going out!”
He had thrown open the door and rushed out into the passage. At the end
of it, at the foot of the stairs, Mrs. Deacon was lying senseless,
struck down by the sight which she had seen. But there was nothing else.
With eyes of horror we looked about us, but all was perfectly quiet and
still. I approached the black square of the studio door, expecting with
every slow step that some atrocious shape would hurl itself out of it.
But nothing came, and all was silent inside the room. Peeping and
peering, our hearts in our mouths, we came to the very threshold, and
stared into the darkness. There was still no sound, but in one direction
there was also no darkness. A luminous, glowing cloud, with an
incandescent centre, hovered in the corner of the room. Slowly it dimmed
and faded, growing thinner and fainter, until at last the same dense,
velvety blackness filled the whole studio. And with the last flickering
gleam of that baleful light the Frenchman broke into a shout of joy.
“What a fun!” he cried. “No one is hurt, and only the door broken, and
the ladies frightened. But, my friends, we have done what has never been
done before.”
“And as far as I can help,” said Harvey Deacon, “it will certainly never
be done again.”
And that was what befell on the 14th of April last at No. 17 Badderly
Gardens. I began by saying that it would seem too grotesque to dogmatise
as to what it was which actually did occur; but I give my impressions,
_our_ impressions (since they are corroborated by Harvey Deacon and John
Moir), for what they are worth. You may, if it pleases you, imagine
that we were the victims of an elaborate and extraordinary hoax. Or you
may think with us that we underwent a very real and a very terrible
experience. Or perhaps you may know more than we do of such occult
matters, and can inform us of some similar occurrence. In this latter
case a letter to William Markham, 146M, the Albany, would help to throw
a light upon that which is very dark to us.
VII
THE RING OF THOTH
Mr. John Vansittart Smith, F.R.S., of 147-A Gower Street, was a man
whose energy of purpose and clearness of thought might have placed him
in the very first rank of scientific observers. He was the victim,
however, of a universal ambition which prompted him to aim at
distinction in many subjects rather than pre-eminence in one. In his
early days he had shown an aptitude for zoology and for botany which
caused his friends to look upon him as a second Darwin, but when a
professorship was almost within his reach he had suddenly discontinued
his studies and turned his whole attention to chemistry. Here his
researches upon the spectra of the metals had won him his fellowship in
the Royal Society; but again he played the coquette with his subject,
and after a year’s absence from the laboratory he joined the Oriental
Society, and delivered a paper on the Hieroglyphic and Demotic
inscriptions of El Kab, thus giving a crowning example both of the
versatility and of the inconstancy of his talents.
The most fickle of wooers, however, is apt to be caught at last, and so
it was with John Vansittart Smith. The more he burrowed his way into
Egyptology the more impressed he became by the vast field which it
opened to the inquirer, and by the extreme importance of a subject which
promised to throw a light upon the first germs of human civilisation
and the origin of the greater part of our arts and sciences. So struck
was Mr. Smith that he straightway married an Egyptological young lady
who had written upon the sixth dynasty, and having thus secured a sound
base of operations he set himself to collect materials for a work which
should unite the research of Lepsius and the ingenuity of Champollion.
The preparation of this _magnum opus_ entailed many hurried visits to
the magnificent Egyptian collections of the Louvre, upon the last of
which, no longer ago than the middle of last October, he became involved
in a most strange and noteworthy adventure.
The trains had been slow and the Channel had been rough, so that the
student arrived in Paris in a somewhat befogged and feverish condition.
On reaching the Hôtel de France, in the Rue Laffitte, he had thrown
himself upon a sofa for a couple of hours, but finding that he was
unable to sleep, he determined, in spite of his fatigue, to make his way
to the Louvre, settle the point which he had come to decide, and take
the evening train back to Dieppe. Having come to this conclusion, he
donned his greatcoat, for it was a raw rainy day, and made his way
across the Boulevard des Italiens and down the Avenue de l’Opéra. Once
in the Louvre he was on familiar ground, and he speedily made his way to
the collection of papyri which it was his intention to consult.
