by Sax Rohmer
“Brian!”
“Damn!” he exclaimed.
Then, lighting his pipe, he set off briskly in the direction of the river, where he knew that a small boat awaited him. He would explain the position to madame and return immediately—so he determined.
Yet such is the way of things that more than four hours had elapsed when the boat brought Desmond back again to the bank of the Nile. He thought of Ali Mahmoud, and was remorseful. Furthermore, he despised himself.
He set out for the camp at a smart pace, wondering what had taken possession of the village dogs. From near and far came sounds of dismal howling.
Then, as he passed the village, and came at last in sight of the great ruin, he heard the sharp crack of a rifle.
“Ali Mahmoud!” he exclaimed.
Plunging his hand into his pocket, where latterly he had carried a pistol, he set out running.
“Good God!” he muttered, but never checked his steps. The pistol was missing!
Familiar with every foot of the way, he raced on through ebony shadows, making for the excavation. Out of the darkness he ran into the dazzling moonlight that bathed one side of the Treasure Room.
“Ali Mahmoud!” he shouted.
From a cavernous doorway, framed in deep-hewn hieroglyphics, the tall figure stepped out.
“Thank God!” Desmond panted. “I thought—”
He paused, staring at the headman, who carried his rifle, and whose strong, brown face betrayed some suppressed emotion.
“I am here, effendi!”
“I heard a shot.”
“I fired that shot.”
“Why? What did you see?”
Ali Mahmoud extended one of his small brown hands in a characteristic and eloquent gesture.
“Perhaps—hyena,” he replied; “but it looked too big.”
“It was some animal, then? I mean, it walked on four legs?”
Ali Mahmoud shook his head doubtfully.
“I thought,” he answered slowly, “not always on four legs. I thought, sometimes on two. So I challenged. When it did not answer. I fired.”
“Well?”
Ali Mahmoud repeated the gesture.
“Nothing,” he explained simply. “All the men say they have seen this unknown thing. I am glad you have returned, Desmond Effendi!”
* * *
In the morning Desmond awakened early. The vague horror of the night, the mystery of the “thing” seen in the temple ruins, had fled.
Egyptian sunlight flooded the prospect, and he thought that moderate diligence on the part of the gang today should bring him within sight of his goal.
Ali Mahmoud, having performed his duty of awakening his chief, did not retire at once, but stood in the door of the tent, a tall, imposing figure, regarding Desmond strangely.
“Well?” Desmond asked.
“There is more trouble,” the Egyptian answered simply. “Follow me, effendi, and you shall see!”
Desmond leaped out of bed immediately and followed the man to the excavation. The site was deserted. Not a labourer was there.
“Where are the men—?” he began.
Ali Mahmoud extended his palms.
“Deserted!” he replied. “Those Coptic mongrels, those shames of their mothers who foraged with their shoes on, have abandoned the work!”
Desmond clenched his fists, and for many moments was silent.
“You and I, Ali Mahmoud,” he said at length, “will do the work ourselves!”
“It is agreed,” the Egyptian replied; “but upon the condition, Desmond Effendi, that neither you nor I shall remain here tonight.”
“What?”
Desmond glared angrily, but Ali remained unmoved.
“I am a man of few words,” he said, in his simple, direct fashion; “but that which I saw last night was no fit thing for a man to see. Tonight I go. You, too, effendi, will leave the temple.”
Brian Desmond was on fire, but he knew his man too well to show it. Moreover, he respected him.
“Be it so,” he said, turned, and went back to his tent.
They laboured, those two, with pick and shovel and basket, from early morning until dusk. They worked as of old the slaves of Pharaoh worked. Not even under the merciless midday sun did they stay or slacken their herculean toils; and when, at coming of welcome evening, they threw down their tools in utter exhaustion, the narrow portals of the secret chamber were uncovered. Standing at the bottom of the shaft, sweat-begrimed, aching in every limb, the brown man and the white solemnly shook hands.
“Ali Mahmoud,” said Desmond, “you are real British!”
“Desmond Effendi,” the Egyptian answered, “you are a true Moslem!”
