Our secret was to be kept. Only the Sirdar knew—and gave Fenton leave of absence for a few days. The Set did not suspect the existence of a mountain at Meroee more important than its neighbours. They did not even know what had become of Antoun Effendi after he bade them farewell, and "good luck." From the first, he had given it out that he must leave the party at Khartum. The object of returning to Meroee was to "meet Sir Marcus;" and I promised to be back in plenty of time to organize the return trip to Cairo. My departure, therefore, was all in the day's work: and the great sensation was Mrs. East's engagement. Even though, for obvious reasons, Monny's love affair was kept dark, Cleopatra could not resist parading hers, the minute her wire to Sir Marcus had been safely sent. I got an invitation for all the members of the Set to a tennis party in the Palace gardens, at which the Sultan of Dafur and a bodyguard armed with battle axes would be the chief attraction. Also I induced the landlord of our hotel to promise special illuminations, music, and an impromptu dance for the evening. This was to make sure that none of our friends should find time to see me off at the train. Anthony was to join me there, in mufti, and might be recognised by sharp eyes on the lookout for mysteries. Once we got away, that danger would be past: unless Cleopatra told. But I was certain that she would not to any one ever again mention the name of Antoun.

It was a full train that night, but no one in it who knew Antoun. Many people who had been visiting friends or staying at an hotel for weeks, were saying good-bye. The narrow corridors of the sleeping-cars had African spears piled up on the floor against the wall, very long and inconvenient. Ladies struggled in, with rainbow-coloured baskets almost too big for their compartments. Seats were littered with snake-skins like immense, decayed apple parings; fearsome, crescent-shaped knives; leopard rugs in embryo; and strange headgear in many varieties. Stuffed crocodiles fell down from racks and got underfoot: men walked about with elephant tusks under their arms; dragomans solicited a last tip; a six-foot seven Dinka, black as ink and splendid as a Greek statue, brought flowers from the Palace for some departing acquaintance of the Sirdar and his wife. Officers in evening dress dashed up through the sand, on donkey-back, to see the last of friends, their mess jackets making vivid spots of colour in the electric light. All the fragrant blossoms of Khartum seemed to be sending farewell messages of perfume on the cool evening air. No more fantastic scene at a railway-station could be imagined. If the world and its doings is but a moving picture for the gods on Olympus they must enjoy the film of "a train departing from Khartum."

Anthony did not join me until just as the train was crawling out of the station, for we had asked Brigit and Monny not to see us off, and they had been startlingly acquiescent. We had a two-berthed compartment together, and talked most of the night, in low voices; of the mountain; of the legends concerning it, and the papers of the dead Egyptologist Ferlini, which indirectly had brought Fenton into Monny Gilder's life, and given Brigit back to me. There was the out-of-doors breakfast party, too, on the terrace at Shepheard's. Had it not been for this incident Antoun, the green-turbaned Hadji, would never have been selected by Miss Gilder, in words she might now like to forget. "I'll have that!" But, had not a distressed artist called on me one morning in Rome, months ago, with an old notebook to sell, I should not have come to Egypt for my sick-leave; and none of us would have met. I had visited the artist's studio to please a friend, and bought a picture to please him (not myself); therefore he regarded me as a charitable dilettante, likely to buy anything if properly approached. Bad luck had come to him; he wanted to try pastures new, and needed money at short notice: therefore he wished to dispose of a secret which might be the key to fortune. Why didn't he use the key himself? was the obvious question; which he answered by saying that a poor man would not be able to find the lock to fit it.

