The False Gods | Page 8

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