crœsus, and yet you must needs import a vulgar semitic broker to help you out of a hole. Good-afternoon."

I left the poor old fellow helpless and speechless, staring after me with anguished eyes and mouth agape. That evening I received a letter from Louis Coen offering to finance my book on the Nile Monuments. He said he felt sure it would prove a work of rare educational value, and on that account he was willing to furnish every library in the English-speaking world with a free copy. Aware, however, that I was not a business man, he would conduct all the business arrangements himself. On receipt of the manuscript, therefore, he would forward me a cheque for £1000 as an instalment in advance of my share of the profits—fifteen per cent. he proposed to allow me—and he wound up as follows: "Your acceptance of my offer will commit you to nothing as regards our chat of this morning. My good friend, Sir Robert Ottley, put me up to this venture. He has the brightest opinion of your ability and he is sure your book will prove a success. I am going blind on his say so. Let me have an answer right away."

I thought a good deal over this precious epistle, but in the end I did not see why I should not make a little money. I knew very well that under ordinary circumstances it would be impossible for me to make £100, let alone a thousand, out of the Nile Monuments. But I felt little doubt that Mr. Coen had a plan to make even more—somehow or other. But I had done the man injustice—it was not money he was after. Reading the Times two mornings later I came upon the following announcement:

"A Patron of Learning"

"We are informed that Mr. Louis Coen, F. R. E. S., has induced the well-known Egyptologist, Dr. Hugh Pinsent, to commit the results of his recent archæological researches on the Nile to the enduring care of the printer's ink. Mr. Coen has purchased the rights in advance for a large sum of the projected volume, which it is said will take the form of an exhaustive treatise on the Nile Monuments. It is not, however, Mr. Coen's object to direct his enterprise to his own financial benefit. It is his intention to produce a splendidly illustrated edition of the book for presentation to educational establishments all over the United Kingdom in the hope of thus fixing public attention upon the enormous historical importance of the work now being carried on by the Royal Egyptologist Society, of which Society Mr. Coen is a member, and a generous supporter. Mr. Coen is to be congratulated upon his latest effort in the interest of popular education. It will be remembered that last year he endowed a chair in the University of Newcome for study of the ancient Egyptian tongue; but it may be confidently expected that his exploitation of Dr. Pinsent's history will go much further in popularising a subject which is now practically confined to the ranks of leisured scholars."

It was not pleasant to think that I had been idiot enough to allow Mr. Coen to use me as a stepping-stone to notoriety. But it was too late to object. The thing was done. My consolation was a bigger banking account than I had had for years. Not even the fact that during the day I received a score of sarcastic congratulatory telegrams from members of the Society, could rob me of that satisfaction. But I sent in my resignation all the same. I felt that I had no right to belong to any institution run by Mr. Coen. I might meet him there—and if I did, a police court case of assault and battery would infallibly result.

Chapter XV A Quaint Love Pact

One evening after a hard morning's work on my book, and a particularly fatiguing afternoon spent in vainly trying to lift Hubbard out of a funereal mood, I thought I should make myself a present of a few minutes' conversation with Miss Ottley. I argued that she would be sure to spend the evening out somewhere, so I knocked at her father's door a few minutes before eight o'clock. A gloomy-looking footman opened the door. Yes, Miss Ottley was at home. He would give her my card. Would I wait? I would, though I wondered. I heard Dr. Belleville's voice. It issued from a room that opened on the hall. He was talking shrilly as though he were angered, and in French, perhaps to spare the feelings of the servants. He kept repeating that he had made up his mind and that he would not wait another day for God Almighty. All of a sudden the door opened and he stalked out looking like the baffled villain in a melodrama. We came face to face. He stopped dead and glared at me. "You!" he gasped. "What are you doing here; what do you want?"

I glanced beyond him and saw Miss Ottley. He had been speaking to her, then, and like that. My blood began to boil. I advanced upon him trying to smile. I had seen Miss Ottley's face. "I want you to go right back into that room and pretend you are a gentleman," I said. The girl had put a kerchief to her eyes. "Quickly!" I added.

Dr. Belleville returned into the room. I followed and closed the door.

"Dr. Pinsent——" he began as I turned. But I cut him short.