The notebook he had to sell had been the property of a distinguished distant relative, long since dead; the Italian, Ferlini, who about 1834 ransacked the ruins of Meroee in the kingdom of Candace. Ferlini had given treasure in gold, scarabs, and jewels to Berlin, all of which he had discovered in a secret cache in the masonry of a pyramid, in the so-called "pyramid field" of Meroee. But he had been blamed for unscientific work, and in some quarters it was not believed that he had found the hoard at Meroee. This jealousy and injustice had prevented Ferlini's obtaining a grant for further explorations he wished to make. He claimed to have proof that in a certain mountain not far from the Meroee pyramids, and much resembling them in shape, was hidden the tomb of a Candace who lived two hundred years earlier than the queen of that name mentioned in the New Testament, mistress of the eunuch baptized by St. Philip. In the notebook which had come down with other belongings of Ferlini the Egyptologist, to Ferlini the artist, was a copy of certain Demotic writing, of a peculiar and little known form. The original had existed, according to the dead Ferlini's notes, on the wall of an antechapel in one of the most ruinous pyramids at Meroee, decorated in a peculiarly barbaric Ethiopian style. The wall-writing described the making of the mountain tomb, ordered by Candace in fear that her body might be disturbed, according to a prophecy which predicted the destruction of the kingdom if the jewels of the dead were found.

Ferlini, a student of the Demotic writings which had superseded hieroglyphics, doubted not that he had translated the revelation aright, though he admitted supplying many missing words in accordance with his own deductions. He was in disfavour at the time he tried to organize an expedition in search of the queen's hoard, and though legends of the mountain confirmed the writings which Ferlini was the first to translate, the Italian could induce no one to finance his scheme. The one person he succeeded in interesting had a relative, already excavating in Egypt: but eventually addressed on the subject, this young man replied that the antechapel in question had fallen completely into ruin. It would be impossible, therefore, to find the wall-writing, "if indeed it ever existed."

This verdict had put an end to Ferlini's hopes, and nothing remained of them save the translated copy of the writing in his notebook (the missing words inserted) and the legends of the negroes who, generation after generation since forgotten times, had told the story of the "Mountain of the Golden Pyramid." Nobody, within the memory of man, had ever searched for the problematical tomb: and as tales of more or less the same character are common in Egypt, I did not place much faith in the enthusiastic jottings of Ferlini. However, my love of the unknown, the mysterious and romantic, made me feel that the possession of the notebook was worth the price asked: two thousand lire. When I had brooded over it myself, I posted it to Fenton at Khartum; and his opinion had brought me to Egypt. Thinking of the matter in this way, it seemed that we owed our love stories to the impecunious artist, who had probably spent his eighty pounds and forgotten me by this time. In a few hours, or a few days, we might owe him even more.

Anthony, acquainted with Meroee, its pyramids and pyramidal mountains, since his first coming to the Sudan, had been able to plan out our campaign almost at an hour's notice. He knew where to wire for camels [to take us to our destination, eighteen miles from Kabushia], also for trained excavators. And he knew one who, if the white men were in ignorance, could tell us all the most hidden happenings of the desert for fifty miles around. This was the great character of the neighbourhood, among the blacks, the Wise Man of the Meroeitic desert, who claimed to be over a hundred years old, had a tribe of sons and grandsons, and practically ruled the village of Bakarawiya. For countless generations his forbears had lived under the shadow of the ruined pyramids. Family tradition made them the descendants of those Egyptian warriors who revolted in the time of King Psammetichus, migrating from Elephantine Island to Ethiopia. There they were well received by the sovereign, given lands in Upper Nubia, and the title of Autolomi, or Asmack, meaning "Those who stand on the left side of the King." Anthony's friend and instructor in the lore of legends rejoiced in the name of "Asmack," which, he proudly said, had been bestowed on the eldest son in his family, since time immemorial.

Asmack the old and wise was to meet us at Kabushia Station, with camels, one for each, and one for Sir Marcus, in case he had arrived and wished to ride to the Mountain of the Golden Pyramid.

