Produced by Mary Glenn Krause, Martin Pettit and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
[Illustration:
The Living Mummy
I swear by the King of Heaven & of Earth--
_Frontispiece_ _Page 244_]
_The_ Living Mummy
BY
AMBROSE PRATT
_With Four Illustrations in Color by_
LOUIS D. FANCHER
[Illustration: Decoration]
_SECOND EDITION_
NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1910, by FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
_All rights reserved_
[Illustration: Logo _February, 1910_]
THE LIVING MUMMY
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. CONCERNING THE SON OF HAP 1
II. A PATIENT OF THE DESERT 13
III. TWO LIES 25
IV. THE SARCOPHAGUS'S PERFUME 29
V. THE SHADOW IN THE CAVE 42
VI. ENTER DOCTOR BELLEVILLE 53
VII. THE ONE GODDESS 62
VIII. OTTLEY SHOWS HIS HAND 75
IX. A COOL DEFIANCE 90
X. THE CAPTURE OF THE COFFIN 96
XI. GOOD-BYE TO THE NILE 104
XII. THE MEETING 111
XIII. HUBBARD IS JEALOUS 124
XIV. THE PUSHFUL MAN 131
XV. A QUAINT LOVE PACT 138
XVI. LADY HELEN PRESCRIBES FOR HER HUSBAND 145
XVII. THE SÉANCE 155
XVIII. THE UNSEEN 173
XIX. THE FIRST VICTIM 184
XX. LADY HELEN'S MEDICINE OPERATES 193
XXI. HUBBARD'S PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 204
XXII. THE DEAD HAND 211
XXIII. I SET OUT FOR THE EAST 220
XXIV. THE GIN IS SPRUNG 226
XXV. THE MUMMY TALKS 238
XXVI. A PLEASANT CHAT WITH A MURDERER 246
XXVII. UNBOUND 262
XXVIII. THE STRUGGLE IN THE CHAMBER 275
XXIX. SAVED BY FIRE 293
XXX. THE LAST 305
THE LIVING MUMMY
Chapter I
Concerning the Son of Hap
I was hard at work in my tent. I had almost completed translating
the inscription of a small stele of Amen-hotep III, dated B. C.,
1382, which with my own efforts I had discovered, and I was feeling
wonderfully self-satisfied in consequence, when of a sudden I heard a
great commotion without. Almost immediately the tent flap was lifted,
and Migdal Abu's black face appeared. He looked vastly excited for an
Arab, and he rolled his eyes horribly. "What do you want?" I demanded
irritably. "Did I not tell you I was not to be disturbed?"
He bent almost double. "Excellency--a white sheik has come riding on an
ass, and with him a shameless female, also white."
"The dickens!" I exclaimed, for I had not seen a European for nine
weeks.
Migdal Abu advanced with hand outstretched. "Excellency, he would have
me give you this."
I took "this," and swore softly underbreath at the humourless
pomposity of my unknown countryman. It was a pasteboard
carte-de-visite. And we--in the heart of the Libyan desert!
With a laugh I looked at the thing and read his name--"Sir Robert
Ottley."
"What!" I said, then sprang a-foot. Ottley the great Egyptologist.
Ottley the famous explorer. Ottley the eminent decipherer of cuneiform
inscriptions. Ottley the millionaire whose prodigality in the cause of
learning had in ten short years more than doubled the common stock of
knowledge of the history of the Shepherd kings of the Nile. I had been
longing since a lad to meet him, and now he had come unasked to see me
out on the burning sands of Yatibiri.
Trembling with excitement, I caught up a jacket, and hardly waiting to
thrust my arms into the sleeves, rushed out of the tent.
Before me, sitting on an ass that was already sound asleep, despite a
plague of flies that played about its eyes, was a little bronze-faced,
grizzled old man attired from head to foot in glistening white duck
and wearing on his head an enormous pith helmet. My Arabs, glad of an
excuse to cease work, squatted round him in a semi-circle.
"Sir Robert Ottley!" I cried. "A thousand welcomes."
"You are very good," he drawled. "I presume you are Dr. Pinsent."
"At your service."
He stooped a little forward and offered me his hand.
"Will you not dismount?" I asked.
"Thank you, no. I have come to ask a favour." Then he glanced round him
and began deliberately to count my Arabs.
I surveyed him in blank astonishment. He possessed a large hawk-like
nose, a small thin-lipped mouth and little eyes twinkling under brows
that beetled.
"Twelve, and two of them are good for nothing; mere weeds," said Sir
Robert.
Then he turned to me with a smile. "You will forgive me?" he asked,
adding quickly, "but then Arabs are cattle. There was no personal
reflection."
"A cup of coffee," I suggested. "The sun is dreadful. It would refresh
you."
"The sun is nothing," he replied, "and I have work to do. I am camped
on the southern slope of the Hill of Rakh. It is twelve miles. I have
found the tomb for which I have been searching seven years. I thought I
had enough Arabs. I was mistaken."
"You may have the use of mine and welcome," I observed.
