The Mummy

by Max Allan Collins

  Evelyn frowned. “Dame?”

  Jonathan gestured. “This is my charming sister, Evy.”

  “Evelyn,” she corrected.

  O’Connell glanced at her and shrugged. “Yeah? Well, maybe with her hair down she wouldn’t be a total loss.”

  Evelyn’s eyes widened. “Well, I never!”

  “That wouldn’t surprise me,” O’Connell said. To Jonathan, he said, “You look mighty familiar . . .”

  Jonathan laughed giddily. “I just have one of those terribly common faces, old boy.”

  “No, I know you from somewhere.”

  Evelyn said, “Mr. O’Connell, allow me to explain why we’ve come.”

  Face striped with the shadows of prison bars, O’Connell half-smirked. “Till I heard your British accents, I was kinda hoping you were from the American embassy.”

  “Sorry, no,” she said. “We’re here about your box.”

  “My what?”

  “Your puzzle box. A little gold knickknack with eight sides? You see we, uh, that is my brother . . . found your box . . .”

  “Now I remember,” O’Connell said, nodding, smiling, and, shackled or not, the prisoner managed to throw a short, sharp right jab into Jonathan’s jaw. Pugilism had never been a long suit of Jonathan’s, and the punch dropped him to the ground. He sat there rubbing his jaw, not quite unconscious.

  “At any rate,” Evelyn continued, “we found your puzzle box and we’ve come to ask you about it.”

  O’Connell was looking at her with renewed interest. “I just decked your brother, you know.”

  “Yes, well, and I’m sure he deserved it. He is my sibling; I would know.”

  O’Connell half-smiled at her. “I guess you would at that, Evy.”

  “That’s ‘Miss Carnahan,’ if you please. Now about the box—”

  “Don’t you mean, about Hamanaptra?” White teeth flashed in the unshaven, deeply tanned face.

  Jonathan, finally getting to his feet, brushing himself off, replacing his hat which had been knocked off, said, “Keep your voice down, man! The walls have ears.”

  Actually, it was the scruffy hood-eyed guard standing in the cell with O’Connell who had ears, and while English may have been foreign to those ears, the word “Hamanaptra” might be all too familiar.

  “What an interesting thing to say, Mr. O’Connell,” Evelyn said, coyly. “Whatever was it about that box that brought, uh, that mythical place to mind?”

  “Maybe it was because I was at that mythical place when I found it.”

  She blinked. “You were there?”

  “Yeah, and if a caravan of diggers out of Cairo hadn’t stumbled across me in the desert, I wouldn’ta lived to tell the tale.”

  Jonathan, jaw aching, feeling irritable toward the chap, snapped, “How do we know this isn’t a load of pig swallow?”

  “Well, for one thing, I have no idea what pig swallow is. And for another, step over here near the bars again . . .”

  “No thank you,” Jonathan said, taking a step back.

  But Evelyn had no compunction about stepping near the bars, closer to the filthy prisoner. She asked, “You were there? At Hamanaptra?”

  He flashed her another big grin. “I sure as hell was, lady. Seti’s joint. City of the Goddamned Dead.”

  “You swear?”

  “I’m afraid so—every goddamn day.”

  She frowned in frustration. “No, no, what I mean to say is, do you take an oath that—”

  “I know what you mean. I’m just pulling your leg. Or anyway, I’d like to . . .”

  Her chin lifted, her gaze traveled to him down her fine nose. “You’re hardly in a position to make flirtatious remarks, Mr. O’Connell. This is strictly business.”

  “Is it, now?”

  “What did you find?”

  “Sand. A lot of sand.”

  “Well, then, what did you see?”

  “Death. Lot of that, too. They aren’t kidding when they say that place is cursed.”

  “Superstition, Mr. O’Connell, is the hallmark of the small mind. My interest is in research. My brother and I are Egyptologists.”

  “Really? Well, then—I bet you’d like to go there. To Hamanaptra, I mean.”

  Jonathan crossly said, “Will the two of you keep your voices down?”

  Evelyn was very near the bars of the cage. “Could you tell me how to get there? The exact location?”

  “Better than that. I’ll take you there.”

  “But Mr. O’Connell—you are rather indisposed.”

  “That’s one way to put it.”