It was orange-red afternoon when our white train slowed down, to pause for a moment at Kabushia Station, and the first face we saw was that of Sir Marcus Antonius—a radiant face whose beaming smile was, I knew, not so much a welcome for us as a sign that he had received the telegram from Cleopatra. He hurried along the platform to the steps of our sleeping car; and Anthony, ready to swing himself down before the train stopped, pointed out Asmack not far off,—a thin old black man who must once have been a stately giant, but bent forward now as if searching the earth for his own grave. He had got to his feet, from a squatting position in the coal-stained, alluvial clay of this strange desert, and was gazing toward us, his few rags fluttering in the warm wind. Beside him stood a mere youth of fifty or so, and two or three young men, with several sulky camels.

Sir Marcus began to shake hands almost before we were on the platform; and so did he engross himself in us and absorb our attention that none of us quite knew when the train went out.

"My dear boys!" he addressed us, nearly breaking our finger bones. "Lord, Fenton, you're even better looking as a true Britisher than a false Arab! But never mind that now. Borrow, you're a trump. I believe I owe everything to you. I mean, in the matter of Mrs. East—Clara. It always was my favourite name. Fenton knows? Thanks for the congratulations. Thanks to you both. You must be my best men. What? Can't have but one? Well, it must be Borrow, then, I suppose. Oh, about the mountain? Why, of course you're anxious. Don't think I have not been busy. I have. Got here by special train. Cost me a lot of money. But who cares? It's worth it. I want to hurry things up, and get to Khartum. What your blessed mountain is to you, that is a certain lady to me."

"What have you found out?" I managed at last to cut short his rhapsodies.

"Why, not much, I'm bound to confess. But I've had only a few hours. Some one—heaven knows who—came here, it seems, with Arabs he'd engaged heaven knows where, and pretended to be my agent, empowered by me to work at the Mountain of the Golden Pyramid, where it was well known I'd got the right to excavate. Well, the chap was armed with credentials, and had a contract signed by me, so the authorities thought he was all right of course, and let him go on. This was more than a month ago. He pitched his camp out by the mountain, and nobody disturbed him. Fact is, from what I hear, I don't believe the excavating men from the Liverpool School of Archeology or whatever you call it, thought much of his chances of success. A case of looking for Captain Kidd's treasure! He and his men were excavating round the mountain, and he'd engaged some more fellows from the neighbourhood to make the work go faster. But a few days ago—not yet a week—he discharged the lot, paid them up and sent them off saying he'd abandoned hope of finding any entrance to an alleged tomb. The Arabs departed by train; but the fellows from hereabouts gossiped a bit, it seemed, and the story was started that they'd been got rid of because the Boss had hit on something, and wanted to be left to himself.

"You haven't told us yet the name of the man," Anthony reminded him.

"By Jove, no more I haven't! I'm so excited about everything. You won't know it, but Borrow will. Colonel Corkran."

Anthony gave me a look. "I do know the name," he said. "It's the man of my dream."

"The man of your dream? Corkran a dream?"

"A dream which has kept repeating itself until I grew superstitious about it. A red-faced man with a purplish sort of moustache, I saw coming between you and us, or looking at me out of a dark recess, something like a deep doorway. Borrow said when I told him, I was describing your man, Corkran, whose place he took on your yacht Candace."

"Well, I'm hanged! If that's not the rummiest go! I only hope he's not in that recess or deep doorway now, if it leads into your mountain. You remember, Borrow, my telling you he'd been alone for a while in the sitting-room I use as an office at the Semiramis Hotel, and had had a good chance if he wanted to browse among my papers? Well, I didn't mention this to you at the time, but an unsigned contract with you for your services, in return for all my rights in the Mountain of the Golden Pyramid, was lying on the desk. (As for the contract he's been showing here, it could only have been for the trip; but it showed him to be my agent right enough.) And there were two confidential letters on my desk: one from a man I'd written to, an Egyptologist chap, saying in his opinion there might be a tomb in the mountain; the other, an answer, not finished, telling him I meant to run the risk, and had secured the rights. You know how queer I thought it, Corkran should throw up his job, which was paying him pretty well? But it wasn't my business, and I was jolly glad to be rid of him as it happened. Well, here we have the mystery explained."

