The Aga then told him a story--so like those in circulation at Luxor in 1923, when it was rumoured by natives that every woman visitor to the tomb of Tutankhamen came away with gold jewellery concealed in her skirts! Belzoni denied the rumours of fabulous wealth and of a reported large golden cock crammed with diamonds and pearls! The Aga was crestfallen. "He seated himself before the sarcophagus," wrote Belzoni, "and I was afraid he would take it into his head that this was the treasure and break it to pieces to see whether it contained any gold." Fortunately he did not. He merely delivered himself of the remarkable observation that the tomb of Seti I "would be a good place for a harem, as the women would have something to look at," and then, happily for Egyptology and the Soane Museum, departed. * * * "Is this place haunted?" I asked the caretaker, just to see what he would say. "No, sir!" he replied scornfully. "I've heard noises, but it's mice. There isn't such a thing as ghosts, believe me." But he's wrong; for I saw old Sir John as plainly as anything in those high, leisurely rooms, arranging things, prying into them with a cut crystal, and touching them with fingers that caressed. Aladdin's Cave As I passed through a steel door set in spiked steel railings a hefty commissionaire secretly pressed a bell that gave the alarm downstairs, so that when I appeared two equally hefty commissionaires sprang out and asked me for my password. No; it was not the Bank of England, or the Tower of London, or Buckingham Palace: it was one of the largest safe deposit vaults in London. Each person who rents a safe there chooses a password--any word he likes; "Annie Laurie," or "Mrs. Jones's Baby," or "Good Queen Anne." Till the commissionaires know him by sight the depositor is held up every time he goes to his safe and is asked to stand and deliver. If he forgets the password he is turned away unless he can prove his identity and his right to unlock his treasures. Fabulous millions are locked away underground in the safe deposits of London. The companies themselves do not know how much treasure they guard day and night. Now and then the inquiry of an insurance company reveals the fact that a fourteen-inch safe holds a cool million pounds' worth of treasure. When the commissionaires had looked me over with an expression which inferred that I probably carried on me acetylene blowpipes, a few six-shooters, and a dozen Mills bombs, they called the secretary, who had promised to take me through Aladdin's Cave. The vaults resembled the interior of a great Atlantic liner. In every direction stretched long lit corridors with doors every few feet along them. What doors! Some of them had handles like a giant's dumb-bells and locks like young cartwheels. I imagine that the door of Lord Astor's safe would laugh cheerfully at a howitzer.