He gave a queer little bow. "He gives twice who gives quickly. The
sarcophagus is in a rock hole forty feet beneath the level of the
desert. I simply must have it up to-night."
"They shall start at once, and I shall go with them; I am as strong
as six," I replied. Then I shouted some orders to Migdal Abu. When I
turned it was to gasp. A woman had materialised from the sunbeams. I
had completely forgotten that Sir Robert had a female companion. All
my eyes had been for him. I swung off my hat and stammered some tardy
words of welcome and invitation.
Sir Robert interrupted me. "My daughter--Dr. Pinsent," he drawled in
slow, passionless tones. "My daughter does not require any refreshment,
thank you, Doctor."
"I am too excited," said a singularly sweet voice. "Father's discovery
has put me into a fever. I really could not eat, and coffee would choke
me. But if you could give me a little water."
I rushed into my tent and returned with a brimming metal cup. "The
Arabs have broken all my glass ware," I said apologetically.
She lifted her veil and our eyes met. She was lovely. She smiled and
showed a set of dazzling teeth. The incisors were inlaid with gold. I
remarked the fact in a sort of self-defensive panic, for the truth is
I am a shy idiot with pretty women. Thank goodness she was thirsty and
did not notice my confusion. Two minutes afterwards I was mounted on
my donkey, and we were off on the long tramp to the Hill of Rakh, the
Arabs trailing behind us in a thin ill-humoured line. We maintained
the silence of bad temper and excessive heat until the sun sank into
the sand. Then, however, we wiped our foreheads, said a cheerful
good-bye to the flies that had been tormenting us, and woke up.
"I am immensely obliged to you, Dr. Pinsent," said Sir Robert.
"So am I," said Miss Ottley.
"The boot is on the other foot," I replied. "It's kind of you to permit
me to be present at your triumph. Is it a king?"
"No," said Miss Ottley, "a priest of Amen of the eighteenth dynasty."
"Oh, a priest."
Miss Ottley bridled at my tone. "No king was ever half as interesting
as _our_ priest," she declared. "He was a wonderful man in every way, a
prophet, a magician, and enormously powerful. Besides, he is believed
to have committed suicide for the sake of principle, and he predicted
his own resurrection after a sleep of two thousand years."
"He has been dead 3285 years," sighed Sir Robert.
"Is that his fault?" cried the girl.
"It falsifies his prophecy."
She shrugged her shoulders.
"Ptahmes was his name," said Sir Robert, turning to me. "He was the
right-hand man of Amen-hotep IV; but when that king changed his
religion and his name and became Akhenaten and a devotee of the old
worship of Heliopolis, Ptahmes apparently killed himself as a protest
against the deposition of Amen, his particular divinity."
"Read that," said Miss Ottley.
She handed me a page of type-written manuscript.
It ran as follows:
"Hearken to the orders which are put upon you by Ptahmes, named
Tahutimes, son of Mery, son of Hap.
"All my ways were regulated even as the pace of an ibis. The
Hawk-headed Horus was my protector like amulets upon my body. I trained
the troops of my lord. I made his pylon 60 cubits long in the noble
rock of quartzite, most great in height and firm as heaven. I did
not imitate what had been done before. I was the royal scribe of the
recruits. Mustering was done under me. I was appointed Judge of the
Palace; overseer of all the prophets of the south and of the north. I
was appointed High Priest of Amen in the Capital--King of all the Gods.
I was made the eyes and ears of the king: keeper of my lord's heart and
fan-bearer at the King's right hand. Great men have come from afar to
bow themselves before me, bringing presents of ivory and gold, copper,
silver and emery, lazuli, malachite, green felspar and vases of mern
wood inlaid with white precious stones sometimes bearing gold at one
time 1000 deben (200 pounds weight). For my fame was carried abroad
even as the fame of the king, 'lord of the sweet wind.' And there
was spoken of me by the son of Paapis that my wisdom was of a divine
nature, because of my knowledge of futurities. Yet on the sixth day of
the month of Pakhons in the 18th year I desire to rest. My lord, at the
solicitation of the great royal wife and mother Nefertiti, has put off
the worship of his predecessors. The name of Amen is proscribed from
the country. Ra is proscribed from the country. Horus is proscribed
from the country. Aten is set up in their place and worshipped in the
land. My lord has even changed his name. Apiy is the high priest of the
new God that is from the Mesopotamian wilderness. Amen, king of the
Gods, dandled my lord and is forsaken and proscribed. I am an old man
and would rest: although my lord has not forsaken me. He has appointed
me overseer of all his works. Therefore, shall you carry me to the
temple of Kak, and give my body to the hands of the priests of Amen who
will wrap me in the linen sheets of Horus without removing my heart, my
entrails or my lungs. Then you shall carry me to Khizebh and enclose
me in the place prepared for me; and cover my tomb to a depth of five
fathoms with the sand of the desert at that hour when no man looks or
listens. Do this even as I command, and as royal scribe I trace the
order with my pen. But you shall place my papyri and the sign by which
I shall be known, and the stele of ivory engraved with the directions
to the priests of Amen who are to wake me from my sleep at the distant
hour, in the tomb that is prepared for my body in the temple of
Merenptah and in such manner that I shall there appear to sleep. And
all these things you shall do, or my curse shall pursue you and your
children and their children for the space of four hundred lives. Nor
shall you remove the endowment of my gifts nor touch them where they
lie under a penalty of great moment."
