The Quest of Julian Day (4 page)

He shook his head. ‘I think I'd better tell you now because I'm quite sure I can rely on you not to let it go any further then, if you decide that you would rather not participate in this affair which is, to a very mild extent, illegal, you would feel quite free to make other plans for your winter in Egypt.'

‘Just as you like, sir,' I agreed, settling back in my chair.

‘You've read Herodotus, of course.'

‘Yes; not recently though.'

‘In any case you know enough about it to realise that whereas half a century ago Herodotus was regarded as a romancer and the prize liar among ancient historians, modern investigations have proved that he was nothing of the kind. His records of his travels sound fantastic on the face of them, particularly as many of his stories are completely unsupported by any other ancient writings. But during this century we've succeeded in digging up and translating innumerable records on stone or pottery which prove conclusively that nine-tenths of the particulars which he set down in his essays on the ancient civilisations were genuine facts. I wonder if by chance you remember the passage in which he refers to the Persian conquest of Egypt? It is in the early part of Book III.'

‘No,' I confessed. ‘I don't.'

‘Well, briefly it was this. During some five thousand years, or perhaps even longer, Egypt, protected by her natural barriers of desert from barbarian hordes, had developed probably the most remarkable and wealthy civilisation the world has ever known. Her two greatest cities, Memphis and Thebes, each had over five million inhabitants, which makes them greater than any city with the one exception of London, in Europe at the present day. In Thebes particularly, the accumulated wealth in gold and jewels in the temples passes imagination, because it was the Sacred City of the great XVIIIth, XIXth and XXth Dynasties which conquered the whole of Palestine right down to Mesopotamia and added the wealth of many other long-civilised peoples to their own.

‘Long before 525 B.C. the tide of conquest had turned and, in that year, came the Persian invasion, Cambyses descended on Egypt with his hordes of horsemen, destroyed her armies and sacked her mighty cities. Having deposed the reigning Pharaoh, Psammetichos III, Cambyses settled down to rest his legions as the new monarch in Thebes. Yet he was not content with having taken the London of the ancient world and, like Alexander who came after him, he sighed for fresh worlds to conquer.

‘To the west of the Nile Valley lies the Libyan desert. It stretches for a thousand miles from north to south and is over nine hundred miles in width. That portion of the Sahara is almost waterless. Arabs cut corners off it with their caravans
but no human being ever succeeded in actually crossing that desert until this was accomplished in the nineteen-twenties by aeroplane.

‘Cambyses learned that to the north-west of the desert there lay another mighty city inhabited by a wealthy people. Their descendants are the Senussi Arabs who inhabit the Oasis of Siwa, a great tract of fertile territory which is known in ancient times as the Oasis of Jupiter-Ammon. Greedy for further spoil, Cambyses determined to march his armies against the Senussi, but he was faced with the almost insoluble problem of crossing those three hundred miles of waterless desert.'

Sir Walter paused and, immensely interested in what he had been telling me, I asked quickly, ‘Did he succeed in finding a way?'

‘The victories of the Persians were largely due to the admirable staff-work they put in before initiating any fresh campaign, and campaigns were leisurely things in those days,' he answered slowly. ‘Time was no object, and while he lorded it in Thebes, Cambyses prepared for his march by making good the lack of wells in a very ingenious manner.

‘He collected thirty thousand wine-jars, filled them with water and despatched them with a huge caravan one day's march into the desert. There they were buried in the sand so that the water should not evaporate. The caravan then returned and picked up another thirty thousand jars which they took two days' march into the desert and buried. And so on and so on until, after many months' labour, he had established a complete chain of halting-places for his army, at each of which they would have an ample supply of water, along a five hundred mile route direct to the Oasis of Jupiter-Ammon.

‘When the time came for Cambyses to march he was a sick man. He retained sufficient men with him to keep Egypt in subjection but sent fifty thousand of his finest troops off into the desert, meaning to follow them afterwards. As he considered Thebes as no more than a temporary resting-place in his great march to conquer the known world, he naturally sent with the Army the bulk of the immense spoils which he had taken from the Egyptian temples. There can be no doubt about that; otherwise we should have found them by now either in
Egypt itself or during our excavations in the Persian capital had he sent them back there.