  “Couldn’t you just tell us how to get there? Give us the exact location?”

  “Have you opened the box?”

  “Well, uh . . . yes we have.”

  “Then you have the map.”

  Evelyn glanced at her brother, who shrugged.

  “About the map, old boy,” Jonathan said, keeping his distance, “I’m afraid there was a slight mishap—a portion of it was burned away . . . the, uh, portion including the particular site of interest, shall we say.”

  “Come closer, Jonathan,” O’Connell said, crooking his finger, smiling tightly, “I can’t hear you . . .”

  Jonathan stepped back a pace.

  Evelyn said to the prisoner, “You’ve been there. You can point the way.”

  O’Connell nodded. “I can take you there.”

  “How?”

  “Well, you might start by, oh, I don’t know, maybe by . . .”

  She leaned closer. “Yes? Yes?”

  “Getting me the hell out of here!”

  Evelyn reared back. “Well, you needn’t be rude, Mr. O’Connell.”

  “Forgive me. A man loses all sense of propriety in a place like this. Would you really like to know the way?”

  “Oh yes.”

  He nodded to her, to come closer, his eyes indicating he didn’t want the guard to hear. She leaned in to him and he kissed her full on the lips.

  Then he grinned at her, rakishly, and winked. “Get me the hell outa here, honey, and we’ll both go on an adventure.”

  The guard had witnessed this forbidden physical familiarity with a visitor, and as O’Connell was speaking to Evelyn, the scruffy fellow was stepping forward to throttle the prisoner again.

  But this time O’Connell was ready: He grabbed the man and yanked him head first into the bars and let the guard’s face slam into steel for a change. In an instant, other guards were hustling into the pen, grabbing O’Connell and dragging him out.

  O’Connell shouted out, “Nice meeting you!”

  Then he was gone, disappearing around the corner, into the fetid darkness of the prison, hauled away by angry Arab guards.

  Suddenly the warden was back at her side.

  “Oh dear,” Evelyn said. “Will they beat him?”

  “No, no, Miss Carnahan,” the warden said pleasantly. “There’s no time for that.”

  “No time?”

  “Yes, he’s being taken to be hanged.”

  “Hanged?”

  “He’s a deserter from the Foreign Legion, as I told you. That’s a hanging offense.”

  Jonathan said, “But the French Foreign Legion have no jurisdiction here. This isn’t Algeria, for heaven’s sake . . .”

  “We’ve civilized people, Mr. Carnahan, Miss Carnahan—we have . . . what is the word? A reciprocal arrangement with the legion—for fifty of your pounds, we waive them the trouble of extradition. And now, I’m afraid, my presence is required at the execution—a formality, but I am so a stickler for doing things right.”

  “Let me go with you,” Evelyn said.

  Groaning, Jonathan said, “Oh, sis, why?”

  The warden said, “That’s out of the question. No women are allowed at hangings in my country.”

  Her chin up again, she said, “In your country, women wear veils. Do you see a veil on my face? I’m an Englishwoman, after all.”

  Hassan shrugged. “So be it. Unlike your face, h
anging is not pretty, my dear.”

  Soon Jonathan, Evelyn, and the warden were stepping out onto a balcony overlooking another courtyard, where from barred windows all around, inmates could look down at the gallows that had been erected. These gallows had no lower apronlike enclosure to keep onlookers from seeing the struggling and kicking of a hanging man. The warden was no sadist: he obviously felt the need to provide his prisoners with a little entertainment.

  And Evelyn’s presence was providing entertainment, as well: From every barred window, bulging eyes in horrible faces took in the presence of Jonathan’s lovely sister. There were no catcalls or wolf whistles: These sorry countenances—displaying a remarkable collection of scars, scraggly beards, missing eyes, and rotten teeth—had gone dead silent at the sight of her, starving jackals staring at fresh meat.

  “A woman without a veil,” the warden said, lifting an eyebrow in an I-told-you-so manner, “might as well be sitting here unclothed.”

  Evelyn ignored the remark, her eyes on the prisoner being ushered into the courtyard.

