# Munsey's Magazine/Volume 86/Issue 4/The Treasure of Taia

from Munsey's Magazine, Jan 1926, pp. 643–652.
The Treasure of Taia
THE LUCK OF BRIAN DESMOND, SEEKER AFTER THE HIDDEN TREASURES OF THE MYSTERIOUS LAND OF THE NILE
By Sax Rohmer
Author of “The Golden Scorpion,” “Dr Fu Manchu,” etc.
BRIAN DESMOND recognized that he was no more than a wretched interloper. Almost he regretted his own temerity. Camp life within the precincts of the Temple of Medinet Habu has many drawbacks, but at least one may stand where heaps of precious ingots once gleamed within the treasury of Rameses in Thebes, the city of the hundred gates; one may share the apartment over the great pylon with bats and creeping things, and, by the light of that same old moon which shone upon golden Pharaoh, watch painted ladies of the royal harem wave flabella before the mighty one, cast flowers at his feet, and receive the reward of his godlike caresses. According to the inscriptions, the queen was never present.
Ofttimes Desmond had spent his evenings thus, imagining how, in some earlier incarnation, he, too, might have worn the double crown of Egypt.
To-night he felt less godlike. Luxor was crowded, and money could not obtain a room at the Winter Palace Hotel. The German representative of one of Europe's great Jewish families had secured twenty apartments for the accommodation of his dahabeah party. Mr. Jacob Goldberger, of Johannesburg, occupied three suites. Others, still more newly rich than Diamond Jake, made Egypt glad with their presence. Only for sentimental reasons had the great M. Pagnon granted Desmond the use of a chamber apparently designed for a hat box, top floor back—at the nominal rate of ninety piasters per day.
What is a distinguished Egyptologist, an M.C., a B.A., a B.Sc., a member of numerous learned societies and of one of the oldest families in Ireland, compared with a millionaire banker who is a director of numberless companies and a member of one of the oldest clans in the world? Small fry, indeed—and a beer drinker withal, whose wine bill for the week would not total as much as Jacob Goldberger paid for a single postprandial cigar. One should not expect impossibilities!
Fashionable women of Europe and America moved about him, with black-coated manhood hovering in attendance. Desmond felt uncomfortable—as every public school man, even though he be Irish, and strive how he may to defy the conventionalities, must ever feel when he is conscious of not being “correct.” Dress suits are unnecessary in the desert, and Desmond was arrayed in a serviceable outfit of washable linen. He concealed his discomfort, however, for in his secret heart he despised the sheeplike trooping of society equally with the gilded glory of Goldberger, and sought to crush that within him which was allied to the ways of the fold.
He turned to his companion, who sat beside him in the gayly lighted lounge, and a slight smile disturbed the firm, straight line of his mouth.
Desmond's smile had once been described by an American lady as “worth while.” He was one of those grim six-footers, prematurely gray, and straight as a mast. His short mustache was black, however. When he smiled, he revealed his lower teeth—small, even, strong-looking teeth—and his deep-set, rather sinister blue eyes lighted up. The stern face became the face of a lovable schoolboy—and a bashful schoolboy, at that. With his fine appearance, his romantic name, and his smile, he was fatal to women; but he didn't seem to know it.
“It is good of you to consent to be with me,” he said, in his slow, hesitating fashion; “for, although I am neither distinguished nor wealthy, I dare to be shabby.”
Mme. de Medicis dropped the cigarette from her taper fingers into the little bowl upon the table at her side. Women were there to-night whose reputation for smartness was well deserved, and who, covertly watching madame, knew her to be dressed with a daring yet exquisite tastefulness which they might copy but could never equal. Women were there whom, society called beautiful, but their beauty became very ordinary prettiness beside the dazzling loveliness of Desmond's companion.
She wore a gown of Delhi muslin with golden butterflies wrought upon its texture, and over it, as a cloud, floated that wondrous gauze which is known in the East as “the breath of Allah.” No newest tenet of Paris was violated in its fashioning; no line of the wearer's exquisite shape was concealed by its softness.
Madame smiled dreamily, protruding one tiny foot cased in a shoe of old gold. Under her curved black lashes her eyes turned momentarily, glancing at Desmond. Those eyes were such as have never been bestowed by the gods upon woman save as a scourge to man. They possessed the hue seen in the eyes of a tigress, yet they could be as voluptuously soft as the shadows of some dim lagoon. Her carmine lips were curved with a high disdain, and, though her hair was black as the ebon pillars of the Hall of the Afreets, her lovely cheeks glowed like the petals of a newborn rose and her velvet skin was as fair as the almond blossom.
