The Curse of Cleopatra

by Michael Avallone

TANOPSIS, HIGH PRIEST TO THE QUEEN CLEOPATRA

Oh, would that she could sleep. Would that we both could rest in the burial place of our fathers. The numberless years have drifted by; the decades, the centuries, the eons of troubled time. Must we stalk the hallways of Time without end? Must we forever be doomed because of my unwise oath on the day of the death of my beloved Queen? How could I know that Osiris, the creator, would include me in that lamentable curse? Yea, I uttered the unholy words. It is my penance for my terrible blasphemy.

But the demands of Her who was my Queen have been excessive. The blood I have spilled in her name because of the monstrous token of that Roman knave Antony. If she had heeded my words and not given herself to that poor pawn of the tyrant Caesar, all this would not have come to pass. But a Queen of the royal blood who steps down from her exalted position to truck with commoners can expect no asylum from the spirit fathers of the other world. The Book of the Dead is just and sound. But why was I, Tanopsis, chosen to share this dreadful shadow life with Her who was my Queen?

The ring. Will we ever find it? Will She place it once more upon her revered fingers so that she may return to her final resting place in the sands along the beloved Nile? And will I, doomed to walk with Her, ever know surcease from this curse of centuries?

I see them all now. The faces of the mortals who have died under my stone knife in pursuit of the ring. But always it has eluded us. The improvident Gods seem to mock our efforts. Why can we not find it? Rome, London, Asia, the great countries of the world. But always we are too late. Ever does some other hand hold that precious prize before us and to the second when we trace the ring to them, it has passed on to other hands. I grow weary of this repetition of history. Death walks with us. I, Tanopsis. And Cleopatra, She who was my Queen.

And now the calendar and time have run out on us. The sands have shifted endlessly in the glass but the final hour is poising. The day draws near for the prophecy. The 27th of October in the year 1956. Fulfillment or Failure. Final Sleep or Endless Unrest. Which will it be?

I weary of this trial by ordeal I say. The hunt has brought us to America. These feet which have known the floors of the desert, Spanish galleons, battlefields and the dusty trails of antiquity now know the stone floors of this Manhattan. And now the search has brought us to William Rameses. I wonder if he knows that he is the descendant of Egyptian kings? His face—it is fairly the image of my own. He has graced the sarcophagus masks of our tombs. But does he know? How can he? Yet, the ring is fated to pass through his hands. It must. And then we will have it once again. If only before the fatal and final hour passes.

I am weary.

I have done all I can.

I have removed the girl who sought the job that she who was my Queen had to have. Now she is near William Rameses. She will know when he first learns of the ring. Already he has begun to feel the strange witchlike power of the Mistress.

I hope there will be no more deaths. I grow wearier.

I want the sleep of my ancestors. The blessed sleep. For myself. And Cleopatra.

Hear me, O great Osiris. Weigh my heart, Anubis. Embrace us. I, Tanopsis. And Cleopatra. She who was my Queen.

I, William Rameses, am going to tell you the whole, incredible story of my relationship with Lucille Nile. It’s a fantastic tale, so much so, you may doubt my sanity. Perhaps If I tell you the whole thing from the day she first walked into my office, I can give you some glimmer of this moonlight madness that is ruining my life.

And that weird ring. Cleopatra’s ring. Talk about misfortune accompanying well-known jewels. They all pale by comparison with the ring of a dead Egyptian queen. But is she really dead? Well—let me begin at the beginning. I’ll leave the conclusions to you.

To begin with, Lucille Nile always laughed when I told her she looked like Cleopatra. Called me a romanticist, an idle fictioneer. Even an old fool. She should have been flattered yet she wasn’t. At least, she never showed it. It was difficult to understand her indifference let alone endure it. She was young, she was vibrant; she was a thousand diverse moods. And her name was Lucille Nile.

I tried to analyze her lack of response on the matter but I never got beyond her laughter. She had a rich, liquid laugh that flowed full-tide—deep. It was laughter that can only come from inside; the kind that always suggests some hidden spring; some secret storehouse where different things were thought than what was said. Picture Cleopatra laughing at some fawning Roman’s compliments. That was Lucille—laughing.

But I digress. Let me tell you how I met her.

She came to me one day from the employment agency at a time when I needed a capable secretary and general all-around Girl Friday. Running a business office efficiently is a near impossibility without such a girl. FIRM FIT FOUNDATIONS, INC. had never been without one.