The desert toilet completed and the evening meal dispatched, Brian Desmond lit his pipe and stood staring out across the violet landscape toward the Valley of the Queens.
That day he had actually cleared the debris from before a door wrought of the red sandstone of Silsilis, which almost certainly was the portal of the secret Treasure Room. Despite the superstitious character of the natives, the spot was altogether too near to Luxor for the excavation to be left unguarded. Some predatory agent of a thieving dealer, or of an ambitious rival—for it had been well said that there is no honour among excavators—armed with suitable implements, might filch the treasure-trove destined to establish definitely the reputation of Brian Desmond.
Ali Mahmoud refused to remain—and Mme. de Medicis was waiting in the perfumed cabin of the dahabeah, where an incense burner sent up its smoke pencils of ambergris; and her golden eyes would be soft as the eyes of the gazelles.
But whosoever would retain the mastery of Moslems must first learn to retain the mastery of himself. Once let the idea that a place is haunted take root in the Arab mind, and, short of employing shackles, nothing could persuade a native to remain in that spot after sunset. Thus, at Karnak, the Bab el Abid, or Gate of the Slaves, a supposed secret apartment in the Temple of Mentu, is said to be watched over by a gigantic black afreet. No Egyptian would willingly remain alone in the vicinity of that gate by night.
Desmond entered his tent, trimmed and lighted the lamp, and wrote a note excusing himself and explaining his reasons. Sadi, the Persian poet, sings that love can conquer all; but Sadi lacked the opportunity of meeting a British archaeologist. Though every houri of Mohammed’s paradise had beckoned him, Brian Desmond would not have been guilty of leaving the treasure of Taia unguarded.
Clapping his hands—a signal which Ali Mahmoud promptly answered—he handed the letter to the tall Egyptian.
“Give this personally to Mme. de Medicis,” he said, “on the dahabeah Nitocris. Then do as you please.”
“And you, effendi?”
“I agreed with you to leave the temple,” Desmond answered. “I shall do so; but I did not agree not to return.”
The fine face of Ali Mahmoud afforded a psychological study. Verbal subtlety is dear to the Arab mind. Desmond Effendi had tricked him, but tricked him legitimately.
“It is true,” he answered; “but my heart misgives me.”
He saluted Desmond gravely, and departed, his slippered feet making no noise upon the sandy ground. Like a shadow he glided from the tent door and was gone.
Desmond stood looking after the headman, and thinking of many things. The fires of his anger were by no means extinct; but Ali Mahmoud was staunch, and had laboured well. The night would pass, and the morrow held golden promise.
A faint, cool breeze fanned his brow, and about him lay that great peace which comes to Egypt with the touch of night. Vague sounds proceeded, for a time, from the direction of the Arab village, and once a pariah dog set up his dismal howling upon a mound not twenty yards away. Desmond could see the beast, painted in violet shadows against the sand; and, picking up a stone, he hurled it well and truly. With it went the last vapours of his rekindled wrath. The beautiful silence had become complete.
For long he stood there, smoking his pipe, and watching the e
ager velvet darkness claiming the land, until the perfect night of Egypt ruled the Thebaid, and the heavens opened their million windows that the angels might look upon the picture below.
Half regretfully, he turned and entered the tent. In the sandy floor his bottle of whisky was buried; in a bucket of water were the “baby Polly” bottles. These latter he might reveal; but for Ali Mahmoud to detect him using strong liquor would be the signal for the headman’s departure. That he so indulged was understood, but that he should keep his vice decently secret from every good Moslem was a sine qua non.
He helped himself to a peg, concealed the “vice” again, and set out to walk to the river, there to taunt himself with a sight of the twinkling lights of madame’s dahabeah—and to carry out his pledge to Ali Mahmoud.
No more than ten paces had he gone when he became aware of a curious, cold tingling of his skin. The sensation was novel, but highly unpleasant. It gradually rose to his scalp—a sort of horrific chill quite unaccountable.
Remotely, sweetly, he heard, or thought he heard, a woman’s voice calling his name:
“Brian! Brian!”
