THE VENGEANCE OF SAKHMET
(_Friday, July 13; 11.30 a.m._)
Markham greeted Vance with a look of sour reproach.
“What’s the meaning of this?” he demanded tartly. “I was in the midst
of an important committee meeting----”
“The meaning is still to be ascertained,” Vance interrupted lightly,
stepping into the car. “The cause of your ungracious presence,
however, is a most fascinatin’ murder.”
Markham shot him a shrewd look, and gave orders to the chauffeur to
drive with all possible haste to the Bliss Museum. He recognized the
symptoms of Vance’s perturbation: a frivolous outward attitude on
Vance’s part was always indicative of an inner seriousness.
Markham and he had been friends for fifteen years, and Vance had aided
him in many of his investigations. In fact, he had come to depend on
Vance’s assistance in the more complicated criminal cases that came
under his jurisdiction.[*3]
It would be difficult to find two men so diametrically opposed to each
other temperamentally. Markham was stern, aggressive, straightforward,
grave, and a trifle ponderous. Vance was debonair, whimsical, and
superficially cynical--an amateur of the arts, and with only an
impersonal concern in serious social and moral problems. But this very
disparateness in their natures seemed to bind them together.
On our way to the museum, a few blocks distant, Scarlett recounted
briefly to the District Attorney the details of his macabre discovery.
Markham listened attentively. Then he turned to Vance.
“Of course, it may be just an act of thuggery--some one from the
street.…”
“Oh, my aunt!” Vance sighed and shook his head lugubriously. “Really,
y’ know, thugs don’t enter conspicuous private houses in broad
daylight and rap persons over the head with statues. They at least
bring their own weapons and choose _mises-en-scène_ which offer some
degree of safety.”
“Well, anyway,” Markham grumbled, “I’ve notified Sergeant Heath.[*4]
He’ll be along presently.”
At the corner of Twentieth Street and Fourth Avenue he halted the car.
A uniformed patrolman stood before a call-box, who, on recognizing the
District Attorney, came to attention and saluted.
“Hop in the front seat, officer,” Markham ordered. “We may need you.”
When we reached the museum Markham stationed the officer at the foot
of the steps leading to the double front door; and we at once ascended
to the vestibule.
I made a casual mental note of the two houses, which Scarlett had
already briefly described to us. Each had a twenty-five-foot frontage,
and was constructed of large flat blocks of brownstone. The house on
the right had no entrance--it had obviously been walled up. Nor were
there any windows on the areaway level. The house on the left,
however, had not been altered. It was three stories high; and a broad
flight of stone stairs, with high stone banisters, led to the first
floor. The “basement,” as was usual in such structures, was a little
below the street level. The two houses had at one time been exactly
alike, and now, with the alterations and the one entrance, gave the
impression of being a single establishment.
As we entered the shallow vestibule--a characteristic of all the old
brownstone mansions along the street--I noticed that the heavy oak
entrance door, which Scarlett had said was ajar earlier in the
morning, was now closed. Vance, too, remarked the fact, for he at once
turned to Scarlett and asked:
“Did you close the door when you left the house?”
Scarlett looked seriously at the massive panels, as if trying to
recall his actions.
“Really, old man, I can’t remember,” he answered. “I was devilishly
upset. I may have shut the door.…”
Vance tried the knob, and the door opened.
“Well, well. The latch has been set anyway. Very careless on some
one’s part.… Is that usual?”
Scarlett looked astonished.
“Never knew it to be unlatched.”
Vance held up his hand, indicating that we were to remain in the
vestibule, and stepped quietly inside to the steel door on the right
leading into the museum. We could see him open it gingerly but could
not distinguish what was beyond. He disappeared for a moment.
“Oh, Kyle’s quite dead,” he announced sombrely on his return. “And
apparently no one has discovered him yet.” He cautiously reclosed the
front door. “We sha’n’t take advantage of the latch being set,” he
added. “We’ll abide by the conventions and see who answers.” Then he
pressed the bell-button.
A few moments later the door was opened by a cadaverous, chlorotic man
in butler’s livery. He bowed perfunctorily to Scarlett, and coldly
inspected the rest of us.
“Brush, I believe.” It was Vance who spoke.
The man bowed slightly without taking his eyes off of us.
“Is Doctor Bliss in?” Vance asked.
Brush shifted his gaze interrogatively to Scarlett. Receiving an
assuring nod, he opened the door a little wider.
