me to be clear enough. This fellow Bellingham, in his Eastern studies,
has got hold of some infernal secret by which a mummy--or possibly only
this particular mummy--can be temporarily brought to life. He was trying
this disgusting business on the night when he fainted. No doubt the
sight of the creature moving had shaken his nerve, even though he had
expected it. You remember that almost the first words he said were to
call out upon himself as a fool. Well, he got more hardened afterwards,
and carried the matter through without fainting. The vitality which he
could put into it was evidently only a passing thing, for I have seen it
continually in its case as dead as this table. He has some elaborate
process, I fancy, by which he brings the thing to pass. Having done it,
he naturally bethought him that he might use the creature as an agent.
It has intelligence and it has strength. For some purpose he took Lee
into his confidence; but Lee, like a decent Christian, would have
nothing to do with such a business. Then they had a row, and Lee vowed
that he would tell his sister of Bellingham’s true character.
Bellingham’s game was to prevent him, and he nearly managed it, by
setting this creature of his on his track. He had already tried its
powers upon another man--Norton--towards whom he had a grudge. It is the
merest chance that he has not two murders upon his soul. Then, when I
taxed him with the matter, he had the strongest reasons for wishing me
out of the way, before I could convey my knowledge to any one else. He
got his chance when I went out, for he knew my habits and where I was
bound for. I have had a narrow shave, Peterson, and it is mere luck you
didn’t find me on your doorstep in the morning. I’m not a nervous man as
a rule, and I never thought to have the fear of death put upon me as it
was to-night.”
“My dear boy, you take the matter too seriously,” said his companion.
“Your nerves are out of order with your work, and you make too much of
it. How could such a thing as this stride about the streets of Oxford,
even at night, without being seen?”
“It has been seen. There is quite a scare in the town about an escaped
ape, as they imagine the creature to be. It is the talk of the place.”
“Well, it’s a striking chain of events. And yet, my dear fellow, you
must allow that each incident in itself is capable of a more natural
explanation.”
“What! even my adventure of to-night?”
“Certainly. You come out with your nerves all unstrung, and your head
full of this theory of yours. Some gaunt, half-famished tramp steals
after you, and seeing you run, is emboldened to pursue you. Your fears
and imagination do the rest.”
“It won’t do, Peterson; it won’t do.”
“And again, in the instance of your finding the mummy case empty, and
then a few moments later with an occupant, you know that it was
lamp-light, that the lamp was half turned down, and that you had no
special reason to look hard at the case. It is quite possible that you
may have overlooked the creature in the first instance.”
“No, no; it is out of the question.”
“And then Lee may have fallen into the river, and Norton been garrotted.
It is certainly a formidable indictment that you have against
Bellingham; but if you were to place it before a police magistrate, he
would simply laugh in your face.”
“I know he would. That is why I mean to take the matter into my own
hands.”
“Eh?”
“Yes; I feel that a public duty rests upon me, and, besides, I must do
it for my own safety, unless I choose to allow myself to be hunted by
this beast out of the college, and that would be a little too feeble. I
have quite made up my mind what I shall do. And first of all, may I use
your paper and pens for an hour?”
“Most certainly. You will find all that you want upon that side-table.”
Abercrombie Smith sat down before a sheet of foolscap, and for an hour,
and then for a second hour his pen travelled swiftly over it. Page after
page was finished and tossed aside while his friend leaned back in his
arm-chair, looking across at him with patient curiosity. At last, with
an exclamation of satisfaction, Smith sprang to his feet, gathered his
papers up into order, and laid the last one upon Peterson’s desk.
“Kindly sign this as a witness,” he said.
“A witness? Of what?”
“Of my signature, and of the date. The date is the most important. Why,
Peterson, my life might hang upon it.”
“My dear Smith, you are talking wildly. Let me beg you to go to bed.”
“On the contrary, I never spoke so deliberately in my life. And I will
promise to go to bed the moment you have signed it.”
“But what is it?”
“It is a statement of all that I have been telling you to-night. I wish
you to witness it.”
“Certainly,” said Peterson, signing his name under that of his
companion. “There you are! But what is the idea?”
“You will kindly retain it, and produce it in case I am arrested.”
“Arrested? For what?”
“For murder. It is quite on the cards. I wish to be ready for every
event. There is only one course open to me, and I am determined to take
it.”
“For Heaven’s sake, don’t do anything rash!”
“Believe me, it would be far more rash to adopt any other course. I hope
that we won’t need to bother you, but it will ease my mind to know that
you have this statement of my motives. And now I am ready to take your
advice and to go to roost, for I want to be at my best in the morning.”
