[Illustration: “GET YOUR RIFLES READY,” COMMANDED THE CAPTAIN.
_Don Sturdy in the Tombs of Gold._ _Page 132_]
DON STURDY IN THE
TOMBS OF GOLD
OR
The Old Egyptian’s Great Secret
BY
VICTOR APPLETON
AUTHOR OF “DON STURDY ON THE DESERT OF MYSTERY,”
“DON STURDY ACROSS THE NORTH POLE,” “TOM
SWIFT AND HIS SKY RACER,” “TOM SWIFT
AND HIS PHOTO TELEPHONE,” ETC.
_ILLUSTRATED BY_
WALTER S. ROGERS
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
Made in the United States of America
BOOKS FOR BOYS
By VICTOR APPLETON
12mo. Cloth. Illustrated.
THE DON STURDY SERIES
DON STURDY ON THE DESERT OF MYSTERY
DON STURDY WITH THE BIG SNAKE HUNTERS
DON STURDY IN THE TOMBS OF GOLD
DON STURDY ACROSS THE NORTH POLE
DON STURDY IN THE LAND OF VOLCANOES
THE TOM SWIFT SERIES
TOM SWIFT AND HIS MOTOR CYCLE
TOM SWIFT AND HIS MOTOR BOAT
TOM SWIFT AND HIS AIRSHIP
TOM SWIFT AND HIS SUBMARINE BOAT
TOM SWIFT AND HIS ELECTRIC RUNABOUT
TOM SWIFT AND HIS WIRELESS MESSAGE
TOM SWIFT AMONG THE DIAMOND MAKERS
TOM SWIFT IN THE CAVES OF ICE
TOM SWIFT AND HIS SKY RACER
TOM SWIFT AND HIS ELECTRIC RIFLE
TOM SWIFT IN THE CITY OF GOLD
TOM SWIFT AND HIS AIR GLIDER
TOM SWIFT IN CAPTIVITY
TOM SWIFT AND HIS WIZARD CAMERA
TOM SWIFT AND HIS GREAT SEARCHLIGHT
TOM SWIFT AND HIS GIANT CANNON
TOM SWIFT AND HIS PHOTO TELEPHONE
TOM SWIFT AND HIS AERIAL WARSHIP
TOM SWIFT AND HIS BIG TUNNEL
TOM SWIFT IN THE LAND OF WONDERS
TOM SWIFT AND HIS WAR TANK
TOM SWIFT AND HIS AIR SCOUT
TOM SWIFT AND HIS UNDERSEA SEARCH
TOM SWIFT AMONG THE FIRE FIGHTERS
TOM SWIFT AND HIS ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVE
TOM SWIFT AND HIS FLYING BOAT
TOM SWIFT AND HIS GREAT OIL GUSHER
TOM SWIFT AND HIS CHEST OF SECRETS
GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK
Copyright, 1925, by
GROSSET & DUNLAP
Don Sturdy in the Tombs of Gold
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I A CALL FOR HELP 1
II LIKE A VOICE FROM THE GRAVE 10
III OFF FOR EGYPT 18
IV A PAIR OF SCOUNDRELS 27
V A VILLAINOUS PLOT 36
VI THE FIGHT IN THE DARK 46
VII ON THE TRAIL 63
VIII A LAND OF WONDERS 77
IX STARTLING NEWS 86
X IN GREAT DANGER 95
XI A DASH FOR LIBERTY 103
XII THE NIGHT PROWLER 115
XIII A DEADLY MENACE 127
XIV IN UTTER DARKNESS 138
XV A FRIGHTFUL APPARITION 144
XVI IN THE GRIP OF DOOM 149
XVII TRAPPED 155
XVIII A NIGHT OF HORROR 162
XIX THE MAN BY THE STREAM 168
XX A JOYFUL REUNION 177
XXI IN THE LABYRINTH 182
XXII A BEWILDERING EXPERIENCE 188
XXIII RICHES BEYOND PRICE 193
XXIV THE SLEEPWALKER 198
XXV VICTORY AGAINST ODDS 207
DON STURDY IN THE
TOMBS OF GOLD
CHAPTER I
A CALL FOR HELP
“Then, you think Dad really went to Egypt?” asked Don Sturdy, with
deep anxiety in his tone, as he stood beside the desk where his uncle,
Professor Bruce, was carefully looking over a mass of papers.
“I’m inclined to think so, my boy,” replied the professor, as he sat
back in his chair and ran his fingers through his hair. “Everything
seems to point that way, though we haven’t a bit of positive proof. But
we know, at least, that the idea of going there was in his mind when
he rushed out of Clifton’s house in Brazil shouting that he must go to
Egypt.”
“Still, that may have been the mere whim of a deranged mind, forgotten
almost as soon as the words were spoken,” put in Captain Frank Sturdy,
another of Don’s uncles, as he turned from the window through which he
had been looking.
“True enough,” assented the professor. “But we know from what Ruth told
us that for weeks he had been talking about the Valley of the Kings
in Egypt. It was, I believe, a fixed idea that had taken possession
of him. And these papers I’ve been looking over explain why he was so
deeply interested in that country.”
He picked up the heap of manuscript as he spoke, and selected some
papers from the mass.
“There’s no collected story here,” he remarked; “simply a lot of
memoranda scribbled on whatever he had at hand, old telegraph blanks,
backs of envelopes, and the like. They bear upon a trip that Richard
took to Egypt several years ago. The magic of the country seems to have
captivated him. But there’s something more than the awakened interest
of a tourist in them. They’re aflame with the ardor of a discoverer.
He seems to have been right on the brink of some remarkable find--so
remarkable, in fact, that he feared to commit it to paper lest it
should get into hands for which it was not intended.”
“I remember now,” broke in Captain Sturdy, “that when he got back from
that trip he seemed strangely excited. But I could never get much out
of him about it. He’d talk about it in a general way, but whenever it
came to details he’d change the subject. I gathered that he meant to
go back the next year, but the war came and that put an end to his
plans for the time.”
“He seemed to have spent most of his time among the tombs,” resumed
the professor. “There is one he mentions that was fifty-two feet long,
thirty-one feet wide, the sides of which were entirely covered with
paintings, while the roof, twenty-four feet high, was adorned with a
hundred squares of over a dozen different designs. There’s a diagram of
it here.”
“What do you gather from that?” asked the captain.
“Nothing much in itself,” was the reply. “But at the end of the
description are the words: ‘This is not the one. Must look further.’
And there are several other descriptions of tombs scattered through the
papers, each with this little note of disappointment at the end. It
seems clear to me that Richard was hunting eagerly for one particular
tomb and desperately anxious to find it.”
“What for, do you suppose?” asked Don.
“What he wanted to find it for or what he expected to find in it I
don’t know. It may have been gold or scarabs or alabaster vases or
amulets or any of the thousand things that make some of those tombs
veritable treasure houses. But whatever it was, his mind was centered
on it. It may have become a sort of obsession. Then, when his head
was hurt in that accident at the time of the shipwreck, that one
overpowering desire to get back to Egypt may have come to the front and
been too strong to be resisted.”
“Even if he did go there,” said Don, in perplexity, “it’s strange that
nothing has been heard of him. He had to live somewhere, must have
registered at some hotel. Yet all the consuls in the various cities
have investigated and can find no traces of any one named Sturdy.”
“He may have used some other name,” suggested the professor. “It’s
quite possible that he’d forgotten his own. Cases of amnesia are common
enough, when a man forgets all his past history, even his name.”
“But if mother had been with him, she’d have set that all right,”
objected Don.
“True enough,” replied the professor. “But how do we know that she was
with him? All we know is that she ran out after him into the night. We
cannot be sure that he didn’t elude her.”
“Oh, shall we ever be able to solve the mystery?” cried Don, in
desperation.
“Yes, we will,” declared the captain heartily, as he placed his hand
encouragingly on his nephew’s shoulder. “Keep up your heart, my boy.
Remember that we found your sister Ruth when we had almost given up
hope. And with heaven’s help we’ll find your father and mother too.”
“To be sure we shall, even if we go to Egypt to do it,” chimed in the
professor. “We’ll rake that country with a fine-toothed comb before
we’ll give up and admit that we’re beaten.”
The sound of the dinner bell broke up the conference, and Don hastened
to his room to wash and to brush his hair.
They were served at table by Jennie Jenks, the maid of all work, who
in her flittings to and fro that afternoon had caught snatches of the
conversation and was bursting with the desire to impart it to Mrs.
Roscoe, the housekeeper of the Sturdy home.
“I guess we kin say good-bye to Mister Don an’ his uncles,” she
remarked, in one of her migrations to the kitchen. “They’re all a goin’
to the tomb.”
