It was a thin-bladed, wicked-looking Egyptian weapon, which I remembered having seen lying on Sir Thomas’ table.
“It seems as if Ganra Singh’s clothes would have been in disarray and his hands bloody,” I suggested.
“He scarcely had time to cleanse himself and arrange his garments.”
“At any rate,” Gordon answered, “the fingerprints of the killer should be upon this dagger hilt. I have been careful not to obliterate any such traces, and I will lay the weapon on the couch here for the examination of a Bertillon expert. I am not adept in such matters myself. And in the meanwhile I think I’ll go over the room, after the accepted manner of detectives, to look for any possible clues.”
“And I’ll take a turn through the house. Ganra Singh may really be innocent, and the murderer lurking somewhere in the building.”
“Better be careful. If there is such a being, remember that it is a desperate man, quite ready and willing to do murder.”
I took up a heavy blackthorn and went out into the corridor. I forgot to say that all these corridors were dimly lighted, and the curtains drawn so closely that the whole house appeared to be dark from the outside. As I shut the door behind me, I felt more strongly than ever the oppressive silence of the house.
Heavy velvet hangings masked unseen doorways and, as a stray whisper of wind whipped them about, I started, and the lines from Poe flitted through my brain:
“And the silken, sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me, filled with fantastic terrors never felt before.”
I strode to the landing of the stair, and, after another glance at the silent corridors and the blank doors, I descended. I had decided that if any man had hidden in the upper story, he would have descended to the lower floor by this time, if indeed he had not already left the house. I struck a light in the lower reception hall, and went into the next room. The whole of the main building between the wings, I found, was composed of Sir Thomas’ private museum, a really gigantic room, filled with idols, mummy cases, stone and clay pillars, papyrus scrolls, and like objects. I wasted little time here, however, for as I entered my eyes fell upon something I knew to be out of place in some manner. It was a mummy case, very different from the other cases, and it was open! I knew instinctively that it had contained the mummy of which Sir Thomas had boasted that evening, but now it was empty. The mummy was gone.
Thinking of his words regarding the jealousy of his rivals, I turned hastily and made for the hall and the stair. As I did so, I thought I heard somewhere in the house a faint crashing. I had no desire, however, to further explore the building alone and armed only with a club. I wished to return and tell Gordon that we were probably opposed to a gang of international thieves. I had started back toward the hall when I perceived a staircase leading directly from the museum room, and it I mounted, coming into the upper corridor near the right wing.
Again the long dim corridor ran away in front of me, with its blank mysterious doors and dark hangings. I must traverse the greater part of it in order to reach the study at the other end, and a foolish shiver shook me as I visualized hideous creatures lurking behind those closed doors. Then I shook myself. Whatever had driven Sir Thomas Cameron insane, it was human, and I gripped my blackthorn more firmly and strode down the corridor.
Then after a few strides I halted suddenly, the short hairs prickling at the back of my neck, and my flesh crawling unaccountably. I sensed an unseen presence, and my eyes turned as drawn by a magnet to some heavy tapestries which masked a doorway. There was no wind in the rooms, but the hangings moved slightly! I started, straining my eyes on the heavy dark fabric until it seemed the intensity of my gaze would burn through it, and I was aware, instinctively, that other eyes glared back. Then my eyes strayed to the wall beside the hidden doorway. Some freak of the vague light threw a dark formless shadow there, and, as I looked, it slowly assumed shape–a hideous distorted goblin image, grotesquely man-like, and noseless!
My nerve broke suddenly. That distorted figure might be merely the twisted shadow of a man who stood behind the hangings, but it was burned into my brain that, man, beast, or demon, those dark tapestries hid a shape of terrible and soul-shattering threat. A brooding horror lurked in the shadows and there in that silent darkened corridor with its vague flickering lights and that stark shadow hovering within my gaze, I came as near to insanity as I have ever come–it was not so much what met my eyes and senses, but the phantoms conjured up in my brain, the terrible dim images that rose at the back of my skull and gibbered at me. For I knew that for the moment the commonplace human world was far away, and that I was face to face with some horror from another sphere.