* * * * *
Abercrombie Smith was not an entirely pleasant man to have as an enemy.
Slow and easy-tempered, he was formidable when driven to action. He
brought to every purpose in life the same deliberate resoluteness which
had distinguished him as a scientific student. He had laid his studies
aside for a day, but he intended that the day should not be wasted. Not
a word did he say to his host as to his plans, but by nine o’clock he
was well on his way to Oxford.
In the High Street he stopped at Clifford’s the gunmaker’s, and bought
a heavy revolver, with a box of central-fire cartridges. Six of them he
slipped into the chambers, and half-cocking the weapon, placed it in the
pocket of his coat. He then made his way to Hastie’s rooms, where the
big oarsman was lounging over his breakfast, with the _Sporting Times_
propped up against the coffee-pot.
“Hullo! What’s up?” he asked. “Have some coffee?”
“No, thank you. I want you to come with me, Hastie, and do what I ask
you.”
“Certainly, my boy.”
“And bring a heavy stick with you.”
“Hullo!” Hastie stared. “Here’s a hunting crop that would fell an ox.”
“One other thing. You have a box of amputating knives. Give me the
longest of them.”
“There you are. You seem to be fairly on the war trail. Anything else?”
“No; that will do.” Smith placed the knife inside his coat, and led the
way to the quadrangle. “We are neither of us chickens, Hastie,” said he.
“I think I can do this job alone, but I take you as a precaution. I am
going to have a little talk with Bellingham. If I have only him to deal
with, I won’t, of course, need you. If I shout, however, up you come,
and lam out with your whip as hard as you can lick. Do you understand?”
“All right. I’ll come if I hear you bellow.”
“Stay here, then. I may be a little time, but don’t budge until I come
down.”
“I’m a fixture.”
Smith ascended the stairs, opened Bellingham’s door and stepped in.
Bellingham was seated behind his table, writing. Beside him, among his
litter of strange possessions, towered the mummy case, with its sale
number 249 still stuck upon its front, and its hideous occupant stiff
and stark within it. Smith looked very deliberately round him, closed
the door, and then stepping across to the fire-place, struck a match and
set the fire alight. Bellingham sat staring, with amazement and rage
upon his bloated face.
“Well, really now, you make yourself at home,” he gasped.
Smith sat himself deliberately down, placing his watch upon the table,
drew out his pistol, cocked it, and laid it in his lap. Then he took the
long amputating knife from his bosom, and threw it down in front of
Bellingham.
“Now, then,” said he, “just get to work and cut up that mummy.”
“Oh, is that it?” said Bellingham with a sneer.
“Yes, that is it. They tell me that the law can’t touch you. But I have
a law that will set matters straight. If in five minutes you have not
set to work, I swear by the God who made me that I will put a bullet
through your brain!”
“You would murder me?”
Bellingham had half risen, and his face was the colour of putty.
“Yes.”
“And for what?”
“To stop your mischief. One minute has gone.”
“But what have I done?”
“I know and you know.”
“This is mere bullying.”
“Two minutes are gone.”
“But you must give reasons. You are a madman--a dangerous madman. Why
should I destroy my own property? It is a valuable mummy.”
“You must cut it up, and you must burn it.”
“I will do no such thing.”
“Four minutes are gone.”
Smith took up the pistol and he looked towards Bellingham with an
inexorable face. As the secondhand stole round, he raised his hand, and
the finger twitched upon the trigger.
“There! there! I’ll do it!” screamed Bellingham.
In frantic haste he caught up the knife and hacked at the figure of the
mummy, ever glancing round to see the eye and the weapon of his terrible
visitor bent upon him. The creature crackled and snapped under every
stab of the keen blade. A thick yellow dust rose up from it. Spices and
dried essences rained down upon the floor. Suddenly, with a rending
crack, its backbone snapped asunder, and it fell, a brown heap of
sprawling limbs, upon the floor.
“Now into the fire!” said Smith.
The flames leaped and roared as the dried and tinder-like debris was
piled upon it. The little room was like the stoke-hole of a steamer and
the sweat ran down the faces of the two men; but still the one stooped
and worked, while the other sat watching him with a set face. A thick,
fat smoke oozed out from the fire, and a heavy smell of burned rosin and
singed hair filled the air. In a quarter of an hour a few charred and
brittle sticks were all that was left of Lot No. 249.
“Perhaps that will satisfy you,” snarled Bellingham, with hate and fear
in his little grey eyes as he glanced back at his tormentor.
“No; I must make a clean sweep of all your materials. We must have no
more devil’s tricks. In with all these leaves! They may have something
to do with it.”
