II


For five minutes the decorous silence of the anteroom was unbroken.
Then the door of the inner office swung open and closed behind a
dejected-looking young man, and the boy, without so much as asking
for a card, preceded the secretly-elated Simpkins into the hall.

They had stepped from the present into the past. Simpkins found himself
looking between a double row of pillars, covered with hieroglyphics in
red and black, to an altar of polished black basalt, guarded on either
side by stone sphinxes. Behind it, straight from the lofty ceiling, fell
a veil of black velvet, embroidered with golden scarabæi, and fringed
with violet. The approach, a hundred paces or more, was guarded by
twoscore mummies in black cases, standing upright along the pillars.

"Watcher gawkin' at?" demanded the youth, grinning up at the staring
Simpkins. "Lose dat farmer-boy face or it's back to de ole homestead
for youse. Her royal nibs ain't lookin' for no good milker."

"Oh, I'm just rubbering to see where the goat's kept," the reporter
answered, trying to assume a properly metropolitan expression. "Suppose
I'll have to take the third degree before I can get out of here."

The youth started noiselessly across the floor, and Simpkins saw that
he wore sandals. His own heavy walking boots rang loudly on the flagged
floors and woke the echoes in the vaulted ceiling. He began to tread on