The Story of the Amulet, E. Nesbit [free ebook reader for iphone txt] 📗

“How did you get to Egypt and to Tyre?” retorted Rekh-marā. “Come, let us leave this crowd.”

“There’s no help for it, I suppose,” Robert shrugged angrily. But they all got up.

“Confederates!” said a man in the row behind. “Now they go round to the back and take part in the next scene.”

“I wish we did,” said Robert.

“Confederate yourself!” said Cyril. And so they got away, the audience applauding to the last.

In the vestibule of St. George’s Hall they disguised Rekh-marā as well as they could, but even with Robert’s hat and Cyril’s Inverness cape he was too striking a figure for foot-exercise in the London streets. It had to be a cab, and it took the last, least money of all of them. They stopped the cab a few doors from home, and then the girls went in and engaged old Nurse’s attention by an account of the conjuring and a fervent entreaty for dripping-toast with their tea, leaving the front door open so that while Nurse was talking to them the boys could creep quietly in with Rekh-marā and smuggle him, unseen, up the stairs into their bedroom.

When the girls came up they found the Egyptian Priest sitting on the side of Cyril’s bed, his hands on his knees, looking like a statue of a king.

“Come on,” said Cyril impatiently. “He won’t begin till we’re all here. And shut the door, can’t you?”

When the door was shut the Egyptian said⁠—

“My interests and yours are one.”

“Very interesting,” said Cyril, “and it’ll be a jolly sight more interesting if you keep following us about in a decent country with no more clothes on than that!”

“Peace,” said the Priest. “What is this country? and what is this time?”

“The country’s England,” said Anthea, “and the time’s about 6,000 years later than your time.”

“The Amulet, then,” said the Priest, deeply thoughtful, “gives the power to move to and fro in time as well as in space?”

“That’s about it,” said Cyril gruffly. “Look here, it’ll be teatime directly. What are we to do with you?”

“You have one-half of the Amulet, I the other,” said Rekh-marā. “All that is now needed is the pin to join them.”

“Don’t you think it,” said Robert. “The half you’ve got is the same half as the one we’ve got.”

“But the same thing cannot be in the same place and the same time, and yet be not one, but twain,” said the Priest. “See, here is my half.” He laid it on the Marcella counterpane. “Where is yours?”

Jane watching the eyes of the others, unfastened the string of the Amulet and laid it on the bed, but too far off for the Priest to seize it, even if he had been so dishonourable. Cyril and Robert stood beside him, ready to spring on him if one of his hands had moved but ever so little towards the magic treasure that was theirs. But his hands did not move, only his eyes opened very wide, and so did everyone else’s for the Amulet the Priest had now quivered and shook; and then, as steel is drawn to the magnet, it was drawn across the white counterpane, nearer and nearer to the Amulet, warm from the neck of Jane. And then, as one drop of water mingles with another on a rain-wrinkled windowpane, as one bead of quicksilver is drawn into another bead, Rekh-marā’s Amulet slipped into the other one, and, behold! there was no more but the one Amulet!

“Black magic!” cried Rekh-marā, and sprang forward to snatch the Amulet that had swallowed his. But Anthea caught it up, and at the same moment the Priest was jerked back by a rope thrown over his head. It drew, tightened with the pull of his forward leap, and bound his elbows to his sides. Before he had time to use his strength to free himself, Robert had knotted the cord behind him and tied it to the bedpost. Then the four children, overcoming the priest’s wrigglings and kickings, tied his legs with more rope.

“I thought,” said Robert, breathing hard, and drawing the last knot tight, “he’d have a try for Ours, so I got the ropes out of the box-room, so as to be ready.”

The girls, with rather white faces, applauded his foresight.

“Loosen these bonds!” cried Rekh-marā in fury, “before I blast you with the seven secret curses of Amen-Rā!”

“We shouldn’t be likely to loose them after,” Robert retorted.

“Oh, don’t quarrel!” said Anthea desperately. “Look here, he has just as much right to the thing as we have. This,” she took up the Amulet that had swallowed the other one, “this has got his in it as well as being ours. Let’s go shares.”

“Let me go!” cried the Priest, writhing.

“Now, look here,” said Robert, “if you make a row we can just open that window and call the police⁠—the guards, you know⁠—and tell them you’ve been trying to rob us. Now will you shut up and listen to reason?”

“I suppose so,” said Rekh-marā sulkily.

But reason could not be spoken to him till a whispered counsel had been held in the far corner by the washhand-stand and the towel-horse, a counsel rather long and very earnest.

At last Anthea detached herself from the group, and went back to the Priest.

“Look here,” she said in her kind little voice, “we want to be friends. We want to help you. Let’s make a treaty. Let’s join together to get the Amulet⁠—the whole one, I mean. And then it shall belong to you as much as to us, and we shall all get our hearts’ desire.”

“Fair words,” said the Priest, “grow no onions.”

“We say, ‘Butter no parsnips,’ ” Jane put in. “But don’t you see we want to be fair? Only we want to bind you in the chains of honour and upright dealing.”

“Will you deal fairly by us?” said Robert.

“I will,” said the Priest. “By the sacred, secret name that is written under the Altar of Amen-Rā, I will deal fairly by you. Will you,