It Happened in Egypt Part 44

When we had raised the slab to a height of about two feet in its grooves, and had made sure that the stones held it firmly in place, we told each other that it was time to cross the threshold. The rock-door was scarcely more than a yard in width, and we crawled through in single file, Anthony going ahead as before, with his torch. I pa.s.sed my lantern in after him, and then followed. As I crept through the narrow aperture I was conscious, among other emotions, of vague disappointment. "If this is the way to a tomb, and the only way, there can't be anything very fine to discover," I said to myself. "Why, the entrance isn't big enough to let in a decent-sized sarcophagus."

"It's the man of my dreams all right, and he's lying close to a deep-set doorway, like the one where I've seen him often. I told you so!"

Anthony was saying in quite a commonplace voice, as I picked myself up, on the other side of the rock-screen.

We were in a small chamber more roughly hewn, and not so large as the inner sanctuary of Abu Simbel, which I had such good cause to remember.

Exactly opposite the entrance by which we had come in was--as Anthony had said--a door, deeply set in the rock--a door of the same type as that through which we had pa.s.sed; and in the shadow of the overhanging arch lay the heavy figure of Colonel Corkran, dressed in khaki.

His eyes were open, but he did not stir as we bent over him. Only his lips moved slightly, as if he were making a grimace.

"He's trying to ask for something to eat or drink," said Fenton. "What a confounded fool I am!--I've nothing, not even a flask. Have you?"

"No. I'll go back at once and get something," I answered. Strange, but I was not in the least angry with Corkran, whom I had been execrating.

Perhaps this was partly because the impression that the djinns had sole rights here was growing stronger every moment. We were all interlopers, usurpers.

Without stopping for more words, I turned my back to the secret still unsolved. To my surprise, however, I saw a light stronger than our own shining outside the partly raised screen of rock. Getting on my knees to crawl out, my face almost met the face of Monny Gilder, about to crawl in. Involuntarily I gave way, and in she crept like a big baby, Biddy coming after. Then we laughed, though I had seldom felt less like laughing. And the echo of our laughter was as if the spirits laughed, behind our backs.

"We never _promised_ we wouldn't come," Monny hastily began, before Anthony could speak. "We just kept still. And Sir Marcus thought you wouldn't much mind, because the two nicest Nubians brought us quite safely. Oh, isn't it wonderful? And to be here when you open that door!

But--why, it _isn't_ one of our men with you. It's--it's the _thief_!"

"Don't call him names now, dearest," Brigit begged. "Poor wretch! He looks nearly dead. What a good thing we brought the biscuits and brandy."

"I was going for some," I said. Not only had I got to my feet again, but had helped Biddy to hers, and Anthony had s.n.a.t.c.hed his tall Monny up, as if she had been a bundle of thistle-down. The Angels! It would never have done to tell them how glad we were that they had disobeyed us. It was Providence, apparently, not Marcus Lark, who had sent them to the rescue.

"We thought perhaps if you found anything interesting you'd want to stay with it a long time," explained Monny. "That's why we brought you food and drink. It is a good thing we came, isn't it?"

Fenton and I did not answer. Instead, we occupied ourselves with ministering to the enemy: a few bits of crumbled biscuit, a few drops of brandy to moisten them. He mumbled and swallowed and choked; and slowly the veinous red came back to the flabby gray cheeks, with their p.r.i.c.kles of sprouting beard.

"It's fresh air he needs now," said Anthony. "He won't die from two or three days' fasting, not he! And it can't be more, for it would have taken him days and nights of hard work to get here, after his men were sent off. Jove, I believe it's more funk than anything else, that's laid him low. Thought he was done for, and all that. Look, there's his candle-lantern upset on the floor. It couldn't have been very gay for him when the light went out. Lend a hand, Duffer, and we'll give him to the Nubians the girls have brought. They'll carry him to his own tent.

He never got as far in as the second door here, so we needn't search him. Otherwise I would, like a shot."

Yes, it was Something higher than a mere financier who sent the girls to us in the antechamber of the secret. We could not, for their own sakes, have risked bringing them. But here they were, and we should always have this memory together, we told ourselves, though we did not tell the disobedient ones. That would have been a bad precedent. What there was to see, they would see with us. And even the djinns could not work harm to Angels.

We went out and collected more stones with which to prop up the second screen of rock, which was not so thick as the first, and used Corkran's spade to hold it up at last. Beyond, was another roughly hewn chamber, and at the far end, set in a curiously fitted frame of wood, a wooden door, looking almost as new as though it had been made yesterday.

Anthony flashed his electric torch over it, and we saw the grain of deal. There was a bronze lock, and a latch of strange, crude workmanship which Monny touched deprecatingly. "May I?" she half whispered. For to her also the place was haunted. She seemed to ask permission of spirits rather than of her lover. But the latch did not move.

"It would be sacrilege to break the lock," she said. "What shall you do?"

"Take the door off its supports: they're not hinges," Fenton answered, in the queer low tone which somehow we all instinctively adopted.

"We've got one or two implements may help to do the trick."

He worked cautiously, even tenderly: for this queen's secret was our secret in the finding, even if the right to it was in the keeping of the djinns. Monny held my lantern, and it was a good half hour before Anthony and I together could carefully lift the deal door, unbroken, from its place.

Still Monny held the lantern, and at the threshold of a dimly seen room beyond, we all drew back: for on the sanded floor were footprints. To them the girl pointed, her eyes turning to Anthony's face, as if to ask; "How can it be that any one came in, when the door was locked, and there was that screen of rock to raise?"

