by Sax Rohmer
I
MR. CLIFFORD’S STORY OF THE EGYPTIAN POTSHERD
During the autumn of 19 — , I was sharing a pleasant set of rooms with Mark Lesty, who was shortly taking up an appointment at a London hospital, and it was, I think, about the middle of that month, that the extraordinary affair of Halesowen and his Egyptian potsherd came under our notice.
Our rooms (they were in a south-west suburb) overlooked a fine expanse of Common. Halesowen rented a flat commanding a similar prospect; and, at the time of which I write, he had but recently returned from a protracted visit to Egypt.
Halesowen was a tall, fair man, clean-shaven, very fresh coloured and wearing his hair cropped close to his head. He was well travelled, and no mean antiquary. He lived entirely by himself; and Lesty and I frequently spent the evening at his place, which was a veritable museum of curiosities. I distinctly recall the first time that he showed us his latest acquisitions.
Both the windows were wide open and the awning fluttered in the slight breeze. Dusk was just descending, and we sat looking out over the Common and puffing silently at our briars. We had been examining the relics that Halesowen had brought back from the land of the Pharaohs, the one, I remember, which had most impressed me, tyro that I was, being the mummy of a sacred cat from Bubastis.
“It wouldn’t have been worth bringing back only for the wrapping,” Halesowen assured me. “This, now, is really unique.”
The object referred to was a broken pot or vase, upon which he pointed out a number of hieroglyphics and a figure with the head of a jackal. “A potsherd inscribed with the figure of Anubis,” he explained. “Very valuable.”
“Why?” Lesty inquired, in his lazy way.
“Well,” Halesowen replied, “the characters of the inscription are of a kind entirely unfamiliar to me. I believe them to be a sort of secret writing, possibly peculiar to some brotherhood. I am risking expert opinion, although in every sense, I stole the thing!”
“How’s that?” I asked.
“Well, Professor Sheraton — you’ll see his name on a row of cases in the B.M. — excavated it. But it’s a moral certainty he didn’t intend to advise the authorities of his find. He was going to smuggle it out of Egypt into his private collection. I had marked the spot where he found it for inquiries of my own. This dishonest old fossil—”
Lesty laughed.
“Oh! my own motives weren’t above suspicion! But any way the Professor anticipated me. Accordingly, I employed one Ali, a distinguished member of a family of thieves, to visit the learned gentleman’s tent! Cutting the story — there’s the pot!”
“Here! I say!” drawled Lesty. “You’ll come to a bad end, young fellow!”
“The position is a peculiar one,” replied Halesowen, smiling. “Neither of us had any legal claim to the sherd — whilst we were upon Egyptian territory. Therefore, even if the Professor learnt that I had the thing — and he may suspect — he couldn’t prosecute me!”
“Devilish high-handed!” commented Lesty.
“Yes. But remember we were well off the map — miles away from Cook’s route. The possession of this potsherd ought to make a man’s reputation — any man who knows a bit about the subject. Curiously enough, a third party had had his eye upon the place where this much-sought sherd was found. And in some mysterious fashion he tumbled to the fact that it had fallen into my hands. He made a sort of veiled offer of a hundred pounds for it. I refused, but ran across him again, a week or so later, in Cairo, and he raised his price to two hundred.”
“That’s strange,” I said. “Who was he?”
“Called himself Zeda — Dr. Louis Zeda. He quite lost his temper when I declined to sell, and I’ve not set eyes on him since.”
He relocked the fragment in his cabinet, and we lapsed into silence, to sit gazing meditatively across the Common, picturesque in the dim autumn twilight.
“By the way, Halesowen,” I said, “I see that the flat next door, same floor as this, is to let.”
“That’s so,” he replied. “Why don’t you men take it?”
“We’ll think about it,” yawned Lesty, stretching his long limbs. “Might look over it in the morning.”
The following day we viewed the vacant flat, but found, upon inquiry of the agent, that it had already been let. However, as our own rooms suited us very well, we were not greatly concerned. Just as we finished dinner the same evening, Halesowen came in, and, without preamble, plunged into a surprising tale of uncanny happenings at his place.
