A Rival from the Grave

by Seabury Quinn

  “Halte la!” de Grandin cried. “I will make the bargain with you. Bring this body which you so adore to Monsieur Mendoza’s house this evening, and promise me you will perform your autopsy upon it before midnight, and I will consent. Refuse, and—it would be some loss to science if I had to shoot you dead, Herr Doktor, but if I must I will. Make no mistake about it.”

  For a moment they glared in each other’s eyes; then, with a shrug of resignation, the big Austrian turned back. Half the other’s size, dandified, almost effeminate, de Grandin nevertheless bore the stamp of the born killer, and in the steady gaze of his little, round blue eyes the Austrian savant had seen the bare-boned face of death. For all his ponderous size and his bloodless, cold devotion to his science, Herr Doktor Grafensburg was something of a coward, and his blustering bravado melted like a snowpatch in the sun before the Frenchman’s cold determination.

  “Ja wohl,” he finally agreed. “Leave me to my work this afternoon. I will the body have at Herr Mendoza’s house tonight at eight.”

  “WHAT THE DICKENS DOES it mean?” I asked as we drove toward Mendoza’s. “Have you found some explanation for this chapter of strange incidents—”

  “Non,” he broke in, “I am at sea, my friend. I, the clever one, the shrewd, so wily fox, am faced with a blank wall. This business of the monkey passes my experiences. I am a poor and purblind stupid fool. Let me think!”

  “But—”

  “Precisely—exactly, ‘but’,” he agreed, nodding. “Consider, if you please: Mademoiselle Dolores has been ill three days. She is unconscious in a coma, and we cannot waken her. She loses weight so quickly that within the little space of seventy-two hours she has become to all appearances a cadaver—a mummy, by blue! Meantime, what happens at the museum? The swinish Grafensburg partially unwraps the mummy of the Priestess Sit-ankh-hku, then stops to read her pectoral tablet. Three days elapse, and in their course the mummy of the Priestess Sit-ankh-hku puts on the semblance of a new-dead body. What is the next step in this dual transformation, hein?”

  “But there may be something in the theory Grafensburg advances,” I argued. “We’ve seen dehydrated food—apples, for instance. Though shrunken to a husk, and bearing no more resemblance to their original state than a mummy resembles a fresh body, when they’re put in water they fill out and almost simulate fresh fruit. Isn’t it possible that the embalmers of old Egypt might have hit upon some process of dehydration whereby the body would take up moisture from the air when it had been unwrapped, and—”

  “Ah bah,” he interrupted in disgust. “Grafensburg can read hieroglyphs, Grafensburg knows Egyptology, but also Grafensburg is a great fool!”

  A CASE OF LEUCOCYTOPENIA I had under observation at Mercy Hospital kept me later than I had expected, and preparations were complete when I reached Mendoza’s house that night. Thin, frail, emaciated, looking more like a cadaver than a living person, Dolores lay swathed in blankets on a lounge. Beside her, close as though ready for a blood transfusion, lay the blanketed body of the Priestess Sit-ankh-hku, and as I looked upon the two pale faces I was struck anew with the strange resemblance each bore to the other. The only light in the room was that given by a red-bowled vigil lamp which de Grandin placed about two feet from, and midway between, the two dark heads pillowed on their couches, and the flickering, fitful gleam of the little lamp’s short wick cast a shifting mottle of shadows on the equally immobile faces of the living and the dead.

  Silently de Grandin crossed the room drew back the curtains at the window and looked up at the sky. “The moon is rising,” he announced at length. “It will soon be time for our experiment.”

  For something like five minutes he stood at gaze; then, as a shaft of silver light stole through the window and across the floor, splashing a little pool of luminance upon the two still faces, he stepped quickly to the lamp, blew out its flame, and from beneath his jacket drew a roll of silken gossamer.

  “Lieber Gott!” cried Grafensburg as de Grandin spread the silver tissue out, laying part of it across the dead girl’s face, the other end across Dolores’ white, still countenance. “Where—where did you get that? It is a portion of the—”

  “Silence, cochon,” bade the little Frenchman sharply. “It is a fragment of the veil of Isis which hung before her altar-throne that the profane might not see her godhead. It will help us get in contact with the past—one hopes.”

