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Title: The False Gods


Author: George Horace Lorimer



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THE FALSE GODS

by

GEORGE HORACE LORIMER

Author of "Letters from a Self-made Merchant to His Son"







[Illustration]


[Illustration]


[Illustration]


[Illustration: "Then ... the arms crushed him against the stone breast."]


[Illustration]



D. Appleton and Company
New York
1906

Copyright, 1906, by George Horace Lorimer
Copyright, 1906, by D. Appleton and Company
Entered at Stationer's Hall, London
Published April, 1906



[Illustration]


[Illustration]



To A.V.L.




[Illustration]


[Illustration]




CONTENTS

                                                  PAGE

     I.                                              1

    II.                                             11

   III.                                             21

    IV.                                             33

     V.                                             39

    VI.                                             51

   VII.                                             59

  VIII.                                             69

    IX.                                             77

     X.                                             81




[Illustration]


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


                                                FACING
                                                  PAGE

  "Then ... the arms crushed him
   against the stone breast"           _Frontispiece_

  "'Aw, fergit it'"                                  4

  "'She's the Real Thing'"                          24

  "Suddenly she felt him coming, and turned"        56




[Illustration]


[Illustration]



THE FALSE GODS




I


It was shortly after ten o'clock one morning when Ezra Simpkins, a
reporter from the _Boston Banner_, entered the Oriental Building,
that dingy pile of brick and brownstone which covers a block on Sixth
Avenue, and began to hunt for the office of the Royal Society of
Egyptian Exploration and Research. After wandering through a labyrinth
of halls, he finally found it on the second floor. A few steps farther
on, a stairway led down to one of the side entrances; for the building
could be entered from any of the four bounding streets.

Simpkins regarded knocking on doors and sending in cards as formalities
which served merely to tempt people of a retiring disposition to lie, so
when he walked into the waiting-room and found it deserted, he passed
through it quickly and opened the door beyond. But if he had expected
this manoeuver to bring him within easy distance of the person whom
he was seeking, he was disappointed. He had simply walked into a small
outer office. A self-sufficient youth of twelve, who was stuffed into
a be-buttoned suit, was its sole occupant.

"Hello, bub!" said Simpkins to this Cerberus of the threshold. "Mrs.
Athelstone in?" and he drew out his letter of introduction; for he had
instantly decided to use it in place of a card, as being more likely to
gain him admittance.

"Aw, fergit it," the youth answered with fine American independence.
"I'll let youse know when your turn comes, an' youse can keep your
ref'rences till you're asked for 'em," and he surveyed Simpkins with
marked disfavor.

The reporter made no answer and asked no questions. Until that moment he
had not known that he had a turn, but if he had, he did not propose to
lose it by any foolish slip. So he settled down in his chair and began
to turn over his assignment in his mind.

That Simpkins had come over to New York was due to the conviction of
his managing editor, Mr. Naylor, that a certain feature which had been
shaping up in his head would possess a peculiar interest if it could be
"led" with a few remarks by Mrs. Athelstone. Though her husband, the
Rev. Alfred W.R. Athelstone, was a Church of England clergyman, whose
interest in Egyptology had led him to accept the presidency of the
American branch of the Royal Society, she was a leader among the
Theosophists. And now that the old head of the cult was dead, it was
rumored that Mrs. Athelstone had announced the reincarnation of Madame
Blavatsky in her own person. This in itself was a good "story," but it
was not until a second rumor reached Naylor's ears that his newspaper
soul was stirred to its yellowest depths. For there was in Boston an
association known as the American Society for the Investigation of
Ancient Beliefs, which was a rival of the Royal Society in its good work
of laying bare with pick and spade the buried mysteries along the Nile.
And this rivalry, which was strong between the societies and bitter
between their presidents, became acute in the persons of their
secretaries, both of whom were women. Madame Gianclis, who served the
Boston Society, boasted Egyptian blood in her veins, a claim which Mrs.
Athelstone, who acted as secretary for her husband's society, politely
conceded, with the qualification that some ancestor of her rival had
contributed a dash of the Senegambian as well.

[Illustration: "'Aw, fergit it.'"]

This remark, duly reported to Madame Gianclis, had not put her in a
humor to concede Madame Blavatsky's soul, or any part of it, to Mrs.
Athelstone. Promptly on hearing of her pretensions, so rumor had it,
the Boston woman had announced the reincarnation of Theosophy's high
priestess in herself. And Boston believers were inclined to accept her
view, as it was difficult for them to understand how any soul with
liberty of action could deliberately choose a New York residence.

Now, all these things had filtered through to Naylor from those just
without the temple gates, for whatever the quarrels of the two societies
and their enemies, they tried to keep them to themselves. They had had
experience with publicity and had found that ridicule goes hand in hand
with it in this iconoclastic age. But out of these rumors, unconfirmed
though they were, grew a vision in Naylor's brain--a vision of a
glorified spread in the _Sunday Banner's_ magazine section. Under
a two-page "head," builded cunningly of six sizes of type, he saw
ravishingly beautiful pictures of Madame Gianclis and Mrs. Athelstone,
and hovering between them the materialized, but homeless, soul of Madame
Blavatsky, trying to make choice of an abiding-place, the whole
enlivened and illuminated with much "snappy" reading matter.

Now, Simpkins was the man to make a managing editor's dreams come true,
so Naylor rubbed the lamp for him and told him what he craved. But the
reporter's success in life had been won by an ability to combine much
extravagance of statement in the written with great conservatism in
the spoken word. Early in his experience he had learned that Naylor's
optimism, though purely professional, entailed unpleasant consequences
on the reporter who shared it and then betrayed some too generous trust;
so he absolutely refused to admit that there was any basis for it now.

"You know she won't talk to reporters," he protested. "Those New York
boys have joshed that whole bunch so they're afraid to say their prayers
out loud. Then she's English and dead swell, and that combination's hard
to open, unless you have a number in the Four Hundred, and then it ain't
refined to try. I can make a pass at her, but it'll be a frost for me."

"Nonsense! You must make her talk, or manage to be around while some one
else does," Naylor answered, waving aside obstacles with the noble scorn
of one whose business it is to set others to conquer them. "I want a
good snappy interview, understand, and descriptions for some red-hot
pictures, if you can't get photos. I'm going to save the spread in the
Sunday magazine for that story, and you don't want to slip up on the
Athelstone end of it. That hall is just what the story needs for a
setting. Get in and size it up."

"You remember what happened to that _Courier_ man who got in?"
ventured Simpkins.

"I believe I did hear something about a _Courier_ man's being
snaked out of a closet and kicked downstairs. Served him right.
_Very_ coarse work. Very coarse work _indeed_. There's a better
way and you'll find it." There was something unpleasantly significant in
his voice, as he terminated the interview by swinging around to his desk
and picking up a handful of papers, which warned the reporter that he
had gone the limit.

Simpkins had heard of the hall, for it had been written up just after
Doctor Athelstone, who was a man of some wealth, had assembled in it his
private collection of Egyptian treasures. But he knew, too, that it had
become increasingly difficult to penetrate since Mrs. Athelstone had
been made the subject of some entertaining, but too imaginative, Sunday
specials. Still, now that he had properly magnified the difficulties
of the undertaking to Naylor, that the disgrace of defeat might be
discounted or the glory of achievement enhanced, he believed that he
knew a way to gain access to the hall and perhaps to manage a talk with
Mrs. Athelstone herself. His line of thought started him for Cambridge,
where he had a younger brother whom he was helping through Harvard.

As a result of this fraternal visit, Simpkins minor cut the classes of
Professor Alexander Blackburn, the eminent archæologist, for the next
week, and went to his other lectures by back streets. For the kindly
professor had given him a letter, introducing him to Mrs. Athelstone as
a worthy young student with a laudable thirst for that greater knowledge
of Egyptian archæology, ethnology and epigraphy which was to be gained
by an inspection of her collection. And it was the possession of this
letter which influenced Simpkins major to take the smoking car and to
sit up all night, conning an instructive volume on Ancient Egypt,
thereby acquiring much curious information, and diverting two dollars of
his expense money to the pocket in which he kept his individual cash
balance.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]




II


For five minutes the decorous silence of the anteroom was unbroken.
Then the door of the inner office swung open and closed behind a
dejected-looking young man, and the boy, without so much as asking
for a card, preceded the secretly-elated Simpkins into the hall.

They had stepped from the present into the past. Simpkins found himself
looking between a double row of pillars, covered with hieroglyphics in
red and black, to an altar of polished black basalt, guarded on either
side by stone sphinxes. Behind it, straight from the lofty ceiling, fell
a veil of black velvet, embroidered with golden scarabæi, and fringed
with violet. The approach, a hundred paces or more, was guarded by
twoscore mummies in black cases, standing upright along the pillars.

"Watcher gawkin' at?" demanded the youth, grinning up at the staring
Simpkins. "Lose dat farmer-boy face or it's back to de ole homestead
for youse. Her royal nibs ain't lookin' for no good milker."

"Oh, I'm just rubbering to see where the goat's kept," the reporter
answered, trying to assume a properly metropolitan expression. "Suppose
I'll have to take the third degree before I can get out of here."

The youth started noiselessly across the floor, and Simpkins saw that
he wore sandals. His own heavy walking boots rang loudly on the flagged
floors and woke the echoes in the vaulted ceiling. He began to tread on
tiptoe, as one moves in a death-chamber.

And that was what this great room was: a charnel-house filled with
the spoil of tombs and temples. The dim light fluttered down from
quaint, triangular windows, set with a checker-work of brick-red and
saffron-colored panes about a central design, a scarlet heart upon a
white star, and within that a black scarabæus. The white background of
the walls threw into relief the angular figures on the frieze, scenes
from old Egyptian life: games, marriages, feasts and battles, painted
in the crude colors of early art. Between were paneled pictures of the
gods, monstrous and deformed deities, half men, half beasts; and the
dado, done in black, pictured the funeral rites of the Egyptians, with
explanatory passages from the ritual of the dead. Rudely-sculptured
bas-reliefs and intaglios, torn from ancient mastabas, were set over
windows and doors, and stone colossi of kings and gods leered and
threatened from dusky corners. Sarcophagi of black basalt, red porphyry
and pink-veined alabaster, cunningly carved, were disposed as they had
been found in the pits of the dead, with the sepulchral vases and the
hideous wooden idols beside them.