“You lack the courage of the soi-disant grand duke,” she murmured.
Desmond turned languidly in his chair, fixing his queer, lingering regard upon the speaker.
“You refer to the eccentric royal personage who braves the wrath of Alexandria arrayed in a frock coat fastened by a piece of string? Poor fellow! His estates are confiscated, and he wears a pair of canvas shoes and a straw hat with a crown that permits the genial rays to caress his scalp.”
Mme. de Medicis laughed softly.
“But he is so clever an artist!” she said.
Desmond shrugged cynically.
“There you are!” he protested. “An artist and a grand duke—all is forgiven!”
Madame laughed again, adjusting the filmy scarf that caressed her white shoulders as lightly as the amorous cloud which of old enveloped Io, the beauteous.
“You are so English!” she declared. “Oh, no—please forgive me! You are Irish—but so absurdly sensitive! You fly to the Winter Palace because you are weary of the Theban solitude, and here you find yourself more lonely than when you camp in wilderness!”
“But you have taken pity upon me,” said Desmond, leaning toward her; “and now wild horses could not drag me back to my camp.”
“Ah!” sighed madame, archly lowering fringes of black lashes. “So you are not so English that you cannot make love!”
“On the contrary,” he replied, “I am so Irish that I cannot help it!”
She rose slowly to her feet. Her moving robe diffused a faint perfume. For a moment Desmond feared that he had offended her. Naïvely, he revealed his concern.
“Come, my desert man!” she said. “Walk with me beside holy Nile, and tell me that I am beautiful, in that deep, deceptive voice which has such tender notes! With what sweet English maids have you rehearsed the ballad of love, my friend? You strike its chords with rare proficiency!”
II
Many regarded Desmond's naïveté as a pose. It was not a conscious pose; yet he knew a certain sense of pagan triumph as he came out from the Winter Palace, past the bench upon which were seated the picturesque dragomans, and so on into the shadowed part of the street between the hotel entrance and the arcade of shops.
Beside him walked the most beautiful and elegant woman of all that gay gathering. An old roué whose name may be found in Debrett bowed to madame in mid-Victorian fashion, and eyed her cavalier unkindly. Lord Abbeyrock, said to be the handsomest man in Europe, who had been haunting the foyer for an hour past, bit savagely at his mustache and turned brusquely to reënter the hotel. Quite a company of young cosmopolitan bloods followed with longing eyes the exquisite figure in the amazing cloak of flamingo red. With manifest reluctance, a stolid New York business magnate—whose wife was in Cairo—quitted his strategic post near the dragomans' bench, hitherto held against all comers.
Mystery is woman's supreme charm. It is the mystery of dark eyes peeping from a mushrebiyeh lattice that constitutes the love lure of the East. Mme. de Medicis was utterly mysterious—tempting, taunting, unfathomable—at once a Sibyl and a Cleopatra.
Who was she, and from whence did she come? She was steeped in mysticism, spoke intimately of the strange writings of Elphas Levi, and quoted Pythagoras and Zarathustra with the same facility wherewith Desmond, of catholic literary sympathies, quoted Kipling and Yeats. She had tremendous intellectual fascination. At one moment she made him feel like a child; in the next, her wondrous eyes would look into his own, and they were the luresome eyes of a ghaziyeh, setting his blood more quickly coursing.
Groups of tourists lingered around the native shops, volubly chattering of their travels. Boatmen and donkey boys sat upon the low parapet, watching the idle throng and smiling their inscrutable Egyptian smiles. In the river lay the lighted dahabeahs. From one of them—that of Diamond Jake—came the softened tones of a sweet violin.
“Art lays its treasures at the feet of Mammon,” murmured madame.
For a moment she paused, resting her slender hand upon Desmond's arm. The strains of a Spanish caprice of Sarasate's, played by one of Europe's greatest violinists, floated across the waters of the Nile.
It was Luxor reborn—Luxor, that has known so much of peace and war, of fashion and art; Luxor, that once was Thebes, beloved of Amen, the city of temples and palaces. And near them, beside them, cloaked in velvet night, swooned the deathless mystery of that historic land.
Desmond looked long and ardently at his companion, as she moved onward again. Only she had a true place in a picture of the greater city which now was rising up before him. The modern, empty Luxor was fading, and upon richer banks of the ancient river, looming shadowly, were the stately walls of the city of a hundred gates. He seemed to be pacing beside the Nile with a Pharaoh's queen on a night of long, long ago.