  Now the moonlight shone full on the girls’ veiled faces, touching them with argent gilding. De Grandin laid one hand upon Dolores’ brow and touched the forehead of the long-dead priestess with the finger-tips of the other. There was something measured, monotonous as a chant, in his voice as he called out softly: “Mademoiselle Dolores, you can hear me when I speak?”

  A moment’s silence; then, so softly we could scarcely hear, soft as a breath of wind among the leafless branches of a tree, but still distinct enough to understand, there came the answer: “I can hear you.”

  “You can hear the chiming of the sistra; you can hear the chanting of the priests?”

  “I can hear them!”

  “Open the eyes of your memory; look around you—tell us what it is you see. I order, I command it.”

  As the answer came I started violently. Was it a vagary of overwrought nerves, or did my ears deceive me? I could not surely tell, but it seemed that by some odd trick of ventriloquism the reply came not only from Dolores, but from the dead girl at her side, as well. They seemed speaking in soft chorus!

  “I am in a lofty temple,” came the faltering, halting answer. “Sistra ring and harps are playing, priestesses are chanting hymns. A man has come into the temple. He is young and very beautiful. He is robed in white. His head is shaven smooth. He has paused before the silver veil that hangs between the temple and the face of Isis. He has put aside the veil and gone through a low door. I can no longer see him.”

  We could hear the soft rustle of the April wind in the budding trees outside; somewhere in the house a clock ticked steadily, and its ticking sounded like the blows of some great hammer on a giant anvil. The sharp staccato yelp of a taxi’s horn out in the street was almost deafening in the silence of that darkened room. Then there came another sound. No, not quite a sound; rather, it was like that subjective sense of ringing in the inner ear we have after taking a heavy dose of quinine, more the impression of a sound than any actual vibration. Bell-like it was, almost unbearably shrill, unspeakably sweet; nearly toneless, yet utterly fascinating. I felt a sense of drowsiness come stealing over me, and with it the impression of another presence in the room was borne upon me. There was another—some one—some thing—among us, and I shivered as though a chill hand had suddenly been passed across my cheek.

  “What is the ceremony you are witnessing?” de Grandin asked, and his voice seemed faint and far away.

  “A man is entering the priesthood. He is in the sanctuary of the goddess now. She will come to him and flood him with her spirit. He will be her own for time and for eternity. He will put away the love of woman and the hope of children from his heart, and devote himself for ever to the service of the great All-Mother.”

  “Who is this man?”

  “I do not know his name, but he was born a Hebrew. He has put aside his God to take vows of Isis for love of a priestess of the goddess. She has put a spell on him; he is mad for love of her, but because she is forbid to marry by her vows he has abjured Jehovah and become a heathen priest that he may be near her in common worship of the goddess.”

  “What else do you see?”

  “I see nothing. All is dark.”

  We waited a tense moment; then: “Is it over—have you finished?” I asked, edging toward the light-switch. Somehow, I felt, with the friendly glow of electricity upon us, that sense of being in the room with something alien would fade away.

  The Frenchman hushed my question with an upraised hand. “Tell us what you witness now?” he ordered, leaning forward till his breathing stirred the silver veil which lay upon
Dolores’ face.

  “It is daylight. The sun shines brightly on a temple’s painted pylon. The sacred birds are feeding in the courtyard. I see a woman cross the forecourt. It is I. I am robed in a white robe which leaves my bosom and my ankles bare. Sandals of papyrus show my feet. Jewels are on my arms and a band of silver crowns my hair. In one hand I bear a lotus bud, and a water-pot is in the other. I am going to the fountain. An old man accosts me. He is very feeble. His hair and beard are white as snow. He wears a blue robe and red turban. He is a Hebrew. He raises his hands and curses me. He tells me I have charmed his son away from God, and have made a heathen of him. He curses me in life and death. He calls the curse of Yahweh on me. I laugh at him and call him Jewish dog and slave. He curses me again and tells me I shall find no rest until atonement has been made. He swears that I must walk the earth again in penance and humility.

