of course--this doesn't lock!" he muttered. "Jinny, you stand here,
do, and if any one tries to come in tell them they can't."

"Tell them you say they can't?" questioned Jinny a little
helplessly.

"No--no--not that. Tell them you are using the room; tell them,"
said Ryder with very brisk and serious inspiration, "tell them your
petticoat is coming off!"

"Why Jack Ryder!" said Jinny indignantly.

"Nonsense," said he to her indignation. "Don't you remember when
your aunt's petticoat came off on the way to church? It happens."

"But it doesn't run in families!"

Her protest fell apparently upon the back of his head. He had
turned to the last sarcophagus and was slipping his fingers beneath
the lid. "Here, Andy," he said quickly. "I had it wedged so it
wasn't tight shut, but it's been so infernally hot and dusty--"

He was tremendously troubled. It was not the heat which had brought
those fine beads of moisture to his brow, white above the line of
brown, and drawn such a pale ring about his mouth. McLean saw that
the slim, wiry wrists which supported the case's top were shaking.

"Gently now," he murmured and the lid was lifted and laid aside.

The same dark, unstirring form of the tomb scene. The same dry,
dusty little mummy.... But with hands strangely reckless for an
archaeologist dealing with the priceless stuff of time Ryder tore at
those bandages; he unwrapped, he unwound, and in a lightning's
flash--

To McLean's tense, expectant nerves it was like a scene at the
pantomime. He had divined it; he had foreseen and yet there was the
shock and eerie thrill of magic, the appealing unreality of the
supernatural in the revelation.

In a wave of an enchanter's wand the mummy was gone. And in its
place lay a Sleeping Beauty, the dark hair in sculptured closeness
to the head, the long, black lashes sweeping the still cheeks.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE PAINTED CASE

"She's fainted," said Ryder in a voice that shook. From his pocket
he drew swiftly a thermos bottle but before the top was off those
long lashes fluttered, and from under their shadow the soft, dark
eyes looked up at him with a smile of very gallant reassurance.

"Not--faint," said the girl, in a breath of a voice. "But it was so
long--so hot--"

"Drink this." Ryder slipped an arm about her, offering the filled
top of the thermos. "It's over, all over," he murmured as she drank.
"You're safe now, safe.... You're at the museum.... Then we'll g