some scampering beast in the garden outside. His light streamed out in
an oblong on to the sandy path, and, laying the two pieces of the image
on the table, he looked out. But there was nothing irregular to be seen;
the palm trees waved and clashed in the wind, and the rose bushes
stirred and scattered their fragrance. Only right down the middle of the
sandy path that ran between the beds, the ground was curiously
disturbed, as by some animal, heavily frolicking, scooping and spurning
the light soil as it ran.
The midday train from Cairo next day brought Mr. Rankin, the eminent
Egyptologist and student of occult lore, a huge red man with a complete
mastery of colloquial Arabic. He had but a day to spend in Luxor, for he
was _en route_ for Merawi, where lately some important finds had been
made; but Hugh took occasion to show him the figure of the ape as they
sat over their coffee in the garden just outside his bedroom after
lunch.
“I found the lower half yesterday outside one of the tombs of the
kings,” he said, “and the top half by the utmost luck among old Abdul’s
things. He told me you said that if it was complete it would be of the
greatest rarity. He lied, I suppose?”
Rankin gave one gasp of amazed surprise as he looked at it and read the
inscription on the back. Marsham thought that his great red face
suddenly paled.
“Good Lord!” he said. “Here, take it!” And he held out the two pieces to
him.
Hugh laughed.
“Why in such a hurry?” he said.
“Because there comes a breaking-point to every man’s honesty, and I
might keep it, and swear that I had given it back to you. My dear
fellow, do you know what you’ve got?”
“Indeed I don’t. I want to be told,” said Hugh.
“And to think that it was you who only a couple of months ago asked me
what a scarab was! Well, you’ve got there what all Egyptologists, and
even more keenly than Egyptologists all students of folk-lore and magic
black and white--especially black--would give their eyes to have found.
Good Lord! what’s that?”
Hugh was sitting by his side in a deck-chair, idly fitting together the
two halves of the broken image. He too heard what had startled Rankin;
for it was the same noise as had startled him last night, namely, the
scampering of some great frolicsome animal, somewhere close to them. As
he jumped up, severing his hands, the noise ceased.
“Funny,” he said, “I heard that last night. There’s nothing; it’s some
stray dog in the bushes. Do tell me what it is that I’ve got.”
Rankin, who had surged to his feet also, stood listening a moment. But
there was nothing to be heard but the buzzing of bees in the bushes and
the chiding of the remote kites overhead. He sat down again.
“Well, give me two minutes,” he said, “and I can tell you all I know.
Once upon a time, when this wonderful and secret land was alive and not
dead--oh, we have killed it with our board-schools and our steamers and
our religion--there was a whole hierarchy of gods, Isis, Osiris, and the
rest, of whom we know a great deal. But below them there was a company
of semi-divinities, demons if you will, of whom we know practically
nothing. The cat was one, certain dwarfish creatures were others, but
most potent of all were the cynocephali, the dog-faced apes. They were
not divine, rather they were demons, of hideous power, _but_”--and he
pointed a great hand at Hugh--“they could be controlled. Men could
control them, men could turn them into terrific servants, much as the
genii in the ‘Arabian Nights’ were controlled. But to do that you had to
know the secret name of the demon, and had yourself to make an image of
him, with the secret name inscribed thereon, and by that you could
summon him and all the incarnate creatures of his species.
“So much we know from certain very guarded allusions in the Book of the
Dead and other sources, for this was one of the great mysteries never
openly spoken of. Here and there a priest in Karnak, or Abydos, or in
Hieropolis, had had handed down to him one of those secret names, but in
nine cases out of ten the knowledge died with him, for there was
something dangerous and terrible about it all. Old Abdul here, for
instance, believes that Moses had the secret names of frogs and lice,
and made images of them with the secret name inscribed on them, and by
those produced the plagues of Egypt. Think what you could do, think what
he did, if infinite power over frog-nature were given you, so that the
king’s chamber swarmed with frogs at your word. Usually, as I said, the
secret name was but sparingly passed on, but occasionally some very bold
advanced spirit, such as Moses, made his image, and controlled----”
He paused a moment, and Hugh wondered if he was in some delirious dream.
Here they were, taking coffee and cigarettes underneath the shadow of a
modern hotel in the year A.D. 1912, and this great savant was talking to
him about the spell that controlled the whole frog-nature in the
universe. The gist, the moral of his discourse, was already perfectly
clear.
