the Princess Hermonthis.
Instead of remaining quiet, as behooved a foot which had been embalmed
for four thousand years, it commenced to act in a nervous manner,
contracted itself, and leaped over the papers like a startled frog. One
would have imagined that it had suddenly been brought into contact with
a galvanic battery. I could distinctly hear the dry sound made by its
little heel, hard as the hoof of a gazelle.
I became rather discontented with my acquisition, inasmuch as I wished
my paper-weights to be of a sedentary disposition, and thought it very
unnatural that feet should walk about without legs, then I commenced to
experience a feeling closely akin to fear.
Suddenly I saw the folds of my bed-curtain stir, and heard a bumping
sound, like that caused by some person hopping on one foot across the
floor. I must confess I became alternately hot and cold, that I felt a
strange wind chill my back, and that my suddenly rising hair caused my
night-cap to execute a leap of several yards.
The bed-curtains opened and I beheld the strangest figure imaginable
before me.
It was a young girl of a very deep coffee-brown complexion, like the
bayadere Amani, and possessing the purest Egyptian type of perfect
beauty. Her eyes were almond-shaped and oblique, with eyebrows so black
that they seemed blue; her nose was exquisitely chiselled, almost Greek
in its delicacy of outline; and she might indeed have been taken for a
Corinthian statue of bronze but for the prominence of her cheek-bones
and the slightly African fulness of her lips, which compelled one to
recognize her as belonging beyond all doubt to the hieroglyphic race
which dwelt upon the banks of the Nile.
Her arms, slender and spindle-shaped like those of very young girls,
were encircled by a peculiar kind of metal bands and bracelets of
glass beads; her hair was all twisted into little cords, and she wore
upon her bosom a little idol-figure of green paste, bearing a whip
with seven lashes, which proved it to be an image of Isis; her brow
was adorned with a shining plate of gold, and a few traces of paint
relieved the coppery tint of her cheeks.
As for her costume, it was very odd indeed.
Fancy a _pagne_, or skirt, all formed of little strips of material
bedizened with red and black hieroglyphics, stiffened with bitumen, and
apparently belonging to a freshly unbandaged mummy.
In one of those sudden flights of thought so common in dreams I
heard the hoarse falsetto of the bric-à-brac dealer, repeating like
a monotonous refrain the phrase he had uttered in his shop with so
enigmatical an intonation:
“Old Pharaoh will not be well pleased. He loved his daughter, the dear
man!”
One strange circumstance, which was not at all calculated to restore
my equanimity, was that the apparition had but one foot; the other was
broken off at the ankle!
She approached the table where the foot lay, starting and fidgetting
about more than ever, and there supported herself upon the edge of the
desk. I saw her eyes fill with pearly gleaming tears.
Although she had not as yet spoken, I fully comprehended the thoughts
which agitated her. She looked at her foot--for it was indeed her
own--with an exquisitely graceful expression of coquettish sadness, but
the foot leaped and ran hither and thither, as though impelled on steel
springs.
Twice or thrice she extended her hand to seize it, but could not
succeed.
Then commenced between the Princess Hermonthis and her foot--which
appeared to be endowed with a special life of its own--a very fantastic
dialogue in a most ancient Coptic tongue, such as might have been
spoken thirty centuries ago by the sphinxes of the land of Ser.
Luckily I understood Coptic perfectly well that night.
The Princess Hermonthis cried, in a voice sweet and vibrant as the
tones of a crystal bell:
“Well, my dear little foot, you always flee from me, yet I always
took good care of you. I bathed you with perfumed water in a bowl of
alabaster; I smoothed your heel with pumice-stone mixed with palm
oil; your nails were cut with golden scissors and polished with a
hippopotamus tooth; I was careful to select _tatbebs_ for you, painted
and embroidered and turned up at the toes, which were the envy of all
the young girls in Egypt. You wore on your great toe rings bearing the
device of the sacred Scarabæus, and you supported one of the lightest
bodies that a lazy foot could sustain.”
The foot replied in a pouting and chagrined tone:
“You know well that I do not belong to myself any longer. I have been
bought and paid for. The old merchant knew what he was about. He bore
you a grudge for having refused to espouse him. This is an ill turn
which he has done you. The Arab who violated your royal coffin in the
subterranean pits of the necropolis of Thebes was sent thither by him.
