He thought he would not be able to sleep. He had the night in which to
pack that steamer trunk. Leisurely he doffed the faultless evening
garments--he was going to have a waistcoat pointed like the waster's,
with four of those little shiny buttons, and studs and cuff-links to
match--and donned a gayly flowered silk robe.
With extreme discomfort he surveyed the new steamer trunk. Merely
looking at a steamer trunk left him with acute premonitions of what the
voyage had in store for him. But the flapper was the flapper; and it was
the only way ever to see that tomb.
The packing began, the choice garments were one by one neatly folded. A
light tan overcoat hung in Ram-tah's closet, back of the case. Ram-tah
was dragged forth and for the moment lay prone. He was to be left in the
locked closet until a more suitable housing could be provided, and
Cassidy had been especially warned not to let the steam-heated apartment
take fire.
He found the coat and returned to the half-packed trunk in the bedroom
where he resumed his wonderful task, stopping at intervals for always
futile efforts at realization of this mad impossibility. It was all
Ram-tah. Nothing but that kingly manifestation of himself could have
brought him up to the thing. He dropped a choice new bit of haberdashery
into the trunk and went for another look at It prone on the floor in
that other room.
A long time he gazed down at the still face--his own still face, the
brow back of which he had once solved difficult problems of
administration, the eyes through which he had once beheld the glories of
his court, the lips that had kissed his long dead queen, smiled with
rapture upon his first-born and uttered the words that had made men call
him wise.
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