Chapter XI: Part 11

“Have I not told thee, daughter of an addled egg? He cherishes a creeping creature that he swears was once his wife in a former life. He fears the fangs of her jealousy.”

“A serpent may be crushed by the heel——”

“That shall be thy task, then. Nay, find the way, and it shall be my heel, and mine the silver _sycee_ that lies under the bricks of his _kang_.”

“Find the way?”

“The secret of the knocks that gain admittance, O Half Moon of Wisdom—buy it from one of the slaves of the pipe that come here each day.”

Allister heard no more, for there was of a sudden a deeper shadow, a more animate void, within the aperture of the door. He shook himself together, and arose, for he was conscious of the eye of Ssu Yin.

After a moment the door opened, and the opium seller stood forth. He was imperceptibly startled when Allister touched his sleeve, for his attention had been directed to the vanishing glint of embroidery that beckoned him toward the tea pavilion of a Thousand and Three Beatitudes.

There was no greeting from either, and there was no need of word or gesture. Allister’s drug-lust uttered its own argument, and Ssu Yin bowed with the air both of acquiescence and of acknowledged obligation. He shouted backward into the passage behind the open door, and shuffling feet responded.

The door closed behind Allister’s starved figure, and Ssu Yin, conscious of the street-crowd admiration that followed the unwonted gayety of his attire, crossed a miasmatic lotus pool and entered the teahouse.

* * * * *

Allister was able to think more clearly when the stupor wore away, though mind and body were torn by a devastating revulsion. He lifted himself abruptly from the filthy bunk in which he lay, and the feeble, awkward movement upset a stand upon which was his chandoo pipe, still nauseous with burnt opium. The effort left him suddenly faint, and with alarm he shuddered back into the bunk, closing fiery-lidded eyes.

“Can’t be far from the end,” he murmured to himself. “If I could only get away—if I could only get back to the States!”

This was the usual burst of remorse; it was like all the rest, a feeble protest against ill-directed destiny. He knew that, of his own effort, he never would get back to the States, away from the insidious East. He had tried that; he had worked until the money was in his hands, only to dive more steeply for a time toward the poppy fields of oblivion.

The consul-general had shipped him out on a transport, but he had gone only as far as Manila. The call of the drug had been too insistent. If the vessel only had been going straight East, without a stop, to the California coast, he might have made it.

He _would_ make it! He would get the money once more—earn it, perhaps, but somehow he would get it, and go Home.

After a second effort, he succeeded in struggling to his feet, then in staggering out of the room into a larger one where there was the light of a horn lantern, and the comforting aroma of tea.

Ssu Yin sat gurgling contemplatively at his water-pipe, his eyes fixed upon two brilliant points of light in the half-shadows over the _kang_. He did not stir at Allister’s approach, though he muttered an acknowledgment of the other’s presence. Slowly Allister’s bleared sight, following the direction of Ssu Yin’s comprehended the significance of those cold-blue darts of phosphorescence. They were set in a rigid, cylindrical, limblike standard, projecting motionless from a pyramid of symmetrical coils. Often as he had beheld the serpent of Ssu Yin, on the poppy excursions that brought him so frequently to the sea cook’s illicit den, he had never conquered a subtle fear, a rage for crushing, stamping out, obliterating. He had tried to explain this as an expression of man’s traditional enmity toward the creeping creatures of the earth. Curiously, to witness the same fear in another was his sole antidote. In the presence of one who was more afraid than himself he could laugh down his own feeling, as had happened in the case of the second mate.

He sat down beside the brazier and helped himself to a gulp of tea. Ssu Yin, removing his eyes from their fixed stare, with a gesture that suggested the snapping of an invisible thread binding them to the eyes of the serpent, regarded Allister with an attentive but unfathomable look. Though his countenance expressed nothing, he was, Allister observed, in an unwonted mood. It was as if there had been a misunderstanding between himself and his reptilian familiar.

“Was there sweetness in the Elder Brother’s honorable pipe of August Beginnings?” inquired Ssu Yin, bringing forth the foreign ear-trumpet that looked incongruous against its oriental setting.

A grimace of pain was Allister’s only answer.

“And was the sleep of this poor worm’s wise and illustrious benefactor filled with the jassmine-incense of celestial happiness?”

“May your flesh be jellied and your bones splintered,” was Allister’s discourteous shot into the trumpet. “May your ancestors——”

“Harmless is the bluster of the paper tiger,” interrupted Ssu Yin, with a playful malice. He went on in a more kindly vein: “A gem cannot be polished without friction, or a man perfected without adversity. The friction has been thine, Elder Brother, even as it is written; also the adversity; but a wise man also has said that the gods cannot help him who loses opportunities.”

