by The Mummy;Miss Nitocris: A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension
As these thoughts ran at lightning speed through his mind, he saw a faint glow inside the room. He crept forward and looked round the side of the doorway. The man had a little electric lamp in his hand and was flashing the slender rays all over the room. He drew his head back quickly as he heard him say:
"There is nothing here, Anat. Come, let us try the next room. Neither lock nor bolt nor even human life must stand in the way of our search now that we have begun it!"
He heard them coming towards the door. Instinctively he shrank back, and his heart stood still as he thought of what would happen if the man chanced to turn the little ray of his lamp on him. Almost involuntarily his thoughts went back to the promise of Queen Nitocris, and something like a prayer that it might be kept rose to his lips.
They came out, and the man flashed the thin electric ray up and down the passage. It wavered hither and thither, and at last fell directly on his face. He was anything but a coward, but he was thinking of Niti—and what if a knife-stab left her undefended? But to his amazement, although they were both looking straight at him, the expression of neither face changed in the slightest. They had not seen him. The Queen had answered his prayer. He was no longer in the world of three dimensions, and so he was invisible to all dwellers in it. For him, then, there was evidently no danger—but Niti—?
They moved along to the next door. That was hers. The woman put her hand on the knob and turned it. To his horror, the door opened. She had forgotten to lock it. They both crept in, and he followed them boldly enough now, knowing what he did. The ray leapt rapidly about the room till it fell on the bed with its pale blue silken coverlet, and then on the pillow, on which rested the head of the sleeping, breathing image of the long-dead Queen.
With a half-stifled gasp the man shrank back and dropped the lamp, and the Professor heard him say to the woman in a shuddering whisper:
"By the High Gods, Neb-Anat, it is a miracle! Do you not see her? It is she—the Queen—alive again, as the ancient prophecy said she should be. What magic have these heathens used?"
"Yes," replied the woman, whispering lower, "truly it is the Queen, and she is alive and sleeping—no doubt passing from the sleep of death through the sleep of life to life again. Now, O Pent-Ah, is our task much harder, yet will its accomplishment be all the more glorious for you and me, and greatly will our Lord reward us if we can restore to his keeping, not the ravished mummy of Nitocris, but the Queen herself, warm and breathing and beautiful, as she was in the ancient days of the great Rameses."
"I'll be hanged if you do!" said the Professor to himself, "not, at least, if Her Majesty's legacy to me is worth anything. Abduct my daughter at the dead of night, would you, you scoundrels? We'll see about that. If you don't leave this house as thoroughly frightened as ever you were in your lives, I know nothing about the fourth dimension."
Meanwhile he heard them both groping about the floor after the lamp. The woman found it, and pressed the button. The ray fell on the man's face, and he saw that the olive of his skin had turned to a ghastly grey. His eyes were wide open, and his mouth and nostrils were working with intense excitement. Then the woman turned the ray on Niti's face again.
"They will wake her if this goes on much longer," said the Professor to himself again. "I had better stop this little comedy before it becomes a tragedy. Poor Niti would go half mad if she found these two scoundrels by her bedside—and yet if I do anything out of the way they will yell. Ah, I think I have it!"
He walked softly out of the room, and when he got into the passage he whispered in the tongue that had become so strangely familiar to him:
"Pent-Ah, Neb-Anat, come hither instantly! Who are you that you should disturb the slumbers of your Lady the Queen!"
He saw them stare at each other with eyes wide with fear and wonder.
"It is the command of the Mighty One," whispered the woman, taking hold of the man's hand and drawing him towards the door.
"And He must be obeyed," said he in reply, bowing his head and following her.
They closed the door very softly behind them.
The Professor could not repress a sigh of thankfulness for Niti's escape from what, at best, would have been a very terrible fright.
"And now, my friends," he went on to himself, "I think I can teach you not to come into an English gentleman's house again with an idea of stealing his property, to say nothing of abducting his daughter."
The man and woman were still staring at each other by the light of the lamp, each holding each other's trembling hand, when the lamp was suddenly snatched away from the woman and went out. Then, to their horror, the ray shot out again in front of them as though the lamp were floating by itself in the air. It flashed from face to face, both ghastly with fear. Then an invisible hand gripped the man's, and drew him with irresistible force along the passage. The woman grasped his coat, and followed with shuffling feet and shaking limbs, dumb with wonder and fear. The hand led them down the passage, round the corner, and into the study. Then it released them. They heard the door shut and the key turn in the lock. Then there was a click, and the electric cluster above the writing-table shone out, apparently of its own volition. The woman uttered a low scream, and cowered down in a corner of a big sofa that stood by the bay-window. The man, after one terrified glance round the room, began to creep towards the open sash; but the invisible hand gripped him by the collar and pulled him back. His trembling knees gave way under him, and he rolled in a heap on the floor.
