were delightedly tasting them, that Robert felt someone
in that vacant seat. He did not feel someone sit down in it. It was just
that one moment there was no one sitting there, and the next moment,
suddenly, there was someone.

Robert turned. The someone who had suddenly filled that empty place was
Rekh-mara, the Priest of Amen!

Though the eyes of the audience were fixed on Mr David Devant, Mr David
Devant's eyes were fixed on the audience. And it happened that his eyes
were more particularly fixed on that empty chair. So that he saw quite
plainly the sudden appearance, from nowhere, of the Egyptian Priest.

'A jolly good trick,' he said to himself, 'and worked under my own eyes,
in my own hall. I'll find out how that's done.' He had never seen a
trick that he could not do himself if he tried.

By this time a good many eyes in the audience had turned on the
clean-shaven, curiously-dressed figure of the Egyptian Priest.

'Ladies and gentlemen,' said Mr Devant, rising to the occasion, 'this
is a trick I have never before performed. The empty seat, third from
the end, second row, gallery--you will now find occupied by an Ancient
Egyptian, warranted genuine.'

He little knew how true his words were.

And now all eyes were turned on the Priest and the children, and the
whole audience, after a moment's breathless surprise, shouted applause.
Only the lady on the other side of Rekh-mara drew back a little. She
KNEW no one had passed her, and, as she said later, over tea and cold
tongue, 'it was that sudden it made her flesh creep.'

Rekh-mara seemed very much annoyed at the notice he was exciting.

'Come out of this crowd,' he whispered to Robert. 'I must talk with you
apart.'

'Oh, no,' Jane whispered. 'I did so want to see the Mascot Moth, and the
Ventriloquist.'

'How did you get here?' was Robert's return whisper.

'How did you get to Egypt and to Tyre?' retorted Rekh-mara. '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-mara as well as
they could, but even with Robert's hat and Cyril's Inverness cape he was
too striking a figure for foot-ex