“A coffin of gold—just like Tutankhamen!”
“Probably a better one than that. Ramses the Second was a much more powerful king. That’s the story, then. Now, Al, run out and phone. When the man comes, tell him to raise the front end of the slab until it pivots back on the hinge; after that, it can be tied in position with heavy ropes.”
She stopped. I could almost hear her waiting for me to speak—and this was the moment I’d been unconsciously putting off. I stood and stretched my legs, licking my lips and wishing sincerely that life were not so complicated.
“Al?” she called.
I knelt again. “I think,” I said into the opening, “that I’m going to have to leave you down there.”
“What!” she cried. “You can’t be serious!”
“I am, though. Yes, Madge, I am. I know it’s awful, but I really think it’s the right thing to do.”
“Don’t talk nonsense! How can it be the right thing to do? Are you mad?” she yelled up, her voice tremulous.
“No, it’s . . . it’s only that you’ve caused so much trouble,” I said slowly, while trying to sort everything out in my head. “And if I set you free, you’ll cause more. Take Great-grampy, for instance. What right have you to disturb him after all the effort he went to, to ensure his repose? Why should you violate his mausoleum? Why should he be dumped from his coffin, merely to satisfy the curiosity of scholars? That’s certainly not right, Madge.”
As far away as she was, the sound of her heavy breathing reached me through the narrow aperture. I listened to it for what seemed a long time.
“Very well, Al,” she replied finally. “I’m certainly not prepared to remain entombed, just for an archaeological discovery. Life is more precious to me than even these chests of treasure . . . or academic acclaim. If my stay in this hole has taught me anything, it’s been that. I give you my solemn word that I will never, as long as I live, reveal what I have found. I swear that I won’t tell anyone. Get me out of here, Al, and I’ll go away immediately. You’ll never hear from me again.”
“Of course,” I said sadly.
Hesitantly she asked, “Of course you’ll let me out?”
“No—oh, no. I meant, of course you would make promises like that—but once you were safe, you’d do just as you pleased. The difficulty is that you’re much cleverer than I am. You’d have me jumping through hoops in no time, Madge. The trip to Philadelphia that I made is a case in point. Off I went, like Don Quixote. And why did you send me there? Because you knew, or had strong suspicions, that the tomb was under this slab, and you couldn’t risk my interference. The day you went down those steps, you didn’t just happen to have a flashlight—you were expecting to explore. Yes, and it was your intention to grab whatever you found and run off with it like a commn thief. However, you underestimated Great-grampy, and he caught you.”
“Al, Al! Don’t talk this way,” she said, striving to control her voice. “You can’t mean what you’re saying. You’re playing one of your little jokes, aren’t you? Don’t, Al. It’s too cruel.”
“I’m not joking.”
“But if you abandon me—that would be murder.”
“Why? I’m not to blame for your predicament. You’re where you are through your own folly. In any event, where does murder enter into it? You’re far from being dead, and you’ve told me that you have everything down there that you could possibly need.”
The nasty letter that I’d found in her handbag came to my thoughts, and I almost mentioned it. I didn’t, though. It would have been brutal, too like taunting a vanquished foe. Instead I said, “I’m going back to the house.”
“No—wait! Wait, Al! You’ve forgotten something, haven’t you?” she called hastily. “Don’t you remember making a promise to me a little while ago? You said that if I explained how I got down here, you’d telephone for the man with the crane.” Her tone was a ghastly imitation of a mother humoring a recalcitrant child. “You remember that, Al. I’m sure you wouldn’t ever go back on your word.”
“When I made that promise, I had my fingers crossed,” I replied. “You couldn’t know it, of course, but nevertheless it means I’m not bound by what I said.”
“Fingers crossed? Fingers crossed?” she screamed then.
“Don’t go to pieces,” I implored quickly, alarmed by her reaction. “Listen to me, Madge. It’s a big decision for me to make, and though I believe I’m right in wanting to keep you there, I don’t want to seem arbitrary. I’ll get a second opinion on the matter, my dear.”
I heard her suck in her breath. “Whose?” she asked hopefully.
“Eulalia’s,” said I. “Her advice is usually very sound.”
“Eulalia. Eulalia is a china pitcher,” Madge declared in a dead voice. “Eulalia. Eulalia isn’t a person—she’s a thing. Anyhow, I broke her to pieces, Al. Have you forgotten that?”
“No, I haven’t. I glued her back together, though.”
“I see. I see. And she’s talking again?”
“Oh, yes. I know it’s not easy to believe, but it’s true. After all that, she’s still alive. It’s a miracle.”
“A miracle? It isn’t a miracle, Al—it’s madness. She doesn’t exist, your Eulalia. Her voice is inside your head. It’s you talking to yourself—can’t you realize that?”
“No, she exists all right,” I answered, laughing. Then an interesting idea occurred to me. “Yes, Eulalia exists just as surely as you exist, Madge. Think about it. I can see Eulalia, but I can’t see you. Here I am, kneeling on the ground and talking into a little hole. If what you say is so—if truth and reality consist only in what we can see and touch—then our conversation today must be adjudged no more than an illusory dialogue, whipped up by my fancy. Do you understand? Who knows? You may be far away in Philadelphia (after all, that’s surely a likelier possibility), but my imagination insists on pretending you’ve never left. I hear your voice rising from beneath the earth. What could be more bizarre than that? It must be that I am talking to myself, as you contend—that the sounds are all inside my skull.”
“Have the stone lifted, then. Have it lifted, if you don’t believe I’m here!”
“And appear a prize boobie when there’s nothing underneath but moldy soil and centipedes? I think not. Now, Madge, I really have to go.”