“Tell me about your work in the temple,” she said, breaking an eloquent silence. “You are looking for the sacred ornaments of the Princess Taia, are you not?”
“Yes,” Desmond answered dreamily, “under the floor of what is sometimes called the Treasure Room.”
“You know that the Egyptian government expedition, under Van Kuyper, is similarly engaged at Biban el Muluk?”
“Van Kuyper is wrong,” snapped Desmond, with sudden animation; for the enthusiast within him was awakened by the challenge in her words. “He confuses the princess with the queen, whereas they belonged to different families. I am glad he is wrong. He deserves to fail.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because,” said Desmond grimly, “Van Kuyper is no true Egyptologist. He is an impostor, and the so-called government expedition is no more than a marauding expedition. It is subsidized by a millionaire collector, and if the jewels were found by Van Kuyper they would mysteriously disappear—and reappear in New York. It's a scandal! Such things belong neither to the Egyptian government nor to any purse-proud collector rich enough to pay to have them stolen. They belong to the world.”
His enthusiasm was infectious. Covertly, Mme. de Medicis watched him; and in the dusk the man's strong, rugged profile resembled that of the carven Rameses who holds eternal court amid the ruins of his great temple-palace.
“You, then, seek for love of seeking?” she asked softly.
“I revere the grandeur that was Egypt,” he replied. “To commercialize such majesty is intolerable!”
“May it not also be dangerous?”
“Well!” Desmond laughed. “Princess Taia certainly had an odd reputation!”
“You refer to the fact that she was a sorceress?”
Desmond started, glancing aside at his lovely companion. Then he laughed again.
“You seem to know everything!” he declared. “At times, when you question me on some point of Egyptology, I feel that you are amusing yourself. Yes—the princess was famous for her beauty and notorious for her witchcraft.”
“Beware, then, that you are not playing with fire,” said Mme. de Medicis softly. “Others have suffered—is it not so?”
Desmond pulled up suddenly. They had passed the shops, and passed the imitation temple gateway which marks the boundary of a hotel garden. They were alone with the night mystery of the Nile, upon a footpath leading to an old shadoof.
Something somber, a new fascination, had come into the woman's silver voice. The moon poured its radiance quenchingly upon the flaming figure of this strange woman who warned him to beware of a sorceress dead twelve hundred years before the dawn of Christianity. Her tigress eyes looked fully into his own; and now their glance chilled him coldly, as but a moment ago it had warmed him like wine.
“You speak in riddles,” he said awkwardly, again become the boy who questions the Sibyl.
“Have you then heard and seen nothing strange in the temple?” she whispered, and looked about her fearfully.
“1 have seen nothing,” he replied, “but I have heard much. Some of the Arabs in these parts regard the ruins of Medinet Habu as haunted, I am aware; but if one listened to natives, one could not avoid the conclusion that the whole of Egypt is haunted. My headman and several others come from Suefee, in the Fayum, and are of different mettle.”
“And so they camp in the temple?”
“Well,” Desmond admitted, “not exactly. They sleep in the village, as a matter of fact—or have been doing so for some little time past.”
“And you sleep in Luxor?”
He stared fully into the lovely, somber face.
“You don't seriously believe that I am afraid to sleep in the temple?” he inquired slowly.
“Not at all; but I think you are wise to avoid doing so.”
Awhile longer he watched her, betwixt anger and perplexity, until her carmine lips softened, parted, and hinted the gleam of pearly teeth. She dropped her heavy lashes, then raised them again; and her wonderful eyes were changed. They chilled no longer. Mme. de Medicis raised one slender, round, ivory arm and laid her jeweled fingers caressingly upon Desmond's breast. The flaming cloak fell back, revealing a peeping shoulder wooed by the daring moon.
“How I love the English character!” she whispered, lending the words a bewitching little foreign intonation. “Ah, my Irish friend, forgive me—but you are so perfectly English! Look!” She moved her hand and pointed out across the silvery Nile. “There is my dahabeah!”
Desmond stared across the water toward where a vessel showing but few lights lay moored in the stream.
“Your dahabeah?” he said in surprise. “But I thought—”
“That I was one of the Goldberger party?” she suggested. “Oh, no! I have my own dahabeah; but because I was lonely, too, I came, as you came, to the Winter Palace.”
“I am grateful to the gods of Egypt!” said Desmond in a low voice.
She turned and laid her hand upon his breast again. He clasped his own tightly over the little jeweled fingers, crushing them against his heart, which was beating wildly, tumultuously.
