We ate heartily, the pair of us, that evening. The effect on me was comforting and humanising. I felt well disposed to my fellow man--and woman, and inclined to sanguine expectations. Miss Ottley, however, was, as usual, impenetrable. She belonged of right to the age of iron. A female anachronism. To cheer her I suggested a game of chess. She consented, and mated me in fourteen moves. We played again, and once more she beat me. My outspoken admiration of her skill--I rather fancy my own play at chess--left her perfectly imperturbable. In the third game she predicted my defeat at the eleventh move on making her own fourth. I did my best, but her prophecy was fulfilled. "Enough!" said I, and retiring to the door way, I lighted a cigarette. "Hassan Ali, our dragoman, should be here to-morrow," she presently remarked, "with troops." "They will never catch our rascal Arabs," I replied. "With five clear days' start those beggars might be anywhere." "Just so," said she, "but they will be of some use none the less--if only to drag that sarcophagus out of the temple." "Eh!" I exclaimed--and looked at her sharply. "What is the matter with the thing--here?" She shrugged her shoulders, then of a sudden smiled. "Do you wish to be amused?" "Of all things." "Then prepare to laugh at me. While you slept this afternoon----" She paused. "Yes," I said. "My father awoke." "Oh!" "And conversed." "Good," I murmured. "He was sensible." "I do not know. He seemed so. But he did not speak to me." "You said that he conversed." "Ay--but with a shadow." Miss Ottley compressed her lips and looked at me defiantly. "A shadow," she repeated. "I saw it distinctly. It moved across the room and stood beside the cot. It was the shadow of a man. But you are not laughing." "Not yet," said I. "Had this shadow a voice?" "No." "What did your father say to it?" "He implored it to be patient." "And the shadow?" "Vanished." "And you?" "I told myself I dreamed. I tried not to die of terror, and succeeded." "Why did you not wake me?" "I wished to, but the shadow intervened." "It reappeared?" "For a second that reduced me to a state of trembling imbecility." "That infernal perfume has simply shattered your nerves," I commented cheerfully. "You'll be better after a good rest. Overstrain and anxiety of course are to a degree responsible. Indeed, they might be held accountable for the hallucination alone. But I blame the perfume to a great extent, because it similarly affected me." "What!" she cried, "you saw a shadow, too?" I laughed softly. "My own--no other. But its appearance shocked me horribly. In my opinion that coffin perfume works powerfully upon the optic nerve. How are you feeling now?" "As well as ever in my life." "No fears?" "None. But I admit a distrust of that sarcophagus--or rather of the perfume it contains. Are you sure that you stopped up the chisel hole securely?"