human; and his, white and blank with an expression that wasbeyond either astonishment or alarm. She looked up; he looked down. Itwas a picture in a nightmare, and the candle, stuck in the sand close tothe hole, threw upon it the glare of impromptu footlights.
Then John Silence moved forward and spoke in a voice that was very low,yet perfectly calm and natural.
"I am glad you have come," he said. "You are the one person whosepresence at this moment is most required. And I hope that you may yet bein time to appease the anger of the Fire, and to bring peace again toyour household, and," he added lower still so that no one heard it butmyself, "_safety to yourself_."
And while her brother stumbled backwards, crushing a candle into thesand in his awkwardness, the old lady crawled farther into the vaultedchamber and slowly rose upon her feet.
At the sight of the wrapped figure of the mummy I was fully prepared tosee her scream and faint, but on the contrary, to my complete amazement,she merely bowed her head and dropped quietly upon her knees. Then,after a pause of more than a minute, she raised her eyes to the roof andher lips began to mutter as in prayer. Her right hand, meanwhile, whichhad been fumbling for some time at her throat suddenly came away, andbefore the gaze of all of us she held it out, palm upwards, over thegrey and ancient figure outstretched below. And in it we beheldglistening the green jasper of the stolen scarabaeus.
Her brother, leaning heavily against the wall behind, uttered a soundthat was half cry, half exclamation, but John Silence, standing directlyin front of her, merely fixed his eyes on her and pointed downwards tothe staring face below.
"Replace it," he said sternly, "where it belongs."
Miss Wragge was kneeling at the feet of the mummy when this happened. Wethree men all had our eyes riveted on what followed. Only the reader whoby some remote chance may have witnessed a line of mummies, freshly laidfrom their tombs upon the sand, slowly stir and bend as the heat of theEgyptian sun warms their ancient bodies into the semblance of life, canform any conception of the ultimate horror we experienced when thesilent figure before us moved in its grave of lead and sand. Slowly,before our eyes, it writhed, and, with a faint rustling of theimmemorial cerements, rose up, and, through sightless and bandaged eyes,stared across the yellow candlelight at the woman who had violated it.
I tried to move--her brother tried to move--but the sand seemed to holdour feet. I tried to cry--her brother tried to cry--but the sand seemedto fill our lungs and throat. We could only stare--and, even so, thesand seemed to rise like a desert storm and cloud our vision ...
And when I managed at length to open my eyes again, the mummy was lyingonce more upon its back, motionless, the shrunken and painted faceupturned towards the ceiling, and the old lady had tumbled forward andwas lying in the semblance of death with her head and arms upon itscrumbling body.
But upon the wrappings of the throat I saw the green jasper of thesacred scarabaeus shining again like a living eye.
Colonel Wragge and the doctor recovered themselves long before I did,and I found myself helping them clumsily and unintelligently to raisethe frail body of the old lady, while John Silence carefully replacedthe covering over the grave and scraped back the sand with his foot,while he issued brief directions.
I heard his voice as in a dream; but the journey back along that crampedtunnel, weighted by a dead woman, blinded with sand, suffocated withheat, was in no sense a dream. It took us the best part of half an hourto reach the open air. And, even then, we had to wait a considerabletime for the appearance of Dr. Silence. We carried her undiscovered intothe house and up to her own room.
"The mummy will cause no further disturbance," I heard Dr. Silence sayto our host later that evening as we prepared to drive for the nighttrain, "provided always," he added significantly, "that you, and yours,cause it no disturbance."
It was in a dream, too, that we left.
"You did not see her face, I know," he said to me as we wrapped our rugsabout us in the empty compartment. And when I shook my head, quiteunable to explain the instinct that had come to me not to look, heturned toward me, his face pale, and genuinely sad.
"Scorched and blasted," he whispered.
Three John Silence Stories Page 39