The warmest admirers of John Vansittart Smith could hardly claim for him
that he was a handsome man. His high-beaked nose and prominent chin had
something of the same acute and incisive character which distinguished
his intellect. He held his head in a birdlike fashion, and birdlike,
too, was the pecking motion with which, in conversation, he threw out
his objections and retorts. As he stood, with the high collar of his
greatcoat raised to his ears, he might have seen from the reflection in
the glass-case before him that his appearance was a singular one. Yet it
came upon him as a sudden jar when an English voice behind him exclaimed
in very audible tones, “What a queer-looking mortal!”
The student had a large amount of petty vanity in his composition which
manifested itself by an ostentatious and overdone disregard of all
personal considerations. He straightened his lips and looked rigidly at
the roll of papyrus, while his heart filled with bitterness against the
whole race of travelling Britons.
“Yes,” said another voice, “he really is an extraordinary fellow.”
“Do you know,” said the first speaker, “one could almost believe that by
the continual contemplation of mummies the chap has become half a mummy
himself?”
“He has certainly an Egyptian cast of countenance,” said the other.
John Vansittart Smith spun round upon his heel with the intention of
shaming his countrymen by a corrosive remark or two. To his surprise and
relief, the two young fellows who had been conversing had their
shoulders turned towards him, and were gazing at one of the Louvre
attendants who was polishing some brass-work at the other side of the
room.
“Carter will be waiting for us at the Palais Royal,” said one tourist to
the other, glancing at his watch, and they clattered away, leaving the
student to his labours.
“I wonder what these chatterers call an Egyptian cast of countenance,”
thought John Vansittart Smith, and he moved his position slightly in
order to catch a glimpse of the man’s face. He started as his eyes fell
upon it. It was indeed the very face with which his studies had made him
familiar. The regular statuesque features, broad brow, well-rounded
chin, and dusky complexion were the exact counterpart of the innumerable
statues, mummy-cases, and pictures which adorned the walls of the
apartment. The thing was beyond all coincidence. The man must be an
Egyptian. The national angularity of the shoulders and narrowness of the
hips were alone sufficient to identify him.
John Vansittart Smith shuffled towards the attendant with some intention
of addressing him. He was not light of touch in conversation, and found
it difficult to strike the happy mean between the brusqueness of the
superior and the geniality of the equal. As he came nearer, the man
presented his side face to him, but kept his gaze still bent upon his
work. Vansittart Smith, fixing his eyes upon the fellow’s skin, was
conscious of a sudden impression that there was something inhuman and
preternatural about its appearance. Over the temple and cheek-bone it
was as glazed and as shiny as varnished parchment. There was no
suggestion of pores. One could not fancy a drop of moisture upon that
arid surface. From brow to chin, however, it was cross-hatched by a
million delicate wrinkles, which shot and interlaced as though Nature in
some Maori mood had tried how wild and intricate a pattern she could
devise.
“Où est la collection de Memphis?” asked the student with the awkward
air of a man who is devising a question merely for the purpose of
opening a conversation.
“C’est là,” replied the man brusquely, nodding his head at the other
side of the room.
“Vous êtes un Egyptien, n’est-ce pas?” asked the Englishman.
The attendant looked up and turned his strange dark eyes upon his
questioner. They were vitreous, with a misty dry shininess, such as
Smith had never seen in a human head before. As he gazed into them he
saw some strong emotion gather in their depths, which rose and deepened
until it broke into a look of something akin both to horror and to
hatred.
“Non, monsieur; je suis français.” The man turned abruptly and bent low
over his polishing. The student gazed at him for a moment in
astonishment, and then turning to a chair in a retired corner behind one
of the doors he proceeded to make notes of his researches among the
papyri. His thoughts, however, refused to return into their natural
groove. They would run upon the enigmatical attendant with the
sphinx-like face and the parchment skin.
“Where have I seen such eyes?” said Vansittart Smith to himself. “There
is something saurian about them, something reptilian. There’s the
membrana nictitans of the snakes,” he mused, bethinking himself of his
zoological studies. “It gives a shiny effect. But there was something
more here. There was a sense of power, of wisdom--so I read them--and of
weariness, utter weariness, and ineffable despair. It may be all
imagination, but I never had so strong an impression. By Jove, I must
have another look at them!” He rose and paced round the Egyptian rooms,
but the man who had excited his curiosity had disappeared.