  “Now I see the youth who took the vows of Isis. He is dead. A wound gapes like a flower in his throat. His Jewish brethren have set on him and killed him for apostasy. I bend over him and kiss him on the lips, and on the gaping, bloody wound. My tears fall on his face. I tear my hair and throw dust on my head. But he does not answer to my cries. I swear that I will join him.

  “I seek out Ana the magician. He is old and wise and very wicked. I promise him what he will if he will make it so that I can join the man who forsook his race and God for me. He tells me I must be a Jewess, but I know this cannot be, for I am Egyptian. He says that when the time for my awakening comes and my ka comes back to seek its earthly tenement, he can make me rise a Jewess. I ask him what his fee will be, and he says it is I. So I yield myself to his embrace, and then, because I know the priests will stone me with stones until I die because I broke my vows of chastity, I throw myself into the Nile. Ana the magician takes my body and prepares it for the tomb.”

  Silence heavy as a cloud of darkness settled on the room as the last faint, halting sentence ended. The shaft of moonlight had vanished from the window, and the still, couched forms were barely visible. There was a queer, sharp freshness to the air, as though it had been ozonated by a thunder-storm. Almost, it seemed to me, there was a quality of intoxication in the atmosphere, and mechanically I put my hand upon my wrist to test my pulsation. My heart was almost racing, and throughout my body there tingled a feeling of physical well-being like that one feels upon a mountain-top in summer.

  “Lights!” came Jules de Grandin’s hail. “Grand Dieu—Trowbridge, Grafensburg, make lights; it is incredible!”

  I stumbled through the gloom, found the wall-switch and turned on the electricity. De Grandin stood between the silent bodies, a mute forefinger pointed at each.

  “Look, observe; behold!” he ordered.

  I blinked my eyes and shook my head. Surely this was some gamin trick of faulty senses. Dolores lay in quiet sleep lips softly parted, limbs relaxed, a faint but unmistakable glow of health upon her cheeks. Beside her lay the body of the priestess, and already it seemed undergoing dissolution. The once firm cheeks were sunken in, the eye-holes so depressed they were no more than hollow pits; the lips were drawn back from the staring teeth, and on the skin there lay that hideous tint of leprous gray which is the harbinger of putrefaction.

  “Quickly, Grafensburg,” de Grandin bade, “if you would make your precious autopsy you had better be about it while there yet is time. Take her away. We follow you soon.”

  THE HERR DOKTORPROFESSOR GRAFENSBURG stripped off his rubber gloves and looked from me to Jules de Grandin, then back again in blank bewilderment “By heaven!” he swore, “never have I a thing like this seen before. Never; never! She was a mummy first, kollegen, as perfect a specimen of embalming as ever I have seen, and thousands of them have I unwrapped. Then she was a woman, almost living, breathing. Next she becomes a kadaver, a long-dead corpse, already almost reeking. Lieber Gott, I cannot understand it!”

  “Yet the autopsy—” de Grandin murmured, “but—”

  “Ach, ja,” excitedly broke in the Austrian, “it showed hers was a body like the thousand others I have cut apart. Donnerwetter, I might have been in hospital dissecting the dead corpse of one who died in bed a little while before! Brain, heart and lungs, viscera—everything she had in life, were all in place. Herr Gott, she had not been embalmed at all according to Egyptian custom; only dried and bandaged! I am in the sea of doubt submerged. I cannot tell my right hand from my left; my experience is of no value here. Have you perhaps a theory?”

  De Grandin shed his linen operating-gown and lit a cigarette. “I have an hypothesis,” he answered slowly, “but I would not care to dignify it by the name of theory. The other night when Mademoiselle Dolores went insensible before that mummy in the museum, she was like one hypnotized. She made a quick recovery, so we thought, but only to be seized again when you told us of the strange inscription you had found upon the pectoral tablet of the Priestess Sit-ankh-hku. Why was this? one wonders.

