Arthur Conan Doyle

Lot No. 249

In a certain wing of what we will call Old College in Oxford there is a corner turret of an exceeding great age. The heavy arch which spans the open door has bent downwards in the centre under the weight of its years, and the grey, lichen-blotched blocks of stone are bound and knitted together with strands of ivy. From the door a stone stair curves upwards spirally, passing two landings, and terminating in a third one. In the month of May, in the year of 1884, three young men occupied the sets of rooms which opened on to the separate landings of the old stair. Each set consisted simply of a sitting-room and of a bedroom, while two corresponding rooms upon the ground-floor were used, the one as a coal-cellar, and the other as a living-room of the servant, or scout, Thomas Styles, whose duty it was to wait upon the three men above him. To the right and left was a line of lecture-rooms and of offices, so that the dwellers in the old turret enjoyed a certain seclusion, which made the chambers popular among the more studious undergraduates. Such were the three who occupied them now – Abercrombie Smith above, Edward Bellingham beneath him, and William Monkhouse Lee upon the lowest storey.

It was ten o’clock on a bright spring night, and Abercrombie Smith lay back in his arm-chair, his feet upon the fender, and his briar-root pipe between his lips. In a similar chair, and equally at his ease, there lounged on the other side of the fireplace his old school friend Jephro Hastie. Both men were in flannels, for they had spent their evening upon the river, but apart from their dress no one could look at their hard-cut, alert faces without seeing that they were open-air men – men whose minds and tastes turned naturally to all that was manly and robust. Hastie, indeed, was stroke for his college boat, and Smith was an even better oar, but a coming examination had already cast its shadow over him and held him to his work, save for the few hours a week which health demanded. A litter of medical books upon the table, with scattered bones, models and anatomical plates, pointed to the extent as well as the nature of his studies, while a couple of single-sticks and a set of boxing-gloves above the mantelpiece hinted at the means by which, with Hastie’s help, he might take his exercise in its most compressed and least distant form. They knew each other very well – so well that they could sit now in that soothing silence which is the very highest development of companionship.

‘Have some whisky,’ said Abercrombie Smith at last between two cloudbursts. ‘Scotch in the jug and Irish in the bottle.’

‘No, thanks. I’m in for the sculls. I don’t liquor when I’m training. How about you?’

‘I’m reading hard. I think it best to leave it alone.’

Hastie nodded, and they relapsed into a contented silence.

‘By-the-way, Smith,’ asked Hastie, presently, have you made the acquaintance of either of the fellows on your stair yet?’

‘Just a nod as we pass. Nothing more.’

‘Hum! I should be inclined to let it stand at that. I know something of them both. Not much, but as much as I want. I don’t think I should take them to my bosom if I were you. Not that there’s much amiss with Monkhouse Lee.’

‘Meaning the thin one?’

‘Precisely. He is a gentlemanly little fellow. I don’t think there is any vice in him. But then you can’t know him without knowing Bellingham.’

‘Meaning the fat one?’

‘Yes, the fat one. And he’s a man whom I, for one, would rather not know.’

Abercrombie Smith raised his eyebrows and glanced across at his companion.

‘What’s up, then?’ he asked. ‘Drink? Cards? ‘

‘Ah! you evidently don’t know the man, or you wouldn’t ask. There’s something damnable about him – something reptilian. He’s no fool, though. They say that he is one of the best men in his line that they have ever had in the college.’

‘Medicine or classics?’

‘Eastern languages. He’s a demon at them.

‘Why do you say you can’t know Lee without knowing Bellingham? ‘

‘Because Bellingham is engaged to his sister Eveline. Such a bright little girl, Smith! I know the whole family well. It’s disgusting to see that brute with her. A toad and a dove, that’s what they always remind me of.’

Abercrombie Smith grinned and knocked his ashes out against the side of the grate. When Hastie had clattered off down the winding stair, Abercrombie Smith sat reading for about an hour, and the hands of the noisy carriage clock upon the side table were rapidly closing together upon the twelve, when a sudden sound fell upon the student’s ear – a sharp, rather shrill sound, like the hissing intake of a man’s breath who gasps under some strong emotion. Smith laid down his book and slanted his ear to listen. There was no one on either side or above him, so that the interruption came certainly from the neighbour beneath – the same neighbour of whom Hastie had given so unsavoury an account. There was no return of the singular sound, and Smith was about to turn to his work once more, when suddenly there broke out in the silence of the night a hoarse cry, a positive scream – the call of a man who is moved and shaken beyond all control. Smith sprang out of his chair and dropped his book. He was a man of fairly firm fibre, but there was something in this sudden, uncontrollable shriek of horror which chilled his blood and pronged his skin. Coming in such a place and at such an hour, it brought a thousand fantastic possibilities into his head. Should he rush down, or was it better to wait? He had all the national hatred of making a scene, and he knew so little of his neighbour that he would not lightly intrude upon his affairs. For a moment he stood in doubt and even as he balanced the matter there was a quick rattle of footsteps upon the stairs, and young Monkhouse Lee, half dressed and as white as ashes, burst into his room.