I was getting on in years and had lost that youthful drive which used to propel me from my desk, rooting up ad men, meeting buyers and the like. I needed someone badly now because Miss Slocum who had put up with my rigorous routine for five long years had suddenly turned up one morning with the startling news of approaching marriage. So I had placed a rush call to the agency and when I saw the superb creation that walked into my office that October afternoon, I was glad I had.

She was literally stunning.

I pretended to be busy with some official papers on my desk after the fashion of a successful business man and let her stew awhile. I watched her keenly above the very edge of the sheets in my hands.

When I got a full look at her, the papers seemed to flutter from my fingers. The reverse had happened that abruptly. My attention was riveted by the resemblance that has always been, to my mind at least—astonishingly exact.

She was calm. In fact, the position of her small, elegant figure in one of my expensive Falco chairs was queenly. There was none of the eager-to-please, on-my-best-behavior evils that so stamp the newcomer seeking employment. None of that. There was something arch about her, a quality difficult to define.

Her attire was no less unconventional than any American working girl today. Tailored with a smart economy of style that rings of making ends meet and scrimping on luxuries. Yet, she wore it all with an extreme dash, a royal smartness. No, it wasn’t her clothes but she herself who gave off an aura of something subtle and fascinating.

Her eyes. They were two round unblinking pools of limpid black widely spaced in a high cheeked face that tapered down to a classic oval with a firm little chin slightly clefted. Her nose was very strong for a woman, with the barest traces of hawk in its poise. Her red-lipped mouth was full, inviting, sensuous in impact. The whole expression of her face despite its naked emotion was one of extreme candor. She was small and even the sharp sobriety of her garb could not hide a definite compactness, fullness of form. It is enough to say that she made me feel exactly as Caesar must have felt when Cleopatra first rolled out of her rug in his quarters. Old, tired and somewhat foolish.

“Uh—yes,” I began lamely, totally at a loss and completely forgetting what had brought her to my office.

Something stirred in those eyes and the faintest suggestion of a smile curved her mouth corners.

“Mr. Rameses? My name is Lucille Nile. I came in answer to your call regarding a personal secretary.”

The familiar words, the stock business form—but what music her voice made of them! She seemed to purr in a kind of liquid-syrup smoothness. Nile! I supposed that helped as much as anything else in my constant thought associations of Lucille Nile and Cleopatra, the almost legendary daughter of the Nile. Strange coincidence.

I coughed, confused at her effect on me and utterly conscious of her beauty, a scant few feet away.

“Oh, yes, Miss Nile. Glad you could come. I—uh—spoke to our Mr. Reeves about you. Your reputation precedes you.”

“Yes?” She said it with the richest of nuances.

“Yes.” I rushed on, eager to hold my crumbling savoir faire together. “He tells me you are efficient, highly capable and extremely fit for the job.” The truth of it was I had heard no such thing from Reeves. I’d been so upset by Miss Slocum’s quitting that I had merely yelled at the fool on the phone that I wanted another secretary right away and hung up. Looking at Miss Nile, I just couldn’t imagine any other kind of recommendation. Or if I could have, I didn’t want to. It’s risky business asking a Dream for qualifications.

She smiled at me and her lips parted to reveal teeth that were bone-white and amazingly pure. “That was very kind of Mr. Reeves. I shall do my best to live up to his faith in me.”

“I’m sure you will, Miss Nile,” I expanded. “He doesn’t say that about everyone or just anybody at all. You must be a rather special sort. Tell me. Do you like being a Girl Friday to an old business man like myself?” It wasn’t what I really wanted to talk about right then but I had to be polite. After all, I didn’t want her to think I was just an old fool who fancied himself still attractive to women.

She nodded with slow majesty. “Yes, I do. It is always interesting to belong behind the scenes of a big organization. So much activity and drive. Rather like being the power behind the throne.”

The remark and general tenor of her conversation was certainly strange. It just wasn’t the customary dialogue of a mere secretary.

“We need power around here,” I boomed good-naturedly to show her how I meant it. “Women keep us busy, bless them, with their demands for something newer and better to hold together what God gave them in such varying quantities.”

Her head arced back and abundant coils of black hair danced on her shoulders.

“I never thought of it that way, Mr. Rameses. That is very good. Worthy of a philosopher.” She laughed in a low, throaty way and the creamy white of her skin enthralled me.

I watched her, more bewitched than I had been for a long time. She seemed so friendly and everything was so informal that I couldn’t wait any longer. I had to mention it to her.

“Uh—Miss Nile. This may seem curious to you but—I can’t help wondering. It strikes me so plain, I mean. Did anyone ever tell you how much you look like Cleopatra? Why, even your name—”

I stopped red-faced. I had to because she was laughing. Rich, liquid, flowing laughter. I realized even then that she was not joining me in a joke. She was laughing at me. The scorn in her tones was unmistakeable.

