ieve that it was by accident I visited your
studio. I am prepared now to confess that it was not so. I was aware
that you had that mummy in your possession. I had known it for some
considerable time, but I had not been able to get in touch with you.
That night an opportunity offered, and I seized it with avidity. I could
not wait until the next day, but called upon you within a few hours of
meeting you at Lady Medenham's 'at home.' I endeavoured to induce you to
part with the mummy, but in vain. My entreaties would not move you. I
exerted all my eloquence, argued and pleaded as I have seldom, if ever,
done to a man before. Then, seeing that it was useless, I put into force
a power of which I am possessed, and determined that, come what might,
you should do as I desired. I do not deny that in so doing I was to
blame, but I think, if the magnitude of the temptation were brought home
to you, you would understand how difficult it would be not to fall. Let
me make my meaning clearer to you if possible."

"It would, perhaps, be as well," I answered, with a touch of sarcasm,
"for at present I am far from being convinced."

"You have been informed already by our mutual friend Sir George Legrath
that I am of Egyptian descent. Perhaps you do not understand that, while
the ancient families of your country are proud of being able to trace
their pedigrees back to the time of the Norman Conquest, a beggarly
eight hundred years or thereabouts, I, Pharos, can trace mine, with
scarcely a break, back to the nineteenth dynasty of Egyptian history, a
period of over three thousand years. It was that very Ptahmes, the man
whose mummy your father stole from its ancient resting-place, who was
the founder of our house. For some strange reason, what I can not tell,
I have always entertained the belief that my existence upon this earth,
and such success as I shall meet with, depend upon my finding that mummy
and returning it to the tomb from which sacrilegious hands had taken it.
At first this was only a mere desire; since then it has become a fixed
determination, which has grown in strength and intensity until it has
become more than a determination, a craving in which the happiness of my
whole existence is involved. For many years, with a feverish longing
which I can not expect or hope to make you understand, I searched Europe
from end to end, visiting all the great museums and private collections
of Egyptian antiquities, but without success. T