The Sarcophagus's Perfume
Towards morning my mind grew much easier. Sir Robert awoke and took a
few mouthfuls of liquid nourishment. But although too weak to speak,
he was sensible and the fever had left him. He fell asleep again
immediately. Soon afterwards my eyes fell on the sarcophagus. Its
great size affected me with wonder--and its construction. Why should
imperishable treasures, gold, silver, and precious stones be enclosed
in lead? Why not in stone? And the sarcophagus had been hermetically
sealed too, witness the chisel and saw marks on the lid, of Ottley's
making. I examined them attentively, then sat down and stared at the
sarcophagus again. It was coffin shaped. Why? If it had been intended
for a mere treasure chest surely--I was struck suddenly by a fact and
a remembrance. The sarcophagus manifestly measured four feet high
at least. And I remembered that in filling it with water for Sir
Robert's bath I had only had to fill eighteen inches in depth. What
if underneath the treasure it contained another chamber overlaid with
lead? There was room. I got afoot and measured the depth of water
on my arm. Eighteen, well, certainly not more than nineteen inches.
I seized a bucket and began to bail the water out, having need to be
noiseless for the sleepers' sake. The task occupied the better part
of half an hour. By then morning had begun to pale the lamplight,
and I was weary. But I kept on, and finally mopped the interior of
the huge basin dry with a towel. Thereupon I examined the bottom
with the lamp. It did not show a single crevice. The lead was in a
solid and impervious sheet. Curious. But the difference between the
eighteen inches and the four feet remained to be accounted for. Was the
interspace filled with lead? If so--why such uneconomic expenditure of
a valuable mineral? The mystery interested me so much that my weariness
was forgotten. I felt that at any cost it must be solved forthwith.
Casting about, I found a fine-pointed and razor-sharp chisel in the
drawer of Sir Robert Ottley's camp table. With this, I set to work.
Climbing into the sarcophagus, I selected a spot, and using the weight
of my body in place of a hammer, I forced the chisel into the lead.
It bit into the metal slowly but surely. One inch. One inch and a
half. Suddenly it slipped. I fell forward and was brought up by the
handle. The mystery was solved. I recovered my position and wiped my
forehead. Instantly a thin but strangely overpowering perfume filled my
nostrils. It resembled camphor, and violets, and lavender, and oil of
almonds, and a hundred other scents, but was truly like none of them.
It created and compelled, however, a confused train of untranslatable
reflections which might have been memories. But God knows what they
were. I experienced a mysterious sensation of immeasurable antiquity.
And wildly absurd as the idea appears set forth in sober language,
something assured me that I was thousands of years old or had lived
before--so long--so very long ago. I saw lights--the sound of chanting
voices and of rushing waters filled my ears. I seemed to be assisting
at a solemn ritual. Ghostly forces and dim spirit figures filled the
cave. The air was thick with incense fumes. My reason rocked and swung.
Just in time I realised that I was becoming mysteriously anæsthetised.
I held my breath and with a powerful effort leaped to the floor. Then
I carefully blocked up the chisel hole with my kerchief and staggered
into the open air. Very soon I was my own man again. Returning filled
with apprehension for the patient, I found nothing to alarm me. The
perfume had absolutely disappeared. Sir Robert was sleeping like a
babe. I took a nip of brandy and sitting down, gave myself to dreams
watching the sarcophagus. What was its secret? And what the secret
of Sir Robert Ottley's passionate interest in the corpse of Ptahmes
that had been potent enough to call him back to life from the very
brink of dissolution? But plainly I must wait to learn. For it would
not do to trifle with the perfume in the cavern. In that confined
space it might bring about the destruction of us all. Already it
had affected me. My head ached fearfully, and I knew that my blood
vessels were distended, and that my heart was still violently excited.
My agitation was not all painful. There was an insidious pleasure
mingled with it, an intangible titillation of the nerves; but that
only alarmed me the more. The poisons that are most to be feared are
those which captivate the senses; they convey no warning to the body,
and betray the mind, however watchful, by effecting a paralysis of
will. Perhaps--unwittingly--I had been very near death. The notion
was disturbing. I began to regard the sarcophagus much in the light
of an infernal machine possessing dangerous potentialities for ill.
I determined as soon as possible--that is to say, as soon as help
arrived--to have it removed from the sick room to the pylon. There at
least it would be less manifestly perilous; having the play of the
whole wide desert atmosphere in which to dissipate its noxious energies.
A rustling sound dissolved my meditations. I glanced up and saw Miss
Ottley bending over her father. I slipped out and sought the Arab's
quarters. Soon I had a good fire alight and water on to boil. I rather
spread myself that morning. I cooked some tinned asparagus, boiled a
tinned chicken, and opened a jar of prunes. Breakfast spread on the lid
of a brandy box looked and smelled very good. I carried it up to the
pylon and whistled "Come into the garden, Maude."
