THE STORY OF ALI MOHAMMED
Saluting each of the three in turn, the tall Egyptian passed from Dr.
Cairn's room. Upon his exit followed a brief but electric silence. Dr.
Cairn's face was very stern and Sime, with his hands locked behind
him, stood staring out of the window into the palmy garden of the
hotel. Robert Cairn looked from one to the other excitedly.
"What did he say, sir?" he cried, addressing his father. "It had
something to do with--"
Dr. Cairn turned. Sime did not move.
"It had something to do with the matter which has brought me to
Cairo," replied the former--"yes."
"You see," said Robert, "my knowledge of Arabic is _nil_--"
Sime turned in his heavy fashion, and directed a dull gaze upon the
last speaker.
"Ali Mohammed," he explained slowly, "who has just left, had come down
from the Fayûm to report a singular matter. He was unaware of its real
importance, but it was sufficiently unusual to disturb him, and Ali
Mohammed es-Suefi is not easily disturbed."
Dr. Cairn dropped into an armchair, nodding towards Sime.
"Tell him all that we have heard," he said. "We stand together in this
affair."
"Well," continued Sime, in his deliberate fashion, "when we struck our
camp beside the Pyramid of Méydûm, Ali Mohammed remained behind with a
gang of workmen to finish off some comparatively unimportant work. He
is an unemotional person. Fear is alien to his composition; it has no
meaning for him. But last night something occurred at the camp--or
what remained of the camp--which seems to have shaken even Ali
Mohammed's iron nerve."
Robert Cairn nodded, watching the speaker intently.
"The entrance to the Méydûm Pyramid--," continued Sime.
"_One_ of the entrances," interrupted Dr. Cairn, smiling slightly.
"There is only one entrance," said Sime dogmatically.
Dr. Cairn waved his hand.
"Go ahead," he said. "We can discuss these archæological details
later."
Sime stared dully, but, without further comment, resumed:
"The camp was situated on the slope immediately below the only _known_
entrance to the Méydûm Pyramid; one might say that it lay in the
shadow of the building. There are tumuli in the neighbourhood--part of
a prehistoric cemetery--and it was work in connection with this which
had detained Ali Mohammed in that part of the Fayûm. Last night about
ten o'clock he was awakened by an unusual sound, or series of sounds,
he reports. He came out of the tent into the moonlight, and looked up
at the pyramid. The entrance was a good way above his head, of course,
and quite fifty or sixty yards from the point where he was standing,
but the moonbeams bathed that side of the building in dazzling light
so that he was enabled to see a perfect crowd of bats whirling out of
the pyramid."
"Bats!" ejaculated Robert Cairn.
"Yes. There is a small colony of bats in this pyramid, of course; but
the bat does not hunt in bands, and the sight of these bats flying out
from the place was one which Ali Mohammed had never witnessed before.
Their concerted squeaking was very clearly audible. He could not
believe that it was this which had awakened him, and which had
awakened the ten or twelve workmen who also slept in the camp, for
these were now clustering around him, and all looking up at the side
of the pyramid.
"Fayûm nights are strangely still. Except for the jackals and the
village dogs, and some other sounds to which one grows accustomed,
there is nothing--absolutely nothing--audible.
"In this stillness, then, the flapping of the bat regiment made quite
a disturbance overhead. Some of the men were only half awake, but
most, of them were badly frightened. And now they began to compare
notes, with the result that they determined upon the exact nature of
the sound which had aroused them. It seemed almost certain that this
had been a dreadful scream--the scream of a woman in the last agony."
He paused, looking from Dr. Cairn to his son, with a singular
expression upon his habitually immobile face.
"Go on," said Robert Cairn.
Slowly Sime resumed:
"The bats had begun to disperse in various directions, but the panic
which had seized upon the camp does not seem to have dispersed so
readily. Ali Mohammed confesses that he himself felt almost afraid--a
remarkable admission for a man of his class to make. Picture these
fellows, then, standing looking at one another, and very frequently up
at the opening in the side of the pyramid. Then the smell began to
reach their nostrils--the smell which completed the panic, and which
led to the abandonment of the camp--"
"The smell--what kind of smell?" jerked Robert Cairn.
Dr. Cairn turned himself in his chair, looking fully at his son.
"The smell of Hades, boy!" he said grimly, and turned away again.
"Naturally," continued Sime, "I can give you no particulars on the
point, but it must have been something very fearful to have affected
the Egyptian native! There was no breeze, but it swept down upon them,
this poisonous smell, as though borne by a hot wind."
"Was it actually hot?"
"I cannot say. But Ali Mohammed is positive that it came from the
opening in the pyramid. It was not apparently in disgust, but in
sheer, stark horror, that the whole crowd of them turned tail and ran.
They never stopped and never looked back until they came to Rekka on
the railway."
A short silence followed. Then:
"That was last night?" questioned Cairn.
His father nodded.
"The man came in by the first train from Wasta," he said, "and we have
not a moment to spare!"
Sime stared at him.
"I don't understand--"
"I have a mission," said Dr. Cairn quietly. "It is to run to earth, to
stamp out, as I would stamp out a pestilence, a certain _thing_--I
cannot call it a man--Antony Ferrara. I believe, Sime, that you are at
one with me in this matter?"
Sime drummed his fingers upon the table, frowning thoughtfully, and
looking from one to the other of his companions under his lowered
brows.
"With my own eyes," he said, "I have seen something of this secret
drama which has brought you, Dr. Cairn, to Egypt; and, up to a point,
I agree with you regarding Antony Ferrara. You have lost all trace of
him?"
"Since leaving Port Said," said Dr. Cairn, "I have seen and heard
nothing of him; but Lady Lashmore, who was an intimate--and an
innocent victim, God help her--of Ferrara in London, after staying at
the Semiramis in Cairo for one day, departed. Where did she go?"
"What has Lady Lashmore to do with the matter?" asked Sime.
"If what I fear be true--" replied Dr. Cairn. "But I anticipate. At
the moment it is enough for me that, unless my information be at
fault, Lady Lashmore yesterday left Cairo by the Luxor train at 8.30."
Robert Cairn looked in a puzzled way at his father.
"What do you suspect, sir?" he said.
"I suspect that she went no further than Wasta," replied Dr. Cairn.
"Still I do not understand," declared Sime.
"You may understand later," was the answer. "We must not waste a
moment. You Egyptologists think that Egypt has little or nothing to
teach you; the Pyramid of Méydûm lost interest directly you learnt
that apparently it contained no treasure. How, little you know what it
_really_ contained, Sime! Mariette did not suspect; Sir Gaston Maspero
does not suspect! The late Sir Michael Ferrara and I once camped by
the Pyramid of Méydûm, as you have camped there, and we made a
discovery--"
"Well?" said Sime, with growing interest.
"It is a point upon which my lips are sealed, but--do you believe in
black magic?"
"I am not altogether sure that I do--"
"Very well; you are entitled to your opinion. But although you appear
to be ignorant of the fact, the Pyramid of Méydûm was formerly one of
the strong-holds--the second greatest in all the land of the Nile--of
Ancient Egyptian sorcery! I pray heaven I may be wrong, but in the
disappearance of Lady Lashmore, and in the story of Ali Mohammed, I
see a dreadful possibility. Ring for a time-table. We have not a
moment to waste!"