13
The Mummy Rests
A motor-brougham stood at the kerb, and we entered it. We slipped away west, quietly, through a drizzle of rain which made the streets and pavements shine with reflected lights. Maundeville hummed as he went, in a soft baritone. But in less than ten minutes we stopped. He made me wait until a man, evidently watching for us, threw the house-door open.
“This rain,” Maundeville said, “is soaking. But it’s soft, and really means spring. It’s a west wind, I’m sure I can smell the buds bursting in the country lanes,” and he ran up the steps humming again. A minute later I was lounging before a wood fire, while Maundeville discoursed learnedly on liqueurs, of which an embarrassing variety stood on the table with Turkish coffee and Egyptian tobacco.
The room, lighted more by