He desired to prevent you from being present at the reunion of the
shadowy nations in the cities below. Have you five pieces of gold for
my ransom?”
“Alas, no! My jewels, my rings, my purses of gold and silver were all
stolen from me,” answered the Princess Hermonthis, with a sob.
“Princess,” I then exclaimed, “I never retained anybody’s foot
unjustly. Even though you have not got the five louis which it cost me,
I present it to you gladly. I should feel unutterably wretched to think
that I were the cause of so amiable a person as the Princess Hermonthis
being lame.”
I delivered this discourse in a royally gallant, troubadour tone which
must have astonished the beautiful Egyptian girl.
She turned a look of deepest gratitude upon me, and her eyes shone with
bluish gleams of light.
She took her foot, which surrendered itself willingly this time, like a
woman about to put on her little shoe, and adjusted it to her leg with
much skill.
This operation over, she took a few steps about the room, as though to
assure herself that she was really no longer lame.
“Ah, how pleased my father will be! He who was so unhappy because of my
mutilation, and who from the moment of my birth set a whole nation at
work to hollow me out a tomb so deep that he might preserve me intact
until that last day, when souls must be weighed in the balance of
Amenthi! Come with me to my father. He will receive you kindly, for you
have given me back my foot.”
I thought this proposition natural enough. I arrayed myself in a
dressing-gown of large-flowered pattern, which lent me a very Pharaonic
aspect, hurriedly put on a pair of Turkish slippers, and informed the
Princess Hermonthis that I was ready to follow her.
Before starting, Hermonthis took from her neck the little idol of
green paste, and laid it on the scattered sheets of paper which covered
the table.
“It is only fair,” she observed, smilingly, “that I should replace your
paper-weight.”
She gave me her hand, which felt soft and cold, like the skin of a
serpent, and we departed.
We passed for some time with the velocity of an arrow through a fluid
and grayish expanse, in which half-formed silhouettes flitted swiftly
by us, to right and left.
For an instant we saw only sky and sea.
A few moments later obelisks commenced to tower in the distance; pylons
and vast flights of steps guarded by sphinxes became clearly outlined
against the horizon.
We had reached our destination.
The princess conducted me to a mountain of rose-colored granite, in the
face of which appeared an opening so narrow and low that it would have
been difficult to distinguish it from the fissures in the rock, had not
its location been marked by two stelæ wrought with sculptures.
Hermonthis kindled a torch and led the way before me.
We traversed corridors hewn through the living rock. These walls
covered with hieroglyphics and paintings of allegorical processions,
might well have occupied thousands of arms for thousands of years in
their formation. These corridors of interminable length opened into
square chambers, in the midst of which pits had been contrived, through
which we descended by cramp-irons or spiral stairways. These pits
again conducted us into other chambers, opening into other corridors,
likewise decorated with painted sparrow-hawks, serpents coiled in
circles, the symbols of the _tau_ and _pedum_--prodigious works of art
which no living eye can ever examine--interminable legends of granite
which only the dead have time to read through all eternity.
At last we found ourselves in a hall so vast, so enormous, so
immeasurable, that the eye could not reach its limits. Files of
monstrous columns stretched far out of sight on every side, between
which twinkled livid stars of yellowish flame; points of light which
revealed further depths incalculable in the darkness beyond.
The Princess Hermonthis still held my hand, and graciously saluted the
mummies of her acquaintance.
My eyes became accustomed to the dim twilight, and objects became
discernible.
I beheld the kings of the subterranean races seated upon thrones--grand
old men, though dry, withered, wrinkled like parchment, and blackened
with naphtha and bitumen--all wearing _pshents_ of gold, and
breast-plates and gorgets glittering with precious stones, their eyes
immovably fixed like the eyes of sphinxes, and their long beards
whitened by the snow of centuries. Behind them stood their peoples,
in the stiff and constrained posture enjoined by Egyptian art, all
eternally preserving the attitude prescribed by the hieratic code.
