The Way Of Stars E-Book

Lily Adams Beck

• Herausgeber: Lily Adams Beck
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Outside the sky rained down waves of quivering light from its metallic blue on the tawny desert. Every now and then, on a sudden puff of hot wind from nowhere, the sand danced in little whirls and dust-devils, and shimmered beneath it, and then subsided again into a goblin quiet. Some Arabs stood in a tense silence waiting, with their tools laid beside them—waiting—and for what?The shaft, cutting the sand like a gash, shored up with beams and planks, led down to the mysteries below, and about the opening lay two painted coffin lids, with rings and pottery and many broken fragments, the relics of a dead ancientry. Men, burrowing like moles in the drift of time, had upheaved these things to the light of day and they lay there lamentably, their very use forgotten.There were great heaps of sand and rocks where the work had gone on beneath the crags tumbled from the huge honeycombed cliffs above. It was a rubble of débris with neither end nor beginning, unsightly, repulsive.

Leseprobe

Lily Adams BECK

The Way Of Stars

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Table of contents

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER XXV

CHAPTER XXVI

CHAPTER XXVII

CHAPTER XXVIII

CHAPTER XXIX

CHAPTER XXX

CHAPTER XXXI

CHAPTER I

Outside the sky rained down waves of quivering light from its metallic blue on the tawny desert. Every now and then, on a sudden puff of hot wind from nowhere, the sand danced in little whirls and dust-devils, and shimmered beneath it, and then subsided again into a goblin quiet. Some Arabs stood in a tense silence waiting, with their tools laid beside them—waiting—and for what? The shaft, cutting the sand like a gash, shored up with beams and planks, led down to the mysteries below, and about the opening lay two painted coffin lids, with rings and pottery and many broken fragments, the relics of a dead ancientry. Men, burrowing like moles in the drift of time, had upheaved these things to the light of day and they lay there lamentably, their very use forgotten. There were great heaps of sand and rocks where the work had gone on beneath the crags tumbled from the huge honeycombed cliffs above. It was a rubble of débris with neither end nor beginning, unsightly, repulsive. In the passage at the bottom of the shaft the heat was frightful. It was as though the stored central heat of the world was escaping through it like a chimney. The silence of ages brooded there, dark, stagnant, repellent. Miles Seton wiped the sweat out of his blinded eyes with a dripping handkerchief and looked at Conway, leaning exhausted against a jut of rock before the sealed door of the unopened tomb chamber. The passage that they had already explored, with no hair-raising result, lay in two directions, empty, exploited. They had been at it for two long years. Those years, the money poured away into the sand, the hope deferred and disappointed time after time, all seemed to fall on them with a cumulative weight, and now that they stood before the last bar to their last hope, they were too played out to be eager any more. Honestly, at that moment, they did not give a damn for anything they might find inside that door. That mood would pass, of course. Mere physical strain. The human brain in each of us is keyed up to a certain pitch and beyond that it declines to respond. Outside, the Arabs broke out into a sudden jabbering and yelling, now the great moment had come—invocations for luck and protection from what the opened door might let loose upon them:— "We take refuge with Allah from the stoned fiend!" "In the name of Allah, and the blessings of the One be upon our lord Mohammed and his family and his companions one and all!" "Allah makes all things easy"—and at last subsided into the silence of expectation. Four trusty men kept them out of the shaft, doing sentry-go at the top. Masoud, the head-man, was down below with the two leaders. Not a sound in the depths. To them, it had been the most extraordinary business from beginning to end. Never a queerer. The two men, Conway and Seton, among their war experiences had run up against a Frenchman from Egypt—a liaison officer at Poperinghe. They got friendly, for French was a strong suit of Seton's and Conway's, and the other fellows got no further than a few nouns and expletives—and the man's English was truly French. They were sorry for the poor chap, and he often spent the evening in their dugout, talking nineteen to the dozen and picking up stray crumbs of comforts, for the British Army had enough and to spare, and the less said about French comforts the better. Looking back, they reckoned him a more unusual fellow than they had guessed at the beginning, for his neat dark head, finished little features and trimmed up moustache had something of thepetit maître about them—the kind of thing they used to guffaw at foolishly in the French comrade until they came to know the fire and the vim of him—and at first the two Englishmen were inclined to be a bit patronising. That soon wore off. There was nothing of the petit maître about him, not a bit of it. He went a long way outside his duty one rainy night when there was a poor devil with a smashed leg