 |
| Lot No. 249 is included in this collection. |
LOT NO. 249.
Of the dealings of Edward Bellingham with William Monkhouse Lee, and of
the cause of the great terror of Abercrombie Smith, it may be that no
absolute and final judgment will ever be delivered. It is true that we
have the full and clear narrative of Smith himself, and such
corroboration as he could look for from Thomas Styles the servant, from
the Reverend Plumptree Peterson, Fellow of Old's, and from such other
people as chanced to gain some passing glance at this or that incident
in a singular chain of events. Yet, in the main, the story must rest
upon Smith alone, and the most will think that it is more likely that
one brain, however outwardly sane, has some subtle warp in its texture,
some strange flaw in its workings, than that the path of Nature has
been overstepped in open day in so famed a centre of learning and light
as the University of Oxford. Yet when we think how narrow and how
devious this path of Nature is, how dimly we can trace it, for all our
lamps of science, and how from the darkness which girds it round great
and terrible possibilities loom ever shadowly upwards, it is a bold and
confident man who will put a limit to the strange by-paths into which
the human spirit may wander.
In a certain wing of what we will call Old College in Oxford there is a
corner turret of an exceeding great age. The heavy arch which spans
the open door has bent downwards in the centre under the weight of its
years, and the grey, lichen-blotched blocks of stone are, bound and
knitted together with withes and strands of ivy, as though the old
mother had set herself to brace them up against wind and weather. From
the door a stone stair curves upward spirally, passing two landings,
and terminating in a third one, its steps all shapeless and hollowed by
the tread of so many generations of the seekers after knowledge. Life
has flowed like water down this winding stair, and, waterlike, has left
these smooth-worn grooves behind it. From the long-gowned, pedantic
scholars of Plantagenet days down to the young bloods of a later age,
how full and strong had been that tide of young English life. And what
was left now of all those hopes, those strivings, those fiery energies,
save here and there in some old-world churchyard a few scratches upon a
stone, and perchance a handful of dust in a mouldering coffin? Yet
here were the silent stair and the grey old wall, with bend and saltire
and many another heraldic device still to be read upon its surface,
like grotesque shadows thrown back from the days that had passed.
In the month of May, in the year 1884, three young men occupied the
sets of rooms which opened on to the separate landings of the old
stair. Each set consisted simply of a sitting-room and of a bedroom,
while the two corresponding rooms upon the ground-floor were used, the
one as a coal-cellar, and the other as the living-room of the servant,
or gyp, Thomas Styles, whose duty it was to wait upon the three men
above him. To right and to left was a line of lecture-rooms and of
offices, so that the dwellers in the old turret enjoyed a certain
seclusion, which made the chambers popular among the more studious
undergraduates. Such were the three who occupied them now—Abercrombie
Smith above, Edward Bellingham beneath him, and William Monkhouse Lee
upon the lowest storey.
It was ten o'clock on a bright spring night, and Abercrombie Smith lay
back in his arm-chair, his feet upon the fender, and his briar-root
pipe between his lips. In a similar chair, and equally at his ease,
there lounged on the other side of the fireplace his old school friend
Jephro Hastie. Both men were in flannels, for they had spent their
evening upon the river, but apart from their dress no one could look at
their hard-cut, alert faces without seeing that they were open-air
men—men whose minds and tastes turned naturally to all that was manly
and robust. Hastie, indeed, was stroke of his college boat, and Smith
was an even better oar, but a coming examination had already cast its
shadow over him and held him to his work, save for the few hours a week
which health demanded. A litter of medical books upon the table, with
scattered bones, models and anatomical plates, pointed to the extent as
well as the nature of his studies, while a couple of single-sticks and
a set of boxing-gloves above the mantelpiece hinted at the means by
which, with Hastie's help, he might take his exercise in its most
compressed and least distant form. They knew each other very well—so
well that they could sit now in that soothing silence which is the very
highest development of companionship.
"Have some whisky," said Abercrombie Smith at last between two
cloudbursts. "Scotch in the jug and Irish in the bottle."
"No, thanks. I'm in for the sculls. I don't liquor when I'm training.
How about you?"
"I'm reading hard. I think it best to leave it alone."
Hastie nodded, and they relapsed into a contented silence.
"By-the-way, Smith," asked Hastie, presently, "have you made the
acquaintance of either of the fellows on your stair yet?"
"Just a nod when we pass. Nothing more."
"Hum! I should be inclined to let it stand at that. I know something
of them both. Not much, but as much as I want. I don't think I should
take them to my bosom if I were you. Not that there's much amiss with
Monkhouse Lee."
"Meaning the thin one?"
"Precisely. He is a gentlemanly little fellow. I don't think there is
any vice in him. But then you can't know him without knowing
Bellingham."
"Meaning the fat one?"
"Yes, the fat one. And he's a man whom I, for one, would rather not
know."
Abercrombie Smith raised his eyebrows and glanced across at his
companion.
"What's up, then?" he asked. "Drink? Cards? Cad? You used not to be
censorious."
"Ah! you evidently don't know the man, or you wouldn't ask. There's
something damnable about him—something reptilian. My gorge always
rises at him. I should put him down as a man with secret vices—an
evil liver. He's no fool, though. They say that he is one of the
best men in his line that they have ever had in the college."
"Medicine or classics?"
"Eastern languages. He's a demon at them. Chillingworth met him
somewhere above the second cataract last long, and he told me that he
just prattled to the Arabs as if he had been born and nursed and weaned
among them. He talked Coptic to the Copts, and Hebrew to the Jews, and
Arabic to the Bedouins, and they were all ready to kiss the hem of his
frock-coat. There are some old hermit Johnnies up in those parts who
sit on rocks and scowl and spit at the casual stranger. Well, when
they saw this chap Bellingham, before he had said five words they just
lay down on their bellies and wriggled. Chillingworth said that he
never saw anything like it. Bellingham seemed to take it as his right,
too, and strutted about among them and talked down to them like a Dutch
uncle. Pretty good for an undergrad. of Old's, wasn't it?"
"Why do you say you can't know Lee without knowing Bellingham?"
"Because Bellingham is engaged to his sister Eveline. Such a bright
little girl, Smith! I know the whole family well. It's disgusting to
see that brute with her. A toad and a dove, that's what they always
remind me of."
Abercrombie Smith grinned and knocked his ashes out against the side of
the grate.
"You show every card in your hand, old chap," said he. "What a
prejudiced, green-eyed, evil-thinking old man it is! You have really
nothing against the fellow except that."
"Well, I've known her ever since she was as long as that cherry-wood
pipe, and I don't like to see her taking risks. And it is a risk. He
looks beastly. And he has a beastly temper, a venomous temper. You
remember his row with Long Norton?"
"No; you always forget that I am a freshman."
"Ah, it was last winter. Of course. Well, you know the towpath along
by the river. There were several fellows going along it, Bellingham in
front, when they came on an old market-woman coming the other way. It
had been raining—you know what those fields are like when it has
rained—and the path ran between the river and a great puddle that was
nearly as broad. Well, what does this swine do but keep the path, and
push the old girl into the mud, where she and her marketings came to
terrible grief. It was a blackguard thing to do, and Long Norton, who
is as gentle a fellow as ever stepped, told him what he thought of it.
