She who sleeps A romance of New York and the Nile

“Yes. In the native quarter, where most of them have friends; for they are all excavators and used to the work.” “We will have cocktails in my room,” said John Cumberland. “One never knows who may overhear us.” The party went upstairs to Cumberland’s suite, which overlooked the romantic gardens of the hotel, and cocktails were ordered. Hassan es-Sugra was a devout Moslem, one who had made the pilgrimage to Mecca. He drank coffee, which, when the waiter presently appeared, he took with him out on to the balcony, bowing deeply as he retired. “That’s a mysterious fellow!” said Barry. Danbazzar fixed the speaker with his piercing regard, and: “You’re right,” he agreed. “He’s quite a lot of mystery. But he holds some kind of position in the Moslem world that gives him complete control of the natives. He’s the best man at the job in Egypt. He can get things done that you or I couldn’t manage if we spent a million dollars. Yes, sir, Hassan es-Sugra is worth his weight in gold, and he knows the game from A to Z.” “Good!” commented John Cumberland. “I know the type and I believe you. Wasn’t he with Flinders Petrie at one time?” “The tomb?” asked Barry Cumberland eagerly. “It has not been disturbed?” Danbazzar stood up, and slowly crossing to a side table, dropped ash into a tray. He turned and: “It’s absolutely untouched,” he replied. “The entrance where I reclosed it is almost hidden by sand. You can rest easy.” He paused impressively. “No one has disturbed her.” “Gad!” Barry brought his hand down upon his knee. “It sounds almost too good to be true! But how did Hassan identify the tomb in the first place? How was he sure? How can _you_ be sure?” “You can take it I made sure before I started,” Danbazzar answered calmly, “but, anyway, Hassan never makes a mistake. You remember the cartouche in the papyrus? It was not that of any Pharaoh or any member of any known royal family. It was clearly meant to represent Princess Zalithea.” He stooped over the cane table at which John Cumberland and his son were seated. With a pencil he roughly outlined upon a newspaper which lay there a design of four figures. “We’re agreed,” he said, glancing up, “that its meaning is: ‘She Who Sleeps but Who Will Awake.’ Both Mr. Pain and Dr. Rittenburg have checked this.” “Well!” said Barry eagerly. “Well!” Danbazzar replaced the pencil in a breast pocket of his tunic. “This same inscription is cut in the rock before the entrance of the tomb!” “I have sometimes wondered,” said John Cumberland, “why it has been overlooked so long.” Danbazzar stared at him for a moment, and then: “Have you stopped to think,” he asked, “how many tombs there are in that valley? Why should those few people with powers to excavate open an obscure one? What’s more, the tomb is in an unfrequented spot, almost due north of the Tombs of the Queens and on the edge of the western valley, more than half a mile from the Tombs of the Kings. The nearest place ordinary tourists ever visit is the tomb of Queen Nefertari and that of Seth Ra, the wife of Seti the First. This was about where I figured to find it. Seven miles farther west, and about a mile and a half north of the caravan road from Farshût to Kûrna, Hassan has put up our men. There’s a small Hawwara village there, and the Sheik is a good friend of mine.” “When do we start?” cried Barry eagerly. “I can see no reason,” Danbazzar replied, “why we shouldn’t leave for Luxor in the morning. We shall be wise to take every advantage of the slack season before the tourist rush begins.” Barry watched the speaker fascinatedly. During his short stay in Cairo, he had been out to visit the Sphinx, that long-cherished ambition of Jim’s; he had penetrated to the interior of the Great Pyramid, and had wandered through the fascinating bazaar streets of the Mûski. He had known the whole indescribable atmosphere that creeps over the most modern and garish hotel in Cairo when night drops its cloak upon Egypt. Now, it seemed to him, watching Danbazzar, that of all the mysteries that the Nile has known, this man was the greatest. “And now, I suggest that we consult with Hassan,” Danbazzar went on. He stood up, clapping his hands sharply. From the shadowy mystery of the balcony, Hassan es-Sugra entered, a slim, impressive black figure. He bowed low upon the threshold. CHAPTER XI. LUXOR The Nile was high. Much of the Memnonia was impassable. The Colossi sat lonely in the midst of a great lake, when Barry came to Luxor. In this way he saw the City of the Sun under advantageous conditions. The Winter Palace Hotel, whose impudent modernity aspires to dwarf the majesty of the great temple, was in a comatose state. Its palatial suites which later in the season would echo Wall Street quotations, its public rooms where, anon, much talk would be heard about the situation in the English coalfields and the cheery optimism of Mr. Baldwin, these were empty. Empty was the dragomans’ bench before the entrance. No guttural German voices were raised in argument against the soft music of Arabic impostors, relative to the cost of donkeys from Kûrna to Dêr-el-Bâhari. The tourist steamers were missing; yet Barry did not miss them. Sighing wearily at the end of her summer sleep, the City of the Sun looked wistfully down the Nile from which at any time now invasion might be expected. Barry had conceived something very like friendship for Hassan es-Sugra. The man fascinated him. Delicate in form and features, soft-spoken and mild-eyed, slow of movement and speech, invariably unruffled, Barry had detected beneath the velvet surface an indomitable will, and something else. On the evening of their arrival, leaving Danbazzar and John Cumberland at the hotel poring over rough plans, Barry had set out with Hassan to view the celebrated spectacle of