“Take it slow,” said Lesty. “You say it was after we came away?”
“About an hour after,” replied Halesowen. “I had brought out the potsherd, and had it in the wooden stand on the table before me. I was copying the hieroglyphics, which are unusual, and had my reading-lamp burning only, the rest of the room being consequently in shadow. I was sitting with my back to the windows, facing the door, so no one could possibly have entered the room unseen by me. It was as I bent down to scrutinise a badly defaced character that I felt a queer sensation stealing over me, as though some one were standing close behind my chair, watching me!”
“Very common,” explained Lesty; “merely nerves.”
“Yes, I know; but not what followed. The sensation became so pronounced, that I stood up. No one was in the room. I determined to take a stroll, concluding that the fresh air would clear these uncanny cobwebs out of my brain. Accordingly, I extinguished the lamp and went out. I was just putting my cap on, when something prompted me to return and lock up the potsherd.”
He fixed his eyes upon us with an expression of doubt.
“There was some one, or something, in the room!”
“What do you mean!” asked Lesty incredulously.
“I quite distinctly saw a hand and bare white arm pass away from the table — and vanish! It was dark in the room, remember; but I could see the arm well enough. I switched on the reading-lamp. Not a thing was to be seen. There was no one in the room and no one but myself in the flat, for I searched it thoroughly!”
Some moments of silence followed this remarkable story, and I sat watching Lesty, who, in turn was regarding Halesowen with the stolid, vacant stare which sometimes served to conceal the working of his keen brain.
“Pity you didn’t let us know sooner,” he said, rising slowly to his feet. “This is interesting.”
II
Halesowen’s nerves evidently had been shaken by the inexplicable incident. As the three of us strode across the corner of the Common, he informed us that the new tenant of the adjoining flat had moved in. “I have been away all day,” he said; “but the stuff was bundled in some time during the afternoon.”
We proceeded upstairs and into the cosy room which had been the scene of the remarkable occurrence related. As it was growing dark, Halesowen turned on the electric light, and, indicating a chair by the writing table, explained that it was there he had been seated at that time.
“Did you have the windows open?” asked Lesty.
“Yes,” was the reply. “I left the chairs and the awning out, too, as it was a fine night; in fact, you can see that they still remain practically as you left them.”
“When you returned, and saw, or thought you saw, the hand and arm — you would have to pass around to this side of the table in order to reach the lamp?”
“Yes.”
Apparently Lesty was about to make some observation, when an interruption occurred, in the form of a ringing on the door bell, followed by a discreet fandango on the knocker.
“Who the deuce have we here!” muttered Halesowen. “I saw no one go in below.”
As our host passed through the lighted room and into the hall, my friend and I both leant forward in our chairs, the better to hear what should pass; nor were we kept long in suspense, for, as we heard the outer door opened, an odd, rumbling voice came, with a queer accent:
“Ah, my dear Mr. Halesowen, it is indeed an intrusion of me! But when I find how we are neighbours I cannot res
ist to make the call and renew a so pleasant acquaintance!”
“Dr. Zeda!” we heard Halesowen exclaim, with little cordiality.
“Ever your devoted servant!” replied the courteous foreigner.
I glanced at Lesty, and we rose together and stepped through the open window in time to see a truly remarkable personage enter.
This was a large-framed man, with snow-white hair cut close to his skull, French fashion. He had a high and very wrinkled brow and wore gold-rimmed pince-nez. Jet black and heavy eyebrows were his, and his waxed moustache, his neat imperial, were likewise of the hue of coal. His complexion was pallid; and in his well-cut frock-coat, with a loose black tie overhanging his vest, he made a striking picture, standing bowing profoundly in the doorway.
Halesowen rapidly muttered the usual formalities; in fact, I remember mentally contrasting our friend’s unceremonious manners with the courtly deportment of Dr. Zeda.
