The Dark Angel

by Seabury Quinn

  “Good heavens!” I exclaimed.

  “For Gawd’s sake!” came Ellis’ rejoinder.

  “Eh bien, I rather think it is the devil’s,” Jules de Grandin murmured.

  The room before us was a chaos of confusion, as though its contents had been stirred with a monster spoon in the hands of a maliciously mischievous giant. Furniture was overturned; some of the chair covers had been ripped open, as though a ruthless, hurrying searcher had cut the upholstery in search of hidden valuables; pictures hung crazily upon the walls.

  In the middle of the study, beneath the glare of a cluster of electric lights, stood a heavy oaken table, and on it lay a mummy-case stripped of its cover, a slender, China-tea-colored form swathed in crisscrossed linen bandages, reclining on the table by the case.

  Close to the baseboard of the wall beneath the window crouched a grotesque, unhuman thing, resembling a farmer’s cast-off scarecrow or a hopelessly outmoded tailor’s dummy. We had to look a second time and strain our unbelieving eyes before we recognized Professor Larson in the crumpled form.

  Stepping daintily as a cat on a shower-splashed pavement, de Grandin crossed the room and sank to one knee beside the huddled form, drawing his right glove off as he knelt.

  “Is—is he—” Ellis whispered hoarsely, halting at the word of which laymen seem to have a superstitious fear.

  “Dead?” de Grandin supplied. “Mais oui, Monsieur; like a herring. But he has not been so long. No; I should hazard a guess that he was still living when we left the house to come here.”

  “But—isn’t there something we can do? There must be something—” Ellis asked tremulously.

  “But certainly; we can call the coroner,” de Grandin answered. “Meanwhile, we might examine this.” He nodded toward the mummy lying on the table.

  Ellis’ humane concern for his dead colleague dropped from him like a worn-out garment as he turned toward the ancient relic, the man eclipsed completely by the anthropologist. “Beautiful—superb!” he murmured ecstatically as he gazed at the unlovely thing. “See, there’s no face-mask or funerary statue, either on the mummy or the case. Fifth Dynasty work, as sure as you’re alive, and the case is—I say, do you see it?” he broke off, pointing excitedly at the open cedar coffin.

  “See it? But certainly,” de Grandin answered sharply. “But what is it you find extraordinary, if one may ask?”

  “Why, don’t you see? There’s not a line of writing on that mummy-case! The Egyptians always wrote the titles and biographies of the dead upon their coffins, but this one is just bare, virgin wood. See”—he leant over and tapped the thin, hard shell of cedar—“there’s never been a bit of paint or varnish on it! No wonder Larson kept it to himself. Why, there’s never been a thing like this discovered since Egyptology became a science!”

  De Grandin’s glance had wandered from the coffin to the mummy. Now he brushed past Ellis with his quick, cat-like step and bent above the bandaged form. “The égyptologie I do not know so well,” he admitted, “but medicine I know perfectly. What do you make of this, hein?” His slender forefinger rested for a moment on the linen bands encircling the desiccated figure’s left pectoral region.

  I started at the words. There was no doubt about it. The left breast, even beneath the mummy-bands, was considerably lower than the right, and faintly, but perceptibly, through the tightly bound linen there showed the faintest trace of brown-red stain. There was no mistaking it. Every surgeon, soldier and embalmer knows that telltale stain at sight.

  Professor Ellis’ eyes opened till they were nearly as wide as de Grandin’s. “Blood!” he exclaimed in a muted voice. “Good Lord!” Then:

  “But it can’t be blood; it simply can’t, you know. Mummies were eviscerated and pickled in natron before desiccation; there’s no possibility of any blood being left in the body—”

  “Oh, no?” the Frenchman’s interruption was charged with sarcasm. “Nevertheless, Monsieur, de Grandin is too old a fox to be instructed in the art of sucking eggs. Friend Trowbridge”—he turned to me—“how long have you been dealing pills to those afflicted with bellyache?”

  “Why,” I answered wonderingly, “about forty years, but—”

  “No buts, my friend. Can you, or can you not recognize a blood-stain when you see it?”