The phone rang and I reached for it gratefully, aware of the awkward position my remark had put me in. Her laughter had subsided but her lambent eyes were still on me, alive with a subtle humor, a veiled mockery.

“Yes, what is it?” I barked into the transmitter, taking out my sudden anger on my caller whoever it might be.

“That you, Mr. Rameses? This is Reeves. Down at the Agency. Now, look, Mr. Rameses, it’s not our fault about that girl you wanted in a hurry. You see, we get awfully pressed down here sometimes and—”

“What are you raving about, Reeves?” I roared back at his whining inferiority. “I am well satisfied—”

“We know you appreciate rapid service, Mr. R.” rushed on Reeves. “But this time we couldn’t accommodate you as fast as we’d have liked to. Fact is, the girl we had planned to send over has disappeared. Now if you could wait until morning, we’ll arrange for a replacement. Don’t know what could have happened to the other girl—”

I didn’t hear the rest of it. I didn’t know what to say—or think. I kept staring at the beautiful creature sitting on the other side of my desk, in one of my chairs, with her legs gracefully crossed, her arms folded, her head held high like some regal being. Like—

“That’s all right with you, isn’t it, Mr. Rameses?”

I got my voice back. “Never mind, Reeves. The job is no longer open. It’s been filled. By someone—completely satisfactory.” I hung up.

“Well, Miss Nile,” I said. “When would you like to start?”

She smiled. “Whenever is agreeable with you, Mr. Rameses.”

For some disturbing reason, she was unreal to me then, sitting here in my office. It was as if she had dropped in from nowhere, unseen by any one else, with no one to properly identify her. Her mounting unreality would not be dispelled by the employment form she would have to fill out, either. I somehow sensed that much. Because that was exactly how she made me feel. It was peculiar—to say the very least.

“Right away if you like. There’s lots to do. Miss Slocum, whom you are replacing by the way, left things in good order but it’s all piled up these last few days.”

“Good.” Her head bobbed approvingly. “I want to be of help right away. That will make me feel that I am needed.”

She glided across the rugged floor and peeled off her three-quarter length coat accomplishing the commonplace act with a grace too little seen by the American eye. Her style struck me then as being decidedly of another generation. Old World.

I reached into a side drawer of my desk for some stenography equipment for her when I noticed her breathless halt beneath the base of the four-foot high statuette of Cleopatra that was handsomely mounted in a cleverly designed wall niche at the southern corner of the room. It was the only encroachment of my expensive hobby on my business life. The niche was so arranged that not all of the visitors to the sanctum sanctorum of William Rameses could see the figure of the most famous temptress of them all.

Miss Nile murmured, “It is beautiful, Mr. Rameses.”

I came around the desk, glad she had seen it without my showing it to her. It was, in a small way, a bit of a triumph. The sting of her laughter was still with me.

“Like it? It’s genuine. Not a modern reproduction. Picked it up on one of my trips abroad. Cost a fortune in European money—and American too.”

She peered at me closely for the first time. “Egyptology is your hobby? An ancient civilization such as that?”

“Why not? It’s damn fascinating, Miss Nile. Romantical, appealingly mysterious. Keeps the blood in me young.”

Miss Nile looked up at the inclined head of the stone lady and it was quite as if she were staring at a cut replica of herself. “She was beautiful, Cleopatra.”

“The best thing in Egyptian history, Miss Nile. Or Roman for that matter. Break down, Miss Nile—” I was exhilarated that she knew the name of my hobby, my extravagant madness. “Don’t you think you strongly resemble the lady?”

Her intoxicating laughter filled the office again. She swayed on her spiked heels and tilted her perfect face toward me. “Mr. Rameses, you are naive. Cleopatra indeed! Why not one of your movie queens or Venus or Pallas Athene? I’m afraid you are a romanticist.”

I smiled at her fresh charm.

“As long as you don’t think I’m an old fool. It’s in the blood, I suppose. I’ve traced my family name all the way back to the year One. I still suspect the Rameses name hung somewhere on the tree of pharaohs.”

Suddenly, her lips parted. And a soft low babble of words poured forth. I looked at her questioningly as if I hadn’t heard her. But she merely threw back her head and laughed again. Then she sobered and said, “Excuse me. It’s just that being compared to Cleopatra amuses me.”