groaning out in No Man's Land, for when Conway and Seton got back from outpost duty, they found it was Alphonse who had brought him in. That was by no means the only time, either. The little man was a rapier in an ornamental sheath. His name was not Alphonse, of course. He was Monsieur le Capitaine Jules Geosfrin de Neuville, and equally, of course, that was frankly impossible, so he became Alphonse in the partnership of three. He never got anything from home—not so much as a letter—might not have had a friend or relation in the world, but he paid his way for all that, for he rewarded his pals with Romance—the best gift any man can take or give, the easer of toil, the draught of nepenthe, the Light that does not fail. Heavens, what romance! He had been everywhere, seen everything. He would sit in the light that invariably failed—a candle stuck in a bottle—with his glittering dark eyes fixed on distance and the nerves in his lean face working, and tell them of places they never heard of before. Of Cambodia and the King's dancing girls, the golden Buddha with the diamond eyes, the jade Buddha of the Lamas, set with priceless pearls. Of the vast forests where, sealed in the knotted jungle, sleep the dead treasures of Angkor Wat, and of the splendours farther in the unknown, which the dark men whisper of to each other, but never to the white stranger. That man had the gift of words, if ever man had it. One might rake in the shekels if one could set down the phrase, the incomparable manner—the pause before the dramatic moment, with the spiked forefinger to point it, the torrent that broke forth when rhetoric was needed. Seton told him once that he could have made his fortune as a professional story-teller in the Eastern bazaars, and he laughed quietly and cocked his eye at him. "I have done it, mon ami! I was a hanashika in Japan for a lean year or two. But I was born there. A man must know the language, for the East takes its jokes and its love full-flavoured. And there arenuances also. It is a poor living, but amusing," he said, and went on to the next story. It happened to be Egypt. He had been helping De Cartier, the great Egyptologist, on his excavations at Abu Tisht, and was present when the Osirian cave was opened up. Conway was not a person of particularly swift imagination, but Seton saw him transfixed as Alphonse gradually fired him with pictures of the close, airless passages they crept through on hands and knees, the final emergence into a shaft leading down, a velvet blackness, into the very bowels of the earth, the fall, as into a well, which nearly ended his earthly adventures, and then—then, the light, the frescoes, the stunned amazement, as the men looked round and realised the presence of an antiquity that left them dumb, before which Europe became a mushroom impertinence and themselves the barbarians of yesterday. "For look you, my friends," said Alphonse one night, "these people were Egyptians, they had forgotten more than our wise men know. It is true they did not devote their research to steam, oil, electricity, flying and the like (a wild shriek, as a shell tore overhead, to settle, a bird of prey, one knows not where). The arrow and the sword were good enough for killing with. It was the secrets of life they wished to probe—of life that laughs at death. Therefore it was in the mind—in the soul—they made their triumphs. What we call magic, they had at their command. Marvels, miracles—and all the result of a science of which we know but the alphabet." "A trick of their priests!" Conway said contemptuously. "Priests are the same the world over." "Yes and no, my friend. So far as the priests made the gods responsible—a trick. But that these things were done—no trick. The mind of man. That was their kingdom. It was a secret lore, handed down, probably, from the lost Atlantis." They had swallowed as much from Alphonse as in a physical sense he had swallowed from them, but this was too much. He had drawn the line at fairy tales previously, and Conway picked up his three weeks' old Times, and Seton a grimy pack of cards, with which he played solitaire like a maiden aunt when he was bored unendurably. Alphonse repeated, undismayed. "What say you to this, when I tell you I have seen?" "What then? You aren't nearly as effective as usual, Alphonse." "Seen a papyrus that came from Sais and speaks of the Atlantis." "Go along with you!" "I have seen it in the Valley of Kafur, and very strange was the writing. My master deciphered some and would have done more but for the cholera. Cholera respects not learning. He died." He drew the well-thumbed notebook, which had been the text of many stories, from his pocket and read aloud. "The Burden of Isis (she also was a great goddess of Sais). Hearken to the beautiful words of my lament. Fallen, fallen is the land of the Great Ocean. Weep for her queens, her wise men, her captains, terrible in war. Weep for her maidens, the light of all the earth. For the sea has swallowed them, the fishes swim in their palaces and for joy there is weeping. Behold, they are gone, as a dream flitting through the night. For the anger of the gods was upon them, and they were broken by their fury. "Have mercy upon them, O Osiris! Be not angry for ever. Set the soul of them in a land they knew not. Restore