"Not quite yet! I wish we had," I said, thinking of the sly old poacher on our preserves, who had perhaps by this time skimmed the cream off the secret. It was easy to guess why he had sent away his workers if, indeed, he had imagined himself on the eve of a discovery. Rights to dig are given on the understanding that the Egyptian government shall have half of anything found, worth the taking. Corkran's scheming to be alone must mean that he intended annexing what treasure he could carry off, and then getting out of the bad business. Already six days had passed since the Arabs and Nubians had left him alone in his camp; and though it was lucky that we had learned what was going on, it might be too late to profit by the information. Even if we caught Corkran red-handed, he might have hidden his spoil where none but he, or some messenger, could ever find it.

"You'll go out with us to the mountain, Sir Marcus?" I went on. "We'll be ready to start—"

But Sir Marcus had suddenly become deaf. He had turned as if to gaze after the long ago departed train. Instead of answering me, he was stalking off toward a group of people at the far end of the platform: three ladies and two men in khaki. For a second I felt an impulse of indignation. Cheek of him to march away like that, not caring much that we had been robbed, largely through his carelessness, and by one of his own men!

But the indignation turned to surprise, sheer incredulous amazement. I glanced at Anthony to learn whether he had seen; but he was beckoning the old wise man of the desert. "Fenton," said I, "it seems we weren't the only passengers to get off here. There are three people we know, talking to two we don't."

Anthony looked. "Great Scott!" said he. And in another instant we were following Sir Marcus hastily along the platform to greet—or scold (we weren't sure which it ought to be) the big hatted, green-veiled, khaki-dressed but easily recognised figures of Brigit O'Brien, Monny Gilder, and Mrs. East.

"We couldn't help it," Monny cried in self-defence to Anthony, before he had time to reach the group. "We knew you wouldn't let us come, so we came—because we had to be in this with you. Even Biddy wanted to —and she's so wise. As, for Aunt Clara, I believe she'd have started without us, if we hadn't been wild for the journey. So you see how it was!"

We did see. And we couldn't help rejoicing in their pluck, as well as in the sight of them, though it was all against our common sense.

"We've ordered our own camels, and a tent, and things to eat and drink, so we shan't be any bother to you," Monny went on, as Anthony rather gravely shook hands, his eager brows lifted, his eyes smiling in spite of himself. "We couldn't have done it, if it hadn't been for Slatin Pasha. We first went and confided everything to him, because we knew he loved adventures and would be sure to sympathize. These gentlemen from the camp are his friends, and they've organized our little expedition at his request. More than one person can use the telegraph, you know! And oh, won't it be lovely going with you out into the desert!"

* * * * * It was not yet evening when we set forth; but it was the birth of another day when we arrived within sight of Corkran's camp. The tents glimmered pale in the light which comes up out of the desert before dawn, as light rises from the sea; and so deep was the stillness that it might have been a ghost camp. There was not even the howling of a dog; and this silence was more eerie than the silence of sleep in a lonely place; because of the tale a grandson of Asmack's had brought to the village. He was one of the Nubian men Corkran had engaged to help his Arab workmen from the north; and when the whole gang had been discharged he, suspecting that some secret thing was on foot, hid in the desert-scrub that he might return by night to spy. He had wished his brothers to stay with him, but they, fearing the djinns who haunt the mountain and have power at night, refused, and begged him to come away lest he be struck by a terrible death. The legend was that Queen Candace, the queen who ordered the making of the tomb—had been a witch. When she died, by her magic arts learned from the lost Book of Thoth, she had turned all those aware of the tomb's existence, into djinns, to guard the secret dwelling of her soul. Even the great men of the court who by her wish hid in the mountain her body and jewels and treasure, became djinns the moment they had closed and concealed the entrance to the tomb. They could never impart the secret to mortals; and because of the knowledge which burned within their hearts, and the anguish of being parted forever from those they loved, the tortured spirits in prison grew malevolent. While the sun (still worshipped by them as Ra) was above the horizon they had no power over men, but the moment that Ra? "died his red death" the djinns could destroy those who ventured within such distance of the mountain as its shadow might reach: and if any man ventured nearer in the darkness of night, he heard the wailing of the spirits. Camp had been pitched beyond the shadow's furthest reach; but the night after the workmen were discharged, Asmack's one brave grandson had been led by curiosity to approach the haunted mountain. When he had crept within the trench most lately dug, he had heard the wicked voice of the djinns raging and quarrelling together. There had been a threatening cry when they knew how a man had defied their power, and the Nubian had escaped a fate too horrible to put in words, only by running, running, until his breath gave out, and the sun rose.

