“Where are you speaking from?” I asked.
“The auction rooms.”
“I will meet you there in an hour,” I said, “and bring Moris Klaw if I
can find him.”
“Good,” replied Grimsby, with much satisfaction in his voice; “this
case ought to be right in his line.”
I chartered a taxi and proceeded without delay to the insalubrious
neighbourhood of Wapping Old Stairs. At the head of the blind alley
which harbours the Klaw emporium I directed the man to wait. The gloom
was very feebly dispelled by a wavering gaslight in the shed-like
front of the shop. River noises were about me. Somewhere a drunken man
was singing. An old lady who looked like a pantomime dame was
critically examining a mahogany chair with only half a back, which
formed one of the exhibits displayed before the establishment.
A dilapidated person whose nose chronically blushed for the excesses
of its owner hovered about the prospective purchaser. This was
William, whose exact position in the Klaw establishment I had never
learned, but who apparently acted during his intervals of sobriety as
a salesman.
“Good evening,” I said. “Is Mr. Moris Klaw at home?”
“He is, sir,” husked the derelict; “but he’s very busy, sir, I
believe, sir.”
“Tell him Mr. Searles has called.”
“Yes, sir,” said William; and, turning to the dame: “Was you thinking
of buyin’ that chair, mum, after you’ve quite done muckin’ it about?”
He retired into the cavernous depths of the shop, and I followed him
as far as the dimly seen counter.
“Moris Klaw, Moris Klaw! The devil’s come for you!”
Thus the invisible parrot hailed my entrance. Indescribable smells,
zoo-like, with the fusty odour of old books and the unclassifiable
perfume of half-rotten furniture, assailed my nostrils; and mingling
with it was the distinct scent of reptile life. Scufflings and
scratchings sounded continuously about me, punctuated with squeals.
Then came the rumbling voice of Moris Klaw.
“Ah, Mr. Searles--good evening, Mr. Searles! It is the Pettigrew
mummy, is it not?”
He advanced through the shadows, his massive figure arrayed for
travelling, in the caped coat, his toneless beard untidy as ever, his
pince-nez glittering, his high bald brow yellow as that of a Chinaman.
“There has been a second outrage,” I said, “at Sotheby’s.”
“So?” said Moris Klaw, with interest; “another mummy is executed!”
“Yes, Inspector Grimsby has asked us to join him there.”
Moris Klaw stooped and from beneath the counter took out his
flat-topped brown bowler. From its lining he extracted a cylindrical
scent spray and mingled with the less pleasing perfumes that of
verbena.
“A cooling Roman custom, Mr. Searles,” he rumbled, “so refreshing when
one lives with rats. So it is Mr. Grimsby who is puzzled again? It is
Mr. Grimsby who needs the poor old fool to hold the lantern for him,
so that he, the clever Grimsby, can pick up the credit out of the
darkness! And why not, Mr. Searles, and why not? It is his business;
it is my pleasure.”
He raised his voice. “Isis! Isis!”
Out into the light of the fluttering gas lamp, out from that nightmare
abode, stepped Isis Klaw--looking more grotesque than a French fashion
plate in an ironmonger’s catalogue. She wore a costume of
lettuce-green silk, absolutely plain and unrelieved by any ornament,
which rendered it the more remarkable. It was cut low at the neck, and
at the point of the V, suspended upon a thin gold chain, hung a big
emerald. Her darkly beautiful face was one to inspire a painter
seeking a model for the Queen of Sheba, but an ultra-modern note was
struck by a hat of some black, gauzy material which loudly proclaimed
its Paris origin. She greeted me with her wonderful smile.
“What, then,” I said. “Were you about to go out?”
“When I hear who it is,” rumbled Moris Klaw, “I know that we are about
to go out; and behold we are ready!”
He placed the quaint bowler on his head and passed through to the
front of the shop.
“William,” he admonished the ripe-nosed salesman, “there is here a
smell of fourpenny ale. It will be your ruin, William. You will close
at half-past nine, and be sure you do not let the cat in the cupboard
with the white mice. See that the goat does not get at the Dutch
bulbs. They will kill him, that goat--those bulbs; he has for them a
passion.”
The three of us entered the waiting cab; and within half an hour we
arrived at the famous auction rooms. The doors were closed and barred,
but a constable who was on duty there evidently had orders to admit
us.
