Climbing into the sarcophagus, I selected a spot, and using the weight of my body in place of a hammer, I forced the chisel into the lead. It bit into the metal slowly but surely. One inch. One inch and a half. Suddenly it slipped. I fell forward and was brought up by the handle. The mystery was solved. I recovered my position and wiped my forehead. Instantly a thin but strangely overpowering perfume filled my nostrils. It resembled camphor, and violets, and lavender, and oil of almonds, and a hundred other scents, but was truly like none of them. It created and compelled, however, a confused train of untranslatable reflections which might have been memories. But God knows what they were. I experienced a mysterious sensation of immeasurable antiquity. And wildly absurd as the idea appears set forth in sober language, something assured me that I was thousands of years old or had lived before--so long--so very long ago. I saw lights--the sound of chanting voices and of rushing waters filled my ears. I seemed to be assisting at a solemn ritual. Ghostly forces and dim spirit figures filled the cave. The air was thick with incense fumes. My reason rocked and swung. Just in time I realised that I was becoming mysteriously anæsthetised. I held my breath and with a powerful effort leaped to the floor. Then I carefully blocked up the chisel hole with my kerchief and staggered into the open air. Very soon I was my own man again. Returning filled with apprehension for the patient, I found nothing to alarm me. The perfume had absolutely disappeared. Sir Robert was sleeping like a babe. I took a nip of brandy and sitting down, gave myself to dreams watching the sarcophagus. What was its secret? And what the secret of Sir Robert Ottley's passionate interest in the corpse of Ptahmes that had been potent enough to call him back to life from the very brink of dissolution? But plainly I must wait to learn. For it would not do to trifle with the perfume in the cavern. In that confined space it might bring about the destruction of us all. Already it had affected me. My head ached fearfully, and I knew that my blood vessels were distended, and that my heart was still violently excited. My agitation was not all painful. There was an insidious pleasure mingled with it, an intangible titillation of the nerves; but that only alarmed me the more. The poisons that are most to be feared are those which captivate the senses; they convey no warning to the body, and betray the mind, however watchful, by effecting a paralysis of will. Perhaps--unwittingly--I had been very near death. The notion was disturbing. I began to regard the sarcophagus much in the light of an infernal machine possessing dangerous potentialities for ill. I determined as soon as possible--that is to say, as soon as help arrived--to have it removed from the sick room to the pylon. There at least it would be less manifestly perilous; having the play of the