It Happened in Egypt
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The exciting part began in Cairo; but perhaps I ought to go back to what happened on the Laconia, between Naples and Alexandria. Luckily no one can expect a man who actually rejoices in his nickname of “Duffer” to know how or where a true story should begin.
The huge ship was passing swiftly out of the Bay of Naples, and already we were in the strait between Capri and the mainland. I had come on deck from the smoking-room for a last look at poor Vesuvius, who lost her lovely head in the last eruption. I paced up and down, acutely conscious of my great secret, the secret inspiring my voyage to Egypt. For months it had been the hidden romance of life; now it began to seem real. This is not the moment to tell how I got the papers that revealed the secret, before I passed them on to Anthony Fenton at Khartum, for him to say whether or not the notes were of real importance. But the papers had been left in Rome by Ferlini, the Italian Egyptologist, seventy years ago, when he gave to the museum at Berlin the treasures he had unearthed. It was Ferlini who ransacked the pyramids all about Meroë, the so-called island in the desert, where in its days of splendor reigned the queens Candace. Fenton, stationed at Khartum, an eager dabbler in the old lore of Egypt, sent me an enthusiastic telegram the moment he read the documents. They confirmed legends of the Sudan in which he had been interested. Putting two and two together…the legends and Ferlini's notes, Anthony was convinced that we had the clue to fortune. At once he applied for permission to excavate under the little outlying mountain named by the desert folk “the Mountain of the Golden Pyramid.” At first the spot was thought to fall within the province given up to Garstang, digging for Liverpool University. Later, however, the Service des Antiquités pronounced the place to be outside Garstang’s borders, and it seemed that luck was coming our way. No one but we two…Fenton and I, had any inkling of what might lie hidden in the Mountain of the Golden Pyramid. That was the great secret! Then Fenton had gone to the Balkans, on a flying trip in every sense of the word. It was only a fortnight ago…I being then in Rome…that I had a wire from him in Salonica saying, “Friends at work to promote our scheme. Meet me on my return to Egypt.” After that, several telegrams had been exchanged; and here I was on the Laconia bound for the land of my birth, full of hope and dreams.
For some moments distant Vesuvius had beguiled my thoughts from the still more distant mountain of the secret, when suddenly a white girl in a white hood and a long white cloak passed me on the white deck: whereupon I forgot mountains of reality and dreams. She was one of those tall, slim, long-limbed, dryad-sort of girls they are running up nowadays in England and America with much success; and besides all that, she was an amazing symphony in white and gold against an azure Italian sea and sky, the two last being breezily jumbled together at the moment for us on shipboard. She walked well in spite of the blue turmoil; and if a fair girl with golden-brown hair gets herself up in satiny white fur from head to foot she is evidently meant to be looked at. Others were looking: also they were whispering after she went by: and her serene air of being alone in a world made entirely for her caused me to wonder if she were not Some One in Particular.
Just then a sweet, soft voice said, close to my ear:
“Why, Duffer, dear, it can’t possibly be you!”
I gave a jump, for I hadn’t heard that voice for many a year, and between the ages of four and fourteen I had been in love with it.
“Brigit O’Brien!” I said. Then I grabbed her two hands and shook them as if her arms had been branches of a young cherry tree, dropping fruit.
“Why not Biddy?” she asked. “Or are ye wanting me to call ye Lord Ernest?”
“Good heavens, no! Once a Duffer, always a Duffer,” I assured her. “And I’ve been thinking of you as Biddy from then till now. Only…”
“Twas as clever a thing as a boy ever did,” she broke in, with one of her smiles that no man ever forgets, “to begin duffing at an early age, in order to escape all the professions and businesses your pastors and masters proposed, and go your own way. Are ye at it still?”
“Rather! But you? I want to talk to you.”
“Then don’t do it in a loud voice, if you please, because, as you must have realized, if you would have taken time to think, I’m Mrs. Jones at present.”
“Why Jones?”
The huge ship was passing swiftly out of the Bay of Naples, and already we were in the strait between Capri and the mainland. I had come on deck from the smoking-room for a last look at poor Vesuvius, who lost her lovely head in the last eruption. I paced up and down, acutely conscious of my great secret, the secret inspiring my voyage to Egypt. For months it had been the hidden romance of life; now it began to seem real. This is not the moment to tell how I got the papers that revealed the secret, before I passed them on to Anthony Fenton at Khartum, for him to say whether or not the notes were of real importance. But the papers had been left in Rome by Ferlini, the Italian Egyptologist, seventy years ago, when he gave to the museum at Berlin the treasures he had unearthed. It was Ferlini who ransacked the pyramids all about Meroë, the so-called island in the desert, where in its days of splendor reigned the queens Candace. Fenton, stationed at Khartum, an eager dabbler in the old lore of Egypt, sent me an enthusiastic telegram the moment he read the documents. They confirmed legends of the Sudan in which he had been interested. Putting two and two together…the legends and Ferlini's notes, Anthony was convinced that we had the clue to fortune. At once he applied for permission to excavate under the little outlying mountain named by the desert folk “the Mountain of the Golden Pyramid.” At first the spot was thought to fall within the province given up to Garstang, digging for Liverpool University. Later, however, the Service des Antiquités pronounced the place to be outside Garstang’s borders, and it seemed that luck was coming our way. No one but we two…Fenton and I, had any inkling of what might lie hidden in the Mountain of the Golden Pyramid. That was the great secret! Then Fenton had gone to the Balkans, on a flying trip in every sense of the word. It was only a fortnight ago…I being then in Rome…that I had a wire from him in Salonica saying, “Friends at work to promote our scheme. Meet me on my return to Egypt.” After that, several telegrams had been exchanged; and here I was on the Laconia bound for the land of my birth, full of hope and dreams.
For some moments distant Vesuvius had beguiled my thoughts from the still more distant mountain of the secret, when suddenly a white girl in a white hood and a long white cloak passed me on the white deck: whereupon I forgot mountains of reality and dreams. She was one of those tall, slim, long-limbed, dryad-sort of girls they are running up nowadays in England and America with much success; and besides all that, she was an amazing symphony in white and gold against an azure Italian sea and sky, the two last being breezily jumbled together at the moment for us on shipboard. She walked well in spite of the blue turmoil; and if a fair girl with golden-brown hair gets herself up in satiny white fur from head to foot she is evidently meant to be looked at. Others were looking: also they were whispering after she went by: and her serene air of being alone in a world made entirely for her caused me to wonder if she were not Some One in Particular.
Just then a sweet, soft voice said, close to my ear:
“Why, Duffer, dear, it can’t possibly be you!”
I gave a jump, for I hadn’t heard that voice for many a year, and between the ages of four and fourteen I had been in love with it.
“Brigit O’Brien!” I said. Then I grabbed her two hands and shook them as if her arms had been branches of a young cherry tree, dropping fruit.
“Why not Biddy?” she asked. “Or are ye wanting me to call ye Lord Ernest?”
“Good heavens, no! Once a Duffer, always a Duffer,” I assured her. “And I’ve been thinking of you as Biddy from then till now. Only…”
“Twas as clever a thing as a boy ever did,” she broke in, with one of her smiles that no man ever forgets, “to begin duffing at an early age, in order to escape all the professions and businesses your pastors and masters proposed, and go your own way. Are ye at it still?”
“Rather! But you? I want to talk to you.”
“Then don’t do it in a loud voice, if you please, because, as you must have realized, if you would have taken time to think, I’m Mrs. Jones at present.”
“Why Jones?”