The student sat down again in his quiet corner, and continued to work at
his notes. He had gained the information which he required from the
papyri, and it only remained to write it down while it was still fresh
in his memory. For a time his pencil travelled rapidly over the paper,
but soon the lines became less level, the words more blurred, and
finally the pencil tinkled down upon the floor, and the head of the
student dropped heavily forward upon his chest. Tired out by his
journey, he slept so soundly in his lonely post behind the door that
neither the clanking civil guard, nor the footsteps of sightseers, nor
even the loud hoarse bell which gives the signal for closing, were
sufficient to arouse him.
Twilight deepened into darkness, the bustle from the Rue de Rivoli waxed
and then waned, distant Notre Dame clanged out the hour of midnight, and
still the dark and lonely figure sat silently in the shadow. It was not
until close upon one in the morning that, with a sudden gasp and an
intaking of the breath, Vansittart Smith returned to consciousness. For
a moment it flashed upon him that he had dropped asleep in his
study-chair at home. The moon was shining fitfully through the
unshuttered window, however, and as his eye ran along the lines of
mummies and the endless array of polished cases, he remembered clearly
where he was and how he came there. The student was not a nervous man.
He possessed that love of a novel situation which is peculiar to his
race. Stretching out his cramped limbs, he looked at his watch, and
burst into a chuckle as he observed the hour. The episode would make an
admirable anecdote to be introduced into his next paper as a relief to
the graver and heavier speculations. He was a little cold, but wide
awake and much refreshed. It was no wonder that the guardians had
overlooked him, for the door threw its heavy black shadow right across
him.
The complete silence was impressive. Neither outside nor inside was
there a creak or a murmur. He was alone with the dead men of a dead
civilisation. What though the outer city reeked of the garish nineteenth
century! In all this chamber there was scarce an article, from the
shrivelled ear of wheat to the pigment-box of the painter, which had not
held its own against four thousand years. Here was the flotsam and
jetsam washed up by the great ocean of time from that far-off empire.
From stately Thebes, from lordly Luxor, from the great temples of
Heliopolis, from a hundred rifled tombs, these relics had been brought.
The student glanced round at the long silent figures who flickered
vaguely up through the gloom, at the busy toilers who were now so
restful, and he fell into a reverent and thoughtful mood. An unwonted
sense of his own youth and insignificance came over him. Leaning back in
his chair, he gazed dreamily down the long vista of rooms, all silvery
with the moonshine, which extend through the whole wing of the
widespread building. His eyes fell upon the yellow glare of a distant
lamp.
John Vansittart Smith sat up on his chair with his nerves all on edge.
The light was advancing slowly towards him, pausing from time to time,
and then coming jerkily onwards. The bearer moved noiselessly. In the
utter silence there was no suspicion of the pat of a footfall. An idea
of robbers entered the Englishman’s head. He snuggled up further into
the corner. The light was two rooms off. Now it was in the next chamber,
and still there was no sound. With something approaching to a thrill of
fear the student observed a face, floating in the air as it were, behind
the flare of the lamp. The figure was wrapped in shadow, but the light
fell full upon the strange eager face. There was no mistaking the
metallic glistening eyes and the cadaverous skin. It was the attendant
with whom he had conversed.
Vansittart Smith’s first impulse was to come forward and address him. A
few words of explanation would set the matter clear, and lead doubtless
to his being conducted to some side door from which he might make his
way to his hotel. As the man entered the chamber, however, there was
something so stealthy in his movements, and so furtive in his
expression, that the Englishman altered his intention. This was clearly
no ordinary official walking the rounds. The fellow wore felt-soled
slippers, stepped with a rising chest, and glanced quickly from left to
right, while his hurried gasping breathing thrilled the flame of his
lamp. Vansittart Smith crouched silently back into the corner and
watched him keenly, convinced that his errand was one of secret and
probably sinister import.
