“Well, when the treasures which we had—­ah!—­taken from the tomb had been brought here, Mr. Trelawny arranged their disposition himself.  The mummy, all except the severed hand, he placed in the great ironstone sarcophagus in the hall.  This was wrought for the Theban High Priest Uni, and is, as you may have remarked, all inscribed with wonderful invocations to the old Gods of Egypt.  The rest of the things from the tomb he disposed about his own room, as you have seen.  Amongst them he placed, for special reasons of his own, the mummy hand.  I think he regards this as the most sacred of his possessions, with perhaps one exception.  That is the carven ruby which he calls the ’Jewel of Seven Stars’, which he keeps in that great safe which is locked and guarded by various devices, as you know.

“I dare say you find this tedious; but I have had to explain it, so that you should understand all up to the present.  It was a long time after my return with the mummy of Queen Tera when Mr. Trelawny re-opened the subject with me.  He had been several times to Egypt, sometimes with me and sometimes alone; and I had been several trips, on my own account or for him.  But in all that time, nearly sixteen years, he never mentioned the subject, unless when some pressing occasion suggested, if it did not necessitate, a reference.

“One morning early he sent for me in a hurry; I was then studying in the British Museum, and had rooms in Hart Street.  When I came, he was all on fire with excitement.  I had not seen him in such a glow since before the news of his wife’s death.  He took me at once into his room.  The window blinds were down and the shutters closed; not a ray of daylight came in.  The ordinary lights in the room were not lit, but there were a lot of powerful electric lamps, fifty candle-power at least, arranged on one side of the room.  The little bloodstone table on which the heptagonal coffer stands was drawn to the centre of the room.  The coffer looked exquisite in the glare of light which shone on it.  It actually seemed to glow as if lit in some way from within.

“‘What do you think of it?’ he asked.

“‘It is like a jewel,’ I answered.  ’You may well call it the ‘sorcerer’s Magic Coffer’, if it often looks like that.  It almost seems to be alive.’

“‘Do you know why it seems so?’

“‘From the glare of the light, I suppose?’

“‘Light of course,’ he answered, ’but it is rather the disposition of light.’  As he spoke he turned up the ordinary lights of the room and switched off the special ones.  The effect on the stone box was surprising; in a second it lost all its glowing effect.  It was still a very beautiful stone, as always; but it was stone and no more.

“‘Do you notice anything about the arrangement of the lamps?’ he asked.

“‘No!’

“’They were in the shape of the stars in the Plough, as the stars are in the ruby!’ The statement came to me with a certain sense of conviction.  I do not know why, except that there had been so many mysterious associations with the mummy and all belonging to it that any new one seemed enlightening.  I listened as Trelawny went on to explain: