Both wore white tropicals. Heyl, who followed the red-faced man into the laboratory, had a receding chin and protruding blue eyes. Apparently he never saw enough of the Egyptian sun to become tanned. Crawford mopped his forehead, and spent a moment glancing about the room.
There were mummy cases, their gilded masks staring inscrutably at the visitors. Embalmed cats filled a cabinet. Several shelves were cluttered with human skulls and withered limbs. These human relics testified to the violence of grave looters who had dismembered the dead, seeking jewels and amulets.
Crawford shivered. He did not like the fixed stare of that woman’s head. The artificial eyes were uncanny, and the luxuriant black hair made the flattened nose, the sunken cheeks with their scraps of adhering wrappings all the more gruesome. Deane chuckled, then said:
“Hullo, Heyl. Do you think you can do as well as the old-time Arab vandals? What’s on your mind?”
Crawford stood there, a pudgy hand vainly extended. Heyl, however, was too smooth to take offense at Deane’s insinuations.
“You’ve met Mr. Crawford, I think.”
“I have. And I told him that everything I discovered was subject to the Egyptian government’s orders, and my museum’s. Nothing for sale.”
“But we don’t want to buy,” Crawford cut in. “Not this time. As I told you, I’ve made a hobby of Egyptology. Ever since I retired from plumbing supplies.”
Deane spat. Curio hunters, not students.
“And finally,” Heyl resumed, “I found something choice on my own account. The mummy of Bint Anath, the Eighteenth Dynasty princess who married—”
“And you had to find her! Or is this another fake?”
“I wouldn’t ask you to convince Mr. Crawford that the stuff is genuine Eighteenth Dynasty, unless it were real. I couldn’t risk it, could I?”
“Won’t he take your word?”
Heyl shrugged. “There are so many frauds, I can’t blame him for being wary.”
“It isn’t that, Mr. Deane,” Crawford added. “It is just that you’re the foremost living authority on that period. Anyone else might make a mistake. And I’m paying a stiff price for the mummy, the furnishings, the tomb frescoes—” He winked, and his face looked like a wrinkled harvest moon. “Delivered in New York.”
“One thousand dollars, Deane,” Heyl said, edging closer. “For your opinion on the genuineness.”
“Get out! I’m not here to help any tomb dredger cheat the Egyptian government. Look at all this stuff I have here, working on it, making records. My museum gets only a small portion, the government takes the rest. Do you think I’d help you rob them and science in general?”
“Now, Mr. Deane—er, Doctor Deane, rather—I’m handling the actual smuggling. You won’t be responsible.”
Deane raised his voice. “Hassan! These gentlemen are leaving at once. Call a cab for them.”
Crawford became redder.
“See here,” he sputtered, and shook his fist. “I know how you get tips from the natives! How that helps you make all your discoveries. It you think you’re going to find Bint Anath’s tomb yourself—”
Then Hassan approached. “Effendi, the cab is outside.”
They left, cursing and muttering.
“Follow those fellows,” Deane said to Hassan. “That’s your job from now on. Find out what natives Heyl is working with.”
Hassan bowed until his white turban was almost level with his waist.
“On my head and eyes, Effendi!”
The native quarter of Cairo was an old story to Deane, and to Hassan also. Gossip and rumor would uncover the back trail of the grave looter and his customer. More than mere loyalty to the museum and the Egyptian government moved Deane. Illicit pillaging and curio hunting had hopelessly ruined many a precious find, had obscured many secrets of the past.
It was not for any personal advantage that he was trying to uncover Heyl’s supposed find. It might be genuine, and priceless.
Deane went back to his work. He turned on the X-ray machine, which enabled him to photograph the skeleton and internal structure of the mummy, without disturbing the wrappings. When inscriptions were obliterated, when mummies had been moved from one tomb to another, thirty centuries ago, Deane could identify their true period from the kind of amulets, the way the body had been prepared, the way it had been bandaged. Deane grinned a little and said to himself: “Maybe I scared Crawford out. In which case, Heyl has to find another customer.”
