by John Burke
There was a gun in the top right-hand drawer of the desk. It was a ludicrous weapon to use against this monstrous apparition, but instinctively Sir Giles grabbed at it. The mummy came on. He fired, then fired again. The mummy shook, jolted by the impact, but its portentous tread did not falter. Sir Giles fired a third time. Then the mummy raised its arm and scooped him up.
Sir Giles uttered a choking cry. It was stifled as the arm tightened.
He was smacked down across the desk, hearing the crunch of his own bones and feeling stabs of pain as though he had been knifed from every side simultaneously. The arm round his throat grew tighter. He flailed out, but met only the thick wadding of the bandages. Then, as his eyes filmed over, the last thing he saw was a china cat which the mummy had lifted from the desk. It was poised over Sir Giles for an instant before coming down. Three times it struck his forehead before smashing; but by the third time Sir Giles Dalrymple was unaware of its savage impact.
12
A book lay open on Adam’s lap. He read from it in his meditative, musical voice, occasionally glancing across the glow of firelight at Annette:
“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle light . . .”
Annette was lulled by the rhythmic beauty of it and by the drowsy contentment induced by the fire. She recognized Adam’s motives: he had every intention of coaxing her away from John; but she had no power to resist.
“I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints—I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and if God choose,
I shall love thee better after death.”
The last line went on reverberating through the room. Adam sat contemplating the page for what seemed an eternity, then looked up at Annette.
“ ‘Better,’ ” he repeated, “ ‘after death.’ ”
Annette tried to find some flippant rejoinder, but now was no time for flippancy. Now was the time for truth, unequivocal and unavoidable.
Adam closed the book. He said: “I have to leave London.”
“Oh, no.” The protest was drawn from her like a cry of despair.
“I could make arrangements for you and John to stay on while the exhibition remains here.”
“Without you?”
“You would be quite comfortable. You wouldn’t want for anything.”
She said: “I couldn’t bear it.”
He put the book down and got up, putting out his hands to her. She took them and he drew her to her feet.
“Or,” he said, “you could come with me. I want you to come. Dare I ask it of you?”
It did not occur to her to ask him where they would go or how long they would be away. She made no protestations. There was no coyness and no doubt in her. She simply said:
“When?”
“Tomorrow morning. Early.”
“How do we tell John?” There was no need for them even to discuss the complications of the present or the future. It was not a matter of her having to decide that she was not meant for John: the decision had been made deeply and secretly without her having to wrestle with it. The only question was that of the kindest and least evasive way of breaking the news.
Adam said: “You won’t want to upset him by a harrowing scene while he’s ill. I suggest you leave him a note.”
“I don’t like to, but . . .”
“Write it now.” Adam spoke quietly but authoritatively.
Annette felt that her life was passing into his hands. She was left with no initiative of her own. Somehow she could have predicted that it would be like this and that she would accept it. There was a lifetime of authority in Adam’s voice and manner. She realized that she knew almost nothing about him—about the source of his wealth, the career that had given him his aristocratic self-possession, the ability to command and to compel immediate obedience . . .
She freed her hands from his and went up to her room. In the white stillness of this bedroom she was farther away from Adam and farther from his influence, and for the first time she felt a flicker of revolt. It was too easy for him. He snapped his fingers and she jumped through the hoop. He told her to cast John aside, and she was about to do so without a murmur.
But stronger than this belated doubt was the anxiety to get back to Adam. The sooner she finished the letter, the sooner she could be with him again.
She began to write to John.
Immediately in front of her was her dressing-table mirror. When she paused to think of the right phrase, she saw her own pale, reproachful face staring back at her. It was cruel to do this to John, and cowardly not to wait until she could talk to him face to face. But she was a woman possessed. None of the normal values prevailed any longer.
“I can only hope that some day you will forgive me . . .”
She said the words aloud as though to test them. Then, as she was about to put them on paper, there was a crash from below. It shook the house. It was no commonplace sound—not just the accidental overturning of a table, or somebody dropping a tray. A dull thumping followed, like the noise of a struggle.
Annette got up and went to the door. She hurried along to the head of the stairs and looked down.
And she screamed.
In the hall below, Adam was fighting desperately with the mummy. Some of the creature’s bandages were torn and flapped about it like the trappings of a scarecrow. Its arms were crushing the breath out of Adam, who beat savagely but unavailingly against the swathed head.
Annette’s scream cut through the sound of the struggle. The mummy paused. Adam went slack. The mummy suddenly hurled him aside so that he fell in a crumpled heap at the foot of the stairs.
The mummy stepped ponderously over him and began to mount the stairs.
Annette leaned against the wall, whimpering to herself. She wanted to turn and run, but was rooted to the spot. If she tried to shut herself in her room, this creature would surely smash down the door. There must be another flight of stairs, another way out, some way of escaping from the house and raising the alarm . . . but all her willpower was sapped by the sheer horror of this impossible, implacable thing plodding up towards her.
