The Perfume of Egypt

The Perfume of Egypt
And Other Weird Stories
by C. W. Leadbeater

FOREWORD
The stories told in this book happen to be true. Of course I do not for a moment expect the ordinary reader to believe that, and I shall be perfectly satisfied if I succeed in whiling away for him the tedium of a railway journey, or if I can add for him a touch of pleasure to a comfortable evening before the fire or a lazy afternoon on the river.
For the few whose interest in these subjects is not merely superficial, I may add that some of the events related are personal experiences of my own, and that the others are reproduced exactly as they were told to me by persons in whose veracity I have every confidence. In every case, except those of "Jagannath" and "The Baron's Room", I myself have heard the story directly from the person principally concerned in it. So that there is no place here for the subtle alterations which are inevitably introduced into tales that have passed through many hands. These things happened; and although it may be difficult for one who has made no study of the subject to believe them, those who are familiar with the literature of the occult will readily be able to parallel most of these occurrences.
I have written other and more serious books in which such things as these are scientifically explained; in this volume my only desire is to help my readers to pass pleasantly a few hours of leisure time.
C. W. LEADBEATER

The Perfume of Egypt
The Forsaken Temple
The Major's Promise
A Test of Courage
An Astral Murder
A Triple Warning
The Concealed Confession
Jagannath: A Tale of Hidden India
The Baron's Room
Saved by a Ghost

THE PERFUME OF EGYPT
It is a curious life, that of a man in chambers, though very pleasant in many ways. Its great charm is its absolute liberty -- the entire freedom to go out and come in, or not to go out and come in, exactly as one pleases. But it is terribly lonely. Probably most people remember Dickens's ghastly tale (founded, I believe, on fact) of a man who was struck by apoplexy when on the point of opening his door, and lay propped up against it for a whole year, until at the expiration of that time it was broken open, and his skeleton fell into the arms of the locksmith. I do not think I am a nervous man, but I confess that during my residence in chambers that story haunted me at times; and indeed, quite apart from such unusual horrors, there is a wide field of uncomfortable possibility in being left so entirely to oneself.
All the most unpleasant things that happen to people, both in fiction and real life, seem to occur when they are alone; and though no doubt the talented American author is right when he "thanks a merciful heaven that the unendurable extreme of agony happens always to man the unit, and never to man the mass," one feels that it is probably easier to re-echo his sentiment heartily when one is not the unit in question. On the other hand, when a man in chambers locks his door on a winter night and settles down cosily by the fire for an evening's reading, he has a sense of seclusion and immunity from interruption only to be equalled by that of a man who has sported his oak in a top set in college.
Just so had I *settled down -- not to reading, however, but to writing -- on the evening on which occurred the first of the chain of events that I am about to relate. In fact, I was writing a book -- my first book -- On the Present State of the Law on Conveyancing. I had published several essays on various aspects of the subject, and these had been so well received by high legal authorities, that I was emboldened to present my views in a more ambitious form. It was to this work, then, that I was applying myself with all a young author's zeal on the evening in question; and my reason for mentioning this fact is to show the subject on which my thoughts were fixed with a special intentness -- one far enough, surely, from suggesting anything like romantic or unusual adventure.
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* The narrator of this remarkable series of incidents (whom I have called Mr. Thomas Keston) is -- or rather was -- a barrister of considerable repute in London. I have thought it best to leave him to tell his own story in his own words, reserving comments until the end. -- C. W. L.
I had just paused, I remember, to consider the exact wording of a peculiarly knotty sentence, when suddenly there came over rue that feeling which I suppose all of