|WE sought you at your house, Kit,” said Dr. Ulswater; “we sought you
also at the establishment where you generate that mystical fluid which
now travels meekly, invisibly, its slender wires, and now spits like a
red-hot cat. You electrical engineers have your fingers on the pulse of
the universe. I admire in you the representatives of the age.
“The condition of affairs in Portate was most mixed and unclassified.
No light anywhere, except here and there a smoky lantern, and such
sulphurous beams as the eye of imagination might detect, or conceive,
gleaming from the bosoms of some thousands of furious citizens. We
reached the railway station with the feeling of having been miraculously
rescued. The town, however, was quieting down. Most of the citizens
had gone home to plot your assassination. Your ultimatum seemed to be
everywhere known. Evidently you were not meaning to be found that
night by friend or foe, and therefore Sadler and I went our way in the
interests of archæology.
“There is a national museum at the capital of this country, which
contains an extraordinary collection of Inca relics, but is as
disorderly as Portate emotions. Thither we went by the slowest train the
ingenuity of man ever invented, getting what sleep we could, through the
night, upon car seats of mistaken construction, each one of which was a
populous commonwealth of bugs.
“Arrived at our destination in the morning, I found my way to the
Museum, and presently was buried from the world, lost to the present.
It must have been near noon when Sadler came and found me surrounded by
pottery, weapons, tools, and the swathed bundles of the mummied dead.
“'Doctor,' he said; 'when's your birthday?'
“I reflected.
“'Bless my soul, it's to-morrow! This thing's got to stop! I'll be older
than an Inca!'
“'You're a swaddled infant,' he said. I thought Mrs. Ulswater said it
was to-morrow. I've got a present for you.'
“Birthdays, indeed! What had I to do with birthdays, who was reborn into
eternity on the day I married Mrs. Ulswater! I had no use for them.
I wished some one would make me a present of the treasures of that
mixed-up and ruinous museum, and rescue them for archaeology. Carvings!
Do you happen to know that the Inca signs of the Zodiac are practically
identical with the Egyptian, that, moreover, they probably antedate
them, that----”
“No, we don't,” interrupted Sadler. “It ain't so.”
“I can prove it to any man with eyes,” shouted Dr. Ulswater, thumping
his knee.
“Which I holds myself,” said Sadler, gloomily, “that any man, with eyes,
can see as them signs of the Zodiac all comes from the jim-jams, and the
first man that made 'em was the first man that had drunk not wisely but
too often.”
“Ha!” said Dr. Ulswater. “Why! Now, that's an idea! It really is!”
“Fiddlesticks!” said Mrs. Ulswater. “What was the present, and what
about it?”
Susannah said, “What's in the box?” and I,
“What are you doing with my trunk?”
Dr. Ulswater wanted to stop there and discuss the origins of the
signs of the Zodiac, and the orderly narrative was getting into a bad
condition, but Sadler took it up.
“Well, it was this way, ma'am,” he said. “I left the doctor at the
Museum. Them mummies didn't look to me respectable, but maybe they are,
only as you told me to look after the doctor, I didn't know as I'd ought
to leave him in that there dissipated society. But I went off down the
street, and by and by I see a man I knew, named Sanchez Beteta. He used
to be a graceless young one, son of a poverty-stricken caballero who
lived on Valencia Street in Portate. Beteta was walking stately and
soft, and he had on patent-leather shoes that was pointed like pins,
and he had a cane that was an airy vision, and a buttonhole bouquet, and
fixings, and side whiskers, and clothes that was beautiful to make a bad
egg remember its young dreams, and he come along like his garments was
angels' wings. I says to myself: 'I want to be like that'; and I pokes
him in the chest sudden and solid, and I says, sort of ingratiating:
“'Where'd you steal them clothes?' I says in West Coast Spanish. He
looked me over with a haughty eye. Then he says:
“'If you're a ghost,' he says, 'I wished you'd fade away. How and why do
you exist, aged one?' and I says:
“'Get me a bouquet and a cane. I want some vanity.'
“Then we went and got them vanities, and paraded in glory on the
fashionable highway that's called 'The Paseo,' and he told me the origin
of his clothes. They came from his being in the Government, a sort
of Subcommissioner of National Monuments and Memorials, and from that
position's having some pickings of drumsticks while his superiors was
busy with other parts of the chicken. I told him how I'd come there, and
how electricity had played it dark on Portate, and how Dr. Ulswater was
at the Museum sorting out knowledge and wishing he had an Inca mummy for
home consumption. Beteta knew about Portate. It was in the morning paper
that's called 'El Patria.' Then he took to thinking.
“'Would the learned senor,' he says, 'pay a price for a royal mummy? He
is, you say, of great wealth.'
“I says: 'Why?'
“'Because,' he says, 'I may have such an article to dispose of.'
“'Which,' I says, 'is a fraud. It's made of mashed paper and it ain't
got no pedigree.'
“'Not at all,' he says, 'not at all! I scorn you. Could I, who am but an
amateur, deceive one learned as your friend? It was in this way, simply.
Some years ago an ancient tomb was opened and found to contain mummies
of the family of the Inca, Huayna Capac. Of him you know nothing at
all, but your friend does, and without doubt he knows that most of that
family died during, or after, the Conquest. Without doubt he knows
of the tomb I speak of and its discovery. It was described in the
publications of science. Now the Museum is in my Department of Monuments
and Memorials, and somewhat under my charge, because of my great
interest in my country's antiquities. Also because of this interest I
was allowed to acquire one of these relics for my private collection.
But alas! I am unfortunate! Integrity and poverty go together. It rends
my heart. I fear I had better dispose of my treasure. You will ask,
“Why not to the Museum?” Again, alas! Evil tongues would whisper. I, an
official of the Department, sell to the Department! My own conscience,
too delicate, would shrink. But you are hardened, of an evil mind, a
cynic. You don't understand the scruples.'
“'Sure,' I says, 'I do. Remorse and me are bosom friends. Come see the
doctor.'
“'At present,' he says, 'I have an important engagement. Bring him to my
house at three this afternoon. Number 20, Street of the Museum.'
“I went after the doctor then, and asked him would he have a birthday
present, and what was the market price of royal mummies of the family
of Hannah Atkins. 'Who?' says he, and I tried it again. 'Oh!' he says,
'Huayna Capac!'
“'The same,' I says. He stated a likely price, which stumped me some,
for Beteta had only asked about a third of that for his mummy, and I
didn't see Beteta's game. I judged he must be an ignorant amateur on
mummies.
“We went to lunch, and about three o'clock we come round to Beteta's
house. It stood side up to the side of the Museum, with a little paved
court, or patio, between. You had to go into the patio to get into
Beteta's house, and there was a small door in the Museum that opened
on the patio too. Beteta let us in and showed his mummy in a box on a
table, and it was that roped and done up in coloured cloth you could
tell it from any sort of bundle, only there was a copper placard on it,
which appeared to be antique.
“'It has been in the Museum for some days past,' says Beteta, 'because
of comparisons I desired to make with the other plates.'
“'Ah!' says the doctor.
“'I regret that an important engagement now hurries me,' says Beteta.
'My house is yours, but if you go back to Portate to-day, the train
leaves in two hours.'
“'Oh!' says the doctor. 'To be sure, we must go back.'
“'So regrettable! But, without doubt,' says Beteta, 'you will return.
My house is yours. For me, but an amateur, to make acquaintance of
a learned archaeologist, how grateful! You find here materials for
packing. My house is yours. Adios, senores. The public servant is not
master of his time. Adios, senores. My house is yours.'
“Then he took his cash and left us, we feeling sort of surprised.
“'What's your expert opinion?' says I.
“'Why,' says the doctor, putting on his glasses again and looking wise,
I think you and your intimate friend belong to the genus gammon, species
humbug; but his mummy is all right.'
“'If it's a sure Hannah Atkins, that's what I'm asking,' I says. 'I
guess Beteta ain't even an amateur on mummies, and he's skeered of
conversation with you. I guess you're right there.'
“We packed Hannah Atkins, and toward five o'clock I shouldered the box.
Some populace saw us come from the patio and followed us to the station,
wondering what a caballero, with a cane and a buttonhole bouquet, and a
box four foot long on his shoulder, and a amiable large party in a white
vest behind him, was doing with that there combination of circumstances.
So we caught the train and started for Portate. There was another man I
used to know on the train. He was a Scotch engineer in the employ of The
Transport Company and named Jamison.”