"Wow!" he said. "Read it!. You'll never believe it, if I tell you. You'll
say I'm making it up."
[...] "Gleeps!" he whispered. And then he asked a
question that anyone who had not read the letter would have thought a
rather unusual one. "How can a 3000-year-old mummy whisper?" he asked.
"Where is [Jupiter], anyway? He ought to be back by now."
Let's have a
look around," Peter suggested. "Up periscope!"
"Is there anything I can do, sir?" Wilkins asked. "Or shall I resume my
duties?"
All of them looked at him. They saw his eyes widen in sudden
alarm. Then he hurled himself upon Professor Yarborough.
"Look out, sir" he yelled. "Look out!"
Two men fell to the floor. An istant later the
tall, wooden statue of Annubis, the jackal-headed god that had been
standing by the open window, crashed forward almost upon the spot where
the professor had been standing.
"I have intruder," he called in a marked accent. "I hold him tight."
[Wilkins] saw a movement in the shrubbery, and lifted his sword as if to
protect himself. A figure moved toward him in the twilight. It was the
figure of a man - but it had the head of a jackal, eyes glaming as they
stared at Wilkins.
Wilkins turned deathly pale.
"Annubis!" he choked. "The jackal god!"
The cat, which was licking itself, rose and strolled toward him. Bob
picked it up.
"Look," he said, "it has one blue eye and one orange eye.
I never saw a cat like that before.
"Good heavens!" Professor Yarborough seemed suddenly agitated.
The cat realy has white forepaws," [Jupiter] told Hamid. "See? It's actually Mrs. Banfry's cat, Spinhx, with its forepaws dyed black to look like the cat Sardon predicted would appear to you."
"At last I have you," [Professor Freeman] said out loud. "After all
these years. Twenty-five years I've waited. But it's worth it, it's
worth every minute of it."
[Jupiter] acted on impulse. He took three steps toward the man and
pushed.