‘Cambyses' legions set out on their march but when they were two-thirds of their way across the desert their Senussi guides deliberately misled them, preferring death for themselves to opening the way to the conquest of their people. The story of their marches and counter-marches lost in the burning sand; of their last, desperate endeavour to stagger back across the endless miles to the Nile and safety is one no man will ever know. All history tells us is that not a single Persian arrived at the Oasis of Jupiter-Ammon, and that no survivor ever returned to tell Cambyses the fate of his legions. That great army, carrying with it the accumulated treasures of five thousand years of civilisation, vanished utterly, the 50,000 men in it perishing of sunstroke and thirst, lying down to die where the last stages of exhaustion overcame them; and no trace of the place where they foundered, out there in the limitless desert, has ever yet been discovered.'

‘What an amazing story!' I exclaimed.

Sir Walter smiled. ‘It
is
amazing, but none the less true. If you re-read your Herodotus, you'll find that he gives quite a lengthy account of this appalling calamity. But the point is that I am in a position to confirm it owing to a discovery I made during my last season's work in Egypt.'

‘How in the world did you manage that?'

‘I was excavating in the Oasis of Dakhla, some 250 miles west of Luxor, which was the jumping-off place used by Cambyses' army. I dug up a small steel, or memorial tablet, there. It was broken into two pieces and I had no opportunity to translate it until late in the spring when our diggings had been closed down for the year.

‘The tablet had been erected by one Heru-tem, Captain of a thousand, and he recorded on it that he was a survivor of Cambyses' lost army. After many terrible days in the desert he had managed to get back to the Oasis, but he knew that the Great King would certainly kill him in his anger if he reported the appalling fate which had overtaken all his finest regiments. Very wisely, Heru-tem never returned to Thebes but settled under another name as a date-farmer in the Oasis and there lived out the rest of his life.'

‘Did he give any indication as to where the army actually foundered?' I asked.

‘Yes,' replied Sir Walter. ‘He recorded the position of certain stars at that season, based of course, not on Greenwich because Greenwich did not exist then, but on the Great Pyramid of Gizeh, which was the Egyptian astronomical zero.'

The deck was quiet. I tried to make my voice sound natural as I said, ‘That's a very valuable secret to possess'.

‘It is indeed, since the greatest treasure in gold and jewels the world has ever known must still lie abandoned there. Even Harry and Clarissa don't know the actual site as yet because I only took the top half of the tablet to England in order to secure financial backing for my expedition. Sylvia has the other half in Cairo. That's why she remained there all through this summer; and without both portions nobody could learn where this enormous treasure lies.'

‘I'd give my eyes to join you on this trip,' I said, ‘so you can rely on me to do my utmost to get my business through in time.'

‘I thought you would,' he smiled, ‘and we shall be delighted to have you. Harry and Clarissa have seen the top half of the tablet already, of course, but it would probably interest you to have a look at it. As it's packed up in linen and sacking it will take a little time to unwrap, but if you care to come down to my cabin in about ten minutes I'll show it to you, and give you a translation of the hieroglyphics on it.'

‘That's awfully kind of you, sir,' I said as he stood up, and, saying good night to the Belvilles, I walked as far as the companion-way with him.

I left him there and went into the lavatory. Ten minutes later I knocked on the door of his stateroom. There was no reply so I pushed it open and stepped in. I could see no tablet nor any package which might have contained it; and although Sir Walter was there he could not speak to me.

He lay dead, sprawled face-downwards on the floor, and a dark patch of blood oozed up through his dinner-jacket, round the knife that was buried up to the hilt in his back.

My eyes were riveted on the hilt of the big knife that stuck out between Sir Walter Shane's shoulder-blades and the pool of blood welling up all round it. I had no impulse to turn him over and see if he were really dead. Although I could not see his face, which was twisted away from me, I knew instinctively that he was beyond all human help.

