the man
presented his side face to him, but kept his gaze still bent upon his
work. Vansittart Smith, fixing his eyes upon the fellow's skin, was
conscious of a sudden impression that there was something inhuman and
preternatural about its appearance. Over the temple and cheek-bone
it was as glazed and as shiny as varnished parchment. There was no
suggestion of pores. One could not fancy a drop of moisture upon that
arid surface. From brow to chin, however, it was cross-hatched by a
million delicate wrinkles, which shot and interlaced as though Nature
in some Maori mood had tried how wild and intricate a pattern she could
devise.

"Ou est la collection de Memphis?" asked the student, with the awkward
air of a man who is devising a question merely for the purpose of
opening a conversation.

"C'est la," replied the man brusquely, nodding his head at the other
side of the room.

"Vous etes un Egyptien, n'est-ce pas?" asked the Englishman.

The attendant looked up and turned his strange dark eyes upon his
questioner. They were vitreous, with a misty dry shininess, such as
Smith had never seen in a human head before. As he gazed into them he
saw some strong emotion gather in their depths, which rose and deepened
until it broke into a look of something akin both to horror and to
hatred.

"Non, monsieur; je suis Fransais." The man turned abruptly and bent
low over his polishing. The student gazed at him for a moment in
astonishment, and then turning to a chair in a retired corner behind
one of the doors he proceeded to make notes of his researches among
the papyri. His thoughts, however refused to return into their
natural groove. They would run upon the enigmatical attendant with the
sphinx-like face and the parchment skin.

"Where have I seen such eyes?" said Vansittart Smith to himself. "There
is something saurian about them, something reptilian. There's the
membrana nictitans of the snakes," he mused, bethinking himself of his
zoological studies. "It gives a shiny effect. But there was something
more here. There was a sense of power, of wisdom--so I read them--and
of weariness, utter weariness, and ineffable despair. It may be all
imagination, but I never had so strong an impression. By Jove, I must
have another look at them!" He rose and paced round the Egyptian rooms,
but the man who had excited his curiosity had disappeared.

The student sat down again in his quiet corner, and continued to work
at his notes.