“Yes, sir,” he answered. “He’s in his study. Who shall I say is
calling?”
“You needn’t disturb him, Brush.” Vance stepped into the entrance
hall, and we followed him. “Has the doctor been in his study all
morning?”
The butler drew himself up and attempted to reprove Vance with a look
of haughty indignation.
Vance smiled, not unkindly.
“Your manner is quite correct, Brush. But we’re not wanting lessons in
etiquette. This is Mr. Markham, the District Attorney of New York; and
we’re here for information. Do you care to give it voluntarily?”
The man had caught sight of the uniformed officer at the foot of the
stone steps, and his face paled.
“You’ll be doing the doctor a favor by answering,” Scarlett put in.
“Doctor Bliss has been in his study since nine o’clock,” the butler
replied, in a tone of injured dignity.
“How can you be sure of that fact?” Vance asked.
“I brought him his breakfast there; and I’ve been on this floor ever
since.”
“Doctor Bliss’s study,” interjected Scarlett, “is at the rear of this
hall.” He pointed to a curtained door at the end of the wide corridor.
“He should be able to hear us now,” remarked Markham.
“No, the door is padded,” Scarlett explained. “The study is his
_sanctum sanctorum_; and no sounds can reach him from the house.”
The butler, his eyes like two glittering pin-points, had started to
move away.
“Just a moment, Brush.” Vance’s voice halted him. “Who else is in the
house at this time?”
The man turned, and when he answered it seemed to me that his voice
quavered slightly.
“Mr. Hani is up-stairs. He has been indisposed----”
“Oh, has he, now?” Vance took out his cigarette-case. “And the other
members of the household?”
“Mrs. Bliss went out about nine--to do some shopping, so I understood
her to say.--Mr. Salveter left the house shortly afterward.”
“And Dingle?”
“She’s in the kitchen below, sir.”
Vance studied the butler appraisingly.
“You need a tonic, Brush. A combination of iron, arsenic and
strychnine would build you up.”
“Yes, sir. I’ve been thinking of consulting a doctor.… It’s lack of
fresh air, sir.”
“Just so.” Vance had selected one of his beloved _Régies_, and was
lighting it with meticulous care. “By the by, Brush; what about Mr.
Kyle? He called here this morning, I understand.”
“He’s in the museum now.… I’d forgotten, sir. Doctor Bliss may be with
him.”
“Indeed! And what time did Mr. Kyle arrive?”
“About ten o’clock.”
“Did you admit him?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And did you notify Doctor Bliss of his arrival?”
“No, sir. Mr. Kyle told me not to disturb the doctor. He explained
that he was early for his appointment, and wished to look over some
curios in the museum for an hour or so. He said he’d knock on the
doctor’s study door later.”
“And he went direct into the museum?”
“Yes, sir--in fact, I opened the door for him.”
Vance drew luxuriously on his cigarette for a moment.
“One more thing, Brush. I note that the latch on the front door has
been set, so that any one from the outside could enter the house
without ringing.…”
The man gave a slight start and, going quickly to the door, bent over
and inspected the lock.
“So it is, sir.… Very strange.”
Vance watched him closely.
“Why strange?”
“Well, sir, it wasn’t unlatched when Mr. Kyle came at ten o’clock. I
looked at it specially when I let him in. He said he wished to be left
alone in the museum, and as members of the house sometimes leave the
door on the latch when they go out for a short time, I made sure that
no one had done so this morning. Otherwise they might have come in and
disturbed Mr. Kyle without my warning them.”
“But, Brush,” interjected Scarlett excitedly; “when I got here at half
past ten the door was open----”
Vance made an admonitory gesture.
“That’s all right, Scarlett.” Then he turned back to the butler.
“Where did you go after admitting Mr. Kyle?”
“Into the drawing-room.” The man pointed to a large sliding door
half-way down the hall on the left, at the foot of the stairs.
“And remained there till when?”
“Till ten minutes ago.”
“Did you hear Mr. Scarlett come in and go out of the front door?”
“No, sir.… But then, I was using the vacuum cleaner. The noise of the
motor----”
“Quite so. But if the vacuum cleaner’s motor was hummin’, how do you
know that Doctor Bliss did not leave his study?”
“The drawing-room door was open, sir. I’d have seen him if he came
out.”
“But he might have gone into the museum and left the house by the
front door without your hearing him. Y’ know, you didn’t hear Mr.