The descriptions of the place had prepared Simpkins for something out
of the ordinary, but nothing like this; and he looked about him with
wonder in his eyes and a vague awe at his heart, until he found himself
standing in the corner of the hall to the right of the black altar in
the west. Two sarcophagi, one of basalt, the other of alabaster, were
placed at right angles to the walls, partially inclosing a small space.
Within this inclosure, bowed over a stone table, sat a woman, writing.
At either end of the table a mummy case, one black, the other gilt,
stood upright. The boy halted just outside this singular private office,
and the woman rose and came toward them.

Simpkins had never read Virgil, but he knew the goddess by her walk. She
was young--not over thirty--and tall and stately. Her gown was black,
some soft stuff which clung about her, and a bunch of violets at her
waist made the whole corner faintly sweet. Her features were regular,
but of a type strange to Simpkins, the nose slightly aquiline, the lips
full and red--vividly so by contrast to the clear white of the skin--and
the forehead low and straight. Black hair waved back from it, and was
caught up by the coils of a golden asp, from whose lifted head two
rubies gleamed. Doubtless a woman would have pronounced her gown absurd
and her way of wearing her hair an intolerable affectation. But it was
effective with the less discriminating animal--instantly so with
Simpkins.

And then she raised her eyes and looked at him. To the first glance they
were dusky eyes, deep and fathomless, changing swiftly to the blue-black
of the northern skies on a clear winter night, and flashing out sharp
points of light, like star-rays. He knew that in that glance he had been
weighed, gauged and classed, and, though he was used to questioning
Governors and Senators quite unabashed and unafraid, he found himself
standing awkward and ill-at-ease in the presence of this woman.

Had she addressed him in Greek or Egyptian, he would have accepted it as
a matter of course. But when she did speak it was in the soft, clear
tones of a well-bred Englishwoman, and what she said was commonplace
enough.

"I suppose you've called to see about the place?" she asked.

"Ye-es," stammered Simpkins, but with wit enough to know that he had
come at an opportune moment. If there were a place, decidedly he had
called to see about it.

"Who sent you?" she continued, and he understood that he was not there
in answer to a want advertisement.

"Professor Blackburn." And he presented his letter and went on, with
a return of his glibness: "You see, I've been working my way through
Harvard--preparing for the ministry--Congregationalist. Found I'd have
to stop and go to work regularly for a while before I could finish. So
I've come over here, where I can attend the night classes at Columbia at
the same time. And as I'm interested in Egyptology, and had heard a good
deal about your collection, I got that letter to you. Thought you might
know some one in the building who wanted a man, as work in a place like
this would be right in my line. Of course, if you're looking for any
one, I'd like to apply for the place." And he paused expectantly.

"I see. You want to be a Dissenting minister, and you're working for
your education. Very creditable of you, I'm sure. And you're a stranger
in New York, you say?"

"Utter," returned Simpkins.

Mrs. Athelstone proceeded to question him at some length about his
qualifications. When he had satisfied her that he was competent to
attend to the easy, clerical work of the office and to care for the
more valuable articles in the hall, things which she did not care to
leave to the regular cleaners, she concluded:

"I'm disposed to give you a trial, Mr. Simpkins, but I want you to
understand that under no circumstances are you to talk about me or
your work outside the office. I've been so hunted and harried by
reporters----" And her voice broke. "What I want above all else is
a clerk that I can trust."

The assurance which Simpkins gave in reply came harder than all the lies
he had told that morning, and, some way, none of them had slipped out
so smoothly as usual. He was a fairly truthful and tender-hearted man
outside his work, but in it he had accustomed himself to regard men and
women in a purely impersonal way, and their troubles and scandals simply
as material. To his mind, nothing was worth while unless it had a news
value; and nothing was sacred that had. But he was uneasily conscious
now that he was doing a deliberately brutal thing, and for the first
time he felt that regard for a subject's feelings which is so fatal to
success in certain branches of the new journalism. But he repressed
the troublesome instinct, and when Mrs. Athelstone dismissed him a few
minutes later, it was with the understanding that he should report the
next morning, ready for work.

He stopped for a moment in the ante-chamber on the way out; for the
bright light blinded him, and there were red dots before his eyes. He
felt a little subdued, not at all like the self-confident man who had
passed through the oaken door ten minutes before. But nothing could long
repress the exuberant Simpkins, and as he started down the stairway to
the street he was exclaiming to himself:

"Did you butt in, Simp., old boy, or were you pushed?"

[Illustration]




[Illustration]




III


At nine o'clock the next morning Simpkins presented himself at the
Society's office, and a few minutes later he found himself in the
fascinating presence of Mrs. Athelstone. He soon grasped the details of
his simple duties, and then, like a lean, awkward mastiff, padded along
at her heels while she moved about the hall and pointed out the things
which would be under his care.

"If I were equal to it, I should look after these myself," she
explained. "Careless hands would soon ruin this case." And she touched
the gilt mummy beside her writing-table affectionately. "She was a
queen, Nefruari, daughter of the King of Ethiopia. They called her 'the
good and glorious woman.'"

"And this--this black boy?" questioned Simpkins respectfully. "Looks as
if he might have lived during the eighteenth dynasty." He had not been
poring over volumes on Ancient Egypt for two nights without knowing a
thing or two about black mummies.

"Quite right, Simpkins," Mrs. Athelstone replied, evidently pleased by
his interest and knowledge. "He was Amosis, a king of the eighteenth
dynasty, and Nefruari's husband. A big, powerful man!"

"What a bully cigarette brand he'd make!" thought Simpkins, and aloud
he added:

"They must have been a fine-looking pair."

"Indeed, yes," was the earnest answer, and so they moved about the hall,
she explaining, he listening and questioning, until at last they stood
before the black altar in the west and the veil of velvet. Simpkins saw
that there was an inscription carved in the basalt, and, drawing nearer,
slowly spelled out:


          TIBI
    VNA           QVE
    ES          OMNIA
    DEA          ISIS


"And what's behind the curtain?" he began, turning toward Mrs.
Athelstone.

"The truth, of course. But remember," and her tone was half serious,
"none but an adept may look behind the veil and live."

"The truth is my long suit," returned Simpkins mendaciously. "So I'll
take a chance." As he spoke, the heavy velvet fell aside and disclosed
a statue of a woman carved in black marble. It stood on a pedestal of
bronze, overlaid with silver, and above and behind were hangings of
blue-gray silk. A brilliant ray of light beat down on it. Glancing up,
Simpkins saw that it shone from a crescent moon in the arched ceiling
above the altar. Then his eyes came back to the statue. There was
something so lifelike in the pose of the figure, something so winning in
the smile of the face, something so alluring in the outstretched arms,
that he involuntarily stepped nearer.

"And now that you've seen Isis, what do you think of her?" asked Mrs.
Athelstone, breaking the momentary silence.

"She's the real thing--the naked truth, sure enough," returned Simpkins
with a grin.

"It _is_ a wonderful statue!" was the literal answer. "There's no
other like it in the world. Doctor Athelstone found it near Thebes, and
took a good deal of pride in arranging this shrine. The device _is_
clever; the parting of the veil you see, makes the light shine down on
the statue, and it dies out when I close it--so"; and, as she pulled a
cord, the veil fell before the statue and the light melted away.

[Illustration: "'She's the Real Thing.'"]

"Aren't you initiating the neophyte rather early?" a man's voice asked
at Simpkins' elbow, and, as he turned to see who it was, Mrs. Athelstone
explained: "This is our new clerk, Mr. Simpkins; Doctor Brander is our
treasurer, and our acting president while my husband's away. He left a
few days ago for a little rest." And Mrs. Athelstone turned back to her
desk.

Simpkins instantly decided to dislike the young clergyman beside him. He
was tall and athletic-looking, but with a slight stoop, that impressed
the reporter as a physical assumption of humility which the handsome
face, with its faintly sneering lines and bold eyes, contradicted. But
he acknowledged Brander's offhand "How d'ye do?" in a properly
deferential manner, and listened respectfully to a few careless
sentences of instructions.

For the rest of the morning, Simpkins mechanically addressed circulars
appealing for funds to carry on the good work of the Society, while his
mind was busy trying to formulate a plan by which he could get Mrs.
Athelstone to tell what she knew about the whereabouts of Madame
Blavatsky's soul. He felt, with the accurate instinct of one used to
classing the frailties of flesh and blood according to their worth in
columns, that those devices which had so often led women to confide
to him the details of the particular sensation that he was working up
would avail him nothing here. "You simply haven't got her Bertillon
measurements, Simp.," he was forced to admit, after an hour of fruitless
thinking. "You'll have to trust in your rabbit's foot."

But if Mrs. Athelstone was a new species to him, the office boy was not.
He knew that youth down to the last button on his jacket. He knew, too,
that an office boy often whiles away the monotonous hours by piecing
together the president's secrets from the scraps in his waste-basket.
So at the noon hour he slipped out after Buttons, caught him as he was
disappearing up a near-by alley in a cloud of cigarette smoke, like the
disreputable little devil that he was, and succeeded in establishing
friendly and even familiar relations with him.

It was not, however, until late in the afternoon, when he was called
into the ante-chamber to discover the business of a caller, that he
improved the opportunity to ask the youth some leading questions.

"Suppose you open up mornings?" he began carelessly.

"Naw; Mrs. A. does. She bunks here."

"How?"

"In a bed. She's got rooms in de buildin'. That door by Booker T. leads
to 'em."

"Booker T.? Oh, sure! The brunette statue. And that other door--the one
to the left. Where does that go?"

"Into Brander's storeroom. He sells mummies on de side."

"Does, eh? Curious business!" commented Simpkins. "Seems to rub it into
_you_ pretty hard. And stuck on himself! Don't seem able to spit
without ringing his bell for some one to see him do it. Guess you'd have
to have four legs to satisfy _him_, all right."