One word led to another, and it ended in Norton laying his stick across
the fellow's shoulders. There was the deuce of a fuss about it, and
it's a treat to see the way in which Bellingham looks at Norton when
they meet now. By Jove, Smith, it's nearly eleven o'clock!"
"No hurry. Light your pipe again."
"Not I. I'm supposed to be in training. Here I've been sitting
gossiping when I ought to have been safely tucked up. I'll borrow your
skull, if you can share it. Williams has had mine for a month. I'll
take the little bones of your ear, too, if you are sure you won't need
them. Thanks very much. Never mind a bag, I can carry them very well
under my arm. Good-night, my son, and take my tip as to your
neighbour."
When Hastie, bearing his anatomical plunder, had clattered off down the
winding stair, Abercrombie Smith hurled his pipe into the wastepaper
basket, and drawing his chair nearer to the lamp, plunged into a
formidable green-covered volume, adorned with great colored maps of
that strange internal kingdom of which we are the hapless and helpless
monarchs. Though a freshman at Oxford, the student was not so in
medicine, for he had worked for four years at Glasgow and at Berlin,
and this coming examination would place him finally as a member of his
profession. With his firm mouth, broad forehead, and clear-cut,
somewhat hard-featured face, he was a man who, if he had no brilliant
talent, was yet so dogged, so patient, and so strong that he might in
the end overtop a more showy genius. A man who can hold his own among
Scotchmen and North Germans is not a man to be easily set back. Smith
had left a name at Glasgow and at Berlin, and he was bent now upon
doing as much at Oxford, if hard work and devotion could accomplish it.
He had sat reading for about an hour, and the hands of the noisy
carriage clock upon the side table were rapidly closing together upon
the twelve, when a sudden sound fell upon the student's ear—a sharp,
rather shrill sound, like the hissing intake of a man's breath who
gasps under some strong emotion. Smith laid down his book and slanted
his ear to listen. There was no one on either side or above him, so
that the interruption came certainly from the neighbour beneath—the
same neighbour of whom Hastie had given so unsavoury an account. Smith
knew him only as a flabby, pale-faced man of silent and studious
habits, a man, whose lamp threw a golden bar from the old turret even
after he had extinguished his own. This community in lateness had
formed a certain silent bond between them. It was soothing to Smith
when the hours stole on towards dawning to feel that there was another
so close who set as small a value upon his sleep as he did. Even now,
as his thoughts turned towards him, Smith's feelings were kindly.
Hastie was a good fellow, but he was rough, strong-fibred, with no
imagination or sympathy. He could not tolerate departures from what he
looked upon as the model type of manliness. If a man could not be
measured by a public-school standard, then he was beyond the pale with
Hastie. Like so many who are themselves robust, he was apt to confuse
the constitution with the character, to ascribe to want of principle
what was really a want of circulation. Smith, with his stronger mind,
knew his friend's habit, and made allowance for it now as his thoughts
turned towards the man beneath him.
There was no return of the singular sound, and Smith was about to turn
to his work once more, when suddenly there broke out in the silence of
the night a hoarse cry, a positive scream—the call of a man who is
moved and shaken beyond all control. Smith sprang out of his chair and
dropped his book. He was a man of fairly firm fibre, but there was
something in this sudden, uncontrollable shriek of horror which chilled
his blood and pringled in his skin. Coming in such a place and at such
an hour, it brought a thousand fantastic possibilities into his head.
Should he rush down, or was it better to wait? He had all the national
hatred of making a scene, and he knew so little of his neighbour that
he would not lightly intrude upon his affairs. For a moment he stood
in doubt and even as he balanced the matter there was a quick rattle of
footsteps upon the stairs, and young Monkhouse Lee, half dressed and as
white as ashes, burst into his room.
"Come down!" he gasped. "Bellingham's ill."
Abercrombie Smith followed him closely down stairs into the
sitting-room which was beneath his own, and intent as he was upon the
matter in hand, he could not but take an amazed glance around him as he
crossed the threshold. It was such a chamber as he had never seen
before—a museum rather than a study. Walls and ceiling were thickly
covered with a thousand strange relics from Egypt and the East. Tall,
angular figures bearing burdens or weapons stalked in an uncouth frieze
round the apartments. Above were bull-headed, stork-headed,
cat-headed, owl-headed statues, with viper-crowned, almond-eyed
monarchs, and strange, beetle-like deities cut out of the blue Egyptian
lapis lazuli. Horus and Isis and Osiris peeped down from every niche
and shelf, while across the ceiling a true son of Old Nile, a great,
hanging-jawed crocodile, was slung in a double noose.
In the centre of this singular chamber was a large, square table,
littered with papers, bottles, and the dried leaves of some graceful,
palm-like plant. These varied objects had all been heaped together in
order to make room for a mummy case, which had been conveyed from the
wall, as was evident from the gap there, and laid across the front of
the table. The mummy itself, a horrid, black, withered thing, like a
charred head on a gnarled bush, was lying half out of the case, with
its clawlike hand and bony forearm resting upon the table. Propped up
against the sarcophagus was an old yellow scroll of papyrus, and in
front of it, in a wooden armchair, sat the owner of the room, his head
thrown back, his widely-opened eyes directed in a horrified stare to
the crocodile above him, and his blue, thick lips puffing loudly with
every expiration.
"My God! he's dying!" cried Monkhouse Lee distractedly.
He was a slim, handsome young fellow, olive-skinned and dark-eyed, of a
Spanish rather than of an English type, with a Celtic intensity of
manner which contrasted with the Saxon phlegm of Abercombie Smith.
"Only a faint, I think," said the medical student. "Just give me a
hand with him. You take his feet. Now on to the sofa. Can you kick
all those little wooden devils off? What a litter it is! Now he will
be all right if we undo his collar and give him some water. What has
he been up to at all?"
"I don't know. I heard him cry out. I ran up. I know him pretty
well, you know. It is very good of you to come down."
"His heart is going like a pair of castanets," said Smith, laying his
hand on the breast of the unconscious man. "He seems to me to be
frightened all to pieces. Chuck the water over him! What a face he
has got on him!"
It was indeed a strange and most repellent face, for colour and outline
were equally unnatural. It was white, not with the ordinary pallor of
fear but with an absolutely bloodless white, like the under side of a
sole. He was very fat, but gave the impression of having at some time
been considerably fatter, for his skin hung loosely in creases and
folds, and was shot with a meshwork of wrinkles. Short, stubbly brown
hair bristled up from his scalp, with a pair of thick, wrinkled ears
protruding on either side. His light grey eyes were still open, the
pupils dilated and the balls projecting in a fixed and horrid stare.
It seemed to Smith as he looked down upon him that he had never seen
nature's danger signals flying so plainly upon a man's countenance, and
his thoughts turned more seriously to the warning which Hastie had
given him an hour before.
"What the deuce can have frightened him so?" he asked.
"It's the mummy."
"The mummy? How, then?"
"I don't know. It's beastly and morbid. I wish he would drop it.
It's the second fright he has given me. It was the same last winter.
I found him just like this, with that horrid thing in front of him."
"What does he want with the mummy, then?"
"Oh, he's a crank, you know. It's his hobby. He knows more about
these things than any man in England. But I wish he wouldn't! Ah,
he's beginning to come to."