Scarlett enter.”
“That would have been out of the question, sir. Doctor Bliss wore only
a light dressing-gown over his pyjamas. His clothes are all
up-stairs.”
“Very good, Brush.… And now, one more question. Has the front
door-bell rung since Mr. Kyle’s arrival?”
“No, sir.”
“Maybe it rang and Dingle answered it.… That motor hum, don’t y’
know.”
“She would have come up and told me, sir. She never answers the door
in the morning. She’s not in presentable habiliments till afternoon.”
“Quite characteristically feminine,” Vance murmured.… “That will be
all for the present, Brush. You may go down-stairs and wait for our
call. An accident has happened to Mr. Kyle, and we are going to look
into it. You are to say nothing… understand?” His voice had suddenly
become stern and ominous.
Brush drew himself up with a quick intake of breath: he appeared
positively ill, and I almost expected him to faint. His face was like
chalk.
“Certainly, sir--I understand.” His words were articulated with great
effort. Then he walked away unsteadily and disappeared down the rear
stairs to the left of Doctor Bliss’s study door.
Vance spoke in a low voice to Markham, who immediately beckoned to the
officer in the street below.
“You are to stand in the vestibule here,” he ordered. “When Sergeant
Heath and his men come, bring them to us at once. We’ll be in there.”
He indicated the large steel door leading into the museum. “If any one
else calls, hold them and notify us. Don’t let any one ring the bell.”
The officer saluted and took up his post; and the rest of us, with
Vance leading the way, passed through the steel door into the museum.
A flight of carpeted stairs, four feet wide, led down along the wall
to the floor of the enormous room beyond, which was on the street
level. The first-story floor--the one which had been even with the
hallway of the house we had just quitted--had been removed so that the
room of the museum was two stories high. Two huge pillars, with steel
beams and diagonal joists, had been erected as supports. Moreover, the
walls marking the former rooms had been demolished. The result was
that the room we had entered occupied the entire width and length of
the house--about twenty-five by seventy feet--and had a ceiling almost
twenty feet high.
At the front was a series of tall, leaded-glass windows running across
the entire width of the building; and at the rear, above a series of
oak cabinets, a similar row of windows had been cut. The curtains of
the front windows were drawn, but those at the rear were open. The sun
had not yet found its way into the room, and the light was dingy.
As we stood for a moment at the head of the steps I noted a small
circular iron stairway at the rear leading to a small steel door on
the same level as the door through which we had entered.
The arrangement of the museum in relation to the house which served as
living quarters for the Blisses, was to prove of considerable
importance in Vance’s solution of Benjamin H. Kyle’s murder, and for
purposes of clarity I am including in this record a plan of the two
houses. The floor of the museum, as I have said, was on the street
level--it had formerly been the “basement” floor. And it must be borne
in mind that the rooms indicated on the left-hand half of the plan
were one story above the museum floor and half-way between the museum
floor and the ceiling.
My eyes at once searched the opposite corner of the room for the
murdered man; but that part of the museum was in shadow, and all I
could see was a dark mass, like a recumbent human body, in front of
the farthest rear cabinet.
Vance and Markham had descended the stairs while Scarlett and I waited
on the upper landing. Vance went straightway to the front of the
museum and pulled the draw-cords of the curtains. Light flooded the
semi-darkness; and for the first time I took in the beautiful and
amazing contents of that great room.
In the centre of the opposite wall rose a ten-foot obelisk from
Heliopolis, commemorating an expedition of Queen Hat-shepsut of the
Eighteenth Dynasty, and bearing her cartouche. To the right and left
of the obelisk stood two plaster-cast portrait statues--one of Queen
Teti-shiret of the Seventeenth Dynasty, and the other a black replica
of the famous Turin statue of Ramses II--considered one of the finest
pieces of sculptured portraiture in antiquity.
[Illustration: caption: Plan of Room]
Above and beside them hung several papyri, framed and under glass,
their faded burnt-orange backgrounds--punctuated with red, yellow,
green and white patches--making splashes of attractive color against
the dingy gray plaster of the wall. Four large limestone bas-reliefs,
taken from a Nineteenth-Dynasty tomb at Memphis and containing
passages from the Book of the Dead, were aligned above the papyri.