"Say, dat duck ain't on de level," the grievance for which Simpkins had
been probing coming to the surface.

"Holds out on what he collects? Steals?"

"Sure t'ing--de loidies," and the boy lowered his voice; "he's dead
stuck on Mrs. A."

"Oh! nonsense," commented Simpkins, an invitation to continue in his
voice. "She's a married woman."

"Never min', I'm tellin' youse; an dat's just where de stink comes in.
Ain't I seen 'im wid my own eyes a-makin' goo-goos at 'er. An' wasn't
there rough house for fair goin' on in dere last mont', just before de
Doc. made his get-away? He tumbled to somethin', all right, all right,
or why don't he write her? Say, I don't expect _him_ back in no
hurry. He's hived up in South Dakote right now, an' she's in trainin'
for alimony, or my name's Dennis Don'tknow."

"Does look sort of funny," Simpkins replied, sympathetic, but not too
interested. "When was it Doc. left? Last week?"

"Last week, not; more'n a mont' ago, an' he ain't peeped since, for I've
skinned every mail dat's come in, an' not a picture-postal, see?"

"That isn't very affectionate of Doc., but I wouldn't mention it to any
one else; it might get you into trouble," was Simpkins' comment. "You
better--Holy, jumping Pharaoh! what a husky pussy!" As he spoke a big
black cat, with blinking, tawny eyes, sprang from the floor and curled
itself up on the youth's desk. "Where'd that----"

A snarl interrupted the question; for the temptation to pull the cat's
tail had proved too strong for the boy. Bowed over his desk in a fit of
laughter at the result, he did not see the door behind him open, but
Simpkins did. And he saw Mrs. Athelstone, her eyes blazing, spring into
the room, seize the youth by the collar and shake him roughly.

"You nasty little brute!" she cried. "How dared you do that to a----"
And then catching sight of Simpkins, she dropped the frightened boy back
into his chair.

"I can't stand cruelty to animals," she explained, panting a little from
her effort. "If anything of this sort happens again, I'll discharge you
on the spot," she added to the boy.

"Shame!" Simpkins echoed warmly. "Didn't know what was up or I'd have
stopped him."

"I'm sure of it," she answered graciously, and, stooping, she picked up
the now purring cat and left the room.

Simpkins followed her back to his desk and went on with his addressing,
but he had something worth thinking about now. Not for nothing had he
been educated in that newspaper school which puts two and two together
and makes six. And by the time he was through work for the day and back
in his room at the hotel, he had his result. He embodied it in this
letter to Naylor:


  _Dear Mr. Naylor_:

  I am in the employ of Mrs. Athelstone. How I managed it is a yarn
  that will keep till I get back. [He meant until he could invent the
  story which would reflect the most credit on his ingenuity, for
  though he knew that the whole thing had been a piece of luck he had
  no intention of cheapening himself with Naylor by owning as much.]
  I had intended to return to Boston to-night, but I'm on the track of
  real news, a lovely stink, something much bigger than the Sunday story.
  There's a sporting parson, quite a swell, in the office here who's gone
  on Mrs. A., and I'm inclined to hope she is on him. Anyway, the Doc.
  left in a hurry after some sort of a row over a month ago, and hasn't
  written a line to his wife since. She's as cool as a cucumber about it
  and handed me a hot one right off the bat about poor old Doc.'s having
  gone away for a rest _a few days ago_. I've drawn cards and am going
  to sit in the game, unless you wire me to come home, for I smell a large,
  fat, front-page exclusive, which will jar the sensitive slats of some of
  our first families both here and in dear old London.

    Yours,
      SIMPKINS.


He hesitated a few minutes before he mailed the letter. He really did
not want to do anything to involve _her_ in a scandal, but, after
all, it was simply anticipating the inevitable, and--he pulled himself
up short and put the letter in the box. He could not afford any mawkish
sentiment in this.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]




IV


Simpkins received a monosyllabic telegram from Naylor, instructing him
to "stay," but after working in the Society's office for another three
days he was about ready to give up all hope of getting at the facts.
Some other reason, he scarcely knew what, kept him on. Perhaps it was
Mrs. Athelstone herself. For though he appreciated how ridiculous his
infatuation was, he found a miserable pleasure in merely being near her.
And she was pleased with her new clerk, amused at what she called his
quaint Americanisms, and if she noticed his too unrepressed admiration
for her, she smiled it aside. It was something to which she was
accustomed, an involuntary tribute which most men who saw her often
rendered her.

She never referred, even indirectly, to her husband, but Simpkins,
as he watched her move about the hall, divined that he was often in
her thoughts. And there was another whom he watched--Brander; for he
felt certain now that the acting president's interest in his handsome
secretary was not purely that of the Egyptologist. And though there was
nothing but a friendly courtesy in her manner toward him, Simpkins knew
his subject well enough to understand that, whatever her real feelings
were, she was far too clever to be tripped into betraying them to him.
"She doesn't wear her heart on her sleeve--if she has a heart," he
decided.

He was trying to make up his mind to force things to some sort of a
crisis, one morning, when Mrs. Athelstone called him to her desk and
said rather sharply:

"You've been neglecting your work, Simpkins. Isis looks as if she hadn't
been dusted since you came."

This was the fact. Simpkins never passed the black altar without a
backward glance, as if he were fearful of an attack from behind. And he
had determined that nothing should tempt him to a tête-à-tête with the
statue behind the veil. But having so senseless, so cowardly a feeling
was one thing, and letting Mrs. Athelstone know it another. So he only
replied:

"I'm very sorry; afraid I have been a little careless about the statue."
And taking up a soft cloth, he walked toward the altar.

It was quite dark behind the veil; so dark that he could see nothing at
first. But after the moment in which his eyes grew accustomed to the
change, he made out the vague lines of the statue in the faint light
from above. He set to work about the pedestal, touching it gingerly at
first, then more boldly. At length he looked up into the face, blurred
in the half-light.

When he had finished with the pedestal he pulled himself up between the
outstretched arms, and perhaps a trifle hurriedly now, as he saw the
face more distinctly, began to pass the cloth over the arms and back.

Then, quick as the strike of a snake, the arms crushed him against the
stone breast. He could not move; he could not cry out; he could not
breathe. The statue, seen from the level of the pedestal, had changed
its whole expression. Hate glowed in its eyes; menace lived in every
line of its face. The arms tightened slowly, inexorably; then, as
quickly as they had closed, unclasped; and Simpkins half-slid, half-fell
to the floor.

When the breath came back into his lungs and he found himself unharmed,
he choked back the cry on his lips, for in that same moment a suspicion
floated half-formed through his brain. He forced himself to climb up on
the pedestal again, and made a careful inspection of the statue--but
from behind this time.

The arms were metal, enameled to the smoothness of the body, and
jointed, though the joints were almost invisible. The statue was one of
those marvelous creations of the ancient priests, and once, no doubt, it
had stood behind the veil in some Egyptian temple to tempt and to punish
the curiosity of the neophyte.

Though Simpkins could find no clew to the mechanism of the statue, he
determined that he had sprung it with his feet, and that during his
struggles a lucky kick had touched the spring which relaxed the arms.
"Did any one beside himself know their strength?" he asked himself, as
he stepped out into the hall again. Mrs. Athelstone was bent over her
desk writing; Brander was yawning over a novel in his corner, and
neither paid any attention to him. So he busied himself going over the
mummy-cases, and by the time he had worked around to the two beside Mrs.
Athelstone he had himself well in hand, outwardly. But he was still so
shaken internally that he knocked the black case rather roughly as he
dusted.

"What way is that to treat a king?" demanded Mrs. Athelstone; and the
anger in her voice was so real that Simpkins, startled, blundered out:

"I really meant no disrespect. Very careless of me, I'm sure." He looked
so distressed that Mrs. Athelstone's anger melted into a delicious
little laugh, as she answered:

"Really, Simpkins, you musn't be so bungling. These mummies are
priceless." And she got up and made a careful inspection of the case.

Simpkins, rather crestfallen, went back to his desk and began to address
circulars, his brain busy with the shadow which had crept into it. But
there was nothing to make it more tangible, everything to dispel it,
and he was forced to own as much. "It's a lovely little cozy corner,"
was his final conclusion; "but keep out of it, Simp., old boy. These
mechanical huggers are great stuff, but they're too strong for a fellow
that's been raised on Boston girls."

[Illustration]




[Illustration ]




V


Mrs. Athelstone was not in the office when he came down the next
day--she had gone to Washington on the Society's affairs, Brander
said--and so he moped about, finding the place dreary without her
brightening presence. In fact, when Brander went out, he slipped into
the sunlit ante-chamber, for companionship, he told himself; but in his
heart he knew that he did not want to be alone with that thing behind
the altar. He had satisfactorily explained its mechanism to himself, but
there was something else about it which he could not explain.

Naylor had telegraphed that very morning: "Get story. Come home. What do
you think you're doing?" and he tried to make up his mind to end the
whole affair by taking the night train to Boston. But he hated to go
back empty-handed from a four days' assignment. Besides, though he knew
himself a fool for it, he wanted to see Mrs. Athelstone once more.

So it happened that he was lingering on in the outer office when the
postman threw the afternoon mail on the desk. Simpkins was alone at the
moment, and he ran over the letters carelessly until he came to one
addressed to Brander in Mrs. Athelstone's writing. The blue card of the
palace car company was in a corner of the envelope.

"Why the deuce is she writing that skunk before she's well out of town?"
he thought, scanning the envelope with jealous eyes. Then he held it up
to the light, but the thick paper told nothing of what was within.
Frowning, he laid the letter down, fingered it, withdrew his itching
hand, hesitated, and finally put it in his pocket.

Simpkins went straight from the office to his hotel, for, though he
told himself that the letter contained some instructions which Mrs.
Athelstone had forgotten to give Brander before leaving, he was anxious
to see just how those instructions were worded. Alone in his little
room, he ripped open the letter and ran over its two pages with
bewilderment growing in his face. He finished by throwing it down on
the table and exclaiming helplessly: "Well, I'll be damned!"