‘Come down!’ he gasped. ‘Bellingham’s ill.’

Abercrombie Smith followed him closely down stairs into the sitting-room which was beneath his own, and intent as he was upon the matter in hand, he could not but take an amazed glance around him as he crossed the threshold. It was such a chamber as he had never seen before – a museum rather than a study. Walls and ceiling were thickly covered with a thousand strange relics from Egypt and the East. Tall, angular figures bearing burdens or weapons stalked in an uncouth frieze round the apartments. Above were bull-headed, stork-headed, cat-headed, owl-headed statues, with viper-crowned, almond-eyed monarchs, and strange, beetle-like deities cut out of the blue Egyptian lapis lazuli. Horus and Isis and Osiris peeped down from every niche and shelf, while across the ceiling a true son of the Old Nile, a great, hanging-jawed crocodile, was slung in a double noose.

In the centre of this singular chamber was a large, square table, littered with papers, bottles, and the dried leaves of some graceful, palm-like plant. These varied objects had all been heaped together in order to make room for a mummy case, which had been conveyed from the wall, as was evident from the gap there, and laid across the front of the table. The mummy itself, a horrid, black, withered thing, like a charred head on a gnarled bush, was lying half out of the case, with its claw-like hand and bony forearm resting upon the table. Propped up against the sarcophagus was an old yellow scroll of papyrus, and in front of it, in a wooden armchair, sat the owner of the room, his head thrown back, his widely-opened eyes directed in a horrified stare to the crocodile above him, and his blue, thick lips puffing loudly with every expiration.

‘My God! he’s dying!’ cried Monkhouse Lee distractedly.

He was a slim, handsome young fellow, olive-skinned and dark-eyed, of a Spanish rather than English type, with a Celtic intensity of manner which contrasted with the Saxon phlegm of Abercombie Smith.

‘Only a faint, I think,’ said the medical student. ‘Just give me a hand with him. You take his feet. Now on to the sofa. Can you kick all those little wooden devils off? What a litter it is! Now he will be all right if we undo his collar and give him some water. What has he been up to at all?’

‘I don’t know. I heard him cry out. I ran up. I know him pretty well, you know. It is very good of you to come down.’

‘His heart is going like a pair of castanets,’ said Smith, laying his hand on the breast of the unconscious man. ‘He seems to me to be frightened all to pieces. Chuck the water over him! What a face he has got on him!’

It was indeed a strange and most repellent face, for colour and outline were equally unnatural. It was white, not with the ordinary pallor of fear but with an absolutely bloodless white, like the underside of a sole. He was very fat, but gave the impression of having been at some time considerably fatter, for his skin hung loosely in creases and folds, and was shot with a meshwork of wrinkles. Short, stubbly brown hair bristled up from his scalp, with a pair of thick, wrinkled ears protruding at the sides. His light grey eyes were still open, the pupils dilated and the balls projecting in a fixed and horrid stare. It seemed to Smith as he looked down upon him that he had never seen nature’s danger signals flying so plainly upon a man’s countenance, and his thoughts turned more seriously to the warning which Hastie had given him an hour before.

‘What the deuce can have frightened him so?’ he asked.

‘It’s the mummy.’

‘The mummy? How, then?’

‘I don’t know. It’s beastly and morbid. I wish he would drop it. It’s the second fright he has given me. It was the same last winter. I found him just like this, with that horrid thing in front of him.’

‘What does he want with the mummy, then?’

‘Oh, he’s a crank, you know. It’s his hobby. He knows more about these things than any man in England. But I wish he wouldn’t! Ah, he’s beginning to come to.’

A faint tinge of colour had begun to steal back into Bellingham’s ghastly cheeks, and his eyelids shivered like a sail after a calm. He clasped and unclasped his hands, drew a long, thin breath between his teeth, and suddenly jerking up his head, threw a glance of recognition around him. As his eyes fell upon the mummy, he sprang off the sofa, seized the roll of papyrus, thrust it into a drawer, turned the key, and then staggered back on to the sofa.

‘What’s up?’ he asked. ‘What do you chaps want?’

‘You’ve been shrieking out and making no end of a fuss,’ said Monkhouse Lee. ‘If our neighbour here from above hadn’t come down, I’m sure I don’t know what I should have done with you.’

‘Ah, it’s Abercrombie Smith,’ said Bellingham, glancing up at him. ‘How very good of you to come in! What a fool I am! Oh, my God, what a fool I am!’

He sank his head on to his hands, and burst into peal after peal of hysterical laughter.

‘Look here! Drop it!’ cried Smith, shaking him roughly by the shoulder.

’I wonder,’ said Bellingham, ‘whether you would be as cool as I am if you had seen – ‘

‘What, then?’