* * * *
A week later, Hassan’s investigations brought results. The wrinkled servant handed Deane a slip of paper, all written in spidery Arabic script.
“Effendi, this is from Nefeyda, the Coptic girl who dances at Quasim’s coffee house.”
Deane had heard of Nefeyda, and seen her. She had a good act, and it drew crowds of tourists to the cafe.
“How does she fit into this?”
“She would not say, except that she knew something of interest to you.”
He glanced at the note. The message was as vague as the report. As Deane removed his stained smock, Hassan said:
“Effendi, better take your pistol. I saw Heyl and Crawford at Quasim’s, once or twice, before I got a chance to talk to Nefeyda.”
Deane laughed. “Heyl’s not dangerous. He doesn’t want to be conspicuous. Not Heyl, and not with what the authorities think of him. He was probably showing Crawford the sights and trying to sell him something just as good!”
“Allah is the knower,” Hassan said, noncommittally.
Half an hour later, Deane parked his car on the Muski, and went on foot, for the streets of the native quarter were too narrow for vehicles.
Not far from the spice bazaar was the yellow horseshoe of light that marked the entrance of Quasim’s place. The second floors of the houses overhung the narrow street, so that they almost met in the center. It was a tunnel whose farther end opened into a shadow kingdom, and the robed figures that stirred vaguely in its depths reminded Deane of the dead who had lost their way.
Egypt’s ancient dead were serene and orderly, in their homes west of the Nile, and Murray Deane was at ease among them. But living Egypt, that night, made him feel as though he walked among those who should be buried. The reeking alleys, the heaped offal, the sickening sweetishness of cassia and olibanum and musk exalted by the shuttered bazaars made him think of corruption that had not quite been embalmed.
Not even the flare of yellow light gave him any sense of reality. The plucked strings of an oudh and the mutter of a little drum lent no more than eerie animation to Quasim’s coffee house. Deane shivered, and stepped into the arched doorway. He stood there for a moment, then shrugged. This was all prosaic enough. Quasim, greasy and wearing a top-heavy turban, was explaining to some tourists that cream is not served with “Turkish” coffee.
He seated himself on one of the upholstered benches that lined the wall. He liked his coffee bitter, so he said to the proprietor’s son:
“Wahad murreh.”
A blonde tourist laughed nervously and said to her companion:
“Why did we come here? That fiddle squeaking makes me think of ghosts gibbering!”
“Wait till you see Nefeyda. The guide said she wears…”
They went into a huddle about that. Deane was certain they would be shocked, but not in the way they anticipated. As he sat there, skillfully sipping the foam-topped coffee without scalding his lips, he watched the blue curtain at the farther end of the paneled room, and listened for the first tinkle of Nefeyda’s heavy anklets. He wondered if she would know him.
Then the drum muttered, and she glided from behind the curtain.
Nefeyda’s face made Deane think of the high-bridged nose and piquant cheek bones of an alabaster statuette he had found in a tomb at Biban ul Mulouk. There was more to the illusion than the slow pace and statuesque po
stures of her dance.
The jangling notes of the sistrum in her hand were echoes from some long-buried temple, and she herself seemed something that had stepped from a painted fresco. She had tightly curled hair, and her frail gown gave her the antique silhouette.
The tourists leaned forward, eagerly watching every gesture. But when the music ceased, and Deane went toward the blue curtain that separated the coffee room from the rest of the house, he saw that they were eyeing him, nudging each other, and whispering.
“If they only knew what the date is about,” he said to himself, “they’d not be so thrilled!”
Nefeyda was following him, anklets jingling. Deane turned as the curtain rippled into place after her.
“My servant said you had word for me,” he said, and dug the crumpled note from his pocket. “But he didn’t tell me any more than that.”
Nefeyda looked up with mysterious, almond-shaped eyes.
“I wasn’t sure how far I could trust him.”
“I’d trust him with my life.”
Nefeyda shrugged. “One hears things whispered about. There is more buried than has ever been dug out.”
