"Yes, yes. Quite." Vance nodded. "I see your point. The sheath might still be in the frustrated assassin's possession. An excellent clew. . . . Sergeant, would you mind going with Doctor Bliss to the study to ascertain if the sheath was taken with the dagger? No use worryin' ourselves about it if it's still in the drawer."
Heath went promptly to the hall, followed by Bliss. We could hear them descending to the first floor.
"What do you make of this, Vance?" Markham asked, when we were alone. "It looks pretty serious to me."
"I make a great deal of it," Vance returned sombrely. "And it is pretty serious. But, thank Heaven, the coup was not very brilliant. The whole thing was frightfully botched."
"Yes, I can see that," Markham agreed. "Imagine any one hurling a knife six feet or more when he could have dealt a single thrust in a vital spot."
"Oh, that?" Vance lifted his eyebrows. "I wasn't thinking of the technic of the knife-thrower. There were other points about the affair still less intelligent. I can't understand it altogether. Perhaps too much panic. Anyway we may get a definite key to the plot through the doctor's suggestion about the sheath."
Bliss and Heath were heard returning up the stairs.
"Well, it's gone," the Sergeant informed us, as the two stepped into the room.
"No doubt taken with the dagger," Bliss supplemented.
"Suppose I send for a couple of the boys and give the house the once-over," Heath suggested.
"That's not necess'ry, Sergeant," Vance told him. "I've a feelin' it won't be hard to find."
Markham was becoming annoyed at Vance's vagueness.
"I suppose," he said, with a tinge of sarcasm, "you can tell us exactly where we can find the sheath."
"Yes, I rather think so." Vance spoke with thoughtful seriousness. "However, I'll verify my theory later. . . . In the meantime"--he addressed himself to Bliss--"I'd be greatly obliged if you'd remain in your room until we finish our investigation."
Bliss bowed in acquiescence.
"We're going to the drawing-room for a while," Vance continued. "There's a little work to be done there."
He moved toward the hall, then stopped as if on sudden impulse and, going to the table, slipped the dagger into his pocket. Bliss closed the door after us, and we could hear the key turn in the lock. Markham and Heath and I started down the stairs, Vance bringing up the rear.
We had descended but a few steps when a calm, flat voice from the upper hall arrested us.
"Can I be of any assistance, effendi?"
The unexpected sound in that dim quiet house startled us, and we instinctively turned. At the head of the stairs leading to the third floor stood the shadowy figure of Hani, his flowing kaftan a dark mass against the palely lighted wall beyond.
"Oh, rather!" Vance answered cheerfully. "We were just repairin' to the drawing-room to hold a little conversational séance. Do join us, Hani."
18
A LIGHT IN THE MUSEUM
(Saturday, July 14; 1:15 A.M.)
Hani joined us in the drawing room. He was very calm and dignified, and his inscrutable eyes rested impassively on Vance like those of an ancient Egyptian priest meditating before the shrine of Osiris.
"How do you happen to be up and about at this hour?" Vance asked casually. "Another attack of gastritis?"
"No, effendi." Hani spoke in slow, measured tones. "I rose when I heard you talking to Brush. I sleep with my door open always."
"Perhaps, then, you heard Sakhmet when she returned to the house tonight."
"Did Sakhmet return?" The Egyptian lifted his head slightly in mild interest.
"In a manner of speaking. . . . But she's a most inefficient deity. She bungled everything again."
"Are you sure she did not intentionally bungle things?" Despite the droning quality of Hani's voice, there was a significant note in it.
Vance regarded him for a moment. Then:
"Did you hear footsteps on the stairs or along the second-floor corridor shortly after midnight?"
The man shook his head slowly.
"I heard nothing. But I was asleep for at least an hour before you arrived; and the soft tread of footsteps on the deep carpet would scarcely have been sufficient to rouse me."
"Doctor Bliss himself," Vance explained, "came down-stairs and telephoned to me. You did not hear him either?"
"The first sound I perceived was when you gentlemen came into the front hall and talked to Brush. Your voices, or perhaps the door opening, awakened me. Later I could hear your muffled tones in Doctor Bliss's bedroom, which is just below mine; but I could not distinguish anything that was said."
