The Bat Flies Low by Rohmer Sax

Author:Rohmer, Sax [Rohmer, Sax]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Egypt
Published: 1952-10-08T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

THE WOMAN OF THE PYRAMID

RORKE’S route to their mysterious destination was largely exploratory. Few travelers would have undertaken it. Lincoln Hayes had given him a free hand. The best cars Cairo could provide and refit at short notice had been obtained. Rorke driving and acting as pilot, with Hayes as his passenger, led in a Rolls. Slim, with Ann Wayland and Stefanson, followed in a big American car. The heavy cars which had gone ahead had been chosen with the same disregard of cost. In seeking to establish new records, millions can be useful. Cultivated land, and then all traces of habitation were left behind. Their way lay along an ancient caravan road, ill-suited to motor traffic. There was nothing to see but sand and sky;, nothing to break that sun-baked desolation.

Lincoln Hayes was continually reliving those last few moments which he had spent with Hatasu…

“Yes, I will see you again if I cam…You don’t know what I risk-by being here now…What you ask is impossible. I am not free—I can never be free…”

But his pleading had not left her unmoved. He had felt her shaking in his arms when he had tried to detain her—begged her not to go back. It was The first great passion of his life—but she was an Oriental; as she averred and clearly believed, a descendant of that mysterious people who for many generations had ruled Egypt. The tradition of the harem was bad enough, but this was worse!

She lived no cloistered life. Her master or masters, as he knew, did not hesitate to use her as a decoy. Hatasu was enmeshed. In meeting him she had recognized the sweets of freedom. From being on the point of abandoning his quest, he was now set upon it with grim determination. His democratic mind demanded that every human being be free to choose the path which his or her feet should wander. Not even Rorke’s account of his interview with Mohammed Ahmes Bey could divert him from his purpose. As he looked out over the sun-parched sands, Hatasu’s parting words echoed in his ears:

“Promise me, please, because I came today for you—just for you—that you will tell ho one, no one, that I have been here.”

“I promise.”

The scene lived again in his memory: he heard his own monotonous voice answering, when:

“There it is again!” said Rorke quietly.

Lincoln Hayes aroused himself from reverie. He peered keenly ahead.

They were upon the lip of a long, deep depression, gloomily patched with dense shadow but boasting no scrap of vegetation. The path at this point, a particularly bad one, skirted this desolate valley and might be faintly traced by sundry indications, some of them taking the form of little mounds of stone. It was already approaching noon, and a heat haze danced like running water over the wilderness.

A mile, perhaps two miles, ahead—difficult to estimate under the conditions—a figure, apparently that of an Arab woman, black robed and white veiled, stood up sharply on an irregular peak.

At the moment that Hayes caught sight of her, she seemed to raise her arm as if beckoning to them.

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