The Mummy Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

by Max Allan Collins

  “One o’clock, ten o’clock,” he muttered, and he forced his forward cast only to catch himself in the seat of his pants; then he felt a hook bite into his neck.

  “Oww!”

  His wife, Evelyn, was supposed to be the clumsy one in the family—he always found it endearing that her grace and ease could occasionally be interrupted by an awkward move, but what could compare to his clumsiness right now? Plowing through the willows, trying to untangle his errant fly, the tippet breaking, a branch poking him in the eye, and then somehow he was flat on his ass on the stream bank, moisture leaching through the cloth like blood from his wounded dignity.

  Eyes narrowing, his mouth a vicious slash in a pitiless face, he clawed at the wicker creel and fumbled for the Colt .45 revolver within.

  Then he was at the edge of the peaceful stream, taking aim at the wiggling tails and his lip curled back as he said, “Bite on this, you bastards . . .”

  And he began blasting at the water, splashing himself in the face but not minding, smiling in grim satisfaction.

  Who did these damn fish think they were dealing with, anyhow?

  When O’Connell, at the wheel of his 1939 Phaeton convertible, rolled through the gates of the palatial estate he shared with Evelyn, the majesty of his Tudor-style manor house and the luxuriant green expanse of its grounds made no impression on him. He had become used to living in a house that had more rooms than your average hotel. This was simply home to him, and he took it for granted.

  Truth be told, a sort of ennui had recently settled in for O’Connell, now that the war was over and the jobs he and Evy had done for MI-5 were behind them. Nor had there been any talk of any new archaeological digs in Egypt or anywhere else, now that Evy was writing again, when she wasn’t helping out at the British Museum. They were after her to be curator again, and he knew she was tempted.

  But where did that leave him? What did an adventurer do, in retirement? Was this retirement. . . ?

  O’Connell, arms filled with fishing tackle, let himself in; he was still soaking wet and the fly remained in his neck. “Evy! I’m home!”

  Jameson, his veddy British, veddy bored butler, materialized to lend a hand and say, “Mrs. O’Connell is at her book reading, sir. She is expected home for dinner.”

  “Swell.” O’Connell thrust the creel at the unflappable fellow. “We’re having fish.”

  Climbing out of his tweed jacket, O’Connell caught the butler hefting the creel, doing a little weight estimate on its contents. “What, you didn’t think I was going to catch anything?”

  “Sir,” the butler said, “I had the utmost confidence in your abilities. And from the feel of things, as you Americans are wont to say, you’ve made a real haul.”

  O’Connell grinned and was heading to the front closet, to hang up his coat and deposit his fishing gear, when the butler cleared his throat. O’Connell turned, and the butler discreetly gestured to a spot on the back of his master’s neck.

  Remembering the fly still stuck in the flesh back there, O’Connell said, “Oh, yeah. When you’ve taken as many slugs as I have, it’s easy to forget about a little snag. Could you get me the wire cutters?”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  The spacious front closet was the Elephant’s Burial Ground of O’Connell’s fallen hobbies—tennis and squash rackets, badminton set, rugby balls, cricket bats, bird-watching binoculars, shotgun cabinet replete with upland game-bird guns—and now the fishing gear joined these failed attempts at battling boredom.

  Hung neatly on the side wall of the closet was his French Foreign Legion uniform. Wistfully, he stroked the striped pants, but before the flood of memories could begin, he stepped back and slammed the doors shut.

  He’d been twenty or so when he’d won that battlefield commission. Not much older than his son, Alex, if any older at all . . .

  And now Alex was grown and gone, out of the house, across the ocean, making his mother proud at Harvard, or anyway the boy better be making her proud. Of course, right now Evelyn was out of the house, too, at another of these literary events. He wished he could share the excitement, but tea and crumpets and book talk were not exactly his style.

  Funny thing, in the couple’s heyday? Hadn’t been Evy’s style, either.