"And of course you were not aware that any one turned off the light in the second-story hall round midnight."
"Had I not been asleep I would certainly have noticed it, as the light shines dimly up the stairs into my room. But when I awoke the light was on as usual." Hani frowned slightly. "Who would have turned the hall light off at that hour?"
"I wonder. . . ." Vance did not take his eyes from the Egyptian. "Doctor Bliss has just told us that it was some one who had designs on his life."
"Ah!" The exclamation was like a sigh of relief. "But the attempt, I gather, was not successful."
"No. It was quite a fiasco. The technic, I might say, was both stupid and hazardous."
"It was not Sakhmet." Hani's pronouncement was almost sepulchral.
"Really, now!" Vance smiled slightly. "She is still reclinin', then, by the side of the great west wind of heaven.* . . . I'm jolly glad to be able to rule her out. And since no occult force was at work, perhaps you can suggest who would have had a motive to cut the doctor's throat."
* Vance was referring jocularly to the declaration of Sakhmet in the Chapter of Opening the Mouth of Osiris Ani in the Egyptian Book of the Dead:
"I am the Goddess Sakhmet, and I take my seat upon the side of the great west (wind?) of the skies."
"There are many who would not weep if he were to quit this life; but I know of none who would take it upon himself to precipitate that departure."
Vance lighted a Régie and sat down.
"Why, Hani, did you imagine you might be of service to us?"
"Like you, effendi," came the soft reply, "I expected that something distressing, and perhaps violent, would happen in this house to-night. And when I heard you enter and go to Doctor Bliss's room, it occurred to me that the looked-for event had come to pass. So I waited on the upper landing until you came out."
"Most considerate and thoughtful of you," Vance murmured, and took several puffs on his cigarette. After a moment he asked: "If Mr. Salveter had emerged from his room to-night after you had gone to bed, would you have known of the fact?"
The Egyptian hesitated, and his eyes contracted.
"I think I would. His room is directly opposite mine--"
"I'm familiar with the arrangement."
"It does not seem probable that Mr. Salveter could have unlocked his door and come out without my being cognizant of it."
"It's possible though, is it not?" Vance was insistent. "If you were asleep, and Mr. Salveter had good reason for not disturbing you, he might have emerged so cautiously that you would have slept on in complete ignorance of his act."
"It is barely possible," Hani admitted unwillingly. "But I am quite sure that he did not leave his room after retiring."
"Your wish, I fear, is father to your assurance," Vance sighed. "However, we sha'n't belabor the point."
Hani was watching Vance with lowering concern.
"Did Doctor Bliss suggest that Mr. Salveter left his room tonight?"
"Oh, to the contr'ry," Vance assured him. "The doctor said quite emphatically that any attempt to connect Mr. Salveter with the stealthy steps outside of his door at midnight would be a grave error."
"Doctor Bliss is wholly correct," the Egyptian declared.
"And yet, Hani, the doctor insisted that a would-be assassin was prowlin' about the house. Who else could it have been?"
"I cannot imagine." Hani appeared almost indifferent.
"You do not think that it could have been Mrs. Bliss?"
"Never!" The man's tone had become quickly animated. "Meryt-Amen would have had no reason to go into the hall. She has access to her husband's room through a communicating door--"
"So I observed a while ago,--she joined our pour-parler in the doctor's room. And I must say, Hani, that she was most anxious for us to find the person who had made the attempt on her husband's life."
"Anxious--and sad, effendi." A new note crept into Hani's voice. "She does not yet understand the things that have happened to-day. But when she does--"
"We won't speculate along those lines now," Vance cut in brusquely. He reached in his pocket and drew out the golden dagger. "Did you ever see that?" he asked, holding the weapon toward the Egyptian.
The man's eyes opened wide as he stared at the glittering, jewelled object. At first he appeared fascinated, but the next moment his face clouded, and the muscles of his jowls worked spasmodically. A smouldering anger had invaded him.
"Where did that Pharaonic dagger come from?" he asked, striving to control his emotion.
"It was brought from Egypt by Doctor Bliss," Vance told him.
