We found the three men sitting patiently in silence.  With manlike fortitude they were content to be still when they felt they had done all in their power.  And so we waited.

The striking of two o’clock seemed to freshen us all up.  Whatever shadows had been settling over us during the long hours preceding seemed to lift at once; and we went about our separate duties alert and with alacrity.  We looked first to the windows to see that they were closed, and we got ready our respirators to put them on when the time should be close at hand.  We had from the first arranged to use them for we did not know whether some noxious fume might not come from the magic coffer when it should be opened.  Somehow, it never seemed to occur to any of us that there was any doubt as to its opening.

Then, under Margaret’s guidance, we carried the mummied body of Queen Tera from her room into her father’s, and laid it on a couch.  We put the sheet lightly over it, so that if she should wake she could at once slip from under it.  The severed hand was placed in its true position on her breast, and under it the Jewel of Seven Stars which Mr. Trelawny had taken from the great safe.  It seemed to flash and blaze as he put it in its place.

It was a strange sight, and a strange experience.  The group of grave silent men carried the white still figure, which looked like an ivory statue when through our moving the sheet fell back, away from the lighted candles and the white flowers.  We placed it on the couch in that other room, where the blaze of the electric lights shone on the great sarcophagus fixed in the middle of the room ready for the final experiment, the great experiment consequent on the researches during a lifetime of these two travelled scholars.  Again, the startling likeness between Margaret and the mummy, intensified by her own extraordinary pallor, heightened the strangeness of it all.  When all was finally fixed three-quarters of an hour had gone, for we were deliberate in all our doings.  Margaret beckoned me, and I went out with her to bring in Silvio.  He came to her purring.  She took him up and handed him to me; and then did a thing which moved me strangely and brought home to me keenly the desperate nature of the enterprise on which we were embarked.  One by one, she blew out the candles carefully and placed them back in their usual places.  When she had finished she said to me: 

“They are done with now.  Whatever comes—­life or death—­there will be no purpose in their using now.”  Then taking Silvio into her arms, and pressing him close to her bosom where he purred loudly, we went back to the room.  I closed the door carefully behind me, feeling as I did so a strange thrill as of finality.  There was to be no going back now.  Then we put on our respirators, and took our places as had been arranged.  I was to stand by the taps of the electric lights beside the door, ready to turn them off or on as Mr. Trelawny