“It does!” the latter rapped. “But, needless to say, I anticipated it.”
“It’s a trick!” the chief shouted. The man’s a conjurer: always was. How did he get Rima in? Damn it! Can’t we ask her?”
“You’ll ask her nothing to-night, Barton,” Petrie returned quietly. “And you’ll ask her nothing in the morning until you have my permission.”
“Thanks!” was the reply. “I’ll remember you in my will.” He was, in short, in a towering rage, and: “Where’s Greville?” he finished up.
“Here I am.”
“D’you think it feasible that Fu Manchu could have slipped up into one of the construction chambers?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Neither do I. Even if he did, he’s got to come down sometime.”
“What are these construction chambers, Greville?” Nayland Smith asked in a low voice.
“Five low spaces above the King’s Chamber,” I replied, “terminating in a pointed roof, generally supposed to have been intended to relieve the stress on the room below.”
“Any way into them?”
“Yes—by means of a long ladder.”
“Is there anything in what Barton says?”
“Hardly. In any event, there is only one way out!” I turned to Sir Lionel. “Have you searched the shaft. Chief?”
“No!” he growled—”I haven’t. And what’s more I’m not going to. Have the damn place closed and watched; that’s all that’s necessary.”
Nayland Smith turned to Hewlett.
“You must arrange for the Pyramid to be closed to visitors for the remainder of the week. And have men on duty at the entrance day and night.”
“Very good,” said Hewlett; “I’ll see to it.”
We had climbed down again to the base, and my feet were on the sand, when an idea occurred to me.
“By heavens! Sir Denis,” I cried. “It isn’t safe to leave just four men there to-night.”
“Why?” he snapped.
“You remember the meeting of dervishes reported by Enderby? Well—they are here—fifty or sixty strong!”
“Where?”
“Just this side of Mena House.”
“A rescue!” said the chief hoarsely. “They mean to rush the entrance! Fu Manchu is hiding inside!”
I could see Nayland Smith pulling at the lobe of his ear.
“They began to gather about midnight,” said Hewlett. “It’s been reported.”
“Who are they?”
“Mostly men from outlying villages, and as Mr Greville says, members of various dervish orders.”
“I don’t like this,” rapped Nayland Smith. The Mahdi organised the dervishes, you know. What’s your opinion, Hewlett?”
“I haven’t one. I can’t make it out—unless, as Sir Lionel suggests, they are going to attempt to rush us...But, byjove! here they come!”
We had set out down the slope and nearly reached that point where Petrie and I had left the car. Now, we pulled up like one man.
Dimly visible in the darkness of the night, their marching feet crunching upon the sand, we saw a considerable company of Arabs approaching from the opposite direction.
“It might be dangerous,” Nayland Smith muttered, “if it weren’t for the fact that sixty armed men are still on duty.”
And as he spoke, that onward march ceased as if in response to some unspoken order. Vaguely, although at no great distance from where we stood, we could see that strangely silent company. The policeman who had stopped Petrie’s car suddenly appeared.
“What do I do about his, sir?” he asked, addressing Hewlett. “They look nasty to me.”
“Do nothing,” was the reply. “We have the situation well in hand.”
“Very good, sir.”
We were near enough now to the crowd on the edge of the plateau to be able to distinguish the colours of robes and turbans—white, black, green and red; a confused blurred mass, but divisible into units. And as I looked doubtingly in their direction, suddenly I saw a hundred arms upraised, and in a muted roar their many voices reached me:
Whereupon, unanimous as worshippers in a cathedral, they dropped to their knees and bowed their heads in the sand!
“Good God! What’s this?”
Nayland Smith was the speaker.
We all turned together, looking back to the northern face of the Great Pyramid. And as we did so, I witnessed a spectacle as vivid in my mind to-night as it was on the occasion of its happening.
Perhaps two thirds of the way up the slope of the great building, but at a point which I knew to be inaccessible to any climber, a figure appeared....Even from where I stood, it was visible in great detail—for the reason that this figure was brilliantly lighted!
Many explanations occurred to us later of how this illumination might have been produced. We recalled the globular lamp in the King’s Chamber; several such lamps, masked from the viewpoint of the onlookers and placed one step below the figure, backed by reflectors, would, I think, have accounted for the phenomenon. But at the time, no solution offered.
Personally, I was conscious of nothing but stark amazement, For there, enshrined in the darkness,
I saw a tall, majestic figure, wearing either a white or a very light green robe. The face was concealed by a golden mask and surmounted by a tall turban. Upraised in the right hand glittered a sword with a curved blade...
A weird chanting arose from the dervishes. I didn’t even glance back. I was staring—staring at that apparition on the Pyramid. Distant shouting reached me—orders, as I realised. But I knew, had known it all along, that no climber could reach that point.
Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, the apparition vanished.
The lights had been extinguished or covered: such was the conclusion to which we came later. But at the time the effect was most uncanny. And as the figure vanished, again, from the dervishes, came a loud and now triumphant shout:
In the dead silence which followed:
“Fu Manchu has set us a problem,” said Nayland Smith. “Either he or some selected disciple has been posing as the reborn prophet, from Afghanistan right down to the border of Arabia. You understand the dervish gathering, now, Hewlett?”
A murmuring of excited conversation reached us. The assembly of Arabs, palpably come there as to a tryst, was dispersing and already returning down the slope.
“It was urgent,” Sir Denis went on; “hence the abduction of Rima. This was an
Whereupon the chief began to laugh!
That laughter was so unexpected, and indeed so eerie in the circumstances, that I found in it some quality of horror.
“He’s tricked us, Smith!” he shouted. “He’s tricked us! But, by God, I’ve tricked