“That’s a good joke,” Hugh said. “You told your story with extraordinary
gravity. And what you mean is that those two blue bits I hold in my hand
control the whole ape-nature of the world? Bravo, Rankin! For a moment,
you and your impressiveness almost made me take it all seriously. Lord!
You do tell a story well! And what’s the secret name of the ape?”
Rankin turned to him with the shake of an impressive forefinger.
“My dear boy,” he said, “you should never be disrespectful towards the
things you know nothing of. Never say a thing is moonshine till you know
what you are talking about. I know, at this moment, exactly as much as
you do about your ape-image, except that I can translate its
inscription, which I will do for you. On the top half is written, ‘He,
of whom this is, let him call on me thrice----’”
Hugh interrupted.
“That’s what Abdul read to me,” he said.
“Of course. Abdul knows hieroglyphics. But on the lower half is what
nobody but you and I know. ‘Let him call on me thrice,’ says the top
half, and then there speaks what you picked up in the valley of the
tombs, ‘and I, Tahu-met, obey the order of the Master.’”
“Tahu-met?” asked Hugh.
“Yes. Now in ten minutes I must be off to catch my train. What I have
told you is all that is known about this particular affair by those who
have studied folk-lore and magic, and Egyptology. If anything--if
anything happens, do be kind enough to let me know. If you were not so
abominably rich I would offer you what you liked for that little broken
statue. But there’s the way of the world!”
“Oh, it’s not for sale,” said Hugh gaily. “It’s too interesting to sell.
But what am I to do next with it? Tahu-met? Shall I say Tahu-met three
times?”
Rankin leaned forward very hurriedly, and laid his fat hand on the young
man’s knee.
“No, for Heaven’s sake! Just keep it by you,” he said. “Be patient with
it. See what happens. You might mend it, perhaps. Put a drop of
gum-arabic on the break and make it whole. By the way, if it interests
you at all, my niece Julia Draycott arrives here this evening, and will
wait for me here till my return from Merawi. You met her in Cairo, I
think.”
Certainly this piece of news interested Hugh more than all the
possibilities of apes and super-apes. He thrust the two pieces of
Tahu-met carelessly into his pocket.
“By Jove, is she really?” he said. “That’s splendid. She told me she
might be coming up, but didn’t feel at all sure. Must you really be off?
I shall come down to the station with you.”
While Rankin went to gather up such small luggage as he had brought with
him, Hugh wandered into the hotel bureau to ask for letters, and seeing
there a gum-bottle, dabbed with gum the fractured edges of Tahu-met. The
two pieces joined with absolute exactitude, and wrapping a piece of
paper round them to keep the edges together, he went out through the
garden with Rankin. At the hotel gate was the usual crowd of donkey-boys
and beggars, and presently they were ambling down the village street on
bored white donkeys. It was almost deserted at this hottest hour of the
afternoon, but along it there moved an Arab leading a large grey ape,
that tramped surlily in the dust. But just before they overtook it, the
beast looked round, saw Hugh, and with chatterings of delight strained
at his leash. Its owner cursed and pulled it away, for Hugh nearly rode
over it, but it paid no attention to him, and fairly towed him along the
road after the donkeys.
Rankin looked at his companion.
“That’s odd,” he said. “That’s one of your servants. I’ve still a couple
of minutes to spare. Do you mind stopping a moment?”
He shouted something in the vernacular to the Arab, who ran after them,
with the beast still towing him on. When they came close the ape stopped
and bent his head to the ground in front of Hugh.
“And that’s odd,” said Rankin.
Hugh suddenly felt rather uncomfortable.
“Nonsense!” he said. “That’s just one of his tricks. He’s been taught it
to get baksheesh for his master. Look, there’s your train coming in. We
must get on.”
He threw a couple of piastres to the man, and they rode on. But when
they got to the station, glancing down the road, he saw that the ape was
still looking after them.
