Dark Angel

OUTSIDE, THE MIDWINTER WIND hurled wave after wave of a sleet-barrage against the window-panes, keening a ferocious war-chant the while. Within, the glow of sawn railway ties burning on the brass fire-dogs blended pleasantly with the shaded lamplight. Jules de Grandin put aside the copy of l’Illustration he had been perusing since dinnertime, stretched his slender, womanishly small feet toward the fire and regarded the gleaming tips of his patent leather pumps with every evidence of satisfaction. “Tiens, Friend Trowbridge,” he remarked lazily as he watched the leaping firelight quicken in reflection on his polished shoes, “this is most entirely pleasant. Me, not for anything would I leave the house on such a night. He is a fool who quits his cheerful fire to—”

The sharp, peremptory clatter of the front door knocker battered through his words, and before I could hoist myself from my chair the summons was repeated, louder, more insistently.

“I say, Doctor Trowbridge, will you come over to Larson’s? I’m afraid something’s happened to him—I hate to drag you out on such a night, but I think he really needs a doctor, and—” Young Professor Ellis half staggered into the hall as the driving wind thrust him almost bodily across the doorstep.

“I ran over to see him a few minutes ago,” he added as I slammed the door against the storm, “and as I went up his front path I noticed a light burning in an upper window, though the rest of the house was dark. I knocked, but got no answer, then went into the yard to call to him, when all of a sudden I heard him give the most God-awful yell, followed by a shriek of laughter, and as I looked up at his window he seemed to be struggling with something, though there was no one else in the room. I rang his bell a dozen times and pounded on the door, but not another sound came from the house. At first I thought of notifying the police; then I remembered you lived just round the corner, so I came here, instead. If Larson’s been taken ill, you can help; if we need the police, there’s always time to call ’em, so—”

“Eh bien, my friends, why do we stand here talking while the poor Professor Larson is in need of help?” demanded Jules de Grandin from the study door. “Have you no professional pride, Friend Trowbridge? Why do we linger here?”

“Why, you’ve only finished saying you wouldn’t budge from the house tonight,” I retorted accusingly. “Do you mean—”

“But certainly I do,” he interrupted. “Only two kinds of people can not change their minds, my friend, the foolish and the dead. Jules de Grandin is neither. Come, let us go.”

“No use getting out the car,” I murmured as we donned our overcoats. “This sleet would make driving impossible.”

“Very well, then, let us walk; but let us be about it swiftly,” he responded, fairly pushing me through the door and out into the raging night. Heads bent against the howling storm, we set out for Professor Larson’s house.

“I DIDN’T EXACTLY HAVE AN engagement with Larson,” Professor Ellis admitted as we trudged along the street. “Fact is, I expect he’d about as soon have seen the devil as me, but—have you heard about his latest mummy?” he broke off.

“His mummy. He brought it in from Africa last week, and he’s been talking about it ever since. This evening he was going to remove the wrappings, so I just ambled over to his house on the off chance he’d let me stick around.

“Larson’s a queer chap. Good man in anthropology, and all that, of course, but a lone wolf when it comes to work. He found this mummy by accident in a cleverly hidden tomb near Naga-ed-dêr, and that country was given up as thoroughly worked out thirty years ago, you know. Funny thing about it, too. While they were excavating the sepulcher two of his workmen were bitten by tomb spiders and died in convulsions. That’s unusual, for the Egyptian tomb spider’s not particularly venomous, though he’s an ugly-looking brute. They’d just about cleared the shaft of rubble and started working toward the funerary chamber when all Larson’s fellaheen ran out on him, too; but he’s a stubborn devil, and he and Foster stuck it out, with the help of such men as they could hire in the neighborhood.

“They had the devil of a time getting the mummy down the Nile, too. Half the crew of their dehabeeyah came down with some mysterious fever, and several of ’em died, and the rest deserted; and just as they were ready to sail from Alexandria, Foster, who was Larson’s assistant, came down with fever and died within three days. Larson hung on like grim death, though, and brought the mummy through—smuggled it right past the Egyptian customs men disguised as a crate of Smyrna sponges.”

“But see here,” I interrupted, “both you and Professor Larson are members of the Harrisonville Museum staff. How does it happen he’s able to treat this mummy as his personal property? Why didn’t he take it to the museum instead of his house?”

Ellis gave a short laugh. “Don’t know Larson very well, do you?” he asked. “Didn’t I say he’s a lone wolf? This expedition to Naga-ed-dêr was a fifty-fifty affair; the Museum paid half the shot, and Larson just about beggared himself to make up the difference. He had a theory there were some valuable Fifth Dynasty relics to be found at Naga, and everybody laughed at him. When he’d justified his theory he was like a spoiled kid with a stick of candy, and wouldn’t share his find with anyone; when I suggested he let me help him unwrap the thing he told me to take a running jump in the lake. I hadn’t an idea, really, he’d let me in when I called on him tonight, but when I heard him yelling and laughing and saw him jumping around like a chestnut on a griddle, I thought maybe he’d gone off his rocker, and ran to get you as quickly as I could. Here we are. We’ll probably be told to go to hell for our trouble, but he might need help.”

As he finished speaking, Ellis sounded a thunderous knock on Larson’s door. Only the skirling of the wind around the angle of the house and the flapping of an unsecured window-blind responded.

“Pardieu, either he is gravely ill or most abominably deaf, that one!” declared de Grandin, sinking his chin in the fur collar of his coat and grasping at his hat as the storm-wind all but wrenched it from his head.

“Think what you please, my friends, and freeze your feet while doing,” the little Frenchman interrupted testily. “Me, I go into that house right away, immediately, this minute.” Trying the door and nearest window, and finding both securely fastened, he dashed his gloved band through the pane without more ado, undid the latch and raised the sash. “Do you follow, or remain behind to perish miserably with cold?” he called as he flung a leg across the sill.

DE GRANDIN IN THE lead, we felt our way across the darkened drawing-room, across the hall, and up the winding staircase. Every room inside the house, save one, was black as ancient Egypt during the plague of darkness, but a thin stream of light trickling out into the hall from beneath Professor Larson’s study door led our footsteps toward his sanctum as a lighthouse guides a ship to port upon a starless night. “Larson!” Ellis called softly, rapping on the study door. “Larson, are you there?”

No answer came, and he seized the door-knob, giving it a tentative twist. The handle turned in his grasp, but the door held firm, for the lock had been shot from the inside.

“One side, if you will be so kind, Monsieur,” requested Jules de Grandin, drawing as far back as the width of the hall permitted, then dashing himself forward like a football player battering toward the goal. The flimsy door fell before his rush, and the darkened hall was flooded with a freshet of dazzling light. For a moment we paused on the threshold, blinking owlishly; then:

The room before us was a chaos of confusion, as though its contents had been stirred with a monster spoon in the hands of a maliciously mischievous giant. Furniture was overturned; some of the chair covers had been ripped open, as though a ruthless, hurrying searcher had cut the upholstery in search of hidden valuables; pictures hung crazily upon the walls.