  At Foyles bookstore on Charing Cross Road, an enthusiastic group of women—young, old and in between (but mostly young)—had gathered for a book signing (and reading!) by an author whose first two novels had made bestseller lists on both sides of the Pond, although critics had been less than kind in either country.

  Had the signing been set for the evening, and not the afternoon, an equal number of men might well have been in attendance, for Evelyn O’Connell’s adventurous romances were the rare novels enjoyed equally by both sexes. The covers of those books may have indicated why: artwork suitable for American pulp magazines depicted a young blonde heroine being menaced by a shambling mummy while a young blond hero, square of jaw and blazing of gun, moved in to save her.

  Each of the novels—The Mummy and The Mummy Returns—had its own pyramidal stacked display on either side of a lectern where the lovely author stood, reading. Her dustjacket photos, as glamorous as any movie star’s, may have been another reason the male audience responded so well . . .

  But today in attendance were primarily women, who could identify with the slender, brown-eyed beauty before them, although unlike the heroine on her covers, the authoress was brunette. Her cream-color hat at a rakish angle, her gray-and-white suit as stylish as it was tasteful, she was as dignified as the covers of her novel were not.

  And her audience hung on her every word.

  “ ‘Now safely aboard the airship,’ ” Evelyn O’Connell said, “ ‘Scarlet and Dash marveled as the pyramid was swallowed into the swirling sandstorm. With the mummy finally vanquished, Dash swept Scarlet into his arms. “Oh God, Scarlet. I thought I’d lost you.” She returned his tender gaze and offered a whispered reply: “For a moment there, you had.” Bathed in the rays of golden sunlight, the adventurer took the librarian into his strong, tired arms, and they shared a long, hard, passionate kiss worthy of a Knight Templar and an Egyptian Princess, their love deeper and truer than ever.’ ” She closed the cover. “ ‘The end.’ ”

  She lifted her eyes to the crowd, smiling as they applauded, though one who knew her well might have detected a melancholy tinge to her expression. Reading aloud from her novels was always a bittersweet experience, because it took her back to a vital time in her life, and Rick’s . . . but a time that was ever receding into the past . . .

  A young woman up front raised her hand and Evelyn nodded.

  “Mrs. O’Connell,” she said, standing, clearly nervous and starstruck. “We’re all aware, of course, of your background as an Egyptologist, and that your husband, Richard, is a noted explorer.”

  Evelyn’s smile widened. “He might prefer ‘soldier of fortune.’ ”

  That elicited rather more laughter than it deserved, Evelyn thought.

  “What we’re all dying to know,” the woman said, “is whether the character of Scarlet O’Keefe is really you? Based on you?”

  She paused and considered, as if she hadn’t been asked this question scores of times. “Every writer of a novel is writing a hidden autobiography, it has been said. But I hate to disappoint you—honestly, I can say she’s a completely different person.” She cocked her head and turned on the practiced charm. “I mean, honestly—do you really believe my husband and I actually went around chasing, and being chased by, reanimated mummies?”

  Laughter and applause followed this response, and she answered more of the standard questions (“Did you like Hollywood’s version of your novel?”) with her standard responses (“Very much . . . but you know, the book is always better”). Most of the women already had the first novel, and had brought it along for her signature, and every single one bought the new book, the sequel.

  All in all, a very satisfying event.

  Why, she wondered
, don’t I feel happier about it?

  The grand O’Connell estate, by midevening, appeared from the road almost asleep, with only the kitchen and dining-room lights on.

  Casual in a light blue blouse and dark trousers, Evelyn, waiting for dinner to be served, sat going through a small stack of mail from a silver tray. Rick entered, in a tie but no jacket, and she offered him her cheek to peck. He did so, if rather dutifully. He went over to a sideboard and poured himself a drink—single malt (Oban thirty-year) and poured her a glass of sherry.

  “Isn’t this blissful?” she said. “A quiet dinner at home.”

  “Sure is.”

  “Remember when that was a rarity?”

  “Yeah. Now it’s every night.”

  He brought her the glass of sherry, they clinked drinks, and he said, “To retirement.”

  She beamed up at him. “May we stay this happy forever.”