This story gave the silent desert power even over European minds, as we came where the small camp glimmered, just outside the Shadow's wicked circle.

Not one of Asmack's men would go with us to the tent, which was evidently that of the leader. He might be lying there dead, struck by the djinns, they said, and all those who looked upon the body would be accursed. The three women would not have gone to Corkran's tent, even had we allowed them to do so; and Sir Marcus, already a slave, though a willing one, stayed with his adored lady and her friends, inside the ring which the Nubians proceeded to make with the camels. Carrying a lighted lantern Anthony and I walked alone to the tent.

The flap was down, but not fastened, and the canvas moved slightly as if trembling fingers tried to hold it taut.

"Colonel Corkran!" I called out, sharply. But there was no answer.



CHAPTER XXXII

THE SECRET

Anthony lifted the flap, holding up the lantern, and we both looked in.

No one was there—but the tent had the look of recent occupation. It was neatly arranged, as the tent of an old soldier should be: but on the table stood a half-used candle stuck in a bottle; and beside it a book lay open, face downward. Entering the tent the first thing I did was to glance at the title of this book. It was a learned archeological treatise. Here and there a paragraph was marked, and leaves dog's-eared. Three other volumes of the same sort were piled one upon the other. Anthony and I had read all four during the last few months, since our minds had concentrated on the subject of pyramids and rock tombs.

"What do you think has become of Corkran?" I said to Anthony.

"I think the djinns have got him," he answered, gravely.

"You mean—"

"I don't quite know what I mean. But—he must have hit upon something, and then—have been prevented from coming back."

"Why should he have had such luck, after a few weeks' work, an unscientific fellow like him, if the secret of the mountain has been inviolate for over two thousand years?"

"Wait and see what's happened to him before you call it 'luck,' Duffer. But you must remember that nobody except Ferlini and a few superstitious blacks ever believed that the mountain had a secret. Incredulity has protected it. And Corkran had to work like a thousand devils if he hoped to get hold of anything before he was found out. I believe he has got hold of something, and—that it then got hold of him. But we shall see."

"Yes, we shall see," I repeated. "And before long if we too have luck."

"I hope it won't be the same kind as his. But come along out of this. We must get to work before sunrise, and try for a result of some sort before the worst of the heat. If he's found anything, we ought pretty quickly to profit by his weeks of frantic labour. That, maybe, will be our revenge."

We had to tell the party what we had found in the tent, and what we meant to do next. Sir Marcus was now excused by Mrs. East; but until summoned by us the ladies were to remain where they were, under shelter of the tent which the camel-boys were getting into shape. When exhorted to be patient, they received the advice in sweet silence; but we did not until later attach much importance to this unusual mood. Perhaps at the moment we were too preoccupied to notice expressions, even in the eyes we loved best.

We took with us two men whom Asmack had provided as diggers, and in five minutes we were at the base of the little dark, conical mountain which for weeks had been the object of our dreams. Now, standing face to face with it, the glamour faded. The Mountain of the Golden Pyramid was exactly like a dozen other tumbled shapes of black rock, grouped or scattered over the dull clay desert which many centuries ago had been the fertile realm of Candace. Why should a queen have selected it from among its lumpish fellows, to do it secret honour? But Corkran had had faith. Here were traces of what Fenton called his "frantic labours."