I turned and hurried down the corridor, my futile black thorn shaking in my grasp, and the cold sweat forming in great beads upon my brow. I reached the study and entered, closing the door behind me. My eyes turned instinctively to the couch with its grim burden. Gordon leaned over some papers on a table, and he turned as I entered, his eyes alight with some suppressed excitement.
“Slade, I’ve found a map here drawn by Cameron, and, according to it, he found that mummy on the borders of the land where Von Honmann was murdered–”
“The mummy’s gone,” I said.
“Gone? By Jupiter! Maybe that explains it! A gang of scientific thieves! Likely Ganra Singh is in with them–let’s go talk to him.”
Gordon strode across the corridor, I following. My nerve was still shaken, and I had no use to discuss my recent experience. I must get back some of my courage before I could bring myself to put the fear I had felt into words. Gordon knocked at the door. Silence reigned. He turned the key in the lock, swung the door open, and swore. The room was empty! A door opening into another room parallel to the corridor showed how he had escaped. The lock had been fairly torn off.
“That was that noise I heard!” Gordon exclaimed. “Fool that I was, I was so engrossed in Sir Thomas’
notes that I paid no attention, thinking it was but the noise of your opening or closing a door! I’m a failure as a detective. If I had been on my guard I might have arrived on the scene before the prisoner made his getaway.”
“Lucky for you, you didn’t,” I answered shakily. “Gordon, let’s get out of here! Ganra Singh was lurking behind the hangings as I came up the corridor–I saw the shadow of his noseless face–and I tell you, the man’s not human. He’s an evil spirit! An inhuman goblin! Do you think a man could unhinge Sir Thomas’
reason–a human being? No, no, no! He’s a demon in human form–and I’m not so sure that the form’s human!”
Gordon’s face was shadowed. “Nonsense! A hideous and unexplained crime has been perpetrated here tonight, but I will not believe that it cannot be explained in natural terms–listen!”
Somewhere down the corridor a door had opened and closed. Gordon leaped to the door, sprang through the passageway. Down the corridor I followed, cursing his recklessness, but fired by his example to a kind of foolhardy bravery. I had no doubt but that the end of that wild chase would be a death grapple with the inhuman Indian, and the shattered door lock was ample proof of his prowess, even without the gory form which lay in the silent study. But when a man like Gordon leads, what can one do but follow?
Down the corridor we sped, through the door where we had seen the thing vanish, through the dark room beyond, and into the next. The sounds of flight in front of us told us that we were pressing close upon our prey. The memory of that chase through darkened rooms is a vague and hazy dream–a wild and chaotic nightmare. I do not remember the rooms and passages which we traversed. I only know that I followed Gordon blindly and halted only when he stopped in front of a tapestry-hung doorway beyond which a red glow was apparent. I was mazed, breathless. My sense of direction was completely gone. I had no idea as to what part of the house we were in, or why that crimson glow pulsed beyond the hangings.
“This is Ganra Singh’s room,” said Gordon. “Sir Thomas mentioned it in his conversation. It is the ext
reme upper room of the right wing. Further he cannot go, for this is the only door to the room and the windows are barred. Within that room stands at bay the man–or whatever–killed Sir Thomas Cameron!”
“Then in God’s name let us rush in upon him before we have time to reconsider and our nerve breaks!” I urged, and, shouldering past Gordon, I hurled the curtains aside…
The red glow at least was explained. A great fire leaped and flickered in the huge fireplace, lending a red radiance to the room. And there at bay stood a nightmarish and hellish form– the missing mummy!
My dazed eyes took in at one glance the wrinkled leathery skin, the sunken cheeks, the flaring and withered nostrils from which the nose had decayed away; the hideous eyes were open now, and they burned with a ghastly and demoniac life. A single glimpse was all I had, for in an instant the long lean thing came lurching headlong at me, a heavy ornament of some sort clutched in its lank and taloned hand. I struck once with the blackthorn and felt the skull give way, but it never halted–for who can slay the dead?–and the next instant I was down, writhing and dazed, with a shattered shoulder bone, lying where the sweep of that dried arm had dropped me.
