It was hideous that footfalls so dissimilar should move in such perfect rhythm. The training of unhallowed thousands of years must lie behind that march of earth's inmost monstrosities . . . . padding, clicking, walking, stalking, rumbling, lumbering, crawling . . . and all to the abhorrent discords of those mocking instruments. And then . . . . God keep the memory of those Arab legends out of my head! The mummies without souls . . . . the meeting place of the wandering kas . . . . the hordes of the devil-cursed pharaonic dead of forty centuries . . . . the composite mummies led through the uttermost onyx voids by King Khephren and his ghoul-queen Nitocris . . . .