Miss Ottley appeared at once, round eyed with surprise.
"Your father has already eaten," I observed. "In all likelihood he will
sleep for hours yet. Kindly sit down. You'll excuse my novel breakfast
call. It is the only invitational air I am acquainted with."
She stared at me.
"May one not be lighthearted when all goes well?" I asked.
"One may," she answered. Then her eyes fell and she coloured painfully.
"But not two. I slept at my post. Oh! how could I?" Her voice was quite
despairing and bitterly contemptuous.
I bit at the leg of a chicken which I held in my fingers. "After all,
you are a woman, you know," I commented, with my mouth full. "This
chick's prime--done to a turn."
"How tired you must be!"
"I'm not complaining. Nor do I grudge you the extra rest. You look
better. Hungry?"
"Y-yes," she admitted.
"Then don't be a ninny spending time in vain regrets. Fall to and
repair your waste tissues. In plain English--eat."
She sat down on a ruined column and I handed her a plate.
"You look--positively merry!" she said. "You are nursing
some--pleasant--or profitable reflection." She considered the words
with care.
"I have discovered that I may have--told the truth to your father last
night after all. By accident."
"I beg your pardon."
"I believe I have found your friend Ptahmes, Miss Ottley."
The plate slid off her lap and broke. Chicken and gravy littered the
pavement. But she had no idea of it. "Impossible!" she cried.
I explained my examination of the sarcophagus and the result in detail.
She sat gazing at me like a graven image. When she had finished she
arose and vanished--without a word. I followed and found her standing
beside the great lead coffin, my kerchief in her hand. She had reopened
the chisel hole, and the cavern was already saturated with the infernal
gas. I snatched my handkerchief away and once more blocked the vent.
Then I exerted all my strength and with a prodigious effort placed the
lid on the sarcophagus. With a woman's curiosity to reckon with, such a
precaution seemed a vital safeguard. I found her standing in the pylon,
breathing like a spent runner.
"You might have taken my word," I said coldly. "You'd have saved
yourself an ugly headache at the least."
Her face was crimson; her eyes burned like stars. The fumes of that
uncanny perfume had made her drunk. She swayed and leaned dizzily
against a pillar. I went up and took her hand. The pulse was beating
like a miniature steam hammer.
"Sit down," I said.
She laughed and sank at my feet in a heap. "Oh! Oh!" she cried and fell
to sobbing half hysterically though tearlessly.
"Lord!" I said aloud. "What a bundle of hysterical humours it is, and
how plain to look on when its resolution takes a holiday."
That is the way to treat hysteria.
Miss Ottley sat up and withered me with a glance. "I--I
am. It--it's not hysteria," she stammered, between gasps.
"Besides--you--confessed--it--overcame--you, too."
Then she fainted. I sprang up, but even as I moved I heard a loud sigh
in the cavern. "The sick man first," I muttered, and let the girl lie.
But at the door of the cavern chamber I stood transfixed. A dark shape
bent over the patient's cot, hiding Sir Robert Ottley's face from view.
It seemed to be a man, but its back was presented to my gaze. "What the
deuce are you doing here, whoever you are?" I cried out, and started
forward. The shape melted on the instant into thinnest air. "Nothing
but a shadow," I said to myself. It was necessary to say something.
I was shocked to my soul. I stood for a moment shaking and dismayed.
The shadow had been so thick and bodily and had fled so like a spirit
that I had work to do to readjust my scattered faculties. Of course a
shadow--and my eyes, dazzled by the sunlight without, had momentarily
failed to pierce it. A reasonable and quite ample scientific
explanation. But what had cast the shadow? Pish--what but myself? And
yet: and yet: I was shivering like a blancmange. Never had my nerves
used me so ill. Perhaps, however, that accursed perfume had affected
them. Ah! there was a reassuring solution of the puzzle. Reassuring to
my reason, be it understood, for the fleshy part of me was taken with
an ague and refused for many seconds to return to its subjection to
my will. Sometimes now I doubt but that the flesh has an intelligence
apart from the brain cells and nerve structures that usually control
it. Indeed, I have never met a man of intellect whose memory does
not register experience of some occasion in which his flesh took
independent fright--like a startled hare--at some bogie which made his
sober reason subsequently smile; nay, contemptuously at times. "Well,
well," I said at length and pushed forward--to receive another shock.
Sir Robert Ottley was almost nude. The bed clothes had been pushed
down past his waist. His fingers convulsively gripped the paillasse.
