by E. F. Benson
That no further confirmation of Pocksky’s announcements on this subject ever came to light was scarcely noticed by the automatic writers, for Pocksky was bursting with other news. He rather terrified his interpreters, when there was nervousness about possible Zeppelin raids, by saying: “Fires from the wicked ones in the clouds. Fourteen, twelve, fourteen, cellar best,” since this could hardly mean anything but that a raid was to be expected on the fourteenth of December; and Mr. and Mrs. Andrews—and, indeed, a large number of their friends—spent the evening in their cellars, coming out again when it was definitely after midnight. But the relief at finding that no harm had been done speedily obliterated the feeling that Pocksky had misled them, and when, on Christmas Eve, he said, “Spirit of Peace descends,” though certain people thought he meant that the War would soon be over, the truce on the Western Front for Christmas Day was more generally believed to bear out this remarkable prophecy.
All through the spring Pocksky continued voluble. He would not definitely commit himself over the course that Italy was to take, but, as Mrs. Andrews triumphantly pointed out, Italy would not definitely commit herself either, which just showed how right Pocksky was. He rather went back to the Pocky style over this, and said: “Prudence is better than precipitation; Italy prepares before making decision. Wisdom guides her counsels, and wisdom is ever best. From Pocksky.” Intermittently the forcing of the Dardanelles occupied him.
Now, here a rather odd point arose. Mr. Andrews at this time had to spend a week in town, and only Mrs. Andrews held the pencil which the intelligence of Pocksky used to express himself with. In all these messages Pocksky spelled the name of the straits “Dardanels,” which, for all I know, may be the Russian form. But two days ago Mrs. Andrews kindly sent me one of his messages, which I was glad to see was most optimistic in tone. She enclosed a note from herself, saying:
“You will like to see what Pocksky says about the Dardanels. Isn’t he wonderful?”
So Mrs. Andrews, writing independently of Pocksky, spells Dardanelles the same way as Pocksky does when he controls the pencil. I cannot help wondering if the control is—shall we say?—quite complete. I wonder also how the straits will get themselves spelt when Mr. Andrews returns. It is all rather puzzling.
The Ape
Table of Contents
Hugh Marsham had spent the day, as a good tourist should, in visiting the temples and the tombs of the kings across the river, and the magic of the hour of sunset flamed over earth and heaven as he crossed the Nile again to Luxor in his felucca. It seemed as if the whole world had been suddenly transferred into the heart of an opal, and burned with a myriad fiery colours. The river itself was of the green that beech trees are clad in at spring-time; the columns of the temple that stood close to its banks glowed as if lit from within by the flame of some perpetual evening sacrifice; the cloudless sky was dusky blue in the east, the blue of turquoise overhead, and melted into aqua-marine above the line of desert where the sun had just sunk. All along the bank which he was fast approaching under the press of the cool wind from the north were crowds of Arabs, padding softly home in the dust from their work, and chattering as sparrows chatter among the bushes in the long English twilights. Even the dust that hovered and hung and was dispersed again by the wind was rainbowed; it caught the hues from the river and the sky and the orange-flaming temple, and those who walked in it were clad in brightness.
Here in the South, no long English twilight lingered, and as he walked up the dusky fragrant tunnel of mimosa that led to the hotel, night thickened, and in the sky a million stars leaped into being, while the soft gathering darkness sponged out the glories of the flaming hour. On the hotel steps, the vendors of carpets and Arabian hangings, of incense and filigree work, of suspicious turquoises and more than suspicious scarabs were already packing up their wares and probably recounting to each other in their shrill incomprehensible gabble the iniquitous bargains they had made with the gullible Americans and English, who so innocently purchased the wares of Manchester. Only in his accustomed corner old Abdul still squatted, for he was of a class above the ordinary vendors, a substantial dealer in antiques, who had a shop in the village where archaeologists resorted, and bought, sub rosa, pieces that eventually found their way into European museums. He was in his shop all day, but evening found him, when serious business hours were over, on the steps of the hotel, where he sold undoubted antiquities to tourists who wanted something genuine.
