The Wrath of Fu Manchu

The Mark of Maat

"What you say is true enough," Tom Borrodale admitted. "Most professional Egyptologists are unimaginative. Meant to be, I guess. You see, they come across queer things, things which just have to be written off for the good of a man's health. There's the Haunted Tomb in the Valley of the Kings where the unwrapped mummy of a strangled girl was found; there's the empty room in the Pyramid of Meydum; and there's the Woman of the Great Pyramid."

He rested bronzed and hairy legs on one chair, leaning back in another — six feet of sunbaked stolidity arrayed in shorts and a khaki shirt. It was the in-between hour, so that Shep-heard's terrace showed as nearly deserted as I had seen it since my arrival in Cairo. There were inky shadows and dazzling high lights, and, save for rather more uniforms than usual, traffic in the Sharia Kamel was much like the traffic I remembered ten years before.

"You look fit, but a trifle warworn, Tom."

"Yes." He nodded and began to fill his pipe. "I joined the infantry, like a mug — and any foot slogger who follows Montgomery wants iron feet as much as iron nerves. Enjoying a spot of leave at the moment."

We fell silent, until: "You are not one of those, I recall, who believe that Ancient Egypt holds no more mysteries for modern man?" I said.

"Not by long odds." He threw a worn pouch on the table and took a sip from his glass. "Those I have mentioned, for instance. Then, since your time, a case cropped up which eclipsed, for a while, the Tutankhamen legends. Something quite in your way."

"What was it?"

"Oh> a classic example! If we hadn't been in the middle of a numberone war, the home newspapers would have sent special reporters out on the job. It happened to a man we'll call Lake. You don't know him, and nothing would be served by using his other name. The second man — a fellow in my own line; experienced excavator and well up in Arab matters — we'll call Thomson. Then — there was a girl."

And this is the story which Tom Borrodale told me about Lake, Thomson, a girl, and the mark of Maat.

Thomson, before the war, had been employed by the Department of Antiquities, and was recognised as a sound Egyptologist. His last job (for which he had been "lent" by the department) was an attempt to complete an excavation begun by Schroeder, the American. Schroeder had sunk a shaft, at great cost, by means of which he had hoped to gain access to the tomb of a queen who was also a priestess of Maat (Maat is the Ancient Egyptian goddess of truth, a somewhat mysterious deity of whose rites little is known).

Funds failing, or something of the kind, Schroeder went home and this shaft was never completed; but Thomson, who had followed the work witir interest, decided to try to influence new capital and to carry Schroeder's shaft through. This was where Lake came into the scheme of things.

Lake and Thomson had been up at Oxford together; but Lake, who had inherited a considerable property, had blossomed into a fashionable dilettante, whereas Thomson had had to work hard for his living. Lake, latterly (this was just before the outbreak of war), had been pottering about Egypt and had developed a keen interest in Thomson's studies. Perhaps seeing himself as another Carnarvon, he agreed to put up the necessary funds and, Thomson in charge, they resumed the work.

It seems that Schroeder's calculations were accurate enough, and in rather a shorter time than Thomson had anticipated, they found their way into the antechamber of the tomb. Further progress was held up by a massive portcullis which offered every promise of a first-class nuisance. However, there were some objects of interest in the anteroom, including a great part of the regalia of a royal high priestess. An amethyst scarab set in a heavy gold ring and inscribed with the sign of Maat, Thomson pronounced to be unique.

Much encouraged, they had just gone to work on the portcullis when war was declared — and once more Schroeder's shaft had to be abandoned. Lake, who already held a pilot's certificate, joined the R.A.F., and Thomson obtained an infantry commission. In due course, both drifted back to North Africa, and both became attached to the Eighth Army. It was during the lull before Montgomery's great advance that the girl stepped into the picture.

Moira (let's call her Moira) was an Irish-Australian and had come out as a nurse with a contingent from Melbourne. Her family had plenty of money, and she had been educated in England, and I gathered that she was by way of being a beauty.

