Argosy, Vol. 112, No. 2 — page 98: what you’re looking at

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

264 ing a small, rubber-mounted one from his pocket. “It’s an inscription in old, old writing, telling the location of the mine. Old T’ath- Messu, the king, her father, put it there.”’ “So that when the soul returned after the eternal cycle, and the body lived once more, it could be found.” ‘““T suppose so. But Professor Fisher, of course, could read it. He had already de- ciphered half of it when he came out of the tent and met my stepfather. He told him what he had found out so far. It had been all introductory. The directions hadn’t come yet, but the mine had been mentioned. He knew it was about that. “Well, you can guess the rest.- That night, Heldstrom got into the professor’s tent, and stole it. Before daylight he was miles away. The professor followed him. Heldstrom beat him at Cairo, got a steamer home within an hour. Fisher came on the next one. “All the way over my stepfather tried to finish reading the inscription, but he didn’t know hieroglyphics—only a smatter- ing that he had picked up. And this one is very difficult. 7 “As soon as the professor got to New York he got detectives looking for my step- father. So he couldn’t venture out at all, because, of course, his strange appearance made him a marked man. He would have been arrested in a minute. “ After my father died and my mother married Mr. Heldstrom I left home, and went to work as a stenographer. In a year my mother also died and my stepfather went away. That was the last I heard of him till I got a letter asking me to call at the house in Pearmain Court, where he had had his things moved secretly, and where he was hiding. “He told me about the jewel and the inscription—but not the whole story at first, of course—and wanted me to help him by going to the library, getting their books on Egypt, and studying the old hieroglyphic writing. Evenings I would show him what I had learned, and we would try to finish reading the inscription, which he had copied out in large characters on a big sheet of _ paper. THE ARGOSY. “But I never could seem to get it right or else he couldn’t understand what I told him. He used to get frightfully angry, and would rage and curse at me. Finally I got frightened. One day I told him I would have to stop. I couldn’t do it any more. ‘““He flew into a perfect fury at that, and threatened to kill me. He told me how some one in Persia had taught him to use his terrible hands the way you saw. He said he had killed men in Egypt for re- fusing to do as he wished. So I had to keep on, although now that I had found out all about him I felt as though J were a criminal, too. But what couldI do? And of course I had to give up all my friends, and I used to get so lonely, day after day.” “What about the magazines?” put in Tarton gently. His arm was around her, but neither knew when it had got there. “Oh, I forgot. Two or three years be- fore some one had written an article about emeralds for the Archeological Magazine, and in it had told about the Cleopatra Mines, and also about the story of this lost mine of yellow ones—how scientists were interested in it and might some day dis- cover it. So—he found out about the ar- ticle, and because he was afraid that some one else might get interested and get ahead of him in some way, he—he made me go around from place to place, and—and—” ‘““T see,” murmured Tarton. ‘ But there wasn’t anything about emeralds in those I looked at.” “He tore all those pages out and burned them. His mind was going, you see.” Tarton nodded. “ That is all, I think,” murmured Zaida Heldstrom after a moment. “ You know the rest.”’ ‘TI suppose Professor Fisher stumbled in accidentally that night?” ‘“ No—he found out where we were living and actually had the courage to come, alone, and demand the emerald.”’ ‘“ Has he any relatives?” asked Tarton. “You mean—TI ought to give it to them?” she said quickly. “I thought of that, but I find he hasn’t. He was a man who lived alone, it seems.”’ ‘““ Then—it’s yours, isn’t it?” smiled the young man. Just then the sun struck it, GEomichoo