their beauty and delight and let them live once more. "And Osiris answered Isis his wife, that entreated before them:— "'The Great White People shall put on again the garment of flesh, and their sinews shall be iron and their strength terrible. They shall dwell in the North and come out from it like locusts, and run over the earth with wings and wheels, and the nations shall abase themselves. And the sign of this shall be that Nefert, the Queen, Lady of Crowns, she whose body sits in the land of Egypt, shall return from the place of the dead. She shall glory in her beauty. She shall live and triumph.'" He clasped the book again. "I had a copy made of that when de Cartier died. I took it to Buisson, the greatest of our hieroglyphic readers. He read it attentively and pronounced it to be the oldest writing he had yet seen. 'As to the prophecy,' he said, 'I can say nothing. Superstition—poetry? Who knows? But the Egyptians could sensitise the human heart as we cannot, for we have bartered that domain of spiritual knowledge for commercial success, and it is difficult to run the two in harness. Still—if ever the body of this Queen Nefert is found, there may be strange happenings.' That was his verdict. But the body is not yet found." "Then was this Nefert a queen of Atlantis?" Seton asked. "That is not said, but one imagines it. She had an Egyptian lover, certainly. Buisson said another curious thing, which has remained in my memory. He said, 'It is a mistake to open these very ancient Egyptian tombs. They were sealed with solemn ceremonies, and for excellent reasons. And when they are torn open, strange things find their way into the world.'" "Diseases?" suggested Conway. "Certainly diseases, my friend; did not Buisson die mysteriously almost directly after? The first out break of the plague form of influenza was coincidental with the opening of the tomb of Atet. And if, like me, you have the curiosity to trace cause and effect, you will find plague, cholera, many other little pleasantries of nature, emerging into history with the disturbance of famous tombs. But that is not all." "What then?" "Difficult to explain—and you might laugh if I told you. Influences—more—much more, for those who have skill to read the occult. Those places were shut and should be respected. Have you not noticed, also, that good luck never attends the riflers of tombs?" He ran off a list of adventurers who had certainly met with inexplicable misfortunes. They listened, interested but unconvinced. He added:— "Yet this did not keep me—I who speak with you—from trying my luck. Learning the place from this document, I opened the tomb of Khar. And I had the devil's own misfortunes. Every one got the credit of my work except myself, and as I sit here now, my pay is the only thing between me and starvation, and my heart is racing me to death even if the guns spare me. All the same, I would do it again to-morrow if I could! I would go to Khar, and follow up the shaft of which I saw the traces during my own excavations. It leads, I dare swear, to a gallery in the rocks of Khar, and the finds there may astonish the world." "I say, let's make up a party of three after this blessed business is over, and go there together," said Conway eagerly. "Alas, I shall not be there to accompany you," sighed Alphonse, gently possessing himself of another cigarette. "In the curse sealed upon the tomb inscriptions, the robber of the Khar scarabs was promised a violent death. I robbed them. I shall take my punishment like a man. I shall not march into Berlin with you at the end of the war." "Where then?" asked Seton, stupidly enough. "Ah, my friend, if I could tell you that, the very guns, opening the gate to so many, would stop to hear me. Exploring the underworld, interviewing the august ghosts of the Atlantean queens (for there were none but queens among that ancient but gallant people, and the royal consort was a very small person compared with his wife), but dead in any case. Simply dead!" He laughed as they stared at him. Not that there was anything strange in an expectation common to all out there. But there was something weird, predestined, in his way of putting it. They liked Alphonse, too. Remember that. "But when I go, I bequeath you this notebook as the reward for many cigarettes and muchcamaraderie," he said, striking a dramatic hand upon his pocket. "It has copies of more than one document, and a later papyrus, and it will give you the clues. If you like excitement better than ease, to follow them up. But yet—pause! I counsel you not to let Queen Nefert loose upon a world which has troubles enough already. She is best where she is." A week after that Alphonse was killed. There were no friends to be informed, no sign of whom he had been. Many a dog might be blotted out with more compunction and observance than that very gallant and singular soldier of fortune. Conway and Seton were his only mourners, and they missed him amazingly. Of course they took the notebook. Of course they pored over it until every word was photographed on their brains, and that is why they found themselves in Egypt when the guns had spoken their last word and the statesmen's turn had come and the world had settled down to enjoy the peace (heaven save the mark!) which the soldiers had won for it.