“Oh, drop the classics, Ssu Yin, and tell me what you’re driving at!”

“The Elder Brother must set his feet unto new paths, or he will learn to walk soon in the Eternal Shades.”

“I’m through, Ssu Yin. No more chandoo for me. Tomorrow——”

“The man who overestimates himself is like a rat falling into a scale and weighing himself.”

Allister was stung by the contempt of his host’s words, but he feared to retort. His sense of need came more fully upon him. His head swam, leadenly, and his tongue was thick.

“The pipe, Ssu Yin—only once more. And tomorrow——”

“Spawn of frog begets but frog; the wise man does not give his cloak to the stealer of his coat; and to cure a habit by indulging it is to push a stone with an egg.”

“No, Ssu Yin, I mean it this time——”

“Dragging the lake for the moon in the water, adding fuel to put out a fire,” ran the relentless river of Ssu Yin’s scornful proverbs.

Nevertheless, Ssu Yin arose and led the way to the sleeping-room. He set forth within Allister’s reach a bamboo pipe with black tassels and a mouthpiece of jade, lighted the lamp, and from a receptacle within his capacious sleeve jealously produced three miniature cylinders of amber-hued opium.

Cynically, Ssu Yin observed the trembling hands of the white man as he held one of the precious morsels over the flame, watched it sizzle, dissolve, evaporate. He waited until the operation thrice had been performed, each puff sending Allister nearer to the paradise of drugs, and stood gazing at the young man’s emaciated features long after the squalid room had been translated, for Allister, into a pearly grotto through which he stepped forth on the winged feet of inexhaustible youth into a world of unimaginable color, transcendent beauty and unspeakable delight.

“A just debt—a just debt is mine,” muttered Ssu Yin, solemnly, “and it is thus that I have paid. For this have I merited no less than the reproach of the gods.”

* * * * *

When Allister returned again from the lotus fields of Elysium, his eyes were more fevered, his yellowed skin closer drawn over cadaverous cheeks, and his weakness even greater than before.

This was the tomorrow of which he had spoken to Ssu Yin.

But what had any Oriental tomorrow to do with him? Here there were promises only of more lethal hours that did not relieve so much as they accented the deepening miseries leading toward an indubitable end.

Tomorrow——

He sprang up suddenly, the effort startling his heart into wild uncertainties. The recurrence of a feeling of resentment, long nourished, supported him.

“Ssu Yin, the superstitious dog—rich—preaching to me in nasty proverbs and feeding me this spawn of hell when he might be sending me home!”

The thought took possession of him, made him stealthy and steel-nerved. He would take the money—Ssu Yin owed it to him, the heathen ingrate; this time he would have a share in that hoard of _sycee_ beneath the bricks of the _kang_.

He crept into the other room, fearing to find Ssu Yin there, a delay to his plot. But Ssu Yin was not in the room; the house seemed empty even of servants. The seller of opium probably was at his daily tryst, Allister thought, in the teahouse of the Beatitudes.

For the moment Allister had forgotten the serpent, and it was only in the act of turning his darting steps toward the _kang_ that he remembered. In that instant a ray of sunlight revealed the still creature, eternally somnolent, as immobile as the stones against which its gelid coils were ranged.

The old fear seized him, and with it the rage to kill; but his weakness returned, and he was incapable of that. He remained as motionless as the snake, thinking of its reputed iniquities. The opium den of Ssu Yin was not without a reputation for crime. It had had its murders, strange deaths that baffled the native doctors of both “inside” and “outside” anatomy.

The serpent, he knew, was master of man in a duel of eyes, and Allister felt relief at a sound of interruption. Someone had entered the house. The shock loosened his limbs, and he crept back to his foul bunk, waiting for the philosophical gibes of Ssu Yin, sick with revulsion at thought of his intended theft.

His ears told him in a moment, however, that the wary step and the listening caution of the one who had entered, were not Ssu Yin’s. Presently there were hurried movements, unwonted sounds, a breathless intenseness that took audible form, in the outer room. Stealthily, Allister moved nearer to see.

The figure of a woman was beneath the ray of sunlight now, cutting off its warning of the coiled spectre of dissolution. She stooped over the _kang_, lifting the bricks, laying them aside with a careless impatience. A cavity grew, and from it presently, with a sigh of gratification, she plucked a silver ingot—followed it with others, until a mound of them, too heavy for her own strength, lay at her feet.