But as we looked, over one another's shoulders, we realised that the prints were not made by modern boots. They were the marks of sandals; and they went across the floor to a thing that glittered in the middle of the room--a vague shape like a draped coffin, with something high and pointed on top: crossed to a glittering table on which a ray from the lantern revealed offerings to the dead: a loaf; a roasted duck, its wings neatly tied with string: cakes and fruit, all dried and blackened, but perfect in form: and a saucer of incense, from which a little ash had fallen from a ghostly pastille onto the table. There the sandalled feet had paused, while the incense caught a spark, and moving on, had walked straight to the door.

A faint fragrance from perfume jars came to our nostrils: a strange, subtle fragrance still, though most of its sweetness had gone, leaving more marked the smell of fat which had held the perfume all these years, while civilizations grew up and perished. The man who had lit the incense and locked the door seemed to have hurried back from--who knew where?--to stand behind us, saying "I forbid you entrance, in the name of the ancient G.o.ds!" We could not see him, nor hear his voice; but we could feel that he was there, and something in us revolted against the ruthlessness of disobeying, of forcing our way into the room in spite of him, to crush his footprints with ours.

"Why does the sand glitter so?" Monny asked. "Everything glitters!

Everything looks as if it were made of gold."

"The Mountain of the Golden Pyramid," Biddy murmured.

"Go in first, you two, and bless the place," I said, my heart wildly beating.

They obeyed for once, moving delicately as if to music which ears of men were not fine enough to hear. They went hand in hand: and as Monny in her straight, pale-tinted dress, held up the lantern, I thought of the Wise Virgin. When this room had last been lighted, the parable of the Virgins of the Lamps was yet unspoken.

"It is not sand," said Monny, gasping a little in the heavy air. "It is sprinkled gold dust. Now it is on the soles of our feet. It shines--it shines!"

Anthony and I followed, still with that curious sense of hesitation, as if we ought to apologize to some one. The room of the dead was very close, and we drew our breath with difficulty for a moment. But the discomfort pa.s.sed. Mechanically we avoided the footmarks printed in gold--avoided them as if they had been covered by invisible feet.

Monny was right. Everything was gold--and it shone--it shone. Dust from the terrible mines of Nub, whence the convict-miners never returned, lay thickly scattered over the rock-floor. The walls of rock were plastered with gold leaf, as high as the low ceiling: and upon the ceiling itself, on a background of deep blue colour, was traced in gold the form of Nut, G.o.ddess of Night, her long arms outspread across an azure sky of golden stars.

The table of offerings was decorated with gold in barbaric patterns, and the saucer which held the burnt pastille of incense was of gold, crudely designed, but beautiful. Cloth of gold, soft as old linen, draped a coffin in the centre of the room, and hid the conical object on the coffin's lid. On a sudden half savage impulse I lifted the covering, with a pang of fear lest the fabric should drop to pieces.

But it did not. Its limp, yet heavy folds fell across my feet, as I stood looking at the wonderful thing it had concealed.

There was no sarcophagus of stone. The doors leading to the rock-tomb were not large enough to have admitted one. Instead, there was an extraordinarily high, narrow coffin or mummy-case, richly gilded, and decorated with intricate designs different from any I had seen in the museum at Cairo. The top of the case represented the figure of a woman, with a smiling golden face, painted lips and hair. But the strangeness and wonder were under the long eyelids, and in the woman's hands. The slanting eyes had each an immense cabuchon emerald for its iris, set round with brilliant stones like diamonds, curiously cut. And the carved, gilded hands of wood, with realistic fingers wearing rings, were clasped round a pyramid of gold. This it was which had betrayed its conical shape through the drapery of gold cloth.

The opening in the miniature pyramid was not concealed. There was a little door, guarded by a tiny golden sphinx; and on the neck of the sphinx, suspended by a delicate chain, was a bell.

"It is to call the spirit of the queen, if a profane touch should violate her tomb," Fenton said, dreamily. He was beginning to look like a man hypnotized. Perhaps it was the close air, with its lingering perfume of two thousand years ago. Perhaps it was something else, more subtile; something else that we could all feel, as one feels the touch of a living hand that moves under a cloak.

No one spoke for an instant. I think we half expected the bell to ring.

Then Fenton said: "Monny, you and Mrs. O'Brien must choose which is to have the privilege of finding out the secret of the golden pyramid. The Duffer and I want it to be one of you."

"Oh no, not I!" cried Monny, almost angrily.

"Nor I," Biddy firmly echoed.

"Duffer, the papers were yours. Will you--" Anthony began.

"No--I--It was _your_ faith in the mountain that brought us to it," I reminded him. "It ought to be you--"

"If--if it ought to be _any one of us_," Monny broke in, with a little breathless catch in her voice.

"If--But what do you mean?" Anthony turned an odd, startled look upon the girl.

"I--hardly know what I mean. Only--I couldn't touch anything here. They are--_hers_. They've been hers for two thousand and two hundred years.

I never thought I should feel like this. I'd rather drop dead, this minute, than try to take that little pyramid out of those golden hands.

They've clasped it so long! She wanted so much to keep the secret.

Anthony--this is the strongest feeling that ever came into my heart --except love for you, this feeling that--we have no right--that it would be monstrous to rob--this queen."

"It wouldn't be robbing," Anthony said, heavily, "we have the right--"

"Oh, I _wonder_?" Biddy whispered.

"What would become of museums if everybody felt as you suddenly feel --or think you feel?" Fenton went on. "If it were wrong to open tombs, the best men in Egypt--"