Saved by fire
Belleville's first act, after tossing the Arab's corpse upon the floor
and bolting the laboratory door, was to rush over to the couch and
remove therefrom the mummy of Ptahmes. This he placed with careful
haste upon a marble slab, and he commanded me, in Arabic, meanwhile, to
carry the lady to the couch. I obeyed him in silence. He then ordered
me to take up the body of the Englishman, Pinsent, and bring it to the
sarcophagus. This gave me an opportunity to examine the Arab. I did
so, and found him quite dead. Belleville's dagger had twice pierced
his heart. I then raised the corpse and carried it to the great lead
coffin. "What next, master?" I asked in guttural Arabic.
Belleville's voice answered from behind me. "Lift the carrion up! That
is well. Now let it slip into the bath! Gently, Ptahmes, gently--or the
stuff will splash. Here--I will help you."
"Where?" I demanded. I was trying to locate him.
"Wait," he replied--then "Here!" His voice sounded from across the
sarcophagus.
A second later his hand brushed one of mine and passed. "I'll take
the shoulders," he said. "You take the feet! Be careful, man--gently,
gently!"
It was maddening to be so near and yet so far. But there was nothing
for it except to follow his directions. I, therefore, grasped the
corpse firmly by the ankles, when the greater weight of it had
been transferred, and then I watched the great blood clot upon its
chest--the only visible sign of its existence--sink down, down to the
liquid contents of the coffin. Soon it rested there like a crimson
lily on the surface of a pond. I let my fingers loose their hold and
the unseen limbs of the corpse subsided on the liquid with an oily
swish. The whole corpse seemed to be floating. Belleville realised
this as soon as I. "Wait here!" he said to me--then added in English,
speaking to himself, "Where the deuce did I put that glass rod? Ah! I
remember." Then I heard the thud of his retreating steps, and a little
later I saw waveringly approaching me from across the room, apparently
of its own volition, a long, glass, solid bar, about four feet long and
an inch thick. I was overjoyed at the sight, for my hands were free,
Belleville could not see me, and the glass rod informed me exactly of
his whereabouts. Quick as thought, I slipped around the sarcophagus and
making a little detour, got behind the murderer. He went straight to
the coffin and plunged the rod within it. Doubtless he was using it to
submerge the corpse. I heard a hissing, bubbling sound, and Belleville
saying, "Watch me closely, Ptahmes--for this is what you must do."
I crept upon him until I could hear his breathing quite distinctly,
although he was not greatly exerting himself. Then came the time to
act. "My God!" he suddenly exclaimed--"not Pinsent--Ptahmes--what's
this?"
The glass rod was still. It stood bolt upright in the sarcophagus, and
so rigidly motionless that I guessed Belleville's weight was leaning
on it. I gave a swift glance into the coffin and almost shrieked with
surprise. The liquid had made the dead Arab visible again, and his
death-mask grinned up at us with a fixed and blood-curdling stare. On
instant I opened my arms wide and threw them round my unseen enemy.
He uttered a howl of rage and terror and turned within my grasp to
fight me, biting and clawing like a savage beast. But very soon I
mastered him. Disregarding his animal-like efforts, I seized him by
the throat and beat his skull upon the edge of the sarcophagus until
he had quite ceased to struggle. Then, anxious, of all things, to make
sure of him by seeing him, I heaved him up and allowed him to slide
headforemost down into the bath beside the Arab he had murdered in
mistake for me. I reasoned that since the liquid there had made the
Arab visible, it should produce a like effect on Belleville. But I
was utterly unprepared for the result. The stuff must have been an
acid of tremendous power. It awakened the senseless wretch to almost
instant tortured consciousness. A series of dreadful shrieks filled
the room with strange detonating echoes. Belleville was no sooner in
the coffin than out of it and visible in part. His face and hands were
plainly to be seen. They came out white and dripping wet, but a few
seconds' contact with the air turned them red as blood. I seized the
glass rod to defend myself, expecting an attack. But there was no need
to use it. The shrieking wretch staggered down the room to the first
dispensing cabinet. He tore the door open and clutched at a big phial,
the contents of which he poured upon his hands and splashed upon his
face, wailing all the while like a lost soul in the depths of Hell.
Happily he did not keep this up for long. The drug that he applied to
his hurts, whatever it was, must have salved them, for in a moment or
two his heart-rending outcries subsided to a deep, low sobbing. Even
that, however, was more than I could stand. I wanted Belleville dead,
but I could not endure the sight and sound of his agony--agony that I,
unwittingly, had caused.
"Belleville," I called out, "can I help you?"
He gasped and caught his breath, turning his face towards me. To my
surprise it was no longer scarlet. It had caught the hue of leather,
and the eyes were mantling purple at the whites.
"I did not know the stuff was acid," I continued. "If there is
anything I can do to soothe your suffering, I shall and gladly."
"You dog!" said he. "You've ruined me and now you are gloating over
your handiwork."
With that, he put his hand in his bosom and began to steal in my
direction. I remembered his concealed dagger and called out, "Be
warned, Belleville--I can see you. Your dagger will not help you."
"Oh! Oh! Oh!" he groaned, and stopped short.
"Hugh Pinsent's voice--oh, Heaven!" cried Miss Ottley--behind me. She
had awakened from her swoon.
I swung on heel and watched her rise. "Hugh!" she sighed. "Hugh--where
are you, dear?" Then she saw Belleville, and the hideous apparition
he presented, a black pain-tortured face hovering in mid-air, with
two dark, ghostly hands outstretched before it, froze her blood.
Mercifully, she swooned again and fell back senseless on the lounge.
Belleville recommenced his moaning, and began walking up and down
wringing his hands. I stood silent, lost in thought and wondering what
I ought to do. Belleville told me. He stopped on a sudden and called my
name twice, "Pinsent, Pinsent."
[Illustration: _The_ Living Mummy
A black pain-tortured face hovering in mid-air
_Face Page 296_]
"Here!" said I.
"I am at your mercy now," he muttered, in a broken voice. "I'm blind."
"What!" I cried.
"Ay," said he, "and my facial extremities are dying fast--pah! my nose
is already dead; look." He put up one hand to his face and before my
eyes broke off his nose and tossed it on the floor. It snapped like a
piece of tinder, leaving a black, ugly stump.
Next he plucked the dagger from his breast--or rather, from where his
bosom seemed to be--and cast it on the floor. I was speechless with
horror and surprise.
"Now that you have naught to fear from me," he groaned, "if you have a
heart in your breast you will help to end my pain."
"Anything, anything--only tell me how!" I cried, advancing towards him
as I spoke. But hearing me approaching, he shouted out for me to stop.
"Don't come near me!" he wailed. "Don't touch me--or I shall try to
murder you--I'll not be able to prevent myself--and I want to undo some
of the ill I've done before I die."
I halted. "But what then shall I do?" I asked.
"Light the asbestos fire. You'll find matches in the table drawer. I am
perishing of cold, that is the only thing that will soothe the anguish
I am going through. Oh! be quick, be quick!"
I flew to obey him, and in a moment I had set the stove ablaze.
Belleville found his way to it as if by instinct, and stooping down,
he pressed his awful-looking face against the bars, groaning in a
way that made my very flesh creep. "Yes--yes, I'm blind," he kept
muttering, between his moans. "And very soon I shall be dead. I must
atone. I must atone."
"Belleville," I said at last--I forced myself to say it, for his face
had grown ink-black, "are you not wasting precious time? Is there not
something I can get to counteract the acid? It appears to----"
"Hush!" he interrupted. "There is nothing. It is eating into my brain.
Besides, I am blind and do not wish to live. But let me think. This
pain--I cannot use my wits--it dazes me! Ah! now! I must. I must. How
can I die with all--Pinsent! Pinsent!"
His voice was a piercing scream.
"Yes--yes," I answered. I was shaking like a reed.
"Is there not a big jar of yellow spirit near the coffin somewhere?"
"Yes."
"Then, for God's sake, lead me to it."
I caught him by the hand and guided him forthwith to the jar.
"Take out the stopper," he entreated. I did so and thereupon he plunged
his hands into the vessel and began to lave his neck and face, sobbing
raucously the while. The odour of the stuff, however, was so nauseous
to me that I stepped back in order to escape it.
Belleville seemed to know at once. "Pinsent!" he cried, "where are you?"
"Here," said I.
"Go and wake her, my wife!" he muttered suddenly. "I have something to
tell you both before I go. I am dying fast."
I hastened to do his bidding, but before I reached Miss Ottley's side
I was arrested by a loud thudding crash. Turning swiftly, I saw that
Belleville had overturned the jar. Its contents had already flooded the
floor. He hovered over with a lighted vesta in one of his black hands.
"What are you doing?" I demanded.
He stooped floorwards with the match and instantly a mighty flame shot
up that licked the very roof. "Revenge!" he shrieked. "Revenge! I've
fooled you, Pinsent, fooled you. Now we all shall die together. Look!"
With that, he steeped both hands in the burning fluid and, flitting
like a salamander through the flames, he made for the sarcophagus.