Across the waters of the river of romance there came, faintly, magically, the sound of a throbbing darabukkeh and the wail of a reed pipe—that ancient music which the ages have not changed, and which accompanied the gliding of Cleopatra's golden barge down the mystic Nile to meet the great Roman soldier.
A man's voice—a light barytone, possessing in a marked degree the wild, yearning note peculiar to oriental vocalists—rose upon the night's silence. The song was a ghazal of that sweet-voiced singer of old Shiraz whom men called Chagarlab, “the sugar-lipped.”
“If a cup of wine is spilled and I have spilled it, what of that?
If ripe, tender lips be crushed and mine have crushed them, be it so!”
Transfixed by something compelling and magnetic in the. vibrant tones, Desmond stood, tightly clasping madame's jeweled fingers. The final syllable of the verse died away, to ever diminishing beats of the drum and a softly sustained wailing note of the reed.
“You have Persians among your crew?” he said, and drew his lovely companion closer to him.
“But why?” she whispered, looking up into his eyes. “Do you recognize the words of Hafiz?”
“Perfectly! May I translate?”
Her reply was barely audible.
“If you wish!”
Desmond stooped and kissed her upon the lips.
III
Desmond always began work in the temple at an early hour. His enthusiasm ran higher than ever, but his ideas had taken a strange twist. He began to study his men, to listen to their conversations with a new interest, and to interpret what he saw and what he heard from a different angle.
His excavators labored with skill and good will; and, once having penetrated the six or eight feet of tightly packed stone which closed the top of the opening, Desmond's task became a mere job of shoveling. Clearly enough, he had blundered upon a shaft opened in very early times, the lower part of which had apparently been filled up with sand. His only fear was that it might prove to be the work of early tomb robbers, and not of those who had hidden the sacred ornaments.
Medinet Habu affords a lively enough scene in the daytime during the Egyptian season, being visited by hundreds of tourists from Luxor. Hence Desmond's early starting of operations. There were many visitors to the temple during the day, and not a few penetrated to the barrier and read the notice posted there. None of them, however, had the necessary official permit to enter the closed Treasure Room of Rameses, and work proceeded without interruption.
Evening came, the laborers departed, and Desmond was left alone—save for the headman, Ali Mahmoud—in the wonder of Egypt's dusk. He watched the pale blue merge into exquisite pink, and the two colors, by some magical transmutation, form that profound violet which defies palette and brush. He became lost in reverie.
Not a sound came to disturb him, save a faint clatter of kitchen utensils from the tent under the ruins, where Ali Mahmoud was preparing dinner. A dog began to howl in the near-by village, but presently ceased. From the Nile, borne upon a slight breeze, came the plaintive note of a boatman's pipe. Presently the breeze died away, and silence claimed the great temple for its own.
Desmond bathed in the extemporized bath which the headman had filled. Then he shaved, changed into his best linen outfit, and dispatched his dinner.
“Ali Mahmoud!” he called, stepping to the tent door.
Out of deepening shadows the tall Egyptian appeared.
“I shall be away for some hours,” said Desmond. “Keep a sharp lookout!”
“But you will return before morning?”
There was an odd note of anxiety—almost of reproach—in the man's voice. Desmond felt his cheeks flush.
“Of course I shall return before morning,” he answered sharply. “'For some hours,' I said. The temple ghafir will keep you company.”
Ali Mahmoud shook his head.
“That Coptic robber has departed,” he replied simply.
“What?” Desmond cried. “Since when?”
“Since the opening to the passage was made, he has departed each night at dusk.”
“Then you have been here alone?”
“It is so.”
“He had orders to remain!”
“It is true; but he is an unclean insect and an eater of pork.”
“Has he been bribed?”
“How can I say, Desmond Effendi? But I will keep a sharp lookout, as you direct.”
Ali Mahmoud saluted with graceful dignity, turned, and walked away.
For a long time Desmond stood looking after the headman, his mind filled with misgivings. From what he had overheard of the men's conversation he had been forced to conclude that superstition was working among them like a virus. The source of the strange rumors passing from man to man he had been unable to trace. He wondered if definite human enmity might not be at the bottom of the trouble. The desertion of the official watchman of the temple was significant.
Clearly, in the circumstances, it was unfair to leave Ali Mahmoud alone on guard. Desmond hesitated. A mental picture uprose before him, and he seemed to hear a soft voice whispering his name:
“Brian!”
“Damn!” he exclaimed.
Then, lighting his pipe, he set off briskly in the direction of the river, where he knew that a small boat awaited him. He would explain the position to madame and return immediately—so he determined.
