The First R. Austin Freeman Megapack: 27 Mystery Tales of Dr. Thorndyke & Others

by R. Austin Freeman

  The quiet conviction of her tone left me for a while speechless with horror and despair. Then I recalled Thorndyke’s calm, even confident attitude, and I hastened to remind her of it.

  “There is one of your friends,” I said, “who is still undismayed. Thorndyke seems to anticipate no difficulties.”

  “And yet,” she replied, “he is ready to consider a forlorn hope like this. However, we shall see.”

  I could think of nothing more to say, and it was in gloomy silence that we pursued our way down Inner Temple Lane and through the dark entries and tunnel-like passages that brought us out, at length, by the Treasury.

  “I don’t see any light in Thorndyke’s chambers,” I said, as we crossed King’s Bench Walk; and I pointed out the row of windows all dark and blank.

  “No: and yet the shutters are not closed. He must be out.”

  “He can’t be after making an appointment with you and your father. It is most mysterious. Thorndyke is so very punctilious about his engagements.”

  The mystery was solved, when we reached the landing, by a slip of paper fixed by a tack on the iron-bound “oak.”

  “A note for P.B. is on the table,” was the laconic message: on reading which I inserted my key, swung the heavy door outward, and opened the lighter inner door. The note was lying on the table and I brought it out to the landing to read by the light of the staircase lamp.

  “Apologise to our friends,” it ran, “for the slight change of programme. Norbury is anxious that I should get my experiments over before the Director returns, so as to save discussion. He has asked me to begin tonight and says he will see Mr. and Miss Bellingham here, at the Museum. Please bring them along at once. The hall porters are instructed to admit you and bring you to us. I think some matters of importance may transpire at the interview.—J.E.T.”

  “I hope you don’t mind,” I said apologetically, when I had read the note to Ruth.

  “Of course I don’t,” she replied. “I am rather pleased. We have so many associations with the dear old Museum, haven’t we?” She looked at me for a moment with a strange and touching wistfulness and then turned to descend the stone stairs.

  At the Temple gate, I hailed a hansom and we were soon speeding westward and north to the soft tinkle of the horse’s bell.

  “What are these experiments that Doctor Thorndyke refers to?” she asked presently.

  “I can only answer you rather vaguely,” I replied. “Their object, I believe, is to ascertain whether the penetrability of organic substances by the X-rays becomes altered by age; whether, for instance, an ancient block of wood is more or less transparent to the rays than a new block of the same size.”

  “And of what use would the knowledge be, if it were obtained?”

  “I can’t say. Experiments are made to obtain knowledge without regard to its utility. The use appears when the knowledge has been acquired. But in this case, if it should be possible to determine the age of any organic substance by its reaction to X-rays, the discovery might be of some value in legal practice—as in demonstrating a new seal on an old document, for instance. But I don’t know whether Thorndyke has anything definite in view; I only know that the preparations have been on a most portentous scale.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “In regard to size. When I went into the workshop yesterday morning, I found Polton erecting a kind of portable gallows about nine feet high, and he had just finished varnishing a pair of enormous wooden trays, each over six feet long. It looked as if he and Thorndyke were contemplating a few private executions with subsequent post-mortems on the victims.”

  “What a horrible suggestion!”

  “So Polton said, with his quaint, crinkly smile. But he was mighty close about the use of the apparatus all the same. I wonder if we shall see anything of the experiments, when we get there. This is Museum Street, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” As she spoke, she lifted the flap of one of the little windows in the back of the cab and peered out. Then, closing it with a quiet, ironic smile, she said:

  “It is all right; he hasn’t missed us. It will be quite a nice little change for him.”

  The cab swung round into Great Russell Street, and, glancing out as it turned, I saw another hansom following; but before I had time to inspect its solitary passenger, we drew up at the Museum gates. The gate-porter, who seemed to expect us, ushered us up the drive to the great portico and into the Central Hall, where he handed us over to another official.

  “Doctor Norbury is in one of the rooms adjoining the Fourth Egyptian Room,” the latter stated in answer to our inquiries: and, providing himself with a wire-guarded lantern, he prepared to escort us thither.

