DON STURDY IN THE TOMBS OF GOLD

OR The Old Egyptian’s Great Secret

BY VICTOR APPLETON Author of “Don Sturdy on the Desert of Mystery,” “Don Sturdy Across the North Pole,” “Tom Swift and His Sky Racer,” “Tom Swift and His Photo Telephone,” Etc.

ILLUSTRATED BY Walter S. Rogers

NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS

Made in the United States of America

BOOKS FOR BOYS

By VICTOR APPLETON

12mo. Cloth. Illustrated.

THE DON STURDY SERIES

DON STURDY ON THE DESERT OF MYSTERY DON STURDY WITH THE BIG SNAKE HUNTERS DON STURDY IN THE TOMBS OF GOLD DON STURDY ACROSS THE NORTH POLE DON STURDY IN THE LAND OF VOLCANOES

THE TOM SWIFT SERIES

TOM SWIFT AND HIS MOTOR CYCLE TOM SWIFT AND HIS MOTOR BOAT TOM SWIFT AND HIS AIRSHIP TOM SWIFT AND HIS SUBMARINE BOAT TOM SWIFT AND HIS ELECTRIC RUNABOUT TOM SWIFT AND HIS WIRELESS MESSAGE TOM SWIFT AMONG THE DIAMOND MAKERS TOM SWIFT IN THE CAVES OF ICE TOM SWIFT AND HIS SKY RACER TOM SWIFT AND HIS ELECTRIC RIFLE TOM SWIFT IN THE CITY OF GOLD TOM SWIFT AND HIS AIR GLIDER TOM SWIFT IN CAPTIVITY TOM SWIFT AND HIS WIZARD CAMERA TOM SWIFT AND HIS GREAT SEARCHLIGHT TOM SWIFT AND HIS GIANT CANNON TOM SWIFT AND HIS PHOTO TELEPHONE TOM SWIFT AND HIS AERIAL WARSHIP TOM SWIFT AND HIS BIG TUNNEL TOM SWIFT IN THE LAND OF WONDERS TOM SWIFT AND HIS WAR TANK TOM SWIFT AND HIS AIR SCOUT TOM SWIFT AND HIS UNDERSEA SEARCH TOM SWIFT AMONG THE FIRE FIGHTERS TOM SWIFT AND HIS ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVE TOM SWIFT AND HIS FLYING BOAT TOM SWIFT AND HIS GREAT OIL GUSHER TOM SWIFT AND HIS CHEST OF SECRETS

GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK

Copyright, 1925, by GROSSET & DUNLAP Don Sturdy in the Tombs of Gold

CHAPTER I A Call for Help

“Then, you think Dad really went to Egypt?” asked Don Sturdy, with deep anxiety in his tone, as he stood beside the desk where his uncle, Professor Bruce, was carefully looking over a mass of papers.

“I’m inclined to think so, my boy,” replied the professor, as he sat back in his chair and ran his fingers through his hair. “Everything seems to point that way, though we haven’t a bit of positive proof. But we know, at least, that the idea of going there was in his mind when he rushed out of Clifton’s house in Brazil shouting that he must go to Egypt.”

“Still, that may have been the mere whim of a deranged mind, forgotten almost as soon as the words were spoken,” put in Captain Frank Sturdy, another of Don’s uncles, as he turned from the window through which he had been looking.

[2]“True enough,” assented the professor. “But we know from what Ruth told us that for weeks he had been talking about the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. It was, I believe, a fixed idea that had taken possession of him. And these papers I’ve been looking over explain why he was so deeply interested in that country.”

He picked up the heap of manuscript as he spoke, and selected some papers from the mass.

“There’s no collected story here,” he remarked; “simply a lot of memoranda scribbled on whatever he had at hand, old telegraph blanks, backs of envelopes, and the like. They bear upon a trip that Richard took to Egypt several years ago. The magic of the country seems to have captivated him. But there’s something more than the awakened interest of a tourist in them. They’re aflame with the ardor of a discoverer. He seems to have been right on the brink of some remarkable find—so remarkable, in fact, that he feared to commit it to paper lest it should get into hands for which it was not intended.”

“I remember now,” broke in Captain Sturdy, “that when he got back from that trip he seemed strangely excited. But I could never get much out of him about it. He’d talk about it in a general way, but whenever it came to details he’d change the subject. I gathered[3] that he meant to go back the next year, but the war came and that put an end to his plans for the time.”

