During the whole of the journey back to Wapping, Moris Klaw regaled me
with anecdotes of travels in the Yucatan Peninsula. I had never met a
man before who had ventured fully to explore those deadly swamps; but
Moris Klaw chatted about the Izamal temples as unconcernedly as
another man might chat about the Paris boulevards. Isis took no part
in the conversation, from which I gathered that, although she seemed
to accompany her father everywhere, she had not accompanied him into
the jungles of Yucatan.
“In the heart of those forests, Mr. Searles,” he whispered, “are
stranger things than these headless mummies. Do you know that the
secret of those great temples buried in the swamps and the jungles and
guarded only by serpents and slimy, crawling things, is a door which
science has yet to unlock? What people built them, and what god was
worshipped in them? Suppose”--he bent to my ear--“I hold the key to
that riddle; am I assured to be immortal? Yes? No?”
His conversation, although it often seemed to be studiously eccentric,
was always that of a man of powerful and unusual mind, a man of vast
and unique experience. I was rather sorry when we arrived at our
destination.
As the cab drew up at the head of the court, I saw that the shop of
Moris Klaw was in darkness; but again telling the man to wait, we
walked down past the warehouse, beyond whose bulk tided muddy Thames,
and my eccentric companion producing a key from one of the bulging
pockets of his caped coat inserted it into the lock of a door which
looked less like a door than a section of a dilapidated hoarding.
The door swung open.
“Ah!” he hissed. “It was not locked!”
Klaw struck a match and peered into the odorous darkness.
“William!” he rumbled. “William!”
But there was no reply. Isis suddenly laid her hand upon my arm, and
it occurred to me that for once her wonderful composure was shaken.
“Something has happened!” she whispered.
Her father lighted a gas-burner, and the yellow light flared up,
reclaiming from the gloom furniture, pictures, cages, glass cases,
statuettes, heaps of cheap jewellery and false teeth, books, and a
hundred-and-one other items of that weird stock-in-trade.
Then, under the littered counter we found William lying flat on his
back with his arms spread widely.
“Ah! _cochon!_” muttered Klaw; “beer-swilling pig!”
He stooped to raise the head of the prostrate man, and then to my
surprise dropped upon his knees beside him, stooped yet lower, and
sniffed suspiciously. Again Isis Klaw seized my arm, and her dark eyes
were opened very widely as she leaned forward watching her father. He
stood up, holding a glass in his hand which yet contained some drops
of what was apparently beer. At this, too, he sniffed. He walked over
to the gaslight and examined the fluid closely, whilst Isis and I
watched him, together. Finally Moris Klaw inserted a long white
forefinger into the dirty glass and applied the tip to his tongue.
“Opium!” he said. “Many drops of pure opium were put in this beer.”
He turned to me with a curious expression upon his parchment-coloured
face.
“Mr. Searles,” he said, “my second idea was a good idea. I shall now
surprise you.”
He led the way through that neat and businesslike office which opened
out of the unutterably dirty and untidy shop. Although within the shop
and in front of it only gaslight was used, in the office he switched
on an electric lamp. But we did not delay long in Moris Klaw’s
sanctum, lined with its hundreds of books, its obscure works of
criminology, its records of strange things: we proceeded through
another door and up a thickly carpeted stair.
I had never before penetrated thus far into the habitable portion of
Moris Klaw’s establishment; the book-lined office hitherto had marked
the limit of my explorations. But now, as more electric lights were
switched on, I saw that we stood upon a wide landing panelled in
massive black oak. Armoured figures stood sentinel-like against the
walls, and several magnificent specimens of Chinese porcelain met my
gaze. I might have thought myself in some old English baronial hall.
Next we entered a big, rectangular room, which I wholly despair of
describing. Apparently it was used as a study, a library, a
laboratory, and a warehouse for all sorts of things, from marble
Buddhas to innumerable pairs of boots. Also, there was in it a French
stove; and upon a Persian coffee table stood a frying pan containing a
cooked sausage solidified in its own fat. There was clear evidence,
moreover, in the form of a rolled-up hammock, that the place served as
a bedroom.
Altogether there were four mummies in the apartment. One of these,
partly unwrapped, lay amongst the litter on the floor--headless!