  Up the great staircase, now wrapped in mysterious gloom, we passed in silence with bitter-sweet memories of that day of days when we had first trodden its steps together: through the Central Saloon, the Mediaeval Room and the Asiatic Saloon, and so into the long range of the Ethnographical Galleries.

  It was a weird journey. The swaying lantern shot its beams abroad into the darkness of the great, dim galleries, casting instantaneous flashes on the objects in the cases, so that they leaped into being and vanished in the twinkling of an eye. Hideous idols with round, staring eyes started forth from the darkness, glared at us for an instant and were gone. Grotesque masks, suddenly revealed by the shimmering light, took on the semblance of demon faces that seemed to mow and gibber at us as we passed. As for the life-sized models—realistic enough by daylight—their aspect was positively alarming; for the moving light and shadow endowed them with life and movement, so that they seemed to watch us furtively, to lie in wait and to hold themselves in readiness to steal out and follow us. The illusion evidently affected Ruth as well as me, for she drew nearer to me and whispered:

  “These figures are quite startling. Did you see that Polynesian? I really felt as if he were going to spring out on us.”

  “They are rather uncanny,” I admitted, “but the danger is over now. We are passing out of their sphere of influence.”

  We came out on a landing as I spoke and then turned sharply to the left along the North Gallery, from the centre of which we entered the Fourth Egyptian Room.

  Almost immediately, a door in the opposite wall opened; a peculiar, high-pitched humming sound became audible, and Jervis came out on tiptoe with his hand raised.

  “Tread as lightly as you can,” he said. “We are just making an exposure.”

  The attendant turned back with his lantern, and we followed Jervis into the room from whence he had come. It was a large room, and little lighter than the galleries, for the single glow-lamp that burned at the end where we entered left the rest of the apartment in almost complete obscurity. We seated ourselves at once on the chairs that had been placed for us, and, when the mutual salutations had been exchanged, I looked about me. There were three people in the room besides Jervis: Thorndyke, who sat with his watch in his hand, a grey-headed gentleman whom I took to be Dr. Norbury, and a smaller person at the dim farther end—indistinguishable, but probably Polton. At our end of the room were the two large trays that I had seen in the workshop, now mounted on trestles and each fitted with a rubber drain-tube leading down to a bucket. At the farther end of the room the sinister shape of the gallows reared itself aloft in the gloom; only now I could see that it was not a gallows at all. For affixed to the top cross-bar was a large, bottomless glass basin, inside which was a glass bulb that glowed with a strange green light; and in the heart of the bulb a bright spot of red.

  It was all clear enough so far. The peculiar sound that filled the air was the hum of the interrupter; the bulb was, of course, a Crookes tube, and the red spot inside it, the glowing red-hot disc of the anti-cathode. Clearly an X-ray photograph was being made; but of what? I strained my eyes, peering into the gloom at the foot of the gallows, but though I could make out an elongated object lying on the floor directly under the bulb, I could not resolve the dimly seen shape into anything recognisable. Pre
sently, however, Dr. Norbury supplied the clue.

  “I am rather surprised,” said he, “that you chose so composite an object as a mummy to begin on. I should have thought that a simpler object, such as a coffin or a wooden figure, would have been more instructive.”

  “In some ways it would,” replied Thorndyke, “but the variety of materials that the mummy gives us has its advantages. I hope your father is not ill, Miss Bellingham.”

  “He is not at all well,” said Ruth, “and we agreed that it was better for me to come alone. I knew Herr Lederbogen quite well. He stayed with us for a time when he was in England.”

  “I trust,” said Dr. Norbury, “that I have not troubled you for nothing. Herr Lederbogen speaks of ‘our erratic English friend with the long name that I can never remember,’ and it seemed to me that he might be referring to your uncle.”

  “I should hardly have called my uncle erratic,” said Ruth.

  “No, no. Certainly not,” Dr. Norbury agreed hastily. “However, you shall see the letter presently and judge for yourself. We mustn’t introduce irrelevant topics while the experiment is in progress, must we, Doctor?”

  “You had better wait until we have finished,” said Thorndyke, “because I am going to turn out the light. Switch off the current, Polton.”

