“I have reached a decision,” declared Professor Blackwell, “upon a point that has been worrying me.”
Dinner dispatched, they sat around the table in council, pipes and cigars going. Safîyeh had reported that her charge had found the soup, the fried chicken, the Château y’Quem--of which they had only three bottles--and the peaches entirely to her satisfaction.
“What point?” asked John Cumberland.
“Distinctly,” the Professor resumed, “distinctly she is the property of the Department of Antiquities.”
“What’s that!” cried Barry. “What on earth are you talking about?”
“He’s talking sense,” Danbazzar’s deep voice broke in. “There are no two ways about it. She is.”
“Are you all mad?” said Barry. “You behave as though the Department of Antiquities were an orphanage!”
“Or a harem agency,” prompted the Professor. “Yet the fact remains that they and no one else have a legal claim upon her person. We are no more entitled to remove her from the country, alive, than we should have been entitled to do so had we found her in what I may term a normal state. I mean dead. She is as much the property of the Department as the sarcophagus she lay in.”
“I must agree with you,” John Cumberland admitted. “Our difficulties are enormous. The more I think about them the bigger they get. For instance--since none of us dare testify that he was present at the discovery, how can we ever give an account of it to the world?”
“We can’t!” said the Professor. “Distinctly and definitely, I for one should not consent under any circumstances to lend my name to a statement on the subject. In the first place, assuming I were safely out of the country before the issue of such a report, criminal proceedings would undoubtedly be taken by the Egyptian government! This applies to all of us!”
Some moments of uncomfortable silence followed, then:
“The fact is,” Danbazzar stated, “the greatest find in Egyptology since the game began has got to blush unseen. I hadn’t thought of it. I’ll say so honestly. None of us had thought of it. But there it is all the same. The testimony of this bunch would carry a lot of weight in America. I don’t say we’d go unchallenged. But we’d be taken seriously. We’re not going to get the chance. We started working in the dark. We’ve got to go on that way.”
“I wish, now,” said John Cumberland regretfully, “that I had curbed my impatience and formally applied for a permit to excavate.”
“You’d never have got it!” Danbazzar assured him. “You might as well apply for a pass-out check to heaven! And once you’d applied and been turned down, to come here as we’ve done would have been to ask for trouble. No, sir, I’d worked on it from that angle before I put up my proposition.”
“Then where do we stand?” cried Barry in bewilderment. “What have we gained if our discoveries can’t be published?”
Danbazzar regarded him fixedly across the table.
“We have gained knowledge,” he replied, “that has been lost for thousands of years. With what we know, and what Zalithea can tell us when we teach her English, we’re going to revolutionize archæology, physiology, and psychology--to say nothing of chemistry!”
“It appears to me,” murmured Professor Blackwell, “that this tent contains the nucleus of a sort of New Rosicrucian order. We are bound together by a living secret which none of us dare divulge. Our present access of knowledge is very great. What we shall learn in the future from this phenomenal girl is also sure to be valuable. But of what use any of it is going to be to the world during our lifetime I confess I fail to see.”
Evidently nobody was very clear on the point, for not a suggestion was forthcoming; but:
“In one sense,” said John Cumberland, “our course is unavoidable. We are committed to go on. Until we have got clear and reclosed the tomb, we aren’t safe! Personally, I’m satisfied. Our very highest hopes have been realized. We have triumphed! That’s good enough for me. Let the future take care of itself. My present big worry is the girl.”
“Explain what you mean, Dad,” said Barry.
“I will,” his father agreed. “In the first place, as soon as we can make her understand how much the world has changed, we have got to get over to Luxor. Difficulty number one: How do we explain her to the folks in Luxor? Assuming we manage this and arrive in Cairo, how in the name of Mike do we get her a passport that will be accepted in New York?”
“Passport?” murmured the Professor. “Quite--quite. The point had not occurred to me. Of course, a certain difficulty is bound to arise in regard to a minor whose legal guardians have been dead for three thousand years.” He scratched his head furiously. “There are times when I doubt my own sanity,” he declared.
Danbazzar flicked a cone of ash from his cigar. In the lamplight a queer green spark moved on the face of the scarab in his ring.
“Leave the story to me,” he said. “The stuff, I can get away. It’s part of my business. The girl we’ll smuggle out nearly as easily. We’ve got to lie like bond salesmen, but we’ll get her away.”
“Fried chicken,” murmured the Professor.
“What’s that, Blackwell?” John Cumberland asked.
“I was reflecting,” the Professor explained, “upon the fact that a princess who doubtless has dined in the palace of the Pharaoh Seti I this evening partook of soup canned in Pittsburgh. I think I shall go to bed.”
He was as good as his word, departing almost immediately. Danbazzar set out to learn if the two guards posted in the valley were on the alert, and Barry and his father were left alone. Hassan es-Sugra, that unfathomable man, was sleeping in the entrance to the tomb to insure against pilfering.
As the sound of Danbazzar’s receding footsteps died away in the wâdi:
“You haven’t said much, Barry,” John Cumberland remarked, after an interval during which he had been closely watching his son; “but I think you have quite a lot to say all the same.”
Barry started, looking up. Then he began to knock out his pipe on the heel of his shoe.
“You mean, about--Zalithea?”
John Cumberland nodded.
“Well--I have!” Barry admitted. “She is the girl I saw twice in New Jersey and twice in New York!”
“I knew it!” said John Cumberland. “I didn’t speak, when I saw it first. I was waiting. Now that we have actually found her, alive, it’s a different matter. Barry--I think I can explain the whole thing.”
“Then go ahead, Dad!” Barry invited.
