Stories and legendary accounts of strange things that the presence of these two brought poured out then. They were obviously somewhat mixed, one account borrowing picturesque details from another, and all in disproportion, as when people tell stories in a language they are little familiar with. But, listening with avidity, yet also with uneasiness, somehow, Henriot put two and two together. Truth stood behind them somewhere. These two held traffic with the powers that ancient Egypt knew. "Tell Felix, dear, about the time you met the nephew--horrid creature--in the Valley of the Kings," he heard his wife say presently. And Mansfield told it plainly enough, evidently glad to get it done, though. "It was some years ago now, and I didn't know who he was then, or anything about him. I don't know much more now--except that he's a dangerous sort of charlatan-devil, _I_ think. But I came across him one night up there by Thebes in the Valley of the Kings--you know, where they buried all their Johnnies with so much magnificence and processions and masses, and all the rest. It's the most astounding, the most haunted place you ever saw, gloomy, silent, full of gorgeous lights and shadows that seem alive--terribly impressive; it makes you creep and shudder. You feel old Egypt watching you." "Get on, dear," said his wife. "Well, I was coming home late on a blasted lazy donkey, dog-tired into the bargain, when my donkey boy suddenly ran for his life and left me alone. It was after sunset. The sand was red and shining, and the big cliffs sort of fiery. And my donkey stuck its four feet in the ground and wouldn't budge. Then, about fifty yards away, I saw a fellow--European apparently--doing something--Heaven knows what, for I can't describe it--among the boulders that lie all over the ground there. Ceremony, I suppose you'd call it. I was so interested that at first I watched. Then I saw he wasn't alone. There were a lot of moving things round him, towering big things, that came and went like shadows. That twilight is fearfully bewildering; perspective changes, and distance gets all confused. It's fearfully hard to see properly. I only remember that I got off my donkey and went up closer, and when I was within a dozen yards of him--well, it sounds such rot, you know, but I swear the things suddenly rushed off and left him there alone. They went with a roaring noise like wind; shadowy but tremendously big, they were, and they vanished up against the fiery precipices as though they slipped bang into the stone itself. The only thing I can think of to describe 'em is--well, those sand-storms the Khamasin raises--the hot winds, you know." "They probably _were_ sand," his wife suggested, burning to tell another story of her own. "Possibly, only there wasn't a breath of wind, and it was hot as blazes--and--I had such extraordinary sensations--never felt anything like it before--wild and exhilarated--drunk, I tell you, drunk."