The Quest of Julian Day

by Dennis Wheatley

  On the other hand, while I had no fear of death, I have always had a very great fear of dying. It is a regrettable fact that only a very small percentage of people are fortunate enough to die from old age, quietly in their sleep, or painlessly under an anaesthetic. The great majority are cut off before their time by some sort of violence which is almost inevitable painful or, perhaps worse, linger for weeks or months before they are finally carried off by some agonising disease.

  Now that I began to think about dying as a personal matter which I should have to face within a time that could be more or less measured by hours, I shrank from the ordeal; particularly as it seemed that death from thirst must be my portion and by all accounts that is a very painful form of death indeed.

  I wondered how I could circumvent it. If I had had my gun on me I could have blown my brains out, but I had left it in my room at the hotel. Whether I should have had the courage to put a pistol to my head and pull the trigger I do not know. Time is an illusion, as we see by our experience of everyday life, from the dreary dragging of school hours as opposed to the fleeting of lovers’ moments; and I have often thought that although it may only be a fraction of a second in our time from the explosion of a suicide’s pistol to the moment when he lies limp and dead, he may experience what seem to him hours of appalling torture as the bullet smashes in the bone formation of his skull and sears like a white-hot comet through the delicate membrane surrounding his palpitating brain.

  I could always throw myself down the pit but it was far from certain that I should die instantly; I might quite well lie there broken, bleeding and in agony for hours before I actually expired.

  Then I had an inspiration. I could open the veins in my arm with my penknife. In the dark I should not see the blood and as it drained away from me I should slip out of life by the easy road of gradual weakening till I fell into a state of unconsciousness. I recalled with some perturbation that a doctor had once told me the reason the Romans always lay in a hot bath when adopting this highly civilised form of suicide was because unless the body were kept at an even temperature during the draining of blood, which naturally lowered it, violent cramp was liable to set in. I had no hot bath in which to die gracefully like the immortal Petronius but I felt that the pains of cramp when I was just on the point of expiring could be borne with much more fortitude than countless hours of agonising thirst.

  It cheered me a lot to think that opening my veins would always provide a way of escaping the worst horrors that beset me; but for the moment I was much too full of life to think of putting it into practice and with a sudden dread that later I might temporarily forget my bearings in the pitchy blackness and fall into the pit by mistake, I decided to make my way back to the sarcophagus-chamber. Taking out my lighter I snapped it open and by the aid of its tiny flame, which did no more than dispel the gloom for a few feet round me, I limped painfully down the passage into the big, oval vault.

  As my hopelessly inadequate torch lit only a small section of the chamber I made a tour round it and found, as I already believed, that it was completely empty except for the stone coffin which had once contained the body of the Pharaoh, near its far end, and the broken bits of funeral offerings, the larger of which showed as faintly white patches upon the floor each time I lowered the lighter to see where I was stepping.

  Only one thing came of my inspection, but that filled me with more elation than the finding of a casket of jewels would have done in the same circumstances. I came across the piece of candle which had fallen from my hand at the moment Sayed had knocked me out. It was a good five inches long and although I knew quite well that it brought me no nearer to any prospect of escape I regarded the finding of it almost as Heaven’s direct answer to a prayer. The petrol in my lighter was liable to run out at any moment; whereas the candle would at least ensure me several hours of blessed light.

  Dusting a clear space on the floor I set it up carefully between two good-sized fragments of pottery, lit it and snapped my lighter shut; then I sat down beside it with my back against the big stone coffin and, as well as my aching head would permit, did my best to review the situation calmly.

  My entombment by Oonas had clearly been a premeditated act. After she had exhausted herself in the violent scene to which she had treated me the night before she must have lain awake in bed beside me in the darkness plotting my death. She had left me about six o’clock in the morning and, instead of going to sleep for a couple of hours in her own bed, she must have dressed at once and gone out to find a man suited to her purpose. Perhaps Sayed had been her guide in Luxor the previous winter; in any case, she probably knew him already and that he was the sort of unscrupulous rogue who would be prepared to do exactly what she told him for a sufficient reward and the promise of her protection. She must have primed him beforehand to appear unwilling to take us down into the tomb of Thothmes III so as to avert any suspicion on my part that she was deliberately luring me there. Oonas was clever enough to know that just such reluctance by a guide to show something of special interest in order, apparently, to save himself a little trouble, was the one thing calculated to make me insist on seeing it.

  I wondered how far, if at all, the tomb guardian who had given Sayed the key could be involved and decided that everything pointed to his being an innocent party. The tomb guardians all lived out here on the far side of the river from Luxor so Oonas could have had no opportunity to get at him early that morning and, as she had never left me from the time we entered the Valley, she had certainly had no chance to conduct such a delicate negotiation as bribing him to be a party to a murder while we were there. For a moment, that gave me renewed hope of rescue. Sayed would have to hand him back the key and if he noticed that whereas a man and woman had gone off to the tomb with Sayed only the woman had returned, he might make enquries as to what had happened to the man; and, if these did not prove satisfactory, perhaps come along later to verify them for himself.

