Part 4 (1/2)
”Yes, sir,” said William; and, turning to the dame, ”Was you thinking of buyin' that chair, mum, after you've quite done muckin' it about?”
He retired into the cavernous depths of the shop, and I followed him as far as the dimly seen counter.
”Moris Klaw, Moris Klaw! the devil's come for you!”
Thus the invisible parrot hailed my entrance. Indescribable smells, zoo-like, with the fusty odor of old books and the uncla.s.sifiable perfume of half-rotten furniture, a.s.sailed my nostrils; and mingling with it was the distinct scent of reptile life. Scufflings and scratchings sounded continuously about me, punctuated with squeals. Then came the rumbling voice of Moris Klaw.
”Ah, Mr. Searles a” good-evening, Mr. Searles! It is the Pettigrew mummy, is it not?”
He advanced through the shadows, his ma.s.sive figure arrayed for traveling, in the caped coat, his toneless beard untidy as ever, his pince-nez glittering, his high bald brow yellow as that of a Chinaman.
”There has been a second outrage,” I said, ”at Sotheby's.”
”So?” said Moris Klaw, with interest; ”another mummy is executed!”
”Yes, Inspector Grimsby has asked us to join him there.”
Moris Klaw stooped, and from beneath the counter took out his flat-topped brown bowler. From its lining he extracted a cylindrical scent-spray and mingled with the less pleasing perfumes that of verbena.
”A cooling Roman custom, Mr. Searles,” he rumbled, ”so refres.h.i.+ng when one lives with rats. So it is Mr. Grimsby who is puzzled again? It is Mr. Grimsby who needs the poor old fool to hold the lantern for him, so that he, the clever Grimsby, can pick up the credit out of the darkness. And why not, Mr. Searles, and why not? It is his business. It is my pleasure.”
He raised his voice. ”Isis! Isis!
Out into the light of the fluttering gas-lamp, out from that nightmare abode, stepped Isis Klaw a” looking more grotesque than a French fas.h.i.+on-plate in an ironmonger's catalogue. She wore a costume of lettuce-green silk, absolutely plain and unrelieved by any ornament, which rendered it the more remarkable. It was cut low at the neck, and at the point of the V, suspended upon a thin gold chain, hung a big emerald. Her darkly beautiful face was one to inspire a painter seeking a model for the Queen of Sheba, but an ultra modern note was struck by a hat of some black, gauzy material which loudly proclaimed its Paris origin. She greeted me with her wonderful smile.
”What, then,” I said. ”Were you about to go out?”
”When I hear who it is,” rumbled Moris Klaw, I know that we are about to go out; and behold we are ready!”
He placed the quaint bowler on his head and pa.s.sed through to the front of the shop.
”William,” he admonished the ripe-nosed salesman, ”there is here a smell of fourpenny ale. It will be your ruin, William. You will close at half-past nine, and be sure you do not let the cat in the cupboard with the white mice. See that the goat does not get at the Dutch bulbs. They will kill him, that goat a” those bulbs; he has for them a pa.s.sion.”
The three of us entered the waiting cab; and within half-an-hour we arrived at the famous auction rooms. The doors were closed and barred, but a constable who was on duty there evidently had orders to admit us.
The thing we had come to see lay upon the table with an electric lamp burning directly over it. The effect was indescribably weird. All about in the shadows fantastic ”lots” seemed to, leer at us. A famous private collection was to be sold in the morning and a rank of mummies lined one wall, whilst, from another, stony Pharaohs, G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses, scorned us through the gloom. We were a living group in a place of long-dead things. And yellow on the table beneath the white light, with partially unwrapt coils of discolored linen hanging gruesomely from it, lay a headless mummy!
I heard the spurt of Moris Klaw's scent-spray behind me, and a faint breath of verbena stole to my nostrils.
”Pah!” came the rumbling voice; ”this air is full of deadness!”
”Good evening, Mr. Klaw,” said Grimsby, appearing from somewhere out of the gloom, ”I'm glad you have come.” He bowed to Isis. ”How do you do, Miss Klaw?”
The bright green figure moved forward into the pool of light. I think I had never seen a more singular picture than that of Isis Klaw bending over the decapitated mummy. Indeed the whole scene had delighted Rembrandt.
