Velu arrived in London at Euston station before dawn and took the Underground home, to sleep most of the day.
Jessica called the temp Agency to quit the job at the Bulwer-Lytton museum. She enquired about any job openings at the Penhew Foundation but was unsuccessful. She then took the Underground out to the East End, where he visited the office at Crescent Empire Imports and enquired about a secretarial job (also unsuccessful). She then walked across the street to the Red Dragon pub and was hired on the spot as a barmaid. She was told to return at 4 PM and work until 1 AM.
Meanwhile, Dan'l was released from the Dover hospital that morning, with the doctor urging him to avoid any further injury. He and Niles took the train back to London. Arriving at Cannon Street station in the heart of the City, they decided to keep a low profile this time and reserved a room at the Walbrook Hotel (near the Wren masterpiece St. Stephen's Walbrook ), an establishment which catered to business travelers. Dan'l called Independent Investigations and left his number with the secretary (Indira - Velu's sister-in-law). He and Niles then went shopping for clothing to replace that ruined by the knife attack. Dan'l also bought a walking stick with a weighted end, suitable for bludgeoning assassins and cultists.
When Niles and Dan'l returned to their hotel, they had a message to call Jessica Wright (who had returned from the pub). She gave them a progress report and suggested they meet that evening with her partner Velu at the Bombay Palace (a restaurant in Soho owned by Velu's cousin) to discuss strategy.
In the afternoon, Velu came into the office and began writing his status report for his employer, Alissa Blankstone (who was in Paris). Jessica told him about the meeting that evening and that she would be at the Red Dragon pub gathering information.
That evening, Niles and Dan'l met Velu at the Bombay Palace restaurant in the private dining room, where Velu told them what had happened in the past week. He asked his cousin about Tewfik al-Sayed and was told that Tewfik was a prosperous businessman from Egypt. The cousin hoped Tewfik would not expand his food service to include Indian cuisine as it would be difficult for his humble restaurant to compete with belly dancers!
Jessica spent the evening working at the Red Dragon pub. The skimpy outfit she was required to wear left little to the imagination, although it was comfortable in the hot, stuffy, smoke-filled interior of the pub. The patrons were dockworkers and sailors, many of them immigrants. As she was taking orders from one table, she overheard a nearby conversation that mentioned "Blue Pyramid", "the island", "Friday midnight", and "reward". She managed to take the drinks to that table and learned that the men were dockworkers from Crescent Empire.
After dinner, Dan'l returned to the Walbrook Hotel to rest, while Niles went to the Army Club and spent the evening drinking cocktails and playing cards with old acquaintances from the Great War. He declined (regretfully) an invitation out to a country house in Surrey that weekend.
Velu took the Underground to the East End and stopped by the Red Dragon pub. After ordering a Fuller's London Porter, he saw Jessica busily serving drinks. During her break they talked in the alley outside.
About 11:30 PM, Velu then took the Underground to Russell Square and walked to the Penhew Foundation. He noticed a truck being loaded behind the museum building and managed to find an unobtrusive spot from which to observe. He noticed Tewfik al-Sayed directing the workers. Velu then flagged down a taxi and waited for the loading to be completed, then followed the truck as it headed north, out of London. After about 15 minutes, Velu told the taxi driver to take him back to Oxford Street.
Velu then walked over to the Penhew Foundation and, after waiting for the night watchman to go back inside the building, climbed over the iron fence. He quickly moved across the grounds to the back door (which was unlocked) and then entered the building.
Using Nell's map, he located the storeroom and went inside. The room was quite dusty and contained boxes, crates, old furniture, and a large mummy case, but no file cabinets with the records he was seeking. He examined a door in the south wall and found that it led into a closet that connected into the Director's office (and was concealed from that side). Returning to the storeroom, he examined the mummy case, which seemed out of place. He noticed that the dust was not very thick around the mummy case and in particular the eyes seemed to have been dusted recently.
At that point Velu heard footsteps in the hallway and took refuge in
the closet. After wating a few minutes, he returned to the storeroom
and, hearing nothing, quickly left the building. He took a taxi back
to the office, updated Nell's map, and wrote a status report for Alisa.
Velu and Jessica met at their office on Wormwood Street (near Liverpool Street station) to discuss the situation. They decided to follow the men from the Blue Pyramid that night as they traveled to the "island". They telephoned Niles and and Dan'l and coordinated their efforts.
Niles and Jessica took a taxi to Highgate Cemetery to investigate a possible link to the Egyptian murders. Jessica talked to the caretaker, who said he had seen some strange people taking photographs last week. He thought they might have been Bolsheviks, preparing for a May Day march to the grave of Karl Marx.
Jessica and Niles then took a taxi to the docks at Thameshaven, where they hired a six-seater motor boat along with a skipper, who was told to have the boat waiting in the Thames near the Limehouse docks at 9 PM that night.
Velu went to Soho, where he walked by the Blue Pyramid and checked out the entrances and the back alley. He applied for a job as a bus boy but was told that there were no vacancies. He then visited Tewfik's spice shop and purchased some cooking herbs for his wife. Tewfik was working behind the counter and was quite uncommunicative.
