She who sleeps

Barry Cumberland pushed on through a growing darkness. There seemed to be an unfamiliar quality in this darkness which he first noticed when, quite mechanically, he stooped to s...

Something was wrong. He could swear he had been sitting but a moment before with his back against the giant pillar of an Ancient Egyptian building, staring at a window high up i...

“She might have stepped down from that painting!” said Barry, pointing to a reproduction of part of a wall of the great temple at Medinet Habu, above the carven mantelpiece of t...

In the days that followed, Barry Cumberland resigned himself to waiting. He was soon practically fit again, however, and he made up his mind to employ his first morning of freed...

“Then, in private life, the--the lady--must be a Miss or a Mrs. Brown. Not a romantic name. But what did the realty sportsman tell you about this mysterious citizen Brown?”

The abstracted mood of Barry during the remainder of the evening was too noticeable to pass without comment. His dance partner, Naomi, a girl friend of Jack’s grew very petulant...

“Quite so,” Barry agreed. His original purpose was forgotten, for here apparently was an even deeper mystery than that which had been puzzling him. “At the moment I simply don’t...

“The last time the man Danbazzar was about,” said Countess Colonna, “the result was that a motor lorry and ten men arrived. The front doors were taken off their hinges and a sto...

“Not so hasty,” Jim rebuked him, “not so hasty, my friend. My ambitions are not the ambitions of an ordinary man. Any fool can visit the interior of the Pyramid if he’s lucky en...

Vendors of fly whisks, of scarabs incredibly old, of necklaces from the tombs of queens, of red slippers, of all sorts of Birmingham ware, clamoured in a group beneath him. They...

The Nile was high. Much of the Memnonia was impassable. The Colossi sat lonely in the midst of a great lake, when Barry came to Luxor. In this way he saw the City of the Sun und...

Barry now entered upon a period of existence widely different from any he had known. Danbazzar’s camp was in the neck of a _wâdi_ on the north of the caravan route from Thebes t...

Nothing succeeds like impudence. The original plan had provided for work at night only; but the flooded state of the Nile Valley was so discouraging to tourists and interruption...

Prone upon a high crag Danbazzar lay, watching a horseman making his way down the slope of a distant valley and heading in the direction of the Nile. At last:

“I believe,” said he, “that we have both got the ‘jumps.’ _I_ am here because my donkey boy refused to come beyond the end of the valley at this time of night. And as we have no...

The position of the moon had cast the greater part of the _wâdi_ into deep shadow. There was a gap in the irregular wall nearly opposite to Barry’s tent through which a certain...

Danbazzar tensed his lips, looking fiercely from face to face. The anxious night was ended, and in the light of early morning this was a somewhat haggard company. Danbazzar with...

The sun was casting its last shafts of gold across the fringe of the Libyan Desert when Barry Cumberland stepped over the threshold and entered the tomb of Zalithea. He had plea...

Barry’s excitement grew so intense that the mere idea of sleep was out of the question. If he had had his way, the wonderful painted lid would have been torn off and the occupan...

Barry looked around the square, rock-hewn chamber communicating with the tomb, and wondered why he felt no inclination to laugh. Had Jim Sakers formed one of the party, his mood...

Perhaps, in his heart of hearts, no one of the party--excepting Danbazzar--had ever really counted on success. Certainly, in their wildest imaginings, they had not schooled thei...

Dinner dispatched, they sat around the table in council, pipes and cigars going. Safîyeh had reported that her charge had found the soup, the fried chicken, the Château y’Quem--...

The sound of a distant shot came--from the direction of the Nile. Professor Blackwell looked up with a start. He was inclined to nervousness in these days. Breakfast was tempora...

Work in the valley was ended. The tomb, stripped of its contents, had been reclosed so that even Mr. Howard Carter could not have found it. The workmen, well paid and happy, had...

He experienced a vague uneasiness. To the best of his knowledge, Mr. Tawwab’s hold upon them was no more. But the man’s insatiable appetite for _bakhshish_ on a grand scale migh...

A month later, to a day, Barry from the boat deck of the _Berengaria_ pointed out Ambrose Light to Zalithea. She clutched his arm to steady herself in the high wind, nestling, f...

Danbazzar, in these days, was constantly at the Cumberland home. Next to Barry, it was evident that Zalithea preferred his society to that of anybody else. John Cumberland she r...

Barry returned home comparatively early. Neither Jim’s airy philosophy nor his more serious sympathy, which was not without a salting of worldly wisdom, had lifted the cloud of...

A period of anxiety now commenced to which it seemed impossible to imagine any end other than the return of Zalithea. The idea that he should never see her again was one that Ba...

“The Moving Finger,” which waits for no man, moved on. But Zalithea did not return. The police had relaxed their efforts. They had nothing to work upon. It was obviously impossi...

If Barry Cumberland had his weaknesses--and who has not?--he had one marked virtue. He knew what he wanted, and always headed straight for his objective. In fact, his impulsiven...

“I don’t ask you to forgive me. I never meant to see you again. But when Jim spoke to me to-day I realized, somehow, that _you_ were here. And I knew you would come. And I knew...

“Well,” Jim replied, thoughtfully rapping on the café table to attract the waiter’s attention, “you can order another half bottle of this very good wine, and then perhaps ideas...