Then, to his wondering horror, he saw a stout blackthorn stick which was standing in a corner of the room, jump up into the air and leap towards him. He put his head down on to the carpet, covered his eyes with his hands, and began to moan with terror. The stick came down with what seemed to him superhuman force again and again on his back and shoulders. He whimpered and moaned, and at last howled with pain. He rolled over and looked up, and there was the stick hanging in the air above him. He put up his hands clasped as though in prayer, and down it came on his knuckles. He did not howl this time. His hands unclasped and dropped beside him; his head went back, and he fainted in sheer terror.
"There, my friend," said the Professor aloud, forgetting the presence of the woman for the moment; "mummy or no mummy, I don't think you will come into this house again. And as for you, madam," he went on, "of course, I can't give you a hiding, so the sight of his punishment will have to be enough for you. Still, I think you have had enough of attempted mummy-stealing to last you some time."
The woman stared up into the vacancy out of which the voice came, her eyes dilated, and her lips trembling with the movement of her lower jaw. She saw a jug of water get up off the table and empty itself over her companion's face. Then she fainted, too.
When Pent-Ah came to himself and sat up, he saw an elderly gentleman, tall and erect as a man in the prime of life, standing over him with the blackthorn in one hand and the water-jug in the other.
"I am not going to ask what you two are doing here," he said sternly, "because I know already. If I called the police I could send you both to prison for house-breaking and attempted robbery; but I don't want any fuss, and perhaps you have been punished enough for the present. Ah, I see your accomplice is coming round. You came in by the window, I suppose. Now get out by it as quick as you can, and mind you keep your mouths shut as to what has happened to-night. If you don't," he went on, suddenly changing into Coptic, "beware of the anger of your Lord—of Him who never forgives!"
The man scrambled to his feet, whimpering:
"I go, Lord, I go, and my lips shall be silent as the lips of—"
He cast a frightened glance towards the mummy-case, and then, grasping the woman roughly by the arm, he dragged her towards the open window, saying:
"Come, Neb-Anat, come ere the wrath of our Lord consumes us!"
*
"Why, where's the Mummy, Dad?" said Miss Nitocris, as she came into her father's study just before breakfast the next morning, and looked in amazement at the
empty case.
"Stolen, my dear, I am sorry to say," replied the Professor gravely. "Did you hear any noises in the house last night, or were you sleeping too soundly?"
"I seem to have an idea that I did," she said, "but only a dim one; I thought I only dreamt it. But did you, Dad? Do tell me all about it. What a horrible shame to steal that lovely Mummy! And it was so like me, too. I believe I should have got quite fond of it."
"Yes, dear," continued the Professor, speaking, as she thought, a little nervously. "There was a noise, and I heard it. I came down here and turned the light on. I found the window open and the Mummy gone—and that is all I can tell you about it."
Chapter V - Across the Threshold
*
After breakfast Professor Marmion, according to his practice on fine days, lit his pipe, and went out for a stroll on the Common to put in a little hard thinking, while Miss Nitocris, after seeing to certain household matters, sat down in his study and read the papers, in order that she might be able to give him a synopsis of the world's news at lunch. He did not read the newspapers himself, except, perhaps, in the train, when he had nothing better to do. He took no interest in politics, for one thing, and he had still less interest in professional cricket and football, racing, and what is generally called sport. He had a fixed opinion that all the events happening in the world which really mattered, not even excepting the proceedings of learned societies and the criminal and civil Law Courts, could be adequately recorded on a couple of sheets of notepaper. In other words, he had an absolute contempt for everything that makes a newspaper sell, and therefore his daughter had very soon learnt to omit these fascinating items entirely.
Curiously enough, his mind seemed to be running on this subject of all things that morning. He had been reading an article in the Fortnightly on the growing sensationalism, and therefore the general decadence of the English Press a day or two before, and this had got connected up in his thoughts with the amazing happenings of the last twelve hours, and he asked himself what would happen if he were to give the narrative of his experiences in a letter to the Times, supported by the authority of his own distinguished and irreproachable name.
Certainly it would be the most sensational communication that had ever appeared in a newspaper. In a day or two, granted always that the Times had no doubts as to his sanity and printed the letter, the whole Press would be ablaze with it; Wimbledon would be besieged by reporters eager to see miracles; and then they would go away and write lurid articles, some about the miracles, if they saw them, and some about an absolutely new form of conjuring that he had invented. Then the scientific Press would take it up, and a very merry battle of wits would begin. He smiled gravely as he thought of the inkshed that would come to pass in a combat à l'outrance between the Three Dimensionists and the Four Dimensionists, and how the distinguished scientists on each side would hurl their ponderous thunderbolts of wisdom against each other.
Then there would be the religious folk to deal with, for naturally no theologian of any enterprise or self-respect could see a fight like that going on without taking a hand in it. The Churches, of course, had a monopoly of miracles, or at least the traditions of them. The Christian Scientists, blatantly, claimed to work them now, but their subjects died with disgusting regularity. So he quickly came to the conclusion that, if he were once to state in plain English that he could accomplish the seemingly impossible; that he, a mere mortal, could make himself independent of the ordinary conditions of time and space and break with impunity all the laws which govern the physical universe, he would simply make himself the centre of a vortex of frenzied disputation which would shake the social, religious, and scientific worlds to their foundations, and that would certainly not be a pleasant position for an eminent and respected scientist, who was already a certain number of years past middle age—to say nothing of the very real harm that might be done.
