E-text prepared by David Garcia and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net/) from page images generously made available by the Kentuckiana Digital Library (http://kdl.kyvl.org/) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 17020-h.htm or 17020-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/0/2/17020/17020-h/17020-h.htm) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/0/2/17020/17020-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through the Electronic Text Collection of the Kentuckiana Digital Library. See http://kdl.kyvl.org/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=kyetexts;cc=kyetexts;xc=1&idno=B92-232-31280846&view=toc THE FALSE GODS by GEORGE HORACE LORIMER Author of "Letters from a Self-made Merchant to His Son" [Illustration] [Illustration] [Illustration] [Illustration: "Then ... the arms crushed him against the stone breast."] [Illustration] D. Appleton and Company New York 1906 Copyright, 1906, by George Horace Lorimer Copyright, 1906, by D. Appleton and Company Entered at Stationer's Hall, London Published April, 1906 [Illustration] [Illustration] To A.V.L. [Illustration] [Illustration] CONTENTS PAGE I. 1 II. 11 III. 21 IV. 33 V. 39 VI. 51 VII. 59 VIII. 69 IX. 77 X. 81 [Illustration] LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE "Then ... the arms crushed him against the stone breast" _Frontispiece_ "'Aw, fergit it'" 4 "'She's the Real Thing'" 24 "Suddenly she felt him coming, and turned" 56 [Illustration] [Illustration] THE FALSE GODS I It was shortly after ten o'clock one morning when Ezra Simpkins, a reporter from the _Boston Banner_, entered the Oriental Building, that dingy pile of brick and brownstone which covers a block on Sixth Avenue, and began to hunt for the office of the Royal Society of Egyptian Exploration and Research. After wandering through a labyrinth of halls, he finally found it on the second floor. A few steps farther on, a stairway led down to one of the side entrances; for the building could be entered from any of the four bounding streets.