Argosy, Vol. 112, No. 2 — page 99: what you’re looking at

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

THE YELLOW EMERALD. sending up a blinding glow. “ The only one in the world—the great yellow emerald of Princess Hata-seps’u, daughter of King T’ath-Messu, master of ten thousand times ten thousand—come down to you after six thousand years!” Slipping her finger into his palm, she glanced up, smiling ruefully. “Yes, but I don’t know what it says. There’s a message there—from that old king. Id like to know what he says to us—to her and me. Perhaps even the mine could be found if I could only read— that—”’ Tarton picked up the relic and produced his magnifying-glass. ‘“ T’ve spent a great deal of my life use- lessly,” he said. ‘ I’m convinced of it. I’ve been wasting months away among dry and dusty books when I ought to have been learning how to earn bushels of gold dollars for you. But here is where I can help. ‘“ Egypt has been my hobby. I’ve studied their hieroglyphic writing just for fun. I saw that inscription on there and read it that first morning before I went to bed. It isn’t very hard—just listen—”’ “Oh, Bruce!” she cried. ‘‘ You don’t really mean you knew it all the time—”’ But Bruce Tarton was readings. He was reading out a curious message — one scratched on that dull gold eons and eons before by a swart-faced scribe in some tall- columned temple by the lazy Nile—to be held there while kingdoms rose and fell, and nations came and passed away, and centuries flitted by—then to be translated, on a piping August afternoon, half-way round the globe, to a slender girl who hov- ered, starry-eyed, at the shoulder of her young American. What would the souls of King T’ath-Messu and his Princess Hata- seps’u have said if they had known and hovered overhead? Tarton, too, was a little white and his voice unsteady as he began. He could not keep the romance of it out of his throat: “Saith the king, T’ath-Messu, mighty in wrath, beloved of the gods, conqueror of Kadesh and Patun and Punt, to whom all nations come bowing, like grasshoppers in summer for multitude; saith he unto his 265, beloved, Hata-seps’u, the princess, the dark- eyed, his daughter: Kadesh shall be thine, thine shall be Punt, the rich land favored of Ra, the sun-god; and therein shall the city of yellow stones be thine, Amenterah, the cavern of yellow jewels, and the mines there- of, deep-dug in the boweled earth, far be- neath the bosom of Hathor, the cow-goddess. Lying beneath the paws of the sphinx are they, at the entrance to the underworld— the fifth sphinx in the avenue of sphinxes that guard the way before the temple of Hathor. When the sun-god, Aten, shines bright in the heavens, so that he gleams in the eye of the sphinx, the eye that is a yellow, gleaming jewel, press ye there for to discover the key, the one key that openeth the treasure, the secret mines of yellow stones beneath the temple of Hathor; to whom entrusteth T’ath-Messu, the king, his daughter, his be- loved, Hata-seps’u. It is said.” “The temple of Hathor, in the city of Amenterah, in the land of Punt—” It was the girl’s voice, hushed in awe as she gazed up at Tarton. ‘‘ Under the sphinx—be- tween his paws, it says. 'Where—where is —where was this city—of the yellow jewels, Bruce? Have you ever heard of it?” He shook his head. ““ This inscription is very old. It belongs to the time of one of the earliest kings. He and his daughter were dead and buried, thousands of years, probably, before Moses looked out over the Red Sea. vind the land of Punt—jit may be anywhere. I have never heard of it. The sphinxes that guard the temple of Hathor, the cow-headed god- dess, are under hundreds of feet of drifting sand. You will never see them, Zaida—no one ever will. They belong to the past— the dim, everlasting, wonderful past that goes back years and years forever.” Tears sprang into her eyes as she looked up at him. : <4 nen’ “Then this is all of King T’ath-Messu that you will ever have,” he smiled, ‘“ and you will be the only woman alive, Zaida, who has a yellow emerald!” “And J’ll be the only woman alive, too, who has you, Bruce,” she whispered as she turned to him and her arms crept round his neck. The yellow emerald of Hata-seps’u slipped from her lap, unnoticed, as she lifted her lips to his. (The End.) Gomichbooks ol Ot CEN