education. Very creditable of you, I'm sure. And you're a stranger in New York, you say?"

"Utter," returned Simpkins.

Mrs. Athelstone proceeded to question him at some length about his qualifications. When he had satisfied her that he was competent to attend to the easy, clerical work of the office and to care for the more valuable articles in the hall, things which she did not care to leave to the regular cleaners, she concluded:

"I'm disposed to give you a trial, Mr. Simpkins, but I want you to understand that under no circumstances are you to talk about me or your work outside the office. I've been so hunted and harried by reporters——" And her voice broke. "What I want above all else is a clerk that I can trust."

The assurance which Simpkins gave in reply came harder than all the lies he had told that morning, and, some way, none of them had slipped out so smoothly as usual. He was a fairly truthful and tender-hearted man outside his work, but in it he had accustomed himself to regard men and women in a purely impersonal way, and their troubles and scandals simply as material. To his mind, nothing was worth while unless it had a news value; and nothing was sacred that had. But he was uneasily conscious now that he was doing a deliberately brutal thing, and for the first time he felt that regard for a subject's feelings which is so fatal to success in certain branches of the new journalism. But he repressed the troublesome instinct, and when Mrs. Athelstone dismissed him a few minutes later, it was with the understanding that he should report the next morning, ready for work.

He stopped for a moment in the ante-chamber on the way out; for the bright light blinded him, and there were red dots before his eyes. He felt a little subdued, not at all like the self-confident man who had passed through the oaken door ten minutes before. But nothing could long repress the exuberant Simpkins, and as he started down the stairway to the street he was exclaiming to himself:

"Did you butt in, Simp., old boy, or were you pushed?"

III

t nine o'clock the next morning Simpkins presented himself at the Society's office, and a few minutes later he found himself in the fascinating presence of Mrs. Athelstone. He soon grasped the details of his simple duties, and then, like a lean, awkward mastiff, padded along at her heels while she moved about the hall and pointed out the things which would be under his care.

"If I were equal to it, I should look after these myself," she explained. "Careless hands would soon ruin this case." And she touched the gilt mummy beside her writing-table affectionately. "She was a queen, Nefruari, daughter of the King of Ethiopia. They called her 'the good and glorious woman.'"

"And this—this black boy?" questioned Simpkins respectfully. "Looks as if he might have lived during the eighteenth dynasty." He had not been poring over volumes on Ancient Egypt for two nights without knowing a thing or two about black mummies.

"Quite right, Simpkins," Mrs. Athelstone replied, evidently pleased by his interest and knowledge. "He was Amosis, a king of the eighteenth dynasty, and Nefruari's husband. A big, powerful man!"

"What a bully cigarette brand he'd make!" thought Simpkins, and aloud he added:

"They must have been a fine-looking pair."

"Indeed, yes," was the earnest answer, and so they moved about the hall, she explaining, he listening and questioning, until at last they stood before the black altar in the west and the veil of velvet. Simpkins saw that there was an inscription carved in the basalt, and, drawing nearer, slowly spelled out:

"And what's behind the curtain?" he began, turning toward Mrs. Athelstone.

"The truth, of course. But remember," and her tone was half serious, "none but an adept may look behind the veil and live."

"The truth is my long suit," returned Simpkins mendaciously. "So I'll take a chance." As he spoke, the heavy velvet fell aside and disclosed a statue of a woman carved in black marble. It stood on a pedestal of bronze, overlaid with silver, and above and behind were hangings of blue-gray silk. A brilliant ray of light beat down on it. Glancing up, Simpkins saw that it shone from a crescent moon in the arched ceiling above the altar. Then his eyes came back to the statue. There was something so lifelike in the pose of the figure, something so winning in the smile of the face, something so alluring in the outstretched arms, that he involuntarily stepped nearer.

"And now that you've seen Isis, what do you think of her?" asked Mrs. Athelstone, breaking the momentary silence.

"She's the real thing—the naked truth, sure enough," returned Simpkins with a grin.

"It is a wonderful statue!" was the literal answer. "There's no other like it in the world. Doctor Athelstone found it near Thebes, and took a good deal of pride in arranging this shrine. The device is clever; the parting of the veil you see, makes the light shine down on the statue, and it dies out when I close it—so"; and, as she pulled a cord, the veil fell before the statue and the light melted away.

"'She's the Real Thing.'"

"Aren't you initiating the neophyte rather early?" a man's voice asked at Simpkins' elbow, and, as he turned to see who it was, Mrs. Athelstone explained: "This is our new clerk, Mr. Simpkins; Doctor Brander is our treasurer, and our acting president while my husband's away. He left a few days ago for a little rest." And Mrs. Athelstone turned back to her desk.

Simpkins instantly decided to dislike the young clergyman beside him. He was tall and athletic-looking, but with a slight stoop, that impressed the reporter as a physical assumption of humility which the handsome face, with its faintly sneering lines and bold eyes, contradicted. But he acknowledged Brander's offhand "How d'ye do?" in a properly deferential manner, and listened respectfully to a few careless sentences of instructions.

For the rest of the morning, Simpkins mechanically addressed circulars appealing for funds to carry on the good work of the Society, while his mind was busy trying to formulate a plan by which he could get Mrs. Athelstone to tell what she knew about the whereabouts of Madame Blavatsky's soul. He felt, with the accurate instinct of one used to classing the frailties of flesh and blood according to their worth in columns, that those devices which had so often led women to confide to him the details of the particular sensation that he was working up would avail him nothing here. "You simply haven't got her Bertillon measurements, Simp.," he was forced to admit, after an hour of fruitless thinking. "You'll have to trust in your rabbit's foot."

But if Mrs. Athelstone was a new species to him, the office boy was not. He knew that youth down to the last button on his jacket. He knew, too, that an office boy often whiles away