The Menzies Museum (scene of my first meeting with Moris Klaw) was not yet opened to the public when Coram (the curator), Moris Klaw, Grimsby, and I stood in the Egyptian Room before a case containing mummies. The room adjoining--the Greek Room--had been the scene of the dreadful tragedies which first had acquainted me with the wonderful methods of the eccentric investigator.
“Whoever broke into Sotheby’s last night, Mr. Klaw,” said Grimsby, “knew the ins and outs of the place; knew it backward. It’s my idea that he was known to the people there. After having cut off the head of the mummy he probably walked out openly. Then, again, it must have been somebody who knew the habits of Mr. Pettigrew’s household that got at his mummy. Of course”--his eyes twinkled with a satisfaction which he could not conceal--“I’m very sorry to hear that our man has proved too clever for you! Think of a burglar breaking into Mr. Moris Klaw’s house!”
“Think of it, my friend,” rumbled the other; “if it makes you laugh go on thinking of it, and you will grow fat!”
Grimsby openly winked at me. He was out of his depth himself, and was not displeased to find the omniscient Moris Klaw apparently in a similar position.
“I am not resentful,” continued Klaw, “and I will capture for you the mummy man.”
“What?” cried Grimsby. “Are you on the track?”
“I will tell you something, my laughing friend. You will secretly watch this Egyptian Room like the cat at the mouse-hole, and presently--I expect it will be at night--he will come here, this hunter of mummies!”
Grimsby stared incredulously.
“I don’t doubt your word, Mr. Klaw,” he said; “but I don’t see how you can possibly know that. Why should he go for the mummies here rather than for those in one of the other museums or in private collections?”
“Why do you order a bottle of Bass,” rasped Klaw, “in a saloon, rather than a bottle of water or a bottle of vinegar? It is because what you want is a bottle of Bass. Am I a damn fool? There are others. I am not alone in my foolishness!”
The group broke up: Grimsby, very puzzled, going off to make arrangements to have the Egyptian Room watched night and day, and Coram, Klaw, and I walking along in the direction of the Greek Room.
“I have no occasion to remind you, Mr. Klaw,” said Coram, “that the Menzies Museum is a hard nut for any burglar to crack. We have a night watchman, you will remember, who hourly patrols every apartment. For any one to break into the Egyptian Room, force one of the cases and take out a mummy, would be a task extremely difficult to perform undetected.”
“This mummy hunter,” replied Klaw, “can perform it with ease; but because we shall all be waiting for him he cannot perform it undetected.”
“I shouldn’t think there is much likelihood of any attempt during the day?” I said.
“There is no likelihood,” agreed Klaw; “but I like to see that Grimsby busy! The man with the knife to decapitate mummies will come to-night. Without fear he will come, for how is he to know that an old fool from Wapping anticipates his arrival?”
We quitted the Museum together. The affair brought back to my mind the gruesome business of the Greek Room murders, and for the second time in my life I made arrangements to watch in the Menzies Museum at night.
On several occasions during the day I found myself thinking of this most singular affair and wondering in what way the “Book of the Lamps,” mentioned by Moris Klaw, could be associated with it. I was quite unable to surmise, too, how Klaw had divined that the Menzies Museum would become the scene of the next outrage.
We had arranged to dine with Coram in his apartments, which adjoined the Museum buildings, and an oddly mixed party we were, comprising Coram, his daughter, Moris Klaw, Isis Klaw, Grimsby, and myself.
A man had gone on duty in the Egyptian Room directly the doors were closed to the public, and we had secretly arranged to watch the place from nightfall onward. The construction of the room greatly facilitated our plan; for there was a long glass skylight in the centre of its roof, and by having the blinds drawn back we could look down into the room from a landing window of a higher floor--a portion of the curator’s house.
Dinner over, Isis Klaw departed.
“You will not remain, Isis,” said her father. “It is so unnecessary. Good-night, my child!”
Accordingly, the deferential and very admiring Grimsby descended with Coram to see Isis off in a taxi. I marvelled to think of her returning to that tumble-down, water-logged ruin in Wapping.
“Now, Mr. Grimsby,” said Moris Klaw, when we four investigators had gathered together again, “you will hide in the case with the mummies!”
“But I may find myself helpless! How do we know that any particular case is going to be opened? Besides, I don’t know what to expect!”
“Blessed is he that expecteth little, my friend. It is quite possible that no attempt will be made to-night. In that event you will have to be locked in again to-morrow night!”
Grimsby accordingly set out. He held a key to the curator’s private door, which opened upon the Greek Room, and also the key of a wall case. Moris Klaw had especially warned him against making the slightest noise. In fact, he had us all agog with curiosity and expectation. As he and Coram and I, having opened, very carefully, the landing window, looked down through the skylight into the Egyptian Room, Grimsby appeared beneath us. He was carrying an electric pocket torch.
Opening the wall case nearest to the lower end of the room, he glanced up rapidly, then stepped within, reclosing the glass door. As Klaw had pointed out earlier in the evening, an ideal hiding place existed between the side of the last sarcophagus and the angle of the wall.
“I hope he has refastened the catch,” said our eccentric companion; “but not with noisiness.”
“Why do you fear his making a noise?” asked Coram, curiously.
“Outside, upon the landing,” replied Moris Klaw, “is a tall piece of a bas-relief; it leans back against the wall. You know it?”
“Certainly.”
“To-night, you did not look behind it, in the triangular space so formed.”
“There’s no occasion. A man could not get in there.”
“He could not, you say? No? That exploits to me, Mr. Coram, that you have no eye for capacity! But if you are wrong, what then?”
“Any one hiding there would have to remain in hiding until the morning. He could not gain access to any of the rooms; all are locked, and he could not go downstairs, because of the night attendant in the hallway.”
