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Oh, for the happy ignorance of those days when he knew nothing about Egypt except that it was the place from which the cigarettes came!... Brander, no doubt, had gone out to send a cablegram of congratulation to Doctor Athelstone, and while he was away the woman had started in to repair a crack in that precious old Amosis of hers. Perhaps the moths had got into him!
Simpkins had heard of the hall, for it had been written up just after Doctor Athelstone, who was a man of some wealth, had assembled in it his private collection of Egyptian treasures. But he knew, too, that it had become increasingly difficult to penetrate since Mrs. Athelstone had been made the subject of some entertaining, but too imaginative, Sunday specials.
Alfred W.R. Athelstone, well known in London as the president of the American branch of the Royal Society of Egyptian Exploration and Research, arrived here this morning and is stopping at the Carlton. He announces that the Khedive has been graciously pleased to grant to his society the sole right to excavate the tombs recently discovered by one of its agents in the Karnak region.
Athelstone, and hovering between them the materialized, but homeless, soul of Madame Blavatsky, trying to make choice of an abiding-place, the whole enlivened and illuminated with much "snappy" reading matter. Now, Simpkins was the man to make a managing editor's dreams come true, so Naylor rubbed the lamp for him and told him what he craved.
Alfred W.R. Athelstone, was a Church of England clergyman, whose interest in Egyptology had led him to accept the presidency of the American branch of the Royal Society, she was a leader among the Theosophists. And now that the old head of the cult was dead, it was rumored that Mrs. Athelstone had announced the reincarnation of Madame Blavatsky in her own person.
But nothing could long repress the exuberant Simpkins, and as he started down the stairway to the street he was exclaiming to himself: "Did you butt in, Simp., old boy, or were you pushed?" At nine o'clock the next morning Simpkins presented himself at the Society's office, and a few minutes later he found himself in the fascinating presence of Mrs. Athelstone.
"You simply haven't got her Bertillon measurements, Simp.," he was forced to admit, after an hour of fruitless thinking. "You'll have to trust in your rabbit's foot." But if Mrs. Athelstone was a new species to him, the office boy was not. He knew that youth down to the last button on his jacket.
He had simply walked into a small outer office. A self-sufficient youth of twelve, who was stuffed into a be-buttoned suit, was its sole occupant. "Hello, bub!" said Simpkins to this Cerberus of the threshold. "Mrs. Athelstone in?" and he drew out his letter of introduction; for he had instantly decided to use it in place of a card, as being more likely to gain him admittance.
"Professor Abel Able, Professor Jeremiah Moses, Sir Wilfrid Athelstone, Costake Theriade," Cosmo continued, "you will please come forward to act as members of the jury, of which I name myself also a member. I shall be both judge and juror here, but I will hear what the rest of you may have to say."
"What way is that to treat a king?" demanded Mrs. Athelstone; and the anger in her voice was so real that Simpkins, startled, blundered out: "I really meant no disrespect. Very careless of me, I'm sure." He looked so distressed that Mrs. Athelstone's anger melted into a delicious little laugh, as she answered: "Really, Simpkins, you musn't be so bungling. These mummies are priceless."
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