Both Lake and Thomson met her socially in Cairo, and Thomson, who found her altogether too attractive for his peace of mind, seems to have resigned her to Lake, slightly the younger man, good-looking, and in every way more suitable; or so Thomson thought. "He didn't believe," as Tom Borrodale put it, "that mere brawn, a medium brain, and small prospects beyond five hundred a year could appeal to any sensible girl. Particularly, with a charming and wealthy man, who one day would inherit a baronetcy as competition."

Thomson was shifted first; and Moira saw him off. There were tears in her eyes, and he decided that she was sorry for him. Although he had tried hard to conceal his real sentiments, he gave her credit for knowing how he felt; he believed that women were like that. To Lake, on parting, he said simply, "Good luck, old man."

When the campaign really got going. Lake's squadron was right up in support. But the two men had seen little of each other up to the time that Thomson was sent over on a special job behind Rommel's lines. His intimate knowledge of Arabic and the Arabs was not wasted. Suitably dressed, he could pass for a member of any one of six or more orders without much risk of detection.

Attired in Senusi style, he was flown across by a roundabout route to be parachuted at a selected point; and the pilot allotted to him was Lake.

Well, they were unlucky. An unsuspected A. A. gun, hidden in a wadi, scored a beauty just as they were turning northward toward the coast. It developed into a race against leaking petrol and faltering engines — and they lost. Lake crash-landed in the middle of what Borrodale described as "God knows where."

Thomson had a splinter in one shoulder, and lost a quantity of blood; the wound was difficult to dress; but Lake escaped intact. Observations showed that they were about Sixty miles west of the British lines. They had, and could carry, sufficient rations and water, sparingly shared, to last them for three days. Their radio had cracked up. It would have been grim enough under normal conditions: being in enemy country made it worse.

They started to trek back; "and," said Borrodale, "only those who know the gritty, shelterless hell called the Libyan desert can begin to imagine those days and nights."

Both were bitten by some unidentified crawling thing while they slept in the shadow of a wadi, and Thomson developed a high temperature. His injured arm swelled to nearly twice its normal size and he began to laugh out loud and talk nonsense. Lake, a man of slighter physique, was not in much better shape. But he did his best to drag Thomson along.

Just before dawn of the third day, Thomson fell into a sort of coma from which Lake was unable to rouse him. Weak as a kitten, himself, he waited until the end. It meant the loss of eighteen precious hours and of nearly all the water. Then, he scraped out a shallow pit and dragged the largest bits of stone which he could carry from a neighbouring mound to make a cairn over his dead companion. It was the best he could do to protect him from the jackals and the vultures.

Lake was picked up, a whole day later, by a reconnaissance party from an Indian unit and rushed to a hospital in Cairo.

"I may as well tell you," said Tom Borrodale, "that he was a pretty desperate case. He looked more like a mummy than a man; and for a long time he hovered on the border line."

No one followed the stages of his slow recovery with greater interest than Moria. You see, so far, he had been quite unable to tell the story of that dreadful march. Incoherent rambling formed his only conversation; and the grim facts were fearfully awaited.

When, at last, a sick man but a sane one. Lake told his story, Moira was among the first to hear it. Much to most peo ple's surprise, she took the news of Thomson's death very badly. The thing that seemed to worry her, and it was a queer thing to worry about in the circumstances, was the possibility that Lake, in his weakened state, had made an inadequate cairn — the possibility that Thomson's body might become the prey of carrion birds and beasts. Lake did his best to reassure her, but he was not altogether successful, as will appear.

Whether the thought of the dead man lying out there in the Libyan desert preyed on her mind or whether overwork at the hospital where she was stationed was responsible has little to do with the matter; but Moira had a breakdown and became a patient herself.

However, she made a good recovery, and was given sick leave. This was the cool season, and she decided to go up to Luxor. Lake was still reporting to the MO when she left, but he had never failed to send flowers, fruit and such offerings to Moira throughout her illness. They lunched together at Shep-heard's on the day she left, and Lake saw her off. About a week later he was given a clean bill, and he lost no time in heading upriver, too. He, also, decided to spend his leave in Luxor.

"This brings me," explained Tom Borrodale, "to the mystery I promised; and here is the mystery."

"There is something I want you to do for me," Moira said to Lake one morning as they sat in the hotel garden.

Lake, stretched beside her in a long chair, looked at Moira smilingly. She was well worth looking at, too: one of those chestnut blondes with warm, creamy colouring whose production in the climate of Ireland seems so odd. With her deep violet eyes and her daintiness, she looked like a flower of the sunny south. Actually, of course, Moira was born in Australia, but both her parents came from Ireland. Lake was a goodlook-er, also — a man of medium build, fairish, and always groomed perfectly, whether in uniform or out of it. He looked quite fit by this time, and so, for that matter, did Moira. They used to take long rides together on the other side of the Nile, Lake loving to act as her guide to the city of dead kings.

"You know I would do anything for you," he replied — and he meant it; his brown eyes glowed as he watched her. "What is it you want?"

That he was hopelessly, blindly in love with her no one who saw them together could doubt. She was his religion; for Lake there was no God — only Moira.

She hesitated a while before she answered, staring out over the river to where a native dahabeah moved slowly through morning haze like a giant hawk moth with lifted wings. Except for the clanking of an ancient water wheel near by, there was hardly a sound. The pair of them just lay there in a peaceful world that didn't seem to know that Hitler had ever been born. At last, Moira spoke.

"I want you to let me go down Schroeder's shaft," she said.

This was not the first time she had made that request. But Lake, gently, and evidently inspired by sincere anxiety to spare her pain, had always headed her off. In their many expeditions among the tombs and temples he had avoided showing her the spot upon which he and Thomson had been at work when war interrupted them. Moira didn't even know quite where it was located.

At first, thinking that she understood the motives of delicacy which prompted him, Moira had dropped the subject; but she had returned to it later; and now she made the request in a manner which invited no evasion.

"Very well," said Lake, "of course. It's not a pleasant business from any point of view, but if you are set on it we can go, say, on Tuesday morning. The shaft has been closed up, of course, but not permanently. I'll go into the town and gather up a few men to prepare the way. Men who know the work are easy to find."

Moira just replied, "Thank you, Vernon," and didn't refer to the matter again.

"If you want to picture Schroeder's shaft to yourself," said Tom Borrodale; "don't confuse it in your mind with an elevator shaft. It wasn't straight and it wasn't smooth; it was more like the inside of a Swiss chimney. It went sheer down for about ten feet and then it had been cut in at a pretty sharp angle to avoid solid granite. That part was shored up. Beyond, it went straight down again, a rugged, rock-studded pit. At this point Schroeder had met more rock and had had to give the job up. Thomson, later, tunnelled around this obstruction and broke into the antechamber from the south."

Lake (so Borrodale told me), although a man of proved courage, had an almost morbid horror of snakes. So that when, early on the appointed Tuesday morning he and Moira arrived at the reopened shaft. Lake sent the Arabs down first to report if all was clear.

They were an experienced crew, one of whom had worked with Thomson and Lake before. "These fellows are born excavators," said Borrodale, "whose fathers dug for Flinders Petrie and Howard Carter. The ghafir of one of the Luxor temples, a white-haired veteran who remembered Maspero, was in charge, and although already he had assembled a gang of six, he had roped in an odd man who came from the Faiyum, a big, bearded fellow, who seemed, for all his physique, since he kept well in the background, to be work-shy. I need not say that such a mob was unnecessary, but the old boy had jumped at the chance to employ all his friends and relations. It's their way."

Lines had been rigged and arrangements made for forming a sort of human escalator by means of which Moira and Lake could be passed down to the foot of the shaft. From the moment that they proceeded beyond the angle, daylight disappeared: but Lake had a big army flashlight which he housed in the hip pocket of his shorts.

They managed the descent successfully and then squeezed around that narrow semicircular cutting which gave access to the anteroom. It was very still down there, when the Arabs had been told to clear out, and it smelled of Ancient Egypt. "That smell of Ancient Egypt," said Tom Borrodale, "is something which no one has ever been able to define. But although it isn't strictly pleasant, it has some hypnotic quality which, even over a bridge of years, can call a man back to the Old Land."