CHAPTER II

I resume where the two of them, faint yet pursuing, leaned against the rock in the downward shaft of the chamber in the Khar Valley and faced the sealed door. And it was then a curious thing happened.

Masoud, their head-man, had a kind of fainting fit. Not surprising, for he was a big, bull-necked fellow, had been exerting himself to exhaustion, and the dull, stagnant heat in there nearly did for his masters as well as himself. He slid in a limp white heap to the ground, and Seton had to tilt a few drops of brandy down his throat before they could do anything with him. He began to talk, as if in sleep, the black agates of his eyes showing in a faint line under the half-shut lids. French! Seton stared at Conway and he at Seton over the man's head. Masoud did not know a word of French! Extremely rocky English—that was all his store, and little enough for his day's work. But this was French, with the true Parisian roll to it.

"The guns! the guns!" he said faintly, then was silent.

"Mon Dieu! That shell! It screamed like a woman! How can a man talk in such a devil's uproar?"

They were in a silence like the very heart of the tomb, the only sound the dull throbbing of the heart-beats in their ears. Seton saw Conway's eyes dilate and fix. They knew the voice, though it came weak like blown wind through leagues of distance.

"That which is sealed is sealed. So! Do not open the doors to the curse shut down with power. Let the dead bury their dead."

Another awful pause. Then, in a wild cry:—

"The Horror! the Horror! Turn, turn, while there is time!"

And whatever it was went out of him with that last rending cry, and the man crumpled up altogether. They thought for a moment he was dead. Conway emptied his water-bottle over his head, and that was all he could do. After that they waited, Seton kneeling beside him, feeling it to be a discouraging prelude to the great experience. Presently, and astonishingly, Masoud sat up and looked about him, and instead of the gradual and painful recovery they expected, the next thing he did was to stagger to his legs and apologise. In fact, never was a man more apologetic—he had twisted his ankle, but it was nothing—a flea-bite. Let them now go on.

Conway, winking at Seton, addressed him in French, to the effect that the delay was nothing and they scarcely supposed he would be up to any more work that day. Masoud, still a livid yellow, evidently thought the heat had affected Conway's brain, and stared at him in amazement, leaning on the pick-axe which had done such good service. Not one word did he understand. That was plain as mud in a wine glass. A pause, and Seton motioned to him to go on, and with a great heave he let drive at the barred door, now clear of rocks and earth.

"But, I say," whispered Conway, "did you hear that, Seton? Who did you think it was? Not Masoud, I'll swear. Of course, it's all bunk, but still—"

"Of course it's bunk. What else? It sounded like Alphonse—if you mean that. But who's to say Masoud didn't serve with De Cartier and Alphonse? Who's to say he hasn't his own reasons for trying to stop us? These fellows are as deep as this shaft, and deeper. You can never catch up with the Arab brain. They think in a different cycle."

"I know. Still—Can't say I liked it. Did you?"

"Not worth thinking of twice."

"That's true." Conway was relieved. "They're one and all born tomb-robbers, and he has his little game to play. Come on. I don't give a fig for all the ghosts and devils in Egypt!"

Nor did Seton. But yet—yet—

The enormous darkness, fold on fold, stirred only on the edge by the faintly flickering lanterns; the stagnant silence; the littered wall of rock; the door it had disclosed, with God knows what lurking behind it—these things caught at any braggart words and made them cheap. Sounding brass and tinkling cymbals, and nothing behind them.

Conway picked up another axe and set to beside Masoud. They were by no means scientific explorers, only impatient men, running the show on their own and eager to get through the shortest way. Their blows resounded up the shaft to the burnished sunshine where the Arabs waited and jabbered. Suddenly the door splintered and yielded, and there was an outrush of imprisoned air, exactly as when a boy bangs an inflated paper bag against a wall, but foetid, sickly. They stood back and scrambled half-way up the shaft, and sat down to await events, staring down into the dark, both of them, and each thinking his own thoughts. Seton's were a mere confusion. After all, what was the use of getting the wind up? The place might be empty, rifled already. Empty? Yet the air went up beside them like the flitting of dry wings, and the silence of expectancy below was horrid. And Masoud's strange fit! The man sat, hugging his knees, below them, staring down into the dark also, with the lantern below him flinging its light upward and dilating his eyes and peaking his chin. It was easier to be nervy than normal as they sat there and said nothing.

They waited half an hour, then Masoud got down again and they followed. He lit a candle and fixed it on a stick, and held it at arm's length into the yawning jaws of the dark. At first it burnt a little blue and flickering, but presently a clear orange, revealing a few feet of emptiness about its small beam.

