“You make out a strong case, Monsieur,” de Grandin nodded, “but—”
“All right, then look at the thing’s history so far: Larson’s workmen died while working in the tomb. How? By tomb-spider bite!
“Bosh! A tomb-spider is hardly more poisonous than our own garden spiders. I know; I’ve been bitten by the things, and suffered less inconvenience than when a scorpion stung me in Yucatan.
“Then, on the passage down the Nile most of the boat crew sickened, and some of ’em died, with a strange fever; yet they were hardy devils, used to the climate and in all probability immune to anything in the way of illness the country could produce. Then Foster, Larson’s assistant, pegged out just as they were setting sail from Egypt. Looks as though some evil influence were working, doesn’t it?
“Now, tonight: Larson was all ready to unwrap the mummy, but never got past taking it from the box. He’s dead—‘dead like a herring,’ as you put it—and only God knows how he died. Right while we’re waiting for the coroner to come, this poor devil of a burglar breaks into the house, fights with some unseen thing, just as Larson did, and dies. Say what you will”—his voice rose almost to a scream—“there’s an aura of terrible misfortune round that mummy, and death is waiting for whoever ventures near it!”
De Grandin patted the waxed ends of his diminutive mustache affectionately. “What you say may all be true, Monsieur,” he conceded, “but the fact remains that both Doctor Trowbridge and I have been near the mummy; yet we were never better in our lives—though I could do nicely with a gulp or so of brandy at this time. Not only that, Professor Larson spent nearly his entire fortune and a considerable portion of the Museum’s funds in finding this so remarkable cadaver. It would be larceny, no less, for us to burn it as you suggest.”
“All right,” Ellis answered with a note of finality in his voice. “Have it your own way. As soon as the coroner’s through with me I’m going home. I wouldn’t go near that cursed mummy again for a fortune.”
“HULLO, DOCTOR DE GRANDIN,” Coroner Martin greeted, stamping his feet and shaking the snow from his coat. “Bad business, this, isn’t it? Any idea as to the cause of death?”
“The one outside unquestionably died from a broken neck,” the Frenchman answered. “As for Professor Larson’s—”
“Eh, the one outside?” Mr. Martin interrupted. “Are there two of ’em?”
“Humph, we’re lucky there aren’t five,” Ellis cut in bitterly. “They have been dying so fast we can’t keep track of ’em since Larson started to unwrap that—”
“One moment, if you please, Monsieur,” de Grandin interrupted as he raised a deprecating hand. “Monsieur the Coroner is a busy man and has his duties to perform. When they have been completed I make no doubt he will be glad to listen to your interesting theories. At present”—he bowed politely to the coroner—“will you come with us, Monsieur?” he asked.
“Count me out,” said Ellis. “I’ll wait down here, and I want to warn you that—”
We never heard the warning he had for us; for, de Grandin in the lead, we mounted the stairs to the study where Professor Larson and the mummy lay.
“H’m,” Mr. Martin, who in addition to being coroner was also the city’s leading funeral director, surveyed the room with a quick, practised glance, “this looks almost as if—” he strode across the room toward Larson’s hunched-up body and extended one hand, but:
“Grand Dieu des cochons—stand back, Monsieur!” de Grandin’s shouted admonition halted Mr. Martin in mid-stride. “Back, Monsieur; back, Friend Trowbridge—for your lives!” Snatching me by the elbow and Mr. Martin by the skirt of his coat, he fairly dragged us from the room.
“What on earth—” I began as we reached the hall, but he pushed us toward the stairway.
“Do not stand and parley!” he commanded shortly. “Out—out into the friendly cold, while there is still time, my friends! Pardieu, I see it now—Monsieur Ellis has right; that mummy—”
“Oh—oh—o-o-o-oh!” The sudden cry came to us from the floor below, followed by the sound of scuffling, as though Ellis and another were struggling madly. Then came an awful, marrow-freezing laugh, shrill, mirthless, sardonic.
“Sang du diable—it has him!” de Grandin shouted, as he rushed madly toward the stair, leaped to the balustrade and shot downward like a meteor.