“He seemed to have spent most of his time among the tombs,” resumed the professor. “There is one he mentions that was fifty-two feet long, thirty-one feet wide, the sides of which were entirely covered with paintings, while the roof, twenty-four feet high, was adorned with a hundred squares of over a dozen different designs. There’s a diagram of it here.”

“What do you gather from that?” asked the captain.

“Nothing much in itself,” was the reply. “But at the end of the description are the words: ‘This is not the one. Must look further.’ And there are several other descriptions of tombs scattered through the papers, each with this little note of disappointment at the end. It seems clear to me that Richard was hunting eagerly for one particular tomb and desperately anxious to find it.”

“What for, do you suppose?” asked Don.

“What he wanted to find it for or what he expected to find in it I don’t know. It may have been gold or scarabs or alabaster vases or amulets or any of the thousand things that make some of those tombs veritable treasure houses. But whatever it was, his mind was centered on it. It may have become a sort of[4] obsession. Then, when his head was hurt in that accident at the time of the shipwreck, that one overpowering desire to get back to Egypt may have come to the front and been too strong to be resisted.”

“Even if he did go there,” said Don, in perplexity, “it’s strange that nothing has been heard of him. He had to live somewhere, must have registered at some hotel. Yet all the consuls in the various cities have investigated and can find no traces of any one named Sturdy.”

“He may have used some other name,” suggested the professor. “It’s quite possible that he’d forgotten his own. Cases of amnesia are common enough, when a man forgets all his past history, even his name.”

“But if mother had been with him, she’d have set that all right,” objected Don.

“True enough,” replied the professor. “But how do we know that she was with him? All we know is that she ran out after him into the night. We cannot be sure that he didn’t elude her.”

“Oh, shall we ever be able to solve the mystery?” cried Don, in desperation.

“Yes, we will,” declared the captain heartily, as he placed his hand encouragingly on his nephew’s shoulder. “Keep up your heart, my boy. Remember that we found your sister Ruth when we had almost given up hope. And[5] with heaven’s help we’ll find your father and mother too.”

“To be sure we shall, even if we go to Egypt to do it,” chimed in the professor. “We’ll rake that country with a fine-toothed comb before we’ll give up and admit that we’re beaten.”

The sound of the dinner bell broke up the conference, and Don hastened to his room to wash and to brush his hair.

They were served at table by Jennie Jenks, the maid of all work, who in her flittings to and fro that afternoon had caught snatches of the conversation and was bursting with the desire to impart it to Mrs. Roscoe, the housekeeper of the Sturdy home.

“I guess we kin say good-bye to Mister Don an’ his uncles,” she remarked, in one of her migrations to the kitchen. “They’re all a goin’ to the tomb.”

Mrs. Roscoe was so startled that she nearly dropped the dish she was carrying from the oven.

“What do you mean?” she gasped. “Are they sick?”

“You wouldn’t think so if you seen the way they was eatin’,” replied Jennie, shifting her wad of chewing gum. “I mean they’re goin’ to them Egypt tombs, where they’s alligaster vases an’ omelets an’ things like that.”

“Oh, you mean the tombs of the Pharaohs,”[6] said the motherly housekeeper, in great relief. “They’ve been dead a long time.”

“Mebbe,” admitted Jennie. “Though I hadn’t even heard they was sick. But it just beats all the way them men go trampin’ all over the earth when they got a good home like this. Here they jest got back from Brazil, an’ lucky they was not to be et up by golcondas or cannonballs, an’ instead of settlin’ down, thankful like, they must be goin’ off lickety-switch to another of them heathen places. Who knows what’ll happen to ’em? Like as not Mister Don may fall down into one of them Egypt tombs an’ be squashed.”

“Oh, I guess not,” replied the housekeeper soothingly. “He’s been in a good many tight places and has come through all right.”

“Yes,” admitted Jennie. “But the picture that goes to the well too often is broke at last. An’ it jest makes my blood creep to think of them goin’ to that Egypt place, where all them plagues used to be.”

“That was a long time ago,” remarked the housekeeper. “I guess it’s all right now.”

“I don’t know,” said Jennie, renewing her attack on her chewing gum more vigorously and shaking her head. “From all I’ve heard, them Egyptians ain’t any better than they ort to be.”

“Who is?” asked Mrs. Roscoe mildly.

“A feller took me to a movie once that[7] showed all ’bout Egypt,” went on Jennie, ignoring the question. “The big buildings was so dark an’ gloomy they give me the shivers. I ast the feller why they didn’t have electric lights, an’ he tole me that they didn’t need electric lights coz they had so many Israelites. I ast him what they had to do with it, an’ he only laughed an’ said he loved every bone in my head.”