The day had been very hot, and Hugh felt himself disposed to linger outside the hotel in this cool dusk and turn over the tray of scarabs which Abdul Hamid presented to his notice. He was a wrinkled, dried-up husk of a man, loquacious and ingratiating in manner, and welcomed Hugh as an old customer.
“See, sir,” he said, “here are two more scroll-scarabs like those you bought from me before the week. You should have these; they are very fine and very cheap, because I do no business this year. Mr. Rankin, you know him? of the British Museum, he give me two pounds each last year for scroll-scarabs not so fine, and today I sell them at a pound and a half each. Take them; they are yours. Scroll-scarabs of the twelfth dynasty; if Mr. Rankin were here he pay me two pounds each and be sorry I not ask more.”
Hugh laughed.
“You may sell them to Mr. Rankin, then,” he said. “He comes here tomorrow.”
The old man, utterly unabashed, grinned and shook his head.
“No; I promised you them for pound and a half,” he said. “I am not cheat-dealer. They are yours—pound and a half. Take them, take them.”
Hugh resisted this unparalleled offer, and, turning over the contents of the tray, picked out of it and examined carefully a broken fragment of blue glaze, about an inch in height. This represented the head and shoulders of an ape, and the fracture had occurred half-way down the back, so that the lower part of the trunk, the forearms which apparently hung by its sides, and the hind legs were missing. On the back there was an inscription in hieroglyphics, also broken. Presumably the missing piece contained the remainder of the letters. It was modelled with extreme care and minuteness, and the face wore an expression of grotesque malevolence.
“What’s this broken bit of a monkey?” asked Hugh carelessly.
Abdul, looking much like a monkey himself, put his eyes close to it.
“Ah, that’s the rarest thing in Egypt,” he said, “so Mr. Rankin he tell me, if only the monkey not broken. See the back? There it says: ‘He of whom this is, let him call on me thrice’—and then some son of a dog broke it. If the rest was here, I would not take a hundred pounds for it; but now ten years have I kept half-monkey, and never comes halfmonkey to it. It is yours, sir, for a pound it is yours. Half-monkey nothing to me; it is fool-monkey only being half-monkey. I let it go—I give it you, and you give me pound.”
Hugh Marsham felt in one pocket, then in another, with no appearance of hurry or eagerness.
“There’s your pound,” he said casually.
Abdul peered at him in the dusk. It was very odd that Hugh did not offer him half what he asked, instead of paying up without bargaining. He regretted extremely that he had not asked more. But the little blue fragment was now in Hugh’s pocket, and the sovereign glistened very pleasantly in his own palm.
“And what was the rest of the hieroglyphic, do you think?” Hugh asked.
“Eh, Allah only knows the wickedness and the power of the monkeys,” said Abdul. “Once there were such in Egypt, and in the temple of Mut in Karnak, which the English dug up, you shall see a chamber with just such monkeys sitting ’round it, four of them, all carved in sandstone. But on them there is no writing; I have looked at them behind and before; they not master-monkeys. Perhaps the monkey promised that whoso called on him thrice, if he were owner of the blue image of which gentleman has the half, would be his master, and that monkey would do his bidding. Who knows? It is of the old wickedness of the world, the old Egyptian blackness.”
Hugh got up. He had been out in the sun all day, and fe
lt at this moment a little intimate shiver, which warned him that it was wiser to go indoors till the chill of sunset had passed.
“I expect you’ve tried it on with the half-monkey, haven’t you?” he said.
Abdul burst out into a toothless cackle of laughter.
“Yes, effendi,” he said. “I have tried it a hundred times, and nothing happens. Else I would not have sold it you. Half-monkey is no monkey at all. I have tried to make boy with the ink-mirror see something about monkeys, but nothing comes, except the clouds and the man who sweeps. No monkey.”
Hugh nodded to him.
“Good-night, you old sorcerer,” he said pleasantly.