A parallel trench had been dug with the evident object of unearthing a buried entrance into the mountain. Down it went through hardened sand and clay, to a depth of eight or ten feet; and descending, we found as we expected to do, several low tunnels driven at right angles toward the mountain itself. One after another we entered, crawling on hands and knees, only to come up against a solid wall of rock at the end. Each of these burrows represented just so much toil and disappointment. But Corkran, whose undertaking could be justified even to his own mind only by success, had not been discouraged. The trench went round three sides of the mountain, as we soon discovered; and the corner of the fourth facade not having yet been turned, it seemed a sign that Corkran had, as Anthony said, "hit upon something," or thought that he had done so. Otherwise he would not have discharged his men before the fourth gallery was begun. We had started from the south because our camp faced the long trench on that side, and it was quicker to jump into it than to walk round and examine the excavations from ground-level. On the east, the plan of the work was the same as on the south, except that the tunnels leading mountainward were driven at different distances, relatively to each other; and each of these also ended in a cul de sac. Now remained the trench on the north side of the mountain, which was the most promising direction for a "find": and as we turned the corner which brought us into this third trench the sun rose, making the sky blossom like the primrose fields of heaven.

On this side, sand driven by the northerly wind which never rests had banked itself high against the mountain, and the excavation had been a more serious task. There were only two tunnels, and into both sand had fallen. One was nearly blocked up, and impossible to enter without reopening; but we took it for granted hopefully that the second had been made later. This ran toward the mountain with a northeasterly slant; and though it was partly choked by sand, it was possible to crawl in. Anthony insisted on going first. I followed, at the pace of my early ancestor the worm, and Sir Marcus comfortably waited outside. He wanted to be a pioneer only in financial paths; and after all, this was our mountain now. It wasn't worth his while to be killed in it. Besides, as he pointed out, if anything happened to us there must be some one to organize a rescue, and break the news to the ladies.

Anthony had a small electric torch, and I a lantern, but going on hands and knees, we could use the lights only now and then. When we had crept ahead (descending always) for twelve or fifteen feet, Anthony stopped. "Hullo!" I heard him call, in a muffled, reverberating voice. "Here's the reason why Corkran sent his Arabs away!"

"What is it?" I yelled, my heart jumping.

"The rock's been cut back, by the hands of men."

"His men, perhaps."

"No, it isn't done like that nowadays. The tunnel turns here, dips down, and goes on along this flat wall. I bet Corkran always kept ahead of the men. When he saw this, he discharged his workers—And yet, it may be nothing of importance after all. Only a flat surface for some old wall-inscription such as Romans and even Egyptian soldiers made constantly, on the march."

The rumbling voice ceased, as Anthony crawled round the turn of the passage. I followed, literally close on his heels, the burrow descending like a rabbit-hole. Suddenly Anthony stopped again. "I've come into a sort of chamber Corkran's scooped out," I heard him say. "It's high enough to sit up in—no, to stand up in. This is the end of the passage, I think. By Jove, look out!" He had disappeared in the darkness behind a higher arch in the roof of the gallery. As he cried out, I slipped through after him, slid down a steep, abrupt slope, and by the light of my agitated lantern saw Anthony standing waist-deep in a well-like hole, into which he had evidently stumbled.

"Let me give you a hand up," I said.

"No thank you," he answered, in a tense, excited voice. "This is where I want to be. Look!"

I looked and saw, at the bottom of the scooped-out hole, a crevice in the flat wall of rock which we had been following down the passage, after its turn from the right angle way to creep along the mountainside. Out of this crevice protruded a large iron crowbar, apparently jammed into place, the first tool we had seen anywhere.

The chamber in which I stood, was littered and piled up with hard masses of earth which had been thrown out of the hole; and on the rough floor of the latter I stepped on the spade which had done the work. It nearly turned my ankle as I jumped on to it, but I hardly felt the pain. Torch and lantern showed clearly that the crevice in the wall was not a natural crack, but a man-made opening. It was as if a slab of rock fitted roughly into grooves had first been lifted, and had then fallen heavily on to the crowbar.