I grinned in spite of her mockery. The affairs of FIRM FIT FOUNDATION, INC. no longer troubled me. I not only had a beautiful secretary but an erudite one. A younger person to share my hobby with. There was an undeniable other side to Lucille. Nile and I meant to find it out regardless of her polished, refined, career-girl mould.

In the succeeding days that followed, she proved to be all that I had thought she was. She was of invaluable assistance and business seemed to move agreeably ahead since the day she began work. No filing task was too exacting for her and she revealed an amazing understanding of the brassiere line that was put to profitable use in the art and promotion departments. She possessed an innate knowledge of what the modern woman was looking for in foundation devices and pretty soon I was faced with the notion that I had come upon someone very special indeed. I was sorely tempted to use her as a model for our sensational new NATURE BRA but when I realized this would take her away from my immediate office, I rejected my own proposal however gloriously she would have benefited the selling campaign of our latest product. She had firm, upturned breasts of almost sculptured magnificence but I wouldn’t spare her. Or my own pleasure, for that matter.

You may wonder at my fixation about her and my strange behavior regarding the unusual aspects of her employment but I feel I can explain it away by repeating that I was, and still am, a fervent Egyptologist—which covers a multitude of sins. Since childhood, the romance of Old Egypt with its Sphinx, its mighty pyramids jutting from the ancient sands, its tales of conquests, passion and magnificent pageantry has held me as few things can. I was forever entranced by the story of the Nile and its civilization in the sand that rose and fell before the onslaught of Time. I had learned all I could about the Pharaohs and their fabulous lives but I had never ventured past the Cleopatra myths. I had halted there and reveled as I had at no other point in my hobby.

Cleopatra fascinated me with her magic, her immense power at so early an age in her life in so powerful a country. Her name was the heady perfume of my Egyptological research and I was powerless before its spell.

Egyptology is a wealthy hobby and in the latter years of a successful business career, I had spared no expense in pursuit of it. I collected all sorts of rare books, dated curios and authentic bric-a-brac pertaining to the lore of the fabled land. Even the luxury of actual travel was not beyond my means. I stood before the inscrutable Sphinx and imagined it asked me a question; I halted in the mammoth shadow of a towering Pyramid and smelled its musty history; I gazed across the expanse of limitless desert and envisioned the days when many-columned monoliths rose challengingly into the scorching sun. I pictured the pomp and pageantry of Mark Antony’s royal entrance into Cleopatra’s stronghold; I boated down the storied Nile and dreamed of her Golden Barge and how she had wooed him with her beauty, her extravagant charm, her scented body.

So you see, the Daughter of the Nile was as constant with me as my arms and my legs and when Lucille Nile brought her exotic person into my office, the astounding resemblance hit me as if I had always been waiting for a duplicate queen to come along. I had. Do not confuse it with love. It was only a dream that the dreamer wishes would come true. If only once, to justify the long years of unfulfilled expectation.

Cleopatra. Cleopatra. Spoken by Antony or even the commonest man, it is a name of extreme loveliness.

From the day that Miss Nile began working for me, I suppose I was a completely enthralled man. No device was too far-fetched for me to get her in my presence. Like a jeweler who has encountered some new and fabulous gem, I wanted to see her up close, watch her slightest movement, study her every facet. Perhaps it was senility, the youth of old age. Who can say?

As I had expected, her employment card told me nothing except what I saw with my own eyes. She was a woman, unmarried and living in Manhattan on the West Side. Beyond that, she was Enigma. However, I intended to learn all I could about her. Collector-like, I was avid for every particle of her wonder, her novelty.

I never mentioned the resemblance to her again. Her laughter had made an odd impression on me. It had a quality that both confused and troubled me. It is difficult to explain a laugh that confuses you, I’m afraid.

One day on the pretext of dictating a letter that could easily have been put off until the following day, I kept her a bit later than usual. My curiosity was enormous at this point. In addition, something had come up. Something so unpredictable that I could scarcely conceal my excitement.

She was folding her steno pad and getting ready to leave when I checked her.

“Uh—Miss Nile. One moment, please. Know anything about rings? Rings for the finger I mean.”

Her answer was surprising.

“Quite a bit, Mr. Rameses.” She fairly purred and little, sparkling lights burned in her deep-set eyes. “It is one of my foolish notions. I have rather an excellent collection of my own. Why do you ask?”

I was overjoyed that she had such an interest in rings. It was making my intended suggestion that much more natural.

“Glad to hear it, Miss Nile. You see, I have an appointment with a Mr. Samarko who deals in curios. Has a shop on Fourteenth and Second. He knows my passion for Egyptian oddments and has helped me get some of the stuff I have now. I’d be a fool to pass him up this time.” I paused to keep the excitement within me controlled. “Samarko claims he has managed to get his hands on a ring that actually belonged to Cleopatra!”