At that safety signal Conway trimmed and wiped the three lanterns and motioned to Seton to go first by right of seniority. There was a big raised ledge to the door, and he stepped over it and down, the others following.

The lanterns were good of their kind, and they strung them out to throw the light as far as possible.

A great chamber, roughed out from a cave, with overhanging juts of rock from the roof. It was a huge oblong, unexpected recesses caving in here and there, as far as the main surface went; entirely empty. There was no time then to explore the bays, as Conway called them. That must wait.

Suddenly he halted and flashed his light upward as gold and colours swam into sight. A fresco. The wall of rock was smoothed with the utmost care into a broad band, possibly four feet high and twelve in length, and thus prepared for the artist with a surface smooth as marble and then apparently gilded. In this the figures were deeply incised and filled with either coloured stones or pastes as hard as stone, level with the gilded surface and polished off like enamel—the colours fair and fresh as when they left the hands of the craftsmen ages ago. They were as hard as adamant, whatever the substance, and turned the edge of Conway's knife.

There is a passage in the Bible which describes exactly what met their astonished eyes:—

"There portrayed upon the wall the images of the Chaldeans, portrayed with vermilion, gilded with girdles upon their loins, exceeding, in dyed attire upon their heads, all of them princes to look to."

Solemn lines of nobles, not a woman among them, converging to a throne supported on lions' legs and claws of gold and raised upon a high dais, so that the occupant towered above the heads of the hushed audience, as an idol to be worshipped. Wide rays of gold broke from the crown and conveyed an impression of divinity, and lo—this divine ruler was a queen.

It is difficult to convey the majesty of the seated figure. A solemn black river of hair descended on either side of her face, which was painted an ivory white, in contrast with the dark features of the surrounding Egyptians and Nubians. The eyes were closed, the full lips were dark vermilion. The head, supported by the high inlaid background of the throne, was crowned with a diadem so singular that they had never seen the like—golden snakes interwound, their three venomous heads darting outward above the brows.

Rows and rows of jewels encircled the throat, and fell in a flood of splendour to the knees, meeting a jewelled girdle above the loins, in plaques of jewels set in gold. The bare feet rested upon a couchant sphinx, dreaming its secrecies also, it seemed, for the eyes were dosed. Mystery of mysteries!

They stood before this great fresco, for great it must be called, from the sense it gave of an awe-stricken crowd, of waiting suspense, majesty.

Suddenly he started. A shout from Conway, more like a cry:—

"Seton, come here! Quick!"

He could not see them. They had stepped into a bay, but the dream shattered and was gone, and he sprang to join them.

Heavens! The bay was the low entrance to an inner chamber, and the others had gone on and in. He must stoop almost to the level of his knees to follow, and struck his head smartly in doing it, and all but fell into the lower level of the floor beneath. Then, recovering, he hurried on to join the other two, who stood like statues, flinging their lights far and upward.

What—what was it that dawned spectral through the gloom? They were not alone. A Fourth was added to their party. But a silent, a terrible one.

On a dais of black granite from Syene, polished like a mirror, an astonishing magnificence for such antiquity, was raised a throne: a throne with a curved seat and stately back of ivory, poised on lions' legs and claws of gold. A figure sat upon it, the bare feet resting on a sphinx of black granite dead white, reflected in the black water-like surface of the stone. The head was crowned. The hair—

They stared, dumb. The woman of the fresco, living but sleeping.

That was the first impression. Then—no, not living, not sleeping. No breath heaved the fair bosom, stirred the locked lips. There was no trembling in the stiff hand that had grasped the golden lotus for ages; the cross of life never wavered in the other. Dead. Death is always terrible. Ten thousand fold more in this petrified loveliness. In the picture outside she held her court amid hundreds of eyes that sought her as a divinity. Here, alone, and the more majestic, she sat with closed eyes, surveying some inward secret, unspeakable and dreadful.

The first impression passed. Conway, the earliest to recover, set his lantern on the ground, snatched out his pocket sketch-book, and began to draw feverishly.

"They won't believe it. They can't, unless we have a record. I don't believe we can photograph even with a flashlight—but get the camera down. Why, I'm not certain I'm not dreaming it myself! For God's sake, look at the jewels!"

But Seton stood lost—utterly abstracted. All the imagination Conway lacked was his in double portion, and, heaven knows, if there were ever anything to strike a man's imagination dumb, it was here.