A faint tinge of colour had begun to steal back into Bellingham's
ghastly cheeks, and his eyelids shivered like a sail after a calm. He
clasped and unclasped his hands, drew a long, thin breath between his
teeth, and suddenly jerking up his head, threw a glance of recognition
around him. As his eyes fell upon the mummy, he sprang off the sofa,
seized the roll of papyrus, thrust it into a drawer, turned the key,
and then staggered back on to the sofa.
"What's up?" he asked. "What do you chaps want?"
"You've been shrieking out and making no end of a fuss," said Monkhouse
Lee. "If our neighbour here from above hadn't come down, I'm sure I
don't know what I should have done with you."
"Ah, it's Abercrombie Smith," said Bellingham, glancing up at him.
"How very good of you to come in! What a fool I am! Oh, my God, what
a fool I am!"
He sunk his head on to his hands, and burst into peal after peal of
hysterical laughter.
"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 coarse
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 wrapt round with coarse yellow bandages. A number
of little clove-like pieces of myrrh and of cassia were sprinkled over
the body, and lay scattered on the inside of the case.
"I don't know his name," said Bellingham, passing his hand over the
shrivelled head. "You see the outer sarcophagus with the inscriptions
is missing. Lot 249 is all the title 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 fashion.
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 noble 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?"
He kept on speaking lightly and rapidly, but it was evident to
Abercrombie Smith that he was still palpitating with fear. His hands
shook, his lower lip trembled, and look where he would, his eye always
came sliding round to his gruesome companion. Through all his fear,
however, there was a suspicion of triumph in his tone and manner. His
eye shone, and his footstep, as he paced the room, was brisk and
jaunty. He gave the impression of a man who has gone through an
ordeal, the marks of which he still bears upon him, but which has
helped him to his end.
"You're not going yet?" he cried, as Smith rose from the sofa.
At the prospect of solitude, his fears seemed to crowd back upon him,
and he stretched out a hand to detain him.
"Yes, I must go. I have my work to do. You are all right now. I
think that with your nervous system you should take up some less morbid
study."
"Oh, I am not nervous as a rule; and I have unwrapped mummies before."
"You fainted last time," observed Monkhouse Lee.
"Ah, yes, so I did. Well, I must have a nerve tonic or a course of
electricity. You are not going, Lee?"
"I'll do whatever you wish, Ned."
"Then I'll come down with you and have a shake-down on your sofa.
Good-night, Smith. I am so sorry to have disturbed you with my
foolishness."
They shook hands, and as the medical student stumbled up the spiral and
irregular stair he heard a key turn in a door, and the steps of his two
new acquaintances as they descended to the lower floor.
In this strange way began the acquaintance between Edward Bellingham
and Abercrombie Smith, an acquaintance which the latter, at least, had
no desire to push further. Bellingham, however, appeared to have taken
a fancy to his rough-spoken neighbour, and made his advances in such a
way that he could hardly be repulsed without absolute brutality. Twice
he called to thank Smith for his assistance, and many times afterwards
he looked in with books, papers, and such other civilities as two
bachelor neighbours can offer each other. He was, as Smith soon found,
a man of wide reading, with catholic tastes and an extraordinary
memory. His manner, too, was so pleasing and suave that one came,
after a time, to overlook his repellent appearance. For a jaded and
wearied man he was no unpleasant companion, and Smith found himself,
after a time, looking forward to his visits, and even returning them.
Clever as he undoubtedly was, however, the medical student seemed to
detect a dash of insanity in the man. He broke out at times into a
high, inflated style of talk which was in contrast with the simplicity
of his life.
"It is a wonderful thing," he cried, "to feel that one can command
powers of good and of evil—a ministering angel or a demon of
vengeance." And again, of Monkhouse Lee, he said,—"Lee is a good
fellow, an honest fellow, but he is without strength or ambition. He
would not make a fit partner for a man with a great enterprise. He
would not make a fit partner for me."
At such hints and innuendoes stolid Smith, puffing solemnly at his
pipe, would simply raise his eyebrows and shake his head, with little
interjections of medical wisdom as to earlier hours and fresher air.
One habit Bellingham had developed of late which Smith knew to be a
frequent herald of a weakening mind. He appeared to be forever talking
to himself. At late hours of the night, when there could be no visitor
with him, Smith could still hear his voice beneath him in a low,
muffled monologue, sunk almost to a whisper, and yet very audible in
the silence. This solitary babbling annoyed and distracted the
student, so that he spoke more than once to his neighbour about it.
Bellingham, however, flushed up at the charge, and denied curtly that
he had uttered a sound; indeed, he showed more annoyance over the
matter than the occasion seemed to demand.
Had Abercrombie Smith had any doubt as to his own ears he had not to go
far to find corroboration. Tom Styles, the little wrinkled man-servant
who had attended to the wants of the lodgers in the turret for a longer
time than any man's memory could carry him, was sorely put to it over
the same matter.
"If you please, sir," said he, as he tidied down the top chamber one
morning, "do you think Mr. Bellingham is all right, sir?"
"All right, Styles?"
"Yes sir. Right in his head, sir."
"Why should he not be, then?"
"Well, I don't know, sir. His habits has changed of late. He's not
the same man he used to be, though I make free to say that he was never
quite one of my gentlemen, like Mr. Hastie or yourself, sir. He's took
to talkin' to himself something awful. I wonder it don't disturb you.
I don't know what to make of him, sir."
"I don't know what business it is of yours, Styles."
"Well, I takes an interest, Mr. Smith. It may be forward of me, but I
can't help it. I feel sometimes as if I was mother and father to my
young gentlemen. It all falls on me when things go wrong and the
relations come. But Mr. Bellingham, sir. I want to know what it is
that walks about his room sometimes when he's out and when the door's
locked on the outside."
"Eh! you're talking nonsense, Styles."
"Maybe so, sir; but I heard it more'n once with my own ears."
"Rubbish, Styles."
"Very good, sir. You'll ring the bell if you want me."
Abercrombie Smith gave little heed to the gossip of the old
man-servant, but a small incident occurred a few days later which left
an unpleasant effect upon his mind, and brought the words of Styles
forcibly to his memory.
Bellingham had come up to see him late one night, and was entertaining
him with an interesting account of the rock tombs of Beni Hassan in
Upper Egypt, when Smith, whose hearing was remarkably acute, distinctly
heard the sound of a door opening on the landing below.
"There's some fellow gone in or out of your room," he remarked.
Bellingham sprang up and stood helpless for a moment, with the
expression of a man who is half incredulous and half afraid.
"I surely locked it. I am almost positive that I locked it," he
stammered. "No one could have opened it."
"Why, I hear someone coming up the steps now," said Smith.
Bellingham rushed out through the door, slammed it loudly behind him,
and hurried down the stairs. About half-way down Smith heard him stop,
and thought he caught the sound of whispering. A moment later the door
beneath him shut, a key creaked in a lock, and Bellingham, with beads
of moisture upon his pale face, ascended the stairs once more, and
re-entered the room.
"It's all right," he said, throwing himself down in a chair. "It was
that fool of a dog. He had pushed the door open. I don't know how I
came to forget to lock it."
