respecting the source of certain information which you know me to possess, I desire that the matter shall be made clear to you.'
How I should have answered this singular man I know not; but as he spoke the words, into the mandarah came the Sheikh, followed by a girl robed and veiled entirely in white. With gait slow and graceful she approached the diwan. She wore a white yelek so closely wrapped about her that it concealed the rest of her attire, and a white tarbar, or head-veil, decorated with gold embroidery, almost entirely concealed her hair, save for one jet-black plait in which little gold ornaments were entwined and which hung down on the left of her forehead. A white yashmak reached nearly to her feet, which were clad in little red leather slippers.
As she approached me I was impressed, not so much with the details of her white attire, nor with the fine lines of a graceful figure which the gossamer robe quite failed to conceal, but with her wonderful gazelle-like eyes, which were uncannily like those of her brother, save that their bordering of kohl lent them an appearance of being larger and more luminous.
No form of introduction was observed; with modestly lowered eyes the girl saluted me and took her seat upon a heap of cushions before a small coffee table set at one end of the diwan. The Sheikh seated himself beside me, and Abu Tabah, with a reed pen, wrote something rapidly on a narrow strip of paper. The Sheikh clapped his hands, a man entered bearing a brazier containing live charcoal, and, having placed it upon the floor, immediately withdrew. The diwan was lighted by a lantern swung from the ceiling, and its light, pouring fully down upon the white figure of the girl, and leaving the other persons and objects in comparative shadow, produced a picture which I am unlikely to forget.
Amid a tense silence, Abu Tabah took from a box upon the table some resinous substance. This he sprinkled upon the fire in the brazier; and the girl extending a small hand and round soft arm across the table, he again dipped his pen in the ink and drew upon the upturned palm a rough square which he divided into nine parts, writing in each an Arabic figure. Finally, in the centre he poured a small drop of ink, upon which, in response to words rapidly spoken, the girl fixed an intent gaze.
Into the brazier Abu Tabah dropped one by one fragments of the paper upon which he had written what I presumed to be a form of invocation. Immediately, standing between the smoking brazier and the girl, he commenced a subdued muttering. I recognized that I was about to be treated to an exhibition of darb el-mendel, Abu Tabah being evidently a sahhar, or adept in the art called er-roohanee. Save for this indistinct muttering, no other sound disturbed the silence of the apartment, until suddenly the girl began to speak Arabic and in a sweet but monotonous voice.
'Again I see the ring,' she said, 'a hand is holding it before me. The ring bears a green scarab, upon which is written the name of a king of Egypt.... The ring is gone. I can see it no more.'
'Seek it,' directed Abu Tabah in a low voice, and threw more incense upon the fire. 'Are you seeking it?'
'Yes,' replied the girl, who now began to tremble violently, 'I am ill a low passage which slopes downwards so steeply that I am afraid.'
'Fear nothing,' said Abu Tabah; 'follow the passage.'
With marvelous fidelity the girl described the passage and the shaft leading to the King's Chamber in the Pyramid of Meydum. She described the cavity in the wall where once (if Hassan es-Sugra was worthy of credence) the ring had been concealed.
'There is a freshly made hole in the stonework,' she said. 'The picture has gone; I am standing in some dark place and the same hand again holds the ring before me.'
'Is it the hand of an Oriental,' asked Abu Tabah, 'or of a European?'
'It is the hand of a European. It has disappeared; I see a funeral procession winding out from Rikka into the desert.'
'Follow the ring,' directed Abu Tabah, a queer, compelling note in his voice.
Again he sprinkled perfume upon the fire and--
'I see a Pharaoh upon his throne,' continued the monotonous voice,
'upon the first finger of his left hand he wears the ring with the green scarab. A prisoner stands before him in chains; a woman pleads with the king, but he is deaf to her. He draws the ring from his finger and hands it to one standing behind the throne--one who has a very evil face. Ah!...'
The girl's voice died away in a low wail of fear or horror. But--
'What do you see?' demanded Abu Tabah.
'The death-ring of Pharaoh!' whispered the soft voice tremulously; 'it is the death-ring!'
'Return from the past to the present,' ordered Abu Tabah. 'Where is the ring now?'
He continued his weird muttering, whilst the girl, who still shuddered violently, peered again into the pool of ink. Suddenly--
'I see a long line of dead men,' she whispered, speaking in a kind of chant; 'they are of all the races of the East, and some are swathed in mummy wrappings; the wrappings are sealed with the death-ring of Pharaoh. They are passing me slowly, on their way across the desert from the Pyramid of Meydum to a narrow ravine where a tent is erected. They go to summon one who is about to join their company....'
I suppose the suffocating perfume of the burning incense was chiefly responsible, but at this point I realized that I was becoming dizzy and that immediate departure into a cooler atmosphere was imperative.
Quietly, in order to avoid disturbing the seance, I left the mandarah.
So absorbed were the three in their weird performance that my departure was apparently unnoticed.
Out in the coolness of the palm grove I soon recovered. I doubt if I possess the temperament which enables one to contemplate with equanimity a number of dead men promenading in their shrouds.
V
'The truth is now wholly made manifest,' said Abu Tabah; 'the revelation is complete.'
Once more I was mounted upon the white camel and the mysterious imam rode beside me upon its fellow, which was of less remarkable color.
'I hear your words,' I replied.
'The poor Ahmed Abdulla,' he continued, 'who was of little wisdom, knew, as Hassan es-Sugra knew, of the hidden ring; for he was one of those who fled from the pyramid refusing to enter it again. Greed spoke to him, however, and he revealed the secret to a certain Englishman, called Bishop, contracting to aid him in recovering the ring.'
At last enlightenment was mine... and it brought in its train a dreadful premonition.
'Something I knew of the peril,' said Abu Tabah, 'but not, at first, all.
The Englishman I warned, but he neglected my warning. Already Ahmed Abdulla was dead, having been despatched by his employer to the pyramid; and the people of Rikka had sent for me. Now, by means known to you, I learned that evil powers threatened your life also, in what form I knew not at that time save that the sign of Set had been revealed to me in conjunction with your death.'
I shuddered.
'That the secret of the pyramid was a Pharaoh's ring I did not learn until later; but now it is made manifest that the thing of power is the death-ring of Sneferu....'
The huge bulk of the Pyramid of Meydum loomed above us as he spoke the words, for we were nearly come to our destination; and its proximity occasioned within me a physical chill. I do not think an open check for a thousand pounds would have tempted me to enter the place again. The death-ring of Sneferu possessed uncomfortable and supernatural properties. So far as I was aware, no example of such a ring (the lettre de cachet of the period) was included in any known collection. One dating much after Sneferu, and bearing the cartouche of Apepi II (one of the Hyksos, or Shepherd Kings) came to light late in the nineteenth century; it was reported to be the ring which, traditionally, Joseph wore as emblematical of the power vested in him by Pharaoh. Sir Gaston Maspero and other authorities considered it to be a forgery and it vanished from the ken of connoisseurs. I never learned by what firm it was manufactured.
A mile to the west of the pyramid we found Theo Bishop's encampment. I thought it to be deserted-until I entered the little tent....
An oil-lamp stood upon a wooden box; and its rays made yellow the face of the man stretched upon the camp-bed. My premonition was realized; Bishop must have entered the pyramid less than an hour ahead of me; he it was who had stood upon the mound, silhouetted against the sky, when I had first approached the slope, he had met with the fate of Ahmed Abdulla.
