The Living Mummy

Excerpt: "I was hard at work in my tent. I had almost completed translating the inscription of a small stele of Amen-hotep III, dated B. C., 1382, which with my own efforts I had discovered, and I was feeling wonderfully self-satisfied in consequence, when of a sudden I heard a great commotion without. Almost immediately the tent flap was lifted, and Migdal Abu's black face appeared. He looked vastly excited for an Arab, and he rolled his eyes horribly. "What do you want?" I demanded irritably. "Did I not tell you I was not to be disturbed?" He bent almost double. "Excellency—a white sheik has come riding on an ass, and with him a shameless female, also white." "The dickens!" I exclaimed, for I had not seen a European for nine weeks. Migdal Abu advanced with hand outstretched. "Excellency, he would have me give you this." I took "this," and swore softly underbreath at the humourless pomposity of my unknown countryman. It was a pasteboard carte-de-visite. And we—in the heart of the Libyan desert! With a laugh I looked at the thing and read his name—"Sir Robert Ottley." "What!" I said, then sprang a-foot. Ottley the great Egyptologist. Ottley the famous explorer. Ottley the eminent decipherer of cuneiform inscriptions. Ottley the millionaire whose prodigality in the cause of learning had in ten short years more than doubled the common stock of knowledge of the history of the Shepherd kings of the Nile. I had been longing since a lad to meet him, and now he had come unasked to see me out on the burning sands of Yatibiri."