He stopped short. He felt his heart leap in his bosom. The voice had seemed to come from westward—from beyond the temple.
“Who’s there?” he cried.
No one answered. A bat circled erratically overhead, as if blindly seeking some lost haven; then it swooped and was gone into some cranny of the great pylon.
“Brian! Brian!”
Again it came, more intimately, that sweet, uncanny crying of his name.
“Brian! Brian!”
Making for the moon-white angle of the great ruin, Desmond set out at a rapid pace. The woman, whoever she was, must be approaching by the path which skirted the temple—approaching from the valley below El Kurn, the Valley of the Queens.
He had almost gained the corner, wherefrom he could command a clear view of the path, when suddenly he pulled up. The icy finger of superstition touched him.
Who, or what, could be coming from the Tombs of the Queens at that hour of night? Breathing checked, muscles tensed, he stood listening.
Not a footfall could be heard, the very insects were still.
Deliberately, putting forth a conscious effort, he took the six remaining paces to the corner of the temple enclosure. No living thing was visible. Again a horrific tingling crept all over his skin and into his scalp. The opinions of the unknown stretched over him, and he stood in the shadow of fear.
“Is any one there?” he cried.
He shrank from the sound of his own voice, for it had a sinister and unfamiliar ring. The voice of the Thebaid answered him—the voice of the silence where altars were, of the valley where queens lie buried.
Panic threatened him, but he grimly attacked the ghostly menace, and conquered. His natural courage returning, he paced slowly forward along the silvery road that stretched to the gorge in the mountain. He stopped.
“My God!” he cried aloud. “What is the matter with me? What does it all mean?”
The moon-bathed landscape was swimming around him. A deadly nausea asserted itself. He had never swooned in his life, but he knew that he was about to do so now.
He turned, and began to stagger back to the tent.
* * *
Music aroused him—a dim chanting. Wearily he opened his eyes. Reflection was difficult, memory defied him; but he seemed to recall that at some time he had returned to the tent.
Yet he found himself in the temple!
That it was the Temple of Medinet Habu in which he stood, he was assured, although, magically, its character had changed. Yes—this was the Treasure Room, the scene of his excavation; but it was intact! The roof had been replaced. The apartment was filled with ancient Egyptian furniture. The air was heavy with a strange scent.
He was crouching like a spy, concealed behind a sort of screen. It was of carven wood, not unlike the mushrebiyeh screens of later Arab days; and through its many interstices he had a perfect view of the apartment.
Two women and a Nubian eunuch were in the room. The women were dressed, as Desmond had never seen living women attired in his life; yet he knew and recognised every ornament, every garment. The exquisite enamel jewellery, the scanty robes upon their slender ivory bodies, belonged to the Eighteenth Dynasty!
One, the small and more slender of the two, was of royal blood. This he knew by her dress. She spoke urgently to the other, whose face Desmond had not seen.
“Be quick, Uarda! I distrust him! Even how he may be spying upon us!”
The woman addressed turned—and he beheld Mme. de Medicis!
“Give me tile casket!” she said.
The first speaker took up a beautifully carven box of ebony and ivory, and placed it in the hands of the woman whom she had addressed as Uarda. Perhaps the judgment of Paris, the immortal shepherd, might have awarded the golden apple to the royal lady; but in the eyes of Desmond, watching, half stupefied, the movements of these two lovely Egyptians, incontestably the fairer was she whom he knew, in life, as Mme. de Medicis. He watched her greedily.
Somewhere in the great temple palace voices were chanting, sweetly.
The Nubian took the casket from the hands of Uarda and descended into a pit revealed by the displacement of a massive couch. Desmond, watching the women as they bent anxiously over the cavity, fell forward.
“Desmond Effendi!”
Desmond raised himself. Ali Mahmoud was supporting him.
He looked out from the tent to where rosy morn tinted the rugged lines of Medinet Habu.
“Effendi! I warned you! I warned you! And now you are stricken with fever!”
Desmond got to his feet. Clutching the tall Egyptian, he stood swaying for a moment, striving—wildly, at first, but with ever increasing self-control—to assemble the facts—the real facts—of the night.
