“Here for a long time I lived like a nun. No one outside our small household ever saw me. When I went anywhere I was always heavily veiled. Ahmes taught me to speak _Coptic_. This was the mysterious language of Zalithea! Arabic I knew, because I had had an Arab nurse from childhood--an old member of Ahmes’s company--Safîyeh! “A year before the papyrus was brought to your father, Ahmes went to Egypt. He erected the screen, as you know, his agent, Hassan es-Sugra, having traced the real, or front, entrance to the tomb. He broke through as far as the first portcullis, which he knew was intact. Then he reclosed and hid the entrance as you found it. The hieroglyphic of ‘She Who Sleeps’ he himself carved in the rock. “By the other tunnel, the one he first discovered, he took in lifting gear and swung up the stone sarcophagus lid. The painted sarcophagus, which he had made in New Jersey and shipped out, he put inside. Then he lowered the stone lid again. The tables, lamps, couch, and other things he set in place. Some of these were genuine. Some he had made. He also added the cartouche of ‘She Who Sleeps’ to the ancient inscriptions painted on the wall. “He cemented the door and, from the tunnel above, blocked the secret entrance. Then he came back to America. The stage was set for his last and greatest illusion. “The ‘Zalithea Papyrus’ and the ‘Formula’ Ahmes had been at work upon for two years. They were the biggest achievements of his career! The materials had cost him no end of research. But no other man in Europe or America could have written them--to pass Horace Pain and Dr. Rittenburg! “Yes, Barry! I’m proud of him! Until you came, it never occurred to me to question his way of life. Besides, he had taught me to hate the name of Cumberland. It was a mania with him. I believe for a long time he held John Cumberland responsible for my mother’s death. “The Zalithea dress, the strange ingredients mentioned in the Formula, and all the other things, he got from many sources, working patiently for months and months. He put his whole soul into the affair. “Then, just as we were ready, you had an accident right outside the house! “We were in an awful panic. But Ahmes was always at his best in an emergency. You know how we managed to keep out of the matter. The household was dispersed. Only Mrs. Brown stayed to clear things up. I was hidden in my guardian’s apartment in New York. And I nearly ruined everything one evening by going out to our old garden in New Jersey to get some flowers. Yes! I was there that day when you came! “As soon as the date of departure was fixed, Safîyeh and another Arab, called Omar, were sent to Egypt. Soon afterward I went, also. I sailed on the same ship, to Cherbourg, as Professor Blackwell! But it didn’t matter, because we had arranged that I should stay in my stateroom all the way.