The first sheet, without beginning or ending, contained only a line in
Mrs. Athelstone's handwriting, reading: "I had to leave in such a hurry
that I missed seeing you."

There was not an intelligible word on the second sheet; it was simply a
succession of scrawls and puerile outline pictures, such as a child
might have drawn.

To Simpkins' first aggrieved feeling that his confidence had been
abused, the certainty that he had stumbled on something of importance
quickly succeeded. He concluded a second and more careful scrutiny of
the letter with the exclamation, "Cipher! all right, all right," and,
after a third, he jumped up excitedly and rushed off to Columbia
University.

An hour later, Professor Ashmore, whose well-known work on "Hieratic
Writings" is so widely accepted an authority on that fascinating
subject, looked across to Simpkins, who for some minutes had been
sitting quietly in a corner of his study, and observed dryly:

"This is a queer jumble of hieroglyphics and hieratic writing, and is
not, I should judge," and his eyes twinkled, "of any great antiquity."

"Quite right, Professor," Simpkins assented cheerfully. "The lady who
wrote it is interested in Egyptology, and is trying to have a little fun
with me."

"If I may judge from the letter, she seems to be interested in you as
well," the professor went on smilingly. "In fact, it appears to
be--ahem--a love-letter."

"Eh! What?" exclaimed Simpkins, suddenly serious, "Let's have it."

"Well, roughly, it goes something like this: 'My heart's dearest, my
sun, my Nile duck--the hours are days without thee, the days an æon. The
gods be thanked that this separation is not for long. For apart from
thee I have no life. That thing that I have to do is about done. May the
gods guard thee and the all-mother protect thee. I embrace thee: I kiss
thine eyes and thy lips.' That's a fair translation, though one or two
of the hieroglyphics are susceptible of a slightly different rendering;
but the sense would not be materially affected by the change," the
Professor concluded.

His words fell on inattentive ears; for Simpkins was sitting stunned
under the revelation of the letter. Now that he had his story, he knew
that he had not wanted it.

But he roused himself when he became conscious that the professor was
peering at him curiously over the top of his glasses, and said:

"Pretty warm stuff, eh! Good josh! Great girl! Ought to know her. She's
daft on this Egyptian business."

"Her letter is perhaps a trifle er--impulsive," the professor answered.
"But she combines the ancient and the modern charmingly. I congratulate
you."

"Thanks, Professor," Simpkins answered awkwardly, and took his leave.

Once in the street, he plunged along, head down. It was worse than he
had suspected. He had felt all along that the boy's surmises about
Brander were correct; now he knew that his suspicions of Mrs. Athelstone
were well founded. But he would keep her from that hypocrite, that hawk,
that--murderer! Simpkins stopped short at the intrusion of that word.
It had come without logic or reason, but he knew now that it had been
shaping in his head for two days past. And once spoken, it began to
justify itself. There was the motive, clear, distinct and proven; there
were the means and the man.

Next morning Simpkins was earlier than usual at the Oriental Building,
where he found the youth waiting for Brander to come and open up the
inner office.

"Parson's late, eh?" he threw out by way of greeting.

"Always is," was the surly answer. "He's de 'rig'nal seven sleepers."

"Puts you behind with your cleaning, eh?"

"Naw; youse ought to know I don't do no cleanin'."

"You don't? I thought you tended to Mrs. Athelstone's rooms and--Mr.
Brander's storeroom."

"Aw, go wan. I'm no second girl, an' de storeroom's never cleaned.
Dere's nothin' to clean but a lot of stones an' bum mummies an' such."

"Brander can't sell much stuff; I never see anything being shipped."

"Oh! I don't know! We sent a couple of embammed dooks to Chicago last
week."

"And last month?"

"Search me; I only copped out me job here last mont'; but seems as if
his whiskers did say dere was somethin' doin'." And just then Mr.
Brander came along.

Simpkins had found out what he wanted to know, and he decided that he
must bring his plans to a head at once. Mrs. Athelstone was expected
back the next day; he must search the storeroom that very night.
If--well, he thought he could spoil one scoundrel.

He worked to good advantage during the day, and at nine o'clock that
night, when he was back outside the Oriental Building, there were three
new keys in his pocket.

He unlocked the door noiselessly, tiptoed up the staircase, and gained
the friendly blackness of the ante-chamber quite unobserved. The
watchman was half a block away, sitting by the only street entrance kept
open at night.

Simpkins took off his shoes and found his sandals without striking a
light, and then felt his way to the door leading into the hall. The knob
rattled a little under his hand. All that evening he had been nerving
himself to go in there alone and in the dark, but now he could have
turned and run like a country boy passing a graveyard at night.

The hall was not utterly black, as he had expected. Light from the
electric lamps without flickered through the stained-glass windows.
Ghastly rays of yellow played over the painted faces on the walls and
lit up the gilded features of the mummy by Mrs. Athelstone's desk. There
were crimson spots, like blotches of blood, on the veil of Isis. And all
about were moving shadows, creeping forward stealthily, falling back
slowly, as the light without flared up or died down.

Step by step Simpkins advanced on the black altar, his muscles rigid,
his nerves quivering, his eyes staring straight ahead, as a child stares
into the dark for some awful shape which it fears to see, yet dares not
leave unseen. Once past that altar he would be safe at the door of the
storeroom.

How his heart was beating! He was almost at it. Steady! A few steps now
and he would gain the storeroom. Good God! What was that!

In the blackness behind the altar two eyes flamed.

Simpkins stopped; he was helpless to turn or to advance. Perhaps if he
did not move, it would not. A moment he stood there, tense with terror,
then--straight from the altar the thing flew at his throat. But quick as
it was: the involuntary jerk of his arm upward was quicker, and it
received the blow. Snarling, the thing fell to the floor, and leaped
back into the darkness. It was Mrs. Athelstone's cat.

So strong was Simpkins' revulsion of feeling, so great his relief, that
he forgot the real cause of his terror, and sank down on the very steps
of the altar, weakly exclaiming over and over again: "Only the cat! Only
the cat! Great Scott! how it frightened me!"

He had been sitting there for a few minutes when he heard a soft click,
click, just to his right. Some one was turning a key in the door leading
from Mrs. Athelstone's apartments. As he jumped to his feet, he heard a
hand grasp the doorknob. He looked around for a hiding-place, ran a few
steps from the altar, doubled like a baited rat, and dove into the
blackness behind the veil of Isis. There had been no time to choose; for
hardly was he safe under cover and peeping out from between the folds of
the veil than the door swung open slowly.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]




VI


It was Mrs. Athelstone who came through the doorway. She was all in
white, a soft, silken white, which floated about her like a cloud,
drifting back from her bare arms and throat, and suggesting the rounded
outlines of her limbs. Her black hair, braided, hung below her waist,
and from her forehead the golden asp bound back the curls. Her arms were
full of roses--yellow, white and red.

For an uncertain moment she stood just within the hall, bathed in the
light that shone through from her apartments. Then she closed the door
and walked toward the veil. As she came through the shafts of light from
the windows, her gown was stained with crimson spots. She was at the
altar now, and Simpkins could no longer see her without changing his
position. Stealthily he edged along, careless of the statue just behind
him. As he parted the folds of the veil he saw that the altar was heaped
with flowers. Just beyond, the light playing fantastically on her
upturned face, stood Mrs. Athelstone.

Simpkins closed the veil abruptly. There came to him the remembrance
of the time when the boy had pulled the cat's tail, her anger and her
curious exclamation; and again, the repetition of it in his case, when
he had handled the mummy of Amosis roughly; and her affectation of
Egyptian symbols as ornaments. "She's the simon-pure Blavatsky, all
right," he concluded, as he pieced these things into what he had just
seen. "All others are base imitations."

The reporter had gathered from his little reading that behind these
monstrous gods and this complex symbolism there was something near akin
to Christianity in a few great essentials, and he understood how a woman
of Mrs. Athelstone's temperament, engrossed in the study of these things
and living in these surroundings, might be affected by them. Even he,
shrewd, hard Yankee that he was, had felt the influence of the place,
and there was that behind him then which made his heart beat quicker at
the thought.

When he looked out again Mrs. Athelstone was gone. He was impatient to
get to his work in the storeroom; but first he peeped out again to make
sure that she had returned to her room. She was still in the hall,
walking about in the corner where she ordinarily worked. There was
something methodical in her movements now that woke a new interest in
Simpkins. "What the dickens can she be up to?" he thought.

She had lit a lamp, and had shaded it, so that its rays were contracted
in a circle on the floor. From a cupboard let into the wall she was
taking bottles and brushes, a roll of linen bandages and some boxes of
pigments. After laying these on the floor, she walked over to the big
black mummy case by her table, and pushed until she had turned it around
with its face to the wall.

What heathen game was this? Simpkins' interest increased, and he poked
his head out boldly from the sheltering veil.

Mrs. Athelstone was standing directly in front of the case now, pulling
and tugging in an effort to bring it down on her shoulders. Finally, she
managed to tilt it toward her, and then, straining, she lowered it until
it rested flat on the floor.

"Sorry I couldn't have lent a hand," thought the gallant Simpkins; "the
old buck must weigh a ton. Now what's she bothering around that passé,
three-thousand-years-dead sport for?"

Her back was toward him; so, cautious and catlike, he stole from behind
the veil and glided to the shelter of a post not ten feet from her.
He peered around it eagerly. Still panting from her efforts, she was on
her knees beside the case, fumbling a key in the Yale lock, a curious
anachronism which Simpkins, in his cleaning, had found on all the more
valuable mummy cases.

The lid was of sycamore wood, comparatively light, and she lifted it
without trouble. Then the rays of the lamp shone full into the open
case, and Simpkins looked over the shoulders of the kneeling woman at
the mummy of a man who had stood full six feet in life. He stared long
at the face, seeking in those shriveled features a reason for the horror
which grew in him as he gazed, trying to build back into life again that
thing which once had been a man. For there was something about it which
seemed different from those Egyptians of whom he had read. Slowly the
vaguely-familiar features filled out, until Simpkins saw--not the
swarthy, low-browed face of an Egyptian king, but the ruddy, handsome
face of an Englishman, and--at last he was sure, a face like that of a
photograph in his pocket. And in that same moment there went through his
mind a sentence from the curious picture letter: "_That thing that I
have to do is about done._"

Already, in his absorption, he had started out from the shelter of
the pillar, and now he crept forward. He was almost on her, and she
had heard nothing, seen nothing, but suddenly she felt him coming,
and turned. And as her eyes, full of fear in the first startled
consciousness of discovery, met his, he sprang at her, and pinioned her
arms to her side. But only for a moment. Fear fought with her, and by a
mighty effort she half shook herself free.

