CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Dan Caine woke with a start. The day was still bright, and dust motes danced in the sunlight that angled through chinks in the boarded window. Dan tried to loosen the rope around his wrists again, but it was a no-go. The bonds were just as tight as before. He looked around him. He was in the place where the steam clock once ticked away seconds, one drop of condensed water at a time. He figured he was even higher in the building than the room occupied by the late Shadow Beck. He seemed to be in a clock tower that faced to the north, judging by the angle of the sun. Towers and turrets were a feature of the mansion, some with pointed roofs as this one had. Unlike the smaller turrets, the tower had a circular shape and was built large enough to accommodate the furnace and workings of a timepiece.
Dan was hungry, thirsty, and hurting. He tried crying out, but the only answer to his croaky cusses and angry yells were mocking echoes. He felt a spiteful pain deep in his gut and angrily vowed to gun all who were responsible for his present wretched circumstances.
Then . . . footsteps . . . slow . . . shuffling . . . ominous . . .
“Who’s there?” Dan said. “Show yourself and state your intentions.”
“As to who I am, I’m Artemus. As to my intentions, I bring you water.”
The old man appeared from the shadows and stepped into the slanting sunlight. A Sharps rifle was slung over his left shoulder by a piece of rope, and he held a bucket of water, the handle of a dipper sticking up above the rim. Artemus, a white-bearded old man with obsidian eyes that gleamed in the light, unslung his Sharps and laid it beside him where it would be handy. He dipped water and held it to Dan’s mouth. The water was alkaline and bitter and ran down his chin, but he drank deeply. Artemus took the dipper away and Dan said, “Any grub?”
“No, but you’ll get a big breakfast, steak and eggs, before the hanging tomorrow.”
“Who’s getting hung?”
“You are.”
Dan was more angry than scared. “By whose authority?”
Artemus smiled. “By the authority of the lawful court that convened at two o’clock this morning, Lord Gray on the bench as judge, Agatha Brewer, alias Olivia De Laurent, for the defense and Miss Misty Maguire for the prosecution. The jury was made up of six whores who kept dozing off.”
“What the hell happened?” Dan said, agitated.
“Well, Prosecutor Brewer told the court that there is no defense for cold-blooded murder and Miss Maguire said, ‘There sure as hell isn’t.’ Lord Bertram Clarence Gray agreed with both the prosecution and the defense, and so did the jury, them that was still awake. Then Lord Gray put a piece of black cloth on his head and sentenced you to hang.” Artemus sighed. “It was a quick trial, you understand, not much of a show. Everybody wanted to get to their beds, especially the judge who said he was plum wore out.”
Artemus reached out and lifted the Bull Durham sack and papers from Dan’s shirt pocket and expertly rolled a cigarette that he held to the prisoner’s mouth. “Here, sonny, lick this,” he said. Dan did as he was told and Artemus stuck the quirley between his lips and thumb-nailed a lucifer into flame. Dan inhaled deeply, and the tip of the cigarette glowed cherry red in the murk.
“This won’t stand,” Dan said from behind ringlets of blue smoke. “It’s the verdict of a kangaroo court, and I object.”
Artemus shook his head. “No one around to hear you object, sonny, well, except for the pretty lady”—he pointed to a dark corner—“over there. But she’s been dead for a thousand years and more.”
Startled, Dan Caine’s eyes probed the shadows. As the sun rose higher in the sky, the clock tower had slowly shaded into gloom, but he made out a pale face in the corner, perfectly still, staring in his direction. “Who the hell is she?” Dan said. Then, “Hey, lady, who are you?” His cigarette bobbed up and down in his mouth.
Artemus said, “She won’t answer, sonny. As to what she’s doing . . . ah . . . what she’s doing is watching you, sonny, the ancient dead keeping vigil over the soon to be dead. As to who she is, well, the French gentleman who brung her here told Miss Maguire that she’s the lady Teshet, once a chantress of the temple of the great god Amun Ra at Thebes in Egypt. You know, where the pyramids are. Well, Miss Maguire traded the services of a pair of whores for the Lady Teshet, but it didn’t take her long to realize that she’d gotten the worse of that deal. She said the mummy was cursed and made her think of death and Judgment Day. She banished it to the top of the house hoping to sell it one day.”
