Читать книгу The Bat Flies Low - Arthur Henry Ward - Страница 8

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“Very mysterious,” said Rorke; “but Mohammed Ahmes Bey is a highly mysterious bloke. He’s well known in Cairo, where I believe he has a villa. He has some sort of official standing. I have never actually met him to speak to. Where did you bump into him?”

“Theater tonight. Jim Patterson introduced us. He was in a box facing me. Very pretty woman with him. Flame-colored hair. But I was watching the eyes of Mohammed Ahmes Bey.”

“What was strange about them?”

“They gleamed in the dark like the eyes of a cat.”

Captain Rorke crossed to the fire, tossing the end of a cigarette in among the burning logs. While a physiognomist might have been mistaken in the temper and make-up of the man, the lamented Mr. Sherlock Holmes could not have failed to note his hands. Although well cared for, they were significantly muscular, with a predominance of thumb which told its own story.

Stefanson looked from man to man in undisguised bewilderment. Lincoln Hayes, leaning on a bookcase, stared across at Rorke.

“Flame-colored hair,” Rorke muttered. “Not just red hair, or golden hair—but flame-colored?”

“Yes. Very unusual,” said Lincoln Hayes. “No better way of describing it.”

Rorke turned.

“I am beginning to wonder,” he declared.

“What about?”

“About the origin of the several attempts which have been made upon me since I acquired that.”

He pointed to the papyrus pinned to the drawing board.

“I d-don’t think,” said Stefanson, “th-that you make yourself t-too clear.”

“Had the story, Stefanson,” said Hayes, “before you arrived. Important you should know. Give Stefanson a brief outline, Paddy.”

“Right.”

Patrick Rorke selected a cigar with careful discrimination from a large cedar-wood box on the table, nicked it and lighted it, with the care due to a cigar of its pedigree. He settled himself back in the big writing chair placed before the table. Hayes crossed and leaned upon the mantel. Ulric Stefanson sat facing Captain Rorke, and bending forward, peering, wine-glass in hand.

“You know my theories,” Rorke began, “about the lamp fragment in the Museum. I am by no means the first man who has believed that the Egyptians possessed a system of lighting of which, today, we know nothing. This theory has a rational basis. The wonderful wall paintings in some rock tombs, far removed from natural light, can only be appreciated by the employment of magnesium ribbon, for instance. Since those paintings were done on the spot, what light was used by the painters?”

Stefanson crossed to the ice bucket and replenished his glass.

“I could s-suggest s-seven alternative th-theories,” he remarked and sat down again.

“Very possibly,” Rorke replied; “but when you have heard me out I don’t think you will consider it necessary to tax the tired brain.”

Lincoln Hayes rang a bell. Lurgan entered almost immediately.

“Open the other bottles.”

“Very good, sir.”

The other bottles being uncorked, Lurgan withdrew, and Rorke continued.

“I have been working recently at no great distance from the Great Pyramid. There is a big discovery there waiting for the man who is clever enough to make it. I used to spend any spare evenings I had in Cairo, putting up for a night now and again at Shepheard’s. It was during this time that the very curious document on the table came into my possession. I won’t go into details—Hayes already knows them—except to say that I acquired it. I realized at once that I had got hold of something unique in the history of Egyptology: part of a chapter of the fabulous Book of Thoth—and the chapter was entitled ‘Temple Lamps!’ ...”