  “Of course, but—”

  “What, then, is this, if you will kindly tell us?”

  “Why, blood, of course; anyone can tell that—”

  “Précisément—it is blood, Monsieur Ellis. The good and most reliable Doctor Trowbridge corroborates me. Now, let us examine the coffin of this so remarkable mummy which, despite your pickling in natron and your desiccation, can still shed blood.” With a wave of his hand he indicated the case of plain, unvarnished cedar-wood.

  “By George, this is unusual, too!” Ellis cried, bending above the coffin. “D’ye see?”

  “What?” I queried, for his eyes were shining with excitement as he gazed into the violated casket.

  “Why, the way the thing’s fastened. Most mummy-case lids are held in place by four little flanges—two on each side—which sink into mortises cut in the lower section and held in place by hardwood dowels. This has eight, three on each side and one at each end. H’m, they must have wanted to make sure whoever was put in there couldn’t break loose. And—great Scott, will you look there!” Excitedly he pointed to the bottom of the case.

  Once more I looked my wonderment. The abnormalities which struck his practised eye were quite invisible to me.

  “See how they’ve lined the case with spices? I’ve opened several hundred mummy-cases, but I never saw that before.”

  As he had said, the entire bottom of the coffin was strewn with loose spices to a depth of four inches or so. The aromatics had crumbled to a fine powder, but the mingled clove and cinnamon, aloes and thyme gave off a pungent, almost suffocating aroma as we bent above the bathtub-like coffin.

  De Grandin’s small blue eyes were very round and bright as he glanced quickly from me to Ellis, then back again. “I damn think this explains it,” he announced. “Unless I am much more mistaken than I think I am, this body never was a mummy, at least not such a mummy as the old embalmers customarily produced. Will you assist me?” He bowed invitingly to Ellis, placing his hands beneath the mummy’s shoulders at the same time.

  “Take the feet, if you please, Monsieur,” he bade, “and lift it gently—gently, if you please—it must be put exactly where it was until the coroner has viewed the room.”

  They raised the bandaged form six inches or so above the table, then set it down again, and astonishment was written on their faces as they finished.

  “What is it?” I asked, completely mystified by their glances of mutual understanding.

  “It weighs—” began de Grandin, and:

  “Sixty pounds, at least!” completed Ellis.

  “Well?”

  “Well, be everlastingly consigned to Satan’s lowest subcellar!” rejoined the little Frenchman sharply. “It is not well at all, my friend; it is completely otherwise. You know your physiology; you know that sixty percent or more of us is water, simply H20, such as is found in rivers, and on the tables of Americans in lieu of decent wine. Mummification is dehydration—the watery contents of the body is removed and nothing left but bone and desiccated flesh, a scant forty per cent of the body’s weight in life. This body is a small one; in life it could have weighed scarcely a hundred pounds; yet—”

  “Why, then, it must have been only partly mummified,” I interrupted, but he cut in with:

  “Or not at all, my friend. I damn think that we shall find some interesting disclosures when these wrappings are removed. A bleeding mummy, and a mummy which weighs more than half its lifetime weight—yes, the probabilities of a surprise are great, or I am more mistaken than I think.

  “Meantime,” he turned toward the door, “there is the routine of the law to be complied with. The coroner must be told of Monsieur Larson’s death, and there
is no need for us to burn these lights while we are waiting.”

  Bowing politely to us to precede him, he switched off the study lights before closing the door and followed us to the lower hall where the telephone was located.

  “I SIMPLY CAN’T IMAGINE HOW it happened,” Professor Ellis murmured, striding nervously across his late colleague’s drawing-room while we waited the advent of the coroner. “Larson seemed in the pink of condition this afternoon, and—good Lord, what’s that?”

  The sound of a terrific struggle, like that of two men locked in a death-grip, echoed through the quiet house.

  Thump—thump—thump! Heavy, pounding footsteps banged upon the floor above our heads; then crash! came a smashing impact, as of overturning furniture, a momentary pause, a strident scream and the sudden crescendo of a wild, discordant laugh. Then silence once again.