Hani took the dagger and held it reverently under the table-lamp.
"It could only have come from the tomb of Ai. Here on the crystal knob is faintly engraved the king's cartouche. Behold: Kheper-kheperu-Rê Iry-Maët--"
"Yes, yes. The last Pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty. The doctor found the dagger during his excavations in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings." Vance was watching the other intently. "You are quite positive you have never seen it before?"
Hani drew himself up proudly.
"Had I seen it, I would have reported it to my Government. It would no longer be in the possession of an alien desecrator, but in the country where it belongs, cared for by loving hands at Cairo. . . . Doctor Bliss did well to keep it hidden."
There was a bitter hatred in his words, but suddenly his manner changed.
"May I be permitted to ask when you first saw this royal dagger?"
"A few minutes ago," Vance answered. "It was projectin' from the headboard of the doctor's bed--just behind the place where his head had lain a second earlier."
Hani's gaze travelled past Vance to some distant point, and his eyes became shrewdly thoughtful.
"Was there no sheath to this dagger?" he asked.
"Oh, yes." There was a flicker in the corners of Vance's eyes. "Gold and cloisonné--though I haven't seen it. The fact is, Hani, we're deuced interested in the sheath. It's disappeared--lying perdu somewhere hereabouts. We're going to make a bit of a search for it ere long."
Hani nodded his head understandingly.
"And if you find it, are you sure you'll know more than you do now?"
"It may at least verify my suspicions."
"The sheath would be an easy object to hide securely," Hani reminded him.
"I really don't anticipate any difficulty in putting my hands on it." Vance rose and confronted the man. "Could you perhaps suggest where we might best start our search?"
"No, effendi," Hani returned, after a perceptible hesitation. "Not at this moment. I would need time to think about it."
"Very well. Suppose you go to your room and indulge in some lamaic concentration. You're anything but helpful."
Hani handed the dagger back, and turned toward the hall.
"And be so good," Vance requested, "as to knock on Mr. Salveter's door and tell him we would like to see him here at once."
Hani bowed, and disappeared.
"I don't like that bird," Heath grumbled, when the Egyptian was out of hearing. "He's too slippery. And he knows something he's not telling. I'd like to turn my boys loose on him with a piece of rubber hose--they'd make him come across. . . . I wouldn't be surprised, Mr. Vance, if he threw the dagger himself. Did you notice the way he held it, laying out flat in the palm of his hand with the point toward the fingers?--just like those knife-throwers in vaudeville."
"Oh, he might have been thinkin' caressingly of Doctor Bliss's trachea," Vance conceded. "However, the dagger episode doesn't worry me half as much as something that didn't happen to-night."
"Well, it looks to me like plenty happened," retorted Heath.
Markham regarded Vance inquisitively.
"What's in your mind?" he asked.
"The picture presented to us to-night, d' ye see, wasn't finished. I could still detect some of the underpainting. And there was no vernissage. The canvas needed another form--the generating line wasn't complete. . . ."
Just then we could hear footsteps on the stairs. Salveter, with a wrinkled Shantung dressing-gown wrapped about his pyjamas, blinked as he faced the lights in the drawing-room. He appeared only half awake, but when his pupils had become adjusted to the glare, he ran his eyes sharply over the four of us and then shot a glance at the bronze clock on the mantel.
"What now?" he asked. "What has happened?" He seemed both bewildered and anxious.
"Doctor Bliss phoned me that some one had tried to kill him," Vance explained. "So we hobbled over. . . . Know anything about it?"
"Good God, no!" Salveter sat down heavily in a chair by the door. "Some one tried to kill the doctor? When? . . . How?" He fumbled in his dressing-gown pockets, and Vance, reading his movements correctly, held out his cigarette-case. Salveter lighted a Régie nervously, and drew several deep inhalations on it.
"Shortly after midnight," Vance answered. "But the attempt failed dismally." He tossed the dagger in Salveter's lap. "Familiar with that knickknack?"
The other studied the weapon a few seconds without touching it. A growing astonishment crept into his expression, and he carefully picked up the dagger and inspected it.
"I never saw it in my life," he said in an awed tone. "It's a very valuable archaeological specimen--a rare museum piece. Where, in Heaven's name, did you unearth it? It certainly doesn't belong to the Bliss collection."
"Ah, but it does," Vance assured him. "A private item, so to speak. Always kept secluded from pryin' vulgar eyes."
"I'm amazed. I'll bet the Egyptian Government doesn't know about it." Salveter looked up abruptly. "Has this dagger anything to do with the attempt on the doctor's life?"
"Everything apparently," Vance replied negligently. "We found it lodged in the headboard of the doctor's bed, evidently thrown with great force at the spot where his throat should have been."
Salveter contracted his brow and set his lips.
"See here, Mr. Vance," he declared at length; "we haven't any Malayan jugglers in this house. . . . Unless," he added, as a startled afterthought, "Hani knows the art. Those orientals are full of unexpected lore and practices."
"The performance to-night was not, according to all accounts, what one would unqualifiedly call artistic. It was, in fact, somewhat amateurish. I'm sure a Malay could have done much better with his kris. In the first place, the intruder's footsteps and the opening of the door were plainly heard by Doctor Bliss; and, in the second place, there was sufficient delay between the projection of the flash-light and the actual hurling of the dagger to give the doctor time to remove his head from the line of propulsion. . . ."
At this moment Hani appeared at the door holding a small object in his hand. Walking forward he laid it on the centre-table.
"Here, effendi," he said in a low voice, "is the sheath of the royal dagger. I found it lying against the baseboard of the second-story hall, near the head of the stairs."
Vance scarcely glanced at it.
"Thanks awfully," he drawled. "I rather thought you'd find it. But of course it wasn't in the hall."
"I assure you--"
"Oh, quite." Vance looked straight into Hani's eyes, and presently a faint, gentle smile crept into his gaze. "Isn't it true, Hani," he asked pointedly, "that you found the sheath exactly where you and I believed it to be hidden?"
The Egyptian did not answer
at once. Presently he said:
"I have told my story, effendi. You may draw your own conclusion."
Vance appeared satisfied and waved his hand toward the door.
"And now, Hani, go to bed. We sha'n't need you any more to-night. Leiltak sa'îda."
"Leiltak sa'îda wemubâraka." The man bowed and departed.
Vance picked up the sheath and, taking the dagger from Salveter, fitted the blade into its holder, looking at the gold embossing critically.
"Aegean influence," he murmured. "Pretty, but too fussy. These ornate floral devices of the Eighteenth Dynasty bear the same relation to early Egyptian art that the Byzantine ginger-bread does to the simple Greek orders." He held the sheath closer to his monocle. "And, by the by, here's a decoration that may interest you, Mr. Salveter. The formal scrolls terminate in a jackal's head."
"Anûpu, eh? Hani's given name. That's curious." Salveter rose and looked at the design. "And another point might be considered, Mr. Vance," he went on, after a pause. "These lower-class Copts are, for all their superficial Christian veneer, highly superstitious. Their minds run along one traditional groove: they like to fit everything to a preconceived symbolism. There have been nine more or less coincidental deaths of late among those connected with the excavations in Egypt,* and the natives ridiculously imagine that the afrîts of their ancestors lay in ambush in the various tombs to mow down the western intruders, as a kind of punitive measure. They actually believe in such malefic forces. . . . And here is Hani, at bottom a superstitious Egyptian, who resents the work of Doctor Bliss:--is it not possible he might consider the death of the doctor by a dagger once worn by a Pharaoh as a sort of mystical retribution in line with all these other irrational ghost stories? And Hani might even regard the jackal's head on that sheath as a sign that he--named after the jackal-headed god, Anûbis--had been divinely appointed the agent in this act of vengeance."
* Salveter was here referring to the Earl of Carnarvon, Colonel the Honorable Aubrey Herbert, General Sir Lee Stack, George J. Gould, Woolf Joel, Sir Archibald Douglas Reid, Professor Lafleur, H. G. Evelyn-White, and Professor Georges-Aaron Bénédite. Since that time two more names have been added to the fatal list--those of the Honorable Richard Bethell, secretary to Howard Carter, and Lord Westbury.
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