"I didn't know you kept a dog," said Smith, looking very thoughtfully
at the disturbed face of his companion.
"Yes, I haven't had him long. I must get rid of him. He's a great
nuisance."
"He must be, if you find it so hard to shut him up. I should have
thought that shutting the door would have been enough, without locking
it."
"I want to prevent old Styles from letting him out. He's of some
value, you know, and it would be awkward to lose him."
"I am a bit of a dog-fancier myself," said Smith, still gazing hard at
his companion from the corner of his eyes. "Perhaps you'll let me have
a look at it."
"Certainly. But I am afraid it cannot be to-night; I have an
appointment. Is that clock right? Then I am a quarter of an hour late
already. You'll excuse me, I am sure."
He picked up his cap and hurried from the room. In spite of his
appointment, Smith heard him re-enter his own chamber and lock his door
upon the inside.
This interview left a disagreeable impression upon the medical
student's mind. Bellingham had lied to him, and lied so clumsily that
it looked as if he had desperate reasons for concealing the truth.
Smith knew that his neighbour had no dog. He knew, also, that the step
which he had heard upon the stairs was not the step of an animal. But
if it were not, then what could it be? There was old Styles's
statement about the something which used to pace the room at times when
the owner was absent. Could it be a woman? Smith rather inclined to
the view. If so, it would mean disgrace and expulsion to Bellingham if
it were discovered by the authorities, so that his anxiety and
falsehoods might be accounted for. And yet it was inconceivable that
an undergraduate could keep a woman in his rooms without being
instantly detected. Be the explanation what it might, there was
something ugly about it, and Smith determined, as he turned to his
books, to discourage all further attempts at intimacy on the part of
his soft-spoken and ill-favoured neighbour.
But his work was destined to interruption that night. He had hardly
caught tip the broken threads when a firm, heavy footfall came three
steps at a time from below, and Hastie, in blazer and flannels, burst
into the room.
"Still at it!" said he, plumping down into his wonted arm-chair. "What
a chap you are to stew! I believe an earthquake might come and knock
Oxford into a cocked hat, and you would sit perfectly placid with your
books among the rains. However, I won't bore you long. Three whiffs
of baccy, and I am off."
"What's the news, then?" asked Smith, cramming a plug of bird's-eye
into his briar with his forefinger.
"Nothing very much. Wilson made 70 for the freshmen against the
eleven. They say that they will play him instead of Buddicomb, for
Buddicomb is clean off colour. He used to be able to bowl a little,
but it's nothing but half-vollies and long hops now."
"Medium right," suggested Smith, with the intense gravity which comes
upon a 'varsity man when he speaks of athletics.
"Inclining to fast, with a work from leg. Comes with the arm about
three inches or so. He used to be nasty on a wet wicket. Oh,
by-the-way, have you heard about Long Norton?"
"What's that?"
"He's been attacked."
"Attacked?"
"Yes, just as he was turning out of the High Street, and within a
hundred yards of the gate of Old's."
"But who——"
"Ah, that's the rub! If you said 'what,' you would be more
grammatical. Norton swears that it was not human, and, indeed, from
the scratches on his throat, I should be inclined to agree with him."
"What, then? Have we come down to spooks?"
Abercrombie Smith puffed his scientific contempt.
"Well, no; I don't think that is quite the idea, either. I am inclined
to think that if any showman has lost a great ape lately, and the brute
is in these parts, a jury would find a true bill against it. Norton
passes that way every night, you know, about the same hour. There's a
tree that hangs low over the path—the big elm from Rainy's garden.
Norton thinks the thing dropped on him out of the tree. Anyhow, he was
nearly strangled by two arms, which, he says, were as strong and as
thin as steel bands. He saw nothing; only those beastly arms that
tightened and tightened on him. He yelled his head nearly off, and a
couple of chaps came running, and the thing went over the wall like a
cat. He never got a fair sight of it the whole time. It gave Norton a
shake up, I can tell you. I tell him it has been as good as a change
at the sea-side for him."
"A garrotter, most likely," said Smith.
"Very possibly. Norton says not; but we don't mind what he says. The
garrotter had long nails, and was pretty smart at swinging himself over
walls. By-the-way, your beautiful neighbour would be pleased if he
heard about it. He had a grudge against Norton, and he's not a man,
from what I know of him, to forget his little debts. But hallo, old
chap, what have you got in your noddle?"
"Nothing," Smith answered curtly.
He had started in his chair, and the look had flashed over his face
which comes upon a man who is struck suddenly by some unpleasant idea.
"You looked as if something I had said had taken you on the raw.
By-the-way, you have made the acquaintance of Master B. since I looked
in last, have you not? Young Monkhouse Lee told me something to that
effect."
"Yes; I know him slightly. He has been up here once or twice."
"Well, you're big enough and ugly enough to take care of yourself.
He's not what I should call exactly a healthy sort of Johnny, though,
no doubt, he's very clever, and all that. But you'll soon find out for
yourself. Lee is all right; he's a very decent little fellow. Well,
so long, old chap! I row Mullins for the Vice-Chancellor's pot on
Wednesday week, so mind you come down, in case I don't see you before."
Bovine Smith laid down his pipe and turned stolidly to his books once
more. But with all the will in the world, he found it very hard to
keep his mind upon his work. It would slip away to brood upon the man
beneath him, and upon the little mystery which hung round his chambers.
Then his thoughts turned to this singular attack of which Hastie had
spoken, and to the grudge which Bellingham was said to owe the object
of it. The two ideas would persist in rising together in his mind, as
though there were some close and intimate connection between them. And
yet the suspicion was so dim and vague that it could not be put down in
words.
"Confound the chap!" cried Smith, as he shied his book on pathology
across the room. "He has spoiled my night's reading, and that's reason
enough, if there were no other, why I should steer clear of him in the
future."
For ten days the medical student confined himself so closely to his
studies that he neither saw nor heard anything of either of the men
beneath him. At the hours when Bellingham had been accustomed to visit
him, he took care to sport his oak, and though he more than once heard
a knocking at his outer door, he resolutely refused to answer it. One
afternoon, however, he was descending the stairs when, just as he was
passing it, Bellingham's door flew open, and young Monkhouse Lee came
out with his eyes sparkling and a dark flush of anger upon his olive
cheeks. Close at his heels followed Bellingham, his fat, unhealthy
face all quivering with malignant passion.
"You fool!" he hissed. "You'll be sorry."
"Very likely," cried the other. "Mind what I say. It's off! I won't
hear of it!"
"You've promised, anyhow."
"Oh, I'll keep that! I won't speak. But I'd rather little Eva was in
her grave. Once for all, it's off. She'll do what I say. We don't
want to see you again."
So much Smith could not avoid hearing, but he hurried on, for he had no
wish to be involved in their dispute. There had been a serious breach
between them, that was clear enough, and Lee was going to cause the
engagement with his sister to be broken off. Smith thought of Hastie's
comparison of the toad and the dove, and was glad to think that the
matter was at an end. Bellingham's face when he was in a passion was
not pleasant to look upon. He was not a man to whom an innocent girl
could be trusted for life. As he walked, Smith wondered languidly what
could have caused the quarrel, and what the promise might be which
Bellingham had been so anxious that Monkhouse Lee should keep.