  “Me, I think I have the answer. Thoughts are things, immortal things. Thought emanations, especially those produced by violent emotions, have a way of permeating physical objects and remaining in them as the odor of the flowers lingers in the vase, or the sweet perfume of sandalwood remains for all to smell long after life departs from out the tree. Very well, consider: Too-late-awakened love, perhaps, shook this ancient priestess’ being to its very core; she would make atonement for the sin she had committed against the Jewish youth who loved her more than he adored his God. That was the thought which moved her when she struck her so abominable bargain with the wizard Ana; the thought persisted when she cast herself into the Nile. And though her body died, the thought lived on.

  “When Ana the magician made her body ready for the tomb he mummified it by some secret process of his own, not by the technique of the paraschites. And, further to concentrate the thought which dominated her, he carved upon her pectoral mortuary tablet the prediction that she would arise through the agency of her brain—her thought, if you prefer—rather than by intervention of the gods.

  “Mademoiselle Dolores is a psychic. As she paused before the mummy of this so unfortunate young girl the tragic history of her life and pitiable death was borne to her as the scent of mummy spices which have been borne to one less susceptible to psychical suggestion. Unwittingly Friend Trowbridge sensed the truth when he said that she ‘identified herself with the mummy.’

  “My friends, she was infected with the thought-force emanating from that long-dead mummy, even as she might have taken germ-contagion from it. Sit-ankh-hku would expiate her sin of long ago by resurrection as a Jewess. Mademoiselle Dolores is a Jewess. Strangely, by coincidence, perhaps, the two resembled each other. Voilà, the thought-cycle was completed. Dolores Mendoza would become Sit-ankh-hku; Sit-ankh-hku would completely dominate—displace—the personality of Dolores Mendoza. Yes, undoubtlessly it was so.

  “These things I surmised without knowing them. It was a process of instinct rather than of reason. Alors, I blended the modern with the ancient. There is much to say in favor of the Freudian psychology, even though it has been made the happy hunting-ground of pornography by some who practise it. Mademoiselle Dolores suffered from a ‘complex’, a series of emotionally accented ideas in a repressed state. A thought-thorn was imbedded in her personality. While it remained there it would fester. Accordingly, we must take it out, as we would take out a physical thorn from her physical body if she were not to suffer an infection.

  “I had you bring the body of the olden one and lay it close beside her that she might be en rapport with things which happened in the long ago. For the same reason I secured the veil of Isis and laid it on her face. It, too, was pregnant with the thought-forms of an ancient day. Finally, I waited for the moon to shine upon her, for the moon was sacred to the Goddess Isis, and each little thing which brought her nearer to the past brought the past nearer us. I sent her questing spirit backward to the days of old. I bade her tell us what she saw and heard, and through her living lips dead Sit-ankh-hk
u disclosed the tragedy which came to her three thousand years ago.

  “Enfin, we took the stopper from the jar of scent, and the perfume, liberated in the air, disseminated. Those old tragic thoughts, so long locked tightly in Sit-ankh-hku’s little body, were set at liberty; they thinned and drifted off like vapor in a breeze—pouf! they were gone for ever. No longer will they ride Mademoiselle Dolores like an incubus. She is forever freed from them. It is doubtful if she will retain the slightest memory of the sufferings she underwent while they possessed her.”

  “But how do you account for Dolores almost changing to a mummy, while the mummy almost came to life?” I asked.

  “In Mademoiselle Dolores’ case it was, as you have aptly phrased it, a case of ‘identifying herself with the mummy’. Under self-hypnosis, originally induced by the thought-force she had absorbed as she stood before the mummy of the Priestess Sit-ankh-hku, she forced herself to simulate the mummy’s stark rigidity, the very physical appearance of a desiccated lich. In the mummy’s case—who knows? Perhaps it was as Doktor Grafensburg suggests, that the body was so treated by the wizard Ana’s art that it took up moisture from the air, became rehydrated and put on its original appearance. Me, I think it was a transfer of psychoplasm from Dolores to the mummy which drained the living girl of all life-force and gave her the appearance of a mummy, while the dead form put upon it the appearance of returning life. One cannot surely say, these are but guesses, but my opinion is strengthened by the fact that when Dolores had recounted the tragedy of Sit-ankh-hku she all at once regained her normal look, while dissolution seemed to fall upon the dead girl with the suddenness of striking fate. It was as if a tide of life flowed and ebbed from one to the other. You see? It is most simple.”