[Illustration: "Suddenly she felt him coming, and turned."]

Simpkins found himself struggling desperately now to regain his
advantage. Already his greater strength was telling, when the lamp
crashed over, leaving them in darkness, and he felt the blow of a heavy
body striking his back. Claws dug through his clothes, deep into his
flesh. Something was at his head now, biting and tearing, and the warm
blood was trickling down into his eyes. A stealthy paw reached round
for his throat. He could feel its silken surface passing over his bare
flesh, the unsheathing of its steel to strike, and, as it sank into
his throat, he seized it, loosening, to do this, his hold on Mrs.
Athelstone, quite careless of her in the pain and menace of that moment.

Still clutching the great black cat, though it bit and tore at his
hands, he gained his feet. In the darkness he could see nothing but two
blazing eyes, and not until the last spark died in them did his fingers
relax. Then, with a savage joy, he threw the limp body against the altar
of Isis, and turned to see what had become of Mrs. Athelstone. She lay
quite still where he had left her, a huddled heap of white upon the
floor.

Simpkins righted and lit the overturned lamp and lifted the unconscious
woman into a chair. There he bound her, wrapping her about with the
linen bandages, until she was quite helpless to move. The obsidian eyes
of the mummy seemed to follow him as he went about his task. Annoyed by
their steady regard, he threw a cloth over the face and sat down to wait
for the woman to come back to life.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]




VII


Though her gown was torn and spotted with his blood, Mrs. Athelstone had
never looked more lovely. But Simpkins was quite unmoved by the sight of
her beauty. His infatuation for her, his personal interest in her even,
had puffed out in that moment when he had discovered in the mummied face
a likeness to Doctor Athelstone. He was regarding her now simply as
"material," and fixing in his mind each detail of her appearance, that
he might the more effectively describe her in his story. And what a
splendid one it was! The Blavatsky "spread," with the opportunity which
it afforded to ridicule two rather well-known women--that was good
stuff; the scandal which had unfolded as he worked--that was better
still; but this "mysterious murder," with its novel features--this was
the superlative of excellence in Yellow Journalism. "Talk about Teddy's
luck," thought the reporter; "how about the luck of Simp., old boy?"

He looked at his watch anxiously. He had plenty of time--the paper did
not go to press until two. Relieved, he glanced toward Mrs. Athelstone
again. How still she was! She was taking an unreasonably long time about
coming to! The shadows in the room began to creep in on him again, and
to oppress him with a vague fear, now that he was sitting inactive. He
got up, but just then the woman stirred, and he settled down again.

Slowly she recovered consciousness and looked about her. Her eyes sought
out Simpkins last, and as they rested on him a flash of anger lit them
up. Simpkins returned their stare unflinchingly. They had quite lost
their power over him.

"So you're a thief, Simpkins--and I thought you looked so honest," she
began at last, contempt in her voice.

"Not at all," Simpkins answered, relieved and grateful that she had only
suspected him of being a thief, that there had been no tears, no
pleadings, no hysterics; "I'm nothing of the sort. I'm just your clerk."

"Then, what are you doing here at this time of night? And why did you
attack me? Why have you bound me?"

"I'll be perfectly frank, Mrs. Athelstone." (Simpkins always prefaced
a piece of duplicity by asseverating his innocence of guile.) "I've
blundered on something in there," and he motioned vaguely toward the
coffin, "that is reason enough for binding you and turning you over
to the police, sorry as I should be to take such a step."

"And that something?"

"The body of your husband."

"You beastly little cad," began Mrs. Athelstone, anger flaming in her
face again. Then she stopped short, and her expression went to one of
terror.

The change was not lost on Simpkins. "That's better," he said. "If a
fellow has to condone murder to meet your standards of what's a perfect
little gentleman, you can count me out. Now, just you make up your mind
that repartee won't take us anywhere, and let's get down to cases. There
may be, I believe there are, extenuating circumstances. Tell him the
whole truth and you'll find Simp. your friend, cad or no cad."

As he talked, Mrs. Athelstone regained her composure, and when he was
through she asked calmly enough: "And because you've blundered on
something you don't understand, something that has aroused your silly
suspicions, you would turn me over to the police?"

"It's not a silly suspicion, Mrs. Athelstone, but a cinch. I know your
husband was murdered there," and he pointed to the altar. "And you're
not innocent, though how guilty morally I'm not ready to say. There may
be something behind it all to change my present determination; that
depends on whether you care to talk to me, or would rather wait and take
the third degree at headquarters."

"But you really have made a frightful mistake," she protested, not
angrily now, but rather soothingly.

"Then I'll have to call an officer; perhaps he can set us straight." And
he stood up.

"Sit down," she implored. "Let me explain."

"That's the way to talk; you'll find it'll do you good to loosen up,"
and Simpkins sat down, exulting that he was not to miss the most
striking feature of his story. Until it was on the wire for Boston, and
the New York papers had gone to press, he had as little use for officers
as Mrs. Athelstone. "Remember," he added, as he leaned back to listen,
"that I know enough now to pick out any fancy work."

"It's really absurdly simple. The cemented surface of this mummy had
been damaged, as you can see"----Mrs. Athelstone began, but Simpkins
broke in roughly:

"Come, come, there's no use doping out any more of that stuff to me. I
want the facts. Tell me how Doctor Athelstone was killed or the Tombs
for yours." He was on his feet now, shaking his fist at the woman, and
he noticed with satisfaction that she had shrunk back in her chair till
the linen bandages hung loosely across her breast.

"Yes--yes--I'll tell," was the trembling answer; "only do sit down," and
then after a moment's pause, in which she seemed to be striving to
compose herself, she began:

"I, sir, was a queen, Nefruari, whom they called the good and glorious
woman." And she threw back her head proudly and paused.

This was better than he had dared hope. Yet it was what he had
half-believed; she was quite mad. He felt relieved at this final proof
of it. After all, it would have hurt him to send this woman to "the
chair"; but there would be no condemned cell for her; only the madhouse.
It might be harder for her; but it made it easier for him. He nodded a
grave encouragement for her to continue.

"This is my mummy," she went on, nodding toward the gilded case, "the
shell from which my soul fled three thousand years ago. Since then it
has been upon its wanderings, living in birds and beasts, that the will
of Osiris might be done."

Again she paused, pleased, apparently, with the respectful interest
which Simpkins showed. And, indeed, he was interested; for his reading
on early Egyptian beliefs enabled him to follow the current of her
madness and to trace it back to its sources. So he nodded again, and she
continued:

"Through all these weary centuries, Amosis, my husband, has been with
me, first as king--ah! those days in hundred-gated Thebes--and when at
last my soul lodged in this body he found me out again. As boy and girl
we loved, as man and woman we were married. And the days that followed
were as happy as those old days when we ruled an empire. Not that we
remembered then. The memory of it all but just came back to me two
months ago."

"Did you tell the Doctor about it?" asked Simpkins, in the wheedling
tone of a physician asking a child to put out her tongue.

"I tried to stir his memory gently, by careless hints, a word dropped
here and there, recalling some bright triumph of his reign, some
splendid battle, but there was no response. And so I waited, hoping that
of itself his memory might quicken, as mine had."

"Did Brander know anything about this--er--extraordinary swapping around
of souls?"

"Not then----" began the woman, but Simpkins cut her short by jumping to
his feet with a cry of "What's that!" and his voice was sharp with fear.
For in that silent second, while he waited for her answer, he had heard
a noise out in the hall, the sound of stealthy feet behind the veil, and
he had seen the woman's eyes gleam triumph.

Again the terror that had mastered him an hour before leaped into life,
and quakingly he faced the darkness. But he saw nothing--only the
shifting shadows, the crimson blotches crawling on the veil, and the
vague outlines of the coffined dead.

He looked back to the woman. Her face was masklike. It must have
been a fancy, a vibration of his own tense nerves. But none the less,
he rearranged the light, that while its rays shone clear on Mrs.
Athelstone, he might be in the shadow, and set his chair back close
against the wall, that both the woman and the hall might be well in his
eye. And when he sat down again one hand clutched tight the butt of a
revolver.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]




VIII


"You seem strangely disturbed, Simpkins," said Mrs. Athelstone quietly;
but he fancied that there was a note of malicious pleasure in her voice.
"Has anything happened to alarm you?"

"I thought I heard a slight noise, as if something were moving behind
me. Perhaps a mummy was breaking out of its case," he answered, but his
voice was scarcely steady enough for the flippancy of his speech.

"Hardly that," was the serious answer; "but it might have been my cat,
Rameses."

"Not unless it was Rameses II., because--well, it didn't sound like a
cat," he wound up, guiltily conscious of his other reason for certainty
on this point. "Perhaps Isis has climbed down from her pedestal to
stretch herself," and he smiled, but his eyes were anxious, and he shot
a furtive glance toward the veil.

"It's hardly probable," was the calm reply.

"What? Can't the thing use its legs as well as its arms?"

"Ah! then you know----"

"Yes; she reached for me when I was dusting her off, but I kicked harder
than Doctor Athelstone, I suppose, and so touched the spring twice."

"You beast!"

"Well, let it go at that," Simpkins assented. "And let's hear the rest."
He was burning with impatience to reach the end and get away, back to
noisy, crowded Broadway.

But Mrs. Athelstone answered nothing, only looked off toward the altar.
It almost seemed as if she waited for something.

"Go on," commanded Simpkins, stirred to roughness by his growing
uneasiness.

"You will not leave while yet you may?" and her tone doubled the threat
of her words.

