"I told you last night that we might have something to say to eachother. I dare say that you may have thought that it was about Margaretand yourself. Isn't that so?"
"I thought so."
"Well, my boy, that is all right. Margaret and I have been talking,and I know her wishes." He held out his hand. When I wrung it, andhad kissed Margaret, who drew her chair close to mine, so that we couldhold hands as we listened, he went on, but with a certainhesitation--it could hardly be called nervousness--which was new to me.
"You know a good deal of my hunt after this mummy and her belongings;and I dare say you have guessed a good deal of my theories. But theseat any rate I shall explain later, concisely and categorically, if itbe necessary. What I want to consult you about now is this: Margaretand I disagree on one point. I am about to make an experiment; theexperiment which is to crown all that I have devoted twenty years ofresearch, and danger, and labour to prepare for. Through it we maylearn things that have been hidden from the eyes and the knowledge ofmen for centuries; for scores of centuries. I do not want my daughterto be present; for I cannot blind myself to the fact that there may bedanger in it--grea
t danger, and of an unknown kind. I have, however,already faced very great dangers, and of an unknown kind; and so hasthat brave scholar who has helped me in the work. As to myself, I amwilling to run any risk. For science, and history, and philosophy maybenefit; and we may turn one old page of a wisdom unknown in thisprosaic age. But for my daughter to run such a risk I am loth. Heryoung bright life is too precious to throw lightly away; now especiallywhen she is on the very threshold of new happiness. I do not wish tosee her life given, as her dear mother's was--"
He broke down for a moment, and covered his eyes with his hands. In aninstant Margaret was beside him, clasping him close, and kissing him,and comforting him with loving words. Then, standing erect, with onehand on his head, she said:
"Father! mother did not bid you stay beside her, even when you wantedto go on that journey of unknown danger to Egypt; though that countrywas then upset from end to end with war and the dangers that followwar. You have told me how she left you free to go as you wished; thoughthat she thought of danger for you and and feared it for you, is provedby this!" She held up her wrist with the scar that seemed to runblood. "Now, mother's daughter does as mother would have done herself!"Then she turned to me:
"Malcolm, you know I love you! But love is trust; and you must trustme in danger as well as in joy. You and I must stand beside Father inthis unknown peril. Together we shall come through it; or together weshall fail; together we shall die. That is my wish; my first wish to myhusband that is to be! Do you not think that, as a daughter, I amright? Tell my Father what you think!"
She looked like a Queen stooping to plead. My love for her grew andgrew. I stood up beside her; and took her hand and said:
"Mr. Trelawny! in this Margaret and I are one!"
He took both our hands and held them hard. Presently he said with deepemotion:
"It is as her mother would have done!"
Mr. Corbeck and Doctor Winchester came exactly at the time appointed,and joined us in the library. Despite my great happiness I felt ourmeeting to be a very solemn function. For I could never forget thestrange things that had been; and the idea of the strange things whichmight be, was with me like a cloud, pressing down on us all. From thegravity of my companions I gathered that each of them also was ruled bysome such dominating thought.
Instinctively we gathered our chairs into a circle round Mr. Trelawny,who had taken the great armchair near the window. Margaret sat by himon his right, and I was next to her. Mr. Corbeck was on his left, withDoctor Winchester on the other side. After a few seconds of silence Mr.Trelawny said to Mr. Corbeck:
"You have told Doctor Winchester all up to the present, as we arranged?"
