"Very well; you are entitled to your opinion. But although you appear to be ignorant of the fact, the Pyramid of Meydum was formerly one of the strong-holds--the second greatest in all the land of the Nile--of Ancient Egyptian sorcery! I pray heaven I may be wrong, but in the disappearance of Lady Lashmore, and in the story of Ali Mohammed, I see a dreadful possibility. Ring for a time-table. We have not a moment to waste!" CHAPTER XVIII THE BATS Rekka was a mile behind. "It will take us fully an hour yet," said Dr. Cairn, "to reach the pyramid, although it appears so near." Indeed, in the violet dusk, the great mastabah Pyramid of Meydum seemed already to loom above them, although it was quite four miles away. The narrow path along which they trotted their donkeys ran through the fertile lowlands of the Fayum. They had just passed a village, amid an angry chorus from the pariah dogs, and were now following the track along the top of the embankment. Where the green carpet merged ahead into the grey ocean of sand the desert began, and out in that desert, resembling some weird work of Nature rather than anything wrought by the hand of man, stood the gloomy and lonely building ascribed by the Egyptologists to the Pharaoh Sneferu. Dr. Cairn and his son rode ahead, and Sime, with Ali Mohammed, brought up the rear of the little company. "I am completely in the dark, sir," said Robert Cairn, "respecting the object of our present journey. What leads you to suppose that we shall find Antony Ferrara here?" "I scarcely hope to _find_ him here," was the enigmatical reply, "but I am almost certain that he _is_ here. I might have expected it, and I blame myself for not having provided against--this." "Against what?" "It is impossible, Rob, for you to understand this matter. Indeed, if I were to publish what I know--not what I imagine, but what I know--about the Pyramid of Meydum I should not only call down upon myself the ridicule of every Egyptologist in Europe; I should be accounted mad by the whole world." His son was silent for a time; then: "According to the guide books," he said, "it is merely an empty tomb." "It is empty, certainly," replied Dr. Cairn grimly, "or that apartment known as the King's Chamber is now empty. But even the so-called King's Chamber was not empty once; and there is another chamber in the pyramid which is not empty _now_!" "If you know of the existence of such a chamber, sir, why have you kept it secret?" "Because I cannot _prove_ its existence. I do not know how to enter it, but I know it is there; I know what it was formerly used for, and I suspect that last night it was used for that same unholy purpose again--after a lapse of perhaps four thousand years! Even you would doubt me, I believe, if I were to tell you what I know, if I were to hint at what I suspect. But no doubt in your reading you have met with Julian the Apostate?" "Certainly, I have read of him. He is said to have practised necromancy."