“And what now?” asked Bellingham, when the leaves also had been added to
the blaze.
“Now the roll of papyrus which you had on the table that night. It is in
that drawer, I think.”
“No, no,” shouted Bellingham. “Don’t burn that! Why, man, you don’t know
what you do. It is unique; it contains wisdom which is nowhere else to
be found.”
“Out with it!”
“But look here, Smith, you can’t really mean it. I’ll share the
knowledge with you. I’ll teach you all that is in it. Or, stay, let me
only copy it before you burn it!”
Smith stepped forward and turned the key in the drawer. Taking out the
yellow, curled roll of paper, he threw it into the fire, and pressed it
down with his heel. Bellingham screamed, and grabbed at it; but Smith
pushed him back and stood over it until it was reduced to a formless
grey ash.
“Now, Master B.,” said he, “I think I have pretty well drawn your teeth.
You’ll hear from me again, if you return to your old tricks. And now
good-morning, for I must go back to my studies.”
And such is the narrative of Abercrombie Smith as to the singular events
which occurred in Old College, Oxford, in the spring of ’84. As
Bellingham left the university immediately afterwards, and was last
heard of in the Soudan, there is no one who can contradict his
statement. But the wisdom of men is small, and the ways of Nature are
strange, and who shall put a bound to the dark things which may be found
by those who seek for them?
XI
“DE PROFUNDIS”
So long as the oceans are the ligaments which bind together the great
broadcast British Empire, so long will there be a dash of romance in our
minds. For the soul is swayed by the waters, as the waters are by the
moon, and when the great highways of an empire are along such roads as
these, so full of strange sights and sounds, with danger ever running
like a hedge on either side of the course, it is a dull mind indeed
which does not bear away with it some trace of such a passage. And now,
Britain lies far beyond herself, for the three-mile limit of every
seaboard is her frontier, which has been won by hammer and loom and pick
rather than by arts of war. For it is written in history that neither
king nor army can bar the path to the man who having twopence in his
strong box, and knowing well where he can turn it to threepence, sets
his mind to that one end. And as the frontier has broadened the mind of
Britain has broadened too, spreading out until all men can see that the
ways of the island are continental, even as those of the Continent are
insular.
But for this a price must be paid, and the price is a grievous one. As
the beast of old must have one young human life as a tribute every year,
so to our Empire we throw from day to day the pick and flower of our
youth. The engine is world-wide and strong, but the only fuel that will
drive it is the lives of British men. Thus it is that in the grey old
cathedrals, as we look round upon the brasses on the walls, we see
strange names, such names as they who reared those walls had never
heard, for it is in Peshawur, and Umballah, and Korti, and Fort Pearson
that the youngsters die, leaving only a precedent and a brass behind
them. But if every man had his obelisk, even where he lay, then no
frontier line need be drawn, for a cordon of British graves would ever
show how high the Anglo-Celtic tide had lapped.
This, then, as well as the waters which join us to the world, has done
something to tinge us with romance. For when so many have their loved
ones over the seas, walking amid hillmen’s bullets, or swamp malaria,
where death is sudden and distance great, then mind communes with mind,
and strange stories arise of dream, presentiment, or vision, where the
mother sees her dying son, and is past the first bitterness of her grief
ere the message comes which should have broken the news. The learned
have of late looked into the matter and have even labelled it with a
name; but what can we know more of it save that a poor stricken soul,
when hard-pressed and driven, can shoot across the earth some
ten-thousand-mile-distant picture of its trouble to the mind which is
most akin to it. Far be it from me to say that there lies no such power
within us, for of all things which the brain will grasp the last will be
itself; but yet it is well to be very cautious over such matters, for
once at least I have known that which was within the laws of Nature seem
to be far upon the further side of them.
John Vansittart was the younger partner of the firm of Hudson and
Vansittart, coffee exporters of the Island of Ceylon, three-quarters
Dutchman by descent, but wholly English in his sympathies. For years I
had been his agent in London, and when in ’72 he came over to England
for a three months’ holiday, he turned to me for the introductions which
would enable him to see something of town and country life. Armed with
seven letters he left my offices, and for many weeks scrappy notes from
different parts of the country let me know that he had found favour in
the eyes of my friends. Then came word of his engagement to Emily
Lawson, of a cadet branch of the Hereford Lawsons, and at the very tail
of the first flying rumour the news of his absolute marriage, for the
wooing of a wanderer must be short, and the days were already crowding
on towards the date when he must be upon his homeward journey. They were
to return together to Colombo in one of the firm’s own thousand-ton
barque-rigged sailing ships, and this was to be their princely
honeymoon, at once a necessity and a delight.