“No? Yes? You are two times wrong! First--someone is concealed there!”
“Mr. Klaw!” began Coram, excitedly.
“Ssh!” Moris Klaw raised his hand. “No excitement. It is noisy and a tax upon the nerves. Second--you are wrong, because presently that hidden one will come into the Egyptian Room!”
“How? How in Heaven’s name is he going to get in?”
“We shall see.”
Utterly mystified, Coram and I stared at Moris Klaw, for we stood one on either side of him; but he merely wagged his finger enjoining us to silence, and silent perforce we became.
The view was a cramped one, and standing there looking out at the clear summer night, I for one grew very weary of the business. But I was sustained by the anticipation that the mystery of the headless mummies was about to come to a climax. I felt very sorry for poor Grimsby, cramped in the corner of the Egyptian Room, for I knew him to be even more hopelessly in the dark respecting the purpose of these manœuvres than I was myself. In vain I racked my brain in quest of the link which united the ancient “Book of the Lamps” with the singular case which had brought us there that night.
Coram began to fidget, and I knew intuitively that he was about to speak.
“Ssh!” whispered Moris Klaw.
A beam of light shone out beneath us, across the Egyptian Room!
I concluded that something had attracted the attention of Grimsby. I leaned forward in tense expectancy, and Coram was keenly excited.
The beam of light moved; it shone upon the door of the very case in the corner of which Grimsby was hiding, but upon the nearer end, fully upon the face of a mummy.
A small figure was dimly discernible, now, the figure of the man who carried the light. Cautiously he crossed the room. Evidently he held the key of the wall case, for in an instant he had swung the door back and was hauling the mummy on to the floor.
Then out upon the midnight visitor leapt Grimsby. The light was extinguished--and Moris Klaw, drawing back from the window, seized Coram by the arm, crying, “The key of the door! The key of the door!”
We were down and into the Egyptian Room in less than half a minute. Coram switched on all the lights; and there with his back to the open door of the wall case, handcuffed and wild-eyed, was--Mr. Mark Pettigrew!
Coram’s face was a study--for the famous archæologist whom we now saw manacled before us was a trustee of the Menzies Museum!
“Mr. Pettigrew!” he said, hoarsely. “Mr. Pettigrew! there must be some mistake----”
“There is no mistake, my good sir,” rumbled Moris Klaw. “Look, he has with him a sharp knife to cut off the head of the priest!”
It was true. An open knife lay upon the floor beside the fallen mummy!
Grimsby was breathing very heavily and looking in rather a startled way at his captive, who seemed unable to realize what had happened. Coram cleared his throat nervously. It was one of the strangest scenes in which I had ever participated.
“Mr. Pettigrew,” he began, “it is incomprehensible to me----”
“I will make you to comprehend,” interrupted Moris Klaw. “You ask”--he raised a long finger--“why should Mr. Pettigrew cut off the head of his own mummy? I answer for the same reason that he cut off the head of the one at Sotheby’s. You ask why did he cut off the head of the one at Sotheby’s? I answer for the same reason that he cut off the head of the one at my house, and for the same reason that he came to cut off the head of this one! What is he looking for? He is looking for the ‘Book of the Lamps’!” He paused, gazing around upon us. Probably, excepting the prisoner, I alone amongst his listeners understood what he meant.
“I have related to Mr. Searles,” he continued, “some of the history of that book. It contained the ritual of the ancient Egyptian ceremonial magic. It was priceless; it gave its possessors a power above the power of kings! And when the line of Pankhaur became extinct it vanished. Where did it go? According to a very rare record--of which there are only two copies in existence--one of them in my possession and one in Mr. Pettigrew’s!--it was hidden in the skull of the mummy of a priest or priestess of the temple!”
Pettigrew was staring at him like a man fascinated.
“Mr. Pettigrew had only recently acquired that valuable manuscript work in which the fact is recorded; and being an enthusiast, gentlemen”--he spread wide his hands continentally “--all we poor collectors are enthusiasts--he set to work upon the first available mummy of a priest of that temple. It was his own. The skull did not contain the priceless papyrus! But all these mummies are historic; there are only five in Europe.”
“Five?” blurted Pettigrew.
“Five,” replied Klaw; “you thought there were only four, eh? But as a blind you called in the police and showed them how your mummy had been mutilated. It was good. It was clever. No one suspected you of the outrages after that--no one but the old fool who knew that you had secured the second copy of that valuable work of guidance!
“So you did not hesitate to use the keys you had procured in your capacity as trustee to gain access to this fourth mummy here.” He turned to Grimsby and Coram. “Gentlemen,” he said, “there will be no prosecution. The fever of research is a disease; never a crime.”
“I agree,” said Coram, “most certainly there must be no prosecution; no scandal. Mr. Pettigrew, I am very, very sorry for this.”
Grimsby, with a rather wry face, removed the handcuffs. A singular expression proclaimed itself upon Pettigrew’s shrivelled countenance.
“The thing I’m most sorry for,” he said, dryly, but with the true fever of research burning in his eyes, “if you will excuse me saying it, Coram, for I’m very deeply indebted to you--is that I can’t cut off the head of this fourth mummy!”
Mr. Mark Pettigrew was a singularly purposeful and rudely truculent man.
“It would be useless,” rumbled Moris Klaw. “I found the fifth mummy in Egypt two years ago! And behold”--he swept his hand picturesquely through the air--“I beheaded him!”
“What!” screamed Pettigrew, and leapt upon Klaw with blazing eyes.
“Ah,” rumbled Klaw, massive and unruffled, “that is the question--what? And I shall not tell you!”
From his pocket he took out the scent spray and squirted verbena into the face of Mr. Pettigrew.