Behind these nations, the cats, ibixes, and crocodiles, contemporary
with them--rendered monstrous of aspect by their swathing bands--mewed,
flapped their wings, or extended their jaws in a saurian giggle.
All the Pharaohs were there--Cheops, Chephrenes, Psammetichus,
Sesostris, Amenotaph--all the dark rulers of the pyramids and sphinxes.
On yet higher thrones sat Chronos and Xixouthros, who was contemporary
with the deluge, and Tubal Cain, who reigned before it.
The beard of King Xixouthros had grown seven times around the granite
table, upon which he leaned, lost in deep reverie, and buried in dreams.
Farther back, through a dusty cloud, I beheld dimly the seventy-two
pre-adamite kings, with their seventy-two peoples, forever passed away.
After permitting me to gaze upon this bewildering spectacle a few
moments, the Princess Hermonthis presented me to her father Pharaoh,
who favored me with a most gracious nod.
“I have found my foot again! I have found my foot!” cried the princess,
clapping her little hands together with every sign of frantic joy. “It
was this gentleman who restored it to me.”
The races of Kemi, the races of Nahasi--all the black, bronzed, and
copper-colored nations repeated in chorus:
“The Princess Hermonthis has found her foot again!”
Even Xixouthros himself was visibly affected.
He raised his heavy eyelids, stroked his moustache with his fingers,
and turned upon me a glance weighty with centuries.
“By Oms, the dog of Hell, and Tmei, daughter of the Sun and of Truth,
this is a brave and worthy lad!” exclaimed Pharaoh, pointing to me with
his sceptre, which was terminated with a lotus-flower. “What recompense
do you desire?”
Filled with that daring inspired by dreams in which nothing seems
impossible, I asked him for the hand of the Princess Hermonthis. The
hand seemed to me a very proper antithetic recompense for the foot.
Pharaoh opened wide his great eyes of glass in astonishment at my witty
request.
“What country do you come from, what is your age?”
“I am a Frenchman, and I am twenty-seven years old, venerable Pharaoh.”
“Twenty-seven years old, and he wishes to espouse the Princess
Hermonthis who is thirty centuries old!” cried out at once all the
Thrones and all the Circles of Nations.
Only Hermonthis herself did not seem to think my request unreasonable.
“If you were even two thousand years old,” replied the ancient king,
“I would willingly give you the princess, but the disproportion is too
great; and, besides, we must give our daughters husbands who will last
well. You do not know how to preserve yourselves any longer. Even those
who died only fifteen centuries ago are already no more than a handful
of dust. Behold, my flesh is solid as basalt, my bones are bones of
steel!
“I will be present on the last day of the world with the same body
and the same features which I had during my lifetime. My daughter
Hermonthis will last longer than a statue of bronze.
“Then the last particles of your dust will have been scattered abroad
by the winds, and even Isis herself, who was able to find the atoms of
Osiris, would scarce be able to recompense your being.
“See how vigorous I yet remain, and how mighty is my grasp,” he added,
shaking my hand in the English fashion with a strength that buried my
rings in the flesh of my fingers.
He squeezed me so hard that I awoke, and found my friend Alfred shaking
me by the arm to make me get up.
“Oh, you everlasting sleeper! Must I have you carried out into the
middle of the street, and fireworks exploded in your ears? It is
afternoon. Don’t you recollect your promise to take me with you to see
M. Aguado’s Spanish pictures?”
“God! I forgot all, all about it,” I answered, dressing myself
hurriedly. “We will go there at once. I have the permit lying there on
my desk.”
I started to find it, but fancy my astonishment when I beheld, instead
of the mummy’s foot I had purchased the evening before, the little
green paste idol left in its place by the Princess Hermonthis!
THE THIEF
By ANNA KATHARINE GREEN
[Attribution By permission of the author. From “Masterpieces of
Mystery,” by Anna Katharine Green, copyright 1913, by Dodd, Mead & Co.]
“And now, if you have all seen the coin and sufficiently admired it,
you may pass it back. I make a point of never leaving it off the shelf
for more than fifteen minutes.”
The half-dozen or more guests seated about the board of the genial
speaker, glanced casually at each other as though expecting to see the
object mentioned immediately produced.