Those were the royal days of coffee-planting in Ceylon, before a single
season and a rotting fungus drove a whole community through years of
despair to one of the greatest commercial victories which pluck and
ingenuity ever won. Not often is it that men have the heart when their
one great industry is withered to rear up in a few years another as rich
to take its place, and the tea-fields of Ceylon are as true a monument
to courage as is the lion at Waterloo. But in ’72 there was no cloud yet
above the skyline, and the hopes of the planters were as high and as
bright as the hill-sides on which they reared their crops. Vansittart
came down to London with his young and beautiful wife. I was introduced,
dined with them, and it was finally arranged that I, since business
called me also to Ceylon, should be a fellow-passenger with them on the
_Eastern Star_, which was timed to sail on the following Monday.
It was on the Sunday evening that I saw him again. He was shown up into
my rooms about nine o’clock at night, with the air of a man who is
bothered and out of sorts. His hand, as I shook it, was hot and dry.
“I wish, Atkinson,” said he, “that you could give me a little lime-juice
and water. I have a beastly thirst upon me, and the more I take the more
I seem to want.”
I rang and ordered a caraffe and glasses. “You are flushed,” said I.
“You don’t look the thing.”
“No, I’m clean off colour. Got a touch of rheumatism in my back, and
don’t seem to taste my food. It is this vile London that is choking me.
I’m not used to breathing air which has been used up by four million
lungs all sucking away on every side of you.” He flapped his crooked
hands before his face, like a man who really struggles for his breath.
“A touch of the sea will soon set you right.”
“Yes, I’m of one mind with you there. That’s the thing for me. I want no
other doctor. If I don’t get to sea to-morrow I’ll have an illness.
There are no two ways about it.” He drank off the tumbler of lime-juice,
and clapped his two hands with his knuckles doubled up into the small of
his back.
“That seems to ease me,” said he, looking at me with a filmy eye. “Now
I want your help, Atkinson, for I am rather awkwardly placed.”
“As how?”
“This way. My wife’s mother got ill and wired for her. I couldn’t
go--you know best yourself how tied I have been--so she had to go alone.
Now I’ve had another wire to say that she can’t come to-morrow, but that
she will pick up the ship at Falmouth on Wednesday. We put in there, you
know, though I count it hard, Atkinson, that a man should be asked to
believe in a mystery, and cursed if he can’t do it. Cursed, mind you, no
less.” He leaned forward and began to draw a catchy breath like a man
who is poised on the very edge of a sob.
Then first it came into my mind that I had heard much of the
hard-drinking life of the island, and that from brandy came these wild
words and fevered hands. The flushed cheek and the glazing eye were
those of one whose drink is strong upon him. Sad it was to see so noble
a young man in the grip of that most bestial of all the devils.
“You should lie down,” I said, with some severity.
He screwed up his eyes like a man who is striving to wake himself, and
looked up with an air of surprise.
“So I shall presently,” said he, quite rationally. “I felt quite swimmy
just now, but I am my own man again now. Let me see, what was I talking
about? Oh, ah, of course, about the wife. She joins the ship at
Falmouth. Now I want to go round by water. I believe my health depends
upon it. I just want a little clean first-lung air to set me on my feet
again. I ask you, like a good fellow, to go to Falmouth by rail, so that
in case we should be late you may be there to look after the wife. Put
up at the Royal Hotel, and I will wire her that you are there. Her
sister will bring her down, so that it will be all plain sailing.”
“I’ll do it with pleasure,” said I. “In fact, I would rather go by rail,
for we shall have enough and to spare of the sea before we reach
Colombo. I believe too that you badly need a change. Now, I should go
and turn in, if I were you.”
“Yes, I will. I sleep aboard to-night. You know,” he continued, as the
film settled down again over his eyes, “I’ve not slept well the last few
nights. I’ve been troubled with theolololog--that is to say,
theolological--hang it,” with a desperate effort, “with the doubts of
theolologicians. Wondering why the Almighty made us, you know, and why
He made our heads swimmy, and fixed little pains into the small of our
backs. Maybe I’ll do better to-night.” He rose and steadied himself with
an effort against the corner of the chair back.
“Look here, Vansittart,” said I gravely, stepping up to him, and laying
my hand upon his sleeve, “I can give you a shakedown here. You are not
fit to go out. You are all over the place. You’ve been mixing your
drinks.”
“Drinks!” He stared at me stupidly.
“You used to carry your liquor better than this.”
“I give you my word, Atkinson, that I have not had a drain for two days.