It was the day of the sculling match between Hastie and Mullins, and a
stream of men were making their way down to the banks of the Isis. A
May sun was shining brightly, and the yellow path was barred with the
black shadows of the tall elm-trees. On either side the grey colleges
lay back from the road, the hoary old mothers of minds looking out from
their high, mullioned windows at the tide of young life which swept so
merrily past them. Black-clad tutors, prim officials, pale reading
men, brown-faced, straw-hatted young athletes in white sweaters or
many-coloured blazers, all were hurrying towards the blue winding river
which curves through the Oxford meadows.
Abercrombie Smith, with the intuition of an old oarsman, chose his
position at the point where he knew that the struggle, if there were a
struggle, would come. Far off he heard the hum which announced the
start, the gathering roar of the approach, the thunder of running feet,
and the shouts of the men in the boats beneath him. A spray of
half-clad, deep-breathing runners shot past him, and craning over their
shoulders, he saw Hastie pulling a steady thirty-six, while his
opponent, with a jerky forty, was a good boat's length behind him.
Smith gave a cheer for his friend, and pulling out his watch, was
starting off again for his chambers, when he felt a touch upon his
shoulder, and found that young Monkhouse Lee was beside him.
"I saw you there," he said, in a timid, deprecating way. "I wanted to
speak to you, if you could spare me a half-hour. This cottage is mine.
I share it with Harrington of King's. Come in and have a cup of tea."
"I must be back presently," said Smith. "I am hard on the grind at
present. But I'll come in for a few minutes with pleasure. I wouldn't
have come out only Hastie is a friend of mine."
"So he is of mine. Hasn't he a beautiful style? Mullins wasn't in it.
But come into the cottage. It's a little den of a place, but it is
pleasant to work in during the summer months."
It was a small, square, white building, with green doors and shutters,
and a rustic trellis-work porch, standing back some fifty yards from
the river's bank. Inside, the main room was roughly fitted up as a
study—deal table, unpainted shelves with books, and a few cheap
oleographs upon the wall. A kettle sang upon a spirit-stove, and there
were tea things upon a tray on the table.
"Try that chair and have a cigarette," said Lee. "Let me pour you out
a cup of tea. It's so good of you to come in, for I know that your
time is a good deal taken up. I wanted to say to you that, if I were
you, I should change my rooms at once."
"Eh?"
Smith sat staring with a lighted match in one hand and his unlit
cigarette in the other.
"Yes; it must seem very extraordinary, and the worst of it is that I
cannot give my reasons, for I am under a solemn promise—a very solemn
promise. But I may go so far as to say that I don't think Bellingham
is a very safe man to live near. I intend to camp out here as much as
I can for a time."
"Not safe! What do you mean?"
"Ah, that's what I mustn't say. But do take my advice, and move your
rooms. We had a grand row to-day. You must have heard us, for you
came down the stairs."
"I saw that you had fallen out."
"He's a horrible chap, Smith. That is the only word for him. I have
had doubts about him ever since that night when he fainted—you
remember, when you came down. I taxed him to-day, and he told me
things that made my hair rise, and wanted me to stand in with him. I'm
not strait-laced, but I am a clergyman's son, you know, and I think
there are some things which are quite beyond the pale. I only thank
God that I found him out before it was too late, for he was to have
married into my family."
"This is all very fine, Lee," said Abercrombie Smith curtly. "But
either you are saying a great deal too much or a great deal too little."
"I give you a warning."
"If there is real reason for warning, no promise can bind you. If I
see a rascal about to blow a place up with dynamite no pledge will
stand in my way of preventing him."
"Ah, but I cannot prevent him, and I can do nothing but warn you."
"Without saying what you warn me against."
"Against Bellingham."
"But that is childish. Why should I fear him, or any man?"
"I can't tell you. I can only entreat you to change your rooms. You
are in danger where you are. I don't even say that Bellingham would
wish to injure you. But it might happen, for he is a dangerous
neighbour just now."
"Perhaps I know more than you think," said Smith, looking keenly at the
young man's boyish, earnest face. "Suppose I tell you that some one
else shares Bellingham's rooms."
Monkhouse Lee sprang from his chair in uncontrollable excitement.
"You know, then?" he gasped.
"A woman."
Lee dropped back again with a groan.
"My lips are sealed," he said. "I must not speak."
"Well, anyhow," said Smith, rising, "it is not likely that I should
allow myself to be frightened out of rooms which suit me very nicely.
It would be a little too feeble for me to move out all my goods and
chattels because you say that Bellingham might in some unexplained way
do me an injury. I think that I'll just take my chance, and stay where
I am, and as I see that it's nearly five o'clock, I must ask you to
excuse me."
He bade the young student adieu in a few curt words, and made his way
homeward through the sweet spring evening feeling half-ruffled,
half-amused, as any other strong, unimaginative man might who has been
menaced by a vague and shadowy danger.
There was one little indulgence which Abercrombie Smith always allowed
himself, however closely his work might press upon him. Twice a week,
on the Tuesday and the Friday, it was his invariable custom to walk
over to Farlingford, the residence of Dr. Plumptree Peterson, situated
about a mile and a half out of Oxford. Peterson had been a close
friend of Smith's elder brother Francis, and as he was a bachelor,
fairly well-to-do, with a good cellar and a better library, his house
was a pleasant goal for a man who was in need of a brisk walk. Twice a
week, then, the medical student would swing out there along the dark
country roads, and spend a pleasant hour in Peterson's comfortable
study, discussing, over a glass of old port, the gossip of the 'varsity
or the latest developments of medicine or of surgery.
On the day which followed his interview with Monkhouse Lee, Smith shut
up his books at a quarter past eight, the hour when he usually started
for his friend's house. As he was leaving his room, however, his eyes
chanced to fall upon one of the books which Bellingham had lent him,
and his conscience pricked him for not having returned it. However
repellent the man might be, he should not be treated with discourtesy.
Taking the book, he walked downstairs and knocked at his neighbour's
door. There was no answer; but on turning the handle he found that it
was unlocked. Pleased at the thought of avoiding an interview, he
stepped inside, and placed the book with his card upon the table.
The lamp was turned half down, but Smith could see the details of the
room plainly enough. It was all much as he had seen it before—the
frieze, the animal-headed gods, the banging crocodile, and the table
littered over with papers and dried leaves. The mummy case stood
upright against the wall, but the mummy itself was missing. There was
no sign of any second occupant of the room, and he felt as he withdrew
that he had probably done Bellingham an injustice. Had he a guilty
secret to preserve, he would hardly leave his door open so that all the
world might enter.
The spiral stair was as black as pitch, and Smith was slowly making his
way down its irregular steps, when he was suddenly conscious that
something had passed him in the darkness. There was a faint sound, a
whiff of air, a light brushing past his elbow, but so slight that he
could scarcely be certain of it. He stopped and listened, but the wind
was rustling among the ivy outside, and he could hear nothing else.
"Is that you, Styles?" he shouted.
There was no answer, and all was still behind him. It must have been a
sudden gust of air, for there were crannies and cracks in the old
turret. And yet he could almost have sworn that he heard a footfall by
his very side. He had emerged into the quadrangle, still turning the
matter over in his head, when a man came running swiftly across the
smooth-cropped lawn.