In the middle of the study, beneath the glare of a cluster of electric lights, stood a heavy oaken table, and on it lay a mummy-case stripped of its cover, a slender, China-tea-colored form swathed in crisscrossed linen bandages, reclining on the table by the case.

Close to the baseboard of the wall beneath the window crouched a grotesque, unhuman thing, resembling a farmer’s cast-off scarecrow or a hopelessly outmoded tailor’s dummy. We had to look a second time and strain our unbelieving eyes before we recognized Professor Larson in the crumpled form.

Stepping daintily as a cat on a shower-splashed pavement, de Grandin crossed the room and sank to one knee beside the huddled form, drawing his right glove off as he knelt.

“Is—is he—” Ellis whispered hoarsely, halting at the word of which laymen seem to have a superstitious fear.

“Dead?” de Grandin supplied. “Mais oui, Monsieur; like a herring. But he has not been so long. No; I should hazard a guess that he was still living when we left the house to come here.”

“But—isn’t there something we can do? There must be something—” Ellis asked tremulously.

“But certainly; we can call the coroner,” de Grandin answered. “Meanwhile, we might examine this.” He nodded toward the mummy lying on the table.

Ellis’ humane concern for his dead colleague dropped from him like a worn-out garment as he turned toward the ancient relic, the man eclipsed completely by the anthropologist. “Beautiful—superb!” he murmured ecstatically as he gazed at the unlovely thing. “See, there’s no face-mask or funerary statue, either on the mummy or the case. Fifth Dynasty work, as sure as you’re alive, and the case is—I say, do you see it?” he broke off, pointing excitedly at the open cedar coffin.

“See it? But certainly,” de Grandin answered sharply. “But what is it you find extraordinary, if one may ask?”

“Why, don’t you see? There’s not a line of writing on that mummy-case! The Egyptians always wrote the titles and biographies of the dead upon their coffins, but this one is just bare, virgin wood. See”—he leant over and tapped the thin, hard shell of cedar—“there’s never been a bit of paint or varnish on it! No wonder Larson kept it to himself. Why, there’s never been a thing like this discovered since Egyptology became a science!”

De Grandin’s glance had wandered from the coffin to the mummy. Now he brushed past Ellis with his quick, cat-like step and bent above the bandaged form. “The égyptologie I do not know so well,” he admitted, “but medicine I know perfectly. What do you make of this, hein?” His slender forefinger rested for a moment on the linen bands encircling the desiccated figure’s left pectoral region.

I started at the words. There was no doubt about it. The left breast, even beneath the mummy-bands, was considerably lower than the right, and faintly, but perceptibly, through the tightly bound linen there showed the faintest trace of brown-red stain. There was no mistaking it. Every surgeon, soldier and embalmer knows that telltale stain at sight.

Professor Ellis’ eyes opened till they were nearly as wide as de Grandin’s. “Blood!” he exclaimed in a muted voice. “Good Lord!” Then:

“But it can’t be blood; it simply can’t, you know. Mummies were eviscerated and pickled in natron before desiccation; there’s no possibility of any blood being left in the body—”

“Oh, no?” the Frenchman’s interruption was charged with sarcasm. “Nevertheless, Monsieur, de Grandin is too old a fox to be instructed in the art of sucking eggs. Friend Trowbridge”—he turned to me—“how long have you been dealing pills to those afflicted with bellyache?”

“No buts, my friend. Can you, or can you not recognize a blood-stain when you see it?”

“Précisément—it is blood, Monsieur Ellis. The good and most reliable Doctor Trowbridge corroborates me. Now, let us examine the coffin of this so remarkable mummy which, despite your pickling in natron and your desiccation, can still shed blood.” With a wave of his hand he indicated the case of plain, unvarnished cedar-wood.

“By George, this is unusual, too!” Ellis cried, bending above the coffin. “D’ye see?”

“What?” I queried, for his eyes were shining with excitement as he gazed into the violated casket.

“Why, the way the thing’s fastened. Most mummy-case lids are held in place by four little flanges—two on each side—which sink into mortises cut in the lower section and held in place by hardwood dowels. This has eight, three on each side and one at each end. H’m, they must have wanted to make sure whoever was put in there couldn’t break loose. And—great Scott, will you look there!” Excitedly he pointed to the bottom of the case.

Once more I looked my wonderment. The abnormalities which struck his practised eye were quite invisible to me.

“See how they’ve lined the case with spices? I’ve opened several hundred mummy-cases, but I never saw that before.”

As he had said, the entire bottom of the coffin was strewn with loose spices to a depth of four inches or so. The aromatics had crumbled to a fine powder, but the mingled clove and cinnamon, aloes and thyme gave off a pungent, almost suffocating aroma as we bent above the bathtub-like coffin.

De Grandin’s small blue eyes were very round and bright as he glanced quickly from me to Ellis, then back again. “I damn think this explains it,” he announced. “Unless I am much more mistaken than I think I am, this body never was a mummy, at least not such a mummy as the old embalmers customarily produced. Will you assist me?” He bowed invitingly to Ellis, placing his hands beneath the mummy’s shoulders at the same time.

“Take the feet, if you please, Monsieur,” he bade, “and lift it gently—gently, if you please—it must be put exactly where it was until the coroner has viewed the room.”

They raised the bandaged form six inches or so above the table, then set it down again, and astonishment was written on their faces as they finished.

“What is it?” I asked, completely mystified by their glances of mutual understanding.

“Well, be everlastingly consigned to Satan’s lowest subcellar!” rejoined the little Frenchman sharply. “It is not well at all, my friend; it is completely otherwise. You know your physiology; you know that sixty percent or more of us is water, simply H20, such as is found in rivers, and on the tables of Americans in lieu of decent wine. Mummification is dehydration—the watery contents of the body is removed and nothing left but bone and desiccated flesh, a scant forty per cent of the body’s weight in life. This body is a small one; in life it could have weighed scarcely a hundred pounds; yet—”

“Why, then, it must have been only partly mummified,” I interrupted, but he cut in with:

“Or not at all, my friend. I damn think that we shall find some interesting disclosures when these wrappings are removed. A bleeding mummy, and a mummy which weighs more than half its lifetime weight—yes, the probabilities of a surprise are great, or I am more mistaken than I think.

“Meantime,” he turned toward the door, “there is the routine of the law to be complied with. The coroner must be told of Monsieur Larson’s death, and there is no need for us to burn these lights while we are waiting.”

Bowing politely to us to precede him, he switched off the study lights before closing the door and followed us to the lower hall where the telephone was located.

“I SIMPLY CAN’T IMAGINE HOW it happened,” Professor Ellis murmured, striding nervously across his late colleague’s drawing-room while we waited the advent of the coroner. “Larson seemed in the pink of condition this afternoon, and—good Lord, what’s that?”

The sound of a terrific struggle, like that of two men locked in a death-grip, echoed through the quiet house.