"No, not till I've heard it all," he answered doggedly, and gripped
the butt of his revolver tighter. But though he told himself that her
changed manner, this new confidence, this sudden indifference to his
going, was the freak of a madwoman, down deep he felt that it portended
some evil thing for him, knew it, and would not go, could not go; for he
dared not pass the ambushed terror of that altar.

"You still insist?" the woman asked with rising anger. "So be it. Learn
then the fate of meddlers, of dogs who dare to penetrate the mysteries
of Isis."

Simpkins took his eyes from her face and glanced mechanically toward
the veil. But he looked back suddenly, and caught her signalling with a
swift motion of her head to something in the darkness. There could be
no mistake this time. And following her eyes he saw a form, black and
shapeless, steal along to the nearest post.

Revolver in hand, he leaped up and back, upsetting his chair. The thing
remained hidden. He cleared the partitioning sarcophagus at a bound,
and, sliding and backing, reached the centre of the hall, never for one
instant taking his eyes from that post or lowering his revolver. Step by
step, back between the pillars, he retreated, stumbling toward the door
and safety.

Half-way, he heard the woman hiss: "Stop him! Don't let him escape!" And
he saw the thing dart from behind the post. In the uncontrollable
madness of his fear he hurled, instead of firing, his revolver at it,
and turned and ran.

Tapping lightly on the flags behind, he heard swift feet. It was coming,
it was gaining, but he was at the door, through it and had slammed it
safely behind him. A leap, a bound, and he was through the ante-chamber,
and, as the door behind him opened, he was slipping out into the
passageway. He went down the stairs in great jumps. Thank God! he had
left the street door unlocked. But already the sound of pursuit had
stopped, and he reached the open air safely.

Down the deserted street to Broadway he ran. There he hailed a cab and
directed the driver to the telegraph office. Then he leaned back and
looked at the garish lights, the passing cabs, the theatre crowds
hurrying along home, laughing and chatting as if the world held no such
horror as that which he had just escaped. That madwoman's words rang
through his brain, drowning out the voices of the street; the tapping of
those flying feet sounded in his ears above the rattle of the cab. That
or this must be unreal; yet how far off both seemed!

Gradually the rough jolting of the cab shook him back to a sense of his
surroundings and their safety. He began to regain his nerve, and to busy
himself knotting the strands of the story into a connected narrative.
And when, a few minutes later, he handed a message to the manager of the
telegraph office and demanded a clear wire into the _Banner_
office, he was quite the old breezy Simpkins.

Then, coat off, a cigar between his teeth, he sat down beside the
operator and began to write his story, his flying fingers keeping time
with the clicking instrument. He made no mention of the fears that had
beset him in the hall and the manner of his exit from it. But there was
enough and to spare of the dramatic in what he sent. After a sensational
half-column of introduction, fitting the murder on Mrs. Athelstone, and
enlarging on the certainty of one's sin finding one out, provided it
were assisted by a _Banner_ reporter, he swung into the detailed
story, dwelling on the woman's madness and sliding over the details of
the murder as much as possible.

Then he described how, for more than a month, Mrs Athelstone had labored
over the body, hiding it days in the empty case and dragging it out
nights, until she had finished it, with the exception of some detail
about the head, into a faithful replica of the mummy of Amosis, the
original of which she had no doubt burned. It all made a vivid story;
for never had his imagination been in such working order, and never had
it responded more generously to his demands upon it. About two in the
morning he finished his third column and concluded his story with:

"So this awful confession of madness and murder ended. I left the woman
bound and helpless, sitting in her chair, her victim at her feet, to
wait the coming of the police." Then he added to Naylor personally,
"Going notify police headquarters now and go back to hall."

Naylor, who had been reading the copy page by page as it came from the
wire, and who, naturally, was taking a mere cold-blooded view of the
case than Simpkins, telegraphed back:

"What share did Brander have in actual murder? You don't bring that out
in story."

"Couldn't get it out of her," Simpkins sent back, truthfully enough.

"Find out," was the answer. "Get back to hall quick. Brander may have
looked in to help Mrs. A. with her night work while you were gone. Will
hold enough men for an extra."

Simpkins called a cab and started for police headquarters at breakneck
speed, but on the way he stopped at Brander's rooms; for a miserable
suspicion was growing in his brain. "If that really was Isis," he was
thinking, "it's funny she didn't nail me before I got to the door, even
with the start I had."

On his representation that he had called on a matter of life and death,
the janitor admitted him to Brander's rooms. They were empty, and the
bed had not been slept in.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]




IX


It was just after three o'clock when Simpkins, an officer on either
side, entered the Oriental Building again, and hurried up the stairs to
the Society's office.

There they were halted, for Simpkins had left his key sticking in
the spring lock inside and slammed the door behind him, a piece of
carelessness over which the officers were greatly exercised; for he had
not confided to them that he had started off in a hurry. In the end,
they sent the door crashing in with their shoulders and preceded
Simpkins--and he was scrupulously polite about this--into the
ante-chamber.

There an incandescent lamp over the youth's desk gave them light and
Simpkins momentary relief. The men used hard language when they found
the second door in the same condition as the first, but Simpkins took
their rating meekly. They tried their shoulders again, but the oak was
stout and long withstood their assaults. When at last it yielded it gave
way suddenly, and they all tumbled pell-mell into the hall. Simpkins
jumped up with incredible agility, and was back in the lighted
ante-chamber before the others had struggled to their feet. Suddenly
they stopped swearing. They looked around them. Then they, too, stepped
back into the ante-chamber.

"Ain't there any way of lighting this place?" asked one of them rather
sullenly.

"Nothing but three incandescents over the desks," answered Simpkins.

"Use your lantern then, Tom; come on now, young feller, and show us
where this woman is," he said roughly, and he pushed Simpkins through
the door.

As the officers followed him, he fell back between them and linked
his arms through theirs. And silently they advanced on the altar, a
grotesque and rather unsteady trio, the bull's eyes on either side
flashing ahead into the darkness.

"The lamp's still burning," whispered Simpkins. They were far enough
into the hall now to see the glow from it in the corner. "Flash your
lights around those pillars, boys. There, over there!"

The bull's eyes jumped about searching her out. "There! now! Hold
still!" cried Simpkins as they focused on the chair.

The black mummy lay as he had left it, the cloth still on the face, but
the chair was empty. Straight to the veil the reporter ran, and pulled
the cord. Light broke from above, and beat down on an altar heaped with
dying roses and the statue of a woman, smiling. And at her feet there
crouched a great black cat, that arched its back and snarled at
Simpkins.

Beyond, the lights were still burning in Mrs. Athelstone's apartment,
but there was no one in the rooms. Some opened drawers in the bureau and
the absence of her toilet articles from the table told of preparations
for a hasty flight.

They did not linger long over their examination of the rooms. But after
replacing the broken doors as best they could and sealing them, they
went out by the main entrance to question the watchman, whom they found
dozing in his chair.

Had he seen anything of Mrs. Athelstone? Sure; he'd called a cab for her
about an hour ago and she'd driven off with her brother.

"Her brother!" echoed Simpkins.

"Yep," yawned the watchman; "you know him--parson--Doctor Brander.
What's up?"

"Nothing," Simpkins returned sourly, but to himself he added, "Oh,
hell!"

[Illustration]




[Illustration]




X


Once in the street again, after a word of explanation to the watchman,
the officers and Simpkins separated, they to report and send out an
alarm for Mrs. Athelstone and Brander, he to call up his office before
rejoining them. His exultation over his beat was keyed somewhat lower,
now that he understood what Brander's real interest in Mrs. Athelstone
was. Mentally, he wrung the neck of Buttons for not having known it;
figuratively, he kicked himself for not having guessed it; literally, he
damned his employers for their British reserve, their cool assumption
that because he was their clerk he was not interested in their family
affairs. "Cuss 'em for snobs," he wound up finally, a deep sense of his
personal grievance stirring his sociable Yankee soul.

Of course, this sickening brother and sister business wouldn't touch the
main fact of the story, but it knocked the "love motive" and the "heart
interest" higher than a kite, utterly ruining some of his prettiest bits
of writing, besides letting him in for a call-down from Naylor. Still,
the old man couldn't be very hard on him--he'd understand that some
trifling little inaccuracies were bound to creep into a great big story
like this, dug out and worked up by one man.

At this more cheerful conclusion, a newsboy, crying his bundle of still
damp papers, came along, and Simpkins hailed him eagerly. Standing under
a lamp on the corner, skipping from front page to back, then from head
to head inside, with an eye skilled to catch at a glance the stories
which a loathed contemporary had that the _Banner_ had missed, he
ran through the bunch. The _Sun_--not a line about Athelstone in
it. Bully! The _American_--he was a little afraid of the _American_.
Safe again. The _World_--Sam Blythe's humorous descriptive story of the
convention led. He stopped to pity Sam and the New York papers, as he
thought of the Boston newsboys, crying his magnificent beat, till all
Washington Street rang with the glory of it. And he could see the
fellows in Mrs. Atkinson's, letting their coffee grow cold as they
devoured the _Banner_, stopping only here and there to call across
to each other: "Good work, Simp., old boy! Great story!"

Then--Simpkins turned the page. Accident--ten killed--bank
robbed--caught--Mrs. Jones gets divorce.... What!


      NOTED SCIENTIST SECURES IMPORTANT RIGHTS
    DOCTOR ATHELSTONE ARRANGES FOR ROYAL SOCIETY
           TO EXPLOIT RECENT DISCOVERIES


Simpkins stuttered around for an exclamation; then looked up weakly.
Instinct started him on the run for the nearest long-distance telephone,
but before he had gone twenty feet he stopped. The paper was long since
off press and distributed. He had no desire to know what Naylor was
saying. He could not even guess. There are heights to which the
imagination cannot aspire.

Then came a faint ray of hope. That was an Associated Press dispatch--a
late one probably. But if it had reached the New York papers in time to
catch the edition, Naylor must have received it soon enough to kill his
story. But even as this hope came it went. The news interest of the
dispatch was largely local. Doubtless it had been sent out only to the
New York papers.