Fever? No! In a flash of intuition the truth came to him. While he and Ali Mahmoud laboured through the previous day, some one—some one—had found and doctored his whisky. Even now he could recall the queer tang of it, which, in the tumult of mind that had been his at the time, he had ignored.
He had been drugged! But his dream—his dream of the Princess Taia and of her confidante?
His strength was returning with his clarity of mind. He shook off the supporting arm of Ali Mahmoud. He uttered a loud cry, and went staggering madly through the mighty courts of the temple.
His excavation below the floor of the sanctuary had been completed during the night. It opened, as he had conjectured, into a small square chamber—which was empty!
* * *
Paul van Kuyper stepped from the small boat to the deck of the dahabeah, bowing low to his beautiful hostess. Even in the desert, Mynheer van Kuyper contrived to preserve the manners, and, in a modified degree, the costume, of a fashionable boulevard lounger. As he stood there in the blaze of noonday sun, he was as truly representative of one school of archaeology as Brian Desmond, Working barefoot with his Arabs at Medinet Habu, was representative of another.
Van Kuyper’s brown eyes flamed with admiration as he bent over the little white hand of Mme. de Medicis. She was seemingly unaffected by the great heat; she looked as cool as a morning rose. Hers were the toilet secrets of Diane de Poitiers, and the love lore of Thais.
Attended by four waiters from the Winter Palace, they lunched, and talked of many things; but always Van Kuyper’s brown eyes spoke of passion. Yet when at last they were alone, with coffee such as may only be tasted in the East, and cigarettes of a sort that never leave Egypt except to go to Moscow:
“Quick—tell me!” he whispered, and glanced furtively around him. “What occurred last night at Medinet Habu?”
“How should I know what occurred, monsieur?”
Languidly Mme. de Medicis swept her black lashes upward, and languidly lowered them again, veiling the amber eyes.
“Ah!” Van Kuyper laughed. “But we understand each other! We are old allies, it is not so? When I learne
d from Abdul, who had been watching Desmond’s camp since the work began, that the shaft was an old one, I followed the arranged plan. On Tuesday night he was nearly shot by Ali Mahmoud—Desmond’s headman; but he brought great news! You received my letter?”
Madame inclined her head languidly.
“I have it in my bureau.”
“Good! You had worked wonders thus far. Nearly a week ago the camp at Medinet Habu became deserted at night. Even the ghafir fled. How you worked upon the fear of the natives I do not know, but you succeeded. Only Ali Mahmoud and Desmond remained. As I told you, I took a double precaution. Desmond’s buried bottle is a byword among the excavators. While he completed the clearing of the shift, Abdul dealt with this matter!”
“Excellent!” madame murmured.
“Your reports of Desmond’s progress reached me daily, and last night, I acted. Abdul and Hassan es Suk were watching. Ali Mahmoud came to you here with a note. It was genius!”
“It was merely coincidence.”
“What? You did not contrive it? No matter—it was good. Shortly afterward, Desmond succumbed to the drug, and Hassan came to fetch me.”
“So?” madame murmured, dropped her half-smoked cigarette into the little brass tray.
Van Kuyper glanced at her uneasily, but proceeded:
“We opened the door. It was stiff work; but what we found, you know. I merely peeped at the contents of the casket, but madame—he seized and kissed her hand—“the cheque for a thousand pounds which reached you recently was not too much! Sail for Cairo in the morning. There will certainly be the usual official inquiry. I saw the casket safely on board your boat, and returned to my camp. Transport has been arranged to Alexandria, where my patron has a yacht lying.”
“So?” madame murmured again, and delicately lighted a fresh cigarette. “Those Arabs are such liars!”
Paul van Kuyper bent forward, resting his manicured hands upon his knees. He had detected a coldness in the attitude of the beautiful woman. Always she was difficult, but today she was incomprehensible.
“Your meaning, madame?” he asked, and sued the glance of the amber eyes, but was foiled by lashes imperiously drooped.
“My meaning?” she returned. “It is so simple! What is this casket which you say you placed in my boat? And why do you refer so strangely to a cheque paid to me for a card debt?”