It’s not drink. I don’t know what it is. I suppose you think this is
drink.” He took up my hand in his burning grasp, and passed it over his
own forehead.
“Great Lord!” said I.
His skin felt like a thin sheet of velvet beneath which lies a
close-packed layer of small shot. It was smooth to the touch at any one
place, but to a finger passed along it, rough as a nutmeg-grater.
“It’s all right,” said he, smiling at my startled face. “I’ve had the
prickly heat nearly as bad.”
“But this is never prickly heat.”
“No, it’s London. It’s breathing bad air. But to-morrow it’ll be all
right. There’s a surgeon aboard, so I shall be in safe hands. I must be
off now.”
“Not you,” said I, pushing him back into a chair. “This is past a joke.
You don’t move from here until a doctor sees you. Just stay where you
are.”
I caught up my hat and rushing round to the house of a neighbouring
physician, I brought him back with me. The room was empty and Vansittart
gone. I rang the bell. The servant said that the gentleman had ordered a
cab the instant that I had left, and had gone off in it. He had told the
cabman to drive to the docks.
“Did the gentleman seem ill?” I asked.
“Ill!” The man smiled. “No, sir, he was singin’ his ’ardest all the
time.”
The information was not as reassuring as my servant seemed to think, but
I reflected that he was going straight back to the _Eastern Star_, and
that there was a doctor aboard of her, so that there was nothing which I
could do in the matter. None the less, when I thought of his thirst, his
burning hands, his heavy eye, his tripping speech, and lastly, of that
leprous forehead, I carried with me to bed an unpleasant memory of my
visitor and his visit.
At eleven o’clock next day I was at the docks, but the _Eastern Star_
had already moved down the river, and was nearly at Gravesend. To
Gravesend I went by train, but only to see her topmasts far off, with a
plume of smoke from a tug in front of her. I would hear no more of my
friend until I rejoined him at Falmouth. When I got back to my offices,
a telegram was awaiting me from Mrs. Vansittart, asking me to meet her;
and next evening found us both at the Royal Hotel, Falmouth, where we
were to wait for the _Eastern Star_. Ten days passed, and there came no
news of her.
They were ten days which I am not likely to forget. On the very day that
the _Eastern Star_ had cleared from the Thames, a furious easterly gale
had sprung up, and blew on from day to day for the greater part of a
week without the sign of a lull. Such a screaming, raving, long-drawn
storm has never been known on the southern coast. From our hotel windows
the sea view was all banked in haze, with a little rain-swept
half-circle under our very eyes, churned and lashed into one tossing
stretch of foam. So heavy was the wind upon the waves that little sea
could rise, for the crest of each billow was torn shrieking from it, and
lashed broadcast over the bay. Clouds, wind, sea, all were rushing to
the west, and there, looking down at this mad jumble of elements, I
waited on day after day, my sole companion a white, silent woman, with
terror in her eyes, her forehead pressed ever against the window, her
gaze from early morning to the fall of night fixed upon that wall of
grey haze through which the loom of a vessel might come. She said
nothing, but that face of hers was one long wail of fear.
On the fifth day I took counsel with an old seaman.
I should have preferred to have done so alone, but she saw me speak with
him, and was at our side in an instant, with parted lips and a prayer in
her eyes.
“Seven days out from London,” said he, “and five in the gale. Well, the
Channel’s swept clear by this wind. There’s three things for it. She may
have popped into port on the French side. That’s like enough.”
“No, no; he knew we were here. He would have telegraphed.”
“Ah, yes, so he would. Well, then, he might have run for it, and if he
did that he won’t be very far from Madeira by now. That’ll be it, marm,
you may depend.”
“Or else? You said there was a third chance.”
“Did I, marm? No, only two, I think. I don’t think I said anything of a
third. Your ship’s out there, depend upon it, away out in the Atlantic,
and you’ll hear of it time enough, for the weather is breaking. Now
don’t you fret, marm, and wait quiet, and you’ll find a real blue
Cornish sky to-morrow.”
The old seaman was right in his surmise, for the next day broke calm and
bright, with only a low dwindling cloud in the west to mark the last
trailing wreaths of the storm-wrack. But still there came no word from
the sea, and no sign of the ship. Three more weary days had passed, the
weariest that I have ever spent, when there came a seafaring man to the
hotel with a letter. I gave a shout of joy. It was from the captain of
the _Eastern Star_. As I read the first lines of it I whisked my hand
over it, but she laid her own upon it and drew it away. “I have seen
it,” said she, in a cold, quiet voice. “I may as well see the rest,
too.”
“DEAR SIR,” said the letter,