* * * * *
Julia Draycott’s arrival that evening speedily put such antique
imaginings as the lordship of apes out of Hugh’s head. He chucked
Tahu-met into the box where he kept his scarabs and ushapti figures, and
devoted himself to this heartless and exquisite girl, whose mission in
life appeared to be to make as miserable as possible the largest
possible number of young men. Hugh had already been selected by her in
Cairo as a decent victim, and now she proceeded to torture him. She had
no intention whatever of marrying him, for poor Hugh was certainly ugly,
with his broad, heavy face, and though rich, he was not nearly rich
enough. But he had a couple of delightful Arab horses, and so, since
there was no one else on hand to experiment with, she let him buy her a
side-saddle, and be, with his horses, always at her disposal. She did
not propose to use him for very long, for she expected young Lord
Paterson (whom she did intend to marry) to follow her from Cairo within
a week. She had beat a Parthian retreat from him, being convinced that
he would soon find Cairo intolerable without her; and in the meantime
Hugh was excellent practice. Besides, she adored riding.
They sat together one afternoon on the edge of the river opposite
Karnak. She had treated him like a brute beast all morning, and had
watched his capability for wretchedness with the purring egoism that
distinguished her; and now, as a change, she was seeing how happy she
could make him.
“You are such a dear,” she said. “I don’t know how I could have endured
Luxor without you; and, thanks to you, it has been the loveliest week.”
She looked at him from below her long lashes, through which there
gleamed the divinest violet, smiling like a child at her friend. “And
to-night? You made some delicious plan for to-night.”
“Yes; it’s full moon to-night,” said he. “We are going to ride out to
Karnak after dinner.”
“That will be heavenly. And, Mr. Marsham, do let us go alone. There’s
sure to be a mob from the hotel, so let’s start late, when they’ve all
cleared out. Karnak in the moonlight, just with you.”
That completely made Hugh’s mind up. For the last three days he had been
on the look out for a moment that should furnish the great occasion; and
now (all unconsciously, of course) she indicated it to him. This
evening, then. And his heart leaped.
“Yes, yes,” he said. “But why have I become Mr. Marsham again?”
Again she looked at him, now with a penitent mouth.
“Oh, I was such a beast to you this morning,” she said. “That was why. I
didn’t deserve that you should be Hugh. But will you be Hugh again? Do
you forgive me?”
In spite of Hugh’s fixing the great occasion for this evening, it might
have come then, so bewitching was her penitence, had not the rest of
their party on donkeys, whom they had outpaced, come streaming along the
river bank at this moment.
“Ah, those tiresome people,” she said. “Hughie, what a bore everybody
else is except you and me.”
They got back to the hotel about sunset, and as they passed into the
hall the porter handed Julia a telegram which had been waiting some
couple of hours. She gave a little exclamation of pleasure and
surprise, and turned to Hugh.
“Come and have a turn in the garden, Hughie,” she said, “and then I must
go down for the arrival of the boat. When does it come in?”
“I should think it would be here immediately,” he said. “Let’s go down
to the river.”
Even as he spoke the whistle of the approaching steamer was heard. The
girl hesitated a moment.
“It’s a shame to take up all your time in the way I’m doing,” she said.
“You told me you had letters to write. Write them now; then--then you’ll
be free after dinner.”
“To-morrow will do,” he said. “I’ll come down with you to the boat.”
“No, you dear, I forbid it,” she said. “Oh, do be good, and write your
letters. I ask you to.”
Rather puzzled and vaguely uncomfortable, Hugh went into the hotel. It
was true that he had told her he had letters that should have been
written a week ago, but something at the back of his mind insisted that
this was not the girl’s real reason for wanting him to do his task now.
She wanted to go and meet the boat alone, and on the moment an unfounded
jealousy stirred like a coiled snake in him. He told himself that it
might be some inconvenient aunt whom she was going to meet, but such a
suggestion did not in the least satisfy him when he remembered the
obvious pleasure with which she had read the telegram that no doubt
announced this arrival. But he nailed himself to his writing-table till
a couple of very tepid letters were finished, and then, with growing
restlessness, went out through the hall into the warm, still night. Most
of the hotel had gone indoors to dress for dinner, but sitting on the
veranda with her back to him was Julia. A chair was drawn in front of
her, and facing her was a young man, on whose face the light shone. He
was looking eagerly at her, and his hand rested on her knee. Hugh turned
abruptly and went back into the hotel.
He and Julia for these last three days had, with two other friends, made
a very pleasant party of four at lunch and dinner. To-night, when he
entered the dining-room, he found that places were laid here for three
only, and that at a far-distant table in the window were sitting Julia
and the young man whom he had seen with her on the veranda. His identity
was casually disclosed as dinner went on; one of his companions had seen
Lord Paterson in Cairo. Hugh had only a wandering ear for table-talk,
but a quick glancing eye, ever growing more sombre, for those in the
window, and his heavy face, as he noted the tokens and signs of their
intimacy, grew sullen and savage. Then, before dinner was over, they
rose and passed out into the garden.
Jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of those to whom it owes its
miseries than love can bear to be parted from the object of its
adoration, and presently Hugh and his two friends went and sat, as was
usual with them, on the veranda outside. Here and there about the garden
were wandering couples, and in the light of the full moon, which was to
be their lamp at Karnak to-night when the “tiresome people” had gone, he
soon identified Julia and Lord Paterson. They passed and repassed down a
rose-embowered alley, hidden sometimes behind bushes and then appearing
again for a few paces, and each sight of them, each vanishing of them
again served but to confirm that which already needed no confirmation.
And as his jealousy grew every moment more bitter, so every moment Hugh
grew more and more dangerously enraged. Apparently Lord Paterson was not
one of the “tiresome people” whom Julia longed to get away from.
Presently his two companions left him, for they were starting now to
ride out to Karnak, and Hugh sat on, smoking and throwing away half
consumed an endless series of cigarettes. He had ordered that his two
horses, one with a side-saddle, should be ready at ten, and at ten he
meant to go to the girl and remind her of her engagement. Till then he
would wait here, wait and watch. If the veranda had been on fire, he
felt he could not have left it to seek safety in some place where he was
unable to see the bushy path where the two strolled. Then they emerged
from that on to the broader walk that led straight to where he was
sitting, and after a few whispered words, Lord Paterson left her there,
and came quickly towards the hotel. He passed close by Hugh, gave him
(so Hugh thought) a glance of amused derision, and went into the hotel.
Julia came quickly towards him when Lord Paterson had gone.
“Oh, Hughie,” she said. “Will you be a tremendous angel? Lord
Paterson--yes, he’s just gone in, such a dear, you would delight in
him--Lord Paterson’s only here for one night, and he’s dying to see
Karnak by moonlight. So will you lend us your horses? He absolutely
insists I should go out there with him.”
The amazing effrontery of this took Hugh’s breath away, and in that
moment’s pause his rage flamed within him.
“I thought you were going out with me?” he said.
“I was. But, well, you see----”
She made the penitent mouth again, which had seemed so enchanting to him
this afternoon.
“Oh, Hughie, don’t you understand?” she said.
Hugh got up, feeling himself to be one shaking black jelly of wounded
anger.
“I’m not sure if I do,” he said. “But no doubt I soon shall. Anyhow, I
want to ask you something. I want you to promise to marry me.”
She opened her great childlike eyes to their widest. Then they closed
into mere slits again as she broke out into a laugh.
“Marry you?” she said. “You silly, darling fellow! That is a good joke.”
Suddenly from the garden there sounded the jubilant scamper of running
feet, and next moment a great grey ape sprang on to the veranda beside
them, and looked eagerly, with keen dog’s eyes, at Hugh, as if intent on
obeying some yet unspoken command. Julia gave a little shriek of fright
and clung to him.
“Oh, that horrible animal!” she cried. “Hughie, take care of me!”
Some sudden ray of illumination came to Hugh. All the extraordinary
fantastic things that Rankin had said to him became sober and real. And
simultaneously the girl’s clinging fingers on his arm became like the
touch of some poisonous, preying thing, snake-coil, or suckers of an
octopus, or hooked wings of a vampire bat. Something within him still
shook and trembled like a quicksand, but his conscious mind was quite
clear and collected.
“Go away,” he said to the ape, and pointed into the garden, and it
scampered off, still gleefully spurning and kicking the soft sandy path.
Then he quietly turned to the girl.
“There, it’s gone,” he said. “It was just some tame thing escaped. I saw
it, or one like it, the other day on the end of a string. As for the
horses, I shall be delighted to let you and Lord Paterson have them. It
is ten now; they will be round.”
The girl had quite recovered from her fright.
“Ah, Hughie, you are a dear,” she said. “And you do understand?”
“Yes, perfectly,” said he.
Julia went to dress herself for riding, and presently Hugh saw them off
from the gate, with courteous wishes for a pleasant ride. Then he went
back to his bedroom and opened the little box where he kept his scarabs.