The Copts, who were descended from the ancient Egyptians, often had bits of lore from the old days, but they were usually wary about telling what they knew. Though Christians, many of them still feared the vengeance of the dead gods.
Deane watched Nefeyda flash a furtive glance over her shapely shoulder, and toward the blue curtain. During that moment of silence, he fancied that something had come out of a tomb to speak to him. He stepped nearer, and his voice shook a little when he repeated:
“Your message. You had some word for me.”
“I’ve heard of you,” Nefeyda whispered. “You’ve always been kind to our people when they worked for you, digging. But that fish-eyed man wasn’t. So I’m telling you—”
“Heyl? Gunther Heyl?”
She nodded.
“How do you know? How much do you want?”
She reached for a black cape and flung it about her olive-tinted shoulders. Arms folded under the trailing garment, she stood there, studying his tanned face.
The scrutiny was mutual. As he returned it, he was more certain than ever that she was of that ancient race, undefiled by any foreign blood. With her small hands and feet, those almond-shaped eyes with lashes so closely spaced that the lids seemed smudged with black, she was old Egypt, living again. And all that made her answer seem natural:
“Whatever you say is fair. Rather than have Heyl desecrate the bones of our ancestors, I’ll tell you. I’ll go now. My act is over.”
Deane drove to the Nile, and crossed the Abbas II bridge. The moon rose and silvered the flat expanse that the river inundated every season. Miles ahead, rocky bulwarks rose from the Libyan Desert. Nefeyda said not a word as he swung south to skirt the outer canal. The twenty mile trip ended near the village of Saqaara, where cubical houses were half hidden by tall palms.
Somewhere in the desert, a jackal howled, eerily. Just beyond the huts of the Fellahin was one of the cities of the dead. The wind wandered over the sand, making it whisper and hiss. The hollowness of hidden tombs enticed the breeze, and the underground emptiness muttered. The dust blown to Deane’s lips was bitter from the dead that tainted the everlasting dryness.
When he pulled up, under a cluster of palms that were some distance beyond the village, Nefeyda shivered, and pointed toward the nearby house.
“Many of our people believe it is sacrilege to desecrate tombs. I’m almost afraid to go on. Sooner or later, a curse destroys robbers. I’m betraying a secret to you. You’ll take the things which Heyl hasn’t moved. It’ll be on my head.”
There was something in her voice that made Deane share her qualms for a moment. Then he forced a chuckle.
“As long as none of Heyl’s gang is hanging around, I’ll risk curses!”
She recoiled a little at his words. Her almond-shaped eyes reproved him for blasphemy. Then she said:
“That house over there. They were digging a well, and cut down into a tomb. One of the passages is just beneath the house. I know where the key is hidden.”
He went with her to the gate, and watched her lift a flat rock from the sand. She took out a key, and opened the way to the courtyard. Then Deane remembered the headlights of his car.
“I’d better turn them off,” he said. “Someone in the village might wake up and see them.”
“Give me your matches. I’ll light a candle inside.”
It was not more than fifty yards back to the palms and the car. But on his return, Deane was strangely uneasy. He was certain that someone was watching him. The same sense that makes animals restless before a storm or earthquake now warned him. He ran toward the courtyard. Whitewash mirrored the moonlight. Inside, a yellow light flickered. Without knowing why, he croaked:
“Come out of there, Nefeyda! Someone’s snooping.”
There was no answer. All he heard was a cry of dismay, suddenly choked and ending in a cough. There was a sound as of furniture legs shifting over the floor; a thump, a whispering rustle, a wheezing gasp. Deane was bounding forward when this happened. Even before he rounded the end of the passage, he knew what to expect. Death, the presence he had so strongly felt, must have struck.
A curious odor now tainted the air. The smell was like quince blossoms, and bitter almonds. Nefeyda lay crumpled on the hard-packed earth floor, but there was no sign of any vial from which poison could have come.