Thump—thump—thump! Heavy, pounding footsteps banged upon the floor above our heads; then crash! came a smashing impact, as of overturning furniture, a momentary pause, a strident scream and the sudden crescendo of a wild, discordant laugh. Then silence once again.

“Good heavens!” I exclaimed, panic grasping at my throat. “Why, it’s directly overhead—in the study, where we left the mummy and—”

“Impossible!” Professor Ellis contradicted. “Nobody could have gotten past us to that room, and—”

“Impossible or not, Friend Trowbridge speaks the truth, by damn!” the little Frenchman shouted, springing from his chair and racing toward the stairs. “En avant, mes enfants—follow me!”

Three steps at a stride he mounted headlong up the stairway, paused a moment at the closed door of the study while he whipped a pistol from his pocket, then his weapon swinging in a circle before him, advanced with a quick leap, snapped on the lights and:

“Hands up!” he shouted warningly. “A single offer of resistance and you breakfast with the devil in the morning—grand Dieu, my friends, behold!”

Save that one or two chairs had been overset, the room was just as we had left it. Upon the table lay the supine, bandaged mummy, its spice-filled case uncovered by its side; the thing which had been Larson crouched shoulders-to-the wall, as though stricken in an attempt to turn a somersault; the window-blind flapped cracklingly in the chilling winter wind.

“The window—it’s open!” cried Professor Ellis. “It was closed when we were here, but—”

“Dieu de Dieu de Dieu de Dieu—does not one know it?” de Grandin interrupted angrily, striding toward the open casement. “Parbleu, the way in which you pounce upon the obvious is greatly trying to my nerves, Friend Ellis, and—ah? A-a-a-ah? One sees, one perceives, one understands—almost!”

Abreast of him, we gazed across the sill, and obedient to the mute command of his pointing finger, looked at the snow-encrusted roof of the first floor bay-window which joined the house-wall something like two feet below the study window. Gouged in the dead-white veneer of snow were four long, parallel streaks, exposing the slate beneath. “U’m,” he murmured, lowering the sash and turning toward the door, “the mystery is in part explained, my friends.

“That window, it would be the logical place for a burglar to force entry,” he added as we trooped down the stairs. “The roof of the bay-window has but very little slope, and stands directly underneath the window of Professor Larson’s study. One bent on burglary could hardly fail to note its possibilities as an aid to crime, and the fact that we had light going only in the downstairs room was notice to the world that the upper story was untenanted. So—”

“Quite so, but there wasn’t any burglar there,” Ellis interrupted practically.

De Grandin favored him with such a stare as a teacher might bestow on a more than ordinarily dull pupil. “One quite agrees, mon ami,” he replied. “However, if you will have the exceeding goodness to restrain your curiosity—and conversation—for a time, it may be we shall find that which we seek.”

The dark, hunched-up object showed with startling vividness against the background of the snow-powdered lawn as we descended from the porch. De Grandin knelt beside it and struck a match to aid in his inspection. It was a ragged, unkempt figure, unwashed, unshaven; a typical low-class sneak-thief who had varied his customary sorry trade with an excursion into the higher profession of housebreaking with disastrous results to himself. He crouched as he had fallen from the bay-window’s sloping roof, one arm twisted underneath him, his head bent oddly to one side, his battered, age-discolored hat mashed in at the crown and driven comically down upon his head till his ears were bent beneath it. Little lodes of sleety snow had lodged within the wrinkles of his ragged coat, and tiny threads of icicles had formed on his mustache.

The man was dead, no doubt of it. No one, not even the most accomplished contortionist, could twist his neck at that sharp angle. And the manner of his death was obvious. Frightened at sight of the mummy, the poor fellow had endeavored to effect a hasty exit by the open window, had slipped upon the sleet-glazed roof of the bay-window and fallen to the ground, striking head-first and skidding forward with his full weight on his twisted neck.

I voiced my conclusions hastily, but de Grandin shook a puzzled head. “One understands the manner of his death,” he answered thoughtfully. “But the reason, that is something else again. We can well think that such a creature would have a paralyzing fear when he beheld the mummy stretched upon the table, but that does not explain the antics he went through before he fell or jumped back through the window he had forced. We heard him thrash about; we heard him kick the furniture; we heard him scream with mirthless laughter. For why? Frightened men may scream, they sometimes even laugh hysterically, but what was there for him to wrestle with?”

“That’s just what Larson did!” Professor Ellis put in hastily. “Don’t you remember—”

“Exactement,” the Frenchman answered with a puzzled frown. “Professor Larson cries aloud and fights with nothing; this luckless burglar breaks into the very room where Monsieur Larson died so strange a death, and he, too, wrestles with the empty air and falls to death while laughing hideously. There is something very devilish here, my friends.”

WHEN WE HAD GONE back in the house young Ellis looked at us with something very near to panic in his eyes. “You say that we must leave that mummy as it is until the coroner has seen it?” he demanded.

“All right, we’ll leave the dam’ thing there, but just as soon as Mr. Martin has finished with it, I think we’d better take it out and burn it.”

“Just that. It’s what the Egyptologists call an ‘unlucky’ mummy, and the sooner we get rid of it the healthier it’ll be for all of us, I’m thinking. See here”—he glanced quickly upward, as though fearing a renewed outbreak in the room above, then turned again to us—“do you recall the series of fatalities following Tutankhamen’s exhumation?”

De Grandin made no answer, but the fixed, unwinking stare he leveled on the speaker, and the nervous way his trimly waxed mustache quivered at the corners of his mouth betrayed his interest.

Ellis hurried on: “Call it nonsense if you will—and you probably will—but the fact is there seems something in this talk of the ancient gods of Egypt having power to curse those disturbing the mummies of people dying in apostasy. You know, I assume, that there are certain mummies known as ‘unlucky’—unlucky for those who find them, or have anything to do with them? Tutankhamen is probably the latest, as well as the most outstanding example of this class. He was a heretic in his day, and had offended the ‘old ones’ or their priests, which amounted to the same thing. So, when he died, they buried him with elaborate ceremonies, but set no image of Amen-Ra at the bow of the boat which carried him across the lake of the dead, and the plaques of Tem, Seb, Nephthys, Osiris and Isis were not prepared to go with him into the tomb. Tutankhamen, notwithstanding his belated efforts at reconciliation with the priesthood, was little better than an atheist according to contemporary Egyptian belief, and the wrath of the gods went into the tomb with him. It was not their wish that his name be preserved to posterity or that any of his relics be brought to light again.

“Now, think what happened: When Lord Carnarvon located the tomb, he had four associates. Carnarvon and three of his helpers are dead today. Colonel Herbert and Doctor Evelyn-White were among the first to go into Tut’s tomb. Both died within a year. Sir Archibald Douglas was engaged to make an X-ray—he died almost before the plates could be developed. Six out of seven French journalists who went into the tomb shortly after it was opened died in less than a year, and almost every workman engaged in the excavations died before he had a chance to spend his pay. Some of these men died one way, some another, but the point is: they all died.

