nterest themselves in Egyptology....

"This female," said Gilbert, pointing to the mummy of the Priestess of
Amen-Ra, "is supposed to bring frightful ill-luck to you if you squint
at her. There was a fellow at Cambridge who was cracked about her ...
used to come here in vac. and make love to her ... sit here for hours
spooning with a corpse. I often wanted to smack his face for him!"

"Pose, I expect!" Henry replied. "I should have thought it was rather
dull to get smitten on a woman who's as dead as this one is...."

They remembered Mrs. Clutters....

"Let's go back and see what's happened," Gilbert said, turning away from
the case which held the Priestess....

Ninian met them in the hall. "She's dead," he said. "Her husband's in
the kitchen. I found him in a lodging-house in Camden Town, and I should
say he's a first-class rotter!"

5

They sat together that evening without speaking. There was to have been
a meeting of the Improved Tories to talk over Roger's plan for enlarging
the Army and mitigating the problem of unemployment. They could not get
messages to people in time, and so part of the evening was spent in
whispered explanations at the door to those who turned up.

"I think I'll go to bed," Ninian said, but he did not move, nor did any
of them move. It was as if they wished to keep together as long as
possible.

Magnolia, red-eyed from weeping, had come to them earlier in the
evening, declaring that she was frightened.

"What are you afraid of?" Roger snapped at her.

"'Er!" she answered.

"But she's dead!..."

"Yes, sir," Magnolia said, "that's why! I don't like goin' upstairs be
meself, sir!..."

"Oh, rubbish, Magnolia!" Roger exclaimed.

"I can't 'elp bein' afraid, sir. I know she's dead an' can't do me no
'arm ... not that she'd want to do me any 'arm ... I will say that for
'er ... but some'ow I'm afraid all the same, sir. I can't 'elp it!"

"I want to get a book out of my room," Henry interjected, "so I'll go
upstairs with her!"

"Oh, thank you, sir," said Magnolia gratefully. "I know she wouldn't
'arm me if she could 'elp it, not if she was alive any'ow, but they're
different when they're dead!..." She broke down, blubbering hopelessly.
"Oh, I wish I was 'ome," she moaned.

"Come on, Magnolia!" Henry said, opening the door for her.

"That girl's getting on my nerves," Gilbert murmured when she had gone.

Magnolia followed Henry upstairs. They had to pass the room in which the