Her olive-tinted limbs still twitched. Her eyes stared horribly, and her lips were drawn back in a frozen grin that made a mockery of her beauty. The candle flame wavered enough to make the profile of a mummy case dance on the bare white wall. There was a fine white film of dust on the floor, and only Nefeyda’s feet had disturbed it.
Deane, standing there, noticed all those things as he told himself:
“This curse business. It’s crazy. There isn’t any such thing.”
But there she was, rigid and staring. It was not until the liberation of those strange sweet fumes that she had fallen, choking. Dizziness made the candle flame dance before Deane’s eyes.
He went toward the girl, having convinced himself that she had fainted. But there was no heart beat when he knelt and bent over, laying his ear against her breast; nor could his fingers at her wrist detect any sign of life. Her fingers were clawed, as though she had fought for an instant against an uncanny assailant.
The candle winked out, suddenly, as though snuffed by invisible fingers. Deane leaped to his feet, a hoarse cry on his lips. He bounded toward the hall which opened into the room.
There was a whispering creak of metal. The invading patch of moonlight became narrower. The door closed before he could reach it. He hurled himself against it, pounded until his fists were bruised. But there was no opening the door.
At first too shocked for thought, he slumped back against the panel, waiting for his sagging knees to let him slide to the floor. Then he recovered a little, and found his box of matches. After several fumbling attempts, he struck one without breaking it. However the door was secured, it was not from the inside. He went back to the candle on the stand, near the mummy case.
He had some difficulty in getting the wick to light. Finally it sputtered, crackled, and a feeble flame rose. Deane paced up and down the dirt floor and tried to think it out. He was drenched with sweat. His lips were dry, his mouth was dust, and his knees shook.
A sudden rush of unreasoning terror made him hurl himself at the door, clawing, pounding, kicking. He did not feel the impacts that battered his body and exhausted his strength. He knew that he could not run away. He knew that he must finally tell a story that would brand him as a madman whose brain had been touched by too much tomb dredging. But he had to get out of that accursed house.
The subtle odor of death and decay which had at firs
t made him uneasy now became stronger. His efforts kicked up dust, choking and bitter—the finely powdered myrrh and olibanum and the linen from long-dried corpses.
The candle, for some moments unwavering, now flickered violently. It winked out, and the darkness that stifled Deane became alive with presences. He was no longer alone with the girl whom invisible death had struck. The newcomers muttered and chirped and mocked him in a strange tongue.
He understood words that were identical in Coptic and in ancient Egyptian. They were cursing him, and Nefeyda. His sobbing breath could not quite blot out the eerie whispers, nor the soft padding of bare feet.
A hinge creaked as he lunged again at the door. It was yielding a little. He made another desperate effort to knock the bolt from its socket before those gibbering presences materialized enough to throttle him. But his own exertion overcame him. He sank, battered and half conscious. Cold hands caught his wrists and ankles. Stifling folds of cloth cut off his breath, and tomb dust choked him.
When he recovered enough to renew his struggles, he knew that any effort would be useless. Broad-shouldered men with narrow hips and sloping foreheads stood about him, arms folded. All but one wore the tight-fitting kilt of ancient time. That one had a flowing robe, and his shaven skull indicated that he was a priest.
The room was one of several connected by passageways whose darkness gave no hint of the extent of the maze. The walls were painted in hieroglyphics. In one corner was a stone slab. On a trestle was a mummy case. Near it, on a table, was a mummy, wound with countless yards of time-yellowed linen.
Bit by bit Deane recognized the purpose of the implements and the urns and the vat which was in the shadows. This chamber of the tomb had been converted into an embalmer’s workshop, and the obsidian knife that lay on the slab was used for making the first incision in a corpse.
The man with the shaven skull spoke, very slowly, so that Deane could understand:
“I am Anu the Priest, and I lived in this land before the first pyramid was built. I have come back, and reclaimed my body, having spent the required time in Amenti, that dim land where all men must go to atone for their evil, or be rewarded for their good. I have seen Osiris and his forty-two judges. They sent me back, and these others have come with me.”
E. Hoffmann Price's Two-Fisted Detectives Page 51