Coroner Martin and I followed sedately, and found the Frenchman standing mute and breathless at the entrance of the drawing-room, his thin, red lips pursed as though emitting a soundless whistle. Professor Larson’s parlor was furnished in the formal, stilted style so popular in the late years of the last century, light chairs and couches of gilded wood upholstered in apple-green satin, a glass-doored cabinet for bric-à-brac, a pair of delicate spindle-legged tables adorned with bits of Dresden china. The furniture had been tossed about the room, the light-gray velvet rug turned up, the china-cabinet smashed and flung upon its side. In the midst of the confusion Ellis lay, his hands clenched at his sides, his knees drawn up, his lips retracted in a grim, sardonic grin.
“Good God!” Coroner Martin viewed the poor, tensed body with staring eyes. “This is dreadful—”
“Cordieu, it will he more so if we linger here!” de Grandin cried. “Outside, my friends. Do not wait to take your coats or hats—come out at once! I tell you death is lurking in each shadow of this cursed place!”
He herded us before him from the house, and bade us stand a moment, hatless and coatless, in the chilling wind. “I say,” I protested through chattering teeth, “this is carrying a joke too far, de Grandin. There’s no need to—”
“Joke?” he echoed sharply. “Do you consider it a joke that Professor Larson died the way he did tonight; that the misguided burglar perished in the same way; that even now the poor young Ellis lies all stiff and dead inside that cursed hellhole of a house? Your sense of humor is peculiar, my friend.”
“What was it?” Coroner Martin asked practically. “Was there some infection in the house that made Professor Ellis scream like that before he died, or was it—”
“Tell me, Monsieur,” de Grandin interrupted, “have you facilities for fumigation at your mortuary?”
“Of course,” the coroner returned wonderingly. “We’ve apparatus for making both formaldehyde and cyanogen gas, depending on the class of fumigation required, but—”
“Very good. Be so good as to hasten to your place of business and return as quickly as may be with materiel for cyanogen fumigation. I shall await you here. Make haste, Monsieur, this matter is of utmost urgency, I assure you.”
WHILE MR. MARTIN WAS obtaining the apparatus for fumigation, de Grandin and I hastened to my house, procured fresh outdoor clothing and retraced our steps. Though I made several attempts to discover what he had found at Larson’s, his only answers were impatient shrugs and half-articulate exclamations, and I finally gave over the attempt, knowing he would explain in detail when he thought it proper. Hands deep in pockets, heads drawn well down into our collars, we waited for the coroner’s return.
With the deftness of long practise Mr. Martin’s assistants set the tanks of mercuric cyanide in place at the front and back doors of the Larson house, ran rubber hose from them to the keyholes and lighted spirit lamps beneath them. When Mr. Martin suggested that the bodies be removed before fumigation began, de Grandin shook his head decidedly. “It would be death—or most unnecessary risk of death, at best—to permit your men to enter till the gas has had at least a day to work within the house,” he answered.
“But those bodies should be cared for,” the coroner contended, speaking from the professional knowledge of one who had practised mortuary science for more than twenty years.
“They will undergo no putrefactive changes worthy of account,” the Frenchman answered. “The gas will act to some extent as a preservative, and the risk to be avoided is worth the trouble.”
As Coroner Martin was about to counter, he continued: “Demonstration outweighs explanati
on ten to one, my friend. Permit that I should have my way, and by this time tomorrow night you will be convinced of the good foundation for my seeming stubbornness.”
SHORTLY AFTER EIGHT O’CLOCK the following evening we met once more at Larson’s house, and as calmly as though such crazy actions were an everyday affair with him, de Grandin smashed window after window with his walking-stick, and bade us wait outside for upward of a quarter-hour. At last:
“I think that it is safe to enter now,” he said. “The gas should be dispelled. Come, let us go in.”
We tiptoed down the hall to the drawing-room where Professor Ellis lay, and de Grandin turned on every available light before entering the room. Beside the young man’s rigid body he went to his knees, and seemed to be examining the floor with minutest care. “Whatever are you doing—” I began, when:
“Triomphe, I have found him!” he announced. “Come and see.”
