The Pyramid Chapter 6

THROUGH GHOSTLY CORRIDORS

He knew that they had not entered the Pyramid of Menkaura by the passageway used by tourists to-day. In that monograph of his there is a rough sketch which indicates, so far as possible, the route which he and “the woman” had followed—a succession of ghostly corridors, concerning which there is to-day no other record. Nothing will ever be done about it, most likely. The indications—Carlton admits it frankly enough—leave much to be desired.

Neither geometry nor geography were uppermost in his mind at the time, as you may readily imagine.

It was, indeed, to some extent as though he were but another molecule passing through intermolecular space. Yet there was nothing unnatural about it.

It wasn’t the first time that he had been into the pyramid. There was the same impression of warm darkness, of silent, stirless air. He is quite sure that “the Woman” carried no light. Such light as there was seemed to be diffused, just sufficient to discover the massive stone walls and roofs and floor.

Corridor after corridor, narrow and long! Once or twice they had paused in front of a monolith which blocked the passage, had seen it silently displaced to let them pass.

Then a rock-chamber not much more than ten feet square—a cruciform couch in the center of it covered with lion-skins, the walls richly frescoed with figures which even he knew were explanatory of Ethiopian magic.

“I know that others have gone mad through having looked at you,” said Carlton. “Is that what has happened to me?”

“You are here because I wished it,” she said.

He sought to disengage her arms from about his neck, had a panicky sensation that the thing was wrong, even if it were nothing but an obsession. She merely held him tighter, while he saw appear in her face a glint of cruelty as well as of immense yearning.

“Tell me that you love me,” she said.

The words, while spoken very softly, had as much of anger as there was of pleading in them.

“I do,” said Carlton: “but I’m pledged to Alice.”

“Alice—you mean Berenice.”

“I’ve always called her Alice,” Carlton answered, still struggling.

“Berenice!”

There was such contempt and hatred in the inflection that Carlton leaped to the defense—mentally, that is.

“As you will,” he whispered; “but I am bound to her.”

“Love me, anyway,” came the answer in a voice that was softer and more savage still.

She was leaning over him. Her face lent itself to savagery—green eyes, straight, black brows, red lips that could be cruel and smiling all at the same time. How different she was from that other one—the girl with the fair skin, violet eyes, apricot hair.

But what was that riddle of the names—Alice or Berenice, Berenice or Alice? The strange name seemed somehow familiar, was stirring up a whole lake of latent memory. A moment, and he was asking himself not where the name Berenice came from, but how he had happened to refer to her as Alice at all.

Then he noticed something else that increased his dismay—baffled him, brought the hot blood surging once more to his face in an unmistakable blush. This enchantress had drawn back slightly, and he saw that his first impression of her was correct—she was attired in the scant, disquieting dress of ancient Egypt. With a calamitous lurch, he knew that it was the same with him—the old, familiar sensation that he had theretofore known only in dreams, the sensation of finding himself in a crowded ballroom half-clothed.

Instantly he was making a wild effort to recover himself, to achieve the truth, to wake himself up.

“Tell me,” he faltered, “what has happened. You are Rhodopis—”

“You dare to speak like that to the Isis?”

He noticed that there was not so much of anger in the question as there was of amazement.

“Are you, indeed, crazed, as you suggested a little while ago?”

Before he could answer she had kissed him.

“Wake me up—I want to wake up,” said Carlton. “I have seen the Woman of the Pyramid—know all that I want to know. I’ll make a report on the facts—interesting stuff for the Society for Psychical Research—”

Said the woman: “My governor is out of his head. Poor Menni is, indeed, mad.”

Carlton was sitting up, heart thumping, head hot.

“Menni—Isis—Berenice! I’m not mad. I’m under a temporary spell, perhaps.”

Even while he was saying this he was perfectly conscious that he was somehow making a fool of himself. But he persisted—hopelessly, yet knowing that therein lay his only hope.

“Who are you?” he demanded thickly. “And who am I?”

He put the questions doggedly. The painted stone all round him, that cruciform couch covered with lion-skins, he himself in the scant attire of another age, then this demonesque, beautiful, terrible apparition just in front of him!

She had again drawn back slightly, was looking at him now with a shade of fearful amusement, yet yearning still.

“I am your queen, Netokris, who loves you. You are Menni, governor of the Double Palace. Calm yourself. Just now you called me Rhodopis. I know that you would not apply to me that name of reproach if you were in your proper senses. But I would be even Rhodopis for you. Call me your courtesan if you will. That is why I brought you here. There now—there—”

She had again drawn near to him—nearer, for she at no time had been far away, couldn’t have been, even had she wished, the room was so small.

Over Carlton’s senses there again swept like a silken pall that gulf of delicate, intoxicating perfume.

There was a ringing in his ears which gradually became the faint, clear music of an elfin orchestra. He did not resist now as he felt that pair of vibrant, bare arms again encircling his head.

His brain was still doing its best to recover old realities, to shake off the sense of delusion—a delusion which itself was instantly becoming more and more real.

The words came back to him: “I am your queen, Netokris, who loves you. You are Menni, governor of the Double Palace.”

It was this that troubled him—that the statement appeared increasingly reasonable and true—that he was not George Carlton—that there could be no such person—but that he was Menni himself, no less.

“And you will love me,” came the tremulous whisper.

This time he answered: “But I am bound to Berenice.”

“Love me, anyway,” the woman answered, “or I’ll kill you both.”