The Pyramid Chapter 3

THE STORY OF HAMID YUSEF

One of the oddest characteristics of the human brain—so that rising young psychologist, George Carlton, had noticed more than once in the course of his life—is its facility as a long-distance jumper.

A friend is about to tell you the dénouement of an alluring bit of scandal, or something like that. You are on the tiptoe of interest. You can’t wait for the next word. Then some trivial interruption occurs, and the whole thing is left in abeyance for months, possibly for years.

Sometimes, in fact, the mind takes such a terrific jump from a springboard like this that it never comes back at all. Was this to be another case in point?

They had traveled together to the Riviera—Carlton, Miss Wentworth, and her aunt—had embarked at Marseilles on the same ship, had traveled together to Alexandria, and thence to Cairo. And still that question had remained unanswered.

“Tell me, did you ever hear of the Woman of the Pyramid?”

As Carlton sat alone in front of his window at Shepheard’s he recalled the question. His asking of it seemed somehow very remote. He recognized it now—he and Alice had not reverted to the subject by some sort of tacit consent.

Why had they never taken up again that curious conversation which had begun in the Bois de Boulogne? Why had she never referred again to her Aunt Rhodopis? Why had he never referred again to that ghost of his? Why had he not repeated his question concerning the Woman of the Pyramid?

Once more there drummed through his brain a jingle that he had heard some place years ago and stored away all unconsciously. Like a soft-footed mental ghost it had been padding up and down the bypaths of his brain almost ever since Alice and her aunt had started up the Nile, leaving him here in Cairo alone.

He wished now that he had gone with them. He was feeling cursedly lonely. He had never felt lonely before in his life—not, at any rate, when he was in a foreign country with a perpetually interesting city around him.

He tried to whistle, tried to reflect, tried to take a mental survey of his circumstances—to tell himself that he was young, healthy, with plenty of money, not too much, but sufficient; and that he was certainly the elect of the finest girl in the two hemispheres.

All this, but through it all there drummed that Satanic refrain:

Fair Rhodopé, as story tells,
The bright, unearthly nymph who dwells
’Mid sunless gold and jewels hid—
The Lady of the Pyramid!

There came a knock at the door, and Carlton was brought back to immediate circumstances with a jolt. He had come up to his room after dinner to get something or other, he hardly remembered what; had been sitting there idly dreaming ever since. He felt as though he had been awakened from a sound sleep.

Faint, yet distinct, there came to him the noises of the night—music and laughter from below-stairs; the shrill, odd pulse of the city.

“Come in—and what is it?”

“It is Osman, sir.”

“Hello, Osman,” said Carlton. “I sha’n’t need you to-night. Go out and enjoy yourself.”

“Please, sir,” said the servant, “I have found the man you speak about.”

Carlton turned with a start of pleased surprise. Osman, dressed in the white galabeah and red tarboosh of the Cairo suffragi, or personal servant, smiled at him through the semi-darkness.

“Where is he?”

“We find him on the steps of the mosque of Ibn-Tulun,” Osman said. “He thinks he’s haunted by an Afrit—by an evil spirit. He refuses to leave the mosque.”

“But there is only one Afrit that interests me, Osman, and that’s the evil spirit of the Red Pyramid.”

“Of such he speaks, monsieur.”

“What’s his name?”

“His name is Hamid Yusef.”

“Only one eye?”

“Only one eye, so far as I could see through his hair and his rags.”

It was about an hour later that Carlton, dressed inconspicuously, a red tarboosh like that which Osman wore replacing his ordinary hat, passed through the streets of Old Cairo toward the deserted, ancient mosque of which his servant had spoken. High, gray houses—as ancient as Egypt itself they seemed—looked down upon him sullenly. He felt a little tremor of excitement.

Was it really superstition that had kept Alice Wentworth and himself from reverting to the subject of their conversation in the Bois de Boulogne, he wondered; or was there some deeper reason? Egypt is full of mystery, and always will be.

He and Osman walked in silence until they came to the steps of the mosque of Ibn-Tulun.

At first Carlton had a disappointing impression that no one was there, it was all so dark and deserted; then he heard a crooning voice—the wail of the ancient Mohammedan who asks charity.

“There he is now,” whispered Osman.

Rags and gray hair, then a single gleaming point of light in the midst of it which Carlton recognized as an eye—a formless gray shadow in the gray shadows of unlighted stone steps and a blank wall. The shadow again stirred and once more there crooned from it that wailing voice, softer now than before.

“In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, have mercy on Hamid Yusef, who has seen the Woman of the Pyramid!”

Osman was translating glibly, with only a slight accent, with only an occasional French word—a souvenir of some former master of his.

“Tell him,” said Carlton, “that there are others among the faithful whom the Prophet has favored with madness; that they also claim to have seen the Woman of the Pyramid.”

“There have been many such.”

Carlton, standing very erect, looked down at the ancient beggar. There was something so hoary and patriarchal in the rags and beard, that single eye gleaming up at him through the twilight, that it seemed impossible that this could be the source of a lie—of self-deception, perhaps, of superstition; but not of a lie.

“Tell him I want to hear the story—that I’ll give him a piece of gold.”

Osman, while a perfectly good gossip, was no great hand at telling a story; yet, even he was unable to lose all of the touches which Hamid Yusef gave to his account.

“Behold, this shriveled form was once young, beautiful, filled with the juices of youth. I was the man Mark Twain spoke about—skipping up and down the pyramids like a goat. The eminent and the beautiful traveled all the way round the world, not to see the pyramids, nor even the mosques, but merely to see Hamid Yusef skip up and down the pyramid.

“Having thus won all the glory in the world, behold there remained yet another feat which beckoned me. We dwellers in the shadows of the pyramids know that not only is the sphinx haunted, but the pyramids themselves, and all the ground whereon they stand.

“There are as many spirits round about there as there are grains of sand in the desert. These have a queen. She is the Woman of the Pyramid.

“Her home is in the Red Pyramid—the third—the one she built, and it was there that I went to see her. Each night of the new moon she appears.

“It was the night of the new moon that I waited. I wore a new burnoose. I was washed and perfumed. I had new shoes. There wasn’t a lady in Cairo who wouldn’t have called me master.

“Then she stood in front of me, quivering—more beautiful than the daughter of the mosque-keeper who opens that little wicket up there every morning and throws me a piece of bread.

“She beckoned. I followed. She was lighter on her feet than the silver of the moon. Hamid Yusef, the admiration of Mark Twain, pursued. Ah, I was scented with all the perfumes of the filamin, but she smelt sweeter still, and she was laughing back at me. It was better than a hashish dream. I had my hand out, just touched her veil—”

“Go on—tell him to go on,” said Carlton.

“He says he wants money,” said Osman. “Says he has a wife and five young children.”

Carlton had put his hand into his pocket. He was willing to make a generous contribution. This was certainly what he had come after. This impressed him all the more as he glanced about him, noted again the unlighted steps, the dim, gray walls that must have stood just there for centuries; the abiding presence of the vast, old, deserted mosque of Ibn-Tulun—the oldest in Cairo—the oldest in Africa, perhaps.

His fingers took note of the loose coins in his pocket, searching, weighing, seeking a piece of gold. Then he went rigid, let out a little gasp.

The slender form of a woman had suddenly appeared, there just a few steps above them, was coming in their direction—“as lightly as the silver of the moon.”

Now, even while he looked, Carlton weighed all the pros and cons of possible delusion. His mental fingers, like the fingers in his pocket, were searching for the piece of gold—the gold of truth, in this instance. For, even before he could recognize her, he knew who this woman—whether real or spectral—would be.

She passed quite close to him—so close that his heart fluttered at once with embarrassment as well as excitement.

She had looked at him squarely and he had looked at her. In an ordinary woman that look of hers would have been brazen—it was so bold, so full of promise, so confident and frank. Yet, there was that in it which gave him a nameless thrill of fear as well. It was as full of slumberous peril as the stare of a snake.

The eyes were green. They looked straight at him from under black brows.

He tore away his own attention long enough to glance at Osman and the antique beggar, Hamid Yusef.

Osman hadn’t moved, still stood there looking down at the old man. The old man himself had shrunken a little deeper into his rags and beard.

Carlton whirled back to where his eyes had left the woman, looked up, looked down, looked all around.

She had disappeared.