"Is that you, Smith?"
"Hullo, Hastie!"
"For God's sake come at once! Young Lee is drowned! Here's Harrington
of King's with the news. The doctor is out. You'll do, but come along
at once. There may be life in him."
"Have you brandy?"
"No."
"I'll bring some. There's a flask on my table."
Smith bounded up the stairs, taking three at a time, seized the flask,
and was rushing down with it, when, as he passed Bellingham's room, his
eyes fell upon something which left him gasping and staring upon the
landing.
The door, which he had closed behind him, was now open, and right in
front of him, with the lamp-light shining upon it, was the mummy case.
Three minutes ago it had been empty. He could swear to that. Now it
framed the lank body of its horrible occupant, who stood, grim and
stark, with his black shrivelled face towards the door. The form was
lifeless and inert, but it seemed to Smith as he gazed that there still
lingered a lurid spark of vitality, some faint sign of consciousness in
the little eyes which lurked in the depths of the hollow sockets. So
astounded and shaken was he that he had forgotten his errand, and was
still staring at the lean, sunken figure when the voice of his friend
below recalled him to himself.
"Come on, Smith!" he shouted. "It's life and death, you know. Hurry
up! Now, then," he added, as the medical student reappeared, "let us
do a sprint. It is well under a mile, and we should do it in five
minutes. A human life is better worth running for than a pot."
Neck and neck they dashed through the darkness, and did not pull up
until, panting and spent, they had reached the little cottage by the
river. Young Lee, limp and dripping like a broken water-plant, was
stretched upon the sofa, the green scum of the river upon his black
hair, and a fringe of white foam upon his leaden-hued lips. Beside him
knelt his fellow-student Harrington, endeavouring to chafe some warmth
back into his rigid limbs.
"I think there's life in him," said Smith, with his hand to the lad's
side. "Put your watch glass to his lips. Yes, there's dimming on it.
You take one arm, Hastie. Now work it as I do, and we'll soon pull him
round."
For ten minutes they worked in silence, inflating and depressing the
chest of the unconscious man. At the end of that time a shiver ran
through his body, his lips trembled, and he opened his eyes. The three
students burst out into an irrepressible cheer.
"Wake up, old chap. You've frightened us quite enough."
"Have some brandy. Take a sip from the flask."
"He's all right now," said his companion Harrington. "Heavens, what a
fright I got! I was reading here, and he had gone for a stroll as far
as the river, when I heard a scream and a splash. Out I ran, and by
the time that I could find him and fish him out, all life seemed to
have gone. Then Simpson couldn't get a doctor, for he has a game-leg,
and I had to run, and I don't know what I'd have done without you
fellows. That's right, old chap. Sit up."
Monkhouse Lee had raised himself on his hands, and looked wildly about
him.
"What's up?" he asked. "I've been in the water. Ah, yes; I remember."
A look of fear came into his eyes, and he sank his face into his hands.
"How did you fall in?"
"I didn't fall in."
"How, then?"
"I was thrown in. I was standing by the bank, and something from
behind picked me up like a feather and hurled me in. I heard nothing,
and I saw nothing. But I know what it was, for all that."
"And so do I," whispered Smith.
Lee looked up with a quick glance of surprise. "You've learned, then!"
he said. "You remember the advice I gave you?"
"Yes, and I begin to think that I shall take it."
"I don't know what the deuce you fellows are talking about," said
Hastie, "but I think, if I were you, Harrington, I should get Lee to
bed at once. It will be time enough to discuss the why and the
wherefore when he is a little stronger. I think, Smith, you and I can
leave him alone now. I am walking back to college; if you are coming
in that direction, we can have a chat."
But it was little chat that they had upon their homeward path. Smith's
mind was too full of the incidents of the evening, the absence of the
mummy from his neighbour's rooms, the step that passed him on the
stair, the reappearance—the extraordinary, inexplicable reappearance
of the grisly thing—and then this attack upon Lee, corresponding so
closely to the previous outrage upon another man against whom
Bellingham bore a grudge. All this settled in his thoughts, together
with the many little incidents which had previously turned him against
his neighbour, and the singular circumstances under which he was first
called in to him. What had been a dim suspicion, a vague, fantastic
conjecture, had suddenly taken form, and stood out in his mind as a
grim fact, a thing not to be denied. And yet, how monstrous it was!
how unheard of! how entirely beyond all bounds of human experience. An
impartial judge, or even the friend who walked by his side, would
simply tell him that his eyes had deceived him, that the mummy had been
there all the time, that young Lee had tumbled into the river as any
other man tumbles into a river, and that a blue pill was the best thing
for a disordered liver. He felt that he would have said as much if the
positions had been reversed. And yet he could swear that Bellingham
was a murderer at heart, and that he wielded a weapon such as no man
had ever used in all the grim history of crime.
Hastie had branched off to his rooms with a few crisp and emphatic
comments upon his friend's unsociability, and Abercrombie Smith crossed
the quadrangle to his corner turret with a strong feeling of repulsion
for his chambers and their associations. He would take Lee's advice,
and move his quarters as soon as possible, for how could a man study
when his ear was ever straining for every murmur or footstep in the
room below? He observed, as he crossed over the lawn, that the light
was still shining in Bellingham's window, and as he passed up the
staircase the door opened, and the man himself looked out at him. With
his fat, evil face he was like some bloated spider fresh from the
weaving of his poisonous web.
"Good-evening," said he. "Won't you come in?"
"No," cried Smith, fiercely.
"No? You are busy as ever? I wanted to ask you about Lee. I was
sorry to hear that there was a rumour that something was amiss with
him."
His features were grave, but there was the gleam of a hidden laugh in
his eyes as he spoke. Smith saw it, and he could have knocked him down
for it.
"You'll be sorrier still to hear that Monkhouse Lee is doing very well,
and is out of all danger," he answered. "Your hellish tricks have not
come off this time. Oh, you needn't try to brazen it out. I know all
about it."
Bellingham took a step back from the angry student, and half-closed the
door as if to protect himself.
"You are mad," he said. "What do you mean? Do you assert that I had
anything to do with Lee's accident?"
"Yes," thundered Smith. "You and that bag of bones behind you; you
worked it between you. I tell you what it is, Master B., they have
given up burning folk like you, but we still keep a hangman, and, by
George! if any man in this college meets his death while you are here,
I'll have you up, and if you don't swing for it, it won't be my fault.
You'll find that your filthy Egyptian tricks won't answer in England."
"You're a raving lunatic," said Bellingham.
"All right. You just remember what I say, for you'll find that I'll be
better than my word."
The door slammed, and Smith went fuming up to his chamber, where he
locked the door upon the inside, and spent half the night in smoking
his old briar and brooding over the strange events of the evening.
Next morning Abercrombie Smith heard nothing of his neighbour, but
Harrington called upon him in the afternoon to say that Lee was almost
himself again. All day Smith stuck fast to his work, but in the
evening he determined to pay the visit to his friend Dr. Peterson upon
which he had started upon the night before. A good walk and a friendly
chat would be welcome to his jangled nerves.
Bellingham's door was shut as he passed, but glancing back when he was
some distance from the turret, he saw his neighbour's head at the
window outlined against the lamp-light, his face pressed apparently
against the glass as he gazed out into the darkness. It was a blessing
to be away from all contact with him, but if for a few hours, and Smith
stepped out briskly, and breathed the soft spring air into his lungs.