Miss Nile’s oval face underwent a curious change; a shadow darkening the cream of her countenance.

“How can he prove such a thing? That was thousands of years ago. No one could say with certainty who it had belonged to!”

I laughed at her skepticism, however righteous it might be.

“You don’t know Samarko. The man’s an absolute wizard. Agents and spies all over the country. Both here and abroad. Nobody knows why he locates on Fourteenth Street even though he claims the drabness of the district is the proper setting for his antique shop. Best thing about the fellow is that he’s given me the necessary proof on every one of the items he has procured for me. Don’t know how he does it but he does. The man’s a genius in his profession.”

“But what sort of proof can the man possibly give you on a ring?” She was curiously persistent on that point. Her fine head was bobbing with her own conviction. “An inscription can be easily scratched on the band at a much later date—”

“From Mark to Cleo with all my love?” I threw my head back and roared with delight. “Nothing like that, Miss Nile. Samarko’s proofs are of a more definite nature. But why not come along and see for yourself? I am anxious to see the thing. Whatever it is.”

Lucille Nile nodded. “I am too, Mr. Rameses. Very much so. Very much indeed.”

I followed her graceful figure out of the office, once more convinced that she was a rather extraordinary girl. The coincidence of her resemblance and the discovery of the ring was not lost upon me.

Samarko’s shop, deep in the environs of a narrow street that was fairly littered with shops of a similar sort, had a clapboard sign fronting its colorful facade. Against a white field of paint, the exotically burned-in-the-wood letters SAMARKO’S guided us from Third Avenue. Miss Nile literally decorated my arm and as her privileged escort, I basked in reflected glory, fully aware of the backward glances accorded us by people we passed.

I felt like some courtier handing a Queen down the marble steps of a palace. Even the aged, worn stone-walk that led down into Samarko’s curio shop did not dispel the illusion.

Jerol, Samarko’s youthful, fuzzy-haired assistant was hang-dog at sight of us. One unbelieving stare at my dazzling companion and he was hastily rolling down the cuffs of his clerk’s jacket and running nervous fingers through his luxuriant hair. Miss Nile flashed him a smile and won him over on the spot. He could only mumble something incoherent and wave us on through to the rear of the ornament-filled establishment, with one sweep of a sleeve still unbuttoned. He very nearly toppled an Etruscan vase doing it.

I had been to Samarko’s place of business too many times to give his stock a second glance but Miss Nile paused at more than one piece of intriguing merchandise to murmur something that expressed either curiosity or genuine delight. Her interest was so spontaneous that I found myself silently exultant that we seemed to share a common interest.

A black onyx bookend in the form of a Roman chariot drew a remark from her that puzzled me at the time. The bookend was a skillfully wrought bit of workmanship but I knew this piece for the clever imitation it was. I had never wanted arty reproductions. Only the real things. The items that ancient, long-dead hands had lifted and held in their own era.

But Miss Nile’s comment was startling.

“No true Roman would have rode such a contraption, Mr. Rameses. The entire assembly is incorrect. If the shaft were that far forward, the horses would never have managed.”

It was a criticism that could only have come from an expert on such things. I had been fooled myself when I first saw it but Samarko had cautioned me against his own duplications. I was one of his select customers and he had not desired to dupe me.

“These things are for the walk-in trade, Sir,” he had glibly remarked. “A man such as you wants only genuine antiques.”

We had reached the end of the maze of commercial antiquity and came into the small clearing that housed a time-battered roll-top desk, a staggering pile of newspapers and sundry magazines, a four-drawer file that leaned dangerously and—Mr. Samarko himself.

He arose from his position directly behind the desk. He was a mountain of fat, rounded, compressed human oil that had long arms for piping that oil and a small hump of head that controlled its flow with pure native shrewdness. His wary set of small black eyes were ever focussed on what Americans liked and what they liked to hear. He was a great showman for a businessman and he never disappointed you.

How could he? He was exactly what you expected to see in a man selling curios from all over the globe. Long, draping pantaloons hid his fat legs and his head was the only thing that separated a rich, maroon Arabian vest from a red felt, flat-topped Egyptian Fez complete with jaunty tassle.

His ready smile widened as he beheld Miss Nile and his black little eyes disappeared in the rolls of flesh that packed his dark brown face.

“Ah, Sir!” he wheezed in his soft, oily foreign voice as he waddled to us, arms extended. “You have brought an antique yourself. A genuine thing. For Beauty is the oldest prize under the stars and the most lasting. A real pleasure, my Lady.”