I set the lantern on the earthy floor and its yellow light streamed through the crack, whence the crowbar protruded like a black pipe in a negro's mouth. It was all darkness on the other side; from behind the screen of rock, set in its deep grooves, came the strangest sound I ever heard, or shall ever hear. It was a voice, groaning, yet it was not like a human voice. The horrid idea jumped into my head that it was the howl of an evil spirit sitting in a dead man's skull.

"He's alive then," exclaimed Anthony, pale in the sickly light. "Is that you, Corkran?" he called. The only answer was another groan.

"I see the whole business now, don't you?" Fenton said. "This passage is very steep. Already it was far under ground-level, before we got to the cutting on the mountain wall, and it must have been under ground-level for many centuries. They dug deep down, to make the tomb, and then covered up the entrance with earth. When Corkran got to his portcullis, he thought he'd reached the reward of his labours. Well—so he had—the punishment. Here's the heap of stone he used as a fulcrum for his lever. The heap tumbled when he was on the other side, and the slab of rock came down to trap him. We'll have to build up his fulcrum again, before we can do anything ourselves."

Together we forced the flat end of the crowbar into the crevice, pressed a piece of rock under it, and exerted all our strength. The slab moved upward an inch or two, grating in its rough grooves. The crack, no higher than the diameter of the crowbar plus a stone or two, when we saw it first, was now twice its original height. In went another stone, and so on. We worked like demons in hell, and in an atmosphere almost as hot and breathless. Yet we could breathe. Whether all the air we got came through the long twisting passage Corkran had made, or whether there were ventilation from the other side of the rock-curtain—some opening in an unseen cave—we could not tell. All we knew was that the mountain had a secret, and that the man who had tried to rob us of our rights to it, was caught in the trap of the djinns.

Our "rights!" How fragile as spider-webs, how almost laughable they seemed down here! Rights we had bargained for with men, which they, not owning them, had gravely given! I suddenly realized, and I think Anthony realized, as sweating and silent we piled up the fulcrum of stones thrown down by the djinns, that they alone, or the sleeping queen they guarded, had "rights" in this hidden place.

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 passed 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 passed; 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 snatched 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 prickles 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 gods!" 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 passed. 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, goddess 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—"

"Not wrong, perhaps," Monny explained, "but—oh, I'm sure you understand. I'm sure in your hearts you both—you men—feel just as we do now we're in this wonderful secret place. That something forbids—I don't know whether it's something in ourselves or outside, but it's here. It says "No; whatever others do, you cannot do this thing." If you didn't feel it, you would have taken the pyramid out of those poor hands, and tried to tear off the rings, and open the coffin itself, to get at the mummy. But you haven't—either of you. You don't want to do it. You can't! I dare one of you to tell me it's only for Biddy and me that you've kept your hands off."

"We've come a long way, and have done a good deal to find this secret that we expected Egypt to give us," I said, dully, instead of answering her challenge.

Monny had no argument for me. She turned to Anthony.

"The secret you expected Egypt to give!" she echoed. "And hasn't Egypt given you a secret?"

"Yes," said Anthony, "Egypt has given us a secret: the greatest secret of all. But—"

"Is there a 'but'? I wonder if that isn't the only secret which one can open and learn by heart, without breaking the charm?" Biddy seemed to be speaking to herself, but we heard. "The secret of love goes on forever being a secret, doesn't it, the more you find out about it, just as the world and its beauty grows greater and more wonderful the higher you climb up a mountain? But other secrets!—You find them out, and they're gone, like a bright soap bubble. Nothing can mend broken romance!"

"If we didn't touch anything here, what a memory this would be to carry away!" Monny said. "Don't you remember, Anthony, my saying once how I loved to dream of all the beautiful lost things, hidden beneath the sea and earth, never to be found while the world lasts, and stuck miserably under glass cases? You said you felt the same, in some moods. I love those moods!"