Mrs. Roscoe was so startled that she nearly dropped the dish she was
carrying from the oven.
“What do you mean?” she gasped. “Are they sick?”
“You wouldn’t think so if you seen the way they was eatin’,” replied
Jennie, shifting her wad of chewing gum. “I mean they’re goin’ to them
Egypt tombs, where they’s alligaster vases an’ omelets an’ things like
that.”
“Oh, you mean the tombs of the Pharaohs,” said the motherly
housekeeper, in great relief. “They’ve been dead a long time.”
“Mebbe,” admitted Jennie. “Though I hadn’t even heard they was sick.
But it just beats all the way them men go trampin’ all over the earth
when they got a good home like this. Here they jest got back from
Brazil, an’ lucky they was not to be et up by golcondas or cannonballs,
an’ instead of settlin’ down, thankful like, they must be goin’ off
lickety-switch to another of them heathen places. Who knows what’ll
happen to ’em? Like as not Mister Don may fall down into one of them
Egypt tombs an’ be squashed.”
“Oh, I guess not,” replied the housekeeper soothingly. “He’s been in a
good many tight places and has come through all right.”
“Yes,” admitted Jennie. “But the picture that goes to the well too
often is broke at last. An’ it jest makes my blood creep to think of
them goin’ to that Egypt place, where all them plagues used to be.”
“That was a long time ago,” remarked the housekeeper. “I guess it’s all
right now.”
“I don’t know,” said Jennie, renewing her attack on her chewing gum
more vigorously and shaking her head. “From all I’ve heard, them
Egyptians ain’t any better than they ort to be.”
“Who is?” asked Mrs. Roscoe mildly.
“A feller took me to a movie once that showed all ’bout Egypt,” went
on Jennie, ignoring the question. “The big buildings was so dark an’
gloomy they give me the shivers. I ast the feller why they didn’t have
electric lights, an’ he tole me that they didn’t need electric lights
coz they had so many Israelites. I ast him what they had to do with it,
an’ he only laughed an’ said he loved every bone in my head.”
“He had a lot to love, then,” put in Mrs. Roscoe dryly.
“An’ they was a picture of the ocean,” Jennie continued, oblivious of
the sarcasm, “an’ the feller that was with me tole me that was Pharaoh
an’ his chariots an’ the children of Israel crossing the Red Sea. I
said, ‘Where’s the children of Israel, I don’t see any,’ an’ he said,
‘Oh, they’ve gone over’; an’ I said, ‘Well, then, where’s Pharaoh and
his chariots?’ an’ he said, ‘Oh, they’ve gone under.’ I s’pose that was
the way of it since he said so, but it didn’t seem just right somehow.”
Just then Jennie was interrupted by a call from the dining room and
scurried away, saving the housekeeper the necessity of listening to any
further details for the moment.
Don finished his dinner and then went out and sat down in a chair on
the porch. It was a beautiful summer evening, and in the great old
trees about the house the birds were singing their vesper songs.
Ordinarily the charm of the hour would have appealed to Don, but now
the outer peace only helped to emphasize by contrast the ferment of
anxiety in his mind. Where was his father? Where was his mother? Were
they still alive? What fate was keeping him without tidings of his
parents, dearer to him than life?
A boy on a motorcycle came at a rapid gait up the road. Don looked
at him listlessly as he neared, but with quickened interest when he
stopped at the gate.
The messenger opened the gate and wheeled his machine up the path.
“Cap’n Sturdy in?” asked the boy.
“Yes,” replied Don. “Want to see him?”
“Got a cablegram for him,” was the answer.
“Uncle Frank!” called Don. “Will you step here a minute? Something for
you.”
The captain came to the door, carrying in his hand the evening
newspaper he had been reading.
“What is it?” he asked.
The messenger handed him the envelope he drew from his pocket. The
captain signed for it and tore it open.
He ran his eyes over the message, and gave a shout that brought Don to
his feet in a twinkling.
“What is it?” he asked in surprise and some alarm. “What’s the matter?”
“Read it! Read it!” cried the captain, shoving the message toward his
nephew with a hand that trembled.
Don looked at it, and started as though he had received an electric
shock.
“It’s from mother!” he cried. “It’s from mother!”
This was the way the message ran:
“Strange disappearance of Richard. Must have assistance. Cable
immediately.
“ALICE STURDY.”