Simpkins forced himself to read the body of the message now, although he
gagged over every line of it:


  London, etc. Dr. Alfred W.R. Athelstone, well known in London as the
  president of the American branch of the Royal Society of Egyptian
  Exploration and Research, arrived here this morning and is stopping
  at the Carlton. He announces that the Khedive has been graciously
  pleased to grant to his society the sole right to excavate the tombs
  recently discovered by one of its agents in the Karnak region. Doctor
  Athelstone left home quietly some weeks ago, and held back any
  announcement of the discoveries, which promise to be very important,
  while the negotiations, now brought to a happy conclusion, were
  pending. He sails for New York on the Campania tomorrow.


"Do I go off half-cocked? Am I yellow? Is a pup yellow?" groaned
Simpkins, and he started off aimlessly toward the park, fighting his
Waterloo over again and counting up his losses. That foolish, foolish
letter! Why had he soiled his fingers by opening it! Of course, that
line which loomed so large and fine in his story, that pointed the
impressive finger of Fate at Crime, "_That thing that I have to do is
about done!_" referred to Doctor Athelstone's silly negotiations. The
letter must have been from him. Now, who could have known that a grown
man would indulge in such fool monkey-business as writing love-letters
in hieroglyphics to his own wife?... And that blame black mummy. Back to
darkest Africa for his! If any one ever said mummy to him there'd be
murder done, all right. Oh, for the happy ignorance of those days when
he knew nothing about Egypt except that it was the place from which the
cigarettes came!... Brander, no doubt, had gone out to send a cablegram
of congratulation to Doctor Athelstone, and while he was away the woman
had started in to repair a crack in that precious old Amosis of hers.
Perhaps the moths had got into him! "And she thought that I was crazy,
and was stringing me along, waiting till the Nile Duck got back,"
muttered the reporter, stopping short in his agony. "Oh! you're guessing
good now, Simp., all right, because there's only one way to guess." And
as he started along again he concluded: "Damn it! even the cat came
back!"

If there was one thing in all the world that Simpkins did not want to
see it was a copy of the _Banner_ with that awful story of his
staring out at him from the first page, headed and played up with all
the brutal skill in handling type of which Naylor was a master; but he
felt himself drawn irresistibly to the Grand Central Station, where the
Boston papers would first be put on sale.

Half an hour to wait. Gad! He could never go back and face Naylor!...
Libel! Why, there wasn't money enough in the world to pay the damages
the Athelstones would get against the paper. He'd take just one look at
it and then catch the first train for Chicago. Perhaps he could get a
job there digging sewers, or selling ribbons in Fields', or start a
school of journalism. Any old thing, if they didn't nab him and put him
in Bloomingdale before he could get away.... He made for the street
again. He wouldn't look at the _Banner_. What malignant little
devils the types were when they shouted your sins, not another fellow's,
from the front page, or whispered them in a stage aside from some little
paragraph in an obscure corner of the paper--a corner that the whole
world looked into. Hell, he'd get out of the filthy business! Think of
the light and frolicsome way in which he'd written up domestic scandals,
the entertaining specials he'd turned out on unfaithful husbands, the
snappy columns on unhappy wives, careless of the cost of his sensation
in blood and tears! And now they'd write him up--Naylor would attend to
that editorial himself, and do it in his most virtuous style--and brand
him as a fakir, a liar, and a yellow dog.

Simpkins was back at the news-stand again and there were the Boston
papers. He snatched a _Banner_ from the top of the pile. No, he
must have the wrong paper. He tore through it from front to back and
then to front again, his heart bounding with joy. There was not a line
of his story in it. They had received that Associated Press dispatch,
after all. Yes, there it was, but oh, how differently it looked! It
spelt damnation an hour ago, it meant salvation now.

       *       *       *       *       *

After all, hadn't his mistake been a natural one? Hadn't he done his
best for the paper? Wasn't it his duty to run down a lead like that?
He'd made errors of judgment, perhaps, but he'd like to see the man who
wouldn't have under the circumstances. Of course, mistakes would creep
in occasionally and give innocent people the worst of it, but look at
the good he'd done in his life by exposing scoundrels. How could he, how
could any man, have acted differently who was loyal to his paper, whose
first interests were the public good? If Naylor didn't appreciate a star
man when he had him, he thought he knew an editor or two who did. Simp.,
old boy, wasn't going to starve.... Starve? It had been hungry work, so
he'd just step across to the Manhattan, get a bite of breakfast, and
look up the trains to Boston.

Naylor did know a good man when he had him, and likewise--quite as
valuable a bit of knowledge--he knew when a man had had enough. So when
Simpkins sat down that afternoon to tell him his experiences, he only
smiled quizzically as the reporter wound up by asking, "Now, what do
_you_ think?" and answered:

"Well, for one thing, I think it did you a power of good to look behind
that veil, because I reckon that for once in your life you've told me
the truth as near as you know how."

"No, but aside from this pleasant personal conclusion," persisted
Simpkins, modestly shedding the compliment.

"Well, I guess we won't bother with the Blavatsky story just now, but
here's a clipping about a woman who's discovered what she calls soul
aura--says we've got red, white and blue souls and all that sort of
stuff. You're our soul expert now, so go over to the City Hall and ask
the mayor and any politicians you meet what's the color of their souls.
It ought to make a fair Sunday special." And Naylor swung around to his
desk, for the city editor had just told him that the headless trunk of a
woman had been picked up in the river--a find that promised a good
story--and a newspaper man cannot waste time on yesterday.

Simpkins' face fell. That he had not been assigned to find the head was,
he knew, the beginning of his punishment. But as he walked down the
dingy hall to the street his step became more buoyant, and once in the
open air he started off eager and smiling. For a good opening sentence
was already shaping in his head, and as he stepped into the City Hall he
was repeating to himself:

"Yesterday, when the Mayor was asked, 'What is the color of your soul?'
he returned his stereotyped 'Nothing to give out on that subject,' and
then added, 'But it would be violating no confidence to tell you that
Boss Coonahan's is black.'"

To Simpkins it had been given to lift the veil and to know the truth;
yet he was back again serving the false gods.

[Illustration]

       *       *       *       *       *




WHERE LOVE CONQUERS.


The Reckoning.

By Robert W. Chambers.


The author's intention is to treat, in a series of four or five
romances, that part of the war for independence which particularly
affected the great landed families of northern New York, the Johnsons,
represented by Sir William, Sir John, Guy Johnson, and Colonel Claus;
the notorious Butlers, father and son, the Schuylers, Van Rensselaers,
and others.

The first romance of the series, Cardigan, was followed by the second,
The Maid-at-Arms. The third, in order, is not completed. The fourth is
the present volume.

As Cardigan pretended to portray life on the baronial estate of Sir
William Johnson, the first uneasiness concerning the coming trouble, the
first discordant note struck in the harmonious councils of the Long
House, so, in The Maid-at-Arms, which followed in order, the author
attempted to paint a patroon family disturbed by the approaching rumble
of battle. That romance dealt with the first serious split in the
Iroquois Confederacy; it showed the Long House shattered though not
fallen; the demoralization and final flight of the great landed families
who remained loyal to the British Crown; and it struck the key-note to
the future attitude of the Iroquois toward the patriots of the
frontier--revenge for their losses at the battle of Oriskany--and ended
with the march of the militia and continental troops on Saratoga.

The third romance, as yet incomplete and unpublished, deals with the
war-path and those who followed it led by the landed gentry of Tryon
County; and ends with the first solid blow delivered at the Long House,
and the terrible punishment of the Great Confederacy.

The present romance, the fourth in chronological order, picks up the
thread at that point.

The author is not conscious of having taken any liberties with history
in preparing a framework of facts for a mantle of romance.

  Robert W. Chambers.

  NEW YORK, _May 26, 1904_.

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.

       *       *       *       *       *




WORKS OF ROBERT W. CHAMBERS.


IOLE

Colored inlay on the cover, decorative borders, head-pieces, thumb-nail
sketches, and tail-pieces. Frontispiece and three full-page
illustrations. 12mo. Ornamental Cloth, $1.25.

Does anybody remember the opera of The Inca, and that heart-breaking
episode where the Court Undertaker, in a morbid desire to increase his
professional skill, deliberately accomplishes the destruction of his
middle-aged relatives in order to inter them for the sake of practice?

If I recollect, his dismal confession runs something like this:

  "It was in bleak November
  When I slew them, I remember,
  As I caught them unawares
  Drinking tea in rocking-chairs."


And so he talked them to death, the subject being "What Really Is Art?"
Afterward he was sorry--

    "The squeak of a door,
    The creak of a floor,
  My horrors and fears enhance;
    And I wake with a scream
    As I hear in my dream
  The shrieks of my maiden aunts!"


Now it is a very dreadful thing to suggest that those highly respectable
pseudo-spinsters, the Sister Arts, supposedly cozily immune in their
polygamous chastity (for every suitor for favor is popularly expected to
be wedded to his particular art)--I repeat, it is very dreadful to
suggest that these impeccable old ladies are in danger of being talked
to death.

But the talkers are talking and Art Nouveau rockers are rocking, and the
trousers of the prophet are patched with stained glass, and it is a day
of dinkiness and of thumbs.

Let us find comfort in the ancient proverb: "Art talked to death shall
rise again." Let us also recollect that "Dinky is as dinky does;" that
"All is not Shaw that Bernards;" that "Better Yeates than Clever;" that
words are so inexpensive that there is no moral crime in robbing Henry
to pay James.

Firmly believing all this, abjuring all atom-pickers, slab furniture,
and woodchuck literature--save only the immortal verse:

  "And there the wooden-chuck doth tread;
    While from the oak trees' tops
  The red, red squirrel on the head
    The frequent acorn drops."


Abjuring, as I say, dinkiness in all its forms, we may still hope that
those cleanly and respectable spinsters, the Sister Arts, will continue
throughout the ages, rocking and drinking tea unterrified by the
million-tongued clamor in the back yard and below stairs, where thumb
and forefinger continue the question demanded by intellectual
exhaustion:

"L'arr! Kesker say l'arr?"

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK.

       *       *       *       *       *




THE MASTERPIECE OF A MASTER MIND.


The Prodigal Son.