Yet such is the way of things that more than four hours had elapsed when the boat brought Desmond back again to the bank of the Nile. He thought of Ali Mahmoud, and was remorseful. Furthermore, he despised himself.
He set out for the camp at a smart pace, wondering what had taken possession of the village dogs. From near and far came sounds of dismal howling.
Then, as he passed the village, and came at last in sight of the great ruin, he heard the sharp crack of a rifle.
“Ali Mahmoud!” he exclaimed.
Plunging his hand into his pocket, where latterly he had carried a pistol, he set out running.
“Good God!” he muttered, but never checked his steps.
The pistol was missing!
Familiar with every foot of the way, he raced on through ebony shadows, making for the excavation. Out of the darkness he ran into the dazzling moonlight that bathed one side of the Treasure Room.
“Ali Mahmoud!” he shouted.
From a cavernous doorway, framed in deep-hewn hieroglyphics, the tall figure stepped out.
“Thank God!” Desmond panted. “I thought—”
He paused, staring at the headman, who carried his rifle, and whose strong, brown face betrayed some suppressed emotion.
“I am here, effendi!”
“I heard a shot.”
“I fired that shot.”
“Why? What did you see?”
Ali Mahmoud extended one of his small brown hands in a characteristic and eloquent gesture.
“Perhaps—hyena,” he replied; “but it looked too big.”
“It was some animal, then? I mean, it walked on four legs?”
Ali Mahmoud shook his head doubtfully.
“I thought,” he answered slowly, “not always on four legs. I thought, sometimes on two. So I challenged. When it did not answer, I fired.”
“Well?”
Ali Mahmoud repeated the gesture.
“Nothing,” he explained simply. “All the men say they have seen this unknown thing. I am glad you have returned, Desmond Effendi!”
IV
In the morning Desmond awakened early. The vague horror of the night, the mystery of the “thing” seen in the temple ruins, had fled. Egyptian sunlight flooded the prospect, and he thought that with moderate diligence on the part of the gang to-day should bring him within sight of his goal.
Ali Mahmoud, having performed his duty of awakening his chief, did not retire at once, but stood in the door of the tent, a tall, imposing figure, regarding Desmond strangely.
“Well?” Desmond asked.
“There is more trouble,” the Egyptian answered simply. “Follow me, effendi, and you shall see!”
Desmond leaped out of bed immediately and followed the man to the excavation. The site was deserted. Not a laborer was there.
“Where are the men—” he began.
Ali Mahmoud extended his palms.
“Deserted!” he replied. “Those Coptic mongrels, those shames of their mothers who foraged with their shoes on, have abandoned the work!”
Desmond clenched his fists, and for many moments was silent.
“You and I, Ali Mahmoud,” he said at length, “will do the work ourselves!”
“It is agreed,” the Egyptian replied; “but upon the condition, Desmond Effendi, that neither you nor I shall remain here to-night.”
“What?”
Desmond glared angrily, but Ali remained unmoved.
“I am a man of few words,” he said, in his simple, direct fashion; “but that which I saw last night was no fit thing for a man to see. To-night I go. You, too, effendi, will leave the temple.”
Brian Desmond was on fire, but he knew his man too well to show it. Moreover, he respected him.
“Be it so,” he said, turned, and went back to his tent.
They labored, those two, with pick and shovel and basket, from early morning until dusk. They worked as of old the slaves of Pharaoh worked. Not even under the merciless midday sun did they stay or slacken their herculean toils; and when, at coming of welcome evening, they threw down their tools in utter exhaustion, the narrow portals of the secret chamber were uncovered.
Standing at the bottom of the shaft, sweat-begrimed, aching in every limb, the brown man and the white solemnly shook hands.
“Ali Mahmoud,” said Desmond, “you are real British!”
“Desmond Effendi,” the Egyptian answered, “you are a true Moslem!”
The desert toilet completed and the evening meal dispatched, Brian Desmond lighted his pipe and stood staring out across the violet landscape toward the Valley of the Queens.
That day he had actually cleared the débris from before a door wrought of the red sandstone of Silsilis, which almost certainly was the portal of the secret Treasure Room. Despite the superstitious character of the natives, the spot was altogether too near to Luxor for the excavation to be left unguarded. Some predatory agent of a thieving dealer, or of an ambitious rival—for it had been well said that there is no honor among excavators—armed with suitable implements, might filch the treasure-trove destined to establish definitely the reputation of Brian Desmond.
Ali Mahmoud refused to remain—and Mme. de Medicis was waiting in the perfumed cabin of the dahabeah, where an incense burner sent up its smoke pencils of ambergris; and her golden eyes would be soft as the eyes of the gazelles.
