I bent down and rested my head against her tangled curls.
"Well?" I said, my arm about her shoul- ders.
"I thought you... found her attractive. Don't get mad. But I knew, I knew, Shan, that she was dangerous. She affects me in the same way as a snake. She has some uncanny power.... "
"Irish colleens are superstitious," I whis- pered.
"They may be. But they are often wise as well. Some women, Shan--bad women--are witches. "
"You're right, darling. And it was almost certainly Madame Ingomar that you saw! "
"Why do you say so?"
Then I told her what had happened in the tomb, and, when I had finished: "Just as she disappeared," Rima said, "I heard footsteps-- quick, padding footsteps-- on the other side of the wadi. I called out to Dr. Petrie, but the sound had died away.... I'd had one glimpse of him, though--a man running. "
"Did you recognise him? "
"Yes. "
"What!"
Rima looked up at me reflectively, and:
"Do you remember the Arab who came into camp some days ago and insisted that he must see uncle?"
I nodded.
"I think I know the man you mean--the chief asked me to find out what he wanted? "
"Yes. "
"A gaunt-faced fellow--steely piercing eyes? Spoke very queer Arabic and denied all knowledge of English. Told me quite bluntly he had nothing whatever to say to me, but must see Sir Lionel. I finally told him to go to the devil. Why, good heavens, Rima.... that was the evening before the tragedy! "
"Well," said Rima in a very low voice, "this was the man I saw running along the ridge to-night! "
"I don't like the sound of it," I admitted. "We have trouble enough already. Did he see you? "
"He couldn't have done. Besides, he was running at tremendous speed."
Even as she spoke the words, my heart seemed to miss a beat. I sprang up. Rima clutched me, her beautiful eyes widely opened.
Racing footsteps were approaching the tent!
I didn't know what to expect. My imagi- nation was numb. But when the flap was dragged aside and All Mahmoud unceremoni- ously burst in, I was past reprimand, past any comment whatever.
"Effendim! Effendim! Quick, please. They tell me not to disturb Forester Effendim and Captain Hunter... His camp bed! "
"What!--the chief's? "
"I am ordered to carry it up to the mouth of the old shaft! "
"Ali Mahmoud!"
Rima sprang forward and grasped the headman's shoulders.
"Yes! Yes!" His eyes were gleaming madly. "It is true, lady! It is Black Magic, but it is true."
Of all the queer episodes of that night- mare business there was none more grotesque, I think, than this of Ali and I carrying Sir Lionel's camp bed up the steep path to that gaunt and desolate expanse upon which Lafleur's Shaft opened. As we had come out of the chief's tent, I had heard the voices of Jameson Hunter and Forester in the big hut.
I was literally bathed in perspiration when we reached our goal. Dropping down upon the light bed, I stared out over that prospect beneath me. Right at my feet lay the Sacred Valley of Der-el-Bahari; to the right the rugged hills and ravines of this domain of the dead. Beyond, indicated by a green tracing under the stars, the Nile wound on like a river of eternity. For a few moments I regarded it all, and then Rima's fingers closed over my own.
A lantern stood at the mouth of Lafleur's Shaft.
We began to descend--to where a group awaited us.- Never, to the end of everything, shall I forget that moment when Weymouth and Dr. Petrie lifted Sir Lionel, still swathed in his worn army blanket, and laid him on the camp bed. Ali Mahmoud, who possessed the lean strength of a leopard, had carried him up the short ladder on his shoulders. But the effort had proved dangerously exhausting to the sufferer. Anxiety was written deeply upon Petrie's face as he bent over him.
Rima was almost as ghostly pale as he who had been plucked out of the gates of death. She was staring at Petrie fearfully, as one who glimpses a superman. But my own feelings were oddly compounded of joy and horror-- joy because the dear old chief had been given a chance to live; horror, because I recognized a scientific miracle--and suddenly, awfully, appreciated the terrifying genius of Dr. Fu Manchu.
At which moment, Sir Lionel opened his eyes--gazed vacantly, and then saw us.
"Cheer up, Rima--child," he whispered. "God bless you fellows." And to me: "Thanks for the dash to Cairo. Good scout!"
He closed his eyes again.
2
"Well, Nurse," said Petrie, as Rima came out and joined us on the hotel terrace, "what do you think of our patient?"
Rima, a delicious picture in a dainty frock which had taken the place of the rough kit she wore in camp, fixed that grave look of hers on the speaker.
Then she turned swiftly aside, and I saw a threat of tears in her eyes.
"Yes," Petrie murmured. "I don't quite know what to make of him. I'm only an ordi- nary practitioner, Rima, and although I've searched every hotel in Luxor, this is an off season. There isn't a man in Upper Egypt whose opinion I could take. And the only likely Cairo man, as bad luck would have it, is away on leave."
Silence fell between us. Sir Lionel Barton --first-perhaps of modem Orientalists--lay in his room in a state of incomparable coma, a mysterious secret locked in his memory. Petrie had rescued him from death--dragged him back, indeed from the other side of that grim Valley--by virtue of an unnamed drug prepared by the greatest physician the world had ever known.
Strange, tragic, that so mighty a brain as that of Dr. Fu Manchu should be crooked-- that an intellect so brilliant should be directed not to healing but to destruction. He was dead. Yet the evil of his genius lived after him....
In a few weeks now this quiet spot in which we sat would be bustling with busy, international life. The tourist season would have set in. Dragomans, sellers of beads, of postcards and of scarabs would be thick as flies around the doors of the hotels. Dahabiyehs would moor at the landing- places; fashionable women would hurry here and there, apparently busy, actually idle: white-suited men, black-robed guides--bustle--excitement....
Even now, as I stared across the nearly deserted roadway and beyond old peaceful Nile to where crags and furrows marked the last resting place of the Pharoahs, even now I could scarcely grasp the reality of it all.
What was the secret of the Tomb of the Black Ape? Careful examination had enabled us to prove that Lafleur at the time his exca- vation was abandoned--that is, at the time of his disappearance in 1909--had got within a few yards of the passage leading to the burial chamber. Some unknown hand had completed the work and then had so carefully concealed the opening that later Egyptolo- gists had overlooked it. Or had the hand been that of Lafleur himself?
More astounding stilclass="underline" the inner stone door, or portcullis, had been opened before! And it had been reclosed--so cunningly that even the chief had thought it to be intact! We were not the first party to reach it.
Therefore... when had the tomb been emptied? In Lafleur's time or a week ago whilst I was in Cairo? Who had reclosed it, and why had he done so? Above all--what had it contained?
Maddening to think that poor Sir Lionel might know... but was unable to tell us....
My musings were interrupted.
"Next to Brian Hawkins of Wimpole Street," came Petrie's voice, "there's one man with whom I'd give half I possess to have ten minutes' conversation. "
"Who is that?" Rima asked.
"Nayland Smith."
I looked across.
"Not as a professional consultant," Petrie added. "But somehow, in the old days, he seemed to find a way. "