"... though most of the wrappings were long ago torn away - in the search for valuables, no doubt - the woman's body
was perfectly preserved by the delta mud, much as bodies found in northern bogs. ..."
The rippling hair, the long slender neck, the gently sloping shoulders! And the face, the very face! For a moment he did not believe his eyes!
The voice pounded in his head:" ... unknown woman ... Ptolemaic period ... Graeco-Roman. But see the Egyptian profile. The well-molded lips ..."
Miss Barrington's high-pitched laugh went through his temples.
He blundered forward. He had brushed Miss Barrington's arm. Alex was saying something to him, calling him sharply by name. The guide was staring up.
He looked down through the glass. Her face! It was she - the soft cerements molded into her flesh, her naked hands gently curved, her feet bare, the wrappings loose around her ankles. All black, black as the delta mud which had surrounded her, preserved her, hardened her!
"Ramses, what is it!"
"Sir, are you ill!"
PART 2 Chapter 19
They were speaking to him from all sides; they were surrounding him. Suddenly someone pulled him away, and he turned back furiously." No, let me go."
He heard the glass shatter beside him. An alarm had gone off, shrieking like a woman in terror.
Look at her closed eyes. It's she! It's she. He needed no rings, no ornaments, no names to tell him. It's she.
The armed men had come. Julie pleaded. Miss Barrington was afraid. Alex was trying to make him listen.
"I cannot hear you now. I can hear nothing. It is she. Anonymous woman." She, the last Queen of Egypt.
Again, he jerked free of the hand on his arm. He hovered over the filthy glass. He wanted to shatter it. Her legs no more than bones; the fingers of her right hand dried almost to a skeleton. But that face, that beautiful face. My Cleopatra.
Finally he had allowed himself to be led away. Julie had questioned him. He had not answered. She had paid for the damage to the case, a small display of jewelry upset. He wanted to say that he was sorry.
He could not remember anything else. Except her face, and the whole picture she made - a thing created from the black earth and lifted up and placed on the bare polished wood of the case, linen wrappings still wrinkled as if by lapping water. And her hair, her thick rippling hair; why, the whole form had almost glistened in the dim light.
Julie spoke words. The lights were soft in the room at Shepheard's Hotel. He wanted to answer, but he couldn't. And then there was that other memory; that strange moment when he had turned in the confusion and the blur, and seen Elliott with those sad grey eyes watching him.
Oscar hurried after Mr. Hancock and the two chaps from Scotland Yard as they marched right through the drawing rooms and into the Egyptian room. Oh, he never should have let them into the house. They had no right to come into this house. And now they were marching right up to the mummy case.
"But Miss Julie will be so angry, sir. This is her house, sir. And you mustn't touch that, sir, why, it's Mr. Lawrence's discovery."
Hancock stared at the five gold Cleopatra coins in their case.
"But the coins could have been stolen in Cairo, sir. Before the collection was cataloged."
"Yes, of course, you're absolutely right," Hancock said. He turned and glared at the mummy case.
Julie poured the wine in his glass. He merely looked at it.
"Won't you try to explain?" she whispered." You recognized it. You knew it. That has to be it."
For hours he'd sat there in silence. The late afternoon sun burned through the sheer curtains. The overhead fan churned slowly, monotonously, giving off a dull groan.
She didn't want to cry again.
"But it couldn't be ..." No. She couldn't bring herself even to suggest it. Yet she thought of the woman again; of the gold tiara in her hair, now black and glossy as all the rest of her." It's not possible that it's she. ..."
Slowly Ramses turned and looked at her. Hard and brilliant his blue eyes were.
"Not possible!" His voice was low, hoarse, no more than an agonized whisper." Not possible! You've dug up thousands of the Egyptian dead. You've raided their pyramids, their desert tombs, their catacombs. What is not possible!"