He got out his notebook and began systematically cataloguing.

"Necklace: flat emeralds set in square plaques of gold, with golden lions and vultures interposed. Diadem: three twisted snakes, heads projecting above forehead. Girdle of gold fringes and jewels, so long as to be a garment to the knees. Armlets and anklets of gold, crystal and emeralds. Feet supported on granite sphinx. Golden lotus in right hand. In left—"

He stopped suddenly, seeing a small object beside the throne—a ring of dull beaten gold with a large carbuncle cut deeply with figures. It lay upon the sand as if it had fallen from the lovely hand that held the lotus. Then it had been hers! In life she had worn it. Now it had passed to him.

He glanced over his shoulder and saw that Conway was hard at work on his sketch; Masoud had turned to the entrance. Seton stooped quickly, and retrieving the ring, slipped it on the third finger of his left hand. A pledge—a token? What? It had evidently been a thumb-ring, for it fitted him well. He went on with his list, reading aloud for Conway's benefit, but with his heart throbbing like a girl's.

"In the left, ivory ankh, or Cross of Life. On steps of throne at each side ivory and crystal vases. Hieroglyphics on back of throne and on each step."

He stopped. Again the weird sense of memory captured him. What was the use of making lists when Beauty, incarnate Beauty, sat before him and called on some sealed chamber of his brain until it echoed responsive? Could he catalogue her charm—that faint, maddening smile that set her apart, though with his hand he could have touched the white foot that rested on the sphinx? He dared not touch it. An insane longing to drive his companions out of the cave, to end the profanation that disturbed her dream, to sit down there alone and worship—these were the thoughts which narcotised his reason. Was it the hot, close air, or some miasma imprisoned for ages in the heart of the tomb-cave, or was it her ring that clasped his finger?

"I'd give something to know how they preserved her in this life-like way," said Conway from behind.

"She might be asleep. Nothing of the mummy about that! But the chemists will get at the secret. She must have been a handsome woman."

Unbearable! Hateful! He felt he could stand it no longer. Must she be lifted from her throne and set down in some museum for cold and curious eyes to stare at? Was he to see rough hands profaning her lovely limbs—and he himself the cause of what he felt would torture her?

Better shovel the sand over the whole thing and blot out all memory of it to the Day of Judgment. But no, it was too late already! Masoud had carried the news to the men above and they were shouting themselves hoarse with delight and excitement. For good or evil, the thing was done.

He came to his senses. Conway had finished, Masoud was bringing down the camera. They took several flashlight photographs, hoping for the best. They took rubbings of the hieroglyphics. They closed and barred the door and set a guard, and, climbing up the shaft, despatched the great news by camel to the Egyptian authorities, and then dined, too excited almost to eat, and lay down, exhausted, to sleep in their huts. And the ancient night, crest-jewelled with the moon of Hathor and the stars of Isis, brooded over the outrage to the majesty of forgotten kings, the gash and wound in the smooth golden sands of the desert.

Conway slept soundly that night. Seton not at all. The darkness was full of voices that answered no questions, but mourned and mourned. Who was she? Could she be the lost Nefert of Alphonse's story? Why had the manner of her burial differed from that of every other royalty known in the long history of tomb-exploration? Why had she died so young? True—

"Queens have died young and fair,Dust hath closed Helen's eye."

Surely there must be some wild and terrible romance behind it all. How could he breathe in peace until the hieroglyphics were deciphered and the truth known? He pressed the ring to his lips and felt the sharp-cut inscription against them. It was sickening to feel it a mystery.

All night he lay and stared out at the dim glimmer of light in the opening of the tent.

CHAPTER III

The next day brought with it Walworth, a skilled hieroglyphist, who happened to be working up at the neck of the valley, fourteen miles away, on a little problem of his own. They had sent him word the afternoon before, and he came, eager as a boy, though a man of sixty, a picturesque figure, with his long white beard, perched on the swiftly moving camel, and attended by his faithful retainer, Ali Agha, known also to all Egyptologists, and himself nearly as learned in antiquities as his master.

Seton and Conway almost dragged Walworth off his beast in the excitement of seeing knowledge at hand. They fed him, they put the sketches of the fresco and their notes before him (by agreement holding the secret of the dead queen as yet); they tried to wile or drag opinions from him which he was too wary to give until he could see for himself; and finally the three descended to the shaft with Masoud and Ali Agha in attendance.