Beneath the front windows stood a black granite Twenty-second-Dynasty
sarcophagus fully ten feet long, its front and sides covered with
hieroglyphic inscriptions. It was surmounted by a mummy-shaped lid,
showing the soul bird, or Ba--with its falcon’s form and human head.
This sarcophagus was one of the rarest in America, and had been
brought to this country by Doctor Bliss from the ancient necropolis at
Thebes. In the corner beyond was a cedar-wood statue of an Asiatic,
found in Palestine--a relic of the conquests of Thut-mosè III.
Near the foot of the stairs on which I stood loomed the majestic
Kha-ef-Rê statue from the Fourth Dynasty. It was made of gray plaster
of Paris, varnished and polished in imitation of the original diorite.
It stood nearly eight feet high; and its dignity and power and
magistral calm seemed to dominate the entire museum.[*5]
To the right of the statue, and extending all the way to the spiral
stairs at the rear, was a row of anthropoid mummy cases, gaudily
decorated in gold and brilliant colors. Above them hung two enormously
enlarged tinted photographs--one showing the Colossi of Amen-hotpe
III,[*6] the other depicting the great Amûn Temple at Karnak.
Around the two supporting columns in the centre of the museum deep
shelves had been built, and on them reposed a fascinating array of
_shawabtis_--beautifully carved and gaily painted wooden figures.
Extending between the two pillars was a long, low, velvet-covered
table, perhaps fourteen feet in length, bearing a beautiful collection
of alabaster perfumery and canopic vases, blue lotiform jars, kohl
pots of polished obsidian, and several cylindrical carved cosmetic
jars of semi-translucent and opaque alabaster. At the rear of the room
was a squat coffer with inlays of blue glazed faience, white and red
ivory and black ebony; and beside it stood a carved chair of state,
decorated in gesso and gilt, and bearing a design of lotus flowers and
buds.
Across the front of the room ran a long glass show-case containing
pectoral collars of cloisonné, amulets in majolica, shell pendants,
girdles of gold cowries, rhombic beads of carnelian and feldspar,
bracelets and anklets and finger-rings, gold and ebony fans, and a
collection of scarabs of most of the Pharaohs down to Ptolemaic times.
Around the walls, just below the ceiling, ran a five-foot frieze--a
sectional copy of the famous Rhapsody of Pen-ta-Weret, commemorating
the victory of Ramses II over the Hittites at Kadesh in Syria.
As soon as Vance had opened the heavy curtains of the front windows he
and Markham moved toward the rear of the room. Scarlett and I
descended the stairs and followed them. Kyle was lying on his face,
his legs slightly drawn up under him, and his arms reaching out and
encircling the feet of a life-sized statue in the corner. I had seen
reproductions of this statue many times, but I did not know its name.
It was Vance who enlightened me. He stood contemplating the huddled
body of the dead man, and slowly his eyes shifted to the serene
sculpture--a brown limestone carving of a man with a jackal’s head,
holding a sceptre.
“Anûbis,” he murmured, his face set tensely. “The Egyptian god of the
underworld. Y’ know, Markham, Anûbis was the god who prowled about
the tombs of the dead. He guided the dead through Amentet--the shadowy
abode of Osiris. He plays an important part in the Book of the
Dead--he symbolized the grave; and he weighed the souls of men, and
assigned each to its abode. Without Anûbis’s help the soul would
never have found the Realm of Shades. He was the only friend of the
dying and the dead.… And here is Kyle, in an attitude of final and
pious entreaty before him.”
Vance’s eyes rested for a moment on the benignant features of Anûbis.
Then his gaze moved dreamily to the prostrate man who, but for the
hideous wound in his head, might have been paying humble obeisance to
the underworld god. He pointed to the smaller statue which had caused
Kyle’s death.
This statue was about two feet long and was black and shiny. It still
lay diagonally across the back of the murdered man’s skull: it seemed
to have been caught and held there in the concavity made by the blow.
An irregular pool of dark blood had formed beside the head, and I
noted--without giving the matter any particular thought--that one
point of the periphery of the pool had been smeared outward over the
polished maple-wood floor.
“I don’t like this, Markham,” Vance was saying in a low voice. “I
don’t like it at all.… That diorite statue, which killed Kyle, is
Sakhmet, the Egyptian goddess of vengeance--the destroying element.
She was the goddess who protected the good and annihilated the
wicked--the goddess who slew. The Egyptians believed in her violent
power; and there are many strange legend’ry tales of her dark and
terrible acts of revenge.…”