He said it in capital letters. He said everything in capital letters.

Miss Nile made a slight bow and I marveled once again at her instant effect on males. Surely, that alone put her on a plane with her fabled prototype.

“You are very kind, Mr. Samarko,” she intoned throatily. “Very kind and properly cast in your role.”

Samarko’s round head rocked on his huge shoulders and the Fez’s tassle swung like a pendulum. He rubbed his fat palms.

“Ah, Mr. Rameses, Sir. She is a pearl indeed.”

“Quite so, Samarko,” I cut him short, eager to get on with the purpose of our visit. “What of the ring? You still have it I hope.”

“Sir, what I promise I do not go back on. I am not the foolish tide that listens to the fickle moon. The ring is here. It only awaits your approval. And my Lady’s.” I wasn’t blind to the meaning of his last remark. A beauty like Miss Nile would cause people to think a lot of things.

Samarko waddled behind the roll-top desk and with a great sigh stooped to open one of its many drawers. I found myself watching my secretary closely.

She was just opposite me, waiting expectantly as was I, yet I sensed a tension in her, a halting of her very life’s breath. As if the next few seconds alone would be a crisis in her life. In our relationship. She scarcely breathed at all and her wide eyes were leveled directly at the fat merchant’s doubled-up bulk, half-hidden by the crowded top of the desk.

“These are the few delights of my profession, Lady and Sir,” wheezed Samarko as he struggled erect, one fat fist closed around a square metallic box. He made a great ceremony of placing it in front of us, clearing a section of his desk with one flourish of a silken arm.

“—uncovering the treasures of the historic past comes only a few, rare times in the dealer’s career. For the true collector, it is even a stronger opiate. So—”

He rubbed his fingers in a gloating preamble and I caught myself leaning forward unable to check the excitement that raced through me. Think of it, a ring actually worn by Cleopatra. I had forgotten Miss Nile entirely.

The square box was embossed, trellis fashion, with a motif of interlaced, grotesquely designed serpents. Samarko’s heavy hands descended on the box briefly and came apart leaving the thing opened.

Something glittered, reflected the light of the bulb overhead.

I gasped. A slow, startled moan emanated from Miss Nile.

There it was. A circle of perfection. A bauble of magnificence. A token of majesty out of the dead past, the bygone glory.

A ring. A beautiful ring. Emeralds flashed and caught the light in a million varying shades. First white, then red, then blue, then white again—

Its size was enormous. If Cleopatra had worn it, a single finger wouldn’t have been large enough to hold it. Only two of her fingers would have sufficed.

Miss Nile reached down slowly and picked it up. Swaying back on her high heels, she held it up to the light with one perfectly tapered hand. “It is beautiful,” she whispered. Her voice had a peculiar throaty catch to it.

The ring was just that. Shaped in the form of an asp, connecting its serpent head to its final coil, it was an amazing piece of jewelry. The entire circumference was a belt of multi-colored emerald chips that sparkled and flashed with each movement of Miss Nile’s hand. The center stone was larger than a postage stamp and as thick as a slice of bread. It was Old World beauty, seemingly new and yet ancient. There was a definite aura of antiquity about the ring. It was not difficult to imagine it on Cleopatra’s hand. Or on Lucille Nile’s for that matter. The ring itself had bridged all time, and all conventions.

Samarko’s cheeky face showed his pleasure at our reaction.

“Is it not a rare specimen, Sir?”

“Damned if it isn’t, Samarko! How about you, Miss Nile?”

She turned at my question, still revolving the ring between her fingers. The fires in the many stones of the ring only matched the deep glow in her beautiful eyes.

“I had never expected to see it. There is an inscription on the inside of the band.”

Samarko’s tiny eyes became slits. “The Lady has excellent sight. I could only discern the words with my jeweler’s glass.”

“What does it say, Miss Nile?” I’m afraid I shouted so excited was I.

She paused and in the momentary silence, the whole shop seemed to wait for the words rolling back from the relentless grave of Yesterday.

“‘To my Egypt from my heart—Antony’” The message came out like something holy. Like litany. She had uttered the words with memorial dignity. She returned the ring to the cushioned square box.

“Ah, the Lady reads my native tongue. And superbly.”

I scarcely heard Samarko’s compliment. The translation had delighted me far more than you can imagine. It was like finding an unknown love letter from Josephine to Napoleon. I was ecstatic. The ring must be authentic.

“Samarko, this is past all belief. Do you realize what a find this would be? Prove it to me, man. Prove it!”