"On your knees," I commanded. He went livid. "Dr. Pinsent," said Miss Ottley, "I beg you not to interfere. You will only make it the harder for me."

She might as well have spoken to a fence. I never took my eyes from Belleville. "You know what you ought to do," I murmured. "If you compel me to teach you, you'll repent the object lesson in a hospital."

He fell on his knees before the girl. "I apologise," he groaned out in a choking voice.

I bowed him out of the room as deferentially as if he were a woman. He vanished silently. Miss Ottley was dressed for the opera.

"You are going out?" I asked.

"Y-yes," she said. She was powdering her face before a mirror.

"To the opera?"

"Yes. To meet there Mrs. Austin."

"Dare you walk there—with me for a companion?"

"Oh, yes," she said.

A moment later we found ourselves in Curzon Street. She took my arm. We walked for two blocks in absolute silence, save that every now and then she choked back a sob. She was her own mistress again at length, however. "Why did you come—of all times to-night?" she asked.

"I do not know."

"Did you wish to see my father?"

"No. You."

"Why?"

"I had a subconscious conviction that you might be needing me."

"Truly?" she cried—and pressed my arm.

"That or something else. At any rate, I felt obliged to call. It may have been from a desire to reassure myself about the colour of your eyes."

"Ah! I suppose you are wondering—because—Dr. Belleville—because—I——," she paused.

"I am human," I observed.

"I want you to forget it. Will you, Dr. Pinsent?"

"On the spot."

"That is good of you." Her tone was crisp with disappointment. "You are indeed a friend."

"But not in need a friend, eh? Come, come, Miss Ottley, you are in trouble. I am strong and trustworthy and capable. There are times when a man may tell the truth about himself, and this, I think, is one of them. Can I help you?"

"No one can help me," she said sadly, "you least of all."

"And why least of all?"

"Because you hate my father."

"Is he in trouble, too?"

"He is the willing but unwitting victim of a wicked, wicked man—but, oh, what am I saying? Dr. Pinsent, please, please let us talk of something else."

"You are trembling—May."

"Oh!" she said—and looked at me.

"It slipped out—unconsciously," I stammered. "I did not mean to be impertinent. I think of you—by that name. Is it impertinent to think——"

"No, no."

"Then you'll forgive me?"

"What is there to forgive?"

"All that the circumstance implies. Come, after all, I am not sorry for the slip. Why should I twist its meaning either, like a coward. It is only the weak who need the shelter of hypocrisy. Look straight before you—May—and do not turn your eyes. May again, you see."

"You have something to tell me," she said gravely.

"The old, old story, May," I answered with a short but reckless laugh.

"Should you—Dr. Pinsent—do you think?"

"Yes, because the husband you have chosen is a gallant fellow and my friend. I am too fond of him to wish to do him an ill turn, even in my own adventure. Why, look you, May, were you to turn to me and say, 'I love you, Hugo Pinsent,' I would answer, 'Yes—and we both love Frankfort Weldon.'"

"Yes," said Miss Ottley. She stopped and we looked deep into each other's eyes.

"Yes," she said again. "And we both love Frankfort Weldon."

"God help us," I exclaimed.

"It is a good prayer. God will hear it," she said softly.

"What made you?" I asked a little later; we were walking on again—but now apart.

"You," she said.

"It is very wonderful."

"And sad," said she.

"But grand and beautiful."

"I shall not go to the opera to-night," she said. "Will you put me in a cab?"

"You will go home?"

"Yes."

"And Belleville?"

"He will be at work. I shall not see him."

"He threatened you?"

"Not me, but Captain Weldon. He demands that I shall marry him. My father also wishes it. You see I tell you everything—now. You will help me, will you not?"

"Of course. But you must teach me how. In what fashion does Belleville threaten Weldon?"

"He vows—that unless I do as he demands within this week—Captain Weldon will be found dead in his bed."

"Murder!" I cried.

"He does not scruple to conceal the fact. He declares he has nothing to fear. He pretends to possess a secret which gives him as great a power over life and death as Providence. An esoteric power, of course. It is connected with the discovery of Ptahmes. He claims to have already tested it. My father has used it in other ways. He has been experimenting on the Stock Exchange. In ten days he has already doubled his fortune. Surely of that you must have heard."