Dan'l decided to visit the Penhew Foundation. After a tour of the first floor museum (second floor in U.S. terminology) by a docent, Dan'l was allowed to examine the collection of Egyptian artifacts by himself. He noticed an elevator in the corner and rode it down to the basement.
The basement contained a number of large crates, a coal bin, and a furnace. Everything was liberally coated in coal dust. Using his civil engineering skills, Dan'l examined the basement carefully and noticed that the room appeared to be subdivided by a concrete wall. An electrical cable from the fuse box passed through the concrete wall,as well as hot and cold water pipes and a steam pipe from the boiler. This led Dan'l to believe that there was a hidden room located beneath the ground floor storage room and inaccessible from the main part of the basement.
After leaving the basement, Dan'l left the Foundation and returned to the Walbrook Hotel to put on clean clothes.
That evening, Niles went down to the boat by the docks. Jessica reported for work at the Red Dragon pub. Dan'l stationed himself in the alley behind the Blue Pyramid nightclub.
Velu showed up at the Crescent Empire warehouse at 10 PM as if looking for work. To his surprise the warehouse was closed. He went across the street to the pub, waited for an hour, then returned to the warehouse and found no sign of activity.
Jessica overheard someone in the pub saying (in Arabic) that Chabout was not here and had gone out to the house tonight. She realized that the group might be traveling by truck rather than by water! She pretended to become ill and left work early. After locating Velu and Niles, she told them to get a car and meet her at the Blue Pyramid. Niles paid off the skipper and dismissed him.
Niles telephoned one of his friends but learned that he had gone to the country house for the weekend. Velu telephoned his cousin at the Bombay Palace and wheedled the loan of his car (a 1923 Morris-Cowley Bullnose four-seater touring car ) for the evening, promising to return it full of petrol. Niles, Jessica, and Velu then took the Underground to the restauarant, picked up the car, and drove to the Blue Pyramid and told Dan'l about the change in plans.
Velu, Jessica, and Niles sat in the car (parked and running) on Old Compton Street while Dan'l continued to watch the alley. Just after midnight, about twenty men left the night club and climbed into a truck parked in the alley. The truck then headed north out of London, followed by the investigators. Velu wrote down the license plate.
The truck continued north for about an hour, passing through Colchester before turning off into an unpaved country lane and heading east. Niles followed at a distance. After about 20 minutes, he noticed the truck turning off the lane and stopping at a gatehouse. Several men (guards?) with flashlights examined the driver and truck before allowing it to pass through the gate, which was connected to a six-foot high stone wall.
Niles continued driving slowly along the lane, past the road to the gatehouse. Velu jumped from the car on the side opposite the gatehouse, twisting his ankle as he discovered that the lane followed the top of a levee, built up about five feet above the marshy ground. Clutching his lunch pail, he moved cautiously along the levee parallelling the stone wall and keeping out of sight of the gatehouse. Because of the New Moon his progress was slow and he could observe little. The smell of salt water was very strong.
Once out of sight of the gatehouse, Niles parked the car. Jessica and Dan'l got out and moved along the levee until they found Velu. The trio then continued walking west until the stone wall took a bend to the north. Approaching the wall, Velu climbed atop it and looked around. To the north, he saw a Jacobean manor about a mile away, with a few lights in the windows. Flickering lights moved in front of the house.
Jessica then tried to climb the wall but slipped on the wet stone and fell back to the marshy ground. Velu threw down a rope, and Jessica and Dan'l climbed up. The three then jumped down on the other side to reduce the likelihood of being seen.
Using his U.S. Army binoculars, Dan'l scanned the scene and noticed a crowd of about fifty people wearing robes and carrying torches in front of the manor. The faint sounds of dissonant music played on flutes, cymbals, panpipes, and drums could be heard, along with a buzzing sound that might have been chanting. The crowd began to surge westward, toward a tall spire resembling an Egyptian obelisk.
Velu then used the binoculars to examine the crowd and spotted Tewfik leading the march. The crowd eventually reached the obelisk and began moving about it in some kind of dance, waving the torches and singing.
Using the binoculars, Jessica noticed that a nude woman was shackled to the obelisk. As the chanting rose in intensity, she saw something happen that was literally indescribable. A chill wind buffetted the investigators as they crouched in the marsh against the stone wall, and a triumphal roar was heard in the distance.
That was enough. Velu tried to climb back over the wall but slipped, as did Dan'l. Jessica successfully scaled the wall and tossed the rope down to the others. While Velu remained by the levee, Jessica and Dan'l hurried back to the car. There they found Niles patiently waiting. After crank-starting the car, he drove back along the lane to pick up Velu. The noise of the car starting had alerted the guards and lights were shined on the car as it drove past the gate. Niles floorboarded the Morris and raced back to Colchester.
Just south of Colchester Niles stopped the car and refilled the gas
tank from the petrol can, then drove back to London in the cold, grey,
reassuring light of dawn.