But no coin appeared.
“I have other amusements waiting,” suggested their host, with a smile
in which even his wife could detect no signs of impatience. “Now let
Robert put it back into the cabinet.”
Robert was the butler.
Blank looks, negative gestures, but still no coin.
“Perhaps it is in somebody’s lap,” timidly ventured one of the younger
women. “It doesn’t seem to be on the table.”
Immediately all the ladies began lifting their napkins and shaking
out the gloves which lay under them, in an effort to relieve their own
embarrassment and that of the gentlemen who had not even so simple a
resource as this at their command.
“It can’t be lost,” protested Mr. Sedgwick, with an air of perfect
confidence. “I saw it but a minute ago in somebody’s hand. Darrow, you
had it; what did you do with it?”
“Passed it along.”
“Well, well, it must be under somebody’s plate or doily.” And he began
to move about his own and such dishes as were within reach of his hand.
Each guest imitated him, lifting glasses and turning over spoons till
Mr. Sedgwick himself bade them desist. “It’s slipped to the floor,” he
nonchalantly concluded. “A toast to the ladies, and we will give Robert
the chance of looking for it.”
As they drank this toast, his apparently careless, but quietly astute,
glance took in each countenance about him. The coin was very valuable
and its loss would be keenly felt by him. Had it slipped from the table
some one’s eye would have perceived it, some hand would have followed
it. Only a minute or two before, the attention of the whole party had
been concentrated upon it. Darrow had held it up for all to see, while
he discoursed upon its history. He would take Darrow aside at the
first opportunity and ask him--But--ah! how could he do that? These
were his intimate friends. He knew them well, more than well, with one
exception, and he--Well, he was the handsomest of the lot and the most
debonair and agreeable. A little more gay than usual to-night, possibly
a trifle too gay, considering that a man of Mr. Blake’s social weight
and business standing sat at the board; but not to be suspected, no,
not to be suspected, even if he was the next man after Darrow and had
betrayed something like confusion when the eyes of the whole table
turned his way at the former’s simple statement of “I passed it on.”
Robert would find the coin; he was a fool to doubt it; and if Robert
did not, why, he would simply have to pocket his chagrin, and not let a
triviality like this throw a shadow over his hospitality.
All this, while he genially lifted his glass and proposed the health of
the ladies. The constraint of the preceding moment was removed by his
manner, and a dozen jests caused as many merry laughs. Then he pushed
back his chair.
“And now, some music!” he cheerfully cried, as with lingering glances
and some further pokings about of the table furniture, the various
guests left their places and followed him into the adjoining room.
But the ladies were too nervous and the gentlemen not sufficiently
sure of their voices to undertake the entertainment of the rest at a
moment of such acknowledged suspense; and notwithstanding the exertions
of their host and his quiet but much discomfited wife, it soon became
apparent that but one thought engrossed them all, and that any attempt
at conversation must prove futile so long as the curtains between the
two rooms remained open and they could see Robert on his hands and
knees searching the floor and shoving aside the rugs.
Darrow, who was Mr. Sedgwick’s brother-in-law and almost as much at
home in the house as Sedgwick himself, made a move to draw these
curtains, but something in his relative’s face stopped him and he
desisted with some laughing remark which did not attract enough
attention, even, to elicit any response.
“I hope his eyesight is good,” murmured one of the young girls, edging
a trifle forward. “Mayn’t I help him look? They say at home that I am
the only one in the house who can find anything.”
Mr. Sedgwick smiled indulgently at the speaker (a round-faced,
round-eyed, merry-hearted girl whom in days gone by he had dandled on
his knees) but answered quite quickly for him:
“Robert will find it if it is there.” Then, distressed at this
involuntary disclosure of his thought, added in his wholehearted way:
“It’s such a little thing, and the room is so big, and a round object
rolls unexpectedly far, you know. Well, have you got it?” he eagerly
demanded, as the butler finally showed himself in the door.
“No, sir; and it’s not in the dining-room. I have cleared the table and
thoroughly searched the floor.”
Mr. Sedgwick knew that he had. He had no doubts about Robert. Robert
had been in his employ for years and had often handled his coins and,
at his order, sometimes shown them.