A feature of the antechamber was a central pillar hewn out of the rock, and before this pillar, on the westward side, stood a sort of shrine, also of rock, upon which had rested a porphyry statuette of the goddess, Maat. The statuette had been taken to the Cairo Museum, but the rock altar was immovable, of course. There were some fine mural paintings in perfect preservation, and the floor of the square room was paved with black stone.

It is necessary to remember the shape of the entrance passage and the presence of this central pillar in order to understand why Moira, after the Arabs had gone, suddenly said, "Are you sure there's no one in the room?"

"No one but you and I," Lake assured her, and shone his light all around from where they stood. "Why?"

"I thought, or perhaps I imagined, that someone else was here," Moira explained.

Lake was wearing a white silk shirt open front, and it seemed to Moira, in the reflected light, that he looked rather ghastly. He was of a naturally pale complexion, which illness had accentuated, but since leaving hospital he had enjoyed plenty of open-air exercise and had regained colour. All the same, as he stood there, Moira thought that his face looked almost as pale as his partly exposed chest. It must be borne in mind, however, that the air of the place was hot and oppressive. Lake laughed but not overconvincingly.

"Suppose we get the inspection through," he suggested, "and return to the outer air. Although I took up this business, once, I may as well admit that the atmosphere of tombs, or their lack of atmosphere, soon bowls me over."

Well, they walked right around the antechamber, examining its murals, which Lake did his best to explain. He showed Moira where the portcullis was hidden in the eastern wall beyond which lay the real tomb.

They had completed their tour and stood one on either side of the empty shrine before the central pillar when Moira whispered, "There it is again!"

She grabbed Lake's arm so suddenly that he dropped his flashlight. It fell on the black pavement with an awesome crash and immediately went out.

"Damn," he exclaimed; then, "Don't get frightened, Moira," he added. "Stand quite still until I strike a match."

"Please don't strike a match," she said — "at least, not for a moment."

Her voice was not entirely steady, but she spoke so quietly that it was evident that she had herself well in hand.

"Whatever do you mean?" Lake asked, and his tones were pretty husky.

"Oh, it's just an impulse — perhaps a silly one. It came to me as the light went out. When you asked me to marry you, Ver-non, in Cairo, don't think that I refused lightly, or frivolously. Indeed, I was honoured, and very, very sorry to have to hurt you. But I told you, quite honestly, why it was impossible, and I respected you enough to tell you, when you asked me, the other man's name — although he didn't know."

"That's all true," said Lake, in a low voice. "But what has it to do with our remaining here in the dark?"

"Just that while we stand here, by this shrine of Maat, which you — and he — discovered, I want to ask you a question. Will you promise to answer truly — in the name of Maat?"

"In the name of Maat! That's a queer pagan oath."

"Perhaps it is. But will you?"

"Of course."

"Very well. Swear, by Maat, with your hand on her altar, that you buried him as well and as deeply as was in your power."

For the next few seconds there was that sort of silence which seems to throb, as though an astral dynamo vibrated near by. Then, Lake's voice came out of the darkness:

"I buried him as well, and as deeply, as was in my power. I swear this — in the name of Maat."

The thing that followed may never be satisfactorily explained. Conjecture is permissible, but proof unlikely. There was a blinding flash of light. It shone directly onto Lake's face, leaving everything else in utter blackness. Something shot toward him, something which Moira described as "a brown shadow". Lake uttered a choking sound and fell. There was utter blackness again.

Moira's shriek — the only sound that she uttered before collapsing, unconscious — was heard by the waiting Arabs. It had a curious (but by no means unusual) effect. For a number of reasons, Schroeder's shaft was reputed to be haunted by a powerful and evil spirit. In consequence, on hearing that wild cry, three of the gang promptly bolted and were seen no more.

It was the white-bearded ghafir who carried Moira up. Laying her in a shady place, he returned for Lake. And when they brought Lake out into morning sunshine, only the old Arab's holy reputation (he was a hadji who had five times kissed the black stone of the Kaaba), his fists, and his uncommonly fluent invective, prevented the others from deserting as well.

Imprinted on Lake's pale skin, right over the heart, and growing plainer every minute, was a reddish-blue mark, like a bruise. It was clearly defined, resembling a seal, and it represented the conventional Feather of Justice: the mark of Maat!