But whosoever would retain the mastery of Moslems must first learn to retain the mastery of himself. Once let the idea that a place is haunted take root in the Arab mind, and, short of employing shackles, nothing could persuade a native to remain in that spot after sunset. Thus, at Karnak, the Bab el Abid, or Gate of the Slaves, a supposed secret apartment in the Temple of Mentu, is said to be watched over by a gigantic black afreet. No Egyptian would willingly remain alone in the vicinity of that gate by night.
Desmond entered his tent, trimmed and lighted the lamp, and wrote a note excusing himself and explaining his reasons. Sadi, the Persian poet, sings that love can conquer all; but Sadi lacked the opportunity of meeting a British archeologist. Though every houri of Mohammed's paradise had beckoned him, Brian Desmond would not have been guilty of leaving the treasure of Taia unguarded.
Clapping his hands—a signal which Ali Mahmoud promptly answered—he handed the letter to the tall Egyptian.
“Give this personally to Mme. de Medicis,” he said, “on the dahabeah Nitocris. Then do as you please.”
“And you, effendi?”
“I agreed with you to leave the temple,” Desmond answered. “I shall do so; but I did not agree not to return.”
The fine face of Ali Mahmoud afforded a psychological study. Verbal subtlety is dear to the Arab mind. Desmond Effendi had tricked him, but tricked him legitimately.
“It is true,” he answered; “but my heart misgives me.”
He saluted Desmond gravely, and departed, his slippered feet making no noise upon the sandy ground. Like a shadow he glided from the tent door and was gone.
Desmond stood looking after the headman, and thinking of many things. The fires of his anger were by no means extinct; but Ali Mahmoud was stanch, and had labored well. The night would pass, and the morrow held golden promise.
A faint, cool breeze fanned his brow, and about him lay that great peace which comes to Egypt with the touch of night. Vague sounds proceeded, for a time, from the direction of the Arab village, and once a pariah dog set up his dismal howling upon a mound not twenty yards away. Desmond could see the beast, painted in violet shadows against the sand; and, picking up a stone, he hurled it well and truly. With it went the last vapors of his rekindled wrath. The beautiful silence had become complete.
For long he stood there, smoking his pipe, and watching the eager velvet darkness claiming the land, until the perfect night of Egypt ruled the Thebaid, and the heavens opened their million windows that the angels might look upon the picture below.
Half regretfully, he turned and entered the tent. In the sandy floor his bottle of whisky was buried; in a bucket of water were the “baby Polly” bottles. These latter he might reveal; but for Ali Mahmoud to detect him using strong liquor would be the signal for the headman's departure. That he so indulged was understood, but that he should keep his vice decently secret from every good Moslem was a sine qua non.
He helped himself to a peg, concealed the “vice” again, and set out to walk to the river, there to taunt himself with a sight of the twinkling lights of madame's dahabeah—and to carry out his pledge to Ali Mahmoud.
No more than ten paces had he gone when he became aware of a curious, cold tingling of his skin. The sensation was novel, but highly unpleasant. It gradually rose to his scalp—a sort of horrific chill quite unaccountable.
Remotely, sweetly, he heard, or thought he heard, a woman's voice calling his name:
“Brian! Brian!”
He stopped short. He felt his heart leap in his bosom. The voice had seemed to come from westward—from beyond the temple.
“Who's there?” he cried.
No one answered. A bat circled erratically overhead, as if blindly seeking some lost haven; then it swooped and was gone into some cranny of the great pylon.
“Brian! Brian!”
Again it came, more intimately, that sweet, uncanny crying of his name.
“Brian! Brian!”
Making for the moon-white angle of the great ruin, Desmond set out at a rapid pace. The woman, whoever she was, must be approaching by the path which skirted the temple—approaching from the valley below El Kurn, the Valley of the Queens.
He had almost gained the corner, wherefrom he could command a clear view of the path, when suddenly he pulled up. The icy finger of superstition touched him.
Who, or what, could be coming from the Tombs of the Queens at that hour of night? Breathing checked, muscles tensed, he stood listening.
Not a footfall could be heard; the very insects were still.
Deliberately, putting forth a conscious effort, he took the six remaining paces to the corner of the temple inclosure. No living thing was visible. Again a horrific tingling crept all over his skin and into his scalp. The pinions of the unknown stretched over him, and he stood in the shadow of fear.
“Is any one there?” he cried.
He shrank from the sound of his own voice, for it had a sinister and unfamiliar ring. The voice of the Thebaid answered him—the voice of the silence where altars were, of the valley where queens lie buried.