“Not only that; even minor articles taken from the tomb seem to exercise a malign influence. There is absolute proof that attendants in the Cairo Museum whose duties keep them near the Tutankhamen relics sicken and die for no apparent reason. D’ye wonder they call him an ‘unlucky’ mummy?”

“Very good, Monsieur; what then?” de Grandin prompted as the other lapsed into a moody silence.

“Just this: That mummy-case upstairs is bare of painting as the palm of your hand, and the orthodox Egyptians of the Fifth Dynasty would no more have thought of putting a body away without suitable biographical and religious writings on the coffin than the average American family today would think of holding a funeral without religious services of some sort. Further than that, the evidence points to that body’s never having been embalmed at all—apparently it was merely wrapped and put into a coffin with a layer of spices around it. Embalming had religious significance in ancient Egypt. If the flesh corrupted, the spirit could not return at the end of the prescribed cycle and reanimate it, and to be buried unembalmed was tantamount to a denial of immortality. This body had only the poorest makeshift attempt at preservation. It looks as though this person, whoever he was, died outside the religious pale, doesn’t it?”

“All right, then look at the thing’s history so far: Larson’s workmen died while working in the tomb. How? By tomb-spider bite!

“Bosh! A tomb-spider is hardly more poisonous than our own garden spiders. I know; I’ve been bitten by the things, and suffered less inconvenience than when a scorpion stung me in Yucatan.

“Then, on the passage down the Nile most of the boat crew sickened, and some of ’em died, with a strange fever; yet they were hardy devils, used to the climate and in all probability immune to anything in the way of illness the country could produce. Then Foster, Larson’s assistant, pegged out just as they were setting sail from Egypt. Looks as though some evil influence were working, doesn’t it?

“Now, tonight: Larson was all ready to unwrap the mummy, but never got past taking it from the box. He’s dead—‘dead like a herring,’ as you put it—and only God knows how he died. Right while we’re waiting for the coroner to come, this poor devil of a burglar breaks into the house, fights with some unseen thing, just as Larson did, and dies. Say what you will”—his voice rose almost to a scream—“there’s an aura of terrible misfortune round that mummy, and death is waiting for whoever ventures near it!”

De Grandin patted the waxed ends of his diminutive mustache affectionately. “What you say may all be true, Monsieur,” he conceded, “but the fact remains that both Doctor Trowbridge and I have been near the mummy; yet we were never better in our lives—though I could do nicely with a gulp or so of brandy at this time. Not only that, Professor Larson spent nearly his entire fortune and a considerable portion of the Museum’s funds in finding this so remarkable cadaver. It would be larceny, no less, for us to burn it as you suggest.”

“All right,” Ellis answered with a note of finality in his voice. “Have it your own way. As soon as the coroner’s through with me I’m going home. I wouldn’t go near that cursed mummy again for a fortune.”

“HULLO, DOCTOR DE GRANDIN,” Coroner Martin greeted, stamping his feet and shaking the snow from his coat. “Bad business, this, isn’t it? Any idea as to the cause of death?”

“The one outside unquestionably died from a broken neck,” the Frenchman answered. “As for Professor Larson’s—”

“Eh, the one outside?” Mr. Martin interrupted. “Are there two of ’em?”

“Humph, we’re lucky there aren’t five,” Ellis cut in bitterly. “They have been dying so fast we can’t keep track of ’em since Larson started to unwrap that—”

“One moment, if you please, Monsieur,” de Grandin interrupted as he raised a deprecating hand. “Monsieur the Coroner is a busy man and has his duties to perform. When they have been completed I make no doubt he will be glad to listen to your interesting theories. At present”—he bowed politely to the coroner—“will you come with us, Monsieur?” he asked.

“Count me out,” said Ellis. “I’ll wait down here, and I want to warn you that—”

We never heard the warning he had for us; for, de Grandin in the lead, we mounted the stairs to the study where Professor Larson and the mummy lay.

“H’m,” Mr. Martin, who in addition to being coroner was also the city’s leading funeral director, surveyed the room with a quick, practised glance, “this looks almost as if—” he strode across the room toward Larson’s hunched-up body and extended one hand, but:

“Grand Dieu des cochons—stand back, Monsieur!” de Grandin’s shouted admonition halted Mr. Martin in mid-stride. “Back, Monsieur; back, Friend Trowbridge—for your lives!” Snatching me by the elbow and Mr. Martin by the skirt of his coat, he fairly dragged us from the room.

“What on earth—” I began as we reached the hall, but he pushed us toward the stairway.

“Do not stand and parley!” he commanded shortly. “Out—out into the friendly cold, while there is still time, my friends! Pardieu, I see it now—Monsieur Ellis has right; that mummy—”

“Oh—oh—o-o-o-oh!” The sudden cry came to us from the floor below, followed by the sound of scuffling, as though Ellis and another were struggling madly. Then came an awful, marrow-freezing laugh, shrill, mirthless, sardonic.

“Sang du diable—it has him!” de Grandin shouted, as he rushed madly toward the stair, leaped to the balustrade and shot downward like a meteor.

Coroner Martin and I followed sedately, and found the Frenchman standing mute and breathless at the entrance of the drawing-room, his thin, red lips pursed as though emitting a soundless whistle. Professor Larson’s parlor was furnished in the formal, stilted style so popular in the late years of the last century, light chairs and couches of gilded wood upholstered in apple-green satin, a glass-doored cabinet for bric-à-brac, a pair of delicate spindle-legged tables adorned with bits of Dresden china. The furniture had been tossed about the room, the light-gray velvet rug turned up, the china-cabinet smashed and flung upon its side. In the midst of the confusion Ellis lay, his hands clenched at his sides, his knees drawn up, his lips retracted in a grim, sardonic grin.

“Good God!” Coroner Martin viewed the poor, tensed body with staring eyes. “This is dreadful—”

“Cordieu, it will he more so if we linger here!” de Grandin cried. “Outside, my friends. Do not wait to take your coats or hats—come out at once! I tell you death is lurking in each shadow of this cursed place!”

He herded us before him from the house, and bade us stand a moment, hatless and coatless, in the chilling wind. “I say,” I protested through chattering teeth, “this is carrying a joke too far, de Grandin. There’s no need to—”

“Joke?” he echoed sharply. “Do you consider it a joke that Professor Larson died the way he did tonight; that the misguided burglar perished in the same way; that even now the poor young Ellis lies all stiff and dead inside that cursed hellhole of a house? Your sense of humor is peculiar, my friend.”

“What was it?” Coroner Martin asked practically. “Was there some infection in the house that made Professor Ellis scream like that before he died, or was it—”

“Tell me, Monsieur,” de Grandin interrupted, “have you facilities for fumigation at your mortuary?”