Allister watched her in amazement. Was she unaware of the snake? Or was she, like Ssu Yin, its master, immune to ophidian fear?

She stood up, turned toward Allister, as if at some psychic warning of his presence, and he recognized her as the woman of the temple yard—the Crimson Lotus, Ssu Yin’s teahouse siren.

Doubtless her apprehensions heightened her error, but in the half-light it must have been easy to mistake Allister’s immobile figure for the darkly vengeful one of Ssu Yin.

She cried out, took an involuntary step backward, tripped upon a _sycee_ ingot, and a bared arm, thrust outward to break her fall, met the serpent’s fangs.

* * * * *

In the nine-toned sing-song of a Cantonese who is at peace with himself, Ssu Yin entered his hovel incanting a bar of that old song of Cathay, “The Millet’s in Flower.”

He paused at the door of his inner room, in the middle of a note, and allowed the details of the tableau to etch themselves upon his brain.

Across the _kang_ lay his woman—his Crimson Lotus—inert, lifeless. Upon her still breast, its viridescence blending strangely with the soft tints of her silk tunic, was piled the deadly pyramid of the coiled serpent—flat, arrowy head drawn back awaiting the impulse to strike, glistening red tongue stirring with forked vibrations, and phosphorescent eyes blazing with a sinister fury.

Within reach of its fangs was crouched Allister, one hand touching, with a suggestion of pity, the face of the woman, the other, clasping a silver ingot, poised cataleptically in the midst of an intended blow. His was the arrested animation of carved marble, the impotent fascination of a bird obeying the hypnosis of the serpent’s eye.

Slow rage filled Ssu Yin—a calm cruelty. Here lay his broken Lotus Bud; a thief, an accomplice, a wanton, or a viperous traitor to his heart’s homage—what did it matter? And here was his “Elder Brother,” his benefactor, the white man—dog, despoiler—who would have robbed him of all.

Well, a simple solution—the fangs of his serpent, slavering for their prey....

But the poise of a hundred philosophical generations began to quiet his thick pulses—the restraints of a race that has schooled itself to play the game of life by meticulous rule. A debt was his—he must pay it.

Ssu Yin realized, suddenly, that an abrupt movement, the slightest translation of Allister’s rigid pose into activity, would bring to him the darting caress of oblivion.

Cautiously, Ssu Yin approached, uttering a curious sound that always, until now, had brought an answering acquiescence into the eyes of the serpent. He came closer, at last laying his parchment-skinned hand upon the vibrant coil, seeking a grip that would keep him safe from a scratch of fangs.

But something was amiss with Ssu Yin’s mastery over the snake. He recognized this in a thrill of terror at the moment when he knew it was forever too late. He would have explained, had there been time for such inquiry, that it was jealousy in the soul of the transmigrated woman who had been his wife—jealousy of the Crimson Lotus. This it was, he would have said, that animated the serpent’s yellow needles of death.

The poison gripped him, but a sense of unfinished justice gave him strength while he battered the cringing reptile into an amorphous, hideous mass.

With Allister, dazed, half understanding, he still had the business of words. A courteous smile crackled the parchment of his face as he took from his sleeve an envelope and held it out to Allister.

“Three lives for two,” he murmured, “and the debt is more than paid. May the August Elder Brother’s voyage into the friendly bosom of the West be as pleasant as the repose of Buddha.”

Allister’s wondering fingers disclosed within the envelope a steamer ticket to Seattle. He put out a protesting hand, began self-accusing phrases, but the seller of opium was beyond argument. Ssu Yin was on his knees murmuring before the shelf of the gods:

“Unabashed, Great Ancestors—into the Vale of Longevity Ssu Yin walks without shame.”

_The Occultism of Ancient Egypt Permeates_

_The_ Hall _of the_ Dead

A Strange Tale

By FRANCIS D. GRIERSON

“You have good nerves?” asked Professor Julius March, with a somewhat cynical smile.

Annette Grey shrugged her shoulders.

“People who work for their living,” she replied, “cannot afford nerves.”

The Professor nodded.

“There is something in that,” he answered, thoughtfully. “At the same time, I must make the position clear to you. As you are aware, I am an Egyptologist, and in my house here I have many queer things. Some people dislike the idea of working among mummies and——”

Annette interrupted him with a deprecating gesture.

“Believe me,” she said, “that sort of thing does not affect me in the least. As your secretary, I am prepared to work where and when you like.”

“My former secretary—” the professor began, and paused.