  But as her husband stood there, swirling his drink and staring down into it, she wondered if he felt as bored and frustrated with their current life as she did.

  “Still no letter from Alex,” she said, back to going through mail. “You know, I’ve sent him three in the last month.”

  “What did you expect?” He grunted a laugh. “That kid only writes when he gets kicked out of college . . . or needs money.”

  “That’s not fair, dear. I’m sure he’s just got his nose buried in his books. Study, study, study.”

  “This is Alex we’re talking about?”

  She gave him a reproving smile.

  He shrugged a little, and sat across from her at the big table and said, “How was your literary do?”

  “Fine. We sold thirty-five copies of the new book and twenty of the old.”

  “Is that good?”

  “It’s excellent.”

  “And the question-and-answer session?”

  She smirked at him. “Fine . . . until they asked me whether there’ll be another mummy adventure.” She shook her head. “You know, I really should be writing serious books, painstakingly researched nonfiction, or at the very least articles for academic journals. I’ll lose my standing, and will never get back to the British Museum.”

  He tilted his head and gave her a look. “You did promise the publisher a third book. You signed a contract.”

  “I know,” she sighed. “But I spend my nights staring at a blank page. This is that writer’s block you hear so much about, apparently.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “You know what the problem is—my novels were successful because I was drawing from personal experience. How can I make up a ‘mummy’ story out of whole cloth?”

  He smirked. “It probably wouldn’t be whole cloth. More like cloth full of holes . . . mummy wrappings? Get it?”

  “I get it. And I appreciate you trying to lighten my mood. But I tell you, Rick, I am completely blocked.”

  He got that flirtatious grin going that she knew so well. “Well, if you need inspiration . . . how about we skip dinner and go straight to dessert? Maybe I can inspire you . . . upstairs?”

  She laughed lightly. “That’s very sweet of you, darling, but before any fun and games, I simply have to sit down in front of that typewriter until something exciting happens on the page.”

  She saw the twinge of disappointment in his eyes, but he was good enough not to press the matter.

  The butler, Jameson, and a female servant in livery entered to place silver platters in front of Evelyn and Rick, who lifted lids simultaneously on two perfectly poached, championship-quality trout.

  Her eyes and mouth were wide. “Why, Rick . . . this is lovely. I’m impressed, I really am.” She beamed at him and he shrugged, aw shucks. “I’m delighted you’ve finally found a hobby that satisfies you . . . and one that for once does not involve guns.”

  She forked a mouthful of the delicate fish and the taste of it on her tongue was heavenly. She began to chew, and—ouch!—clamped down on something terribly hard.

  Delicately, she removed an object from her mouth and regarded it quizzically. Was it a spent bullet? She dropped it on her Wedgwood plate with a clunk and looked across at Rick, who was grinning sheepishly.

  “What can I say?” he said with a shrug. “He put up a hell of a fight.”

  Evelyn maintained a corner of the library as her office. Around her on the walls and here and there on the desk, to help encourage her muse, were mementos of their Egyptian adventures.

  Shortly after dinner, she had typed the following deathless prose: The sunset painted the Nile the color of blood, and here she had stopped. She contemplated whether she’d used the word the too many times in one sentence. She wondered whether it might be better: Sunset painted the Nile as red as blood. Or perhaps: Sunset painted the Nile blood red.

  These last two attempts, unlike the dozen or so crumpled sheets in her overflowing wastebasket, did not even make it onto paper. And this sheet soon joined the other wadded-up ones in (and around) the basket.

  The problem was, whether the Nile was red or blue or purple wasn’t the point. The point was, she had no story, and no experiences from which to create or even embellish one. The only decent idea she had involved the work she and Rick had done for the intelligence people during the war, exciting stuff, rivaling anything from the Imhotep days, or darn near.

  Only that was classified, all of it.

  That left her with only her imagination, and when it came to being imaginative, Evelyn Carnahan O’Connell was about as imaginative as your average scholar or museum curator, both of which she was.

