Condensed Novels: New Burlesques Part 14

"Yes; but the three-thousand-year gag did not work! She spotted you, cher ami, on the instant. And she wouldn't let me take her with my kodak."

The doctor looked grave. "I see," he mused thoughtfully. "You must have my camera, a larger one and more bulky perhaps to carry; but she will not object to that,--she who has stood for full lengths. I will give you some private instructions."

"But, cher doctor, this previous-existence idea--at what do you arrive?"

"There is much to say for it," said the doctor oracularly. "It has survived in the belief of all ages. Who can tell? That some men in a previous existence may have been goats or apes," continued the doctor, looking at him curiously, "does not seem improbable! From the time of Pythagoras we have known that; but that the individual as an individual ego has been remanded or projected, has harked back or antic.i.p.ated himself, is, we may say, with our powers of apperception,--that is, the perception that we are perceiving,--is"--

But the Chevalier had fled. "No matter," said the doctor, "I will see Mcf.e.c.kless." He did. He found him gloomy, distraught, baleful. He felt his pulse. "The mixture as before," he said briefly, "and a little innocent diversion. There is an Aunt Sally on the esplanade--two throws for a penny. It will do you good. Think no more of this woman! Listen,--I wish you well; your family have always been good patients of mine. Marry some good Scotch girl; I know one with fifty thousand pounds. Let the Princess go!"

"To him--never! I will marry her! Yet," he murmured softly to himself, "feefty thousand pun' is nae small sum. Aye! Not that I care for siller--but feefty thousand pun'! Eh, sirs!"

VI

Dr. Haustus knew that the Chevalier had again visited the Princess, although he had kept the visit a secret,--and indeed was himself invisible for a day or two afterwards. At last the doctor's curiosity induced him to visit the Chevalier's apartment. Entering, he was surprised--even in that Land of Mystery--to find the room profoundly dark, smelling of Eastern drugs, and the Chevalier sitting before a large plate of gla.s.s which he was examining by the aid of a lurid ruby lamp,--the only light in the weird gloom. His face was pale and distraught, his locks were disheveled.

"Voila!" he said. "Mon Dieu! It is my third attempt. Always the same--hideous, monstrous, unearthly! It is she, and yet it is not she!"

The doctor, professional man as he was and inured to such spectacles, was startled! The plate before him showed the Princess's face in all its beautiful contour, but only dimly veiling a ghastly death's-head below. There was the whole bony structure of the head and the eyeless sockets; even the graceful, swan-like neck showed the articulated vertebral column that supported it in all its hideous reality. The beautiful shoulders were there, dimly as in a dream--but beneath was the empty clavicle, the knotty joint, the hollow sternum, and the ribs of a skeleton half length!

The doctor's voice broke the silence. "My friend," he said dryly, "you see only the truth! You see what she really is, this peerless Princess of yours. You see her as she is to-day, and you see her kinship to the bones that have lain for centuries in yonder pyramid. Yet they were once as fair as this, and this was as fair as they--in effect the same!

You that have madly, impiously adored her superficial beauty, the mere dust of tomorrow, let this be a warning to you! You that have no soul to speak of, let that suffice you! Take her and be happy. Adieu!"

Yet, as he pa.s.sed out of the fitting tomblike gloom of the apartment and descended the stairs, he murmured to himself: "Odd that I should have lent him my camera with the Rontgen-ray attachment still on. No matter! It is not the first time that the Princess has appeared in two parts the same evening."

VII

In spite of envy, jealousy, and malice, a certain curiosity greater than all these drew everybody to the Princess Zut-Ski's ball. Lady Fitz-Fulke was there in virgin white, looking more youthful than ever, in spite of her sixty-five years and the card labeled "Fresh Paint"

which somebody had playfully placed upon her enameled shoulder. The Mcf.e.c.klesses, the Pyles, Flossy, the doctor, and the Chevalier--looking still anxious--were in attendance.