The half-moon lay in the west between two Gothic pinnacles, and threw
upon the silvered street a dark tracery from the stone-work above.
There was a brisk breeze, and light, fleecy clouds drifted swiftly
across the sky. Old's was on the very border of the town, and in five
minutes Smith found himself beyond the houses and between the hedges of
a May-scented Oxfordshire lane.
It was a lonely and little frequented road which led to his friend's
house. Early as it was, Smith did not meet a single soul upon his way.
He walked briskly along until he came to the avenue gate, which opened
into the long gravel drive leading up to Farlingford. In front of him
he could see the cosy red light of the windows glimmering through the
foliage. He stood with his hand upon the iron latch of the swinging
gate, and he glanced back at the road along which he had come.
Something was coming swiftly down it.
It moved in the shadow of the hedge, silently and furtively, a dark,
crouching figure, dimly visible against the black background. Even as
he gazed back at it, it had lessened its distance by twenty paces, and
was fast closing upon him. Out of the darkness he had a glimpse of a
scraggy neck, and of two eyes that will ever haunt him in his dreams.
He turned, and with a cry of terror he ran for his life up the avenue.
There were the red lights, the signals of safety, almost within a
stone's throw of him. He was a famous runner, but never had he run as
he ran that night.
The heavy gate had swung into place behind him, but he heard it dash
open again before his pursuer. As he rushed madly and wildly through
the night, he could hear a swift, dry patter behind him, and could see,
as he threw back a glance, that this horror was bounding like a tiger
at his heels, with blazing eyes and one stringy arm outthrown. Thank
God, the door was ajar. He could see the thin bar of light which shot
from the lamp in the hall. Nearer yet sounded the clatter from behind.
He heard a hoarse gurgling at his very shoulder. With a shriek he
flung himself against the door, slammed and bolted it behind him, and
sank half-fainting on to the hall chair.
"My goodness, Smith, what's the matter?" asked Peterson, appearing at
the door of his study.
"Give me some brandy!"
Peterson disappeared, and came rushing out again with a glass and a
decanter.
"You need it," he said, as his visitor drank off what he poured out for
him. "Why, man, you are as white as a cheese."
Smith laid down his glass, rose up, and took a deep breath.
"I am my own man again now," said he. "I was never so unmanned before.
But, with your leave, Peterson, I will sleep here to-night, for I don't
think I could face that road again except by daylight. It's weak, I
know, but I can't help it."
Peterson looked at his visitor with a very questioning eye.
"Of course you shall sleep here if you wish. I'll tell Mrs. Burney to
make up the spare bed. Where are you off to now?"
"Come up with me to the window that overlooks the door. I want you to
see what I have seen."
They went up to the window of the upper hall whence they could look
down upon the approach to the house. The drive and the fields on
either side lay quiet and still, bathed in the peaceful moonlight.
"Well, really, Smith," remarked Peterson, "it is well that I know you
to be an abstemious man. What in the world can have frightened you?"
"I'll tell you presently. But where can it have gone? Ah, now look,
look! See the curve of the road just beyond your gate."
"Yes, I see; you needn't pinch my arm off. I saw someone pass. I
should say a man, rather thin, apparently, and tall, very tall. But
what of him? And what of yourself? You are still shaking like an
aspen leaf."
"I have been within hand-grip of the devil, that's all. But come down
to your study, and I shall tell you the whole story."
He did so. Under the cheery lamplight, with a glass of wine on the
table beside him, and the portly form and florid face of his friend in
front, he narrated, in their order, all the events, great and small,
which had formed so singular a chain, from the night on which he had
found Bellingham fainting in front of the mummy case until his horrid
experience of an hour ago.
"There now," he said as he concluded, "that's the whole black business.
It is monstrous and incredible, but it is true."
Dr. Plumptree Peterson sat for some time in silence with a very puzzled
expression upon his face.
"I never heard of such a thing in my life, never!" he said at last.
"You have told me the facts. Now tell me your inferences."
"You can draw your own."
"But I should like to hear yours. You have thought over the matter,
and I have not."
"Well, it must be a little vague in detail, but the main points seem to
me to be clear enough. This fellow Bellingham, in his Eastern studies,
has got hold of some infernal secret by which a mummy—or possibly only
this particular mummy—can be temporarily brought to life. He was
trying this disgusting business on the night when he fainted. No doubt
the sight of the creature moving had shaken his nerve, even though he
had expected it. You remember that almost the first words he said were
to call out upon himself as a fool. Well, he got more hardened
afterwards, and carried the matter through without fainting. The
vitality which he could put into it was evidently only a passing thing,
for I have seen it continually in its case as dead as this table. He
has some elaborate process, I fancy, by which he brings the thing to
pass. Having done it, he naturally bethought him that he might use the
creature as an agent. It has intelligence and it has strength. For
some purpose he took Lee into his confidence; but Lee, like a decent
Christian, would have nothing to do with such a business. Then they
had a row, and Lee vowed that he would tell his sister of Bellingham's
true character. Bellingham's game was to prevent him, and he nearly
managed it, by setting this creature of his on his track. He had
already tried its powers upon another man—Norton—towards whom he had
a grudge. It is the merest chance that he has not two murders upon his
soul. Then, when I taxed him with the matter, he had the strongest
reasons for wishing to get me out of the way before I could convey my
knowledge to anyone else. He got his chance when I went out, for he
knew my habits, and where I was bound for. I have had a narrow shave,
Peterson, and it is mere luck you didn't find me on your doorstep in
the morning. I'm not a nervous man as a rule, and I never thought to
have the fear of death put upon me as it was to-night."
"My dear boy, you take the matter too seriously," said his companion.
"Your nerves are out of order with your work, and you make too much of
it. How could such a thing as this stride about the streets of Oxford,
even at night, without being seen?"
"It has been seen. There is quite a scare in the town about an escaped
ape, as they imagine the creature to be. It is the talk of the place."
"Well, it's a striking chain of events. And yet, my dear fellow, you
must allow that each incident in itself is capable of a more natural
explanation."
"What! even my adventure of to-night?"
"Certainly. You come out with your nerves all unstrung, and your head
full of this theory of yours. Some gaunt, half-famished tramp steals
after you, and seeing you run, is emboldened to pursue you. Your fears
and imagination do the rest."
"It won't do, Peterson; it won't do."
"And again, in the instance of your finding the mummy case empty, and
then a few moments later with an occupant, you know that it was
lamplight, that the lamp was half turned down, and that you had no
special reason to look hard at the case. It is quite possible that you
may have overlooked the creature in the first instance."
"No, no; it is out of the question."
"And then Lee may have fallen into the river, and Norton been
garrotted. It is certainly a formidable indictment that you have
against Bellingham; but if you were to place it before a police
magistrate, he would simply laugh in your face."
"I know he would. That is why I mean to take the matter into my own
hands."
"Eh?"
"Yes; I feel that a public duty rests upon me, and, besides, I must do
it for my own safety, unless I choose to allow myself to be hunted by
this beast out of the college, and that would be a little too feeble.
I have quite made up my mind what I shall do. And first of all, may I
use your paper and pens for an hour?"