“Of course,” the coroner returned wonderingly. “We’ve apparatus for making both formaldehyde and cyanogen gas, depending on the class of fumigation required, but—”

“Very good. Be so good as to hasten to your place of business and return as quickly as may be with materiel for cyanogen fumigation. I shall await you here. Make haste, Monsieur, this matter is of utmost urgency, I assure you.”

WHILE MR. MARTIN WAS obtaining the apparatus for fumigation, de Grandin and I hastened to my house, procured fresh outdoor clothing and retraced our steps. Though I made several attempts to discover what he had found at Larson’s, his only answers were impatient shrugs and half-articulate exclamations, and I finally gave over the attempt, knowing he would explain in detail when he thought it proper. Hands deep in pockets, heads drawn well down into our collars, we waited for the coroner’s return.

With the deftness of long practise Mr. Martin’s assistants set the tanks of mercuric cyanide in place at the front and back doors of the Larson house, ran rubber hose from them to the keyholes and lighted spirit lamps beneath them. When Mr. Martin suggested that the bodies be removed before fumigation began, de Grandin shook his head decidedly. “It would be death—or most unnecessary risk of death, at best—to permit your men to enter till the gas has had at least a day to work within the house,” he answered.

“But those bodies should be cared for,” the coroner contended, speaking from the professional knowledge of one who had practised mortuary science for more than twenty years.

“They will undergo no putrefactive changes worthy of account,” the Frenchman answered. “The gas will act to some extent as a preservative, and the risk to be avoided is worth the trouble.”

As Coroner Martin was about to counter, he continued: “Demonstration outweighs explanation ten to one, my friend. Permit that I should have my way, and by this time tomorrow night you will be convinced of the good foundation for my seeming stubbornness.”

SHORTLY AFTER EIGHT O’CLOCK the following evening we met once more at Larson’s house, and as calmly as though such crazy actions were an everyday affair with him, de Grandin smashed window after window with his walking-stick, and bade us wait outside for upward of a quarter-hour. At last:

“I think that it is safe to enter now,” he said. “The gas should be dispelled. Come, let us go in.”

We tiptoed down the hall to the drawing-room where Professor Ellis lay, and de Grandin turned on every available light before entering the room. Beside the young man’s rigid body he went to his knees, and seemed to be examining the floor with minutest care. “Whatever are you doing—” I began, when:

We crossed the room and stared in wonder at the tiny object which he held between the thumb and finger of his gloved right hand. It was a tiny, ball-like thing, scarcely larger than a dried bean, a little, hairy spider with a black body striped about the abdomen with lines of vivid vermilion. “You observe him?” he asked simply. “Was I not wise to order our retreat last night?”

“What is the thing?” I demanded. “It’s harmless-looking enough, but—”

“Eh bien, there is a very great but there, my friend,” he retorted with a mirthless smile. “You saw what had been Monsieur Larson; you looked upon the poor, new-dead young Ellis? This—this little, seemingly so harmless thing it was which killed them. It is a katipo, or latrodectus Nasselti, the deadliest spider in the world. Even the cobra’s bite is but a sweetheart’s kiss beside the sting of this so small, deadly thing. Those bit by him are seized immediately with convulsions—they beat the air, they stumble and they whirl, at length they give vent to a dreadful scream which simulates a laugh. And then they fall and die.

“Does not that make it clear? The wholly irrational antics performed by Professor Larson ere he died could be explained in no sane manner. They puzzled me. I was not willing to accept Professor Ellis’ theory that the mummy was ‘unlucky,’ although, as the good God knows, it proved so for him. However, that Professor Larson was entirely dead could not be doubted, nor could one readily assign a reason for his death. Tiens, in such a case the coroner must be called, and so we telephoned for Monsieur Martin.

“Meantime, as we sat waiting in this room, a poor, half-starving devil of a man decided he would break into the house and steal whatever he could find. He mounted the bay-window’s roof, and, guided by his evil star, set foot inside the chamber where the mummy and Professor Larson lay. We heard him trample on the floor; we heard him give that dreadful, laughing scream; we searched for him, and found him dead upon the lawn.

“Very good. In due time Monsieur Martin comes; we lead him to the place where Monsieur Larson is, and as we go into the room I chance to look into the spices strewn about the bottom of that mummy-case. Ha—what is it that I see? Parbleu, I see a movement! Spices do not move, my friend, except they be blown on by the wind, and there is no wind in that room. Moreover, spices are not jettyblack with bands of red about their bellies. Non, pardieu, but certain spiders are. I see him and I know him. In the Eastern Islands, in Java, in Australia, I have seen him, and I have also seen his deadly work. He is the latrodectus Nasselti, called katipo by the natives, and his bite is almost instant and most painful death. More, those bitten by him dance about insanely in a sort of frantic seizure; they laugh—but not with happiness!—they scream with mirthless laughter; then they die. I did not wish to dance and laugh and die, my friends; I did not wish that you should do so, either. There was no time for talk or explanation; our only safety lay in flight, for they are tropic things, those spiders, and once we were outside the cold would kill them. I was about to call a warning to Monsieur Ellis, too; but I was, hélas, too late.

“Beyond a doubt one of the spiders had fastened on his clothing while he bent over to inspect that mummy-case. The insect clung to him when he left the room, and while he waited downstairs for us it crawled until it came in contact with his naked skin; then, angered, it may be, by some movement which he made, it bit him and he died.

“When I saw him lying here upon the floor I took incontinently to flight. Jules de Grandin is no coward, but who could say how many of those cursed spiders had crawled from the mummy-case and found hiding-places in the shadows—even in our clothing, as in the case of Monsieur Ellis? To stay here was to court a quick and highly disagreeable death; accordingly I rushed you out into the storm and asked Monsieur Martin to provide fumigation for the house forthwith. Now, since the cyanogen gas has killed every living thing inside this house, it is safe for us to enter.

“The bodies may safely be taken away by your assistants at any time, Monsieur,” he finished with a bow to Mr. Martin.

“EH BIEN, WERE HE but here, we could set poor Monsieur Ellis’ mind at rest concerning many things,” de Grandin murmured as we drove toward my house. “He could not understand how Professor Larson’s servants died by spider-bite, since the Egyptian tomb-spider is known to be innocuous, or nearly so. The answer now is obvious. In some way which we do not understand, a number of those poisonous black spiders found their way into that mummy-case. They are terrestrial in their habits, living in the earth and going forth by night. Light irritates them, and when the workmen brought their torches into the tomb they showed their annoyance by biting them. Death, accompanied by convulsions, followed, and because the small black spiders were invisible in the shadows, the harmless tomb-spiders received the blame. Some few of the black spiders came overseas with Professor Larson; when he pried the lid from that mummy-case—perhaps when he thrust his hand into the scattered spices to lift the mummy out—they fastened on him, bit him; killed him. You apprehend?”