‘Oh, nothing. I meant that I wonder if you could sit up at night with a mummy without trying your nerves. I have no doubt that you are quite right. I dare say that I have been taking it out of myself too much lately. But I am all right now. Please don’t go, though. Just wait for a few minutes until I am quite myself.’

‘The room is very close,’ remarked Lee, throwing open the window and letting in the cool night air.

‘It’s balsamic resin,’ said Bellingham. He lifted up one of the dried palmate leaves from the table and frizzled it over the chimney of the lamp. It broke away into heavy smoke wreaths, and a pungent, biting odour filled the chamber. ‘It’s the sacred plant – the plant of the priests,’ he remarked. ‘Do you know anything of Eastern languages, Smith?’

‘Nothing at all. Not a word.’

The answer seemed to lift a weight from the Egyptologist’s mind.

‘By-the-way,’ he continued, ‘how long was it from the time that you ran down, until I came to my senses?’

‘Not long. Some four or five minutes.’

‘I thought it could not be very long,’ said he, drawing a long breath. ‘But what a strange thing unconsciousness is! There is no measurement to it. I could not tell from my own sensations if it were seconds or weeks. Now that gentleman on the table was packed up in the days of the eleventh dynasty, some forty centuries ago, and yet if he could find his tongue he would tell us that this lapse of time has been but a closing of the eyes and a reopening of them. He is a singularly fine mummy, Smith.’

Smith stepped over to the table and looked down with a professional eye at the black and twisted form in front of him. The features, though horribly discoloured, were perfect, and two little nut-like eyes still lurked in the depths of the black, hollow sockets. The blotched skin was drawn tightly from bone to bone, and a tangled wrap of black coarse hair fell over the ears. Two thin teeth, like those of a rat, overlay the shrivelled lower lip. In its crouching position, with bent joints and craned head, there was a suggestion of energy about the horrid thing which made Smith’s gorge rise. The gaunt ribs, with their parchment-like covering, were exposed, and the sunken, leaden-hued abdomen, with the long slit where the embalmer had left his mark; but the lower limbs were wrapt round with coarse yellow bandages. A number of little clove-like pieces of myrrh and of cassia were sprinkled over the body, and lay scattered on the inside of the case.

‘I don’t know his name,’ said Bellingham, passing his hand over the shrivelled head. ‘You see the outer sarcophagus with the inscriptions is missing. Lot 249 is all the title he has now. You see it printed on his case. That was his number in the auction at which I picked him up.’

‘He has been a very pretty sort of fellow in his day,’ remarked Abercrombie Smith.

‘He has been a giant. His mummy is six feet seven in length, and that would be a giant over there, for they were never a very robust race. Feel these great knotted bones, too. He would be a very nasty fellow to tackle.’

‘Perhaps these very hands helped to build the stones into the pyramids,’ suggested Monkhouse Lee, looking down with disgust in his eyes at the crooked, unclean talons.

‘No fear. This fellow has been pickled in natron, and looked after in the most approved style. They did not serve hodmen in that fashion. Salt or bitumen was enough for them. It has been calculated that this sort of thing cost about seven hundred and thirty pounds in our money. Our friend was a noble at least. What do you make of that small inscription near his feet, Smith?’

‘I told you that I know no Eastern tongue.’

‘Ah, so you did. It is the name of the embalmer, I take it. A very conscientious worker he must have been. I wonder how many modern works will survive four thousand years?’

‘You’re not going yet?’ cried Bellingham, as Smith rose from the sofa.

At the prospect of solitude, his fears seemed to crowd back upon him, and he stretched out a hand to detain him.

‘Yes, I must go. I have my work to do. You are all right now. I think that with your nervous system you should take up some less morbid study.’

‘Oh, I am not nervous as a rule; and I have unwrapped mummies before.’

‘You fainted the last time,’ observed Monkhouse Lee.

‘Ah, yes, so I did. Well, I must have a nerve tonic or a course of electricity. You are not going, Lee?’

‘I’ll do whatever you wish, Ned.’

‘Then I’ll come down with you and have a shake-down on your sofa. Good-night, Smith. I am so sorry to have disturbed you with my foolishness.’

They shook hands, and as the medical student stumbled up the spiral and irregular stair he heard a key turn in a door, and the steps of his two new acquaintances as they descended to the lower floor.

One habit Bellingham had developed of late which Smith knew to be a frequent herald of a weakening mind. He appeared to be forever talking to himself. At late hours of the night, when there could be no visitor with him, Smith could still hear his voice beneath him in a low, muffled monologue, sunk almost to a whisper, and yet very audible in the silence. This solitary babbling annoyed and distracted the student, so that he spoke more than once to his neighbour about it. Bellingham, however, flushed up at the charge, and denied curtly that he had uttered a sound; indeed, he showed more annoyance over the matter than the occasion seemed to demand.