There was no hesitation in the other’s movements. He stepped lightly and
swiftly across to one of the great cases, and, drawing a key from his
pocket, he unlocked it. From the upper shelf he pulled down a mummy,
which he bore away with him, and laid it with much care and solicitude
upon the ground. By it he placed his lamp, and then squatting down
beside it in Eastern fashion he began with long quivering fingers to
undo the cerecloths and bandages which girt it round. As the crackling
rolls of linen peeled off one after the other, a strong aromatic odour
filled the chamber, and fragments of scented wood and of spices pattered
down upon the marble floor.
It was clear to John Vansittart Smith that this mummy had never been
unswathed before. The operation interested him keenly. He thrilled all
over with curiosity, and his birdlike head protruded further and further
from behind the door. When, however, the last roll had been removed from
the four-thousand-year-old head, it was all that he could do to stifle
an outcry of amazement. First, a cascade of long, black, glossy tresses
poured over the workman’s hands and arms. A second turn of the bandage
revealed a low, white forehead, with a pair of delicately arched
eyebrows. A third uncovered a pair of bright, deeply fringed eyes, and a
straight, well-cut nose, while a fourth and last showed a sweet, full,
sensitive mouth, and a beautifully curved chin. The whole face was one
of extraordinary loveliness, save for the one blemish that in the centre
of the forehead there was a single irregular, coffee-coloured splotch.
It was a triumph of the embalmer’s art. Vansittart Smith’s eyes grew
larger and larger as he gazed upon it, and he chirruped in his throat
with satisfaction.
Its effect upon the Egyptologist was as nothing, however, compared with
that which it produced upon the strange attendant. He threw his hands up
into the air, burst into a harsh clatter of words, and then, hurling
himself down upon the ground beside the mummy, he threw his arms round
her, and kissed her repeatedly upon the lips and brow. “Ma petite!” he
groaned in French. “Ma pauvre petite!” His voice broke with emotion, and
his innumerable wrinkles quivered and writhed, but the student observed
in the lamplight that his shining eyes were still dry and tearless as
two beads of steel. For some minutes he lay, with a twitching face,
crooning and moaning over the beautiful head. Then he broke into a
sudden smile, said some words in an unknown tongue, and sprang to his
feet with the vigorous air of one who has braced himself for an effort.
In the centre of the room there was a large circular case which
contained, as the student had frequently remarked, a magnificent
collection of early Egyptian rings and precious stones. To this the
attendant strode, and, unlocking it, threw it open. On the edge at the
side he placed his lamp, and beside it a small earthenware jar which he
had drawn from his pocket. He then took a handful of rings from the
case, and with the most serious and anxious face he proceeded to smear
each in turn with some liquid substance from the earthen pot, holding
them to the light as he did so. He was clearly disappointed with the
first lot, for he threw them petulantly back into the case and drew out
some more. One of these, a massive ring with a large crystal set in it,
he seized and eagerly tested with the contents of the jar. Instantly he
uttered a cry of joy, and threw out his arms in a wild gesture which
upset the pot and sent the liquid streaming across the floor to the very
feet of the Englishman. The attendant drew a red handkerchief from his
bosom, and, mopping up the mess, he followed it into the corner, where
in a moment he found himself face to face with his observer.
“Excuse me,” said John Vansittart Smith, with all imaginable politeness;
“I have been unfortunate enough to fall asleep behind this door.”
“And you have been watching me?” the other asked in English, with a most
venomous look on his corpse-like face.
The student was a man of veracity. “I confess,” said he, “that I have
noticed your movements, and that they have aroused my curiosity and
interest in the highest degree.”
The man drew a long flamboyant-bladed knife from his bosom. “You have
had a very narrow escape,” he said; “had I seen you ten minutes ago, I
should have driven this through your heart. As it is, if you touch me or
interfere with me in any way you are a dead man.”
“I have no wish to interfere with you,” the student answered. “My
presence here is entirely accidental. All I ask is that you will have
the extreme kindness to show me out through some side door.” He spoke
with great suavity, for the man was still pressing the tip of his dagger
against the palm of his left hand, as though to assure himself of its
sharpness, while his face preserved its malignant expression.