“Yes, Mr. Magician,” my exotic secretary added. “Where is your proof?”

Samarko sat down grandly and motioned us to do likewise in the armchairs reserved for visitors. When we had seated ourselves, he eyed us keenly and splayed his meaty hands.

“I can well understand your—ah—concern. Inscriptions are not difficult to forge. In a business such as this, such tricks are often employed to raise to the sky the value of a trinket. But see for yourself, Lady and Sir. These emeralds are exquisite. The ring itself is a fortune.”

“Agreed.” I nodded. “But its words make it a fabulous relic. Don’t you realize, man, that it’s a link back to Egyptian history?”

“I do, Mr. Rameses, Sir.” His Fez tassle shook at me. “I do. I am fully prepared to present for your inspection a dossier complete with names and places and dates concerning the acquisition of the ring and its strange history. To which, let me add, I am the last entry.”

I was impatient for him to continue but Miss Nile suddenly lay a gentle, restraining hand on my arm. Samarko was not a man to be rushed. He was enjoying his momentary power immensely and he wasn’t going to lose a drop of his intrigue if he could help it. He was a man to linger in the garden.

She had somehow sensed his character and I shot her a grateful look. She was watching Samarko intently, her ivory teeth resting evenly on her full lower lip. The atmosphere of the little back room was charged now with something electric. Something dynamic.

“Cleopatra was a beautiful woman, Lady and Sir,” Samarko began somewhat facetiously. “Egypt sang of her beauty and erected monuments to her tastes. No work of art was too enormous or too costly to commemorate the most famous, the most prized of Egyptian daughters. She was perfumed, bathed, adorned in all the glories of the day. When Mark Antony fell under her spell, he showered her with the gifts of his land and hers. This ring before us is one of those gifts. Proofs you ask?”

He pyramided his fingers.

“What further proof than this story I shall tell you? It is not the story to be qualified with statements of sworn witnesses or the testimony of the living. For all of this is nearly two thousand years ago.”

“Get to the point!” I snapped testily.

He smiled back at me making me ashamed of my abruptness.

“Ah, Sir. Bear with me. You also, kind Lady. For your beauty is like that of Her who wore this ring.”

Miss Nile smiled and Samarko bowed from the waist in his chair.

“When Cleopatra allowed an asp to suckle at her breasts and died, all Egypt wept with Roman mankind. Sealed in her tomb, she was surrounded by the most lavish of her possessions. Among them was this.” He poked a stubby forefinger at the ring where it lay glittering in the metallic box.

“That still leaves it with her in her tomb about two centuries ago, Samarko,” I reminded him before he could continue.

“Mr. Rameses, Sir!” He reproved me gently but firmly. “Her crypt was rifled and looters carried away her treasures.”

“That makes it worse,” I groaned, convinced only that the ring was simply a very expensive duplicate of its fabulous original.

Lucille Nile stirred. “Let him go on, Mr. Rameses. He hasn’t finished yet.”

He beamed at her. “The Lady is as always—correct. I have managed to trace the many ownerships of this ring all the way up to the present time. To this very minute. I have the papers here. A veritable book of murder, theft and grand degeneration. A story as old as the Bible. Brother killing brother, wife betraying husband—all of this for the priceless article once worn by Her who was many things to many men.” He reached down into the drawer again with rodent noisiness.

The whole thing was fantastic. One lie, one incorrect bit of information, the tiniest loophole and all of his facts would be built on sand. The sand of uncertainty. I had one more argument.

“You mentioned something else in reference to the ring. Some sort of hokum connected with it. What was that all about?”

I was eager now to trap him in some lie. As much as I wanted a Cleopatra possession, I was first and last, a realist.

Samarko’s gimlet eyes burned back at me above an encyclopedia-sized bound sheaf of papers that he had brought forth from his drawer. He rested a fat hand on the pile.

“It is all here, Sir. How Cleopatra can not sleep without her love token in its final resting place. On her hand. How she stalks down through the dust of centuries, ever searching, ever seeking the ring that was stolen from her dead fingers. How she cries, the Tears of Time, for that which is gone from her. The dossier is exact in all detail. A camel driver in Cairo tells here how he saw her royally robed figure stalking through the sands on one clear night on the outskirts of the city. There are many such reports. All of a similar nature. And they all deal with the curse.”

Had this not been so seriously stated or so believingly put forth, I would have burst out laughing. But I couldn’t. Samarko’s brown face held a silent, deadly conviction that had communicated itself to me. Miss Nile was oddly quiet too. The dealer had a theatric persistency of demeanor that was impressive.