Dan shook his head. “Frenchmen, mummy, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“Wait right there and I’ll explain it to you, then I have to go stoke the furnace. And get your gallows ready for tomorrow. Don’t move now,” Artemus said.
“You trying to make a joke, old man?” Dan said.
Dan’s question was answered with a cackle, and Artemus crossed the floor into the dark corner. A few moments later, Dan heard the old man say, “Come on, Lady, we’re going for a walk.” Then a dragging sound, something heavy pushed across the rough timber floor. Then Artemus spoke again, his gravelly voice loud in the silence. “You’re heavy, Lady. Any of them French fellers in Egypt ever tell you that?”
Like an apparition, a vaguely human-shaped and richly decorated container about seven feet tall appeared out of the gloom. The case bore the painted likeness of a young woman’s face and at three different places it was enveloped in the outspread, protective wings of a strange, buzzard-like creature. Down the front of the case was a column of small pictures and wavy and straight lines that Artemus identified as Ancient Egyptian writing.
“What the hell is that?” Dan said. He spat away the stub of his cigarette. Whatever the box was, he didn’t like the look of it.
“You’re some kind of ignorant, ain’t you, cowboy?” Artemus said. He doffed his top hat and goggles, laid them carefully on the floor, and wiped his sweaty brow with his coat sleeve. “It’s a mummy case. The Lady Teshet is a mummy, and she’s inside there, all wrapped in bandages, a-waiting for the Day of Resurrection. You never saw the like, huh?”
It suddenly dawned on Dan that he had seen the like. Just after he got out of Huntsville, twenty pounds underweight and fevered, he watched a medicine show in Waco that featured a bandage-wrapped corpse in a painted coffin.
“I seen the like a few years back,” Dan said. “I recollect listening to a snake-oil salesman who called himself Professor Leviticus Bookworm. I’ll never forget that name. Anyway, he told the crowd that the dead ranny was the mummy of a great Egyptian king who’d lived for a hundred, healthy years by drinking sacred water from the river Nile every single day. The bottle of Nile water cost me my last nickel, and it didn’t cure my fever but at the time I thought it made my hair grow thicker.” Dan shook his head. “Hell, the mummy didn’t look like a king. All wrapped in dirty bandages it was even skinnier than I was. The professor was a cheat and a fraud and so was the mummy.” He nodded to the coffin. “Like her.”
“You’ve a good mind, lawman. That is until you make it up,” Artemus said. “I guess you think the curse is a fraud too, huh?”
“What curse?” Dan said.
“Want another smoke?” Artemus said. “I’m being nice to you here, trying to stop you studying on the hanging tomorrow.”
“Why?” Dan said.
“Because I’ve took to liking you, sonny. I’m going to hang you, but I like you.”
Dan nodded. “That’s true blue of you,” he said.
Artemus smiled. “Damn right. Sometimes I act like a white man. Smoke?”
“Yeah, smoke.”
Dan watched the old man go through the cowboy ritual of building the cigarette with one hand, only a few tiny strands of tobacco dropping on the floor. He licked the paper and then got the thing lit. Dan inhaled deeply, the wished-for nicotine hit carried like a genie on a cloud of blue smoke.
“What curse? That’s what you asked, wasn’t it, sonny?” Artemus said. “Well, it’s right there on the front of the coffin. The Frenchman told Miss Maguire what it says and wrote it down for her. And then she told me. Now listen up, here’s what it says . . . Whosoever disturbs the body of this servant of Amun Ra will meet with violent death. His breast will be pierced by arrows and his body consumed by fire.”
Artemus smiled and said, “Scary, ain’t it? The curse is why Miss Maguire had me bring Lady Teshet up here. She hopes to sell her for fifty dollars someday, but so far, she’s had no takers. Men don’t come to a whorehouse to buy mummies.”
He picked up his hat, settled it on his head, sighed, and said, “Well I got to go and battle the demon furnace. Until I see you again, I’ll leave Lady Teshet here to keep you company. But I warn you, she ain’t much of a chatterbox.”
Pleased with his little joke, Artemus stepped away. Then he stopped, turned, and said, “How do you like your eggs?”
“Huh?” Dan said.
“To go with your steak tomorrow afore you get hung,” Artemus said.
“Scrambled,” Dan said. “And while you’re at it, cook up some for the mummy. She’s had nothing to eat for a thousand years.”