And suddenly she realized the worst thing of all. Her own breath rasped in her throat, but it was drowned by the noise of other breathing. The mummy was steadily, hoarsely breathing.
It had almost reached her. One arm was raised. Annette knew that her knees were going to give way. She was going to collapse abjectly, right in its path.
Then Adam, at the foot of the stairs, forced himself up to his knees. Shakily but commandingly he mouthed:
“Hoom a Ra.”
The mummy halted.
Adam came up two steps. “Arrer as . . . Nek hebet!”
The mummy seemed undecided. The head turned, shaking solemnly. Annette tried to back away, to hide round the corner of the landing. The movement attracted the mummy’s attention, and it reached out for her. The slow, relentless movement of that arm was too much for Annette: she slid down the wall into a sobbing heap on the floor.
She was aware of Adam rhythmically, desperately calling. In her waking nightmare the sounds were jumbled and nonsensical. Again the mummy shook its head as though to dismiss the petty sting of the words. It loomed over Annette. She did not know how much was reality and how much distorted fantasy. It seemed to her that the mummy bent over her for an age and that it then touched her limp hand almost tenderly, regretfully. There was a stale, sickly sweet grave smell; and all the time the
heavy breathing.
The smell drifted away. The sound of breathing receded. Lying with her cheek on the floor, she was vaguely aware of the shrouded feet turning and pacing back down the stairs. She tried to pull herself round. Adam swam into view, facing up as the mummy descended, challenging the creature.
An arm swung like a slow, weighty hammer; and Adam went down again.
There was noise. More noise. Annette seemed still to hear that painful breathing and at the same time to be assailed by a hammering on wood, the racket of a doorbell swinging and clanking, and men shouting.
The mummy had gone. Adam lay still. And suddenly the place was full. Men crashed into the hall, and one came racing up the stairs towards her.
Firm hands took her gently by the shoulders and turned her over.
“Darling . . . darling, what’s happened?”
It was John. Even through her fading nightmare she was sorry that it should be John.
She whispered: “Adam—how’s Adam?”
Two police uniforms struck an incongruous note in the delicate green and white color scheme of the hall.
“All right, sir?” growled a voice below her.
“Adam,” she said again, struggling up.
“He’s all right, miss.”
“Thank God.”
With John supporting her, Annette went downstairs to join the group at the foot of the flight.
“You remember me, miss—Inspector Mackenzie.” Yes, she remembered, though it seemed a lifetime since the mummy disappeared. So much had happened, so many things had altered since then. She was scared—torn between wanting it all to have been a terrible dream, and wanting part of it not to have been a dream. “Miss”—it was the Inspector, urgent and insistent—“can you tell me what happened?”
“The mummy,” she said.
The thought of it made her feel faint once more. John’s arm tightened across her shoulders. Hashmi Bey—whatever was he doing here?—stepped forward, intent on what she had just said.
“Yes?” he prompted her. “It was here, yes?”
“It was here,” she said. “It’s alive.”
“You actually saw it?” said Inspector Mackenzie.
“Yes. It . . . it attacked Adam.”
“Attacked Adam?” The incredulity in John’s voice was not, she somehow knew, directed against the mere idea of the mummy being alive. There was something deeper and stranger than that.
Hashmi and John exchanged glances.
Hashmi said, puzzled: “But why should it do that?”
The Inspector tugged thoughtfully at his lower lip. He was on utterly foreign ground. John said: “It looks as though the theory we brought to you, Inspector, has been proved wrong.”
“That’s often the trouble with theories, sir.”
The baize door on the far side of the hall opened quietly and Jessop came in. His eyes widened as he saw his master lying on the lower steps of the staircase. The police sergeant with Inspector Mackenzie gave him a hand to carry Adam up to his room. When they had gone, the group of people in the hall stayed together, waiting for someone to give a lead, to say something that would make sense.
John broke the baffled silence. “And yet, you know, it’s the only theory that works. Unless . . . well, of course, it could be that something else has gone wrong. Just could be.”
Annette could not follow what he was talking about. She doubted whether the Inspector was doing any better.
“Look”—John turned to Inspector Mackenzie—“will you give us another chance to prove that we’re right?”
“That’s one advantage the amateur detective has over the professional: a second chance.”
John was too preoccupied with this new opportunity to notice when Annette slipped gently away from him and hurried to Adam’s room.
Jessop and the police sergeant had laid him on the wide bed. A lesser man would have been swamped by the airy proportions of the room with its spartan furnishing and lack of clutter; but Adam, even struggling up from unconsciousness, dominated his setting. He waved Jessop away and continued the gesture to include the policeman.
The sergeant hesitated at the door.
“I think the Inspector will be requiring a statement from you, sir.”
“Not now,” said Adam imperiously.
“When you’re quite recovered, sir, of course.”