"Most certainly. You will find all that you want upon that side table."
Abercrombie Smith sat down before a sheet of foolscap, and for an hour,
and then for a second hour his pen travelled swiftly over it. Page
after page was finished and tossed aside while his friend leaned back
in his arm-chair, looking across at him with patient curiosity. At
last, with an exclamation of satisfaction, Smith sprang to his feet,
gathered his papers up into order, and laid the last one upon
Peterson's desk.
"Kindly sign this as a witness," he said.
"A witness? Of what?"
"Of my signature, and of the date. The date is the most important.
Why, Peterson, my life might hang upon it."
"My dear Smith, you are talking wildly. Let me beg you to go to bed."
"On the contrary, I never spoke so deliberately in my life. And I will
promise to go to bed the moment you have signed it."
"But what is it?"
"It is a statement of all that I have been telling you to-night. I
wish you to witness it."
"Certainly," said Peterson, signing his name under that of his
companion. "There you are! But what is the idea?"
"You will kindly retain it, and produce it in case I am arrested."
"Arrested? For what?"
"For murder. It is quite on the cards. I wish to be ready for every
event. There is only one course open to me, and I am determined to
take it."
"For Heaven's sake, don't do anything rash!"
"Believe me, it would be far more rash to adopt any other course. I
hope that we won't need to bother you, but it will ease my mind to know
that you have this statement of my motives. And now I am ready to take
your advice and to go to roost, for I want to be at my best in the
morning."
Abercrombie Smith was not an entirely pleasant man to have as an enemy.
Slow and easytempered, he was formidable when driven to action. He
brought to every purpose in life the same deliberate resoluteness which
had distinguished him as a scientific student. He had laid his studies
aside for a day, but he intended that the day should not be wasted.
Not a word did he say to his host as to his plans, but by nine o'clock
he was well on his way to Oxford.
In the High Street he stopped at Clifford's, the gun-maker's, and
bought a heavy revolver, with a box of central-fire cartridges. Six of
them he slipped into the chambers, and half-cocking the weapon, placed
it in the pocket of his coat. He then made his way to Hastie's rooms,
where the big oarsman was lounging over his breakfast, with the
Sporting Times propped up against the coffeepot.
"Hullo! What's up?" he asked. "Have some coffee?"
"No, thank you. I want you to come with me, Hastie, and do what I ask
you."
"Certainly, my boy."
"And bring a heavy stick with you."
"Hullo!" Hastie stared. "Here's a hunting-crop that would fell an ox."
"One other thing. You have a box of amputating knives. Give me the
longest of them."
"There you are. You seem to be fairly on the war trail. Anything
else?"
"No; that will do." Smith placed the knife inside his coat, and led the
way to the quadrangle. "We are neither of us chickens, Hastie," said
he. "I think I can do this job alone, but I take you as a precaution.
I am going to have a little talk with Bellingham. If I have only him
to deal with, I won't, of course, need you. If I shout, however, up
you come, and lam out with your whip as hard as you can lick. Do you
understand?"
"All right. I'll come if I hear you bellow."
"Stay here, then. It may be a little time, but don't budge until I
come down."
"I'm a fixture."
Smith ascended the stairs, opened Bellingham's door and stepped in.
Bellingham was seated behind his table, writing. Beside him, among his
litter of strange possessions, towered the mummy case, with its sale
number 249 still stuck upon its front, and its hideous occupant stiff
and stark within it. Smith looked very deliberately round him, closed
the door, locked it, took the key from the inside, and then stepping
across to the fireplace, struck a match and set the fire alight.
Bellingham sat staring, with amazement and rage upon his bloated face.
"Well, really now, you make yourself at home," he gasped.
Smith sat himself deliberately down, placing his watch upon the table,
drew out his pistol, cocked it, and laid it in his lap. Then he took
the long amputating knife from his bosom, and threw it down in front of
Bellingham.
"Now, then," said he, "just get to work and cut up that mummy."
"Oh, is that it?" said Bellingham with a sneer.
"Yes, that is it. They tell me that the law can't touch you. But I
have a law that will set matters straight. If in five minutes you have
not set to work, I swear by the God who made me that I will put a
bullet through your brain!"
"You would murder me?"
Bellingham had half risen, and his face was the colour of putty.
"Yes."
"And for what?"
"To stop your mischief. One minute has gone."
"But what have I done?"
"I know and you know."
"This is mere bullying."
"Two minutes are gone."
"But you must give reasons. You are a madman—a dangerous madman. Why
should I destroy my own property? It is a valuable mummy."
"You must cut it up, and you must burn it."
"I will do no such thing."
"Four minutes are gone."
Smith took up the pistol and he looked towards Bellingham with an
inexorable face. As the second-hand stole round, he raised his hand,
and the finger twitched upon the trigger.
"There! there! I'll do it!" screamed Bellingham.
In frantic haste he caught up the knife and hacked at the figure of the
mummy, ever glancing round to see the eye and the weapon of his
terrible visitor bent upon him. The creature crackled and snapped
under every stab of the keen blade. A thick yellow dust rose up from
it. Spices and dried essences rained down upon the floor. Suddenly,
with a rending crack, its backbone snapped asunder, and it fell, a
brown heap of sprawling limbs, upon the floor.
"Now into the fire!" said Smith.
The flames leaped and roared as the dried and tinderlike debris was
piled upon it. The little room was like the stoke-hole of a steamer
and the sweat ran down the faces of the two men; but still the one
stooped and worked, while the other sat watching him with a set face.
A thick, fat smoke oozed out from the fire, and a heavy smell of burned
rosin and singed hair filled the air. In a quarter of an hour a few
charred and brittle sticks were all that was left of Lot No. 249.
"Perhaps that will satisfy you," snarled Bellingham, with hate and fear
in his little grey eyes as he glanced back at his tormenter.
"No; I must make a clean sweep of all your materials. We must have no
more devil's tricks. In with all these leaves! They may have
something to do with it."
"And what now?" asked Bellingham, when the leaves also had been added
to the blaze.
"Now the roll of papyrus which you had on the table that night. It is
in that drawer, I think."
"No, no," shouted Bellingham. "Don't burn that! Why, man, you don't
know what you do. It is unique; it contains wisdom which is nowhere
else to be found."
"Out with it!"
"But look here, Smith, you can't really mean it. I'll share the
knowledge with you. I'll teach you all that is in it. Or, stay, let
me only copy it before you burn it!"
Smith stepped forward and turned the key in the drawer. Taking out the
yellow, curled roll of paper, he threw it into the fire, and pressed it
down with his heel. Bellingham screamed, and grabbed at it; but Smith
pushed him back, and stood over it until it was reduced to a formless
grey ash.
"Now, Master B.," said he, "I think I have pretty well drawn your
teeth. You'll hear from me again, if you return to your old tricks.
And now good-morning, for I must go back to my studies."
And such is the narrative of Abercrombie Smith as to the singular
events which occurred in Old College, Oxford, in the spring of '84. As
Bellingham left the university immediately afterwards, and was last
heard of in the Soudan, there is no one who can contradict his
statement. But the wisdom of men is small, and the ways of nature are
strange, and who shall put a bound to the dark things which may be
found by those who seek for them?
