by Pamela Kent
But also in the dining-room, in glass-fronted cabinets, were one or two obviously very valuable pieces. The keys of the cabinets were missing, but Romilly could see elegant little statuettes and bronzes - obviously Egyptian - and a whole collection of fascinating-looking scarabs, rings and brooches.
There were no servants in the house, only Kalim to look after it and organise whatever help was needed when he needed it. He explained to Romilly that, anticipating that she would wish to stay in the house, he had arranged for a couple of women to come in daily, as well as a house-boy, and the gardener would continue to look after the garden.
Romilly explained, a little diffidently, that she had more than half made up her mind to stay at a hotel, but he looked so wistful and disappointed, as well as slightly disapproving, that she changed her mind almost on the instant, and smilingly agreed to spend a week or so, at least, in her own house. She told herself that it would save her money, even if it wasn't frightfully convenient, for until the house and
its contents were sold she had not actually benefited financially as a result of her great-aunt's will, and was drawing upon funds of her own to make this visit possible.
Kalim, who looked as fragile as blown glass, and had a curiously withered air about him, although his smile when he rewarded anyone with it was peculiarly radiant, instantly nodded his head and smiled delightedly. He assured the sitt that she would be well looked after, went away to organise his domestic arrangements, and left her to continue making discoveries in her latest acquisition.
She was glad that she had brought thin things with her, for the weather was enchantingly balmy, and there was nothing in the least wintry about it. She selected a roam for herself overlooking one of the most attractive corners of the garden, changed out of her travelling outfit, and went out through the french windows to explore the garden.
Later she had lunch, which was served to her in the dining-room, and struck her,,as being very well cooked and prepared. She spent the afternoon enjoying a nap on the outside of her extremely comfortable bed, and awoke to find that the sun was setting and the room ablaze with the crimson magnificence of it.
Never in her life had she seen such a sunset before, or witnessed such a magical paling of the hard blue sky into a sort of apple-green afterglow. She went out on to the terrace at the back of the house to marvel at it, and the
.whole garden seemed to be swimming in the lovely green light, while low down on the flat horizon the fires of sunset were all but extinguished by a rush of pure primrose in which the first stars were already hanging suspended as if
(they were jewels supported by invisible threads. As the
ygreen light faded and gave place to a kind of bat's wing
Igloom which clamped down protectively over the garden,
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and it was difficult to see the outline of her own hand when it was extended in front of her, she went back into the house, where the lights were glowing softly, and sought out Kalim to ask him whether, as the moon would be at its full later on, he could drive her out to see the Pyramids, since she understood they were not far away.
"Certainly, sitt," Kalim had answered, and he had looked mildly resigned as if he understood perfectly the reactions of people like herself, who could not wait to see
�the wonders of his country once they arrived in it. So the visit to the Pyramids was made, and it was while they were driving back in the car that Romilly made up her mind that if it was at all possible she would extend her visit for at least an extra week, since she was after all being spared the heavy cost of a Cairo hotel, and the highly inflationary cost of her air fare more than justified it. And having arrived in Egypt for the first time, with a travel record behind her thai included nothing more exciting than a week-end in Paris and a solitary week in Switzerland, she honestly felt she owed it to herself to broaden her vision a little, if nothing else.
And what an extraordinarily fascinating place Egypt was! ... If only her finances would run to a trip up the Nile ... perhaps as far as Luxor! Wonderful starry nights and long, languid, sun-filled days reliving Egypt's past m the company of other tourists whose society she would probably find very pleasant, while she would almost certainly enjoy the delving into ancient history. She wasn't the great-niece of a well-known Egyptologist for nothing!
And Cairo itself had struck her, as a result of the brief glimpse she had had of it, as a very modern and attractive city, with lots of modern shops and hotels. Her/frequent visits to the British Museum and absorbed study- of the Pharaohs, through the thirty-three dynasties during which
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they had ruled Egypt, had hardly prepared her for it.
It was only back there, at the feet of the Sphinx, that all the strange magnetic force of Ancient Egypt had risen up and engulfed her. She had not yet shaken off the peculiar, mesmerised feeling that she had had while entering into a somewhat one-sided conversation with the Sphinx, and as for the man who could have been part of that longdead civilisation, but for the fact that she was absolutely certain he had worn a dinner-jacket.... Well, he had laid a spell on her, too.
She gave her head a sudden, quite vigorous shake in the back of the car, and was convinced for a moment that she was slightly bewitched. The magic of the night had been too much for her, on top of her somewhat hectic day.
And then they were back at the villa, and almost immediately after her head touched the pillow and her bedside light was out she fell asleep. She was awakened quite suddenly by a noise which must have been so very slight that it was difficult to understand why it had aroused her. at all, and then while she was staring into the blackness of her room she heard it repeated.
The moon had set, so it must have been very close to dawn, and as she glanced at the window she could see that there was a certain vague lightening of the sky towards the east. As she stared at the patch of sky framed by the win-' dow she saw it brighten as if it was coming mysteriously to life, and a flush of rose invaded the purple gloom in which the last of the stars was beaming benevolently down at her.