"I have heard that he has been speculating with extravagant success. But that his luck was due to supernatural agency I decline to believe. In my opinion Belleville is simply putting up a scoundrelly game of bluff."

"I wish I could think so, too. But I cannot."

"But, my dear girl, consider the probabilities. Belleville's story belongs to the Middle Ages."

"Yes—but he believes it. I am as sure of that as that I live."

"And is that a reason why you should believe it, too? The man is perhaps a lunatic."

"Ah!" she said. "I knew that you would take this view. That was partly why I felt you could not help me."

But her distress cut me to the quick. "It does not matter what view I take," I muttered hastily. "I'll do anything you wish."

"Anything?"

"Did you doubt it?"

"No."

"Then——"

"Then go and stay with Captain Weldon. He will welcome you, for he likes you out of mention. Spend the week with him. Do not let him from your sight at night. Especially guard him while he sleeps. Is it too much to ask?"

"No."

"There is a cab—stop it, please! Thanks. Now say good-bye to me."

"Good-bye—May." I helped her into the vehicle. "Would it be permissible to kiss your hand?"

"No!" she said, "but give me yours."

I felt her lips upon my fingers, and with a sort of groan I snatched them away from her grasp. That was our good-bye.

Chapter XVI Lady Helen Prescribes for Her Husband

Next morning early I picked a quarrel with Hubbard, and left him biting his finger nails. I went straight to Jermyn Street with my valise. Weldon was in bed. I told him I had had a fight with Hubbard and asked to be put up for a few days. He agreed with acclamation, though I am sure he was perfectly astounded at my strange request. I proceeded to astound him further. I mendaciously informed him that my nerves were in rags and that I was obsessed with a horrible hallucination of a mysteriously threatened life at night. Would, then, he give me a shakedown in his own bedroom, just for a week? It is wonderful how easy lying comes to one after the first plunge. I did the thing thoroughly. Mind you, I felt all along the utmost scorn for Dr. Belleville's threats against young Weldon's life. But Miss Ottley had asked me to look after him, and I was determined to fulfil the trust to the very foot of the letter. He was a splendid fellow to live with. It gives me a heartache to remember the anxiety to make me comfortable, the almost absurd cordiality of his welcome, the unselfish sincerity of his desire to please. One would have thought me a superior creation, a sort of divinity in disguise, the way he treated me. I had never awakened such affection in any living thing before, except in a mongrel retriever which once upon a time followed me home and which I had to turn away after it had licked my hand. And the amazing thing was, I had done nothing in the world to deserve it. I had never put myself out of my way in the smallest particular to serve the Captain. When we first met I had treated him with the scantest courtesy and afterwards with a sort of good-natured contempt. Even now I cannot understand it properly. It may have arisen from a secret disposition to hero-worship. Some men are like that. They are fond of investing a sentient figure-head with exaggerated attributes of majesty and bowing down before it. It is the survival of an aboriginal instinct to glorify the insubordinate. Weldon admired two things above all others: strength of body and strength of mind. In both these gifts he felt himself inferior to me, therefore he must needs put me on a pedestal. His gratitude in finding me willing to stoop to ask a favour of him was unbounded. It resembled that of an Eton fag to a monitor kind enough to take an interest in his doings. I have said before that he was essentially a boy at heart. But what an honest, clean-minded, fresh, wholehearted boy! I found myself liking and admiring him more and more each day. He taught me one of the greatest truths a man may learn. It is this—there is a more admirable thing in the world than intellect. Weldon's intellect was not of the first order. That is why I began by very nearly despising him. But he was the straightest, truest, manliest and simplest-minded man I have ever met. And I ended by half-humorously but none the less sincerely, reverencing him. If it were only for his sake I shall while I live regard the highest type of brain as incomplete without a paramount ideal of morality. And the best thing about Weldon was that he was utterly unconscious of his goodness. He was perfectly incapable of posing, but he had a fine, robust vanity of sorts, and he liked to regard himself as a bit of a "sad dog!" Romance was at the bottom of this. He envied the more than questionable experience of some of his acquaintances. It was because of the glamour of their perfumed wickedness. But their callous self-extrication from entanglements after growing weary of their chains made him long to wring their necks. For his own part, a certain shop girl had once fallen in love with him. He twirled his moustache and cast furtive glances at the mirror near him. It appears he had dallied with the temptation for a while—the "sad dog"—but Miss Ottley's portrait had saved him. He had kissed the shop girl once—horror of horrors!—in the Park after dark. He apologised to her father with a thousand pounds and fled to South America. When he came back she was married. He had confessed the whole of his truly dreadful criminality to Miss Ottley in a letter—and she had kept him waiting three miserable days for a reply. He believed he would have gone to the dogs headlong if she had refused to pardon him. But she did not. Vanity told him the reason. But it was beautiful to see the colour flush his cheeks and his eyes sparkle as he protested that he couldn't understand why she ever brought herself to speak to him again. I believe that was as far as Weldon ever got to telling a downright falsehood; the dear, great gander.

On the third afternoon of my stay at Jermyn Street I was busily at work writing, when a knock sounded. Weldon was out; he had gone to take Miss Ottley for a drive in his newest dogcart. His man, too, had a day off, so I was quite alone. I said "Come in," and there entered Lady Helen—Hubbard's wife. She was a vision of lace fripperies and arch, mincing daintiness.

"So! run to earth!" she cried.

I sprang up and offered her a chair.

She settled into it with a swish and a sigh. "Been searching for you everywhere! I had thought of applying to the police."

I suppose I looked astonished, for she laughed.

I stammered, "Why have you been searching for me?"

She gave me a glance of scorn. "Should a dutiful wife regard with indifference the sudden desertion of her husband by the only friend he possesses? Just tell me that."

"You take my breath away."

"No," she flashed, "the 'dutiful wife' did that. Confess!"

"Well, since you insist—I admit that Helen becomes you better than Joan," I said audaciously.

Her eyes glittered. "May be, my fine gentleman—but would you say 'Dixon' was synonymous with 'Darby'?"

"Not quite. Still, they both commence with a 'D.' That is something, eh?"

"So does another word which rhymes with lamb," she retorted cuttingly. "Oh! I might have known that you would take his part. You men always stick together."

"I beg your pardon, Lady Helen. I consider that you deserve well of your country. You have improved Hubbard past belief. He is worth improving."

She smiled. "I have humanised him, just a little, don't you think?"

I nodded.

She leaned forward suddenly and looked me in the eye. "It's only the commencement, the thin edge of the wedge."

"Oh!"

She began speaking through her teeth. "I'll make a man of him yet if I have to beggar him in the process."

"I beg you to excuse me."

She fell back and began to laugh. "Oh, how solemn you are. You disapprove of me. Ha! ha! ha! You don't even begin to hide it."

"You see I do not understand you."

"Yet you disapprove?"

"No. I wonder."

"You are a man, Doctor, that one can't help trusting!" She stood up and began to move about the room. "I am going to confide in you," she announced, stopping suddenly.

"A dangerous experiment," I observed.

"One risks death every time one crosses a car-crowded thoroughfare. I'll take the risk."

I shrugged my shoulders.

She frowned. "You used to like me once. What stopped you?"

"I haven't stopped."

She smiled bewitchingly and, gliding forward, placed her hand upon my arm. "He wanted to take me away to South America—he owns a ranch there—and to bury us two for ever from the world. That was his idea of marriage. It all came of a rooted disbelief in his own ability to keep me interested in himself while I possessed an opportunity to contrast him with his social equals. He saw a rival in every man I looked at or who looked at me. He should have been born a Turk. I should then have been the queen of his zenana. But no, I must do him justice—he is not polygamously inclined. Still, he would have shut me up."

"The poor devil," I muttered. "It is his disposition. He cannot help himself."

"But he may be cured of it," said Lady Helen. "He thinks every woman is a rake at heart. But he is mad. I for one am not. Mind you, I love society. I like men. I live for admiration. But as to—pshaw!"—she spread out her hands.

"You quarrelled?" I inquired.

"No, we argued the matter out and came to an arrangement. We are good friends. But he does not conceal his opinion that some day or another I will go to the devil. He thinks it inevitable. Pride, however, forbids him from looking on except at a distance. That is why he separated from me. He imagines that no woman can keep true to one man unless she is immured. The fool, the utter fool! As if walls and locks and keys were ever an encumbrance. Love is the only solid guarantee of a woman's faith."

"But my dear Lady Helen, your husband has not the faintest idea that you love him!"