“See here, Samarko. That’s rot. What curse?”

He shrugged his big shoulders expressively.

“As you will, Sir. But the legend is here. When one item is looted from the sacred tombs of Egypt, the dead one cannot sleep. It was thus ordained by the High Priest of Cleopatra’s time. The Priest’s name was Tanopsis. And he was a Pharaoh in his own right. So Cleopatra will not sleep until the ring is returned. Or else—”

“Go on,” I whispered. Samarko’s mood was contagious.

Samarko’s smile was deadly. “If she does not get her ring before the 27th of October in this calendar year, and before the full moon disappears into a morning sun—she is doomed to walk without sleep for eternity.”

I could feel Lucille Nile shudder alongside of me. I suddenly remembered something.

“Samarko, you’re a genius for effect. You know damn well this is the night of the twenty seventh!”

His smile was colder now. “Be it so. But if Cleopatra does not sleep then the chain of death continues with each ownership of the ring. Such as the tailor in the last century, the merchant in 1421, the Swiss watchmaker in 1702, the seaman in 1833—it is all here, Mr. Rameses. I tell you this, Sir, to forewarn you in all faith about the ring before you take it for your own. It is a cursed object. And with its purchase you also buy yourself the curse of Tanopsis, High Priest of the Pharaohs of Egypt....”

I was reaching for my pen and checkbook when Lucille Nile suddenly laughed. Her laugh—I mean. The deep, vibrant, full-chested chuckle that came from within. The sound rolled through the room and everything else stopped. I saw Samarko shift his bulk a trifle angrily. I turned with a stifled oath.

Miss Nile was lifting the sparkling ring from its metal box. Her manner was something that cannot be successfully described. She was completely detached from me, from Samarko, from the shop—everything. It was as if she were a woman alone in her boudoir looking for the first time at the secret power of the new gift from her lover. Every atom of her, every angle and curve of her compact form was inclined toward the flashing object in her hands.

With a deft, fluid motion, she slipped it over the second and third fingers of her left hand. Even from where I sat rooted, I could see it was a perfect fit.

She turned and the triumph that blazed in her deep-set eyes had the majesty of ageless sovereignty. I knew then what I had always known, always suspected, deep down.

Samarko swayed to his feet, his Fez askew, surprise mottling his face. “Lady, I do not understand—”

Suddenly a shadow lengthened across the floor and a low, humming, chanting sound filled the room. My gaze swung from Lucille Nile and Samarko toward the doorway leading out to the shop.

There was a tall quiet figure standing there. Fully six feet six in height. I saw a dark suit, a Fez and then the face. A stern, brown, graven face that I had seen so many times on Egyptian tombs. The face you see on coins.

But the figure was beckoning with one imperious finger crooked in the direction beyond my shoulder. Where Lucille Nile was standing. I whirled with the chanting sound filling my ears.

For that split second, that clock’s tick between madness and reality, my gaze swung from the figure in the doorway toward her. And Samarko.

I saw Samarko first.

I saw his brown cheeks cloud over, puff out and his eyes tremble with something seen. He sagged and fell back into his chair like a toy dummy before I could reach him.

“Miss Nile,” I blurted. “What’s going on here—?” I whirled on her angrily and—spoke to nothing. She was not there. And the rhythm of the unknown chant had faded into nothing.

Stupified, I plunged out into the shop. But Jerol by the only door leading out was busily wiping the glass of the door. I had my answer and rushed back to Samarko.

The far wall that had been blocked by Lucille Nile’s chair and body was now visible to me. She couldn’t have gone by me without touching me.

It is easy to say, far easier to read. But have you ever seen a person vanish completely in the flicker of an eyelash? Two persons?

I revived Samarko by pouring water in his face. He came to, spluttering, fearful. His eyeballs rolled; he clutched at me with frightened fingers.

“Mr. Rameses, Sir! One moment she was there—the very next—she was not!” He stopped and breathed deeply, his flabbiness shaking like jello that has fallen from its serving dish.

“The ring is gone, Samarko. So is she. Utterly gone.”

He blanched and his mouth dropped.

“Do you imagine—is it possible—the curse—was she—?”

“I don’t know, Samarko. I don’t know.”

So there it is. All I have to report about the disappearance of Mr. Samarko’s valuable ring. There is no fraud or chicanery involved here. I have known Mr. Samarko for many years and vouch for his honesty in this matter. I fully realize my story is incredible but the ring disappeared exactly as I have reported here.

Type that up, Miss Henderson and send it off today. Address it to The New York All-Risk Insurance Company, 359 East 28th Street, New York, New York....