She put. a foot out of bed and groped for her dressinggown. The sound which had reached her and penetrated her decidedly heavy sleep had come from somewhere fairly near at hand, and below her rather than anywhere else. Which meant that someone was moving about on the ground floor of the House of the Seven Stars, and it was as
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yet too early, surely, for the servant&to be stirring?
She switched on her bedside light cautiously, and saw by her travelling clock that it was a quarter to five. A quarter to five, and certainly too early for the most conscientious domestic to be anything other than still asleep.
.No; there was someone else in the house, and whoever it was was moving about it very cautiously, endeavouring to make as little noise as possible but sufficiently unaware of the geography of the house to avoid certain pitfalls which lay in wait for the unwary. A muted crash was followed by a stunned period of silence while the intruder, whoever he was - and somehow Romilly did not think it could be a "she" - either made good his escape, or trusted to his particular good fortune to ensure mat the moment of carelessness had failed to arouse anyone, and was holding his breath in some secret corner of the house until he judged it safe to continue his unlawful prowling.
But Romilly was far too curious by nature to allow anything like that unexpected crash followed by absolute silence to go un-investigated. She had to know what was happeniig below stairs, and although she had very little natural boldness, and was inclined to suspect that in a
strange house - and a strange land! - she might be wiser
if she just slipped back into bed and pulled the covers up
over her head until the dawn light outside the windows
should have spread sufficiently to make investigation a trifle
safer, she did nothing of the kind. Instead she extinguished
her bedside light, fastened the sash of her slim silk dressing
go
wn until it hugged her slender waist as if it loved it,
and moved stealthily across the floor to the door.
Luckily she encountered nothing on the way that could
cause her to stumble and advertise her movements to who
ever was below, .and opening her bedroom door cautiously
she stole outside into the thickly carpeted corridor - it
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was most fortunate that her great-aunt Romilly had favoured lush carpeting despite the fact that she was living in a country renowned for its soaring temperatures! - and then stood appalled by the blackness that greeted her.
The house was as inky with its closely drawn blinds and closed shutters as the inside of one of the Pyramids; and for a second or so she had no idea of the direction in which the head of the stairs lay. And then she remembered that she turned left outside her bedroom door to reach the stairs, and was halfway down the rather handsome staircase when she saw the gleam of light in a comer of the hall, rapidly extinguished.
Her heart thudded against her ribs, and for one moment she contemplated flight. Undoubtedly that was the pale beam of a torch that had been doused when the owner of it caught the sound of her footsteps on the stairs. He was standing near the dining-room door, and as she strained her eyes through the gloom she was able to make out that
the dining-room door was standing open.
She summoned up a trembling voice.
"Who's there?" she called.
There was no immediate answer, and she called again.
"I know you're there, because I saw your light! You'd
better tell me what you're doing, because I'm going to find
an electric light switch and - and switch on a light!"
But to her horror she realised suddenly that she had no
idea where the nearest light switch was, and if the intruder
wished to prove awkward he could have her at his mercy
Little prickles of horror sped up and down her spine, and
she was groping about frantically on the wall behind her
for a selection of switches which she had observed some
where there during the earlier part of the day before, when
whoever it was who stood below her laughed suddenly and
spontaneously.
. "Little fool!" he exclaimed, and bathed her in the white light of his torch.
Romilly stood quite still on the handsome oak staircase, and then when she felt herself blinded put both hands up over her eyes. She was not very tall --barely five feet three inches - and swathed in the pale lavender silk of her dressyig- gown, with her chestnut curls delightfully disordered and her smooth, rounded cheeks pale from shock while her eyes Were wide, she quite obviously represented nothing in the nature of a reprisal, or even a justifiably angry householder, to the man below.
From the note of contempt in his laughter, and his handsome but contemptuous eyes as he obligingly switched on the hall light for her, he was amazed that she had even discovered enough courage'to descend the stairs.
"Little fool," he said again, and this time she felt indignation bubble up in her.
"You!" she gasped, as if she could hardly believe it.
For it was one thing to have decided that a flesh and blood man encountered at the feet of the Sphinx had something to do with Ancient Egypt, and quite another to discover in the early hours of the morning that he was nothing but a vulgar housebreaker.
And a very modem housebreaker, too, for she had been right about his wearing a dinner-jacket; and not even the fact that it was a very well-cut dinner-jacket, and it really was a diamond stud - unless he went in for paste, which she doubted owing to the way in which it caught the light and sparkled like a diamond-bright eye - in his immaculate shirt-front; while tucked in at the end of his sleeve was a rakish red handkerchief which looked like extremely expensive silk, could lend him any respectability which his means of entering her house had deprived him of. In fact, she had caught him red-handed.
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She glanced in through the open door of the diningroom and saw a broken ornament lying in the middle of one of the Oriental rugs.
