The False Gods | Page 7

large, fat, front-page
exclusive, which will jar the sensitive slats of some of our first families
both here and in dear old London.
Yours, SIMPKINS.
He hesitated a few minutes before he mailed the letter. He really did
not want to do anything to involve her in a scandal, but, after all, it was

simply anticipating the inevitable, and--he pulled himself up short and
put the letter in the box. He could not afford any mawkish sentiment in
this.
[Illustration]

[Illustration]

IV
Simpkins received a monosyllabic telegram from Naylor, instructing
him to "stay," but after working in the Society's office for another three
days he was about ready to give up all hope of getting at the facts.
Some other reason, he scarcely knew what, kept him on. Perhaps it was
Mrs. Athelstone herself. For though he appreciated how ridiculous his
infatuation was, he found a miserable pleasure in merely being near her.
And she was pleased with her new clerk, amused at what she called his
quaint Americanisms, and if she noticed his too unrepressed admiration
for her, she smiled it aside. It was something to which she was
accustomed, an involuntary tribute which most men who saw her often
rendered her.
She never referred, even indirectly, to her husband, but Simpkins, as he
watched her move about the hall, divined that he was often in her
thoughts. And there was another whom he watched--Brander; for he
felt certain now that the acting president's interest in his handsome
secretary was not purely that of the Egyptologist. And though there was
nothing but a friendly courtesy in her manner toward him, Simpkins
knew his subject well enough to understand that, whatever her real
feelings were, she was far too clever to be tripped into betraying them
to him. "She doesn't wear her heart on her sleeve--if she has a heart," he
decided.
He was trying to make up his mind to force things to some sort of a
crisis, one morning, when Mrs. Athelstone called him to her desk and

said rather sharply:
"You've been neglecting your work, Simpkins. Isis looks as if she
hadn't been dusted since you came."
This was the fact. Simpkins never passed the black altar without a
backward glance, as if he were fearful of an attack from behind. And he
had determined that nothing should tempt him to a tête-à-tête with the
statue behind the veil. But having so senseless, so cowardly a feeling
was one thing, and letting Mrs. Athelstone know it another. So he only
replied:
"I'm very sorry; afraid I have been a little careless about the statue."
And taking up a soft cloth, he walked toward the altar.
It was quite dark behind the veil; so dark that he could see nothing at
first. But after the moment in which his eyes grew accustomed to the
change, he made out the vague lines of the statue in the faint light from
above. He set to work about the pedestal, touching it gingerly at first,
then more boldly. At length he looked up into the face, blurred in the
half-light.
When he had finished with the pedestal he pulled himself up between
the outstretched arms, and perhaps a trifle hurriedly now, as he saw the
face more distinctly, began to pass the cloth over the arms and back.
Then, quick as the strike of a snake, the arms crushed him against the
stone breast. He could not move; he could not cry out; he could not
breathe. The statue, seen from the level of the pedestal, had changed its
whole expression. Hate glowed in its eyes; menace lived in every line
of its face. The arms tightened slowly, inexorably; then, as quickly as
they had closed, unclasped; and Simpkins half-slid, half-fell to the
floor.
When the breath came back into his lungs and he found himself
unharmed, he choked back the cry on his lips, for in that same moment
a suspicion floated half-formed through his brain. He forced himself to
climb up on the pedestal again, and made a careful inspection of the

statue--but from behind this time.
The arms were metal, enameled to the smoothness of the body, and
jointed, though the joints were almost invisible. The statue was one of
those marvelous creations of the ancient priests, and once, no doubt, it
had stood behind the veil in some Egyptian temple to tempt and to
punish the curiosity of the neophyte.
Though Simpkins could find no clew to the mechanism of the statue, he
determined that he had sprung it with his feet, and that during his
struggles a lucky kick had touched the spring which relaxed the arms.
"Did any one beside himself know their strength?" he asked himself, as
he stepped out into the hall again. Mrs.