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Ah, the girl. The girl again in the hallway with her hands clasped, the girl very afraid, but of what?
"Miss Julie would be so angry."
He could think of nothing to say. He gave an awkward little nod, and went back to the sofa.
"Perhaps tomorrow you should come," she said.
"No. I must see her tonight."
"But, sir, it's so very late."
The clop of a horse outside, the low creak of the hansom's wheels. He heard a sudden little laugh, very faint, but he knew it was Julie.
Rita hurried to the door and drew back the bolt. He stared speechless as the pair entered the room, Julie, radiant, her hair studded with sparkling droplets of rain; and a man, a tall, splendid-looking man, with dark brown hair and glittering blue eyes, beside her.
Julie spoke to him. She said his name. But it did not register.
He could not take his eyes off this man. The skin was pale, flawless. And the features exquisitely moulded. But the spirit inhabiting the man was the overwhelming characteristic. The man exuded strength and a sudden wariness that was almost chilling.
"I only wanted to ... to look in on you," he said to Julie without so much as glancing at her. "To see that you were well. I worry on your account...."
His voice trailed off.
"Ah, I know who you are!" said the man suddenly, in a faultless British accent. "You are Lawrence's friend, are you not? Your name is Samir."
"We have met?" Samir said. "I do not remember."
His eyes moved tentatively over the figure that approached him now, and suddenly he was staring fixedly at the outstretched hand, at the ruby ring, and the ring with the cartouche of Ramses the Great, and it seemed the room had become quite unreal; that the voices speaking to him were making no sense, and that there was no necessity to answer.
The ring he had seen through the mummy's wrappings! There was no mistake. He could not make such a mistake. And what was Julie saying that could possibly matter now? Words so politely spoken, but all lies, and this being was staring back at him, knowing full well that he recognized the ring, knowing full well that words just didn't matter.
"I hope Henry didn't run to you with that nonsense of his...." Yes, that was the meaning.
But it was not nonsense at all. And slowly he shifted his gaze and forced himself to see for himself that she was safe and sound and sane. Then he closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, he looked not at the ring but at the King's face, at the steady blue eyes which understood everything.
When he spoke to her again, it was a meaningless murmur:
"Your father would not have wanted for you to be unprotected. Your father would have wanted me to come...."
"Ah, but Samir, friend of Lawrence," the other said, "there is no danger now to Julie Stratford." And dropping suddenly into the ancient Egyptian with an accent Samir had never heard: "This woman is loved by me and shall be protected from all harm."
Stunning, that sound. He backed away. Julie was talking again. And again he wasn't listening. He had gone to the mantel shelf and held on to it now as if he might fall.
"Surely you know the ancient tongue of the Pharaohs, my friend," said the tall blue-eyed man. "You are Egyptian, are you not? All your life you have studied it. You can read it as well as you read Latin or Greek."
Such a carefully modulated voice; it was trying to dispel all fear; civilized, courteous. What more could Samir have wanted?
"Yes, sir, you are right," Samir said. "But I've never heard it spoken aloud, and the accent has always been a mystery. But you must tell me--" He forced himself to look at the man directly again. "You are an Egyptologist, I have been told. Do you believe it was the curse on the tomb that killed my beloved friend, Lawrence? Or did death take him naturally as we supposed?"
The man appeared to weigh the question; and in the shadows some feet away, Julie Stratford paled and lowered her eyes, and turned just a little away from both of them.
"Curses are words, my friend," the man said. "Warnings to drive away the ignorant and meddlesome. It requires poison or some other crude weapon to take a human life unnaturally."
"Poison!" Samir whispered.
"Samir, it's very late," Julie said. Her voice was raw, strained. "We mustn't speak of all this now, or I'll give way to tears again and feel foolish. We must speak of these things only when we really want to examine them." She came forward and took both his hands. "I want you to come another night, when we can all sit down together."
"Yes, Julie Stratford is very tired. Julie Stratford has been a great teacher. And I bid you good night, my friend. You are my friend, are you not? There are many things perhaps that we can say to each other. But for now, believe I shall protect Julie Stratford from anyone or anything that would hurt her."