"I'm sorry," he said casually, "but if you will allow junk like that to clutter up the place you mustn't allow yourself to be upset when some of it gets smashed. I tried to move about as carefully as I could, but the wretched thing got in my way!"
"Got in your way " She regarded him as if he was something utterly alien in her experience ... which, as a matter of fact, he was. "I wonder whether you would mind very much telling me precisely what you think you're doing here at this hour?"
"Of course." His voice still held that slight, insolent drawl which offended her even more than his casualness. "But it will take time, so you'd better ask me to sit down somewhere ... anywhere that is. a little less public than the hall here. By the way, does your man Kalim sleep ia the house?"
"I - I don't know," she answered, realising that that was something she ought to have found out before she went to bed.
Her intruder smiled.
"Not particularly au faif with things yet, are you? But of course, you've only been in the country a matter of hours, haven't you? However, a young woman alone should have a servant sleep in the house."
She regarded him with a look of strong suspicion.
"You knew Kalim didn't sleep in the house?"
His smile broadened, permitting her to admire his excellent white teeth. His eyes were very dark, and strange, and in some way sensual while at the same time remaining cold and emotionless. And never before in her life had she seen a man with such long eyelashes.
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"I would have been foolish to break in knowing him to
sleep in the house, wouldn't I?" he counter-questioned.
"But -" She felt extraordinarily helpless all at once, very much aware of the deficiencies of her dress, and the fact that he was more than adequately clothed. And she was perplexed by his extraordinary air of complete self-possession (considering the circumstances), and his faint but quite unmistakable air of criticism and amused disapproval which lent him a curiously maddening air of disdain, which in view of all the circumstances deprived her of the capacity to think clearly. "I have no idea what it is you want," she concluded, her voice faltering, "And presumably you do want something?"
His eyes warmed as his look flickered over her.
"Oh, yes, I want something," he assured her. He held his handsome head on one side. "Looking at you, in that fetching kimono, some people might say I'd been lucky enough to find it!"
The colour was flooding back into her cheeks, and his words brought it pounding back like an avalanche. The rosy flush disappeared under the soft waves of her hair, and even the pale ivory of her throat was stained by it. With the golden light of the fine mosque lantern, swaying slightly in a current of air above her head, pouring over her and making it unnecessary for him to exercise his imagination where her general shapeliness was concerned, she realised she was at a disadvantage and he was basely taking advantage of it.
She told him so, shortly, her indignation reviving with his impertinence.
"You followed me from the Pyramids, didn't you?" she accused him. "It was you I saw at the Pyramids!"
His smile was intended to annoy her.
"Even now you don't seem absolutely certain that I'm
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quite real," he told her, in his curiously provoking drawl. "But I was very much entertained by the one-sidedness of your conversation with the Sphinx! The one thing I still don't understand is why you seemed to be attempting to justify yourself!"
Romilly flushed brilliantly.
"You shouldn't have been listening," she said shortly. "And in any case, I wasn't having a conversation with the Sphinx.... That would, be absurd! I was merely musing aloud." , � �
He smiled in a very amused way. "So that was it, was it?" he said. "Well, well!" ;' , ' . She turned hurriedly in the direction of the dining-room<
br />
door.
"You'd better come in here," she said, "if you've really got some explanation to offer that will convince me you're not just a common housebreaker," with an edge to her voice. "But I might as well warn you at the outset it will have to be a very good explanation if I'm to be prevented
' from ringing the police." At that he laughed softly, with enjoyment. "Oh, my poor, dear, foolish young woman, you're not
even on the telephone, so I don't quite see how you're going to contact the police! And there can be no question of detaining me by brute force," towering above her in the open doorway. "I'm afraid you'd come off very badly if we attempted a contest of that sort!" laughing softly in his throat.
She looked round at him in alarm. It had never even occurred to her that the house wasn't on the telephone. Her intruder continued to smile, his black eyes gleaming like velvet. "Yes, an odd notion, wasn't it...? Thinking a telephone a nuisance! But that, I'm afraid, is what your aunt thought 23
of such a very valuable means of maintaining some sort of
contact with the outside world!"
Romilly remained standing once they were inside the diningroom, with the broken vase making an untidy litter at her feet. But although she indicated a chair her early morning caller seemed also to prefer to stand while he delivered himself of his explanation.
"You see, I knew your great-aunt very well! She was a somewhat eccentric maiden lady, and I'm amazed her house wasn't constantly brolen into, considering the number of valuable objects it contains."
Romilly glanced round at the heterogeneous collection of objects that immediately met her eye, and she felt surprised that he considered some of them - in fact, apparently, a good many of them! - valuable."
"Oh, yes." He nodded his head with emphasis. "Don't be misled because I talked about junk just now. There is a vast quantity of junk in the place, of course," spuming the broken ornament with his foot, "but there are also one or two priceless pieces. One in particular!"
"Oh!" She looked at him for further enlightenment. "My great-uncle was an archaeologist. Do you mean that some of the things here came from the -"