Had Abercrombie Smith had any doubt as to his own ears he had not to go far to find corroboration. Tom Styles, the little wrinkled man-servant who had attended to the wants of the lodgers in the turret for a longer time than any man’s memory could carry him, was sorely put to it over the same matter.

‘If you please, sir,’ said he, as he tidied down the top chamber one morning, ‘do you think Mr. Bellingham is all right, sir?’

‘All right, Styles?’

‘Yes sir. Right in his head, sir.’

‘Why should he not be, then?’

He’s took to talkin’ to himself something awful. I wonder it don’t disturb you. I don’t know what to make of him, sir.’

‘I don’t know what business it is of yours, Styles.’

‘Well, I takes an interest, Mr. Smith. It may be forward of me, but I can’t help it. I feel sometimes as if I was mother and father to my young gentlemen. It all falls on me when things go wrong and the relations come. But Mr. Bellingham, sir. I want to know what it is that walks about his room sometimes when he’s out and when the door’s locked on the outside.’

‘Eh! you’re talking nonsense, Styles.’

‘Maybe so, sir; but I heard it more’n once with my own ears.’

‘Rubbish, Styles.’

‘Very good, sir. You’ll ring the bell if you want me.’

Abercrombie Smith gave little heed to the gossip of the old man-servant, but a small incident occurred a few days later which left an unpleasant effect upon his mind, and brought the words of Styles forcibly to his memory.

Bellingham had come up to see him late one night, and was entertaining him with an interesting account of the rock tombs of Beni Hassan in Upper Egypt, when Smith, whose hearing was remarkably acute, distinctly heard the sound of a door opening on the landing below.

‘There’s some fellow gone in or out of your room,’ he remarked.

Bellingham sprang up and stood helpless for a moment, with the expression of a man who is half incredulous and half afraid.

‘I surely locked it. I am almost positive that I locked it,’ he stammered. ‘No one could have opened it.’

‘Why, I hear someone coming up the steps now,’ said Smith.

Bellingham rushed out through the door, slammed it loudly behind him, and hurried down the stairs. About half-way down Smith heard him stop, and thought he caught the sound of whispering. A moment later the door beneath him shut, a key creaked in a lock, and Bellingham, with beads of moisture upon his pale face, ascended the stairs once more, and re-entered the room.

‘It’s all right,’ he said, throwing himself down in a chair. ‘It was that fool of a dog. He had pushed the door open. I don’t know how I came to forget to lock it.’

‘I didn’t know you kept a dog,’ said Smith, looking very thoughtfully at the disturbed face of his companion.

‘Yes, I haven’t had him long. I must get rid of him. He’s a great nuisance.’

‘He must be, if you find it so hard to shut him up. I should have thought that shutting the door would have been enough, without locking it.’

‘I want to prevent old Styles from letting him out. He’s of some value, you know, and it would be awkward to lose him.’

‘I am a bit of a dog-fancier myself,’ said Smith, still gazing hard at his companion from the corner of his eyes. ‘Perhaps you’ll let me have a look at it.’

‘Certainly. But I am afraid it cannot be to-night; I have an appointment. Is that clock right? Then I am a quarter of an hour late already. You’ll excuse me, I am sure.’

He picked up his cap and hurried from the room. In spite of his appointment, Smith heard him re-enter his own chamber and lock his door upon the inside.

This interview left a disagreeable impression upon the medical student’s mind. Bellingham had lied to him, and lied so clumsily that it looked as if he had desperate reasons for concealing the truth. Smith knew that his neighbour had no dog. He knew, also, that the step which he had heard upon the stairs was not the step of an animal. But if it were not, then what could it be? There was old Styles’s statement about the room at times when the owner was absent. Could it be a woman? Smith rather inclined to the view. If so, it would mean disgrace and expulsion to Bellingham if it were discovered by the authorities, so that his anxiety and falsehoods might be accounted for. And yet it was inconceivable that an undergraduate could keep a woman in his rooms without being instantly detected. Be the explanation what it might, there was something ugly about it, and Smith determined, as he turned to his books, to discourage all further attempts at intimacy on the part of his soft-spoken and ill-favored neighbor.

But his work was destined to interruption that night. He had hardly caught up the broken threads when a firm, heavy footfall came three steps at a time from below, and Hastie, in blazer and flannels, burst into the room.

Have you heard about Long Norton?’ he asked.

‘What’s that?’

‘He’s been attacked.’

‘Attacked?’

‘Yes, just as he was turning out of the High Street, and within a hundred yards of the gate of Old’s.’

‘But who—’

If you said ‘what,’ you would be more grammatical. Norton swears that it was not human, and, indeed, from the scratches on his throat, I should be inclined to agree with him.’

He passes that way every night, you know, about the same hour. There’s a tree that hangs low over the path – the big elm from Rainy’s garden. Norton thinks the thing dropped on him out of the tree. Anyhow, he was nearly strangled by two arms, which, he says, were as strong and as thin as steel bands. He saw nothing; only those beastly arms that tightened and tightened on him. He yelled his head nearly off, and a couple of chaps came running, and the thing went over the wall like a cat. He never got a fair sight of it the whole time. It gave Norton a shake up, I can tell you. I tell him it has been as good as a change at the sea-side for him.’