In all my twenty-seven years I had only once before seen a dead man. That was at the age of eleven, when Uncle Herbert had taken me up for a last glimpse of my father. His kind, familiar face had been no more frightening in death than in life; but this was different. I felt a little sick and swallowed hard.

I was still standing in the open doorway of Sir Walter's stateroom and stepped back on to the deck meaning to shout, but checked myself in time. The Captain would not thank me for bringing a crowd of curious passengers on the scene. Entering the cabin again, I closed the door and rang for the steward.

While I waited there I tried to collect my thoughts. It was obvious that Sir Walter had been murdered, and the reason was not far to seek. Someone had killed him to gain possession of the portion of the tablet which gave the position in the Libyan Desert where Cambyses' army had foundered; the key to the vast treasure that he had been going out to Egypt with the Belvilles to seek.

I looked swiftly round for some package which might contain the ancient slab of stone. It would be, I felt sure, a pretty bulky object, two of three feet square at least and probably several inches thick. I peered under the bed and took a quick look in the private bathroom next door, but I could see nothing which might be the memorial stone he had guarded so carefully, and it was hardly likely that he would have kept such an unwieldy thing in one of his trunks.

When the door swung open it took me by surprise and I probably had a guilty look.

‘Gawd!' exclaimed the fat-faced steward, his eyes popping as he took in the situation. ‘Who done it? You?'

His startled exclamation and accusing eyes brought home to me for the first time my own unenviable position in the affair. Presumably I had been the last person to see the famous Egyptologist alive, when he had left me ten minutes before at the foot of the companion-way, and certainly I was the first person to find him dead.

‘No,' I muttered, pulling out my handkerchief and mopping my face. ‘No. Of course not. I found him like this a couple of minutes ago. Don't stand there goggling man. Get one of the officers, or better still the Captain, and keep your mouth shut.'

‘Very good, sir—very good. No offence, but it comes as a bit of a shock to see the old gent struck all of an 'eap like that.'

As the steward hurried off along the deck and I stood waiting once more, my eye fell on the photograph of Sir Walter's daughter that he had shown me earlier that evening. The turmoil of my mind was stayed for a moment as I studied Sylvia Shane's lovely features again and speculated about her. From numerous remarks the old man had let drop on the voyage out I gathered that she was devoted to him. It would be a ghastly shock when she learnt that her father had been murdered. What a grim ending to her long and dreary wait for him, through the hot and dusty summer months in Cairo, while she guarded the other portion of the tablet until he could return with funds for their expedition.

The Chief Purser arrived at that moment. He went a shade paler about the gills as he said, ‘This is a terrible business, Mr. Day. How did you come to be down here in his cabin?'

I was just about to reply when the Captain and the Ship's Doctor joined us. After the doctor had made a brief examination, Captain Bingham grunted at the Purser, ‘You'd best lock up here, Mr. Irons, and all of you come to my cabin.'

The next four hours were, at first, extremely trying and, as the night wore on, incredibly dreary. Harry and Clarissa Belville were sent for in due course; and the Captain, a very angry and disgruntled man at having his ship's record besmirched by such a tragedy, questioned us all in turn.

Clarissa and Harry both protested from the very start their conviction that I had had no hand in the murder. Their evidence proved that although I had not started from Liverpool in their party, and although previous to joining the ship I had been quite unknown to them, our acquaintance had ripened to a strong friendship during the voyage and Sir Walter had actually invited me to join them on their winter's digging in Egypt. They stated, too, that they were both present when Sir Walter had asked me down to his cabin a quarter of an hour before his death to see an Egyptian antique he had dug up during the previous season.

‘What sort of an antique?' inquired Captain Bingham with a sharp glance in my direction.

‘The half of a memorial tablet,' I replied.

‘Had it any particular value?'

‘The inscription …' I began, but Clarissa cut in quickly: