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tombs. The widespread legend sufficed to keep them inviolate against both desert robbers and the Moslem invaders of the country. We were the first to open them."

"But, Neil, you don't believe in that stuff about the curse, do you?" I asked him.

"Well, I didn't," answered Neil, "when I went along with the University of Virginia expedition. But what happened? Lord Cardingham, who had largely financed the expedition, fell into an excavation and broke his neck. Burke was taken sick with a mysterious fever and died within a day. Plague, they called it—but there is no plague in Upper Egypt.

"Watrous pricked his finger with a thorn splinter and died of blood poisoning. Three of our natives died mysteriously within a week. Lewis and Holmes were taken ill and sent down to the coast. Lewis died, and Holmes was drowned when his vessel was shipwrecked off Sicily.

"By that time, I was the last one left. I was supposed to be immune against the curse, because I was the physician of the party. I didn't believe—but I had seen too much to disbelieve. I determined to sift the matter to the bottom.

"I succeeded, by bribes, in persuading some of the natives to load the coffins and trophies upon a flat-bottomed boat. I managed to get them down to the coast and so to America. Doctor Coyne, with whom I had worked, and one of the leading neurologists of the world, suggested that I should have the use of this old house, which he owns, in which to carry out my experiment."

"What experiment?" I asked, looking at Neil incredulously, for his face was almost fanatical.

"First," answered Neil, "I must have it from your own lips that you are prepared to associate yourself with me, taking your chance of coming under the curse."

"I've told you I'm in to the limit," I answered. "But so far as the curse is concerned, I think it's a lot of poppycock."

Neil looked at me in a queer way, and walked to the papyrus. He began translating:

"That Menes, the accursed one, who has been utterly destroyed by fire, may never return to any earthly habitation . . . the curse of Horus, the curse of Anubis, of Osiris, of Hapimou, of the Nile god, of Shu, of the winds, of the god Mesti, the hawk-headed, rest upon him who shall violate these tombs. May he die by water, thorn, and fire. . . ."

"Does it really say 'thorn,' Neil?" I asked, remembering that Watrous had died from a thorn splinter.

"May he die by pestilence and the winds and shipwreck, and by the beak and claw of Mesti. May his bowels be consumed by inward fire, and he and all his perish. May he. . . .

"But I reckon that's enough," continued Neil, looking back at me from the papyrus. His manner grew almost furtive. "How would you like to take a look at the little princess?" he asked in a low tone.

"I certainly should," I answered. "Do you mean to say. . . ?"

"Yes, I've opened them all. Of course the dampness of Pequod Island would play havoc with them. But, you see, the experiment. . . ."

He broke off, went to the cabinet, and took out a chisel, which he inserted in the edge of the mummy casket. Evidently he had opened the casket a number of times, for the lid, which was perfectly preserved, despite the centuries that