He told his
host and hostess about the strangers, though omitting the actual
conversation because they would merely smile in blank miscomprehension. But the moment he described the strong black eyes beneath the level
eyelids, his hostess turned with a start, her interest deeply roused:
"Why, it's that awful Statham woman," she exclaimed, "that must be Lady
Statham, and the man she calls her nephew." "Sounds like it, certainly," her husband added. "Felix, you'd better
clear out. They'll bewitch you too." And Henriot bridled, yet wondering why he did so. He drew into his shell
a little, giving the merest sketch of what had happened. But he listened
closely while these two practical old friends supplied him with
information in the gossiping way that human nature loves. No doubt there
was much embroidery, and more perversion, exaggeration too, but the
account evidently rested upon some basis of solid foundation for all
that. Smoke and fire go together always. "He _is_ her nephew right enough," Mansfield corrected his wife, before
proceeding to his own man's form of elaboration; "no question about
that, I believe. He's her favourite nephew, and she's as rich as a pig. He follows her out here every year, waiting for her empty shoes. But
they _are_ an unsavoury couple. I've met 'em in various parts, all over
Egypt, but they always come back to Helouan in the end. And the stories
about them are simply legion. You remember--" he turned hesitatingly to
his wife--"some people, I heard," he changed his sentence, "were made
quite ill by her." "I'm sure Felix ought to know, yes," his wife boldly took him up, "my
niece, Fanny, had the most extraordinary experience." She turned to
Henriot. "Her room was next to Lady Statham in some hotel or other at
Assouan or Edfu, and one night she woke and heard a kind of mysterious
chanting or intoning next her. Hotel doors are so dreadfully thin. There
was a funny smell too, like incense of something sickly, and a man's
voice kept chiming in. It went on for hours, while she lay terrified in
bed--"

"Frightened, you say?" asked Henriot. "Out of her skin, yes; she said it was so uncanny--made her feel icy. She wanted to ring the bell, but was afraid to leave her bed. The room
was full of--of things, yet she could see nothing. She _felt_ them, you
see. And after a bit the sound of this sing-song voice so got on her
nerves, it half dazed her--a kind of enchantment--she felt choked and
suffocated. And then--" It was her turn to hesitate. "Tell it all," her husband said, quite gravely too. "Well--something came in. At least, she describes it oddly, rather; she
said it made the door bulge inwards from the next room, but not the door
alone; the walls bulged or swayed as if a huge thing pressed against
them from the other side. And at the same moment her windows--she had
two big balconies, and the venetian shutters were fastened--both her
windows _darkened_--though it was two in the morning and pitch dark
outside. She said it was all _one_ thing--trying to get in; just as
water, you see, would rush in through every hole and opening it could
find, and all at once. And in spite of her terror--that's the odd part
of it--she says she felt a kind of splendour in her--a sort of elation." "She saw nothing?" "She says she doesn't remember. Her senses left her, I believe--though
she won't admit it." "Fainted for a minute, probably," said Mansfield. "So there it is," his wife concluded, after a silence. "And that's true. It happened to my niece, didn't it, John?" Stories and legendary accounts of strange things that the presence of
these two brought poured out then. They were obviously somewhat mixed,
one account borrowing picturesque details from another, and all in
disproportion, as when people tell stories in a language they are
little familiar with. But, listening with avidity, yet also with
uneasiness, somehow, Henriot put two and two together. Truth stood
behind them somewhere. These two held traffic with the powers that
ancient Egypt knew. "Tell Felix, dear, about the time you met the nephew--horrid
creature--in the Valley of the Kings," he heard his wife say presently. And Mansfield told it plainly enough, evidently glad to get it done,
though. "It was some years ago now, and I didn't know who he was then, or
anything about him. I don't know much more now--except that he's a
dangerous sort of charlatan-devil, _I_ think. But I came across him one
night up there by Thebes in the Valley of the Kings--you know, where
they buried all their Johnnies with so much magnificence and processions
and masses, and all the rest. It's the most astounding, the most haunted
place you ever saw, gloomy, silent, full of gorgeous lights and shadows
that seem alive--terribly impressive; it makes you creep and shudder. You feel old Egypt watching you." "Get on, dear," said his wife. "Well, I was coming home late on a blasted lazy donkey, dog-tired into
the bargain, when my donkey boy suddenly ran for his life and left me
alone. It was after sunset. The sand was red and shining, and the big
cliffs sort of fiery. And my donkey stuck its four feet in the ground
and wouldn't budge. Then, about fifty yards away, I saw a
fellow--European apparently--doing something--Heaven knows what, for I
can't describe it--among the boulders that lie all over the ground
there. Ceremony, I suppose you'd call it. I was so interested that at
first I watched. Then I saw he wasn't alone. There were a lot of moving
things round him, towering big things, that came and went like shadows. That twilight is fearfully bewildering; perspective changes, and
distance gets all confused. It's fearfully hard to see properly. I only
remember that I got off my donkey and went up closer, and when I was
within a dozen yards of him--well, it sounds such rot, you know, but I
swear the things suddenly rushed off and left him there alone. They went
with a roaring noise like wind; shadowy but tremendously big, they were,
and they vanished up against the fiery precipices as though they slipped
bang into the stone itself. The only thing I can think of to describe
'em is--well, those sand-storms the Khamasin raises--the hot winds, you
know." "They probably _were_ sand," his wife suggested, burning to tell
another story of her own. "Possibly, only there wasn't a breath of wind, and it was hot as
blazes--and--I had such extraordinary sensations--never felt anything
like it before--wild and exhilarated--drunk, I tell you, drunk." "You saw them?" asked Henriot. "You made out their shape at all, or
outline?" "Sphinx," he replied at once, "for all the world like sphinxes. You know
the kind of face and head these limestone strata in the Desert
take--great visages with square Egyptian head-dresses where the driven
sand has eaten away the softer stuff beneath? You see it
everywhere--enormous idols they seem, with faces and eyes and lips
awfully like the sphinx--well, that's the nearest I can get to it." He
puffed his pipe hard.