The mysterious Nubian doorkeeper admitted the guests through the same narrow pa.s.sages, much to the disgust of Lady Pyle and the discomfiture of her paunchy husband; but on reaching a large circular interior hall, a greater surprise was in store for them. It was found that the only entrance to the body of the hall was along a narrow ledge against the bare wall some distance from the floor, which obliged the guests to walk slowly, in single file, along this precarious strip, giving them the att.i.tudes of an Egyptian frieze, which was suggested in the original plaster above them. It is needless to say that, while the effect was ingenious and striking from the centre of the room, where the Princess stood with a few personal friends, it was exceedingly uncomfortable to the figures themselves, in their enforced march along the ledge,--especially a figure of Sir Midas Pyle's proportions.

Suddenly an exclamation broke from the doctor.

"Do you see," he said to the Princess, pointing to the figure of the Chevalier, who was filing along with his sinewy hands slightly turned inward, "how surprisingly like he is to the first attendant on the King in the real frieze above? And that," added the doctor, "was none other than 'Arry Axes, the Egyptian you are always thinking of." And he peered curiously at her.

"Goodness me!" murmured the Princess, in an Arabic much more soft and fluent than the original gum. "So he does--look like him."

"And do you know you look like him, too? Would you mind taking a walk around together?"

They did, amid the acclamations of the crowd. The likeness was perfect. The Princess, however, was quite white as she eagerly rejoined the doctor.

"And this means--?" she hissed in a low whisper.

"That he is the real 'Arry Axes! Hush, not a word now! We join the dahabiyeh to-night. At daybreak you will meet him at the fourth angle of the pyramid, first turning from the Nile!"

VIII

The crescent moon hung again over the apex of the Great Pyramid, like a silver cutting from the rosy nail of a houri. The Sphinx--mighty guesser of riddles, reader of rebuses and universal solver of missing words--looked over the unfathomable desert and these few pages, with the worried, hopeless expression of one who is obliged at last to give it up. And then the wailing voice of a woman, toiling up the steep steps of the pyramid, was heard above the creaking of the Ibis: "'Arry Axes! Where are you? Wait for me."

"J'y suis," said a voice from the very summit of the stupendous granite bulk, "yet I cannot reach it."

And in that faint light the figure of a man was seen, lifting his arms wildly toward the moon.

"'Arry Axes," persisted the voice, drifting higher, "wait for me; we are pursued."

And indeed it was true. A band of Nubians, headed by the doctor, was already swarming like ants up the pyramid, and the unhappy pair were secured. And when the sun rose, it was upon the white sails of the dahabiyeh, the vacant pyramid, and the slumbering Sphinx.

There was great excitement at the Cairo Hotel the next morning. The Princess and the Chevalier had disappeared, and with them Alaster Mcf.e.c.kless, Lady Fitz-Fulke, the doctor, and even his dahabiyeh! A thousand rumors had been in circulation. Sir Midas Pyle looked up from the "Times" with his usual I-told-you-so expression.

"It is the most extraordinary thing, don'tcherknow," said Fitz-Fulke.

"It seems that Dr. Haustus Pilgrim was here professionally--as a nerve specialist--in the treatment of hallucinations produced by neurotic conditions, you know."

"A mad doctor, here!" gasped Sir Midas.

"Yes. The Princess, the Chevalier, Mcf.e.c.kless, and even my mother were all patients of his on the dahabiyeh. He believed, don'tcherknow, in humoring them and letting them follow out their cranks, under his management. The Princess was a music-hall artist who imagined she was a dead and gone Egyptian Princess; and the queerest of all, 'Arry Axes was also a music-hall singer who imagined himself Chevalier--you know, the great Koster artist--and that's how we took him for a Frenchman.

Mcf.e.c.kless and my poor old mother were the only ones with any real rank and position--but you know what a beastly bounder Mac was, and the poor mater DID overdo the youthful! We never called the doctor in until the day she wanted to go to a swell ball in London as Little Red Riding-hood. But the doctor writes me that the experiment was a success, and they'll be all right when they get back to London."

"Then, it seems, sir, that you and I were the only sane ones here,"

said Sir Midas furiously.

"Really it's as much as I can do to be certain about myself, old chappie," said Fitz-Fulke, turning away.