  A moment’s thought dispelled that hope as I put myself in Oonas’ shoes and considered what I should have done had I been in her place. Other than the gorge by which cars arrive at the great natural bowl in which the Tombs are situated, there is only one way out from it; this is by a steep track which leads up a spur into the mountains whereby, after three quarters of an hour’s hard climb, one comes out upon a flat cliff-top five hundred feet above the rock hewn temple of Deir el Ba’hari. From this spot there is one of the most magnificent views obtainable in the whole of the Nile Valley.

  Luxor can be clearly seen some five miles distant on the opposite bank; the river winds away for mile after mile on either hand and below, as though charted on, a map, one can pick out the Colossi of Memnon, the Ramesseum, the ruins of all the temples of ancient Thebes. It is even possible to identify the lines of their outer courtyards and buildings which are no longer above the level of the sand, just as one can do from an aeroplane. From this cliff another steep track leads down to Cook’s rest-house where most of the visitors to the west bank eat their lunch.

  The beginning of this climb over the great cliff barrier coincides for its first half-mile with the track by which we had come up to Thothmes III’s tomb. I knew that if I had been Oonas I should have sat down where the two tracks joined and told Sayed to leave me while he returned the key to the tomb guardian with the information that his ‘lord and lady’ were on their way over the cliff to lunch at Deir el Ba’hari. Sayed could then have seen our chauffeur, sent the car round to meet us, and returned to me; upon which we should have taken the track over the mountains leaving the tomb guardian to suppose that the third member of our party was still with us.

  The chauffeur was Oonas’ own man, so if anybody questioned him he would say exactly what she told him to; but what would she do when she arrived back at Luxor without me?

  If she returned to the hotel alone the Belvilles would naturally want to know what had happened to me and she would have to put up a fairly water-tight yarn to allay their suspicions. She could, of cou
rse, say she had quarrelled with me, that I had gone off on my own and she had not the faintest idea where I had got to; that would give her time to get her things packed and clear out; but it could only be a very temporary expedient.

  When I did not arrive back in time to leave Luxor with the expedition late in the afternoon my friends would naturally become anxious about me and delay their departure. If I failed to return that night they would promptly set enquiries on foot. The police would be called in, the tomb guardians questioned and a hue and cry raised after Oonas as the last person who had seen me alive. If that happened there seemed a fair prospect that the tomb guardian who had given Sayed the key would tell what he knew to the police as a result of which, within twenty-four hours, I would be found and Oonas would be charged with attempted murder.

  On the other hand, would Oonas be fool enough to tell such a story? I did not think so. It was far more likely she would try to find some means of causing the Belvilles to set off that afternoon into the desert believing that I had let them down at the last minute.

  It was hardly conceivable that they would swallow such a yarn unless she had some written message from me to show them in confirmation of it; and I did not think that she could have got one forged at such notice.

  But was there any necessity for her to return to the hotel at all? She had her car and, directly she had crossed the river, she could drive north towards Assiut or south towards Aswan along the Nile bank. When she reached one of the towns on either route there was nothing to prevent her sending several telegrams; one to the Belvilles purporting to come from me, expressing my regret at having left them in the lurch and inferring that I had eloped with her; another to her maid, and two more signed with her name and mine to the manager of the hotel instructing him that her maid would pack our bags and bring them on.

  That seemed much the soundest plan she could adopt and as far as I could see there were no snags to it. The Belvilles might be distressed about my ratting on them but they knew of her extraordinary attraction for me, so it would not surprise them overmuch to hear that I had abandoned them in order to remain with her; and if they were once convinced that I had elected to do so there was no reason why they should delay their departure. That I should be too ashamed of my weakness to face them and tell them the truth myself even added plausibility to the story; they would think I had just bolted and despatched a telegram from the first halt on my flight with Oonas.

  Knowing we had shared a table in the restaurant and been constantly in each other’s company the hotel management would also put two and two together on the receipt of the telegrams about our baggage. The maid would collect both our bills which Oonas would settle by cheque and the hotel people would have no more cause than the Belvilles to suspect that anything had gone wrong.

  There was only one point that I did not quite see how Oonas was going to get over; and that was my body. It might be days, it might be weeks, it might be months before it was discovered; but sooner or later somebody was bound to come down into the tomb. The first thing they would find was that the plank bridge had been withdrawn to the outer side of the pit; the second, when they had replaced the bridge, would be my remains in the sarcophagus-chamber. The fact that the bridge had been removed would make it abundantly clear that I had not died through any accident or heart-attack when down there on my own, but had been deliberately trapped and left there to perish.