  “Good heavens!” I exclaimed, panic grasping at my throat. “Why, it’s directly overhead—in the study, where we left the mummy and—”

  “Impossible!” Professor Ellis contradicted. “Nobody could have gotten past us to that room, and—”

  “Impossible or not, Friend Trowbridge speaks the truth, by damn!” the little Frenchman shouted, springing from his chair and racing toward the stairs. “En avant, mes enfants—follow me!”

  Three steps at a stride he mounted headlong up the stairway, paused a moment at the closed door of the study while he whipped a pistol from his pocket, then his weapon swinging in a circle before him, advanced with a quick leap, snapped on the lights and:

  “Hands up!” he shouted warningly. “A single offer of resistance and you breakfast with the devil in the morning—grand Dieu, my friends, behold!”

  Save that one or two chairs had been overset, the room was just as we had left it. Upon the table lay the supine, bandaged mummy, its spice-filled case uncovered by its side; the thing which had been Larson crouched shoulders-to-the wall, as though stricken in an attempt to turn a somersault; the window-blind flapped cracklingly in the chilling winter wind.

  “The window—it’s open!” cried Professor Ellis. “It was closed when we were here, but—”

  “Dieu de Dieu de Dieu de Dieu—does not one know it?” de Grandin interrupted angrily, striding toward the open casement. “Parbleu, the way in which you pounce upon the obvious is greatly trying to my nerves, Friend Ellis, and—ah? A-a-a-ah? One sees, one perceives, one understands—almost!”

  Abreast of him, we gazed across the sill, and obedient to the mute command of his pointing finger, looked at the snow-encrusted roof of the first floor bay-window which joined the house-wall something like two feet below the study window. Gouged in the dead-white veneer of snow were four long, parallel streaks, exposing the slate beneath. “U’m,” he murmured, lowering the sash and turning toward the door, “the mystery is in part explained, my friends.

  “That window, it would be the logical place for a burglar to force entry,” he added as we trooped down the stairs. “The roof of the bay-window has but very little slope, and stands directly underneath the window of Professor Larson’s study. One bent on burglary could hardly fail to note its possibilities as an aid to crime, and the fact that we had light going only in the downstairs room was notice to the world that the upper story was untenanted. So—”

  “Quite so, but there wasn’t any burglar there,” Ellis interrupted practically.

  De Grandin favored him with such a stare as a teacher might bestow on a more than ordinarily dull pupil. “One quite agrees, mon ami,” he replied. “However, if you will have the exceeding goodness to restrain your curiosity—and conversation—for a time, it may be we shall find that which we seek.”

  The dark, hunched-up object showed with startling vividness against the background of the snow-powdered lawn as we descended from the porch. De Grandin knelt beside it and struck a match to aid in his inspection. It was a ragged, unkempt figure, unwashed, unshaven; a typical low-class sneak-thief who had varied his customary sorry trade with an excursion into the higher profession of housebreaking with disastrous results to himself. He crouched as he had fallen from the bay-window’s sloping roof, one arm twisted underneath him, his head bent oddly to one side, his battered, age-discolored hat mashed in at the crown and driven comically down upon his head till his ears were bent beneath it. Little lodes of sleety snow had lodged within the wrinkles of his ragged coat, and tiny threads of icicles had formed on his mustache.

  The man was dead, no doubt of it. No one, not even the most accomplished contortionist, could twist his neck at that sharp angle. And the manner of his death was obvious. Frightened at sight of the mummy, the poor fellow had endeavored to effect a hasty exit by the open window, had slipped upon the sleet-glazed roof of the bay-window and fallen to the ground, striking head-first and skidding forward with his full weight on his twisted neck.

  I voiced my conclusions hastily, but de Grandin shook a puzzled head. “One understands the manner of his death,” he answered thoughtfully. “But the reason, that is something else again. We can well think that such a creature would have a paralyzing fear when he beheld the mummy stretched upon the table, but that does not explain the antics he went through before he fell or jumped back through the window he had forced. We heard him thrash about; we heard him kick the furniture; we heard him scream with mirthless laughter. For why? Frightened men may scream, they sometimes even laugh hysterically, but what was there for him to wrestle with?”