The latter explained that he had taken the adjacent flat, only learning, that evening, whom he had for a neighbour, and, despite the lateness of the hour, he said, he could not resist the desire to see Halesowen, of whose company in Egypt he retained such pleasant memories. Allowing for his effusiveness, there was nothing one could take exception to in his behaviour, and I rather wondered at the brusque responses of our usually polite host.
When, after a brief chat, the foreign gentleman rose to take his leave, he extended an invitation to all of us to lunch with him on the following day. “My place is in somewhat disorder,” he said, smiling, “but you are Bohemian, like myself, and will not care!”
Though I half expected that Halesowen would decline, he did not do so; I, therefore, also accepted, as did Lesty. Whereupon, Zeda departed.
Halesowen, returning to the chair which he had vacated to usher out his visitor, lighted a cigarette, regarded it for a moment, meditatively, and then frankly expressed his doubts.
“He’s been watching me!” he said; “and when he saw the next flat vacant he jumped at the chance.”
“My dear chap,” I retorted, “he must be very keen on securing your potsherd if he is prepared to take and furnish a flat next door to you simply with a view to keeping an eye on it!”
“You have no idea how anxious he is,” he assured me. “If you had seen his face, in Cairo, when I flatly declined to sell, you would be better able to understand.”
“Why not sell, then?”
“I’m dashed if I do!” said Halesowen stubbornly.
On the following day we lunched with Dr. Zeda, and were surprised at the orderly state of his establishment. Everything, from floor to ceiling, was in its proper place.
“It hasn’t taken you long to get things straight,” commented Lesty.
“Ah, no,” replied the other. “These big firms they do it all in a day if you insist — and I insist, see?”
I thoroughly enjoyed my visit, for he proved an excellent host, and I think even Lesty grew less suspicious of him. During the weeks that followed, the doctor came several times to our rooms, and we frequently met at Halesowen’s. The latter, who boldly had submitted photographs and drawings of the sherd to the British Museum, experienced no repetition of the mysterious phenomenon already described. Then, about seven o’clock one morning, when the mists hung low over the Common in promise of a hot day, a boy came for Lesty and myself with news of a fresh development. He was a lad who did odd jobs for Halesowen, and he brought word of an attempted burglary, together with a request that we should go over without delay.
Our curiosity keenly aroused, we were soon with our friend, and found him seated in the familiar room, before a large cabinet, with double glass doors, which, as was clearly evident, had been hastily ransacked. Other cases in which he kept various curios were also opened, and the place was in general disorder.
“What’s gone?” asked Lesty, quickly.
“Nothing!” was the answer. “The potsherd is in the safe, and the safe is in my bedroom — or perhaps something might have gone!”
“You lock it up at night, then? I thought you kept it in the cabinet.”
“Only during the day. It goes in the safe, with one or two other trifles, at night; but everybody doesn’t know that!”
We looked at one another, silently; but the name that was on all our lips remained unspoken — for we were startled by a loud knocking and ringing at the door. Carter opening it, into the room ran Dr. Zeda!
“Oh, my dear friends!” he cried, in his hoarse, rumbling voice, “there has been to my flat a midnight robber! He has turned completely upside-down all my collections!”
Lesty coughed loudly; but, as I turned my head to look at him, his face was quite expressionless. Halesowen seemed stricken dumb by surprise; whilst, for my own part, as I watched the foreigner staring about the disordered room, and noted the growing look of bewilderment creeping over his pallid countenance, I was compelled to admit to myself that here was either a consummate actor or a man of whom we hastily had formed a most unwarrantable opinion.
“But, my friend — my good Halesowen,” he exclaimed, with widely opened eyes and extended palms— “what is it that I see? You are as disordered as myself!”
Halesowen nodded. “The burglar gave me a call, too!” he said, grimly.
“My dear sir!” gasped Zeda, seizing the speaker’s arm— “tell me quickly — you have lost nothing?”
Halesowen glanced at him rather hard. “No,” he answered.
“Ah, what a relief! I feared,” rumbled the doctor. “But perhaps you wonder for what it is they came?”
“I can guess!”
“You need no longer to guess; I will tell you. It is for your fragment of the sacred vase, and to me they come for mine!”
