The False Gods | Page 3

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