The thing we had come to see lay upon the table with an electric lamp
burning directly over it. The effect was indescribably weird. All
about in the shadows fantastic “lots” seemed to leer at us. A famous
private collection was to be sold in the morning and a rank of mummies
lined one wall, whilst, from another, stony Pharaohs, gods and
goddesses scorned us through the gloom. We were a living group in a
place of long-dead things. And yellow on the table beneath the white
light, with partially unwrapped coils of discoloured linen hanging
gruesomely from it, lay a headless mummy!
I heard the spurt of Moris Klaw’s scent spray behind me, and a faint
breath of verbena stole to my nostrils.
“Pah!” came the rumbling voice; “this air is full of deadness!”
“Good evening, Mr. Klaw,” said Grimsby, appearing from somewhere out
of the gloom. “I am so glad you have come.” He bowed to Isis. “How do
you do, Miss Klaw?”
The bright green figure moved forward into the pool of light. I think
I had never seen a more singular picture than that of Isis Klaw
bending over the decapitated mummy. Indeed, the whole scene would have
delighted Rembrandt.
“I am pleased to meet you, Mr. Klaw,” said a middle-aged gentleman,
stepping up to the curio dealer; “the Inspector has been telling me
about you.”
Moris Klaw bowed, and his daughter turned to him with a little nod of
the head.
“It is the same period,” she said, “as Mr. Pettigrew’s mummy. Possibly
this was a priest of the same temple. Certainly both are of the same
dynasty.”
“It is instructive,” rumbled Moris Klaw, “but so confusing.”
“It’s amazing, Mr. Klaw,” said Grimsby. “If I understand Miss Klaw
rightly, this is the mummy of someone who lived at the same period as
the priestess whose mummy is in Mr. Pettigrew’s possession?”
“I do not trouble to look,” rumbled Moris Klaw, who, in fact, was
staring all about the room. “If Isis has said so, it is so.”
“If I happened to be superstitious,” said Grimsby, “I should think
this was a sort of curse being fulfilled, or some fantastic thing of
that sort.”
“You should call a curse fantastic, eh, my friend?” said Moris Klaw.
“Yet here in your own country you have seen a whole family that was
cursed to be wiped out mysteriously. Am I with you?”
Grimsby looked very perplexed.
“There’s nothing very mysterious about how the thing was done,” he
said. “Some madman got in here with a knife early in the evening. It’s
always pretty dark, even during the daytime. But the mystery is his
object.”
“His object is a mystery, yes,” agreed Klaw. “I would sleep here in
order to procure a mental negative of what he hoped or what he feared,
this lunatic headsman, only that I know he is a man possessed.”
“Possessed!” I cried; and even Isis looked surprised.
“I said possessed,” continued Klaw, impressively. “He is some madman
with a one idea. His mad brain will have charged the ether”--he waved
his long arms right and left--“with mad thoughts. The room of Mr.
Pettigrew also will be filled with these grotesque thought-forms.
Certainly he is insane, this butcher of mummies. In this case I shall
rely, not upon the odic photography, not upon that great science the
Cycle of Crime, but upon my library.”
None of us, I am sure, entirely understood his meaning; and following
a brief silence, during which, in a curiously muffled way, the sounds
of the traffic in Wellington Street came to us as we stood there
around that modern bier with its 4000-year-old burden, Grimsby asked,
with hesitancy:
“Don’t you want to make any investigations, Mr. Klaw?”
Then Moris Klaw startled us all.
“I have a thought!” he cried, loudly. “Name of a dog! I have a
thought!”
Grabbing his brown bowler, which he had laid on the table beside the
headless mummy, “Come, Isis!” he cried, and grasped the girl by the
arm. “I have yet another thought, most disturbing! Mr. Searles, would
you be so good as also to come?”
Wondering greatly whence we were bound and upon what errand, I
hastened down the room after them, leaving Inspector Grimsby staring
blankly. I think he was rather disappointed with the result of Moris
Klaw’s inquiry--if inquiry this hasty visit may be termed. He was
disappointed, too, at having spent so short a time in the company of
the charming Isis.
The middle-aged gentleman came running to let us out.
“Good-night, Inspector Grimsby!” called Moris Klaw.
“Good-night! good-night, Miss Klaw!”
“Good-night, Mr. Someone who has not been introduced!” said Klaw.
“My name is Welby,” smiled the other.
“Good-night, Mr. Welby!” said Moris Klaw.