al tone.

"Are you anxious to hear more? If you are determined to proclaim my
doings to the world, it is only fit you should know everything. I will
willingly confess. Why should I not do so? You are mine to do with as I
please. Without my leave you are powerless to hurt me, and who would
believe you if you were to tell? No one! They would call you mad, as you
undoubtedly are, and say that fear of the plague had turned your brain.
In Naples you accused me of the murder of Clausand, the curiosity
dealer. I denied it because the time was not then ripe for me to
acquaint you with the truth. Now I confess it. I stabbed him because he
would not give me a certain scarabeus, and to divert suspicion willed
that the half-crazy German, Schmidt, whom the other had cast out of his
service, should declare that he did the deed. In obedience to my desire
you followed me to Italy and accompanied me thence to Egypt. I it was
who drew you to the Pyramid and decreed that you should lose your way
inside, in order that when fear had deprived you of your senses I might
inoculate you with the plague. Seven days later you were stricken with
it in the desert. As soon as you recovered I carried you off to Europe
to begin the work required of you. In Constantinople, Vienna, Prague,
Berlin, Hamburg, wherever you went you left the fatal germs of the
disease as a legacy behind you. You infected this woman here, and but
for me she would have died. To-day the last portion of that vengeance
which has been decreed commences, and when all is finished I go to that
rest in ancient Thebes which has been denied me these long three
thousand years. Hark! Even now the sound of wailing is to be heard in
London. Hour by hour the virulence of the pestilence increases, and the
strong men and weak women, youths and maidens, children and babes, go
down before it like corn before the reaper. On every hand the voices of
mourners rise into the summer air, and it is I, Ptahmes, the servant of
the Gods, the prophet of the King, the man whom thou hast said thou wilt
proclaim to the world, who has brought it about."

Then, lifting his right hand, he pointed it at me.

"Fool--fool!" he cried, with withering scorn. "Frail atom in the path of
life, who art thou that thou shouldst deem thyself strong enough to cope
with me? Learn then that the time is not yet ripe. I have further need
of thee. Sleep again, and in that sleep do all I shall require of thee."

As he said this h