"This extraordinary story does not rest on the testimony of the Arabs alone," said Tom Borrodale. "By the time that Moira was in a fit state to see Lake (who was dead) the mark had faded into a sort of general contusion. But she could swear to its character, nevertheless; there were many similar inscriptions on the walls of the antechamber."

Medical evidence, when it could be obtained (they had to hold a postmortem), showed that death had been from shock, apparently caused by a trmendous blow over the heart.

"So there's your mystery," Borrodale commented; "and I flatter myself it's a pretty deep one. Which brings me to Thomson's story."

"To Thomson's story?" I echoed.

"Yes. About a week later Thomson turned up in Cairo. He had a story to tell, also; but he told it (in full) to no one but Moira."

And this is Thomson's story:

Thomson came temporarily to his senses in that dreadful hour just before dawn of the third day in the desert. Hovering between sanity and delirium, he saw Lake creeping stealthily away over a neighbouring mound — taking with him their remaining stock of food and water!

He staggered to his feet and tried to run after Lake. He shouted — or he thought he was shouting: it may have been a husky-whisper.

And Lake? Lake looked back and then began to run, also… away from Thomson! Thomson ran on until he fell.

His next recollection was one of lying in an Arab tent, raving. A man and an old woman were trying to soothe him. They forced him to swallow some bitter draught. A good Moslem respects insanity, looking upon it as a visitation of God and a thing to merit a True Believer's pity… In time (Thomson had no idea if in days or in weeks) he recovered. He had been picked up and tended by a small party of wandering Bedawi; and he was his own man again.

Lake! The mere thought of Lake set Thomson's brain on fire. His first idea was how soon he could find his way back and expose Lake. Nothing else mattered until he had broken Lake, until he had shown him up for the cad and cur he thought him to be. Then — he fell to thinking about the thing from another angle.

"You will recall," said Borrodale, "that both had been bitten, or stung, by some unspecified reptile or insect. It occurred to Thomson that Lake might not have been in his right mind when he deserted, when he left a fellow man to almost certain death in the desert. This theory worried him so much that he determined to prove or disprove it before he acted."

"Thomson must have been a fellow of singular generosity — or simplicity."

"That's as may be. I merely state the facts. Anyway, he knew that he would be posted missing, perhaps dead, and he made up his mind to stay missing until he could find out if Lake had got back — and, if so, what Lake had said."

I gathered that, according to Thomson's explanation when he turned up in Cairo, he had been wandering about in Arab dress, bearded to the eyes (he was heavily hirsute), in Libya and Egypt for many weeks, still uncertain of his real identity. The fact was (or so Borrodale hinted) that Thomson was seeking news of Lake.

"It is probable," said Borrodale, "that he learned of Lake's illness, and it is possible that he made his way up to Luxor in order to confirm the reported facts. He might have reached Cairo, for instance, just after Lake left. It is even possible, if a little farfetched, that he was watching Lake and Moira. I hesitate to suggest so fantastic a theory, but he may have been one of the party recruited by the ghafir to reopen Schroeder's shaft. The blinding light described by Moira would not be inconsistent with someone suddenly turning on a flashlight — someone concealed behind the central pillar."

While Tom Borrodale had been talking, people had begun to drift onto the formerly deserted terrace, and now, from behind me, I heard a soft call: "Coo-ee, Tom!"

Tom Borrodale came to his feet at a jump; his eyes gleamed; his whole rugged face irradiated happiness. I turned and stared at a girl who had just come up the steps. She was well worth staring at: a petite chestnut blonde with that Irish rose complexion which has inspired so many songs, and widely spaced violet eyes. She wore nurse's uniform. A quick intake of breath drew my glance away. Tom Borrodale was grasping his left arm, which evidently pained him.

"Moved my chair too hurriedly," he explained. "Stopped a bit of shrapnel with this arm."

He had also grasped it too hurriedly; for a heavy gold ring which he wore with the bezel concealed had got twisted, and I saw that it was set with a large amethyst scarab.

"You don't know Sheila Asthore, do you?" he asked. "Shei-la, one of my oldest friends has turned up in the nick of time — to act as best man." He turned to me. "We're to be married in three days."