“H’m, it sounds logical enough,” I answered thoughtfully, “but have you any idea how those spices came in that coffin? Poor Ellis seemed to think we’d hit on something extraordinary when he saw them; but he’s gone now and—great Scott, de Grandin, d’ye suppose those old Egyptian priests could have planted spider eggs among the spices, hoping they would hatch eventually, so that whoever molested the body in years to come would stand a chance of being bitten and killed?”

For a moment he drummed soundlessly with gloved fingers on the silver head of his stick. At length: “My friend, you interest me,” he declared solemnly. “I do not know that what you say is probable, but the manner of that mummy’s preparation is unusual. I think we owe it as a debt to poor, dead Ellis to look into the matter thoroughly.”

“Tomorrow we shall unwrap the body,” he responded as casually as though unshrouding centuries-old dead Egyptians were an everyday activity with us. “If we can find some explanation hidden in the mummy-clothes, well and good. If we do not—eh bien, the dead have spoken before; why not again?”

“The—dead—have—spoken?” I echoed slowly, incredulously. “What in the world—”

“Not in this world, precisely,” he interrupted with the shadow of a smile, “but there are those who look behind the veil which separates us from the ones we call the dead, my friend. We shall try other methods first. Those failing—” he recommenced his drumming on the handle of his cane, humming softly:

Sacré de nom,

Ron, ron et ron;

La vie est brêve,

La nuit est longue—

It was an oddly assorted group which gathered in the basement of Harrisonville Museum to denude the ancient dead of its cerements. Hodgson, the assistant curator of the department of archeology, a slender little man in gold-bowed, rimless spectacles, bald to the ears and much addicted to the habit of buttoning and unbuttoning his primly untidy double-breasted jacket, stood by in a state of twittering nervousness as de Grandin set to work.

“Who sups with the devil needs a long spoon,” the little Frenchman quoted with a smile as he drew a pair of heavy rubber gloves on his hands before taking up his scissors and snipping one of the criss-crossed linen bands with which the body was tightly wrapped. “I do not greatly fear that any of those small black imps of hell survived Monsieur Martin’s gas,” he added, laying back a fold of yellowed linen, “but it is well to be prepared. The cemeteries are full to overflowing with those who have thought otherwise.”

Yard after endless yard of linen he reeled off, coming at length to a strong, seamless shroud drawn sackwise over the body and tied at the feet with a stout cord. The cloth of which the sack was made seemed stronger and heavier than the bandages, and was thickly coated with wax or some ceraceous substance, the whole being, apparently, airtight and watertight.

“Why, bless my soul, I never saw anything like this before,” stammered Doctor Hodgson, leaning forward across de Grandin’s shoulder to stare curiously at the inner shroud.

“So much we gathered from Monsieur Ellis before—when he first viewed this body,” de Grandin answered dryly, and Professor Hodgson retreated with an odd little squeaking exclamation, for all the world like that of an intimidated mouse.

“Sale lâche!” the Frenchman whispered softly, his contempt of Hodgson’s cowardice written plainly on his face. Then, as he cut the binding string away and began twitching the waxed shroud upward from the mummy’s shoulders:

The body brought to view beneath the blue-white glare of the electric bulbs was not technically a mummy; though the aromatic spices and the sterile, arid atmosphere of Egypt had combined to keep it in a state of most unusual preservation. The feet, first parts to be exposed, were small and beautifully formed, with long, straight toes and narrow heels, the digits and soles, as well as the whole plantar region, stained brilliant red. There was surprizingly little desiccation, and though the terminal tendons of the brevis digitorum showed prominently through the skin, the effect was by no means revolting; I had seen equal prominence of flexor muscles in living feet where the patient had suffered considerable emaciation.

The ankles were sharp and shapely, the legs straight and well turned, with the leanness of youth, rather than the wasted look of death; the hips were narrow, the waist slender and the gentle swelling bosoms high and sharp. Making allowance for the early age at which women of the Orient mature, I should have said the girl died somewhere in her middle teens; certainly well under twenty.

“Ah?” de Grandin murmured as the waxed sack slid over the body’s shoulders. “I think that here we have the explanation of those stains, Friend Trowbridge, n’est-ce-pas?”

I looked and gulped back an exclamation of horrified amazement. The slim, tapering arms had been folded on the breast, in accordance with the Egyptian custom, but the humerus of the left arm had been cruelly crushed, a compound comminutive fracture having resulted, so that a quarter-inch or more of splintered bone thrust through the skin above and below the deltoid attachment. Not only this: the same blow which had crushed the arm had smashed the bony structure of the chest, the third and fourth left ribs being snapped in two, and through the smooth skin underneath the breast a prong of jagged bone protruded. A hemorrhage of considerable extent had followed, and the long-dried blood lay upon the body from left breast to hip in a dull, brown-red veneer. Waxed though the mummy-sack had been, the welling blood had found its way through some break in the coating, had soaked the tightly knotted outer bandages, and borne mute testimony of an ancient tragedy.

The finely cut features were those of a woman in her early youth. Semitic in their cast, they had a delicacy of line and contour which bespoke patrician breeding. The nose was small, slightly aquiline, high-bridged, with narrow nostrils. The lips were thin and sensitive, and where they had retracted in the process of partial desiccation, showed small, sharp teeth of startling whiteness. The hair was black and lustrous, cut short off at the ears, like the modern Dutch bob affected by young women, parted in the middle and bound about the brows with a circlet of hammered gold set with small studs of lapis lazuli. For the rest, a triple-stranded necklace of gold and blue enamel, armlets of the same design and a narrow golden girdle fashioned like a snake composed the dead girl’s costume. Originally a full, plaited skirt of sheer white linen had been appended to the girdle, but the fragile fabric had not withstood the years of waiting in the grave, and only one or two thin wisps of it remained.

“La pauvre!” exclaimed the Frenchman, gazing sadly at the broken little body. “I think, my friends, that we see here a demonstration of that ancient saying that the blood of innocents can not be concealed. Unless I am more wrong than I admit, this is a case of murder, and—”

“But it might as well have been an accident,” I cut in. “I’ve seen such injuries in motor-wrecks, and this poor child might have been the victim of a chariot smashup.”

“I do not think so,” he returned. “This case has all the marks of ritual murder, my friend. Observe the—”

“I think we’d better wrap the body up again,” Hodgson broke in hastily. “We’ve gone as far as we can tonight, and—well, I’m rather tired, gentlemen, and if you don’t mind, we’ll call the session off.” He coughed apologetically, but there was the mild determination of weak men who have authority to make their wishes law in his manner as he spoke.

“You mean that you’re afraid of something that might happen?” de Grandin countered bluntly. “You fear the ancient gods may take offense at our remaining here to speculate on the manner of this poor one’s death?”

“Well,” Hodgson took his glasses off and wiped them nervously, “of course, I don’t believe those stories that they tell of these ‘unlucky’ mummies, but—you’re bound to admit there have been some unexplained fatalities connected with this case. Besides—well, frankly, gentlemen, this body’s less a mummy than a corpse, and I’ve a terrible aversion to being around the dead, unless they’ve been mummified.”