  She glanced up, hoping for inspiration, and her eyes landed on the Carnahan family shield on the wall—she had positioned this, with its two crossed swords, as another means of sparking her creativity. She stood and plucked a sword from its perch, savored its grip, then sliced the air with enthusiasm and skill.

  Soon she was capering around the room like Tyrone Power in The Mark of Zorro, grinning as she parried an invisible foe across the wood-paneled library, her face flushed with excitement. Inspired, finally inspired, she leaped across a table, swung off a curtain, and decapitated a candle off the chandelier, yelling, “Take that!”

  A cough behind her brought her down to earth, or at least to the parquet floor, and she tucked the sword behind her back, too late, because Jameson had obviously been standing in the doorway for a while now.

  He said, “If there isn’t anything else, madam, I should like to retire for the evening.”

  “Of course,” a blushing Evelyn said. “Good night, Jameson. Sweet dreams.”

  “And you, madam.”

  She put things right, then returned to the desk and, rather than make another attempt, she straightened up her work area and took her leave of the library.

  Upstairs, in her bathroom, she bathed and powdered herself and spritzed perfume in all the right places, and when she entered their bedroom in her sexiest robe, she was ready to be inspired.

  But her husband wasn’t in bed.

  She slipped into the hallway and padded on bare feet to the staircase. From there she could see down into the study, where he sat in his favorite chair, its back to her as he faced the windows onto the garden. She tiptoed down and came up behind him and said, “Rick . . . is that offer still good? For a little inspiration?”

  She dropped the robe and it pooled at her feet. She had bought the now-revealed sheer, silk negligee at Harrods and it had cost a small fortune; she’d been saving it for their anniversary, but some things just couldn’t wait . . .

  She edged alongside the big comfy leather chair and touched his shoulder, rubbed his neck where it was always sore. “That time the mummy had me tied down, about to plunge his dagger into me . . . my heart was pounding. It’s pounding like that now. Want to feel . . . ?”

  His answer was a loud, abrupt, snort of a snore.

  The great adventurer was asleep in his chair, his mouth open, a trickle of drool at one corner, the latest issue of a magazine devoted to guns and a
mmunition on his lap.

  Guns could kill anything, she thought. Even a mood.

  And she left him there.

  The next afternoon, after a morning phone call requested a short-notice visit, the O’Connells received a valued colleague of the recent past in their sitting room. Jameson finished the tea service, and the couple, seated on a sofa, made small talk with their guest, who lounged across from them in a comfortable chair. Still, there was an air of near formality, Rick O’Connell in a gray suit and dark tie, Evelyn in a lavender dress with a gold Egyptian symbol on a necklace.

  Benjamin Fry—a lanky dark-haired man with sharp, almost hawkish features, and a palpable air of danger despite his three-piece-suit—sat with a small square mahogany box in his lap. Were they to be presented a medal? O’Connell wondered.

  “The Foreign Office,” Fry said, “appreciates all that the two of you did during the war . . . especially that nasty business in Luxor. But I’ve been sent to offer you, shall we say, one last assignment.”

  The couple, sitting close together, exchanged glances.

  Then Evelyn shook her head, the brunette tresses bouncing on her shoulders, and said, “I’m afraid we’ve retired from the adventure business . . . and the espionage game.” She smiled at her husband. “Haven’t we, dear?”

  O’Connell nodded assertively. “Absolutely! We are totally, completely, utterly retired.” He swallowed. Sat forward just a little. “But out of respect to you, Benjamin, and since you made the trip out here . . . and, you know, just out of curiosity, maybe you could lay out the shape of the thing—not violating any state secrets, of course.”

  “Of course,” Fry said. “Is that all right with you, Evelyn?”

  “Certainly.” She shrugged. “I can’t see any harm in hearing why you asked for this meeting.”

  “It’s a fairly straightforward job,” he said. “Courier duty.” He pointed to the mahogany box. “We would like you to deliver this to Shanghai . . .”

  O’Connell’s eyebrows rose. “That?”

  So did Evelyn’s. “That box? What’s in it?”