His face was livid. His eyes were open and upturned. His whole form
was stiff and rigid. A fit? It seemed so. His pulse was still. He
did not breathe. But a cataleptic fit then, for at a lance prick the
blood flowed. I forced him to his right side and tried massage. No
use. Strychnine and nitro-glycerine equally refused to act. Finally I
saturated a cloth with amyl nitrate, placed it over his open mouth and
tried artificial respiration. A whole hour had passed already, but I
refused to give in. It was well. In another twenty minutes my efforts
were rewarded with a sigh. I kept on and the man began to breathe. When
it seemed safe to leave off, I disposed him easily and watched events.
First his normal colouring returned. Then his mouth closed. Finally his
eyes revolved. The lids closed and opened several times, then rested
closed. His pulse beat feverishly, but in spite of that he slept. I
walked to the door. Miss Ottley--whom I had completely forgotten--still
lay insensible where she had fallen. I picked her up and brought her
into the cavern. She awoke to consciousness in transit. I forced her
to drink a stiff nobbler of brandy, and very soon she was in her old,
cold, bright, proud, self-reliant state--armed cap-a-pie with insolence
and egotism.
"Is your father subject to fits?" I asked.
"He has never had, till this, a day's illness in his life," she
responded--with a touch of indignation.
I nodded. "Well, his period of disease indemnity has passed. While you
swooned he had a fit. I use the expression colloquially. You would
probably have so described his condition had you seen him. As for me I
don't know. The symptoms were unique. I restored him by treating him
as a drowned man. He was in a sort of trance. From this moment he must
never be left, even for a second."
"He was insensible?"
"He was inanimate."
"That perfume!" she cried.
I shrugged my shoulders. "No doubt."
We glanced at the sarcophagus, then at each other.
"Was there need?" she asked, colouring. Then her eyes sparkled. "Oh,
for such strength!" she cried. "It took six Arabs to lift that coffin
lid. You must be a Samson."
"Fortunately," I observed.
Her brows drew together and her lips. "You treat me in a way that I
resent," she said. "I am as reasonable a being as yourself."
I retired to a corner and stretched myself upon the floor without
replying.
"When do you wish to be aroused?" she asked.
"An hour before sunset. We must eat--that is I. You appear to thrive on
air."
She bit her lips and I stared at the ceiling. I was dog-tired, but
could not sleep. I counted a thousand and then glanced at Miss Ottley.
Her gaze was fixed on me.
"You are overtired," she said, and her tone was pure womanly.
It irritated and amused me to find she could so unaffectedly assume it.
I smiled.
She interpreted the smile aloud. "What sound reason have you for
despising me?" she asked. "You pretend to be a scientist. Answer me as
such, rejecting bias."
"I don't," said I.
"Then you dislike me; why?"
"I don't."
Her lip curled. "Oh, indeed." She arose and brought me a cushion. I
took it and our hands touched. "I must conclude, then, that you like
me?" She drew her hand swiftly away and returned to her seat.
I smiled again. "Undoubtedly, Miss Ottley."
"Thank you." The tone was instinct with sarcasm.
"Confess that you are craving for a little human sympathy."
"I!" she exclaimed and started haughtily.
"Being a woman and in a simply damnable position."
"Ah!" she cried, "you admit that."
"My dear girl, whenever I think of it your pluck amazes me."
To my astonishment her eyes closed and her bosom heaved. Then I
saw such a struggle as I do not wish ever to witness again. Pride
prevented her from raising her hand to hide her face. And pride put up
a superhuman fight with human weakness. Her features were distorted.
One could see that soul and body were engaged in mortal combat. That
spectacle was poignantly fascinating. I thrilled to see it and yet
hated myself for not being able to look away. Why--who knows? But at
length I could stand it no longer. I got up and shook her gently. She
stiffened into marble, but did not offer to resist me.
"Peace, peace," I said. "You foolish, foolish child, you are wasting
forces that were given you for quite another purpose."
Suddenly her eyes opened and looked straight in mine. "What?" she
questioned, and two great tears rolled down her cheeks.
"Why do you hate your sex?" I asked. "God knows it is more valuable
than mine."
"Man," she muttered--and shuddered from me--bitterly defiant.
"Woman," I retorted. "And each of us with a fateful mission to fulfil,
not to fight against."
"Yours to sting, to hurt, to crush."
"And yours to foster and create a better, finer-natured breed."
"Generous?" she sneered. "Is it possible?"
"My dear girl," said I, "I haven't a temper to lose; I am a sober,
cold-blooded man of the world. Of thirty."
I laughed out heartily, then stopped, remembering the patient. He
stirred and we both hurried to his side. But he did not wake.
I looked up and offered Miss Ottley my right hand.
"We started badly," I whispered, "but still we may be friends."
Her eyes darkened with anger. She stood like a statue regarding me, her
expression sphinx-like and brooding. "Instinct says one thing and pride
another!" I hazarded.
She coloured to her chin, but her firm glance did not falter.
"Ah, well," said I, and made off to my stone couch, convinced that a
man who argues with a woman is a fool. And I was punished properly. She
haunted my dreams.