Pharos, The Egyptian: A Romance

A short silence followed, during which I am convinced I heard my companion say very softly to himself, "That settles it."

Then, turning to me, he continued, "You say you were at the Duchess of Amersham's ball the night before last? Do you mean this?"

"Of course I do," I replied. "Why, you spoke to me there yourself, and congratulated me upon my engagement. And, now I come to think of it, I saw you talking with Pharos there."

"Quite right," he said. "I did speak to Monsieur Pharos there. But are you sure it was the night before last? That is what I want to get at."

"I am as sure of that as I am of anything in this world," I replied.

"What you tell me is very interesting," he said, rising from his chair – "very interesting indeed, and I am sincerely obliged to you for coming to me. Now, if you will excuse me, I must be going, for, as I told you, I have a meeting of the Health Commission to attend in a few minutes. If I were you I should go back to my house and keep quiet. There is nothing to be gained by worrying oneself, as you have evidently been doing."

"I can see that you do not believe what I have told you," I cried with great bitterness. "Sir Edward, I implore you to do so. I assure you on my honour as a gentleman, I will swear, by any oath you care to name, that what I say is true in every particular. Pharos is still in London, in Park Lane, and if you are quick you can capture him. But there is not a moment to lose. For God's sake believe me before it is too late!"

"I have listened to all you have said, my dear Cyril," he answered soothingly, "and I can quite understand that you believe it to be true. You have been ill, and it is plain your always excitable imagination has not yet recovered its equilibrium. Go home, as I say, and rest. Trust me, you will soon be yourself once more. Now I must go."

"Oh, heavens! how can I convince you?" I groaned, wringing my hands. "Is there nothing I can say or do that will make you believe my story? You will find out when it is too late that I have told you the truth. Men and women are dying like sheep to right and left of us, and yet the vile author of all this sorrow and suffering will escape unpunished. Is it any use, Sir Edward, for me to address one last appeal to you?"

Then a notion struck me. I thrust my hand into my coat pocket and produced the prescription which Pharos had given me for Valerie in Hamburg, and which, since it had done her so much good, I had been careful not to let out of my possession.

"Take that, Sir Edward," I said. "I came to make my confession to you because I deemed it my duty, and because of the load upon my brain, which I thought it might help to lighten. You will not believe me, so what can I do? This paper contains the only prescription which has yet been effectual in checking the disease. It saved the life of Valerie de Vocxqal, and I can vouch for its efficacy. Show it to the medical authorities. It is possible it may convince them that I am not as mad as you think me."

He took it from me, but it was plain to me, from the look upon his face, that he believed it to be only another part of my delusion.

"If it will make your mind any easier," he said, "I will give you my word that it shall be placed before the members of the Commission. If they deem it likely that any good can result from it, you may be sure it will be used."

He then wished me good-bye, and, with a feeling of unavailing rage and disappointment in my heart, I left the Offices and passed out into Whitehall. Once more I made my way into St. James's Park, and reaching a secluded spot, threw myself down upon the turf and buried my face in my arms. At first I could think of nothing but my own shame; then my thoughts turned to Valerie. In my trouble I had for the moment forgotten her. Coward that I was, I had considered my own safety before hers. If anything happened to me, who would protect her? I was still debating this with myself when my ears caught the sound of a footstep on the hard ground, and then the rustle of a dress. A moment later a voice sounded in my ears like the sweetest music. "Thank God!" it said, "Oh! thank God! I have found you."

Her cry of happiness ended in a little choking sob, and I turned and looked up to discover Valerie, her beautiful eyes streaming with tears, bending over me.

"How did you find me?" I inquired, in a voice that my love and longing for her rendered almost inaudible. "How did you know that I was here?"

"Love told me," she answered softly. "My heart led me to you. You forget the strange power with which I am gifted. Though I did not see you leave the house, I knew that you were gone, and my instinct warned me not only where you were going, but what you were going to do. Cyril, it was brave of you to go."

"It was useless," I cried. "I have failed. He would not believe me, Valerie, and I am lost eternally!"

"Hush!" she said. "Dear love, you must not say such things. They are not true. But rise. You must come to him. All this morning he has not been at all the same. I do not know what to think, but something is going to happen, I am certain."

There was no need for her to say to whom she referred.

I did as she commanded me, and side by side we crossed the park.

"He has made arrangements to leave England this afternoon," she continued, as we passed into Piccadilly. "The yacht is in the Thames, and orders have been sent to hold her in readiness for a long voyage."

"And what does he intend doing with us?"

"I know nothing of that," she answered. "But there is something very strange about him to-day. When he sent for me this morning I scarcely knew him, he was so changed."

We made our way along the deserted streets and presently reached Park Lane. As soon as we were inside the house I ascended the stairs beside her, and it was not until we had reached the top floor, on which Pharos's room was situated, that we paused before a door. Listening before it, we could plainly hear someone moving about inside. When we knocked, a voice I failed to recognise called upon us to enter. It was a strange picture we saw when we did so. In a large armchair before a roaring fire, though it was the middle of summer, sat Pharos, but so changed that I hardly knew him. He looked half his usual size; his skin hung loose about his face, as if the bones had shrunken underneath it; his eyes, always so deep-set in his head, were now so much sunken that they could scarcely be seen, while his hands were shrivelled until they resembled those of a mummy more than a man. The monkey also, which was huddled beside him in the chair, looked smaller than I had ever seen it. As if this were not enough, the room was filled with Egyptian curios from floor to ceiling. So many were there, indeed, that there barely remained room for Pharos's chair. How he had obtained possession of them I did not understand; but since Sir George Legrath's confession, written shortly before his tragic death by his own hand, the mystery has been solved, and Pharos confronts us in an even more unenviable light than before. Hating, loathing, and yet fearing the man as I did, there was something in his look now that roused an emotion in me that was almost akin to pity.

"Thou hast come in time," he said to Valerie, but in a different voice and without that harshness to which we had so long grown accustomed. "I have been anxiously awaiting thee."

He signed to her to approach him.

"Give me your hand," he whispered faintly. "Through you it is decreed that I must learn my fate. Courage, courage – there is naught for thee to fear!"

Taking her hand, he bade her close her eyes and describe to him what she saw. She did as she was ordered, and for upward of a minute perfect silence reigned in the room. The picture they made – the worn-out, shrivelled body of the man and the lovely woman – I cannot hope to make you understand.

"I see a great hall, supported by pillars," she said at last, speaking in that hard, measured voice I remembered to have heard on board the yacht. "The walls are covered with paintings, and two sphinxes guard the door. In the centre is an old man with a long white beard, who holds his arms above his head."

"It is Paduamen, the mouthpiece of the Gods," moaned Pharos, with a look of terror in his face that there was no disguising. "I am lost for ever – for ever; not for to-day, not for to-morrow, but for all time! Tell me, woman, what judgment the Mighty Ones pronounce against me?"

"Hush – he speaks!" Valerie continued slowly; and then a wonderful thing happened.

Whether it was the first warning of the illness that was presently to fall upon me, or whether I was so much in sympathy with Valerie that I saw what she and Pharos saw, I cannot say; at any rate, I suddenly found myself transported from Park Lane away to that mysterious hall below the Temple of Ammon, of which I retained so vivid a recollection. The place was in semi-darkness, and in the centre, as Valerie had described, stood the old man who had acted as my guide on the other occasion that I had been there. His arms were raised above his head, and his voice when he spoke was stern yet full of sadness.

"Ptahmes, son of Netruhôtep," he was saying, "across the seas I speak to thee. For the second time thou hast been found wanting in the trust reposed in thee. Thou hast used the power vouchsafed thee by the Gods for thine own purposes and to enrich thyself in the goods of the earth. Therefore thy doom is decreed, and in the Valley of Amenti thy punishment awaits thee. Prepare, for that time is even now upon thee."

Then the hall grew dark, there was a rushing sound as of a great wind, and once more I was back in Park Lane. Pharos was crouching in his chair, moaning feebly, and evidently beside himself with terror.

"What more dost thou see?" he said at length, and his voice was growing perceptibly weaker. "Tell me all."

There was another pause, and then Valerie spoke again.

"I see a rocky hillside and a newly-opened tomb. I see three white men and five Arabs who surround it. They are lifting a mummy from the vault below with cords."

On hearing this Pharos sprang to his feet with a loud cry, and for a moment fought wildly with the air. Meanwhile the monkey clung tenaciously to him, uttering strange cries, which grew feebler every moment. Valerie, released from her trance, if by such a name I may describe it, and unable to bear more, fled the room, while I stood rooted to the spot, powerless to move hand or foot, watching Pharos with fascinated eyes.

As if he were choking, he tore at his throat with his skeleton fingers till the blood spurted out on either side. Little by little, however, his struggles grew weaker, until they ceased altogether, and he fell back into his chair, to all intents and purposes a dead man, with the dying monkey still clinging to his coat.

After all I had lately gone through, the strain this terrible scene put upon my mind was too great for me to bear, and I fell back against the wall in a dead faint.

When I recovered from the attack of brain fever which followed the ghastly event I have just described, I found myself lying in my bunk in my old cabin on board the yacht. Valerie was sitting beside me holding my hand in hers and gazing lovingly into my face. Surprised at finding myself where I was, I endeavoured to obtain an explanation from her.

"Hush," she said, "you must not talk! Let it suffice that I have saved you, and now we are away from England and at sea together. Pharos is dead, and the past is only a bitter memory."

As she spoke, as if to bear out what she had said, a ray of sunshine streamed in through the porthole and fell upon us both.