We crossed the room and stared in wonder at the tiny object which he held between the thumb and finger of his gloved right hand. It was a tiny, ball-like thing, scarcely larger than a dried bean, a little, hairy spider with a black body striped about the abdomen with lines of vivid vermilion. “You observe him?” he asked simply. “Was I not wise to order our retreat last night?”
“What is the thing?” I demanded. “It’s harmless-looking enough, but—”
“Eh bien, there is a very great but there, my friend,” he retorted with a mirthless smile. “You saw what had been Monsieur Larson; you looked upon the poor, new-dead young Ellis? This—this little, seemingly so harmless thing it was which killed them. It is a katipo, or latrodectus Nasselti, the deadliest spider in the world. Even the cobra’s bite is but a sweetheart’s kiss beside the sting of this so small, deadly thing. Those bit by him are seized immediately with convulsions—they beat the air, they stumble and they whirl, at length they give vent to a dreadful scream which simulates a laugh. And then they fall and die.
“Does not that make it clear? The wholly irrational antics performed by Professor Larson ere he died could be explained in no sane manner. They puzzled me. I was not willing to accept Professor Ellis’ theory that the mummy was ‘unlucky,’ although, as the good God knows, it proved so for him. However, that Professor Larson was entirely dead could not be doubted, nor could one readily assign a reason for his death. Tiens, in such a case the coroner must be called, and so we telephoned for Monsieur Martin.
“Meantime, as we sat waiting in this room, a poor, half-starving devil of a man decided he would break into the house and steal whatever he could find. He mounted the bay-window’s roof, and, guided by his evil star, set foot inside the chamber where the mummy and Professor Larson lay. We heard him trample on the floor; we heard him give that dreadful, laughing scream; we searched for him, and found him dead upon the lawn.
“Very good. In due time Monsieur Martin comes; we lead him to the place where Monsieur Larson is, and as we go into the room I chance to look into the spices strewn about the bottom of that mummy-case. Ha—what is it that I see? Parbleu, I see a movement! Spices do not move, my friend, except they be blown on by the wind, and there is no wind in that room. Moreover, spices are not jettyblack with bands of red about their bellies. Non, pardieu, but certain spiders are. I see him and I know him. In the Eastern Islands, in Java, in Australia, I have seen him, and I have also seen his deadly work. He is the latrodectus Nasselti, called katipo by the natives, and his bite is almost instant and most painful death. More, those bitten by him dance about insanely in a sort of frantic seizure; they laugh—but not with happiness!—they scream with mirthless laughter; then they die. I did not wish to dance and laugh and die, my friends; I did not wish that you should do so, either. There was no time for talk or explanation; our only safety lay in flight, for they are tropic things, those spiders, and once we were outside the cold would kill them. I was about to call a warning to Monsieur Ellis, too; but I was, hélas, too late.
“Beyond a doubt one of the spiders had fastened on his clothing while he bent over to inspect that mummy-case. The insect clung to him when he left the room, and while he waited downstairs for us it crawled until it came in contact with his naked skin; then, angered, it may be, by some movement which he made, it bit him and he died.
“When I saw him lying here upon the floor I took incontinently to flight. Jules de Grandin is no coward, but who could say how many of those cursed spiders had crawled from the mummy-case and found hiding-places in the shadows—even in our clothing, as in the case of Monsieur Ellis? To stay here was to court a quick and highly disagreeable death; accordingly I rushed you out into the storm and asked Monsieur Martin to provide fumigation for the house forthwith. Now, since the cyanogen gas has killed every living thing inside this house, it is safe for us to enter.
“The bodies may safely be taken away by your assistants at any time, Monsieur,” he finished with a bow to Mr. Martin.
“EH BIEN, WERE HE but here, we could set poor Monsieur Ellis’ mind at rest concerning many things,” de Grandin murmured as we drove toward my house. “He could not understand how Professor Larson’s servants died by spider-bite, since the Egyptian tomb-spider is known to be innocuous, or nearly so. The answer now is obvious. In some way which we do not understand, a number of those poisonous black spiders found their way into that mummy-case. They are terrestrial in their habits, living in the earth and going forth by night. Light irritates them, and when the workmen brought their torches into the tomb they showed their annoyance by biting them. Death, accompanied by convulsions, followed, and because the small black spiders were invisible in the shadows, the harmless tomb-spiders received the blame. Some few of the black spiders came overseas with Professor Larson; when he pried the lid from that mummy-case—perhaps when he thrust his hand into the scattered spices to lift the mummy out—they fastened on him, bit him; killed him. You apprehend?”