Panic threatened him, but he grimly attacked the ghostly menace, and conquered. His natural courage returning, he paced slowly forward along the silvery road that stretched to the gorge in the mountain. He stopped.
“My God!” he cried aloud. “What is the matter with me? What does it all mean?”
The moon-bathed landscape was swimming around him. A deadly nausea asserted itself. He had never swooned in his life, but he knew that he was about to do so now.
He turned, and began to stagger back to the tent.
V
Music aroused him—a dim chanting. Wearily he opened his eyes. Reflection was difficult, memory defied him; but he seemed to recall that at some time he had returned to the tent.
Yet he found himself in the temple!
That it was the Temple of Medinet Habu in which he stood, he was assured, although, magically, its character had changed. Yes—this was the Treasure Room, the scene of his excavation; but it was intact! The roof had been replaced. The apartment was filled with ancient Egyptian furniture. The air was heavy with a strange scent.
He was crouching like a spy, concealed behind a sort of screen. It was of carven wood, not unlike the mushrebiyeh screens of later Arab days; and through its many interstices he had a perfect view of the apartment.
Two women and a Nubian eunuch were in the room. The women were dressed as Desmond had never seen living women attired in his life; yet he knew and recognized every ornament, every garment. The exquisite enamel jewelry, the scanty robes upon their slender ivory bodies, belonged to the Eighteenth Dynasty!
One, the small and more slender of the two, was of royal blood. This he knew by her dress. She spoke urgently to the other, whose face Desmond had not seen.
“Be quick, Uarda! I distrust him! Even now he may be spying upon us!”
The woman addressed turned—and he beheld Mme. de Medicis!
“Give me the casket!” she said.
The first speaker took up a beautifully carven box of ebony and ivory, and placed it in the hands of the woman whom she had addressed as Uarda. Perhaps the judgment of Paris, the immortal shepherd, might have awarded the golden apple to the royal lady; but in the eyes of Desmond, watching, half stupefied, the movements of these two lovely Egyptians, incontestably the fairer was she whom he knew, in life, as Mme. de Medicis. He watched her greedily.
Somewhere in the great temple palace voices were chanting, sweetly.
The Nubian took the casket from the hands of Uarda and descended into a pit revealed by the displacement of a massive couch. Desmond, watching the women as they bent anxiously over the cavity, fell forward.
“Desmond Effendi!”
Desmond raised himself. Ali Mahmoud was supporting him.
He looked out from the tent to where rosy morn tinted the rugged lines of Medinet Habu.
“Effendi! I warned you! I warned you! And now you are stricken with fever!”
Desmond got to his feet. Clutching the tall Egyptian, he stood swaying for a moment, and striving—wildly, at first, but with ever increasing self-control—to assemble the facts—the real facts—of the night.
Fever? No! In a flash of intuition the truth came to him. While he and Ali Mahmoud labored through the previous day, some one—some one—had found and doctored his whisky. Even now he could recall the queer tang of it, which, in the tumult of mind that had been his at the time, he had ignored.
He had been drugged! But his dream—his dream of the Princess Taia and of her confidante?
His strength was returning with his clarity of mind. He shook off the supporting arm of Ali Mahmoud. He uttered a loud cry, and went staggering madly through the mighty courts of the temple.
His excavation below the floor of the sanctuary had been completed during the night. It opened, as he had conjectured, into a small square chamber—which was empty!
VI
Paul Van Kuyper stepped from the small boat to the deck of the dahabeah, towing low to his beautiful hostess. Even in the desert, Mynheer van Kuyper contrived to preserve the manners, and, in a modified degree, the costume, of a fashionable boulevard lounger. As he stood there in the blaze of noonday sun, he was as truly representative of one school of archeology as Brian Desmond, working barefoot with his Arabs at Medinet Habu, was representative of another.
Van Kuyper's brown eyes flamed with admiration as he bent over the little white hand of Mme. de Medicis. She was seemingly unaffected by the great heat; she looked as cool as a morning rose. Hers were the toilet secrets of Diane de Poictiers, and the love lore of Thais.
Attended by four waiters from the Winter Palace, they lunched, and talked of many things; but always Van Kuyper's brown eyes spoke of passion. Yet, when at last they were alone, with coffee such as may only be tasted in the East, and cigarettes of a sort that never leave Egypt except to go to Moscow:
“Quick—tell me!” he whispered, and glanced furtively around him. “What occurred last night at Medinet Habu?”
“How should I know what occurred, monsieur?”