  The green light vanished from the bulb, the hum of the interrupter swept down an octave or two and died away. Then Thorndyke and Dr. Norbury rose from their chairs and went towards the mummy, which they lifted tenderly while Polton drew from beneath it what presently turned out to be a huge black-paper envelope. The single glow-lamp was switched off, leaving the room in total darkness, until there burst out suddenly a bright orange-red light immediately above one of the trays.

  We all gathered round to watch, as Polton—the high-priest of these mysteries—drew from the black envelope a colossal sheet of bromide paper, laid it carefully in the tray and proceeded to wet it with a large brush which he had dipped in a pail of water.

  “I thought you always used plates for this kind of work,” said Dr. Norbury.

  “We do, by preference; but a six-foot plate would be impossible, so I had a special paper made to the size.”

  There is something singularly fascinating in the appearance of a developing photograph; in the gradual, mysterious emergence of the picture from the blank, white surface of plate or paper. But a skiagraph, or X-ray photograph, has a fascination all its own. Unlike an ordinary photograph, which yields a picture of things already seen, it gives a presentment of objects hitherto invisible; and hence, when Polton poured the developer on the already wet paper, we all craned over the tray with the keenest curiosity.

  The developer was evidently a very slow one. For fully half a minute no change could be seen in the uniform surface. Then, gradually, almost insensibly, the marginal portion began to darken, leaving the outline of the mummy in pale relief. The change, once started, proceeded apace. Darker and darker grew the margin of the paper until from slaty grey it had turned to black; and still the shape of the mummy, now in strong relief, remained an elongated patch of bald white. But not for long. Presently the white shape began to be tinged with grey, and, as the colour deepened, there grew out of it a paler form that seemed to steal out of the enshrouding grey like an apparition, spectral, awesome, mysterious. The skeleton was coming into view.

  “It is rather uncanny,” said Dr. Norbury. “I feel as if I were assisting at some unholy rite. Just look at it now!”

  The grey shadow of the cartonnage, the wrappings and the flesh was fading away into the black background and the white skeleton stood out in sharp contrast. And it certainly was a rather weird spectacle.

  “You’ll lose the bones if you develop much farther,” said Dr. Norbury.

  “I must let the bones darken,” Thorndyke replied, “in case there are any metallic objects. I have three more papers in the envelope.”

  The white shape of the skeleton now began to grey over and, as Dr. Norbury had said, its distinctness became less and yet less. Thorndyke leaned over the tray with his eyes fixed on a point in the middle of the breast and we all watched him in silence. Suddenly he rose. “Now, Polton,” he said sharply; “get the hypo on as quickly as you can.”

  Polton, who had been waiting with his hand on the stop-cock of the drain-tube, rapidly ran off the developer into the bucket and flooded the paper with the fixing solution.

  “Now we can look at it at our leisure,” said Thorndyke. After waiting a few seconds, he switched on one of the glow-lamps, and as the flood of light fell on the photograph, he added: “You see we haven’t quite lost the skeleton.”

  “No.” Dr. Norbury put on a pair of spectacles and bent down over the tray; and at this moment I felt Ruth’s hand touch my arm, lightly, at first, and then with a strong, nervous grasp; and I could feel that her hand was trembling. I looked round at her anxiously and saw that she had turned deathly pale.

  “Would you rather go out into the gallery?” I asked; for the room with its tightly shut windows was close and hot.

  “No,” she replied quietly, “I will stay here. I am quite well.” But still she kept hold of my arm.

  Thorndyke glanced at her keenly and then looked away as Dr. Norbury turned to him to ask a question.

  “Why is it, think you, that some of the teeth show so much whiter than others?”

  “I think the whiteness of the shadows is due to the presence of metal,” Thorndyke replied.

  “Do you mean that the teeth have metal fillings?” asked Dr. Norbury.

  “Yes.”

  “Really! This is very interesting. The use of gold stoppings—and artificial teeth, too—by the ancient Egyptians is well known, but we have no examples in the Museum. This mummy ought to be unrolled. Do you think all those teeth are filled with the same metal? They are not equally white.”

