The man appeared to weigh the question; and in the shadows some feet away, Julie Stratford paled and lowered her eyes, and turned just a little away from both of them.
"Curses are words, my friend," the man said." Warnings to drive away the ignorant and meddlesome. It requires poison or some other crude weapon to take a human life unnaturally."
"Poison!" Samir whispered.
"Samir, it's very late," Julie said. Her voice was raw, strained." We mustn't speak of all this now, or I'll give way to tears again and feel foolish. We must speak of these things only when we really want to examine them." She came forward and took both his hands." I want you to come another night, when we can all sit down together."
"Yes, Julie Stratford is very tired. Julie Stratford has been a great teacher. And I bid you good night, my friend. You are my friend, are you not? There are many things perhaps that we can say to each other. But for now, believe I shall protect Julie Stratford from anyone or anything that would hurt her."
Samir walked slowly to the door.
"If you need me," he said, turning back," you must send for me." He reached into his coat. He took out his card and stared at it, quite baffled for a moment. Then he gave it to the man. He watched the ring glinting in the light as the man took it from him.
"I am in my office at the British Museum very late every night. I walk the corridors when everyone is gone. Come to the side door, and you will find me."
But why was he saying these things? What did he mean to convey? He wished suddenly the creature would speak the ancient tongue again; he could not understand the strange mixture of pain and joy that he felt; the strange darkening of the world, and the keen appreciation of light which had come with that darkening.
He turned and went out, hurrying down the granite steps and past the uniformed guards without so much as a glance in their direction. He walked fast through the cold damp streets. He ignored the cabs mat slowed. He wanted only to be alone. He kept seeing that ring; hearing those old Egyptian words finally denned aloud as he had never heard them. He wanted to weep. A miracle had been revealed; yet somehow it threatened the miraculous all around him.
"Lawrence, give me guidance," he whispered.
Julie shut the door and slipped the bolt.
She turned to Ramses. She could hear Rita's tread on the floor above. They were alone, quite beyond Rita's hearing.
"You don't mean to trust him with your secret!" she asked.
"The harm is done," he said quietly." He knows the truth. And your cousin Henry will tell others. And others, too, will come to believe."
"No, that's impossible. You saw yourself what happened with the police. Samir knows because he saw the ring; he recognized it. And because he came to see, and came to believe. Others will not do that. And somehow ..."
"Somehow?"
"You wanted him to know. That's why you addressed him by name. You told him who you were."
"Did I?"
"Yes, I think that you did."
He pondered this. He didn't find the idea too agreeable. But it was true, she could have sworn so.
"Two who believe can make three," he said, as if she hadn't made the point at all.
"They cannot prove it. You're real, yes, and the ring is real. But what is there really to connect you with the past! You don't understand these times if you think it takes so little for men to believe that one has risen from the grave. This is the age of science, not religion."
He was collecting his thoughts. He bowed his head and folded his arms and moved back and forth on the carpet. Then he stopped:
"Oh, my darling dear, if only you understood," he said. There was no urgency in his voice, but there was great feeling. And it seemed the cadence was English now, almost intimately so." For a thousand years I guarded this truth," he said," even from those I loved and served. They never knew whence I came, or how long I'd lived, or what had befallen me. And now I've blundered into your time, revealing this truth to more mortals in one full moon than ever knew it since Ramses ruled Egypt."