Languidly Mme. de Medicis swept her black lashes upward, and languidly lowered them again, veiling the amber eyes.
“Ah!” Van Kuyper laughed. “But we understand each other! We are old allies, is it not so? When I learned from Abdul, who had been watching Desmond's camp since the work began, that the shaft was an old one, I followed the arranged plan. On Tuesday night he was nearly shot by Ali Mahmoud, Desmond's headman; but he brought great news! You received my letter?”
Madame inclined her head languidly.
“I have it in my bureau.”
“Good! You had worked wonders thus far. Nearly a week ago the camp at Medinet Habu became deserted at night. Even the ghafir fled. How you worked upon the fear of the natives I do not know, but you succeeded. Only Ali Mahmoud and Desmond remained. As I told you, I took a double precaution. Desmond's buried bottle is a byword among the excavators. While he completed the clearing of the shaft, Abdul dealt with this matter!”
“Excellent!” madame murmured.
“Your reports of Desmond's progress reached me daily, and last night I acted. Abdul and Hassan es Suk were watching. Ali Mahmoud came to you here, with a note. It was genius!”
“It was merely coincidence.”
“What? You did not contrive it? No matter—it was good. Shortly afterward, Desmond succumbed to the drug, and Hassan came to fetch me.”
“So?” madame murmured, dropping her half smoked cigarette into the little brass tray.
Van Kuyper glanced at her uneasily, but proceeded:
“We opened the door. It was stiff work; but what we found, you know. I merely peeped at the contents of the casket, but, madame”—he seized and kissed her hand—“the check for a thousand pounds which reached you recently was not too much! Sail for Cairo in the morning. There will certainly be the usual official inquiry. I saw the casket safely on board your boat, and returned to my camp. Transport has been arranged to Alexandria, where my patron has a yacht lying.”
“So?” madame murmured again, and delicately lighted a fresh cigarette. “Those Arabs are such liars!”
Paul van Kuyper bent forward, resting his manicured hands upon his knees. He had detected a coldness in the attitude of the beautiful woman. Always she was difficult, but to-day she was incomprehensible.
“Your meaning, madame?” he asked, and sued the glance of the amber eyes, but was foiled by lashes imperiously drooped.
“My meaning?” she returned. “It is so simple! What is this casket which you say you placed in my boat? And why do you refer so strangely to a check paid to me for a card debt?”
Van Kuyper came to his feet as if shot out of a trap. Every vestige of color had fled from his flabby cheeks. A small table, with the coffee cups upon it, crashed over upon the carpet. He sought to speak, but she forestalled him.
“Your incorruptible Abdul is probably on his way to Persia,” she said scornfully. “Why do you try to weave romances for me? You seem to suggest that I am here as your ally in some scheme to smuggle relics out of Egypt. I have a most damaging letter from you touching this plot!”
“By God!” Van Kuyper burst out hoarsely. “The police shall search this boat from stem to stern!”
“They will find your correspondence, my friend!” said Mme. de Medicis, and rose, queenly, sweeping the speaker with a glance of high disdain.
In the long, low cabin of the dahabeah Nitocris, Mme. de Medicis reclined upon a divan, its mattress gay with many silken cushions. Her flawless figure was draped wondrously in a robe conceived in Deccan gauzes. A cloud of delicate green caressed the pure modeling of her form, which shimmered alluringly as through the phantom haze of a Fayum sunset, quickened to greater tenderness by an ultimate veil like the blush in the heart of a tulip. Keats's Lamia was not more magically lovely. The long, amber eyes were soft as enchanted lagoons; the shadows of the curved lashes rested upon flower-fresh. cheeks.
Silver incense burners filled the air with the sensuous perfume of ambergris.
Brian Desmond entered, peering eagerly into the shadows cast by dim mosque lanterns swung from the ceiling. A casket of ebony and ivory, wrought with ancient Egyptian astronomical subjects, stood in the center of the apartment. Beside it, heaped upon the carpet, lay ornaments richly chased and inlaid with strange gems.
“The ritual jewels!” he whispered. “The treasure of Princess Taia!”
“'Such things belong neither to the Egyptian government nor to any purse-proud collector,'” she whispered. The words were his own. “They belong to you!”
From the deck above to that perfumed cabin below stole the sound of a softly beaten darabukkeh and the mournful sweetness of a reed pipe. The tender-voiced singer of ghazals began, so softly that the music seemed indeed a ravishing sigh, to render the love plaint of Hafiz.
    “If a cup of wine is spilled, and I have spilled it, what of that?”
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1930.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1959, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 65 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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