“I’ll notify you when that is.”
Dubiously the sergeant went away to report. Adam sank back on the bed and put out his hand. Annette took it.
She said: “I still don’t understand. I . . . it makes no sense.”
“It will.” Adam stared at the ceiling. “It will all make sense when you know the truth.”
“The truth? But why should the mummy attack you? If all the old legends are true, it should be seeking out the . . . the desecrators of the tomb . . . meaning Sir Giles and John and myself.” Annette shivered. “But you had nothing to do with it. You weren’t there. Just because you offered us hospitality when we got to England . . .”
She was bewildered by his calmness. In spite of that terrible attack on him he showed no fear, not even a trace of resentment that his generosity should have had such results. As he lay there tranquilly with his eyes open, gazing at something remote which she could not share with him, he seemed almost to be welcoming what had happened and would happen. He might have been waiting a lifetime for it—a lifetime of incredible length.
He said: “When those people downstairs have gone, we will talk.”
“They’ll be here for ages yet.”
“No,” he said softly, “I don’t think so.”
As though to confirm this, there was a tap at the door and John came in. His eyes took in the scene—Adam with his hand in Annette’s, the two of them caught in a world of their own—but his voice was steady as he said:
“We’ve got to lure it out into the open. If I was right about the incantation, that’s the best way. We’ve got to go and see Sir Giles—got to make him work with us, if we have to pump the alcohol out of him first!”
Adam continued to stare upwards. “You’re very . . . determined,” he said abstractedly.
“Yes,” said John with unusual vigor. “I am. And when you’ve quite recovered,” he added ironically, deliberately setting out to bring a flush to Annette’s cheeks, “perhaps you’ll contribute your little bit by making a detailed statement to the policeman downstairs. He’ll stay there on guard until you’re ready.”
Annette recognized the threat in the words. It made no impression on Adam, but she was suffused with a sudden misery, like a child deprived of a promised holiday. Something menaced their happiness. They would not be allowed to leave early in the morning. They were involved in this horror and would not be able to flee from it until the whole affair was cleared up. John could hardly conceal his gratification: in his view the policeman would be a gaoler rather than a protector.
She said: “I think Adam should rest.”
“See that he does, then.”
John turned and left them. They heard his footsteps die away, and a little while later the front door slammed.
After a long pause Adam said: “They must be very foolish if they think I cannot get past a policeman in my own house.”
“Shall we . . .” Annette fumbled, hardly daring to put it to the test. “Are we going to leave, as we planned? Will we be able to go after all?”
“First,” he said, “I think you should know the truth.”
He turned over to face her. She was shocked by the impression of age communicated by his eyes. He was not the Adam she had thought she knew: there was someone else there, someone who must always have been waiting.
“You’re tired,” she said, trying to put off the moment when irrevocable things might be said. “We can talk later.”
He said: “I have so much to tell you. Think back first to the legend of Ra. Even there, there are facts which none of you could see when you tried to interpret the writings. And some deta
ils of the story are lost in the mists of antiquity. How much simpler for all your earnest scholars and interpreters if they had had access to the missing fragments! You see, when Rameses heard the news of the death of Ra, his favorite son, he suffered a stroke which was finally to kill him. Before he died he sent emissaries to ensure that Ra should have a worthy burial. This much you know. But you do not know that on his deathbed he sent for the person who had been responsible for the death of Ra and, truly, for his own impending death. He cursed that person—cursed him to everlasting life, unless he could die by the hand of his own brother.”
“How would you know this?” Annette whispered.
“Because I am that person.” Adam sat up, swung his legs off the bed, and stood in the middle of the room. He lifted his head arrogantly, once more staring beyond her into the infinite. “I am Be, younger son of Rameses the Eighth, Pharaoh of Pharaohs.”
The house was still. The walls of the spacious room seemed to contract and close in on Annette. She wanted to believe that she was listening to a madman, but knew that she was not. He had promised her the truth and this was it.
“Cursed to eternal wandering,” he brooded, “for I could never die. The only person who could release me from the curse had already been destroyed at the hands of my hired assassins. My father had knowingly burdened me with this grotesque fate. No escape for me unless I could be killed by one already dead—a mockery, an impossibility . . .” He was convulsed by a groan of despair, echoing with the memories of thousands of years. And then he said almost inaudibly: “Until now.”
13
The corpse of Sir Giles Dalrymple lay in ghastly ruin in his library. When his housekeeper had tapped several times on the door and then opened it to admit John, Hashmi, and Inspector Mackenzie, she collapsed.
The Inspector sent for more men, and while John and Hashmi ploughed their way through books from Sir Giles’s shelves, policemen examined the body and the floor, the shattered window and the debris around the desk. Finally the corpse was removed. Whatever doubts his superiors might cast on his reports, the Inspector was beginning to believe the gruesome story advanced by John Bray and the Egyptian.