We were even more astonished by this assertion than we had been by the doctor’s first. “Your fragment!” said Halesowen, slowly, with his eyes fixed on Zeda— “to what fragment do you refer?”
“To that which, together with your potsherd, makes up the complete vase! But you doubt?” he suggested, shrugging his shoulders. “Wait but for a moment and I will prove!”
He moved from the room; his gait had a mincing awkwardness, quite indescribable; and we heard his retreating, heavy footsteps as he passed downstairs. Then we stood and gaped at one another. “His confounded ingenuity,” rapped Halesowen, “has completely tied my hands.”
Being interrupted, at this moment, by the re-entrance of the gentleman in question, further discussion of the subject was precluded. Zeda carried a small iron box, which he placed carefully upon the table and unlocked. A second box of polished ebony was revealed within, and this being unlocked in turn, was proved to contain, reposing in a nest of blue velvet, a fragment of antique pottery. Taking the fragment in his hand, the doctor begged that the potsherd be produced.
Halesowen, after a momentary hesitation, retired from the room, to return almost immediately with the broken vase in its wooden frame. Dr. Zeda, placing the portion which he held in his hand against that in the frame, but not so closely as to bring the parts in contact, turned to us with a triumphant smile. “They correspond, gentlemen, to a smallest fraction!” he declared; which, indeed, was perfectly true.
“And now,” continued Zeda, evidently gratified by the surprise which we could not conceal, “I will relate to you a story. I do not ask that you shall credit it; I only say that I have given up my life to such studies, and that I am willing, as matters have so arrived, that you shall join me to prove false or true what I think of the potsherd of Anubis.”
“Good!” said Lesty, and settled himself to listen, an example that was followed by Halesowen and myself. Zeda paused for a moment, evidently to collect his ideas, a pause upon which my stolid friend placed a dubious interpretation, for he cleared his throat, significantly.
III
“The date is no matter,” said Dr. Zeda, “but there was at Gizeh, to the north of the Sphinx, a temple dedicated to Isis; but wherein the worship was different. We only know of this shrine
by the monuments, but they prove it to have been — eh, Mr. Halesowen?”
Halesowen nodded.
“Here, then, the gods of the dead were adored — but the worship of Anubis took precedence, and was conducted at a shrine apart. Here, locked within three-and-thirty doors, having each its separate janitor who held the key, reposed a sacred symbol — a symbol, my friends, upon which was based the occult knowledge of the initiated; a symbol more precious than the lives of a hundred-hundred warriors — for so it is written!”
“I have never met with the inscription!” said Halesowen drily.
Dr. Zeda smiled.
“You never are likely to meet it!” he responded. “Your Belzoni and Lepsius, your Birch, Renouf, Brugsch and Petrie, is a mere unseeing vandal, blinded to the great truth — to the ultimate secret that Egypt holds for him who has eyes to see and a brain to realise!”
The mysterious foreign gentleman looked about him with a sort of challenge in his glance; then he quietly resumed his story.
“At the change of the moon in the sacred month, Methori, a maiden selected from a noble house for her beauty and purity, and for a whole year dedicated to the service of the gods, held in her hands the sacred thing — held it aloft that the initiated might worship, until the first white beam lit up the receptacle, when all bowed down their heads and chanted the Hymn of the souls who are passing.’ Then was it locked again within the three-and-thirty doors, there to remain for another year. None saw the symbol itself but the high priest, who looked upon it when he was so ordained — for any other that gazed upon it died! It was contained in a holy vase!”
He paused impressively. We had all fallen under the peculiar fascination of the speaker’s personality; we felt as though he spoke of matters wherein he had had personal concern. I could almost believe him to have witnessed the strange rites that he told of with such conviction.
“In a year so long ago,” he softly resumed, his voice now a kind of jagged whisper, “that to speak of its date were to convey nothing to you, the highborn virgin on whom the exalted office was conferred, closed upon her unhappy soul the gates of paradise for ages unnumbered; called down upon her head the curse of the high priest and the anger of the most high gods; was rejected of Set himself!