“He had a lot to love, then,” put in Mrs. Roscoe dryly.

“An’ they was a picture of the ocean,” Jennie continued, oblivious of the sarcasm, “an’ the feller that was with me tole me that was Pharaoh an’ his chariots an’ the children of Israel crossing the Red Sea. I said, ‘Where’s the children of Israel, I don’t see any,’ an’ he said, ‘Oh, they’ve gone over’; an’ I said, ‘Well, then, where’s Pharaoh and his chariots?’ an’ he said, ‘Oh, they’ve gone under.’ I s’pose that was the way of it since he said so, but it didn’t seem just right somehow.”

Just then Jennie was interrupted by a call from the dining room and scurried away, saving the housekeeper the necessity of listening to any further details for the moment.

Don finished his dinner and then went out and sat down in a chair on the porch. It was a beautiful summer evening, and in the great old trees about the house the birds were singing their vesper songs.

[8]Ordinarily the charm of the hour would have appealed to Don, but now the outer peace only helped to emphasize by contrast the ferment of anxiety in his mind. Where was his father? Where was his mother? Were they still alive? What fate was keeping him without tidings of his parents, dearer to him than life?

A boy on a motorcycle came at a rapid gait up the road. Don looked at him listlessly as he neared, but with quickened interest when he stopped at the gate.

The messenger opened the gate and wheeled his machine up the path.

“Cap’n Sturdy in?” asked the boy.

“Yes,” replied Don. “Want to see him?”

“Got a cablegram for him,” was the answer.

“Uncle Frank!” called Don. “Will you step here a minute? Something for you.”

The captain came to the door, carrying in his hand the evening newspaper he had been reading.

“What is it?” he asked.

The messenger handed him the envelope he drew from his pocket. The captain signed for it and tore it open.

He ran his eyes over the message, and gave a shout that brought Don to his feet in a twinkling.

“What is it?” he asked in surprise and some alarm. “What’s the matter?”

“Read it! Read it!” cried the captain, shoving[9] the message toward his nephew with a hand that trembled.

Don looked at it, and started as though he had received an electric shock.

“It’s from mother!” he cried. “It’s from mother!”

This was the way the message ran:

“Strange disappearance of Richard. Must have assistance. Cable immediately.

“Alice Sturdy.”

CHAPTER II Like a Voice from the Grave

“From mother!” shouted Don. “She’s alive! A cablegram from mother!”

He kissed the precious message and pressed it to his heart. Happy tears were in his eyes. The captain was scarcely less stirred.

The commotion brought the professor hurrying to the porch, as well as Don’s sister Ruth, who, not yet fully recovered from her long illness, stood like a frail lily, framed in the doorway.

“What is it, Don?” she asked, clasping her hands beseechingly. “I heard you say something about mother? What has happened?”

Don sprang to her side and led her to a chair, where he seated her tenderly.

“Good news, Ruth, glorious news!” he cried. “We have a message from mother. She’s alive! Think of it, Ruth! Mother’s alive and we’re going to see her soon!”

Ruth’s head drooped on his breast and she fell into a passion of weeping. They let her cry to her heart’s content, knowing they were[11] tears that could bring balm and blessing. The captain turned away, and the professor, to conceal his emotion, blew his nose vigorously.

The paroxysm passed, and Ruth, her eyes shining through her tears, looked at Don.

“What about Dad?” she asked.

Don’s face clouded.

“That news isn’t so good,” he answered. “Mother says that he has mysteriously disappeared. But we’ll find him, never fear. And, anyway, we know that he is still alive—or was up to within a very short time. When is that cablegram dated, Uncle Frank?”

“This morning,” answered the captain, “and it comes from Alexandria. That shows that they both reached Egypt from Brazil. It’s probable that Richard has been missing for a day or two only, or Alice would have cabled sooner. I wish she had gone more into details. But those will come later,” he added.

“She has probably been short of money, and cable tolls are expensive,” suggested the professor.

“We’ll soon settle the money question!” exclaimed the captain. “Dan,” he called to the man of all work, who, together with Mrs. Roscoe and Jenny, had been called out by the excitement and stood near by, “get out the car at once and drive me down to the village. I’ll cable her a thousand dollars to-night, and tell[12] her we’re coming to her by the first steamer we can get.”

Dan hurried away to the garage, while the captain went into the house to get his hat.

“Come into the house, my blessed lamb,” said Mrs. Roscoe, her own face wet with happy tears, as she folded Ruth in her motherly embrace and led her inside.

“My poor dear Missus!” blubbered Jenny, as she followed them. “All alone out there in the land of the Pigamids and the Spinach!”