  “No,” replied Thorndyke. “Those teeth that are perfectly white are undoubtedly filled with gold, but that greyish one is probably filled with tin.”

  “Very interesting,” said Dr. Norbury. “Very interesting! And what do you make of that faint mark across the chest, near the top of the sternum?”

  It was Ruth who answered his question.

  “It is the Eye of Osiris!” she exclaimed, in a hushed voice.

  “Dear me!” exclaimed Dr. Norbury, “so it is. You are quite right. It is the Utchat—the Eye of Horus—or Osiris, if you prefer to call it so. That, I presume, will be a gilded device on some of the wrappings.”

  “No: I should say it is a tattoo mark. It is too indefinite for a gilded device. And I should say further that the tattooing is done in vermilion, as carbon tattooing would cast no visible shadow.”

  “I think you must be mistaken about that,” said Dr. Norbury, “but we shall see, if the Director allows us to unroll the mummy. By the way, those little objects in front of the knees are metallic, I suppose?”

  “Yes, they are metallic. But they are not in front of the knees; they are in the knees. They are pieces of silver wire which have been used to repair fractured kneecaps.”

  “Are you sure of that?” exclaimed Dr. Norbury, peering at the little white marks with ecstasy; “because, if you are, and if these objects are what you say they are, the mummy of Sebek-hotep is an absolutely unique specimen.”

  “I am quite certain of it,” said Thorndyke.

  “Then,” said Dr. Norbury, “we have made a discovery, thanks to your inquiring spirit. Poor John Bellingham! He little knew what a treasure he was giving us! How I wish he could have known! How I wish he could have been here with us tonight!”

  He paused once more to gaze in rapture at the photograph. And then Thorndyke, in his quiet, impassive way, said:

  “John Bellingham is here, Doctor Norbury. This is John Bellingham.”

  Dr. Norbury started back and stared at Thorndyke in speechless amazement.

  “You don’t mean,” he exclaimed, after a long pause, “that this mummy is the body of John Bellingham!”

&n
bsp; “I do, indeed. There is no doubt of it.”

  “But it is impossible! The mummy was here in the gallery a full three weeks before he disappeared.”

  “Not so,” said Thorndyke. “John Bellingham was last seen alive by you and Mr. Jellicoe on the fourteenth of October, more than three weeks before the mummy left Queen Square. After that date he was never seen alive or dead by any person who knew him and could identify him.”

  Dr. Norbury reflected awhile in silence. Then, in a faint voice, he asked: “How do you suggest that John Bellingham’s body came to be inside that cartonnage?”

  “I think Mr. Jellicoe is the most likely person to be able to answer that question,” Thorndyke replied drily.

  There was another interval of silence, and then Dr. Norbury asked suddenly:

  “But what do you suppose has become of Sebek-hotep? The real Sebek-hotep, I mean?”

  “I take it,” said Thorndyke, “that the remains of Sebek-hotep, or at least a portion of them, are at present lying in the Woodford mortuary awaiting an adjourned inquest.”

  As Thorndyke made this statement a flash of belated intelligence, mingled with self-contempt, fell on me. Now that the explanation was given, how obvious it was! And yet I, a competent anatomist and physiologist and actually a pupil of Thorndyke’s, had mistaken those ancient bones for the remains of a recent body!

  Dr. Norbury considered the last statement for some time in evident perplexity. “It is all consistent enough, I must admit,” said he, at length, “and yet—are you quite sure there is no mistake? It seems so incredible.”

  “There is no mistake, I assure you,” Thorndyke answered. “To convince you, I will give you the facts in detail. First, as to the teeth. I have seen John Bellingham’s dentist and obtained particulars from his case-book. There were in all five teeth that had been filled. The right upper wisdom-tooth, the molar next to it, and the second lower molar on the left side, had all extensive gold fillings. You can see them all quite plainly in the skiagraph. The left lower lateral incisor had a very small gold filling, which you can see as a nearly circular white dot. In addition to these, a filling of tin amalgam had been inserted while the deceased was abroad, in the second left upper bicuspid, the rather grey spot that we have already noticed. These would, by themselves, furnish ample means of identification. But in addition, there is the tattooed device of the Eye of Osiris—”