I could not have stayed him had I wished, for there was a sea of
fire between us. But in good truth I was too dazed for the while, at
least, to move a muscle. Reaching the great lead tomb, the dreadful
flaming object that had once been Belleville thrust his lambent hands
into the coffin. There followed an explosion of appalling fury. A
mass of brilliant, white, combustible shot up with a mighty roar from
the sarcophagus to the ceiling. It pierced the padded lining like a
thunderbolt and flashed into the room above. But on its impact with
the ceiling it also splashed a rain of fire about the great laboratory.
In two seconds the whole place ran with flames. By a miracle I was not
touched. But it was not so with Miss Ottley. Her skirt was ablaze.
I rushed forward and tore the thing off in strips before it burnt
her--then seizing her in my arms, I made like a madman to the door. A
hideous burning object lay before it shrieking sulphurous curses. It
was Belleville. But he had come to the end of his strength and he could
not stay me. The catch yielded to my hand and I dashed into the passage
half blinded with fire and smoke, but safe. I did not rest until I
had reached the staircase. Miss Ottley was then awake. She struggled
in my arms, so I set her down and faced her. But she did not see me.
Her dress was smouldering in places. She seemed utterly bewildered.
A woman ran up to her and began to put out the burning patches with
her hands. The house was in an uproar. Servants--they were all either
Arabs or Nubians--ran hither and thither shouting and screaming in a
panic. The woman, evidently a nurse, who attended to Miss Ottley, was
the only white person to be seen. She was evidently terrified, but
she did not lose her head. She kept asking Miss Ottley in French to
explain what had happened. Nobody seemed aware that the house was on
fire. They had all been merely alarmed by the noises they had heard.
Miss Ottley in the middle of it all began to weep. She was thoroughly
upset and ill, and I perceived at once that she was on the verge of a
mental and physical collapse. In the circumstances, I judged it best to
remain a silent onlooker of events and not to take any action unless
there arose a real necessity. It was plain that I was still invisible.
And as for the house being on fire, I deemed it utterly desirable that
it should burn down to the last shaving and thus fittingly entomb
in its destruction the ghastly tragedy of the laboratory. The issue
tallied largely with my wishes. The fire was seen first from the
street. There followed a veritable pandemonium. The coloured servants
fled like cowards for their lives, and in an incredibly short space
of time the house was in the hands of firemen and police. Miss Ottley
was taken by the nurse out into the street and there questioned by a
sergeant. But she was quite unable to answer his insistent queries
satisfactorily. All she could say was that she had been a long time
ill. She had fainted in her room that afternoon, and Dr. Belleville
or someone had carried her to the laboratory. When she woke up she
had heard a frightful noise. She supposed it was one of the Doctor's
experiments. She thought she had fainted again, but she remembered
nothing more until she found herself with her dress on fire at the foot
of the staircase. She could not explain how she got there. The sergeant
was civil enough to her, but the fool, in his fussy officiousness,
overlooked her weak condition, and the girl broke down and utterly
collapsed before he realised his quite unnecessary cruelty. The worst
of it was that the French nurse had disappeared during the colloquy.
There was, therefore, no woman at hand to attend to my poor sweetheart.
Fortunately, however, a physician appeared opportunely on the scene,
and at his direction she was immediately conveyed to a hospital. After
she had gone, I did not tarry very long. Choosing a place where the
cordoned crowd was thinnest, I slipped back through the park railings,
over which I climbed and dropped into the park, feeling the weight
of my invisibility acutely. From this vantage point I watched the
conflagration for a while. The house was manifestly doomed. Indeed,
the efforts of the firemen were entirely directed to save adjoining
buildings. A hundred jets of water played upon the walls of these in
thin continuous streams. Men about me were talking the matter over as
if it personally appealed to them. They mostly viewed it with a sort of
half-secret satisfaction. The misfortunes of millionaires do not excite
much sympathy in the hearts of the mob.
One man glibly quoted, "Lay not up unto yourselves treasures in this
world!" on the occasion of a grimy fireman bringing out a magnificent
but half-destroyed silver-framed canvas of Velasquez. But the crowd
cheered the fireman for his pluck all the same. At length I realised
that I was very tired, and hungry, too, so I slunk off and made my way
to Dixon Hubbard's rooms. They were locked, of course, and I had not
the key. I had left it with the porter of the building. But I could not
go to him and ask him to give it up to an apparently fleshless voice.
Wondering what to do, I crept into the passage, sat down in a corner
underneath the stairs and waited for an inspiration. Waiting there, I
fell asleep.