* * * * *
An hour later he was walking out alone on the road to Karnak, and in his
pocket was the image of Tahu-met. He had formed no clear idea of what he
was meaning to do; the immediate reason for his expedition was that once
again he could not bear to lose sight of Julia and her companion. The
moon was high, the feathery outline of palm-groves was clearly and
delicately etched on the dark velvet of the heavens, and stars sat among
their branches like specks of golden fruit. The caressing scent of
bean-flowers was wafted over the road, and often he had to stand aside
to let pass a group of noisy tourists mounted on white donkeys, coming
riotously home from the show-piece of Karnak by moonlight. Then,
striking off the road, he passed beside the horseshoe lake, in the
depths of whose black waters the stars burned unwaveringly, and by the
entrance of the ruined temple of Mut. And then, with a stab of jealousy
that screamed for its revenge, he saw, tied up to a pillar just within,
his own horses. So _they_ were here.
He gave the beasts a wide berth, lest, recognizing him, they should
whinny and perhaps betray his presence, and, creeping in the shadow of
the walls behind the row of great cat-headed statues, he stole into the
inner court of the temple. Here for the first time he caught sight of
the two at the far end of the enclosure, and as they turned, white-faced
in the moonlight, he saw Paterson kiss the girl, and they stood there
with neck and arms interlaced. Then they began walking towards him
again, and he stepped into a dark chamber on his right to avoid meeting
them.
It had that strange stale animal odour about it that hangs in Egyptian
temples, and with a thrill of glee he saw, by a ray of moonlight that
streamed in through the door, that by chance he had stepped into the
shrine round which sit the dog-faced apes, whose secret name he knew,
and whose controlling spell lay in his breast-pocket. Often he had felt
the underworld horror that dwelt here, as a thing petrified and
corpse-like; to-night it was petrified no longer, for the images seemed
tense and quivering with the life that at any moment he could put into
them. Their faces leered and hated and lusted, and all that demoniac
power, which seemed to be flowing into him from them, was his to use as
he wished. Rankin’s fantastic tales were bursting with reality; he knew
with the certainty with which the night-watcher waits for the day, that
the lordship of the spirit of apes, incarnate and discarnate, would
descend on him as on some anointed king the moment he thrice pronounced
the secret name. He was going to do it too; he knew also that all he
hesitated for now was to determine what orders their lord should give.
It seemed that the image in his breast-pocket was aware, for it throbbed
and vibrated against his chest like a boiling kettle.
He could not make up his mind what to do; but fed as with fuel by
jealousy, and love, and hate, and revenge, his sense of the magical
control he wielded could be resisted no longer, but boiled over, and he
drew from his pocket the image where was engraven the secret name.
“Tahu-met, Tahu-met, Tahu-met,” he shouted aloud.
There was a moment’s absolute stillness; then came a wild scream of
fright from his horses, and he heard them gallop off madly into the
night. Slowly, like a lamp turned down and then finally turned out, the
blaze of the moon faded into utter darkness, and in that darkness, which
whispered with a gradually increasing noise of scratchings and
scamperings, he felt that the walls of the narrow chamber where he stood
were, as in a dream, going farther and farther away from him, until,
though still the darkness was impenetrable, he knew that he was standing
in some immense space. One wall, he fancied, was still near him, close
behind him, but the space which was full of he knew not what unseen
presences, extended away and away to both sides of him and in front of
him. Then he was aware that he was not standing, but sitting, for
beneath his hands he could feel the arms as of some throne, of which the
seat’s edge pressed him just below his knees. The animal odour he had
noticed before increased enormously in pungency, and he sniffed it in
ecstatically, as if it had been the scent of beanfields, and mixed with
it was the sweetness of incense and the savour as of roast meat. And at
that the withdrawn light began to glow once more, only now it was not
the whiteness of the moon, but a redder glow as of flames that aspired
and sank again.
He saw where he was now. He was seated on a chair of pink granite, and a
little in front of him was a huge altar, on which limbs smoked. Overhead
was a low roof supported at intervals by painted pillars, and the whole
of the vast floor was full of great grey apes, squatting in dense rows.
Sometimes they all bowed their heads to the ground, sometimes, as by a
signal, they raised them again, and myriads of obscene expectant eyes
faced him. They glowed from within, as cats’ eyes glow in the dusk, but
with an infinity of hellish power. All that power was his to command,
and he gloried in it.