  That would result in an immediate investigation; the tomb guardians would be questioned and the fact that I had gone down into the tomb with Sayed and Oonas established. Even if the man who kept the key had been bribed to keep his mouth shut in the meantime there could be no concealing the fact that I had left the Winter Palace with Oonas on the morning of my disappearance. A score of people, at least, had seen us either crossing the river together or in the valley of the Kings. Sayed and Oonas would be arrested and, as far as could see, they would find it a mighty difficult job to explain how it was that I had been left down there in the tomb with the bridge over the pit withdrawn so that I could not get across it, and found with dried blood all over the back of my skull.

  Suddenly a ray of daylight pierced my abysmal gloom. Oonas dared not leave my body in the tomb unless she wanted to face a charge of murder; she had got to come back and collect it.

  The more I thought it over the more certain I became that that was what she meant to do. Perhaps she had taken an impression of the key of the tomb so that she could have another made and return with Sayed secretly at night; but, in any case, sooner or later they would come back, replace the bridge over the pit, carry my body out to hide it in some cleft in the hills and cover it with rocks so that there would be little chance of its being discovered for years, or perhaps generations.

  If they were coming back, when would they do so? That was the question which now agitated my feverish mind. The longer they left my body in the tomb the greater the risk of its being discovered; once that happened they would have to face a charge of murder. It seemed to me that they would not dare to delay the removal of my body for more than a few days, at most. The time of their return would have to be judged by them very carefully; they must leave me there long enough to ensure my death but not a moment longer.

  Yet would they wait even so long when every hour meant a lengthening of the shadow of the gallows which was reaching out towards them? Perhaps they would only wait just long enough for hunger and thirst to sap my strength until I was reduced to such a state that I was incapable of resistance; then return to drag me out and finish me off outside in one of the little-frequented gullies.

  As I thought of that my pulses quickened. If I were right there was still a chance that I might live until they returned and then escape from them. But how could I possibly conserve my strength sufficiently to put up a fight when they came to get me?

  I could hardly hope they would leave me there for less than a couple of days and, by that time, if I were not a raving lunatic from thirst I would certainly be so weak that I could barely crawl and coherent thinking would be an impossibility; therefore my sole chance of getting away alive lay in my concocting some plan to outwit them while my brain was still keen and active.

  Gone were all thoughts of meeting death half-way by opening a vein in my arm. I was determined now to see the matter through whatever agony it might cost me. In my mind I turned over a dozen plans until I hit upon one which I thought might give me the chance I needed.

  It was quite warm in the tomb and whether the rocks three hundred feet above were red hot with the blistering heat of an Egyptian summer or swept by the cold night winds of winter the vault was so deep down in the heart of the mountain that its temperature remained unchanging through the centuries. Knowing that, I began to undress right away in order to put my idea into operation.

  When I had finished my preparations against the return of Sayed and Oonas I looked at my wrist-watch, which by great good fortune was one with a luminous dial that I had bought in Cairo specially for the expedition, and I saw that it was a quarter-past two. It seemed that I had already been entombed for so many dreary hours that immediately assumed it to be a quarter-past two in the morning, but suddenly my eye fell on the candle. It had been over five inches long when I found it and about three inches were remaining. We had made our descent into the tomb at a little after twelve so by my reckoning I had been there some fourteen hours; yet the fact the candle was still burning showed that to be quite impossible. If it were really the middle of the night the whole five inches would long since have been consumed; so it must be a quarter-past two in the afternoon. Incredible as it seemed, I had been down there only just over two hours.

  If my plan of escape were to have any chance of success I should need the candle later on; I quickly blew it out and was instantly wrapped round again with the Stygian darkness.

  Sitting down in the dust of ages that softened the hardness of the rock floor, I began to wonder how best I could possibly support the forty-eight hours or more of torture t
hat lay before me. The place was silent with that deathly stillness which can almost be felt. So far that had not troubled me because when I first came round my head had been too painful for me to think of much else; when the pain had eased a little my brain had been fully occupied with the horror of my situation, and later, for the last hour at least, I had been moving about so that the sounds I myself made had reverberated round the oval tomb-chamber; but now I knew this eerie, unbroken quiet was going to play the very devil with my nerves.

  Somehow I had to defeat it and there were only two ways in which to do so. I must either sleep or occupy my brain with something else. Manual labour would have kept my mind busy but there was none that I could do, and even if there had been I knew that I should have been unwise to do it; exertion of any kind would tend to exhaust me quicker; worse, it would create thirst—the thing that was my most deadly enemy. I remembered newspaper accounts of men in exhibitions who for the stunt purposes had gone without food for upwards of forty days, and that although the pangs of hunger were said to be severe during the first sixty hours or so, they then faded away leaving the faster in a weakened but untroubled condition. Thirst, however, was a very different matter and, as far as my memory served me, no man could hope to survive more than three or four days without some form of liquid.

  Just as I had reached this point in my deliberations I let out a scream of such terror that the whole vault seemed to quiver round me. I leapt to my feet and stood shaking there while the perspiration broke out on my forehead and the hair seemed to rise on the back of my scalp.