"Yes," he answered; so Mr. Trelawny said:
"And I have told Margaret, so we all know!" Then, turning to theDoctor, he asked:
"And am I to take it that you, knowing all as we know it who havefollowed the matter for years, wish to share in the experiment which wehope to make?" His answer was direct and uncompromising:
"Certainly! Why, when this matter was fresh to me, I offered to go onwith it to the end. Now that it is of such strange interest, I wouldnot miss it for anything which you could name. Be quite easy in yourmind, Mr. Trelawny. I am a scientist and an investigator of phenomena.I have no one belonging to me or dependent on me. I am quite alone,and free to do what I like with my own--including my life!" Mr.Trelawny bowed gravely, and turning to Mr. Corbeck said:
"I have known your ideas for many years past, old friend; so I need askyou nothing. As to Margaret and Malcolm Ross, they have already told metheir wishes in no uncertain way." He paused a few seconds, as thoughto put his thoughts or his words in order; then he began to explain hisviews and intentions. He spoke very carefully, seeming always to bearin mind that some of us who listened were ignorant of the very root andnature of some things touched upon, and explaining them to us as hewent on:
"The experiment which is before us is to try whether or no there is anyforce, any reality, in the old Magic. There could not possibly be morefavourable conditions for the test; and it is my own desire to do allthat is possible to make the original design effective. That there issome such existing power I firmly believe. It might not be possible tocreate, or arrange, or organise such a power in our own time; but Itake it that if in Old Time such a power existed, it may have someexceptional survival. After all, the Bible is not a myth; and we readthere that the sun stood still at a man's command, and that an ass--nota human one--spoke. And if the Witch at Endor could call up to Saulthe spirit of Samuel, why may not there have been others with equalpowers; and why may not one among them survive? Indeed, we are told inthe Book of Samuel that the Witch of Endor was only one of many, andher being consulted by Saul was a matter of chance. He only sought oneamong the many whom he had driven out of Israel; 'all those that hadFamiliar Spirits, and the Wizards.' This Egyptian Queen, Tera, whoreigned nearly two thousand years before Saul, had a Familiar, and wasa Wizard too. See how the priests of her time, and those after ittried to wipe out her name from the face of the earth, and put a curseover the very door of her tomb so that none might ever discover thelost name. Ay, and they succeeded so well that even Manetho, thehistorian of the Egyptian Kings, writing in the tenth century beforeChrist, with all the lore of the priesthood for forty centuries behindhim, and with possibility of access to every existing record, could noteven find her name. Did it strike any of you, in thinking of the lateevents, who or what her Familiar was?" There was an interruption, forDoctor Winchester struck one hand loudly on the other as he ejaculated:
"The cat! The mummy cat! I knew it!" Mr. Trelawny smiled over at him.
"You are right! There is every indication that the Familiar of theWizard Queen was that cat which was mummied when she was, and was notonly placed in her tomb, but was laid in the sarcophagus with her.That was what bit into my wrist, what cut me with sharp claws." Hepaused. Margaret's comment was a purely girlish one:
"Then my poor Silvio is acquitted! I am glad!" Her father stroked herhair and went on:
"This woman seems to have had an extraordinary foresight. Foresightfar, far beyond her age and the philosophy of her time. She seems tohave seen through the weakness of her own religion, and even preparedfor emergence into a different world. All her aspirations were for theNorth, the point of the compass whence blew the cool invigoratingbreezes that make life a joy. From the first, her eyes seem to havebeen attracted to the seven stars of the Plough from the fact, asrecorded in the hieroglyphics in her tomb, that at her birth a greataerolite fell, from whose heart was finally extracted that Jewel ofSeven Stars which she regarded as the talisman of her life. It seemsto have so far ruled her destiny that all her thought and care circledround it. The Magic Coffer, so wondrously wrought with seven sides, welearn from the same source, came from the aerolite. Seven was to her amagic number; and no wonder. With seven fingers on one hand, and seventoes on one foot. With a talisman of a rare ruby with seven stars inthe same position as in that constellation which ruled her birth, eachstar of the seven having seven points--in itself a geologicalwonder--it would have been odd if she had not been attracted by it.Again, she was born, we learn in the Stele of her tomb, in the seventhmonth of the year--the month beginning with the Inundation of the Nile.Of which month the presiding Goddess was Hathor, the Goddess of her ownhouse, of the Antefs of the Theban line--the Goddess who in variousforms symbolises beauty, and pleasure, and resurrection. Again, inthis seventh month--which, by later Egyptian astronomy began on October28th, and ran to the 27th of our November--on the seventh day thePointer of the Plough just rises above the horizon of the sky at Thebes.