As he walked up the broad flagged passage to his room, carrying the half-monkey in his hand, Hugh felt with a disengaged thumb in his waistcoat pocket for something he had picked up that day in the valley of the tombs of the kings. He had eaten his lunch there, after an inspection of the carved and reeking corridors, and, as he sat idly smoking, had reached out a lazy hand to where this thing had glittered among the pebbles. Now, entering his room, he turned up the electric light, and, standing under it with his back to the window, that opened, door fashion, on to the three steps that led into the hotel garden, he fitted the fragment he had found to the fragment he had just purchased. They joined on to each other with the most absolute accuracy, not a chip was missing. There was the complete ape, and down its back ran the complete legend.
The window was open, and at this moment he heard a sudden noise as of some scampering beast in the garden outside. His light streamed out in an oblong onto the sandy path, and, laying the two pieces of the image on the table, he looked out. But there was nothing irregular to be seen; the palm trees waved and clashed in the wind, and the rose bushes stirred and scattered their fragrance. Only right down the middle of the sandy path that ran between the beds, the ground was curiously disturbed, as by some animal, heavily frolicking, scooping and spurning the light soil as it ran.
** * * *
The midday train from Cairo next day brought Mr. Rankin, the eminent Egyptologist and student of occult lore, a huge red man with a complete mastery of colloquial Arabic. He had but a day to spend in Luxor, for he was en route for Merawi, where lately some important finds had been made; but Hugh took occasion to show him the figure of the ape as they sat over their coffee in the garden just outside his bedroom after lunch.
“I found the lower half yesterday outside one of the tombs of the kings,” he said, “and the top half by the utmost luck among old Abdul’s things. He told me you said that if it was complete it would be of the greatest rarity. He lied, I suppose?”
Rankin gave one gasp of amazed surprise as he looked at it and read the inscription on the back. Marsham thought that his great red face suddenly paled.
“Good Lord!” he said. “Here, take it!” And he held out the two pieces to him.
Hugh laughed.
“Why in such a hurry?” he said.
“Because there comes a breaking-point to every man’s honesty, and I might keep it, and swear that I had given it back to you. My dear fellow, do you know what you’ve got?”
“Indeed I don’t. I want to be told,” said Hugh.
“And to think that it was you who only a couple of months ago asked me what a scarab was! Well, you’ve got there what all Egyptologists, and even more keenly than Egyptologists all students of folklore and magic black and white—especially black—would give their eyes to have found. Good Lord! what’s that?”
Hugh was sitting by his side in a deck-chair, idly fitting together the two halves of the broken image. He too heard what had startled Rankin; for it was the same noise as had startled him last night, namely, the scampering of some great frolicsome animal, somewhere close to them. As he jumped up, pulling his hands apart, the noise ceased.
“Funny,” he said, “I heard that last night. There’s nothing; it’s some stray dog in the bushes. Do tell me what it is that I’ve got.”
Rankin, who had surged to his feet also, stood listening a moment. But there was nothing to be heard but the buzzing of bees in the bushes and the chiding of the remote kites overhead. He sat down again.
“Well, give me two minutes,” he said, “and I can tell you all I know. Once upon a time, when this wonderful and secret land was alive and not dead—oh, we have killed it with our board-schools and our steamers and our religion—there was a whole hierarchy of gods, Isis, Osiris, and the rest, of whom we know a great deal. But below them there was a company of semi-divinities, demons if you will, of whom we know practically nothing. The cat was one, certain dwarfrsh creatures were others, but most potent of all were the cynocephali, the dog-faced apes. They were not divine, rather they were demons, of hideous power, but”—and he pointed a great hand at Hugh—“they could be controlled. Men could control them, men could turn them into terrific servants, much as the genii in the ‘Arabian Nights’ were controlled. But to do that you had to know the secret name of the demon, and had yourself to make an image of him, with the secret name inscribed thereon, and by that you could summon him and all the incarnate creatures of his species.