“I’m going with you, Uncle Frank!” cried Don, as Dan brought the car up to the door.

“Jump in,” said the captain, as he set the example. Dan threw in the clutch and the car whirled out of the gate.

While uncle and nephew are speeding to respond to that call for help from faraway Egypt, it may be well, for the benefit of those who have not read the preceding volumes of this series, to tell who Don Sturdy was and what had been his adventures up to the time this story opens.

Don was a lad of fourteen, unusually tall and muscular for his age, with brown hair and eyes and a fair complexion. He had been born and brought up in Hillville, a thriving town in an Eastern state, about fifty miles from New York. The Sturdy house was of stone, as were the barn, garage and other outbuildings, surrounded[13] by several acres of ground set out with large trees.

Some time before the beginning of the events here narrated, Don’s father, Richard Sturdy, a great traveler, had set out on an exploring expedition, accompanied by his wife, Alice, and by his daughter, Ruth, who was about two years younger than Don. No word came from them, nor did the ship Mercury on which they had embarked reach port, and with the passage of time it began to be feared that the Mercury had gone down with all on board while rounding Cape Horn. The blow was a terrible one to Don, who dearly loved his parents and younger sister, and drove him nearly frantic with grief.

During his parents’ absence, Don had been left in the care of his uncle on his father’s side, Captain Frank Sturdy, his official guardian, a big game hunter of great repute, whose business of gathering animals dead and alive for museums and menageries had taken him at times all over the world. He was a big man of iron nerve, sinewy, with black hair and eyes. He was a dead shot, and his instructions had made Don also a marksman only second to himself.

Don was also under the general oversight of Professor Amos Regor Bruce, his uncle on his mother’s side, and an eminent scientist and member of many learned societies. He also[14] had traveled extensively in the interest of museums, for whom he gathered rare archæological specimens.

To divert Don’s mind from dwelling on his supposed loss, his uncles, both of whom were bachelors, took him with them on a trip to the Sahara Desert. There one adventure trod quickly on the heels of another. Don rescued a boy of about his own size, Teddy Allison, from the attack of thievish Arabs. It developed that Teddy’s father had been captured and carried into slavery. The sympathies of Don and his uncles were enlisted by the boy’s plight, and they organized an auto expedition into the desert to find Mr. Allison and incidentally to discover, if they could, the City of Brass and the Cave of Emeralds. What difficulties they had to surmount; the encounters they had with bandits; the thrilling circumstances attending the rescue of Mr. Allison and their finding of the emeralds are told in the first volume of this series, entitled: “Don Sturdy on the Desert of Mystery; or, Autoing in the Land of the Caravans.”

Don’s astonishment and delight may be imagined when he learned from Mr. Allison that, though the Mercury had indeed been shipwrecked, a number of passengers on the ill-fated ship had been picked up by a sailing vessel and carried to Brazil. Teddy’s father had heard the story from others of the rescued[15] party, a scientist and a sailor, who were presumably somewhere in Brazil, though he did not know their exact whereabouts. Don’s hopes that his parents and sister might have been among the survivors were revived, and he and his uncles determined to go to that great South American country, a project rendered the easier by the fact that the captain had a contract to capture big snakes and the professor wished to go to the same region to search for rare drugs.

Before long their expedition was organized and they had plunged into the wilds of Brazil. Here they had the most exciting adventures with anacondas, boa constrictors, alligators and jaguars, and were many times in peril of their lives.

How they captured the hideous monsters of the jungle; how they followed up traces of Don’s parents and sister and finally found Ruth in a hospital and brought her back to America; how they were baffled by the perplexing mystery that still clung about the movements of Don’s father and mother, are fully narrated in the second volume of this series, entitled: “Don Sturdy with the Big Snake Hunters; or, Lost in the Jungles of the Amazon.”

Now to return to Don, as, with his heart thumping against his ribs with joy and excitement, he accompanied his uncle to Hillville in[16] order to send the message that would bring relief and assurance to his mother’s heart.

Cable tolls were a matter of no consequence to the captain, and he sent a long message to his sister-in-law, full of love and sympathy and encouragement, accompanied by a telegraphic order for a thousand dollars and directions to draw on him for all she needed to any amount. He told her also that Ruth was safe at home, and that he and the professor and Don would be on their way to her by the first steamer on which they could secure passage.

“Well, that’s that!” exclaimed the captain, when he had finished and again climbed into the car. “Now to be up at daybreak and on my way to New York to make arrangements for our passage. You’ve got to hustle now, my boy, to get ready.”