I saw Gordon at short range fire four shots pointblank into the frightful form, and then it had grappled with him, and as I struggled futilely to regain my feet and re-enter the battle, my athletic friend, held helpless in those inhuman arms, was bent back across a table until it seemed his spine would give way.
It was Ganra Singh who saved us. The great Sikh came suddenly through the hangings like an Arctic blast and plunged into the fray like a wounded bull elephant. With a strength I have never seen equalled and which even the living-dead man could not resist, he tore the animated mummy from its prey and hurled it across the room. Borne on the crest of that irresistible onslaught, the mummy was flung backward until the great fireplace was at its back. Then with one last volcanic effort, the avenger crashed it headlong into the fire, beat it down, stamped it into the flames until they caught at the writhing limbs, and the frightful form crumbled and disintegrated among them with an intolerable scent of decayed and burning flesh.
Then Gordon, who had stood watching like a man in a dream, Gordon, the iron-nerved lion hunter who had braved a thousand perils, now crumpled forward on his face in a dead faint!
Later we talked the affair over, while Ganra Singh bandaged my hurts with hands as gentle and light of touch as those of a woman.
“I think,” I said weakly, “and I will admit that my view is untenable in the light of reason, but then any explanation must be incredible and improbable, that the people who made this mummy centuries and possibly thousands of years ago knew the art of preserving life; that by some means this man was simply put to sleep and slept in a death-like manner all these years, just as Hindu fakirs appear to lie in death for days and weeks at a time. When the proper time came, then the creature awoke and started on its–or his–hideous course.”
“What do you think, Ganra Singh?”
“Sahib,” said the great Sikh courteously, “who am I to speak of hidden things? Many things are unknown to man. After the sahib had locked me into the room, I bethought me that whoever slew my master might escape while I stood helpless, and, desiring to go elsewhere, I plucked away the lock with as much silence as I could and went forth searching among the darkened rooms. At last I heard sounds in my own bedroom and, going there, found the sahibs fighting with the living-dead man. It was fortunate that before all this occurred I had built a great fire in my room so as to last all night, for I am unused to this cold country. I know that fire is the enemy of all evil things, the Great Cleanser, and so thrust the Evil One into the flame. I am glad to have avenged my master and aided the sahibs.”
“Aided!” Gordon grinned. “If you hadn’t showed up just when you did, our bally ships would have been sunk. Ganra Singh, I’ve already apologized for my suspicions; you’re a real man.”
“No, Slade,” his face grew serious, “I think you are wrong. In the first place, the mummy isn’t thousands of years old. It’s scarcely ten years old! As I find by reading his secret notes, Sir Thomas didn’t find it in a lost temple in Upper Egypt, he found it in a fetish hut in Central Africa. He couldn’t explain its presence there, and so said he found it in the hinterlands of Egypt. He being an Egyptologist, it sounded better, too.
But he really thought it was very ancient, and, as we know, he was right about the unusual process of mummification. The tribesmen who sealed that mummy into its case knew more about such things than the ancient Egyptians, evidently. But it wouldn’t have lasted over twenty years anyway, I’m sure. Then Sir Thomas came along and stole it from the tribesmen–the same tribe, by the way, who murdered Von Honmann.
“No, your theory is wrong, I feel. You have heard of the occult theory which states that a spirit, earthbound through hate or love, can only do material good or evil when animating a material body? The occultists say, reasonably enough, that to bridge the gulf which lies between the two worlds of life and death, the spirit or ghost must inhabit and animate a fleshly form–preferably its own former habitation.
This mummy had died as men die, but I believe that the hate it felt in life was sufficient to span the void of death, to cause the dead and withered body to move and act and do murder.