“So much we know from certain very guarded allusions in the Book of the Dead and other sources, for this was one of the great mysteries never openly spoken of. Here and there a priest in Karnak, or Abydos, or in Hieropolis, had had handed down to him one of those secret names, but in nine cases out of ten the knowledge died with him, for there was something dangerous and terrible about it all. Old Abdul here, for instance, believes that Moses had the secret names of frogs and lice, and made images of them with the secret name inscribed on them, and by those produced the plagues of Egypt. Think what you could do, think what he did, if infinite power over frog-nature were given you, so that the king’s chamber swarmed with frogs at your word. Usually, as I said, the secret name was but sparingly passed on, but occasionally some very bold advanced spirit, such as Moses, made his image, and controlled—”
He paused a moment, and Hugh wondered if he was in some delirious dream. Here they were, taking coffee and cigarettes underneath the shadow of a modern hotel in the year A.D. 1912, and this great savant was talking to him about the spell that controlled the whole frog-nature in the universe. The gist, the moral of his discourse, was already perfectly clear.
“That’s a good joke,” Hugh said. “You told your story with extraordinary gravity. And what you mean is that those two blue bits I hold in my hand control the whole ape-nature of the world? Bravo, Rankin! For a moment, you and your impressiveness almost made me take it all seriously. Lord! You do tell a story well! And what’s the secret name of the ape?”
Rankin turned to him with the shake of an impressive forefinger.
“My dear boy,” he said, “you should never be disrespectful towards the things you know nothing of. Never say a thing is moonshine till you know what you are talking about. I know, at this moment, exactly as much as you do about your ape-image, except that I can translate its inscription, which I will do for you. On the top half is written, ‘He, of whom this is, let him call on me thrice’—”
Hugh interrupted.
“That’s what Abdul read to me,” he said.
“Of course. Abdul knows hieroglyphics. But on the lower half is what nobody but you and I know. ‘Let him call on me thrice,’ says the top half, and then there speaks what you picked up in the valley of the tombs, ‘and I, Tahu-met, obey the order of the Master.’”
“Tahu-met?” asked Hugh.
“Yes. Now in ten minutes I must be off to catch my train. What I have told you is all that is known about this particular affair by those who have studied folk-lore and magic and Egyptology. If anything—if anything happens, do be kind enough to let me know. If you were not so abominably rich I would offer you what you liked for that little broken statue. But there’s the way of the world!”
“Oh, it’s not for sale,” said Hugh gaily. “It’s too interesting to sell. But what am I to do next with it? Tahu-met? Shall I
say Tahu-met three times?”
Rankin leaned forward very hurriedly, and laid his fat hand on the young man’s knee.
“No, for Heaven’s sake! Just keep it by you,” he said. “Be patient with it. See what happens. You might mend it, perhaps. Put a drop of glue on the break and make it whole. By the way, if it interests you at all, my niece Julia Draycott arrives here this evening and will wait for me here till my return from Merawi. You met her in Cairo, I think.”
Certainly this piece of news interested Hugh more than all the possibilities of apes and super-apes. He thrust the two pieces of Tahu-met carelessly into his pocket.
“By Jove, is she really?” he said. “That’s splendid. She told me she might be coming up, but didn’t feel at all sure. Must you really be off? I shall come down to the station with you.”
** * * *
While Rankin went to gather up such small luggage as he had brought with him, Hugh wandered into the hotel bureau to ask for letters, and seeing there a gum-bottle, dabbed with gum the fractured edges of Tahu-met. The two pieces joined with absolute exactitude, and wrapping a piece of paper ’round them to keep the edges together, he went out through the garden with Rankin.
At the hotel gate was the usual crowd of donkey-boys and beggars, and presently they were ambling down the village street on bored white donkeys. It was almost deserted at this hottest hour of the afternoon, but along it there moved an Arab leading a large grey ape that tramped surlily in the dust. But just before they overtook it, the beast looked ’round, saw Hugh, and with chatterings of delight strained at his leash. Its owner cursed and pulled it away, for Hugh nearly rode over it, but it paid no attention to him, and fairly towed him along the road after the donkeys.
Rankin looked at his companion.
“That’s odd,” he said. “That’s one of your servants. I’ve still a couple of minutes to spare. Do you mind stopping a moment?”
He shouted something in the vernacular to the Arab, who ran after them, with the beast still towing him on. When they came close the ape stopped and bent his head to the ground in front of Hugh.