“Not yet, Al!”
“Yes—but I’ll be back,” I said soothingly. “And in the meantime I’ll have a word with Eulalia and see what she recommends.”
The woman began to shriek. The shrill cries sent chilling tremors down my spine, I got to my feet. Though she continued with her yelling, so little of the sound escaped from the tiny opening that it might have been mistaken for the faint squeaking of a mouse. When I reached the door of the charnel house, I no longer heard it at all. Only the drumming of the cicada was audible.
37
COUNCIL AND COUNSEL
Every why hath a wherefore, Shakespeare says. I now understood the why of that exorbitant electric-light bill. Great-grampy’s ingenuity was nothing less than prodigious. A suite of rooms, fifty feet beneath the surface of the earth! And with all the conveniences, too!
Reflecting thus, I came around the corner of the charnel house and espied Mrs. Binney peeking at me from behind the sawtooth pickets of the wooden fence. Her white hair, sparkling in the sunlight, strongly resembled that glossy spun glass which is used to festoon Christmas trees.
She wheezed a few times, blinked, and then asked slyly, “Been talking with the tombstones again, Al?”
I grinned at her. “Yes, that’s what I’ve been doing, Mrs. B. You heard me, eh? Ah well, it doesn’t hurt to exchange a pleasantry or two with the dear departed, does it?”
“Ha, ha! You’re a funny one, Al.”
“I guess so. By the by—did you get rid of your ants?”
“Indeed I did!” said the old dear, her faded eyes brightening with satisfaction. “Do you know how? I vacuumed the house from top to bottom—rooms, closets, the attic, d
own cellar, out on the porch, the garage, the backyard—and when I was all finished, I threw away the vacuum cleaner. Yes, that’s just what I did. The sanitation men took it—and I haven’t laid eyes on a single ant since. It cost fifty-eight dollars for a new Hoover, but that’s all right as long as I beat those pesky bugs. And Captain Kidd doesn’t have fleas any more, either.”
I congratulated her and the Captain, then excused myself and hurried back to the house.
Of the many surprises I received that day, I think the greatest came from Eulalia’s reaction to the extraordinary news I brought her. I had expected my friend to become quite agitated, but instead she was the soul of equanimity. During the entire story she listened without interrupting, and when I finished and asked her advice, she merely sighed resignedly. I marveled at her self-containment. It was almost as if she knew the tale before I told it.
After a moment’s pondering she said, “We must be careful, Al. To leave her in the tomb may seem wicked at first glance, but if you release her—what then? Once she gets out of there she’ll destroy you and me and Great-grampy. She’ll trample us underfoot to attain her ends. Remember, too—she knows about the dead Turk, and your fat friend, Norbie. Free her, and you’re liable to imprison yourself, Al. Do you understand? I confess that I despise her—I have good reason to—but the warnings I’m giving you aren’t based on my personal feelings; they’re based on our past experiences with the lady, on her own behavior.”
She then went on to review everything that had happened since Madge came to the house, dwelling at length on the trip to Philadelphia and the remarks that she’d made in the letter that I found. To tell you the truth, I can’t recall ever having told Eulalia of that letter, but I guess I must have. Be that as it may, my friend’s long exposition of the facts, together with her numerous arguments, fully convinced me that the conniving archaeologist would have to remain where she was.
How restrained Eulalia was! How cool and rational! Only once—at the very end of our discussion—did she display any bitterness. Then, in her broken, discordant voice, she whispered, “That gypsy! She wanted to find him, Al. Now she has.”
Considering all Eulalia had suffered, I thought her attitude remarkably mild.
38
PRONOUNCING JUDGMENT
At dusk I returned to the charnel house and told Madge she must stay in the tomb. She carried on extravagantly—weeping, cajoling, cursing, threatening, screeching. When it got too awful, I withdrew my ear from the opening. I was glad that I couldn’t see her. Had her fair face with that moist mouth and those lustrous amber eyes been visible, or had I smelled her camphor scent and heard the tinkle of her earrings—then I might well have wavered. But now she was for me only another voice.
Time, I knew, would lessen her misery. Solitude can always be borne somehow. Besides, I would come often to talk to her, just as I talked to Eulalia. Once she grew used to it, it wouldn’t be bad at all. I’d widen the hole to facilitate conversation. I might even enlarge it enough so that I could lower fresh food to her—and newspapers, and a little radio, and an electric heater.
I tried to explain this to the poor girl, but she was too upset to listen. No matter—in a few days she would regain her composure.
It was dark when I left her. Walking back, I paused first at Norbie’s grave, then at Mahir’s. What forms did their souls inhabit now? I wondered. I thought of my mother and father, of the men on the Davoran, and of all the people who have died down through the ages. Where were their psychic entities? To what inconceivable places had their spirits soared?
Above me the stars twinkled mischievously. Albert Einstein had calculated the radius of the universe to be 210 sextillion miles. Light, travelling at 186,000 miles a second, would require thirty-five billion years to cover such a distance. Imagine! Thirty-five billion years! In so vast an ocean, there is room enough for everything and everyone.
That’s where they all were, then. Right up there in the cosmos—past the Pleiades and the quintet of Pegasus, amongst the pinwheeling galaxies flaming in the void, off in those mystical regions where the quasars sing.
And Great-grampy? He was there, too. The old boy had done a lot of work to no real purpose, I feared. What need has nature for prayers and solid-gold coffins? Eternity is open to all.
Feeling elated, I turned my back on the Burying Ground, strode up the slight hill, climbed the wooden steps, crossed the creaking porch and went inside the house.
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