Array Sapper - The Complete Works of H. C. McNeile Sapper

Once again Jim laughed.

"I went to see Toby Bretherton as soon as I arrived, and the first thing he said to me was, 'Pity you had your trip in vain, old man.'

"I grunted non-committally.

"'Dashed plucky thing on her part, going off to see her brother like that.'

"'Dashed plucky,' I agreed.

"'And then to find he'd blown his brains out. Bad show. Glad you were there, Jim. By the same token—you kept your identity pretty dark. She has no idea who you are. Why not come and dine tonight, and I'll ask her and Hounslow. She's going tomorrow. It will be rather interesting to see if she recognises you.'

"'It undoubtedly will,' I remarked. 'Eight o'clock?'

"She didn't recognise me; as I say, a boiled shirt and an eyeglass alter a man. But she was very charming and very sweet, and quite delightfully modest when Hounslow told me of her trip at great length.

"'It was nothing,' she said. Ibrahim—the wonderful Ibrahim had made everything easy. And she would rather not talk about it: it was all too horrible.

"'I do hope he's better, Major Bretherton,' she said gently. 'He looked so ill when he went into hospital at Khartoum. If only I wasn't going tomorrow I would have so liked to thank him again.'

"Toby Bretherton smiled.

"'You can thank him tonight, Mrs. Dallas,' he remarked, and she gave a little gasp and stared at him.

"'You surely don't suppose, do you,' he went on, 'that I would ever have allowed you—quite ignorant of the country as you are—to go a long trip like that alone with an Arab?'

"His smile expanded; it really was a devilish good joke. It was such a good joke in fact that her tortoiseshell cigarette-holder snapped in two in her hand.

"'There is your Ibrahim.' He waved his hand at me, and positively laughed.

"Even George was tickled to death and remarked, 'Well, I'm blowed!'

"As a situation it had its dramatic possibilities, you'll admit, and I've sometimes wondered how one would have ended it if one had been writing a story. The actual truth was almost banal. George had turned to speak to a man passing the table; Toby was giving an order to the waiter. She leant across to me and spoke.

"'What are you going to do?'

"And my answer was, 'George is waiting. It is quite safe. And may God help George!'

"I haven't seen her from that day till this afternoon."

Table of Content

SO much for Jim's doings on his own while I kicked my heels in Cairo and waited for him. As for mine during that period, sufficient let it be said that I met She who must be Obeyed. And the rest of these chronicles are concerned with her, and that other She who completed Jim's half-section.

By rights, I suppose, with the advent of the ladies the course of our lives should have at once developed a certain tranquillity. Only things don't always happen according to order. Certain it is that the narrowest shave of all we had occurred through my She: a shave when for a brief space the curtain was lifted on dark and horrible things—things it is better to forget, though, once seen, they are unforgettable.

I know that to the man who catches the 8.30 train every morning and spends the day in his office in the City, the mere mention of such a thing as Black Magic is a cause for contemptuous laughter.

It is as well that he should think thus. And yet, surely to even the most prosaic of train-catchers, motoring maybe over Salisbury Plain, there must come some faint stirring of imagination as he sees the vast dead monument of Stonehenge. Can he not see that ancient temple peopled with vast crowds of fierce savages waiting in silence for the first rays of the rising sun to touch the altar? And then the wild-eyed priests; the human sacrifice; the propitiation of strange gods?

Thus it was in England two thousand years ago; thus it is today in places beyond the ken of England's train-catchers. Stamped out where possible, retreating always before advancing civilisation, there are still men who practise strange and dreadful rites in secret places.

Moreover, it is not good for a white man to dabble in those ceremonies. For they are utterly foul and evil. They are without every law, moral and social—and those who have dealings with them must pay a terrible price, even as Professor John Gainsford paid—Gainsford the celebrated Egyptologist.

Most people by now have forgotten his name, though at the time the case aroused great interest. It may be remembered that, as the result of information given to them, the authorities raided a certain house on the right bank of the Nile about half-way between Cairo and Luxor. They found it empty and deserted, but possessed of one very strange feature. In the centre of the house was a large pool—almost the size of a small swimming-bath. It was filled with slimy, stagnant water which stank. And when they had drained the water away they made a very sinister discovery. On the bottom of the pool, partially hidden in the filthy ooze, was a pair of spectacles. And the spectacles were identified as belonging to Professor Gainsford.

No other trace of that eminent savant was ever found, and finally his death was presumed.

We let it rest at that—for, you see, we knew. We talked it over, Jim and Molly Tremayne, the professor's niece, and, rightly or wrongly, we made our decision. Molly insists that it was just a sudden phase of dreadful madness; Jim maintains that Professor John Gainsford was of all vile murderers the vilest, and that the fact that he didn't succeed in his cold-blooded crime, but died himself, was no more than just retribution.

Be that as it may, I will put down now for the first time the real truth of what happened on that ghastly night. For Molly Tremayne is my She who was Obeyed then, and is now.

Professor Gainsford was the last man whom one would have considered capable of evil. His mutton-chop whiskers alone gave him an air of paternal benevolence, which was enhanced by the mild, blue eyes continually blinking behind his spectacles. At Shepheard's Hotel he was a familiar figure with his coat-tails flapping behind him whenever he moved, and a silk pocket- handkerchief hanging out of his pocket.

It was one night at dinner that the Professor first mentioned the subject. He had omitted to put on his tie, I remember, and Molly had driven him upstairs again to remedy the defect. I was dining at their table— it was not an unusual occurrence—and we started to pull his leg about it. As a general rule he used to take our chaffing in the mildest way, blinking amiably at us from behind his spectacles.

But on this particular night the Professor seemed strangely preoccupied, and our conversation grew a little desultory. He kept shooting little bird-like glances at Molly, and was, in fact, so unlike his usual self that once or twice we looked at one another in surprise.

It was towards the end of the meal that we found out the reason of his peculiar manner.

"I have had," he remarked suddenly, "an almost unbelievable stroke of luck this afternoon."

"Discovered a new beetle, Uncle John?" asked Molly with a smile.

"I have discovered," he answered solemnly, "that a secret cult thought by every Egyptologist to have become extinct centuries ago is still in existence. If it should prove to be the case, if this cult, which, as far as we know, came into being about the eighteenth dynasty, still lives, and has carried on intact from generation to generation the hidden secrets of the ages, then I shall have made a discovery of staggering magnitude."

"But how did you find out about it, Uncle?" said Molly.

"By sheer accident," he remarked. "I was in the bazaar this afternoon haggling with that arch-robber Yussuf over a scarab, when there strode into the shop a native who was evidently not a Cairene. Being engrossed in the scarab, I paid no attention to him until suddenly I happened to glance up. And I saw him make a sign to Yussuf which instantly made me forget everything else. I could hardly believe my eyes, for the sign he made was the secret sign of the highest adepts of this almost forgotten cult.