Karnak by moonlight. The evening was oppressively hot. The sky looked like a dome of lapis lazuli. The moon was such a moon as gave birth to Isis; fronds of palms seemed to be carved out of ebony; and the whiteness of the buildings was dazzling. Plaintive notes of a reed pipe crept up from the river, with more distant throbbing of a _darabukkeh_. A great zest of life, an eagerness to inhale, as it were, the unfamiliar perfume of this strange land, possessed Barry. He hurried as though bound for his father’s New York office. But: “Sir,” said Hassan, in his soft, caressing voice, “there is no need for haste, and the evening is hot.” Barry pulled up and glanced aside at his companion. The gaze of the gazelle-like eyes met his own. Hassan smiled. “Always,” the speaker went on hesitantly yet with perfect expression, “always the gentlemen who come from America and from Europe are in so great a hurry; particularly the gentlemen from America. Yet there is so much time, and life in Egypt is very beautiful for those who will rest and enjoy it.” Barry laughed. “No wonder you always look so cool,” he commented. “Now I come to think of it, I have never seen you hurry.” Hassan extended his slender brown hands, his ebony stick held lightly between the first and second fingers of the left. “What is there to hurry for?” he asked softly. “We are all going the same way. Why should we try to pass one another? Everything that life has to give us is ours to-night. Let us enjoy it, for to-night will never come again.” Barry stared curiously at this survival of the Arabian philosophers, but checked his eager steps and walked on sedately beside the dignified Egyptian. Spots of interest were pointed out by Hassan, and, as they moved through the streets, it became apparent to Barry that his companion possessed many acquaintances in Upper Egypt by whom he was held in high esteem. A most notable demonstration of this came when they passed a café in the native town. A number of men sat smoking outside. Five of them, on sight of the approaching figure, sprang up and performed a graceful Arab salute with the right hand. All were fine types, tall muscular fellows, and different from the townsmen surrounding them. Hassan es-Sugra gravely returned their salutation, but they remained standing until the café was passed. “Who were those men, Hassan?” Barry asked. “They are some of our excavators, sir,” Hassan replied. “Most of them are already at the camp: these are late arrivals who go to-morrow.” Barry glanced curiously at the delicate, almost effeminate face of the speaker, and he wondered, as he had wondered many times before, how Hassan es-Sugra had inspired, and how he retained, the profound respect of these men. And so, pursuing their leisurely way, they presently found themselves on the ancient road to Karnak, formerly bordered by Sphinxes throughout the mile of its length. The silence now was broken only by the distant note of a pipe, the faint throbbing of a drum. Barry grew silent, too, awed by the sleeping past upon which he intruded. At that point where the road turned left into the Avenue of the Rams he sighted the great shadowy ruins and hastened his steps. “It is fortunate, sir,” Hassan said, laying one slender hand upon Barry’s arm to check this impetuous increase of pace, “that we have been able to begin while the Nile was in flood.” “Why is that?” Barry asked. “Because,” Hassan replied, “the tomb, which is on high land, can only be approached from above at this season and is cut off from those routes along which people generally come. We are less likely to be disturbed.” At the entrance to the Temple, the _Ghafîr_ appeared, mysterious, out of a bank of shadow. Barry, a law-abiding citizen, had been given to understand that he must show his ticket here, but Hassan es-Sugra waved him aside, saluted the guardian, was saluted deeply in return, and they entered the great, silent building. Again Barry found himself glancing curiously at the face of his companion, delicately beautiful in the moonlight. He was learning a lesson that anyone susceptible to truth learns in Egypt. He was learning to look with less satisfaction upon the hurriedly grasped successes of modern life, and to experience an unpleasant sense of inferiority in the company of this dignified, placid, yet majestic Arab. Those who are sent to govern in these lands must be of a type immune from such impressions. Barry had too much poetry in his nature to be blind to some strange spiritual calm possessed by Hassan es-Sugra (whom Aunt Micky would have briefly classified as a heathen), the secret of which has been lost during generations of feverish endeavour. He found himself amid a forest of vast columns; statues looked down upon him scornfully; and all about him upon painted walls were those Pharaohs and gods whom the imagination of Pierre Loti has depicted as eternally signalling to one another. Bats haunted high, shadowy places, and the note of some night bird sounded eerily. Hassan es-Sugra walked through the mysterious darkness as confidently as Barry would have walked along Fifth Avenue, until they came to the Great Hall, most awe-inspiring of all the Egyptian monuments. He seemed to know every inch of the place. The hieroglyphics held no mystery for him. Raising his stick he pointed to an inscription, translating slowly: “I did the best I could for the Temple of Amen, as architect of my Lord. I placed obelisks, their height reached to the world of heaven. A propylon is before the same in sight of the city of Thebes; and ponds and gardens of flourishing trees.…” “Who made this inscription, Hassan?” Barry asked. “He was the First Prophet of Amen,” was the reply, “in the reign of Rameses the Second, who was the son of Seti the First.” Barry did not reply. A new idea had possessed him; a new magic had