‘A garrotter, most likely,’ said Smith.

‘Very possibly. Norton says not; but we don’t mind what he says. The garrotter had long nails, and was pretty smart at swinging himself over walls. By-the-way, your neighbour would be pleased if he heard about it. He had a grudge against Norton, and he’s not a man, from what I know of him, to forget his little debts.

Hastie went off and Smith laid down his pipe and turned stolidly to his books once more. But with all the will in the world, he found it very hard to keep his mind upon his work. It would slip away to brood upon the man beneath him, and upon the little mystery which hung around his chambers. Then his thoughts turned to this singular attack of which Hastie had spoken, and to the grudge which Bellingham was said to owe the object of it. The two ideas would persist in rising together in his mind, as though there were some close and intimate connection between them. And yet the suspicion was so dim and vague that it could not be put down in words.

One afternoon, however, he was descending the stairs when, just as he was passing it, Bellingham’s door flew open, and young Monkhouse Lee came out with his eyes sparkling and a dark flush of anger upon his olive cheeks. Close at his heels followed Bellingham, his fat, unhealthy face all quivering with malignant passion.

‘You fool!’ he hissed. ‘You’ll be sorry.’

‘Very likely,’ cried the other. ‘Mind what I say. It’s off! I won’t hear of it!’

‘You’ve promised, anyhow.’

‘Oh, I’ll keep that! I won’t speak. But I’d rather little Eva was in her grave. Once for all, it’s off. She’ll do what I say. We don’t want to see you again.’

So much Smith could not avoid hearing, but he hurried on, for he had no wish to be involved in their dispute. There had been a serious breach between them, that was clear enough, and Lee was going to cause the engagement with his sister to be broken off. Smith thought of Hastie’s comparison of the toad and the dove, and was glad to think that the matter was at an end.

There was one little indulgence which Abercrombie Smith always allowed himself, however closely his work might press upon him. Twice a week, on the Tuesday and the Friday, it was his invariable custom to walk over to Farlingford, the residence of Dr. Plumptree Peterson, situated about a mile and a half out of Oxford. Peterson had been a close friend of Smith’s elder brother Francis, and as he was a bachelor, fairly well-to-do, with a good cellar and a better library, his house was a pleasant goal for a man who was in need of a brisk walk. Twice a week, then, the medical student would swing out there along the dark country roads, and spend a pleasant hour in Peterson’s comfortable study, discussing, over a glass of old port, the the gossip of the ‘varsity or the latest developments of medicine or of surgery.

Smith shut up his books at a quarter past eight, the hour when he usually started for his friend’s house. As he was leaving his room, however, his eyes chanced to fall upon one of the books which Bellingham had lent him, and his conscience pricked him for not having returned it. However repellent the man might be, he should not be treated with discourtesy. Taking the book, he walked downstairs and knocked at his neighbour’s door. There was no answer; but on turning the handle he found that it was unlocked. Pleased at the thought of avoiding an interview, he stepped inside, and placed the book with his card upon the table.

The lamp was turned half down, but Smith could see the details of the room plainly enough. It was all much as he had seen it before – the frieze, the animal-headed gods, the hanging crocodile, and the table littered over with papers and dried leaves. The mummy case stood upright against the wall, but the mummy itself was missing. There was no sign of any second occupant of the room. The spiral stair was as black as pitch, and Smith was slowly making his way down its irregular steps, when he was suddenly conscious that something had passed him in the darkness. There was a faint sound, a whiff of air, a light brushing past his elbow, but so slight that he could scarcely be certain of it. He stopped and listened, but the wind was rustling among the ivy outside, and he could hear nothing else.

‘Is that you, Styles?’ he shouted.

There was no answer, and all was still behind him. It must have been a sudden gust of air, for there were crannies and cracks in the old turret. And yet he could almost have sworn that he heard a footfall by his very side. He had emerged into the quadrangle, still turning the matter over in his head, when a man came running swiftly across the smooth-cropped lawn.

‘Is that you, Smith?’

‘Hullo, Hastie!’

‘For God’s sake come at once! Young Lee is drowned! Here’s Harrington of King’s with the news. The doctor is out. You’ll do, but come along at once. There may be life in him.’

‘Have you brandy?’

‘No.’

‘I’ll bring some. There’s a flask on my table.’

Smith bounded up the stairs, taking three at a time, seized the flask, and was rushing down with it, when, as he passed Bellingham’s room, his eyes fell upon something which left him gasping and staring upon the landing.