  “That’s just what Larson did!” Professor Ellis put in hastily. “Don’t you remember—”

  “Exactement,” the Frenchman answered with a puzzled frown. “Professor Larson cries aloud and fights with nothing; this luckless burglar breaks into the very room where Monsieur Larson died so strange a death, and he, too, wrestles with the empty air and falls to death while laughing hideously. There is something very devilish here, my friends.”

  WHEN WE HAD GONE back in the house young Ellis looked at us with something very near to panic in his eyes. “You say that we must leave that mummy as it is until the coroner has seen it?” he demanded.

  “Your understanding is correct, my friend,” de Grandin answered.

  “All right, we’ll leave the dam’ thing there, but just as soon as Mr. Martin has finished with it, I think we’d better take it out and burn it.”

  “Eh, what is it that you say? Burn it, Monsieur?” de Grandin asked.

  “Just that. It’s what the Egyptologists call an ‘unlucky’ mummy, and the sooner we get rid of it the healthier it’ll be for all of us, I’m thinking. See here”—he glanced quickly upward, as though fearing a renewed outbreak in the room above, then turned again to us—“do you recall the series of fatalities following Tutankhamen’s exhumation?”

  De Grandin made no answer, but the fixed, unwinking stare he leveled on the speaker, and the nervous way his trimly waxed mustache quivered at the corners of his mouth betrayed his interest.

  Ellis hurried on: “Call it nonsense if you will—and you probably will—but the fact is there seems something in this talk of the ancient gods of Egypt having power to curse those disturbing the mummies of people dying in apostasy. You know, I assume, that there are certain mummies known as ‘unlucky’—unlucky for those who find them, or have anything to do with them? Tutankhamen is probably the latest, as well as the most outstanding example of this class. He was a heretic in his day, and had offended the ‘old ones’ or their priests, which amounted to the same thing. So, when he died, they buried him with elaborate ceremonies, but set no image of Amen-Ra at the bow of the boat which carried him across the lake of the dead, and the plaques of Tem, Seb, Nephthys, Osiris and Isis were not prepared to go with him into the tomb. Tutankhamen, notwithstanding his belated efforts at reconciliation with the priesthood, was little better than an atheist according to contemporary Egyptian belief, and the wrath of the gods went into the tomb with him. It was not their wish that his name be preserved to posterity or that any of his relics be brought to light again.
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br />   “Now, think what happened: When Lord Carnarvon located the tomb, he had four associates. Carnarvon and three of his helpers are dead today. Colonel Herbert and Doctor Evelyn-White were among the first to go into Tut’s tomb. Both died within a year. Sir Archibald Douglas was engaged to make an X-ray—he died almost before the plates could be developed. Six out of seven French journalists who went into the tomb shortly after it was opened died in less than a year, and almost every workman engaged in the excavations died before he had a chance to spend his pay. Some of these men died one way, some another, but the point is: they all died.

  “Not only that; even minor articles taken from the tomb seem to exercise a malign influence. There is absolute proof that attendants in the Cairo Museum whose duties keep them near the Tutankhamen relics sicken and die for no apparent reason. D’ye wonder they call him an ‘unlucky’ mummy?”

  “Very good, Monsieur; what then?” de Grandin prompted as the other lapsed into a moody silence.

  “Just this: That mummy-case upstairs is bare of painting as the palm of your hand, and the orthodox Egyptians of the Fifth Dynasty would no more have thought of putting a body away without suitable biographical and religious writings on the coffin than the average American family today would think of holding a funeral without religious services of some sort. Further than that, the evidence points to that body’s never having been embalmed at all—apparently it was merely wrapped and put into a coffin with a layer of spices around it. Embalming had religious significance in ancient Egypt. If the flesh corrupted, the spirit could not return at the end of the prescribed cycle and reanimate it, and to be buried unembalmed was tantamount to a denial of immortality. This body had only the poorest makeshift attempt at preservation. It looks as though this person, whoever he was, died outside the religious pale, doesn’t it?”