De Grandin smiled sarcastically. “The old-time fears die hard,” he assented. “Nevertheless, Monsieur, we shall respect your sensibilities. You have been most kind, and we would not try your nerves still further. Tomorrow, if you do not mind, we shall pursue our researches. It may be possible that we shall discover something hitherto unknown about the rites and ceremonies of those old ones who ruled the world when Rome had scarce been thought of.”

“Yes, yes; of course,” Hodgson coughed as he edged near the door. “I’m sure I shall be happy to give you a pass to the Museum tomorrow—only”—he added as an afterthought—“I must ask that you refrain from mutilating the body in any way. It belongs to the Museum, you know, and I simply can not give permission for an autopsy.”

“Morbleu, but you are the shrewd guesser, Monsieur,” de Grandin answered with a laugh. “I think you must have read intention in my eyes. Very well; we consent. There shall be no post-mortem of the body made. Bon soir, Monsieur.”

“I’M SORRY, DOCTOR DE Grandin,” Hodgson greeted us the next morning, “but I’m afraid you’ll not be able to pursue any further investigations with the mummy—the body, I mean—we unwrapped last night.”

The little Frenchman stiffened in both body and manner. “You mean that you have altered your decision, Monsieur?” he asked with cold politeness.

“Not at all. I mean the body’s disintegrated with exposure to the air, and only a few wisps of hair, the skull and some unarticulated bones remain. While they weren’t quite airtight, the bandages and the wax-coated shroud seem to have been able to keep the flesh intact, but exposure to our damp atmosphere has reduced them to a heap of bone and dust.”

“U’m,” the Frenchman answered. “That is unfortunate, but not irreparable. I think our chance of finding out the cause and manner of the poor young lady’s death is not yet gone. Would you be good enough to lend us the ornaments, some of the mummy-cloth and several of the bones, Monsieur? We guarantee their safe return.”

“Well,” Hodgson hesitated momentarily, “it’s not quite regular, but if you’re sure you will return them—”

“Monsieur,” de Grandin’s voice broke sharply through the curator’s apologetic half-refusal, “I am Jules de Grandin; I am not accustomed to having my good faith assailed. No matter, the experiment which I have in mind will not take long, and you are welcome to accompany us. Thus you need never have the relics out of sight at any time. Will that assure you of their safe return?”

Hodgson undid the buttons of his jacket, then did them up again. “Oh, don’t think I was doubting your bona fides,” he returned, “but this body cost the Museum a considerable sum, and was the indirect cause of our losing two valuable members of the staff. I’m personally responsible for it, and—”

“No matter,” de Grandin interrupted, “if you will come with us I can assure you that the articles will be within your sight at all times, and you may have them back again this morning.”

Accordingly, Hodgson superintending fussily, we selected the gold and lapis lazuli diadem, the broken humerus, one of the fractured ribs and several lengths of mummy-cloth which bore the dull-red blood stains, and thrust them into a traveling-bag. De Grandin paused to call a number on the ’phone, talked for a moment in a muted tone, then directed me to an address in Scotland Road.

HALF AN HOUR’S DRIVE through the brisk winter air brought us to a substantial brownstone-fronted residence in the decaying but still eminently respectable neighborhood. Lace curtains hung at the tall windows of the first floor and the windows of the basement dining-room were neatly draped with scrim. Beside the carefully polished bell-pull a brass plate with the legend, Creighton, Clairvoyant, was set. A neat maid in black and white uniform responded to de Grandin’s ring and led us to a drawing-room rather overfurnished with heavy pieces of the style popular in the middle nineties. “Mrs. Creighton will be down immediately, sir; she’s expecting you,” she told him as she left the room.

My experience with those who claim ability to “look beyond the veil” was limited, but I had always imagined that they set their stages more effectively than this. The carpet, patterned with impossible roses large as cabbages, the heavy and not especially comfortable golden oak chairs upholstered in green plush, the stereotyped oil paintings of the Grand Canal, of Capri by moonlight and Vesuvius in action, were pragmatic as a plate of prunes, and might have been duplicated, item by item, in the “parlor” of half a hundred non-fashionable but respectable boarding-houses. Even the faint aroma of cooking food which wafted up to us from the downstairs kitchen had a reassuring and worldly tang which seemed entirely out of harmony with the ghostly calling of our hostess.

Madame Creighton fitted her surroundings perfectly. She was short, stout and matronly, and her high-necked white linen blouse and plain blue skirts were far more typical of the busy middle-class housewife than of the self-admitted medium. Her eyes, brown and bright, shone pleasantly behind the lenses of neat, rimless spectacles; her hair, already shot with gray, was drawn tightly back from her forehead and twisted in a commonplace knot above her occiput. Even her hands were plump, short-fingered, slightly workworn and wholly commonplace. Nowhere was there any indication of the “psychic” in her dress, face, form or manner.

“You brought the things?” she asked de Grandin when introductions were completed.

Nodding, he placed the relics on the oaken table beside which she was seated. “These were discovered—” he began, but she raised her hand in warning.

“Please don’t tell me anything about them,” she requested. “I’d rather my controls did all that, for one never can be sure how much information secured while one is conscious may be carried over into the subconscious while the trance is on, you know.”

Opening a drawer in the table she took out a hinged double slate and a box of thin, white chalk.

“Will you hold this, Doctor Trowbridge?” she asked, handing me the slate. “Take it in both hands, please, and hold it in your lap. Please don’t move it or attempt to speak to me until I tell you.”

Awkwardly I took the blank-faced slate and balanced it on my knees while Mrs. Creighton drew a small crystal ball from a little green-felt bag, placed it on the table between the broken arm-bone and the fractured rib, then, with a snap of the switch, set an electric light in a gooseneck fixture standing on the table aglow. The luminance from the glowing bulb shone directly on the crystal sphere, causing it to glow as though with inward fire.

For a little time—two minutes, perhaps—she gazed intently at the glass ball; then her eyes closed and her head, resting easily against the crocheted doily on the back of her rocking-chair, moved a little sidewise as her neck muscles relaxed. For a moment she rested thus, her regular breathing only slightly audible.

Suddenly, astonishingly, I heard a movement of the chalk between the slates. I had not moved or tilted them, there was no chance the little pencil could have rolled, yet unquestionably the thing was moving. Now, I distinctly felt it as it traveled slowly back and forth across the tightly folded leaves of the slate, gradually increasing its speed till it seemed like a panic-stricken prisoned thing rushing wildly round its dungeon in search of escape.

I had a momentary wild, unreasoning desire to fling that haunted slate away from me and rush out of that stuffy room, but pride held me in my chair, pride made me grip those slates as a drowning man might grip a rope; pride kept my gaze resolutely on Mrs. Creighton and off of the uncanny thing which balanced on my knees.

I could hear de Grandin breathing quickly, hear Hodgson moving restlessly in his chair, clearing his throat and (I knew this without looking) buttoning and unbuttoning his coat.