”I am pleased to meet you, Mr. Klaw,” said a middle-aged gentleman, stepping up to the curio dealer; ”the Inspector has been telling me about you.”
Moris Klaw bowed, and his daughter turned to him with a little nod of the head.
”It is the same period,” she said, ”as Mr. Pettigrew's mummy. Possibly this was a priest of the same temple. Certainly both are of the same dynasty.”
”It is instructive,” rumbled Moris Klaw, ”but so confusing.”
”It's amazing, Mr. Klaw,” said Grimsby. ”If I understand Miss Klaw rightly, this is the mummy of someone who lived at the same period as the priestess whose mummy is in Mr. Pettigrew's possession?”
”I do not trouble to look,” rumbled Moris Klaw, who, in fact, was staring all about the room. ”If Isis has said so, it is so.”
”If I happened to be superst.i.tious,” said Grimsby, ”I should think this was a sort of curse being fulfilled, or some fantastic thing of that sort.”
”You should call a curse fantastic, eh, my friend? said Moris Klaw. ”Yet here in your own country you have seen a whole family that was cursed to be wiped out mysteriously. Am I with you?
Grimsby looked very perplexed, ”There's nothing very mysterious about how the thing was done,” he said. ”Some madman got in here with a knife early in the evening. It's always pretty dark even during the daytime. But the mystery is his object.”
”His object is a mystery, yes,” agreed Klaw. ”I would sleep here in order to procure a mental negative of what he hoped or what he feared, this lunatic headsman, only that I know he is a man possessed.”
”Possessed!” I cried; and even Isis looked surprised.
”I said possessed,” continued Klaw, impressively.
He is some madman with a one idea. His mad brain will have charged the ether ” a” he waved his long arms right and lefta”” with mad thoughts. The room of Mr. Pettigrew also will be filled with these grotesque thought-forms. Certainly he is insane, this butcher of mummies. In this case I shall rely, not upon the odic photography, not upon that great science the Cycle of Crime, but upon my library.”
None of us, I am sure, entirely understood his meaning; and following a brief silence during which in a curiously m.u.f.fled way the sounds of the traffic in Wellington Street came to us as we stood there around that modern bier with its 4000-year-old burden, Grimsby asked with hesitancy: ”Don't you want to make any investigations, Mr. Klaw?”
Then Moris Klaw startled us all.
”I have a thought!” he cried, loudly. ”Name of a dog! I have a thought!
Grabbing his brown bowler, which he had laid on the table beside the headless mummy, ”Come, Isis!” he cried, and grasped the girl by the arm. ”I have yet another thought, most disturbing. Mr. Searles, would you be so good as also to come?”
Wondering greatly whence we were bound and upon what errand, I hastened down the room after them, leaving Inspector Grimsby staring blankly. I think he was rather disappointed with the result of Moris Klaw's inquiry a” if inquiry this hasty visit may be termed. He was disappointed, too, at having spent so short a time in the company of the charming Isis.
The middle-aged gentleman came running to let us out.
”Good night, Inspector Grimsby!” called Moris Klaw.
”Good night! Good night, Miss Klaw.”
”Good night, Mr. Some One who has not been introduced!” said Klaw.
”My name is Welby,” smiled the other.
”Good night, Mr. Welby!” said Moris Klaw.
III.
During the whole of the journey back to Wapping, Moris Klaw regaled me with anecdotes of travels in the Yucatan Peninsula. I had never met a man before who had ventured fully to explore those deadly swamps; but Moris Klaw chatted about the Izamal temples as unconcernedly as another man might chat about the Paris boulevards. Isis took no part in the conversation, from which I gathered that, although she seemed to accompany her father everywhere, she had not accompanied him into the jungles of Yucatan.
”In the heart of those forests, Mr. Searles,” he whispered, ”are stranger things than these headless mummies. Do you know that the secret of those great temples buried in the swamps and the jungles and guarded only by serpents and slimy, crawling things, is a door which science has yet to unlock? What people built them, and what G.o.d was wors.h.i.+pped in them? Suppose ” a” he bent to my eara”” I hold the key to that riddle; am I a.s.sured to be immortal? Yes? No?”
His conversation, although it often seemed to be studiously eccentric, was always that of a man of powerful and unusual mind, a man of vast and unique experience. I was rather sorry when we arrived at our destination.