The door, which he had closed behind him, was now open, and right in front of him, with the lamp-light shining upon it, was the mummy case. Three minutes ago it had been empty. He could swear to that. Now it framed the lank body of its horrible occupant, who stood, grim and stark, with his black shrivelled face towards the door. The form was lifeless and inert, but it seemed to Smith as he gazed that there still lingered a lurid spark of vitality, some faint sign of consciousness in the little eyes which lurked in the depths of the hollow sockets. So astounded and shaken was he that he had forgotten his errand, and was still staring at the lean, sunken figure when the voice of his friend below recalled him to himself.

‘Come on, Smith!’ he shouted. ‘It’s life and death, you know. Hurry up! Now, then,’ he added, as the medical student reappeared, ‘let us do a sprint. It is well under a mile, and we should do it in five minutes. A human life is better worth running for than a pot.’

Neck and neck they dashed through the darkness, and did not pull up until, panting and spent, they had reached the little cottage by the river. Young Lee, limp and dripping like a broken water-plant, was stretched upon the sofa, the green scum of the river upon his black hair, and a fringe of white foam upon his leaden-hued lips. Beside him knelt his fellow-student Harrington, endeavouring to chafe some warmth back into his rigid limbs.

‘I think there’s life in him,’ said Smith, with his hand to the lad’s side. ‘Put your watch glass to his lips. Yes, there’s dimming on it. You take one arm, Hastie. Now work as I do, and we’ll soon pull him round.’

For ten minutes they worked in silence, inflating and depressing the chest of the unconscious man. At the end of that time a shiver ran through his body and his lips trembled, and he opened his eyes. The three students burst out into an irrepressible cheer.

Monkhouse Lee raised himself on his hands, and looked wildly about him.

‘What’s up?’ he asked. ‘I’ve been in the water. Ah, yes; I remember.’

A look of fear came into his eyes, and he sank his face into his hands.

‘How did you fall in?’

‘I didn’t fall in.’

‘How, then?’

‘I was thrown in. I was standing by the bank, and something from behind picked me up like a feather and hurled me in. I heard nothing, and I saw nothing. But I know what it was, for all that.’

It was little chat that they had upon their homeward path. Smith’s mind was too full of the incidents of the evening, the absence of the mummy from his neighbour’s rooms, the step that passed him on the stair, the reappearance – the extraordinary, inexplicable reappearance of the grisly thing – and then this attack upon Lee, corresponding so closely to the previous outrage upon another man against whom Bellingham bore a grudge. All this settled in his thoughts, together with the many little incidents which had previously turned him against his neighbour, and the singular circumstances under which he was first called in to him. What had been a dim suspicion, a vague, fantastic conjecture, had suddenly taken form, and stood out in his mind as a grim fact, a thing not to be denied. And yet, how monstrous it was! how unheard of! how entirely beyond all bounds of human experience.

The next evening Smith determined to pay the visit to his friend Dr. Peterson upon which he had started upon the night before. A good walk and a friendly chat would be welcome to his jangled nerves. Bellingham’s door was shut when he passed, but glancing back when he was some distance from the turret, he saw his neighbour’s head at the window outlined against the lamp-light, his face pressed apparently against the glass as he gazed out into the darkness.

It was a lonely road which led to his friend’s house. Early as it was, Smith did not meet a single soul upon his way. He walked briskly along until he came to the avenue gate, which opened into the long gravel drive leading up to Farlingford. In front of him he could see the cosy red light of the windows glimmering through the foliage. He stood with his hand upon the iron latch of the swinging gate, and he glanced back at the road along which he had come. Something was coming swiftly down it.

It moved in the shadow of the hedge, silently and furtively, a dark, crouching figure, dimly visible against the black background. Even as he gazed back at it, it had lessened its distance by twenty paces, and was fast closing upon him. Out of the darkness he had a glimpse of a scraggy neck, and of two eyes that will ever haunt him in his dreams. He turned, and with a cry of terror he ran for his life up the avenue. There were the red lights, the signals of safety, almost within a stone’s throw of him. He was a famous runner, but never had he run as he ran that night.

The heavy gate had swung into place behind him, but he heard it dash open again before his pursuer. As he rushed madly and wildly through the night, he could hear a swift, dry patter behind him, and could see, as he threw back a glance, that this horror was bounding like a tiger at his heels, with blazing eyes and one stringy arm out-thrown. Thank God, the door was ajar. He could see the thin bar of light which shot from the lamp in the hall. Nearer yet sounded the clatter from behind. He heard a hoarse gurgling at his very shoulder. With a shriek he flung himself against the door, slammed and bolted it behind him, and sank half-fainting on to the hall chair.

‘My goodness, Smith, what’s the matter?’ asked Peterson, appearing at the door of his study.

‘Give me some brandy!’

Peterson disappeared, and came rushing out again with a glass and a decanter.

‘You need it,’ he said, as his visitor drank off what he poured out for him. ‘Why, man, you are as white as cheese.’

Smith laid down his glass, rose up, and took a deep breath.