"In a marvellously strange way, therefore, are grouped into thiswoman's life these various things. The number seven; the Pole Star,with the constellation of seven stars; the God of the month, Hathor,who was her own particular God, the God of her family, the Antefs ofthe Theban Dynasty, whose Kings' symbol it was, and whose seven formsruled love and
the delights of life and resurrection. If ever therewas ground for magic; for the power of symbolism carried into mysticuse; for a belief in finites spirits in an age which knew not theLiving God, it is here.
"Remember, too, that this woman was skilled in all the science of hertime. Her wise and cautious father took care of that, knowing that byher own wisdom she must ultimately combat the intrigues of theHierarchy. Bear in mind that in old Egypt the science of Astronomybegan and was developed to an extraordinary height; and that Astrologyfollowed Astronomy in its progress. And it is possible that in thelater developments of science with regard to light rays, we may yetfind that Astrology is on a scientific basis. Our next wave ofscientific thought may deal with this. I shall have something specialto call your minds to on this point presently. Bear in mind also thatthe Egyptians knew sciences, of which today, despite all ouradvantages, we are profoundly ignorant. Acoustics, for instance, anexact science with the builders of the temples of Karnak, of Luxor, ofthe Pyramids, is today a mystery to Bell, and Kelvin, and Edison, andMarconi. Again, these old miracle-workers probably understood somepractical way of using other forces, and amongst them the forces oflight that at present we do not dream of. But of this matter I shallspeak later. That Magic Coffer of Queen Tera is probably a magic boxin more ways than one. It may--possibly it does--contain forces thatwe wot not of. We cannot open it; it must be closed from within. Howthen was it closed? It is a coffer of solid stone, of amazinghardness, more like a jewel than an ordinary marble, with a lid equallysolid; and yet all is so finely wrought that the finest tool made todaycannot be inserted under the flange. How was it wrought to suchperfection? How was the stone so chosen that those translucent patchesmatch the relations of the seven stars of the constellation? How isit, or from what cause, that when the starlight shines on it, it glowsfrom within--that when I fix the lamps in similar form the glow growsgreater still; and yet the box is irresponsive to ordinary lighthowever great? I tell you that that box hides some great mystery ofscience. We shall find that the light will open it in some way:either by striking on some substance, sensitive in a peculiar way toits effect, or in releasing some greater power. I only trust that inour ignorance we may not so bungle things as to do harm to itsmechanism; and so deprive the knowledge of our time of a lesson handeddown, as by a miracle, through nearly five thousand years.
"In another way, too, there may be hidden in that box secrets which,for good or ill, may enlighten the world. We know from their records,and inferentially also, that the Egyptians studied the properties ofherbs and minerals for magic purposes--white magic as well as black.We know that some of the wizards of old could induce from sleep dreamsof any given kind. That this purpose was mainly effected by hypnotism,which was another art or science of Old Nile, I have little doubt. Butstill, they must have had a mastery of drugs that is far beyondanything we know. With our own pharmacopoeia we can, to a certainextent, induce dreams. We may even differentiate between good andbad--dreams of pleasure, or disturbing and harrowing dreams. But theseold practitioners seemed to have been able to command at will any formor colour of dreaming; could work round any given subject or thought inalmost any was required. In that coffer, which you have seen, may resta very armoury of dreams. Indeed, some of the forces that lie withinit may have been already used in my household." Again there was aninterruption from Doctor Winchester.
"But if in your case some of these imprisoned forces were used, whatset them free at the opportune time, or how? Besides, you and Mr.Corbeck were once before put into a trance for three whole days, whenyou were in the Queen's tomb for the second time. And then, as Igathered from Mr. Corbeck's story, the coffer was not back in the tomb,though the mummy was. Surely in both these cases there must have beensome active intelligence awake, and with some other power to wield."Mr. Trelawny's answer was equally to the point: