door was unlocked? '
'You're right,' I admitted; 'it was. We locked it after his body had been placed here. '
'As I thought.'
Weymouth paused; then: 'Someone who chewed betel nut,' he went on, 'must have been listening outside Sir Lionel's tent when you decided to move his body to this hut. He anticipated you, concealed himself, and, at some suitable time later, with the key which Sir Lionel carried on his chain, he unlocked the door and removed the body!'
I entirely agree,' said Forester, staring very hard, 'and I compliment you heartily. But--betel nut? '
'Perfectly simple,' Petrie replied. 'Many dacoits chew betel nut.'
At which moment, unexpectedly: 'Perhaps,' came Rima's quiet voice, 'I can show you the man! '
'What!' I exclaimed.
'I think I may have his photograph... and the photograph of someone else!'
Chapter Third
TOMB OF THE BLACK APE
I might have thought, during that strange conference in the hut, that life had nothing more unexpected to offer me. Little I knew what Fate held in store. This was only the beginning. Dawn was close upon us. Yet, before the sun came blushing over the Nile Valley, I was destined to face stranger experi- ences.
I went with Rima from the hut to the tent. All our old sense of security was gone. No one knew what to expect now that the shadow of Fu Manchu had fallen upon us.
'Imagine a person tall, lean, and feline, high shouldered, with a brow like Shake- speare and a face like Satan... long, magnetic eyes of the true cat-green...'
Petrie's description stuck in my memory; especially 'tall, lean, and feline... eyes of the true cat-green...'
A lamp was lighted in Rima's tent, and she hastily collected some other photographic gear and rejoined me as Ali came up shoul- dering his rifle.
'Anything to report, Ali Mahmoud? '
'Nothing, Effendim.'
When we got back to the hut I could see how eagerly we were awaited. A delicious shyness which I loved-- for few girls are shy-- descended upon Rima when she realized how we were all awaiting what she had to say. She was so charmingly petite, so vividly alive, that the deep note which came into her voice in moments of earnestness had seemed, when I heard it first, alien to her real personality. Her steady grey eyes, though, belonged to the real Rima--the shy Rima.
'Please don't expect too much of me,' she said glancing around quickly. 'But I think perhaps I may be able to help. I wasn't really qualified for my job here, but... Uncle Lionel was awfully kind; and I wanted to come. Really, all I've done is wild-life photography --before, I mean.'
She bent and opened a paper folder which ahe had put on the table; then: 'I used to lay traps,' she went on, 'for all sorts of birds and animals. '
'What do you mean by 'traps' Miss Barton?' Weymouth asked.
'Oh, perhaps you don't know. Well, there's a bait--and the bait is attached to the trigger of the camera. '
'Perfectly clear. You need not explain further.'
'For night things, it's more complicated; because the act of taking the bait has to touch off a charge of flash powder as well as expose the film. It doesn't work very often. But I had set a trap--with the camera most cunningly concealed--on the plateau just by the entrance to the old shaft. '
'Lafleur's Shaft!' I exclaimed.
'Yes; there was a track there which I thought might mean jackal--and I have never got a close-up of a jackal. The night before I went to Luxor something fell into my trap! I was rather puzzled, because the bait didn't seem to have been touched. It looked as though someone might have stumbled over it. But I never imagined that anyone would pass that way at night--or at any other time, really.'
She stopped, looking at Weymouth; then: 'I took the film to Luxor,' she said; 'but I didn't develop it until to- day. When I saw what it was, I couldn't believe my eyes! I have made a print of it. Look!'
Rima laid a photographic print on the table and we all bent over it.
'To have touched off the trigger and yet got in focus,' she said, 'they must have been actually coming out of the shaft. I simply can't imagine why they left the camera undis- turbed. Unless they failed to find it or the flash scared them!'
I stared dazedly at the print.
It represented three faces--one indistin- guishably foggy, in semi-profile. That nearest to the camera was quite unmistakable. It was a photograph of the cross-eyed man who had followed me to Cairo!
This was startling enough. But the second face--that of someone directly behind him-- literally defeated me. It was the face of a woman--wearing a black native veil but held aside so that her clear-cut features were reproduced sharply....
Brilliant, indeterminably oblique eyes... a strictly chiselled nose, somewhat too large for classic beauty... full lips, slightly parted... a long oval contour....
That's a dacoit!' came Petrie's voice. 'Miss Barton, this is amazing! See the mark on his forehead! '
'I have seen it,' Rima replied, 'although I didn't know what it meant. '
'But,' I interrupted excitedly, as: 'Greville,' Forester cried, 'do you see! '
'I see very plainly,' said I. 'Weymouth-- the woman in this photograph is Madame Ingomar!'
2
'What is Lafleur's Shaft?' Weymouth asked. 'And in what way is it connected with Lafleur's Tomb? '
'It isn't connected with it,' I replied. 'Lafleur's Tomb--also known as the Tomb of the Black Ape--was discovered, or rather suspected to exist, by the French Egyptologist Lafleur, about 1908. He accidentally unearthed a little votive chapel. All the frag- ments of offerings found were inscribed with the figure of what appeared to be a huge black ape--or perhaps an ape-man. There's been a lot of speculation about it. Certain authorities, notably Maspero, held the theory that some queer pet of an unknown Pharoah had been given a freak burial.
'Lafleur cut a shaft into a long zigzag passage belonging to another burial chamber, which he thought would lead him to the Tomb of the Black Ape. It led nowhere. It was abandoned in 1909. Sir Lionel started from a different point altogether and seems to have hit on the right entrance. '
'Ah!' said Weymouth. 'Then my next step is clear.' 'What is that? '
'I want you to take me down to your excavation.' 'Good enough,' said I; 'shall we start now?' 'I think it would be as well.' He turned to Forester. 'I want Greville to act as guide, and I want you and Petrie to look after Miss Barton in our absence. '
'We shall need Ali,' I said, 'to go ahead with lights.' 'Very well. Will you please make the necessary arrangements?'
Accordingly I relieved Ali Mahmoud of his sentry duties and had the lanterns lighted. They were kept in the smaller hut. And presently Weymouth and I were on the ladders....
The first part of our journey led us down a sheer pit of considerable depth. At the bottom it gave access to a sloping passage, the original entrance to which had defied all our efforts to discover it.
This was very commonplace to me, but I don't know how that first glimpse of the pit affected Weymouth. The night was black as pitch. Dawn was very near. Outlined by the light of the lanterns Ali carried, that ragged gap far below, to reach which we had been at work for many months, looked a likely enough portal to ghostly corridors.
An indescribable smell which charac- terises the tombs of Upper Egypt crept up like a hot miasma. Our ladders were fairly permanent fixtures, sloping down at easy gradients from platform to platform. The work had been fenced around; and, as we entered the doorway, watching the Arab descending from point to point and leaving a lantern at each stopping place, a sort of foreboding seemed to grab me by the throat.