  O’Connell was led up onto the gallows by the same guards who’d manhandled him in the visitor’s pen, and positioned on the trapdoor. A hangman in a mask, with a bare chest and loose-fitting pants, draped the noose around the prisoner’s neck, then cinched it tight. O’Connell noticed Evelyn and Jonathan seated in the balcony nearby, and at first frowned, then smiled.

  The warden took his seat and Evelyn sat next to him; Jonathan preferred to stand.

  Evelyn said to Hassan, “I will give you fifty pounds more to let him live than the legion’s paying you to kill him.”

  Jonathan could barely believe his ears. One hundred pounds for that lout? Of course, if he could lead them to Hamanaptra . . .

  The warden’s nose twitched like a big dark bunny’s. “I would pay one hundred pounds to see the insolent pig hang.”

  “Two, then,” she said.

  “Two hundred pounds?” Jonathan asked. Now he sat down, heavily, next to his sister.

  “Two hundred pounds,” Evelyn said, nodding curtly.

  The warden shook his head, dismissively, and raised a hand. “Proceed!” he called to the hangman, who stood near his deadly lever. O’Connell’s forehead was tensed and beaded with sweat; he could hear every word of the negotiation between the warden and Jonathan’s sister.

  “Three hundred pounds!” Evelyn said.

  Jonathan clutched his sister’s arm, whispering, “Are you mad? A year’s stipend for that blackguard?”

  Evelyn looked daggers at her brother and her mouth formed, but she did not speak the word, “Hamanaptra.”

  The warden, however, did not even reply to this latest offer. Down on the gallows, the hangman was saying to O’Connell, “Any last request?”

  “Yeah—could we do this tomorrow, instead? That fish-head lunch just isn’t settling.”

  That stopped the hangman cold—he’d never had such a request—and he turned, and yelling, repeated the plea for the balcony, though the warden and his guests had heard every word.

  Interrupting, the warden said, “No, he can’t wait until tomorrow. Get on with it!”

  Embarrassed, the hangman gave O’Connell a why-I-oughta look, and grabbed the trapdoor lever.

  “Five hundred pounds,” Evelyn said firmly.

  Jonathan covered his face with a hand.

  The warden looked at Evelyn, calling out to the hangman, “A moment! . . . Five hundred pounds?”

  “Yes.”

  Hassan placed a hand on Evelyn’s leg, just above the knee. “I will consent, if you grant me some other inducement, not financial . . . a personal kindness. I am a lonely man in a difficult job.”

  Evelyn plucked his greasy paw from her leg with the thumb and middle finger of her right hand, as if removing a particularly odious bug. She turned away and made a sound in her chest that conveyed her revulsion.

  The warden had his pride, which was wounded by rude, crude laughter from the windows where prisoners had witnessed the rebuff. In the thumbs-down gesture that had been good enough for Nero, Hassan cued his hangman to pull the lever.

  Which the hangman did.

  The trapdoor fell away, under O’Connell’s boots, and as Evelyn screamed, “Nooooo!”, the former corporal of the Foreign Legion dropped through the hole, the rope jerking tight.

  O’Connell’s body snapped at the end of the rope . . .

  . . . but he was clearly alive, struggling, kicking!

  “Ah!” the warden said, and touched the fingers of his hands together playfully, “a rare treat: His neck did not break. We have the pleasure of watching him take his time strangling to death.”

  The audience in the barred windows gave the show mixed reviews: Some were amused, and hooting with laughter; others were angry, possibly outraged that the prisoner should be tortured so slowly, or was it annoyance over having the fun of seeing a neck broken denied them? Jonathan certainly took no pleasure in seeing the beggar turning various shades of red, struggling so piteously.

  Evelyn was whispering in the warden’s ear. Surely she wasn’t telling him about . . .

  “Hamanaptra?” the warden said, eyes wide. “You lie!”

  “Never! I’m a respectable woman.”

  Hassan frowned. “This filthy godless son of a pig knows where to find the City of the Dead, and all its treasures?”

  “Yes . . . and if you cut him down, we will give you five percent.”

  O’Connell, strangling and eavesdropping, managed to croak out, “Five percent?” His eyes were bugging out, in part due to Evelyn’s cheapness, Jonathan supposed, but also because he was choking to death.

  “All right,” Evelyn said, “ten percent.”

  “Fifty,” the warden said.

  “Twenty.”