‘I am my own man again now,’ said he. ‘I was never so unmanned before. But, with your leave, Peterson, I will sleep here to-night, for I don’t think I could face that road again except by daylight. It’s weak, I know, but I can’t help it.’

Peterson looked at his visitor with a very questioning eye.

‘Of course you shall sleep here if you wish. I’ll tell Mrs. Burney to make up the spare bed. Where are you off to now?’

‘Come up with me to the window that overlooks the door. I want you to see what I have seen.’ They went up to the window of the upper hall whence they could look down upon the approach to the house. The drive and the fields on either side lay quiet and still, bathed in the peaceful moonlight.

‘Well, really, Smith,’ remarked Peterson, ‘it is well that I know you to be an abstemious man. What in the world can have frightened you?’

‘I’ll tell you presently. But where can it have gone? Ah, now look, look! See the curve of the road just beyond your gate.’

‘Yes, I see; you needn’t pinch my arm off. I saw someone pass. I should say a man, rather thin, apparently, and tall, very tall. But what of him? And what of yourself? You are still shaking like an aspen leaf.’

‘I have been within hand-grip of the devil, that’s all. But come down to your study, and I shall tell you the whole story.’

He did so. Under the cheery lamplight, with a glass of wine on the table beside him, and the portly form and florid face of his friend in front, he narrated, in their order, all the events, great and small, which had formed so singular a chain, from the night on which he had found Bellingham fainting in front of the mummy case until his horrid experience of an hour ago.

‘There now,’ he said as he concluded, ‘that’s the whole black business. It is monstrous and incredible, but it is true.’ Dr. Plumptree Peterson sat for some time in silence with a very puzzled expression upon his face.

‘I never heard of such a thing in my life, never!’ he said at last. ‘You have told me the facts. Now tell me your inferences.’

‘You can draw your own.’

‘But I should like to hear yours. You have thought over the matter, and I have not.’

‘Well, it must be a little vague in detail, but the main points seem to me to be clear enough. This fellow Bellingham, in his Eastern studies, has got hold of some infernal secret by which a mummy – or possibly only this particular mummy – can be temporarily brought to life. He was trying this disgusting business on the night when he fainted. No doubt the sight of the creature moving had shaken his nerve, even though he had expected it. Having done it, he naturally thought him that he might use the creature as an agent. It has intelligence and it has strength. For some purpose he took Lee into his confidence; but Lee, like a decent Christian, would have nothing to do with such a business. Then they had a row, and Lee vowed that he would tell his sister of Bellingham’s true character. Bellingham’s game was to prevent him, and he nearly managed it, by setting this creature of his on his track. He had already tried its powers upon another man – Norton – towards whom he had a grudge. It is the merest chance that he has not two murders upon his soul. Then, when I taxed him with the matter, he had the strongest reasons for wishing to get me out of the way before I could convey my knowledge to anyone else. He got his chance when I went out, for he knew my habits, and where I was bound for. I have had a narrow shave, Peterson, and it is mere luck that you didn’t find me on your doorstep in the morning. I’m not a nervous man as a rule, and I never thought to have the fear of death put upon me as it was tonight.’

Now, I have quite made up my mind what I shall do. And first of all, may I use your paper and pens for an hour?’

‘Most certainly. You will find all you want upon that side table.’

Abercrombie Smith sat down before a sheet of foolscap, and for an hour, and then for a second hour his pen travelled swiftly over it. Page after page was finished and tossed aside while his friend leaned back in his arm-chair, looking across at him with patient curiosity. At last, with an exclamation of satisfaction, Smith sprang to his feet, gathered his papers into order, and laid the last one upon Peterson’s desk.

‘Kindly sign this as a witness,’ he said.

‘A witness? Of what?’

‘Of my signature, and of the date. The date is the most important. Why, Peterson, my life might hang upon it.’

‘My dear Smith, you are talking wildly. Let me beg you to go to bed.’

‘On the contrary, I never spoke so deliberately in my life. And I will promise to go to bed the moment you have signed it.’

‘But what is it?’

‘It is a statement of all that I have been telling you to-night. I wish you to witness it.’

‘Certainly,’ said Peterson, signing his name under that of his companion. ‘There you are! But what is the idea?’

‘You will kindly retain it, and produce it in case I am arrested.’

‘Arrested? For what?’

‘For murder. It is quite on the cards. I wish to be ready for every event. There is only one course open to me, and I am determined to take it.’

‘For Heaven’s sake, don’t do anything rash!’

‘Believe me, it would be far more rash to adopt any other course. I hope that we won’t need to bother you, but it will ease my mind to know that you have this statement of my motives. And now I am ready to take your advice and go to roost, for I want to be at my best in the morning.’

Next day Smith stopped at Clifford’s, the gunmaker’s, and bought a heavy revolver, with a box of central-fire cartridges. Six of them he slipped into the chambers, and half-cocking the weapon, placed it in the pocket of his coat. He then made his way to Hastie’s rooms, where the big oarsman was lounging over his breakfast, with the Sporting Times propped up against the coffeepot.