"I felt—I feel—so about things in general," Anthony admitted. "It was my romantic side you appealed to—"

"Have you a better side?"

"No better, but more practical. This isn't 'things in general.' It's a thing particular, personal, and definite. If we should be quixotic enough not to take what we've earned the right to take, we should be called fools. Instead of claiming our half, the Egyptian government would get all—"

"Let it!" Monny cried. "A government is a big, cold, soulless —impersonality! It never could know the thrill that's in our blood this wonderful minute—or miss the thrill if it were destroyed. Do you mind being called a fool, Anthony—and you, Lord Ernest?"

Anthony was silent; but something made me speak. "I don't mind. You know, I've always been a Duffer."

"Our future largely depends on this," Fenton persisted, with a conscientious wish to persuade us—and himself.

"I believe it does!" Monny strangely agreed with him.

"What do you mean?" Anthony's voice was suddenly sharp with some emotion; which sounded more like anxiety than anger. "Do you mean, that if Ernest Borrow and I insist on our rights to whatever treasure is hidden here, you and Mrs. O'Brien will think less of us?"

"Not less. Nothing you could do would make us think less, after all that has happened to us, together. But—could it ever be as it has been—as beautiful, as sweet, with all the dearest kind of romance in our thoughts of you? You see, you have the glory of finding the secret. Queen Candace saved it for you. She wouldn't give it to such a man as Colonel Corkran. She knew he wouldn't respect her. Maybe she hoped you would. I seem to hear her saying so. All this gold, and the treasure we haven't seen, is hers. It's been hers for more than two thousand years. Why should we steal it? We aren't a horrid, cold Government. It won't be our fault, whatever a Government may choose to do. She'll know that, and so shall we. Besides, we can beg to have the tomb kept like this for the great shrine of Meroee. Our memory of this place can't have the glamour torn away whatever happens. Nothing sordid will come between it and us, as it would if—why, after all, where's the great difference between opening the coffin of a woman dead thousands of years ago, or a few months? Supposing people wanted to dig up Queen Elizabeth, to see what had been buried with her? Or Napoleon? What an outcry there'd be all over the world. This poor queen is defenceless, because her civilization is dead, too. Could you force open the lid of her coffin, Lord Ernest, and take the jewels off her neck?"

"Just now, I feel as if I couldn't," I confessed humbly.

"And you, Anthony? What if I died, and asked to have the jewels I loved because you'd given them, put on my body to lie there till eternity, and—"

"Don't," Anthony cut her short. "There are some things I can't listen to from you."

"And some things you can't do. You may think you could, but—Go and take the golden pyramid out of those golden hands if you can!"

"I shall not take it," said Anthony, "I shall never take it now. You must know that."

"I'm not saying I shan't go on loving you if you go against me. I shall love you always. I can't help that. But—"

"That's it: the 'but'. Let it all go! At least, we've had the adventure. And we've got Love. I don't want the treasure, now. Or the secret. I give up my part in them forever."

"For me?"

"Yes, for you. But there's something more."

"Another reason?"

"I think so. Frankly, it isn't all for you. Only, you've made me feel it. Without you, I might have felt it—but too late. If there's a drop of Egyptian blood in my veins—why, yes, it must be that, telling me the same thing that you have told. This Egyptian queen may lose her treasure, and must lose her secret; but it won't be through me."

"And because you wouldn't steal them, she has given you the secret and the treasure, the best of both, with her royal blessing," Biddy said. "This is what Ferlini's papers, and the legends, really meant for you and Ernest. Everything that's happened, not only in Egypt, but in our whole lives, has been leading up to the discovery of the Treasure and the Secret that we can take without stealing. Do you know what I'm talking about? And if you do, was it worth coming so far to find—this treasure that I mean, and this secret?"

"We know very well," Anthony said, "and you know that we realize it was worth journeying to the end of the world for—or into the next."

"Or into the next!" Monny echoed. "Here we're on the threshold of the next. That's why the Queen's blessing feels so near."

THE END