“Very well,” said he, “we’ll not bother about it any more to-night; you
may draw the curtains.”
But here the clear, almost strident voice of the youngest man of the
party interposed.
“Wait a minute,” said he. “This especial coin is the great treasure
of Mr. Sedgwick’s valuable collection. It is unique in this country,
and not only worth a great deal of money, but cannot be duplicated at
any cost. There are only three of its stamp in the world. Shall we
let the matter pass, then, as though it were of small importance? I
feel that we cannot; that we are, in a measure, responsible for its
disappearance. Mr. Sedgwick handed it to us to look at, and while it
was going through our hands it vanished. What must he think? What has
he every right to think? I need not put it into words; you know what
you would think, what you could not help but think, if the object
were yours and it was lost in this way. Gentlemen--I leave the ladies
entirely out of this--I do not propose that he shall have further
opportunity to associate me with this very natural doubt. I demand the
privilege of emptying my pockets here and now, before any of us have
left his presence. I am a connoisseur in coins myself and consequently
find it imperative to take the initiative in this matter. As I propose
to spare the ladies, let us step back into the dining-room. Mr.
Sedgwick, pray don’t deny me; I’m thoroughly in earnest, I assure you.”
The astonishment created by this audacious proposition was so great,
and the feeling it occasioned so intense, that for an instant all
stood speechless. Young Hammersley was a millionaire himself, and
generous to a fault, as all knew. Under no circumstances would any one
even suspect him of appropriating anything, great or small, to which he
had not a perfect right. Nor was he likely to imagine for a moment that
any one would. That he could make such a proposition then, based upon
any such plea, argued a definite suspicion in some other quarter, which
could not pass unrecognized. In vain Mr. Sedgwick raised his voice in
frank and decided protest, two of the gentlemen had already made a
quick move toward Robert, who still stood, stupefied by the situation,
with his hand on the cord which controlled the curtains.
“He is quite right,” remarked one of these, as he passed into the
dining-room. “I shouldn’t sleep a wink to-night if this question
remained unsettled.” The other, the oldest man present, the financier
of whose standing and highly esteemed character I have already spoken,
said nothing, but followed in a way to show that his mind was equally
made up.
The position in which Mr. Sedgwick found himself placed was far from
enviable. With a glance at the two remaining gentlemen, he turned
towards the ladies now standing in a close group at the other end of
the room. One of them was his wife, and he quivered internally as he
noted the deep red of her distressed countenance. But it was the other
he addressed, singling out, with the rare courtesy which was his by
nature, the one comparative stranger, Darrow’s niece, a Rochester
girl, who could not be finding this, her first party in Boston, very
amusing.
“I hope you will appreciate the dilemma in which I have been placed by
these gentlemen,” he began, “and will pardon--”
But here he noticed that she was not in the least attending; her eyes
were on the handsome figure of Hugh Clifford, her uncle’s neighbor
at table, who in company with Mr. Hammersley was still hesitating
in the doorway. As Mr. Sedgwick stopped his useless talk, the two
passed in and the sound of her fluttering breath as she finally turned
a listening ear his way, caused him to falter as he repeated his
assurances and begged her indulgence.
She answered with some conventional phrase which he forgot while
crossing the room. But the remembrance of her slight satin-robed
figure, drawn up in an attitude whose carelessness was totally belied
by the anxiety of her half-averted glance, followed him into the
presence of the four men awaiting him. Four? I should say five, for
Robert was still there, though in a corner by himself, ready, no
doubt, to share any attempt which the others might make to prove their
innocence.
“The ladies will await us in the music-room,” announced the host
on entering; and then paused, disconcerted by the picture suddenly
disclosed to his eye. On one side stood the two who had entered first,
with their eyes fixed in open sternness on young Clifford, who, quite
alone on the rug, faced them with a countenance of such pronounced
pallor that there seemed to be nothing else in the room. As his
features were singularly regular and his almost perfect mouth was
accentuated by a smile as set as his figure was immobile, the effect
was so startling that not only Mr. Sedgwick, but every other person
present, no doubt, wished that the plow had never turned the furrow
which had brought this wretched coin to light.