I strained my eyes to catch the last words, for the darkness was
already setting down upon the desert; and I was profoundly interested.
"Wonderful!" I said, as I returned her the document. "A papyrus, of
course?"
"Yes, one of several. Father found it seven years ago at Dier el
Batiri."
"I had not heard."
Sir Robert coughed. "No," said he, "nor anyone else. I have never
published it. It did not come to me in the usual way. I bought it from
an Arab who had rifled the tomb in which it was discovered."
"And the other papyri and the ivory stele?" I questioned.
"They are in my possession, too."
"They enabled you doubtless to locate the real tomb that holds the
body?"
"They helped."
Then silence supervened. To me it was filled with wonder. I could not
help asking myself what circumstances could possibly have induced
Ottley to withhold so valuable an historic treasure for so many years
from the world. Such a course of action was utterly opposed to all
practice, and the unwritten but immutable laws of scientific research.
It seemed strangely at odds, too, with the man's reputed character. It
would have covered him with glory to have placed his discovery before
the Society to which we both belonged. And a dozen incidents related
of him far and wide, proved that he was not indifferent to praise and
fame. He read my thoughts probably, for at length he cleared his throat
and spoke.
"There were reasons why I should not blazon the find abroad," he said.
"No doubt," I observed, with unintentioned dryness.
"One papyrus speaks of a golden treasure," he went on quietly. "If
published, it would have set thousands looking for the tomb. In that
case the chances are that the body of Ptahmes would have been destroyed
by some vandal intent solely on pillage."
"You assumed a great responsibility," I remarked. I simply had to say
it, for I was angry, and his explanation appeared puerile to me.
"Do you dispute my right?" he demanded coldly.
I shrugged my shoulders. "It is not for me to say, Sir Robert.
Doubtless when the time comes you will be able to satisfy the Society
and the world that you have acted rightly."
"I admit no responsibility," he answered; "and permit me to observe
that you are talking nonsense. I owe no duty to communicate the results
of my purchases or discoveries to any Society or to the world."
"True, Sir Robert. An action for damages could not lie against you."
"Sir!" he cried.
"Father," said Miss Ottley, "how can Dr. Pinsent's foolish sarcasm
affect you? Besides, we need his Arabs."
"Quite so," said Sir Robert. "We need his Arabs. How brightly the stars
shine to-night, Dr. Pinsent."
The cool impudence of the pair struck me dumb. I shook with passion.
For a moment I thought of calling a halt and returning the way we had
come to my own camp with my Arabs. But for my curiosity to see the
tomb of Ptahmes very probably I should have done so. In a few seconds,
however, my rage cooled, and my uppermost feeling was admiration mixed
with mirth. I had never been treated with such open and absurd contempt
before. It was a refreshing experience. I burst of a sudden into a peal
of laughter. Miss Ottley joined me in the exercise. But Sir Robert rode
on like a hook-nosed Sphinx.
"I knew I could not be mistaken," said Miss Ottley. "You should thank
God for your sense of humour, Dr. Pinsent."
"And who is benefiting from it at this moment, I should like to know?"
I retorted. "The thanks are due from you, I fancy."
"Deo gratias!" she flashed. "In sober truth, we need your Arabs sadly."
"I repeat, I am glad to be of use."
"We shall use you, but not necessarily in the cause of your Society.
Understand that fully."
"You mean?"
"That you must not expect to share our secrets."
"In plain words, you will not let me help you open the sarcophagus."
"Your penetration is remarkable."
"And if----"
"And if," she interrupted quickly, "you require a reward for the
courtesy we asked and you accorded or have promised to accord, you have
but to name a sum in cash to have it paid."
"Or----" said I, stung to the quick.
"Or," she flashed, "return! You are at liberty to make your choice.
Yours are not the only Arabs in Egypt. At a pinch we can wait a day or
two. It is for you to say."
I tore off my hat. "Miss Ottley--my Arabs are yours for as long as you
require them!" I furiously announced. "Good day to you. Sir Robert,
good day!"
Then I dragged the head of my ass round and set his face to my
camp. The beast, however, would hardly budge, and I had to belabour
him unmercifully to induce him to trot. Never did man make a more
undignified exit from circumstances of indignity. And it did not need
Miss Ottley's mocking laughter to assure me that I looked ridiculous.
I could have strangled her with all the cheerfulness in life; and from
that moment I have cherished an ineradicable hatred of donkeys. Sir
Robert did not open his lips. He did not even return my angry salute.
Almost choking with rage, I finally got out of range of Miss Ottley's
laughter. Then I dismounted and told the desert just what I thought of
her and her father. It was almost midnight when I reached my camp, for,
to crown all, I neglected the stars in my passion, and for two hours
lost my way.