“Mon Dieu!” cried Isis, clasping her hands; “it is uncanny, this!”
She was evidently excited, for her French accent suddenly asserted
itself to a marked degree. Moris Klaw, from somewhere amongst the
rubbish at his feet, picked up the severed head of the mummy and
stared at it intently. In the stillness I could hear the river noises
very distinctly, and a sort of subterranean lapping and creaking which
suggested that at high tide the cellars of the establishment became
flooded. Moris Klaw dropped the head from his hands. It fell with a
dull thud to the floor.
From the lining of his hat he took out the inevitable scent spray and
moistened his brow with verbena.
“I need the cool brain, Mr. Searles,” he said. “I, the old cunning,
the fox, the wily, am threatened with defeat. This slaughter of
mummies it surpasses my experience. I am nonplussed; I am a stupid old
fool. Let me think!”
Isis was looking about her in a startled way.
“It is horribly uncanny, Miss Klaw,” I said. “But the drugging of the
man downstairs points to very human agency. Perhaps if we could revive
him----”
“He will not revive,” interrupted Moris Klaw, “for twelve hours at
least. In his beer was enough opium to render unconscious the
rhinoceros!”
“Is there anything missing?” I asked.
“Nothing,” rumbled Klaw. “He came for the mummy. Isis, will you
prepare for us those cooling drinks that help the fevered mind, and
from downstairs bring me the seventh volume of the ‘Books of the
Temples.’”
Isis Klaw immediately walked forward to the door.
“And Isis, my child,” added her father, “remove the tall cage to the
top end of the shop. Presently that William’s snores will awake the
Borneo squirrel.”
As the girl departed, Klaw opened an inner door and ushered me into a
dainty white room, an amazing apartment indeed, a true Parisian
boudoir. The air was heavy with the scent of roses, for bowls of white
and pink roses were everywhere. Klaw lighted a silver table lamp with
a unique silver gauze shade apparently lined with pale rose-coloured
silk. Evidently this apartment belonged to Isis, and was as
appropriate for her, exquisite Parisian that she seemed to be, as the
weird barn through which we had come was an appropriate abode for her
father.
When presently Isis returned I saw her for the first time in her
proper setting, a dainty green figure in a white frame. Moris Klaw
opened the bulky leather-bound volume which she had handed to him, and
whilst I sat sipping my wine and watching him, he busily turned over
the pages (apparently French MS.) in quest of the reference he sought.
“Ah!” he cried, in sudden triumph; “vaguely I had it in my memory, but
here it is, the clue. I will translate for you, Mr. Searles, what is
written here: ‘The “Book of the Lamps,” which was revealed to the
priest, Pankhaur, and by him revealed only to the Queen’--it was the
ancient Egyptian Queen, Hatshepsu, Mr. Searles--‘was kept locked in
the secret place beneath the altar, and each high priest of the
temple--all of whom were of the family of Pankhaur--held the key and
alone might consult the magic writing. In the 14th dynasty, Seteb was
high priest, and was the last of the family of Pankhaur. At his death
the newly appointed priest, receiving the key of the secret place,
complained to Pharaoh that the “Book of the Lamps” was missing.’”
He closed the volume and placed it on a little table beside him.
“Isis,” he rumbled, looking across at his daughter, “does the mystery
become clear to you? Am I not an old fool? Mr. Searles, there is only
one other copy of this work”--he laid a long white hand upon the
book--“known to European collectors. Do I know where that copy is?
Yes? No? I think so!”
There was triumph in his hoarse voice. Personally I was quite unable
to see in what way the history of the “Book of the Lamps” bore upon
the case of the headless mummies; but Moris Klaw evidently considered
that it afforded a clue. He stood up.
“Isis,” he said, “bring me my catalogue of the mummies of the
Bubastite priests.”
That imperious beauty departed in meek obedience.
“Mr. Searles,” said Moris Klaw, “this will be for Inspector Grimsby
another triumph; but without these records of a poor old fool, who
shall say if the one that beheads mummies had ever been detected? I
neglected to secure the odic negative because I thought I had to deal
with a madman; but I was more stupid than an owl. This decapitating of
mummies is no madman’s work, but is done with a purpose, my
friend--with a wonderful purpose.”