“Now, if this be true, there is no limit to the horror to which mankind may be heir. If this be true, men may be hovering forever on the brink of unthought oceans of supernatural terror, parted from the next world by a thin veil which may be rent, as we have just seen it rent. I would like to believe otherwise–but Slade–
“As Ganra Singh hurled the struggling mummy into the fire, I watched–the sunken features expanded in the heat for a fleeting instant, just as a toy balloon when inflated, and for one brief second took on a human and familiar likeness. Slade, that face was the face of Gustave Von Honmann! ”
The Dwellers Under the Tomb
I awoke suddenly and sat up in bed, sleepily wondering who it was that was battering on the door so violently; it threatened to shatter the panels. A voice squealed, sharpened intolerably as with mad terror.
“Conrad! Conrad!” someone outside the door was screaming. “For God’s sake, let me in! I’ve seen him!–I’ve seen him!”
“It sounds like Job Kiles,” said Conrad, lifting his long frame off the divan where he had been sleeping, after giving up his bed to me. “Don’t knock down the door!” he called, reaching for his slippers. “I’m coming.”
“Well, hurry!” squalled the unseen visitor. “I’ve just looked into the eyes of Hell!”
Conrad turned on a light and flung open the door, and in half fell, half staggered a wild-eyed shape which I recognized as the man Conrad had named–Job Kiles, a sour, miserly old man who lived on the small estate which adjoined that of Conrad. Now a grisly change had come over the man, usually so reticent and self-possessed. His sparse hair fairly bristled; drops of perspiration beaded his grey skin, and from time to time he shook as with a violent ague.
“What in God’s name is the matter, Kiles?” exclaimed Conrad, staring at him. “You look as if you’d seen a ghost!”
“A ghost!” Kiles’ high pitched voice cracked and dribbled off into a shriek of hysterical laughter. “I’ve seen a demon from Hell! I tell you, I saw him–tonight! Just a few minutes ago! He looked in at my window and laughed at me! Oh God, that laugh!”
“Who?” snapped Conrad impatiently.
“My brother Jonas!” screamed old Kiles.
Even Conrad started. Job’s twin brother Jonas had been dead for a week. Both Conrad and I had seen his corpse placed in the tomb high upon the steep slopes of Dagoth Hills. I remembered the hatred which had existed between the brothers–Job the miser, Jonas the spendthrift, dragging out his last days in poverty and loneliness, in the ruined old family mansion on the lower slopes of the Dagoth Hills, all the brooding venom in his embittered soul centering on the penurious brother who dwelt in a house of his own in the valley.
This feeling had been reciprocated. Even when Jonas lay dying, Job had only grudgingly allowed himself to be persuaded to come to his brother. As it chanced, he had been alone with Jonas when the latter died, and the death scene must have been hideous, for Job had run out of the room, grey-faced and trembling, pursued by a horrible cackle of laughter, broken short by the sudden death-rattle.
Now old Job stood shaking before us, sweat pouring off his grey skin, and babbling his dead brother’s name.
“I saw him! I sat up later tonight than usual. Just as I turned out the light to go to bed–his face leered at me through the window, framed in the moonlight. He’s come back from Hell to drag me down, as he swore to do as he lay dying. He’s not human! He hadn’t been for years! I suspected it when he returned from his long wandering in the Orient. He’s a fiend in human shape! A vampire! He plans my destruction, body and soul!”
I sat speechless, utterly bewildered, and even Conrad found no words. Confronted by the apparent evidence of complete lunacy what is a man to say or do? My only thought was the obvious one that Job Kiles was insane. Now he seized Conrad by the breast of his dressing gown and shook him violently in the agony of his terror.
“There’s but one thing to do!” he cried, the light of desperation in his eyes. “I must go to his tomb! I must see with my own eyes if he still lies there where we laid him! And you must go with me! I dare not go through the darkness alone! He might be waiting for me–lying in wait behind any hedge or tree!”
“This is madness, Kiles,” expostulated Conrad. “Jonas is dead–you had a nightmare–”
“Nightmare!” his voice rose in a cracked scream. “I’ve had plenty since I stood beside his evil death-bed and heard the blasphemous threats pour like a black river from his foaming lips; but this was no dream! I was wide awake, and I tell you–I tell you I saw my demon-brother Jonas leering hideously through the window at me!”