By Hall Caine. 12mo. Ornamental Cloth, $1.50.


"The Prodigal Son" follows the lines of the Bible parable in the
principal incidents, but in certain important particulars it departs
from them. In a most convincing way, and with rare beauty, the story
shows that Christ's parable is a picture of heavenly mercy, and not of
human justice, and if it were used as an example of conduct among men it
would destroy all social conditions and disturb accepted laws of
justice. The book is full of movement and incident, and must appeal to
the public by its dramatic story alone. The Prodigal Son at the close of
the book has learned this great lesson, and the meaning of the parable
is revealed to him. Neither success nor fame can ever wipe out the evil
of the past. It is not from the unalterable laws of nature and life that
forgiveness can be hoped for.

"Since 'The Manxman' Hall Caine has written nothing so moving in its
elements of pathos and tragedy, so plainly marked with the power to
search the human heart and reveal its secret springs of strength and
weakness, its passion and strife, so sincere and satisfying as 'The
Prodigal Son.'"--_New York Times_.

"It is done with supreme self-confidence, and the result is a work of
genius."--_New York Evening Post_.

"'The Prodigal Son' will hold the reader's attention from cover to
cover."--_Philadelphia Record_.

"This is one of Hall Caine's best novels--one that a large portion of
the fiction-reading public will thoroughly enjoy."--_Chicago
Record-Herald_.

"It is a notable piece of fiction."--_Philadelphia Inquirer_.

"In 'The Prodigal Son' Hall Caine has produced his greatest
work.'--_Boston Herald_.

"Mr. Caine has achieved a work of extraordinary merit, a fiction as
finely conceived, as deftly constructed, as some of the best work of our
living novelists."--_London Daily Mail_.

"'The Prodigal Son' is indeed a notable novel; and a work that may
certainly rank with the best of recent fiction...."--_Westminster
Gazette_.

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.

       *       *       *       *       *




"A beautiful romance of the days of Robert Burns."


Nancy Stair.

A Novel. By Elinor Macartney Lane, author of "Mills of God."
Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.

"With very much the grace and charm of Robert Louis Stevenson, the
author of 'The Life of Nancy Stair' combines unusual gifts of narrative,
characterization, color, and humor. She has also delicacy, dramatic
quality, and that rare gift--historic imagination.

"'The Life of Nancy Stair' is interesting from the first sentence to the
last; the characters are vital and are, also, most entertaining company;
the denouement unexpected and picturesque and cleverly led up to from
one of the earliest chapters; the story moves swiftly and without a
hitch. Robert Burns is neither idealized nor caricatured; Sandy, Jock,
Pitcairn, Danvers Carmichael, and the Duke of Borthewicke are admirably
relieved against each other, and Nancy herself as irresistible as she is
natural. To be sure, she is a wonderful child, but then she manages to
make you believe she was a real one. Indeed, reality and naturalness are
two of the charms of a story that both reaches the heart and engages the
mind, and which can scarcely fail to make for itself a large audience. A
great deal of delightful talk and interesting incidents are used for the
development of the story. Whoever reads it will advise everybody he
knows to read it; and those who do not care for its literary quality
cannot escape the interest of a love-story full of incident and
atmosphere."

"Powerfully and attractively written."--_Pittsburg Post_.

"A story best described with the word 'charming.'"--_Washington Post_.

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.

       *       *       *       *       *




WIT, SPARKLING, SCINTILLATING WIT, IS THE ESSENCE OF


Kate of Kate Hall,

By Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler, whose reputation was made by her first
book, "Concerning Isabel Carnaby," and enhanced by her last success,
"Place and Power."

"In 'Kate of Kate Hall,' by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler, the question of
imminent concern is the marriage of super-dainty, peppery-tempered Lady
Katherine Clare, whose wealthy godmother, erstwhile deceased, has left
her a vast fortune, on condition that she shall be wedded within six
calendar months from date of the testator's death.

"An easy matter, it would seem, for bonny Kate, notwithstanding her
aptness at sharp repartee, is a morsel fit for the gods.

"The accepted suitor appears in due time; but comes to grief at the last
moment in a quarrel with Lady Kate over a kiss bestowed by her upon her
godmother's former man of affairs and secretary. This incident she
haughtily refuses to explain. Moreover, she shatters the bond of
engagement, although but three weeks remain of the fatal six months. She
would rather break stones on the road all day and sleep in a pauper's
grave all night, than marry a man who, while professing to love her,
would listen to mean and malicious gossips picked up by tell-tales in
the servants' hall.

"So the great estate is likely to be lost to Kate and her debt-ridden
father, Lord Claverley. How it is conserved at last, and gloomy
apprehension chased away by dazzling visions of material splendor--that
is the author's well-kept secret, not to be shared here with a careless
and indolent public."--_Philadelphia North American._

"The long-standing reproach that women are seldom humorists seems in a
fair way of passing out of existence. Several contemporary feminine
writers have at least sufficient sense of humor to produce characters as
deliciously humorous as delightful. Of such order is the Countess
Claverley, made whimsically real and lovable in the recent book by Ellen
Thorneycroft Fowler and A.L. Felkin, 'Kate of Kate Hall.'"--_Chicago
Record-Herald._

"'Kate of Kate Hall' is a novel in which Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
displays her brilliant abilities at their best. The story is well
constructed, the plot develops beautifully, the incidents are varied and
brisk, and the dialogue is deliciously clever."--_Rochester Democrat
and Chronicle._

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.

       *       *       *       *       *




LOVE. MYSTERY. VENICE.


The Clock and the Key.

By Arthur Henry Vesey. 12mo. Ornamental Cloth, $1.50.

This is a tale of a mystery connected with an old clock. The lover, an
American man of means, is startled out of his sensuous, inactive life in
Venice by his lady-love's scorn for his indolence. She begs of him to
perform any task that will prove his persistence and worth. With the
charm of Venice as a background, one follows the adventures of the lover
endeavoring to read the puzzling hints of the old clock as to the
whereabouts of the famous jewels of many centuries ago. After following
many false clues the lover ultimately solves the mystery, triumphs over
his rivals, and wins the girl.

AMERICA.

"For an absorbing story it would be hard to beat."--_Harper's
Weekly._

ENGLAND.

"It will hold the reader till the last page."--_London Times._

SCOTLAND.

"It would hardly suffer by comparison with Poe's immortal 'Gold
Bug.'"_--Glasgow Herald._

       *       *       *       *       *

NORTH.

"It ought to make a record."--_Montreal Sun._

SOUTH.

"It is as fascinating in its way as the Sherlock Holmes
stories--charming--unique."--_New Orleans Picayune._

EAST.

"Don't fail to get it."--_New York Sun._

WEST.

"About the most ingeniously constructed bit of sensational fiction that
ever made the weary hours speed."--_St. Paul Pioneer Press._

       *       *       *       *       *

"If you want a thrilling story of intrigue and mystery, which will cause
you to burn the midnight oil until the last page is finished, read 'The
Clock and the Key.'"--_Milwaukee Wisconsin._

"One of the most highly exciting and ingenious stories we have read for
a long time is 'The Clock and the Key.'"--_London Mail._

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.

       *       *       *       *       *




A GOOD AUTOMOBILE STORY.


Baby Bullet.

By Lloyd Osbourne, Author of "The Motor-maniacs." Illustrated.
12mo. Ornamental Cloth, $1.50.

This is the jolliest, most delightfully humorous love story that has
been written in the last ten years. Baby Bullet is an "orphan
automobile." It is all through the adoption of Baby Bullet by her
travelling companion that a dear, sweet, human modern girl meets a very
nice young man, and a double romance is begun and finished on an
automobiling tour through England.

"The story is smoothly written, full of action and healthful
fun."--_Philadelphia Public Ledger._

"'Baby Bullet' is without doubt the best written and most entertaining
automobile story yet published. The most enjoyable feature of this book
is its genuine, unforced humor, which finds expression not only in
ludicrous situations, but in bright and spirited dialogue, keen
observation and natural characterization.'--_St. Paul Dispatch._

"Certain stories there are that a man fervently wishes he might claim as
his own. Of these, 'Baby Bullet' is one."--_Baltimore Sun._

"It is broad comedy, full of adventurous fun, clever and effective. The
tale is fascinating from the start. The adventures of Baby Bullet are
distinctly funny."--_New York Sun._

"The characters are lightly drawn, but with great humor. It is a story
that refreshes a tired brain and provokes a light heart."--_Chicago
Tribune._

"It is a most satisfying and humorous narrative."--_Indianapolis
News._

"One of the funniest scenes in recent fiction is the escape of the
automobile party from the peroxide blonde who has answered their
advertisement for a chaperon."--_San Francisco Chronicle._

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.

       *       *       *       *       *




A SPLENDID NEWSPAPER YARN.


A Yellow Journalist.

By Miriam Michelson, Author of "In the Bishop's Carriage," etc.
Illustrated. 12mo. Ornamental Cloth, $1.50.

This novel has the true newspaper thrill in it from beginning to end.
The intense desire to "cover" one's assignment completely and well is
brought out in the midst of the melodramatic atmosphere in which a
modern newspaper woman must live. The stories are all true to life, and
mixed with the excitement there is a wealth of humor and pathos.

"There is a dash about 'A Yellow Journalist' that exhilarates like a
fresh breeze on a sharp winter morning."--_Chicago Record-Herald_.

"The book is bright and entertaining."--_Minneapolis Tribune_.

"There are just a few writers who have succeeded in reducing to paper
the atmosphere of a newspaper office, and since the appearance of 'A
Yellow Journalist,' Miriam Michelson must be numbered among
them."--_The Bookman_.

"Miss Michelson's work has found great favor. The stories contained in
this book are characteristic."--_Philadelphia Public Ledger_.

"Only one with the genuine journalistic instinct, who has agonized over
a story and known the ecstacy of a 'beat' and the anguish of being beat,
can write of news-gathering as Miss Michelson does. But she has other
good qualities in addition to these--a good dramatic instinct, a piquant
humor, and a knowledge of human nature. The fourteen chapters of 'A
Yellow Journalist' are mighty interesting reading."--_Baltimore
News_.

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.



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