“H’m, it sounds logical enough,” I answered thoughtfully, “but have you any idea how those spices came in that coffin? Poor Ellis seemed to think we’d hit on something extraordinary when he saw them; but he’s gone now and—great Scott, de Grandin, d’ye suppose those old Egyptian priests could have planted spider eggs among the spices, hoping they would hatch eventually, so that whoever molested the body in years to come would stand a chance of being bitten and killed?”
For a moment he drummed soundlessly with gloved fingers on the silver head of his stick. At length: “My friend, you interest me,” he declared solemnly. “I do not know that what you say is probable, but the manner of that mummy’s preparation is unusual. I think we owe it as a debt to poor, dead Ellis to look into the matter thoroughly.”
“Look into it? How—”
“Tomorrow we shall unwrap the body,” he responded as casually as though unshrouding centuries-old dead Egyptians were an everyday activity with us. “If we can find some explanation hidden in the mummy-clothes, well and good. If we do not—eh bien, the dead have spoken before; why not again?”
“The—dead—have—spoken?” I echoed slowly, incredulously. “What in the world—”
“Not in this world, precisely,” he interrupted with the shadow of a smile, “but there are those who look behind the veil which separates us from the ones we call the dead, my friend. We shall try other methods first. Those failing—” he recommenced his drumming on the handle of his cane, humming softly:
Sacré de nom,
Ron, ron et ron;
La vie est brêve,
La nuit est longue—
NEXT EVENING WE UNWRAPPED the mummy.
It was an oddly assorted group which gathered in the basement of Harrisonville Museum to denude the ancient dead of its cerements. Hodgson, the assistant curator of the department of archeology, a slender little man in gold-bowed, rimless spectacles, bald to the ears and much addicted to the habit of buttoning and unbuttoning his primly untidy double-breasted jacket, stood by in a state of twittering nervousness as de Grandin set to work.
“W
ho sups with the devil needs a long spoon,” the little Frenchman quoted with a smile as he drew a pair of heavy rubber gloves on his hands before taking up his scissors and snipping one of the criss-crossed linen bands with which the body was tightly wrapped. “I do not greatly fear that any of those small black imps of hell survived Monsieur Martin’s gas,” he added, laying back a fold of yellowed linen, “but it is well to be prepared. The cemeteries are full to overflowing with those who have thought otherwise.”
Yard after endless yard of linen he reeled off, coming at length to a strong, seamless shroud drawn sackwise over the body and tied at the feet with a stout cord. The cloth of which the sack was made seemed stronger and heavier than the bandages, and was thickly coated with wax or some ceraceous substance, the whole being, apparently, airtight and watertight.
“Why, bless my soul, I never saw anything like this before,” stammered Doctor Hodgson, leaning forward across de Grandin’s shoulder to stare curiously at the inner shroud.
“So much we gathered from Monsieur Ellis before—when he first viewed this body,” de Grandin answered dryly, and Professor Hodgson retreated with an odd little squeaking exclamation, for all the world like that of an intimidated mouse.
“Sale lâche!” the Frenchman whispered softly, his contempt of Hodgson’s cowardice written plainly on his face. Then, as he cut the binding string away and began twitching the waxed shroud upward from the mummy’s shoulders:
“Ah ha? Ah-ha-ha—que diable?”
The body brought to view beneath the blue-white glare of the electric bulbs was not technically a mummy; though the aromatic spices and the sterile, arid atmosphere of Egypt had combined to keep it in a state of most unusual preservation. The feet, first parts to be exposed, were small and beautifully formed, with long, straight toes and narrow heels, the digits and soles, as well as the whole plantar region, stained brilliant red. There was surprizingly little desiccation, and though the terminal tendons of the brevis digitorum showed prominently through the skin, the effect was by no means revolting; I had seen equal prominence of flexor muscles in living feet where the patient had suffered considerable emaciation.
The Dark Angel Page 50