Of course, he could settle all the disputes instantly, and dazzle the whole world into the bargain by simply delivering a lecture, say, before the Royal Society, on the existence of a world of four dimensions, and then proving by ocular demonstration that it does exist; but what would happen then? Simply intellectual anarchy.
Every belief that man had held for ages would be negatived. For instance, if there is one dogma to which humanity has clung with unanimous consistency, it is to the dogma that two and two make four. What if he were to prove—as, of course, he could do now that this mysterious hand, outstretched through the mists of the far past, had led him across the horizon which divides the two states of Existence—that, under certain circumstances, they would also make three or five? What if he demonstrated that even the axioms of Euclid could, under different conditions, be both true and false at the same time?
No, the thought of overthrowing such a venerable authority and plunging the scientific world into a hopeless state of intellectual chaos sent a shudder through his nerves. He could not do it.
And yet it was only the bare, solid truth that he did possess these powers. The dream of the death-bridal of Nitocris might possibly have been nothing more than just a dream, or possibly the revival of an episode in a past existence; but the other experiences certainly were not. He had taken off his ring without unbending his finger. Yes, he could do it again now; it was just as easy as taking it off in the ordinary way. He certainly had not been dreaming when the Mummy had become Queen Nitocris and given him the wine. He could not have been mad or dreaming, because his daughter was there. The episode of the strange stealers who had come into his house—that too was real, for they had left their lamp and the man's shoes behind them, and the Mummy was gone!
He took a piece of string out of his pocket, tied the two ends, and then with the greatest ease tied another knot in the string without undoing the first.
A motor-car came humming along the road towards him, and he began to think what this place was like a thousand years before motors were heard of. That instant the motor vanished, and he found himself standing in a little glade surrounded by huge forest trees with not so much as a foot-track in sight. He made his way through the trees in what he remembered to be the direction of the road, and presently, through an opening avenue, he saw the sun glittering upon something moving, and heard voices; and then past the end of the avenue half a dozen armoured knights, followed by their squires and a string of men-at-arms guarding a covered waggon, and after these came a motley little crowd of travellers, some on horseback and some on foot, evidently taking advantage of the escort to protect them from robbers.
"Dear me!" said the Professor to himself, not without a little shiver of apprehension, "this is very interesting. I seem to have put myself back into the tenth century. Yes, that is certainly tenth-century armour that they're wearing. I mustn't let them see me, or there's no telling what they'd think of an elderly gentleman in a soft hat and a twentieth-century morning suit. But perhaps," he went on with his reasoning, "they can't see me at all. My condition is N to the fourth now. There's a thousand years between us; I forgot that. At any rate, I'll try it."
He walked quickly down the avenue, and stood by the side of the rugged path looking at the strange spectacle. No one took the slightest notice of him. And then a chill of awful loneliness struck him. Although he could see and move and hear, and, no doubt, eat and drink in this world, he was unexistent as regards the inhabitants of it, and yet he knew perfectly well he was standing by the side of the road where the motor-car ought to be, and over there, a few hundred yards away, Niti would be sitting in her room or walking in the garden—and she wouldn't be born for nearly a thousand years yet.
It was certainly somewhat disquieting, this power of living in two existences and different ages, but it was a matter that would take some little time to get accustomed to.
The next instant the cavalcade and the forest had vanished, and there was the motor-car, just spinning past him. He was on the Wimbledon Common of the twentieth century once more. He stroked his clean-shaven chin with his
finger and thumb, and walked slowly along the path by the side of the road, and then across the grass towards the flagstaff.
"I think I begin to see it now," he murmured. "Of course, life, that is to say real, intellectual, or, as some would say, spiritual life, is, after all, the coefficient of that totally unexplainable thing called thought which enables us to explain most things except itself. Time and space and location are only realities to us in so far that we can see them. A human being born blind, dumb, deaf, and without feeling would still, I suppose, be a human being, because it would be conscious of existence; it would breathe and know that its heart was beating, but without sight or sensation there could be no idea of space—time, to it, would be a meaningless series of breaths or heartbeats. Without touch or sight it could have no idea of form or size, which are merely conditions of space, and both the past and the future would be absolutely non-existent for it."
He paused, and walked on a little way in silence, arguing silently with himself as to the correctness of these premises. Then he began aloud again:
"Yes, I think that's about right. And now, suppose that such a being became endowed with the natural senses, one by one. It would go through all the processes of the physical and mental evolution of humanity until it reached the highest of human attributes—the ability to think, and therefore to reason. In other words, from a merely living organism it would, in the old Scriptural language, have become a living soul. That is, obviously, what the words in Genesis were really intended to mean. It would then become capable of development, of proceeding from the partly-known to the more fully known, until, granted perfect physical and mental health, it reached what are generally called the limits of human knowledge."