Part 20 (2/2)

”Look here! Drop it!” cried Smith, shaking him roughly by the shoulder.

”Your nerves are all in a jangle. You must drop these little midnight games with mummies, or you'll be going off your chump. You're all on wires now.”

”I wonder,” said Bellingham, ”whether you would be as cool as I am if you had seen----”

”What then?”

”Oh, nothing. I meant that I wonder if you could sit up at night with a mummy without trying your nerves. I have no doubt that you are quite right. I dare say that I have been taking it out of myself too much lately. But I am all right now. Please don't go, though. Just wait for a few minutes until I am quite myself.”

”The room is very close,” remarked Lee, throwing open the window and letting in the cool night air.

”It's balsamic resin,” said Bellingham. He lifted up one of the dried palmate leaves from the table and frizzled it over the chimney of the lamp. It broke away into heavy smoke wreaths, and a pungent, biting odour filled the chamber. ”It's the sacred plant--the plant of the priests,” he remarked. ”Do you know anything of Eastern languages, Smith?”

”Nothing at all. Not a word.”

The answer seemed to lift a weight from the Egyptologist's mind.

”By the way,” he continued, ”how long was it from the time that you ran down, until I came to my senses?”

”Not long. Some four or five minutes.”

”I thought it could not be very long,” said he, drawing a long breath.

”But what a strange thing unconsciousness is! There is no measurement to it. I could not tell from my own sensations if it were seconds or weeks.

Now that gentleman on the table was packed up in the days of the eleventh dynasty, some forty centuries ago, and yet if he could find his tongue, he would tell us that this lapse of time has been but a closing of the eyes and a reopening of them. He is a singularly fine mummy, Smith.”

Smith stepped over to the table and looked down with a professional eye at the black and twisted form in front of him. The features, though horribly discoloured, were perfect, and two little nut-like eyes still lurked in the depths of the black, hollow sockets. The blotched skin was drawn tightly from bone to bone, and a tangled wrap of black coa.r.s.e hair fell over the ears. Two thin teeth, like those of a rat, overlay the shrivelled lower lip. In its crouching position, with bent joints and craned head, there was a suggestion of energy about the horrid thing which made Smith's gorge rise. The gaunt ribs, with their parchment-like covering, were exposed, and the sunken, leaden-hued abdomen, with the long slit where the embalmer had left his mark; but the lower limbs were wrapped round with coa.r.s.e yellow bandages. A number of little clove-like pieces of myrrh and of ca.s.sia were sprinkled over the body, and lay scattered on the inside of the case.

”I don't know his name,” said Bellingham, pa.s.sing his hand over the shrivelled head. ”You see the outer sarcophagus with the inscriptions is missing. Lot 249 is all the t.i.tle he has now. You see it printed on his case. That was his number in the auction at which I picked him up.”

”He has been a very pretty sort of fellow in his day,” remarked Abercrombie Smith.

”He has been a giant. His mummy is six feet seven in length, and that would be a giant over there, for they were never a very robust race.

Feel these great knotted bones, too. He would be a nasty fellow to tackle.”

”Perhaps these very hands helped to build the stones into the pyramids,”

suggested Monkhouse Lee, looking down with disgust in his eyes at the crooked, unclean talons.

”No fear. This fellow has been pickled in natron, and looked after in the most approved style. They did not serve hodsmen in that fas.h.i.+on.

Salt or bitumen was enough for them. It has been calculated that this sort of thing cost about seven hundred and thirty pounds in our money.

Our friend was a n.o.ble at the least. What do you make of that small inscription near his feet, Smith?”

”I told you that I know no Eastern tongue.”

”Ah, so you did. It is the name of the embalmer, I take it. A very conscientious worker he must have been. I wonder how many modern works will survive four thousand years?”

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