The All-Story, March 1914 — page 11: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

438 THE ALL-STORY MAGAZINE. this could be the source of a he—of self-deception, perhaps. af stpersti- tion; but not of a Lie. “Tell him I want to hear the story —that Pll give hima ptece of gold.” Osman, while a perfectly good gos- sip, was no great hand at telling a story; yet, even he was unable to lose all of the touches which Hamid Yusef gave to his account. “Behold, this shriveled form was once young, beautiful, filled with the juices of youth. I was the man Mark Twain spoke about—skipping up and down the pyramids like a goat. The eminent and the beautiful traveled all the way round the world, not to see the pyramids, nor even the mosques, but merely to see Hamid Yusef skip up and down the pyramid. “ Having thus won all the glory in the world, behold there remained yet another feat which beckoned me. We dwellers in the shadows of the pyra- mids know that not only 1s the sphinx haunted, but the pyramids themselves. and all the ground whereon they stand. “There are as many spirits round about there as there are grains of sand in the desert. These have a queen. She is the Woman of the Pyramid. “Her home is in the Red Pyramid —the third—the one she built, and it was there that [ went to see her. Fach night of the new moon she appears. “It was the might of the new moon that I waited. I wore a new burnoasce. I was washed and perftmed. I had new shoes. There wasn’t a lady in Cairo who wouldn't have called ime master. “Then she stood in front of me. quivering—imore beautiful than the daughter of the mosque-keeper who opens that little wicket up there every morning and throws me a piece of bread. “She beckoned. 1 followed. She was lighter on her feet than the silver of the moon. Hamid Yusef, the ad- miration of Mark ‘Twain, pursued. Ah, T was scented -with all the per- fumes of the famin, but she stuelt sweeter still, and she was laughing back at me. It was better than hashish dream. I had my hand Just touched her veil—” “Go on—tel}] him to go on,” Carlton. “He says he wants money,” young children.” cl out. sald said Osman. “ Says he has a wife and five Carlton had put his hand into his pocket. He was willing to make a generous contribution. This was cer- This impressed him all the more as he glanced about him, noted again the un- lighted steps. the dim, gray walls that must have stood just there for cen- turies; the abiding presence of the Ibn- Tulun—the oldest in Cairo—the oldest. tainly what he had come after. vast, old, deserted mosque of 1 Africa, perhaps. His fingers took note of the loose coins in his pocket, searching, weigh- ing. seeking a piece of gold. Then he went rigid, “let out a little gasp. The slender form of a woman had suddenly appeared, there just a few steps above them, was coming in their direction—“ as lightly as the silv er of the moon.” Now, even while he looked. Carlton weighed all the pros and cons of pos- sible delusion. His mental fingers. hke the fingers in his pocket, were searching for the piece of gold—the gold of truth, in this instance. For; even before he could recognize her, he knew who this woman—whether real or spectral—would be. She passed quite close to him—so close that his heart fluttered at once with embarrassment as well as excite- ment. She had looked at him squarely and he had looked at her. In an ordinary woman that look of hers would have been brazen—it was so bold, so full of promise, so confident and frank. Yet, there was that in if which gave hin a naineless thrill of fear as well. was as full of slumberous peril as the stare of a snake. gamaichnoa S Tt CO