Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II OR five minutes the decorous silence of the anteroom was unbroken. Then the door of the inner office swung open and closed be- iiind a dejected-looking young man, and the boy, without so much as -asking for a card, preceded the secretly-elated Simpkins into the hall. They had stepped from the present into the past. Simpkins found himself looking between a double row of pillars, covered with hieroglyphics in red and black, to an altar of polished black basalt, guarded on either side by stone sphinxes. Behind it, straight from the lofty ceiling, fell a veil of black velvet, embroidered with golden scarabaei, and fringed with violet. The approach, a hundred paces or more, was guarded by twoscore mummies in black cases, standing upright along the pillars. "Watcher gawkin' at ?" demanded the youth, grinning up at the staring Simpkins. "Lose dat farmer-boy face or it's back to de ole homestead for youse. Her royal nibs ain't lookin' for no good milker." "Oh, I'm just rubbering to see where the goat's kept," the reporter answered, trying to assume a properly metropolitan expression. " Suppose I'll have to take the third degree before I can get out of here." The youth started noiselessly across the floor, and Simpkins saw that he wore sandals. His own heavy walking boots rang loudly on the flagged floors and woke the echoes in the vaulted ceiling. He began to tread on tiptoe, as one moves in a death-chamber. And that was what this great room was: a charnel-house filled with the spoil of tombs and temples. The dim light fluttered down from quaint, triangular windows, set with a checker- work of brick-red and saffron-colored panes about a central design, a scarlet heart upon a white star, and within that a black scarabaeus. The white background of the walls threw into r...