“If I thought----” said he. “But no, perhaps it is as well. What is your
name?”
The Englishman gave it.
“Vansittart Smith,” the other repeated. “Are you the same Vansittart
Smith who gave a paper in London upon El Kab? I saw a report of it. Your
knowledge of the subject is contemptible.”
“Sir!” cried the Egyptologist.
“Yet it is superior to that of many who make even greater pretensions.
The whole keystone of our old life in Egypt was not the inscriptions or
monuments of which you make so much, but was our hermetic philosophy and
mystic knowledge of which you say little or nothing.”
“Our old life!” repeated the scholar, wide-eyed; and then suddenly,
“Good God, look at the mummy’s face!”
The strange man turned and flashed his light upon the dead woman,
uttering a long doleful cry as he did so. The action of the air had
already undone all the art of the embalmer. The skin had fallen away,
the eyes had sunk inwards, the discoloured lips had writhed away from
the yellow teeth, and the brown mark upon the forehead alone showed that
it was indeed the same face which had shown such youth and beauty a few
short minutes before.
The man flapped his hands together in grief and horror. Then mastering
himself by a strong effort he turned his hard eyes once more upon the
Englishman.
“It does not matter,” he said, in a shaking voice. “It does not really
matter. I came here to-night with the fixed determination to do
something. It is now done. All else is as nothing. I have found my
quest. The old curse is broken. I can rejoin her. What matter about her
inanimate shell so long as her spirit is awaiting me at the other side
of the veil!”
“These are wild words,” said Vansittart Smith. He was becoming more and
more convinced that he had to do with a madman.
“Time presses, and I must go,” continued the other. “The moment is at
hand for which I have waited this weary time. But I must show you out
first. Come with me.”
Taking up the lamp, he turned from the disordered chamber, and led the
student swiftly through the long series of the Egyptian, Assyrian, and
Persian apartments. At the end of the latter he pushed open a small door
let into the wall and descended a winding stone stair. The Englishman
felt the cold fresh air of the night upon his brow. There was a door
opposite him which appeared to communicate with the street. To the right
of this another door stood ajar, throwing a spurt of yellow light across
the passage. “Come in here!” said the attendant shortly.
Vansittart Smith hesitated. He had hoped that he had come to the end of
his adventure. Yet his curiosity was strong within him. He could not
leave the matter unsolved, so he followed his strange companion into the
lighted chamber.
It was a small room, such as is devoted to a _concierge_. A wood fire
sparkled in the grate. At one side stood a truckle bed, and at the other
a coarse wooden chair, with a round table in the centre, which bore the
remains of a meal. As the visitor’s eye glanced round he could not but
remark with an ever-recurring thrill that all the small details of the
room were of the most quaint design and antique workmanship. The
candlesticks, the vases upon the chimneypiece, the fire-irons, the
ornaments upon the walls, were all such as he had been wont to associate
with the remote past. The gnarled heavy-eyed man sat himself down upon
the edge of the bed, and motioned his guest into the chair.
“There may be design in this,” he said, still speaking excellent
English. “It may be decreed that I should leave some account behind as a
warning to all rash mortals who would set their wits up against workings
of Nature. I leave it with you. Make such use as you will of it. I speak
to you now with my feet upon the threshold of the other world.
“I am, as you surmised, an Egyptian--not one of the down-trodden race of
slaves who now inhabit the Delta of the Nile, but a survivor of that
fiercer and harder people who tamed the Hebrew, drove the Ethiopian back
into the southern deserts, and built those mighty works which have been
the envy and the wonder of all after generations. It was in the reign of
Tuthmosis, sixteen hundred years before the birth of Christ, that I
first saw the light. You shrink away from me. Wait, and you will see
that I am more to be pitied than to be feared.
“My name was Sosra. My father had been the chief priest of Osiris in the
great temple of Abaris, which stood in those days upon the Bubastic
branch of the Nile. I was brought up in the temple and was trained in
all those mystic arts which are spoken of in your own Bible. I was an
apt pupil. Before I was sixteen I had learned all which the wisest
priest could teach me. From that time on I studied Nature’s secrets for
myself, and shared my knowledge with no man.