“We have proof--living proof--that the Ancient Egyptians knew more than we know. If they were wiser in one respect, it’s only reasonable to suppose they were wiser in others. Now, here’s what I believe: you didn’t see Zalithea in America. You had prevision of her! Danbazzar spoke of what we know, upsetting physiology and psychology. It’s going to upset religion as well. I believe you had an incarnation in Egypt at the time of Seti I, and I believe Zalithea remembers you!”
Barry started up excitedly.
“Why,” he exclaimed, “I had come to just that conclusion only to-night! It’s unavoidable, Dad! There’s no other explanation.”
They discussed the problem at some length, with the result that they agreed upon the main issue while differing about minor points.
“Poor humanity’s unanswerable question--the destiny of the soul--has been answered for us!” said John Cumberland. “I’m dazzled, Barry, by the magnificence of all these revelations. We have learned something, or are on the verge of learning it, which has taxed the greatest intellects in history.”
When finally John Cumberland turned in, Danbazzar had not come back from his tour of inspection. Barry, feverishly restless, lighted a fresh pipe and strolled out into the wâdi.
The night was very dark. Leaving the door of the tent, he walked into a wall of shadow, until, around a natural buttress, he saw a patch of light upon the sand ahead. It came from the entrance of Zalithea’s tent. Danbazzar was just coming out. He wore the priest’s robe and linen skullcap. Barry paused: and in the next moment Danbazzar saw him.
“I was coming to get you,” he called.
“Why? Is there anything wrong?”
Danbazzar joined him.
“No,” he replied. “But old Safîyeh was hanging around to speak to me. She caught me on my way back. Come along and get into a robe.”
“What!” Barry exclaimed. “Why?”
“Because Princess Zalithea wants to see you!”
Barry pulled up dead in his tracks. His heart began thumping.
“How do you know?” he demanded. “I mean, how did she make you understand?”
“Largely by signs,” Danbazzar admitted. “My Egyptian is mighty limited. But I’m learning.”
That old sensation of unreality, phantasy, came to Barry again. Urged by Danbazzar, he attired himself in the strange dress that they had adopted with the idea that it would be more familiar to the awakened girl. Then, not entirely master of himself, he walked back along the wâdi. At Zalithea’s tent:
“Wait outside,” Danbazzar directed. “Safîyeh will call you when I have made her understand you are here. I’ll do my best as interpreter.”
He went in, leaving Barry alone in the darkness.
Vaguely, a sound of voices came to him where he waited. The deep, subdued tones of Danbazzar made a marked contrast to the silvery note of that other voice! How well he seemed to know it!
Barry wondered why he was so nervous.
Suddenly the flap was drawn open, and the old Arab woman looked out, beckoning. Barry stooped and went in.
He found himself in a sort of tiny antechamber or lobby constructed of hanging tent cloths. An antique lamp hung from above. There were carpets on the sandy floor, but no furniture.
Safîyeh held one of the tent cloths aside and intimated that he was to enter. He stepped forward. Some hazy impression he had of a silver lamp, of embroidered curtains, of cushions, queer-looking inlaid chests, but these were an indistinct background into which the tall robed figure of Danbazzar merged appropriately. He was standing behind a cushioned divan, or native mattress.
Upon it, her cheek resting in her upraised hand, lay Princess Zalithea.
She was dressed in a manner which perhaps represented a compromise between the ancient and the modern Egyptian style. Her beautiful arms were bare to the shoulders, and she wore no jewellery of any kind. A sort of tightly fitting tunic and some sort of gauzy dress disguised in a measure the delicate shape which Danbazzar’s scissors had so mercilessly revealed in the tomb. Her white ankles were bare, as also were her little feet. It was so that he remembered her.
Long, dark, heavily fringed eyes were raised to Barry as he entered. They were the deeply mysterious eyes that had watched him since memory began--the beckoning eyes of the women who lived upon the frescoes surrounding his father’s walls--the eyes that had smiled down upon him from a New Jersey balcony!
How beautiful she was! But how pale and fragile. He found himself unable to believe Safîyeh’s report that she had enjoyed the meal so carefully prepared for her. Those full red lips, though, spoke of health. He was hopelessly, speechlessly embarrassed, under the grave scrutiny of unreadable eyes. But how beautiful she was!
“Speak to her,” Danbazzar prompted.
Barry bowed awkwardly.
“Princess Zalithea,” he said, “I am deeply honoured.”
She watched him, unmoved, for several moments more. Then, a slow, delightful smile revealed her little gleaming teeth. She turned her head slightly, looking up at Danbazzar. She spoke in soft, queerly modulated syllables. One word which might have been “Zalithea,” but accented very differently from Barry’s rendering, gave him a clue to her question. Danbazzar replied, slowly, haltingly; then:
“I think,” he said, “she is curious about how you learned her name. She seems to have recognized it. I told her that you were a very learned priest. She wants to know what you are called. Tell her.”
Zalithea turned her disturbing glance upon him again, as:
“I am called Barry Cumberland,” he responded.
Zalithea considered the words, then:
“Bahree?” she said--and nodded interrogatively.
“Yes--Barry; Barry Cumberland.”
She smiled, shaking her head in bewilderment. She looked up at Danbazzar and addressed him again. He listened, interpolating hesitant questions, while Barry watched, fascinated. Presently:
“She understands that you are called Barry,” he explained. “Cumberland is too much for her. Now, she is going to tell you how to pronounce her name properly.”
Zalithea turned to Barry, and, laying one slender hand on her breast:
“Zal’ith-eeah,” she said distinctly, and beckoned to him to approach closer.
He did so, almost trembling: the mad wonder of it all had seized upon him anew. Zalithea, in a sweetly imperious way, intimated that he should kneel. He obeyed, and she laid her hand on his breast. His heart was thumping wildly. She looked fixedly into his eyes.
