The days have slipped away rapidly since that well-remembered morning when I stood beside Professor Stewart and watched him, peering through his gla.s.ses, decipher those puzzling hieroglyphics which Sanehat had penned two thousand years before.
No doubt you read the newspapers and, of course, have seen the interesting results of the excavations made and still being continued by the Egypt Exploration Fund, under the auspices of the Egyptian Government, with whom Mr Fryer, as the late Arnold Edgec.u.mbe"s executor, came to a mutual arrangement.
Professor Stewart has, for some months past, been out at the Temple of Denderah, that cyclopean pile which Cleopatra built for herself, and though from time to time vague reports have found their way into the papers of important discoveries close to that famous edifice, yet, truth to tell, we are endeavouring to keep the actual extent of the discoveries as private as possible for the present. All I can say is that ancient jewels, worth many thousands of pounds, taken from the spot have already reached London--jewels, ornaments, and heart scarabs which once adorned the person of Egypt"s most gorgeous queen.
But it is of my own sweet-faced queen that I think the most--she who sits here in silent love beside me at Upton End as I now pen these final lines. We have already been man and wife for eight months, and, after a delightful honeymoon spent beside the Nile, during which we paid a visit, of course, to Cleopatra"s temple, where Professor Stewart was superintending operations, have returned home and settled down in peace and happiness--a rural bliss, perfect and entire, that will last always.
The hated name of Harvey Shaw is never mentioned between us. And little wonder, indeed. Within a month after his flight from Lydford, two men, one a foreigner, called at night at a lonely cottage near Hexworthy, far away on wild Dartmoor, and asked to see the tenant, a gentleman who had recently taken the place furnished.
The broad-speaking, old Devon housekeeper went upstairs to inform her master of his visitors, but she found the door locked. Shaw, for it was he, had recognised the voice of Victor Tramu, and knew instantly that he had at last been run to earth.
The second visitor, a well-known officer from New Scotland Yard, rushed upstairs and called upon the accused to open the door, but on doing so they heard the report of a revolver, and, bursting in, found the a.s.sa.s.sin of poor Guy Nicholson lying shot through the head and quite dead.
It appeared, too, that on the day following Harford"s flight Ridgehill Manor was found by the police to be tenantless, and Earnshaw and his clever wife have not yet been found. The police, however, are confident that, possessing only slight funds, they must be heard of again ere long at their old game of pa.s.sing forged notes to Continental money-changers.
Asta, instead of existing upon the charity of a criminal and unwittingly exchanging forged notes for genuine ones and gold, as she had done so many times, is now wealthy in her own right, while Mr Fryer has received a very handsome legacy as executor. Cardew, fond of adventure, got six months" leave to a.s.sist in the excavations in Egypt, and recently, on his return, has been here at Upton End on a visit, and has told us much of interest concerning what has of late been found there.
And as evidence of the genuineness of that half-faded record--penned by the trusted general of Cleopatra whom she afterwards desired to kill in order to protect her secret of her treasure, and preserved for so long in that bronze cylinder--there stand before me with the gold statuette of Osiris beneath domes of gla.s.s upon a side-table in the library wherein I am this evening writing, a canopic jar of alabaster and four ancient golden goblets varying from seven to ten inches in height thickly encrusted with magnificent rubies, sapphires and emeralds--the actual cups which once held the wine drunk at those gorgeous baccha.n.a.lian feasts which the great queen gave to Antony, over whom she exercised that fatal fascination.
They represent but a specimen of what has already been recovered and is later on to be divided between the Egyptian Government, the British Museum and Asta herself. Though we are extremely careful to conceal the real facts from the papers, extensive works of examination are at this moment in progress, for it seems that the queen"s enormous wealth was buried hurriedly beneath stones in a watercourse which has ages ago dried up. The action of the water scattered the loose gems, as, from the sifting of the sand each day, precious stones, cut and uncut, are now being recovered.
Never in these our modern days of progress and discovery has such a flutter of excitement been caused in archaeological circles, and certainly never has such a magnificent and authentic treasure, the lost million of Cleopatra, been located.
Arnold Edgec.u.mbe, always attracted to the study of Egyptian archaeology, had devoted the last seventeen years of his broken life to studies in Upper Egypt, and, truly, the discovery he made in the tomb of Merenptah has resulted in the recovery of great numbers of the gems and ornaments actually worn by Cleopatra herself.
Every national museum in Europe has eagerly offered to purchase specimens, hence the estate of the late Arnold Edgec.u.mbe, the man so cruelly misjudged and hunted down by the investing public, will be greatly enriched by the remarkable discovery, which, on that evening of his death, he predicted to me would astound this our prosaic modern world.
Often have I congratulated myself upon my narrow escape from a sudden end on that night in the old French inn, for surely the cunning ingenuity and truly devilish resourcefulness of Asta"s foster-father from the moment when he so successfully cast the blame of fraud upon his friend Arnold Edgec.u.mbe and caused him to flee to Egypt until that night when he so nearly succeeded in taking the young girl"s life, showed him to be a veritable master-criminal.
But the days of darkness, insecurity and despair are happily over. The clouds have parted, and the sunshine of happiness now falls upon the dear, sweet girl who, eight months ago, knelt beside me at the altar of that grey, square-spired village church which, here as we sit in the summer sunset, we can see peeping beyond the old elm avenue across the park.
"Yes, my darling, I am at last truly happy," she whispers softly in my ear, bending over to kiss me in reply to a question. "So happy that I cannot adequately describe what I feel amid this perfect peace."
And so, with her sweet lingering caress upon my lips, a kiss more full of love and holy pa.s.sion than ever Cleopatra gave Antony beside the Nile, I embrace her with all the tenderness of my affection, with all the strength of my very soul, and while so doing conclude this my strange personal narrative, and write--
The End.