I felt like a conspirator, and that my companion in stealth should be Tybalt was a great joy to me.

We took one of the boats down the river and then an arabiya took us to the site.

Tybalt led me past the mounds of earth over the brown hard soil to an opening in the side of the hill. He slipped his arm through mine and said, "Tread warily."

I said excitedly, "You discovered this then, Tybalt?"

"No," he answered, "this tunnel was discovered by the previous expedition. My father opened this up." He took a lantern which was hanging on the wall and lighted it. Then I could see the tunnel which was some eight feet in height. I followed him and at the end of the tunnel were a few steps.

"Imagine! These steps were cut centuries ago!" I said.

"Two thousand years before the birth of Christ to be exact. Imagine how my father felt when he discovered this tunnel and the steps. But come on and you will see."

"How thrilled he must have been! This must have been a miraculous discovery."

"It led, as so many miraculous discoveries have led be-fore, to a tomb which was rifled probably three thousand years ago."

"So your father was the first to come here after three thousand years."

"That may well be. But he found little that was new. Give me your hand, Judith. He came through here into this chamber. Look at the walls," said Tybalt holding the lantern high. "See those symbols? That is the sacred beetle—the scarab—and the man with a ram's head is Amen Ra, the great Sun God."

"I recognized him and I am wearing my beetle at the moment. The one you gave me. It will preserve me, won't it, in my hour of danger?"

He stopped still and looked at me. In the light from the lantern he seemed almost a stranger.

"I doubt it, Judith," he said. Then his expression lightened and he went on: "Perhaps I can do that. I daresay I would manage as well as a beetle."

I shivered.

"Are you cold?" he asked.

"Not exactly . . . but it is cool in here." I think I felt then as they say at home as though someone was walking over my grave.

Tybalt sensed this for he said: "It's so awe inspiring. We all feel that. The man who was buried here belonged to a world whose civilization had reached its zenith when in Britain men lived in caves and hunted for their food in the primeval forests."

"I feel as though I'm entering the underworld. Who was the man who was buried here ... or was it a woman?"

"We couldn't discover. There was so little left. The mummy itself had been rifled. The robbers must have known that often valuable jewels were concealed beneath the wrappings. All that my father found here when he reached the burial chamber was the sarcophagus, the mummy, which had been disturbed, and the soul house, which the thieves thought was of no value."

"I haven't seen a soul house," I said.

"I hope I will be able to show you one one day. It's a small model of a house usually with colonnades in white stone. It is meant to be the dwelling house of the soul after death and it is left in the tomb, so that when the Ka returns to its home after its journeyings it has a comfortable place in which to live."

"It's fascinating," I said. "I seem to gather fresh information every day."

We had come to another flight of steps.

"We must be deep in the mountainside," I said.

"Look at this," said Tybalt. "It is the most elaborate chamber as yet and it is a sort of anteroom to the one in which the sarcophagus was found."

"How grand it all is!"

"Yet the person buried here was no Pharaoh. A man of some wealth possibly, but the entrance to this tomb shows us that he was not of the highest rank."

"And this is the tomb which was excavated by your father."

"Months of hard work, expectation, and excitement, and this is what he found. That someone had been here before. We had opened up the mountainside, found the exact spot which led to the underground tunnel and when we found it ... Well, you can imagine our excitement, Judith. And then, just another empty tomb!"

"Then your father died."

"But he discovered something, Judith. I'm certain of it. That was why I came back. He wanted me to come back. I knew it. That was what he was trying to tell me. It could only mean one thing. He must have discovered that there was another tomb—the entrance to which is here somewhere."

"If it were, wouldn't you see it?"

"It could be cunningly concealed. We could find nothing here that led beyond this. But somewhere in this tomb, I felt sure, there was a vital clue. I may have found it. Look!

You see this slight unevenness in the ground. There could be something behind this wall. We are going to work on it ... keeping it as secret as we can. We may be wasting our time, but I don't think so."

"Do you think that because your father discovered this he was murdered?"

Tybalt shook his head. "That was a coincidence. It may have been the excitement which killed him. In any case, he died and because he had decided not to tell anyone, not even me, death caught up with him and there was no time."

"It seems strange that he should die at such a moment."

"Life is strange, Judith." He held the lantern and looked down at me. "How many of us know when our last moment has come."

I felt a sudden shiver of fear run down my spine.

I said: "What an eerie place this is."

"What do you expect of a tomb, Judith?"

"Even you look different here."

He put his free hand to my throat and touched it caressingly. "Different, Judith, how different?"

"Like someone I don't know everything about."

"But who does know everything about another person."

"Let's go," I said.

"You are cold." He was standing very close to me and I could feel his warm breath on my face. "What are you afraid of, Judith? Of the Curse of the Pharaohs, of the wrath of the gods, of me . . . ?"

"I'm not afraid," I lied. "I just want to be out in the air. It's oppressive in here."

"Judith . . ."

He stepped towards me. I couldn't understand myself. I sensed evil in this place. All my instincts were crying out for me to escape. Escape from what! This mystic aura of doom? From Tybalt!

I was about to speak but his hand was over my mouth.

"Listen," he whispered.

Then I heard it distinctly in the silence of this place . . . a light footfall.

"Someone is in the tomb," whispered Tybalt.

Tybalt released me. He stood very still listening.

"Who is there?" he called. His voice sounded strange and hollow, eerie, unnatural.

There was no answer.

"Keep close to me," said Tybalt. We mounted the staircase to the chamber, Tybalt holding the lantern high above his head, cautiously going step by step resisting the impulse to hurry, which might have been dangerous I supposed.

I followed at his heels. We went into the tunnel.

There was no one there.

As we passed through the door and stepped over the heaps of brown earth, the warm night air enveloped me with relief and a pleasure that was almost bliss.

My legs felt numb; my skin was damp and I was trembling visibly.

There was no one in sight.

Tybalt turned to me.

"Poor Judith, you look as if you've had a fright."

"It was rather alarming."

"Someone was in there."

"Perhaps it was one of your fellow workers."

"Why didn't he answer when I called?"

"He might have thought you would have been displeased with him for prowling about there at night."

"Come on," he said, "we'll get the arabiya, and go back to the palace."

Everything was normal now—the Nile with its strange beauty and its odors, the palace, and Tybalt.

I could not understand what had come over me in the depth of that tomb. Perhaps it was the strangeness of the atmosphere, the knowledge that three thousand years or so before a dead man had been laid there; perhaps there was something in the powers of these gods which could even make me afraid of Tybalt.

Afraid of Tybalt! The husband who had chosen me as his wife! But had he not chosen me rather suddenly—in fact, so unexpectedly that the aunts, who loved me dearly, had been apprehensive for me? I was a rich woman. I had to remember that. And Tabitha, what of Tabitha? I had seen her and Tybalt together now and then. They always seemed to be in earnest conversation. He discussed his work with her more than he did with me. I still lacked her knowledge and experience in spite of all my efforts. Tabitha had a husband . . .

There was evil in that tomb and it had planted these thoughts in my mind. Where was my usual common sense? Where was that trait in my character which had always looked for the challenge in life and been so ready to grasp it?

Idiot! I told myself. You're as foolish as Theodosia.

On the river side of the palace was a terrace and I liked to sit there watching the life of the Nile go by. I would find a spot in the shade—it was getting almost unbearably hot now—and idly watch. Very often one of the servants would bring me a glass of mint tea. I would sit there, sometimes alone, sometimes joined by some member of our party. I would watch the black clad women chattering together as they washed their clothes in the water; the river seemed to be the center of social life rather like the sales of work and the socials over which Dorcas and Alison used to preside in my youth. I would hear their excited voices and high-pitched laughter and wondered what they talked of. It was exciting when the dahabiyehs with their sails shaped like curved Oriental swords sailed by.