  “Give it . . . give it to . . .” O’Connell was saying, as he twisted and turned redder.

  “Forty,” the warden said.

  “Thirty.”

  “I’m . . . I’m dyin’ here!” O’Connell called.

  “Twenty-five,” the warden said.

  “Done!” Evelyn said, and they shook hands.

  The warden flashed his green smile, yelled a command in Arabic, and a scimitar slashed the air, cutting the rope, sending O’Connell crashing to the ground.

  He rolled on the gravel, half dead, still gagging; but he’d won the crowd over: the captive audience at the barred windows was cheering and clapping and whistling, though O’Connell was in too much agony to appreciate his celebrity.

  Jonathan didn’t feel much better himself. Twenty-five percent! That City of the Dead better bloody well be out there . . .

  Evelyn stood and leaned over the balcony railing and smiled down at her new partner.

  “Nice meeting you, too,” she said.

  And O’Connell passed out.

  6

  A Night on the Nile

  The Nile—with its two branches, the White and the Blue—was the longest river in the world and the only one Richard O’Connell ever heard of that flowed north. Everyone in this damn-fool country lived on the river’s banks or along its canals; here at Cairo, and just south, was the widest part of the valley—five whole miles.

  Under the hot, dry afternoon sun, the Nile lay like a bolt of shimmering satin, a few shades deeper than the nearly cloudless sky, spiked by pyramids across the way. On the river’s placid surface graceful little boats glided, laden with passengers and cargo, sails spread like the white wings of gulls.

  The peacefulness of this view was negated by the bustle of the boardwalk adjoining the docks of Giza Port, where tourists and teams of explorers were pushing awkwardly through an army of turbaned men in their nightshirtlike robes, hawkers peddling King Tut trinkets, and beggars bellowing, “Baksheesh!”

  The word, which meant “Gimme something!”, seemed to be a two-syllable national anthem: They all sang it. O’Connell, lugging a gunnysack, ignored them, even the child who informed him, “Fadder and modder dead, belly empty.” The
Chicagoan had spent enough time in this part of the world to know that pitching a quarter to one of these poor souls would bring every beggar down on him like the Notre Dame front line on a ball carrier.

  O’Connell was a new man, thanks to the twenty pounds he’d talked out of his benefactor, Miss Evelyn Carnahan, to cover expenses and supplies. Shaved, hair cut and combed, boots and chinos begging to be broken in, his white shirt so new and fresh it bore no sweat circles yet, a brown kerchief covering where the noose had rubbed his neck raw, he looked dashing and handsome and damn well knew it.

  He spotted them in the crowd. Evelyn, in a wide-brimmed white hat and a blue dress that might have seemed frumpy were it not traversing some very nice curves, and her brother, Jonathan, in pith helmet and khakis. They were both hauling heavy carpetbags, doing their best to hold on to their hats, dignity and money, as they moved through the horde of peddlers and panhandlers, to the steamer Ibis that awaited them at the jetty.

  As he caught up to them, O’Connell could hear their conversation, in progress.

  “How can we even be sure he’ll show up?” Evelyn was saying. “For all we know, he’s sitting in a bar, drinking away my twenty pounds.”

  “That sounds more like me, Sis, than O’Connell. He’ll be here—these American cowboy types are as good as their word. It’s all they have.”

  Evelyn continued, in a clipped, haughty manner: “Well, personally I find him a filthy, rude, impertinent cad, and I don’t like him one tiny bit.”

  “Anybody I know?” O’Connell asked, sidling up to her.

  Her eyes widened in surprised embarrassment—big blue eyes that O’Connell wouldn’t have minded diving into; and that mouth, full, sensual . . .

  He caught himself, not wanting to give her the satisfaction of noticing his admiring her, and in the process he failed to notice that she had been admiring the new spit-and-polished him.

  “Afternoon, O’Connell,” Jonathan said, nodding toward his sister, taking the American’s arm, shaking his hand enthusiastically. “Don’t mind Sis—she was talking about some other cad.”

  “He sounds pretty bad,” O’Connell said, with a little smile.

  “Hello, Mr. O’Connell.” Evelyn smiled nervously at him, pretending she didn’t know she was being needled, as O’Connell fell in step with them, pushing through the crowd toward the waiting stern-wheeler.