Mrs. Creighton’s sleep became troubled. Her head rolled slowly, fretfully from side to side, and her breathing became stertorous; once or twice she gave vent to a feeble moan; finally the groaning, choking cry of a sleeper in a nightmare. Her smooth, plump hands clenched nervously and doubled into fists, her arms and legs twitched tremblingly; at length she straightened stiffly in her chair, rigid as though shocked by a galvanic battery, and from her parted lips there came a muffled, strangling cry of horror. Little flecks of foam formed at the corners of her mouth, she arched her body upward, then sank back with a low, despairing whimper, and her firm chin sagged down toward her breast—I knew the symptoms! No medical practitioner can fail to recognize those signs.

“Madame!” de Grandin cried, rising from his chair and rushing to her side. “You are unwell—you suffer?”

She struggled to a sitting posture, her brown eyes bulging as though a savage hand were on her throat, her face contorted with some dreadful fear. For a moment she sat thus; then, with a shake of her head, she straightened, smoothed her hair, and asked matter-of-factly: “Did I say anything?”

“No, Madame, you said nothing articulate, but you seemed in pain, so I awakened you.”

“Oh, that’s too bad,” she answered with a smile. “They tell me I often act that way when in a trance, but I never remember anything when I wake up, and I never seem any the worse because of anything I dream while I’m unconscious. If you had only waited we might have had a message on the slate.”

“We have!” I interrupted. “I heard the pencil writing like mad, and nearly threw the thing away!”

“Oh, I’m so glad,” responded Mrs. Creighton. “Bring it over, and we’ll see what it says.”

The slate was covered with fine writing, the minute characters, distinct as script etched on a copper plate, running from margin to margin, spaces between the lines so narrow as to be hardly recognizable.

“Mort de ma vie, we have triumphed over Death and Time, my friends!” de Grandin cried excitedly. “Attendez, si’l vous plait.” Opening the slates before him like a book he read:

Revered and awful judges of the world, ye awful ones who sit upon the parapets of hell, I answer guilty to the charge ye bring against me. Aye, Atoua, who now stands on the brink of deathless death, whose body waits the crushing stones of doom, whose spirit, robbed for ever of the hope of fleshly tegument, must wander in Amenti till the end of time has come, confesses that the fault was hers, and hers alone.

Behold me, awesome judges of the living and the dead, am I not a woman, and a woman shaped for love? Are not my members beautiful to see, my lips like apricots and pomegranates, my eyes like milk and beryl, my breasts like ivory set with coral? Yea, mighty ones, I am a woman, and a woman formed for joy.

Was it my fault or my volition that I was pledged to serve the great All-Mother, Isis, or ever I had left the shelter of my mother’s flesh? Did I abjure the blissful agony of love and seek a life of sterile chastity, or was the promise spoken for me by another’s lips?

I gave all that a woman has to give, and gave it freely, knowing that the pains of death and after death the torment of the gods awaited me, nor do I deem the price too great to pay.

Ye frown? Ye shake your dreadful heads upon which rest the crowns of Amun and of Kneph, of Seb and Tem, of Suti and Osiris’ mighty self? Ye say that I speak sacrilege? Then hear me yet awhile: She who stands in chains before ye, shorn of reverence as a priestess of Great Mother Isis, shorn of all honor as a woman, tells ye these things to your teeth, knowing that ye can not do her greater hurt than that she stands already judged to undergo. Your reign and that of those ye serve draws near its end. A little while ye yet may strut and preen yourselves and mouth the judgments of your gods, but in the days that wait your very names shall be forgot, save when some stranger delves into your tombs and drags your violated bodies forth for men to make a show of. Aye, and the very gods ye serve shall be forgotten—they shall sink so low that none shall call their names, not even as a curse, and in their ruined temples none shall do them reverence, and no living thing be found, save only the white-bellied lizard and the fearful jackal.

And who shall do this thing? An offspring of the Hebrews! Yea, from the people ye despise a child shall spring, and great shall be His glory. He shall put down your gods beneath his feet and spoil them of all glory and respect; they shall become but shadow-gods of a forgotten past.

My name ye’ve stricken from the roll of priestesses, no writing shall be graven on my tomb, and I shall be forgotten for all time by gods and men. So reads your judgment. I give ye, then, the lie. Upon a day far in the future strange men from a land across the sea shall open wide my tomb and take my body from it, nor shall my flesh taste of corruption until those strangers look upon my face and see my broken bones, and seeing, wonder how I died. And I shall tell them. Yea, by Osiris’ self I swear that though I have been dead for centuries, I shall relate the manner of my judgment and my death, and they shall know my name and weep for me, and on your heads they shall heap curses for this thing ye do to me.

Pile now your stones of doom upon my breast, break my bones and still the fevered beating of my heart. I go to death, but not from out the memory of men as ye shall go. I have spoken.

Below the writing was a little scrawl of drawing, as crudely executed as a child’s rough chalk-sketch on a wall; yet as we looked at it we seemed to see the outline of a woman held upon the ground by kneeling slaves while a man above her poised a heavy rock to crush her exposed breast and another stood in readiness to aid the executioner:

“Cordieu!” de Grandin exclaimed as we gazed upon the drawing. “I shall say she told the truth, my friends. She was a priestess of the goddess Isis, and as such was sworn to lifelong chastity, with awful death by torture as the penalty for violation of her vow. Undoubtlessly she loved not wisely, but too well, as women have been wont to love since time began, and upon discovery she was sentenced to the death decreed for those who did forget their obligations to the goddess. Her chest was broken in with stones, and without benefit of mummification her mutilated body was put in a casket void of any writing which might give a clue to her identity. Without a single invocation to the gods who held the fate of her poor spirit in their hands, they buried her. But did she triumph? Who says otherwise? We know her name, Atoua, we know the reason and the manner of her death. But those old priests who judged her and decreed her doom—who knows their names, yes, parbleu, who knows or cares a single, solitary damn where their vile mummies lie? They are assuredly gone into oblivion, while she—tiens, at least she is a personality to us, and we are very much alive.”

“Excuse me, gentlemen, if you’re quite finished with these relics, I’ll take them, now,” Professor Hodgson interrupted. “This little séance has been interesting, but you must admit nothing sufficiently authentic to be incorporated in our archives has been developed here. I fear we shall have to label these bones and ornaments as belonging to an unidentified body found by Doctor Larson at Naga-ed-dêr. Now, if you don’t mind I shall get—”

“Get anywhere you wish, Monsieur, and get there quickly,” de Grandin broke in furiously. “You have presided over relics of the dead so long your brain is clogged with mummy-dust. As for your heart—mort d’un rat mort, I do not think you have one!

“As for me,” he added with a sudden smile, “I return at once to Doctor Trowbridge’s. This poor young lady’s tragic fate affects me deeply, and unless some urgent business interferes, I plan to drown my sorrow—morbleu, I shall do more. Within the hour I shall be most happily intoxicated!”