‘Hullo! What’s up?’ he asked. ‘Have some coffee?’

‘No, thank you. I want you to come with me, Hastie, and do what I ask you.’

‘Certainly, my boy.’

‘And bring a heavy stick with you.’

‘Hullo!’ Hastie stared. ‘Here’s a hunting-crop that would fell an ox.’

‘One other thing. You have a box of amputating knives. Give me the longest of them.’

‘There you are. You seem to be fairly on the war trail. Anything else?’

‘No; that will do.’ Smith placed the knife inside his coat, and led the way to the quadrangle. ‘We are neither of us chickens, Hastie,’ he said ‘I think I can do this job alone, but I take you as a precaution. I am going to have a little talk with Bellingham. If I have only him to deal with, I won’t, of course, need you. If I shout, however, up you come, and lam out with your whip as hard as you can lick. Do you understand?’

‘All right. I’ll come if I hear you bellow.’

‘Stay here, then. It may be a little time, but don’t budge until I come down.’

‘I’m a fixture.’

Smith ascended the stairs, opened Bellingham’s door and stepped in. Bellingham was seated behind his table, writing. Beside him, among his litter of strange possessions, towered the mummy case, with its sale number 249 still stuck upon its front, and its hideous occupant stiff and stark within it. Smith looked very deliberately round him, closed the door and then stepping across to the fireplace, struck a match and set the fire alight. Bellingham sat staring, with amazement and rage upon his bloated face.

‘Well, really now, you make yourself at home,’ he gasped.

Smith sat himself deliberately down, placing his watch upon the table, drew out his pistol, cocked it, and laid it in his lap. Then he took the long amputating knife from his bosom, and threw it down in front of Bellingham.

‘Now, then,’ said he, ‘just get to work and cut up that mummy.’

‘Oh, is that it?’ said Bellingham with a sneer.

‘Yes, that is it. They tell me that the law can’t touch you. But I have a law that will set matters straight. If in five minutes you have not set to work, I swear by the God who made me that I will put a bullet through your brain!’

‘You would murder me?’

Bellingham had half risen, and his face was the colour of putty.

‘Yes.’

‘And for what?’

‘To stop your mischief. One minute has gone.’

‘But what have I done?’

‘I know and you know.’

‘This is mere bullying.’

‘Two minutes are gone.’

‘But you must give reasons. You are a madman – a dangerous madman. Why should I destroy my own property? It is a valuable mummy.’

‘You must cut it up, and you must burn it.’

‘I will do no such thing.’

‘Four minutes are gone.’

Smith took up the pistol and he looked towards Bellingham with an inexorable face. As the second-hand stole round, he raised his hand, and the finger twitched upon the trigger.

‘There! there! I’ll do it!’ screamed Bellingham.

In frantic haste he caught up the knife and hacked at the figure of the mummy, ever glancing round to see the eye and the weapon of his terrible visitor bent upon him. The creature crackled and snapped under every stab of the keen blade. A thick yellow dust rose up from it. Spices and dried essences rained down upon the floor. Suddenly, with a rending crack, its backbone snapped asunder, and it fell, in a brown heap of sprawling limbs, upon the floor.

‘Now into the fire!’ said Smith.

The flames leaped and roared as the dried and tinder-like débris was piled upon it. The little room was like the stoke-hole of a steamer and the sweat ran down the faces of the two men; but still the one stooped and worked, while the other sat watching him with a set face. A thick, fat smoke oozed out from the fire, and a heavy smell of burned rosin and singed hair filled the air. In a quarter of an hour a few charred and brittle sticks were all that was left of Lot No. 249.

‘Perhaps that will satisfy you,’ snarled Bellingham, with hate and fear in his little grey eyes as he glanced back at his tormenter.

‘No; I must make a clean sweep of all your materials. We must have no more devil’s tricks. In with all these leaves! They may have something to do with it.’

‘And what now?’ asked Bellingham, when the leaves also had been added to the blaze.

‘Now the roll of papyrus which you had on the table that night. It is in that drawer, I think.’

‘No, no,’ shouted Bellingham. ‘Don’t burn that! Why, man, you don’t know what you do. It is unique; it contains wisdom which is nowhere else to be found.’

‘Out with it!’

‘But look here, Smith, you can’t really mean it. I’ll share the knowledge with you. I’ll teach you all that is in it. Or, stay, let me only copy it before you burn it!’

Smith stepped forward and turned the key in the drawer. Taking out the yellow, curled roll of paper, he threw it into the fire, and pressed it down with his heel. Bellingham screamed, and grabbed at it; but Smith pushed him back, and stood over it until it was reduced to a formless grey ash.

And such is the narrative of Abercrombie Smith as to the singular events which occurred in Old College, Oxford, in the spring of ‘84. As Bellingham left the university immediately afterwards, and was last heard of in the Soudan, there is no one who can contradict Smith’s statement.