"When his adoptive father, Sir Michael Ferrara," resumed the doctor, beginning to pace up and down the library--"when Sir Michael and I were in Egypt, in the winter of 1893, we conducted certain inquiries in the Fayum. We camped for over three months beside the Meydum Pyramid. The object of our inquiries was to discover the tomb of a certain queen. I will not trouble you with the details, which could be of no interest to anyone but an Egyptologist, I will merely say that apart from the name and titles by which she is known to the ordinary student, this queen is also known to certain inquirers as the Witch-Queen. She was not an Egyptian, but an Asiatic. In short, she was the last high priestess of a cult which became extinct at her death. Her secret mark--I am not referring to a cartouche or anything of that kind--was a spider; it was the mark of the religion or cult which she practised. The high priest of the principal Temple of Ra, during the reign of the Pharaoh who was this queen's husband, was one Hortotef. This was his official position, but secretly he was also the high-priest of the sinister creed to which I have referred. The temple of this religion--a religion allied to Black Magic--was the Pyramid of Meydum. "So much we knew--or Ferrara knew, and imparted to me--but for any corroborative evidence of this cult's existence we searched in vain. We explored the interior of the pyramid foot by foot, inch by inch--and found nothing. We knew that there was some other apartment in the pyramid, but in spite of our soundings, measurements and laborious excavations, we did not come upon the entrance to it. The tomb of the queen we failed to discover, also, and therefore concluded that her mummy was buried in the secret chamber of the pyramid. We had abandoned our quest in despair, when, excavating in one of the neighbouring mounds, we made a discovery." He opened a box of cigars, selected one, and pushed the box towards his son. Robert shook his head, almost impatiently, but Dr. Cairn lighted the cigar ere resuming: "Directed, as I now believe, by a malignant will, we blundered upon the tomb of the high priest--" "You found his mummy?" "We found his mummy--yes. But owing to the carelessness--and the fear--of the native labourers it was exposed to the sun and crumpled--was lost. I would a similar fate had attended the other one which we found!" "What, another mummy?" "We discovered"--Dr. Cairn spoke very deliberately--"a certain papyrus. The translation of this is contained"--he rested the point of his finger upon the writing-table--"in the unpublished book of Sir Michael Ferrara, which lies here. That book, Rob, will never be published now! Furthermore, we discovered the mummy of a child--" "A child."