“Your former secretary disappeared,” said the girl. “Of course I know that; you will remember that I applied for the vacancy after reading about her in the paper. I do not propose to disappear; the terms you offer are too good.”

She smiled faintly, and the Egyptologist shrewdly eyed her.

“Well,” he said at last, “your qualifications and education appear to recommend you for the work I should want you to do. It is secretarial work in the broadest sense of the term—from typing my notes (when you have learned to decipher my abominably bad handwriting) to looking up references in the British Museum, or—should occasion arise—accompanying me on a flying visit to Egypt. I give you fair warning that I shall work you hard, but, apart from the salary and board, which I have already named, you will not find me ungenerous if you prove yourself valuable.”

“Then I may consider myself engaged?”

March bowed.

“Certainly,” he replied. “You will probably learn presently,” he added, in his cynical way, “that I am regarded as an eccentric person, and somewhat of a hard taskmaster—”

“I prefer to form my own opinion,” said Annette quietly.

Again he smiled. It was not a pleasant smile.

* * * * *

So Annette Grey took up her residence in the rambling old house on the outskirts of London in which Professor Julius March had gradually accumulated relics of ancient Egypt that were regarded with respect by the curators of some of the greatest museums in the world.

There were those who hinted that the Professor had not always been scrupulous in the methods he adopted to secure his rarer curios; but March laughed at such stories when anyone had the hardihood to repeat them to him, openly attributing them to the jealousy of less fortunate rivals. Wealthy and profoundly learned, he had become known as one of the greatest Egyptologists of his day.

Annette studied her new employer with the patience characteristic of her nature, and she found the study an interesting as well as a useful one. March, for the most part, was reserved and silent, but he was capable of bursts of extraordinary excitement. He devoted himself, with an almost religious fervor, to the pursuit which he had made his life study, and the few friends he possessed—for he was not a popular man—were almost all brother archeologists.

Tall and thin, with black eyes peering through large tortoise-shell-rimmed spectacles, his gray hair tumbled in a shaggy mass over his broad forehead, he had a habit of thrusting his square chin aggressively forward when he spoke. His long, graceful fingers moved in nervous sympathy with what he was saying, and he would spring from his chair and walk rapidly up and down with catlike steps that reminded Annette of a panther ceaselessly pacing to and fro behind the bars of its cage.

Possessed of great endurance, he would sit for hours at a stretch poring over an ancient papyrus, disdaining food and sleep. Then, plunging into a cold bath, he would emerge glowing, eat an enormous meal and set off for a long walk, indifferent as to whether it happened to be day or the middle of the night.

When March first asked her whether or not she had good nerves, Annette had supposed him to be referring to the disappearance of Beatrice Vane, his former assistant. Beatrice, a beautiful girl just budding into the maturity of womanhood, had vanished utterly, leaving her clothes and other possessions behind her, but no clue as to where she had gone. March, with his lawyer, Henry Sturges, had sought the assistance of the police, and every effort had been made to trace the missing girl, but without success.

Attorney Sturges, who had recommended Beatrice Vane to Professor March, had been the girl’s guardian. An orphan, she had been left a small annual income, the capital of which was under Sturges’ control as trustee. She had received a good education, and the lawyer had procured her employment with Julius March in order that she might occupy her time and at the same time supplement the scanty income which declining financial conditions had left her.

March spoke highly of her work, and was more affected by her disappearance than many, who saw only the cynicism of the man, would have believed. He feared, Annette supposed, that his new secretary would think it unlucky to step into the shoes of the girl who had vanished so mysteriously, and she hastened to disabuse his mind of any such idea.

But Annette soon found that there existed an additional reason for his question. The old house, she found, was divided into two parts. In one, the smaller of the two, lived March and his staff. A bachelor, he was looked after by an elderly housekeeper, one or two maids, a chauffeur and a confidential valet, who had been with him for years. These people attended to what he called the “domesticities” of the place.

The larger part of the house was consecrated to his hobby, and had been, indeed, altered and partially reconstructed to suit his unusual requirements. Into this Egypt in miniature the servants were sternly forbidden to penetrate. There March would bury himself amid his mummies and papyri, and sometimes, in his morose moods, even his secretary was forbidden access.

Annette had a comfortably-furnished sitting-room of her own, and a little room furnished as an office, but a great part of her work, she found, was to be done in the room which March grimly called the “Hall of the Dead.”

It was, indeed, an apartment in which only a girl of strong nerves could have worked without glancing fearfully over her shoulder. Floored with black-and-white marble, alternated in a curious pattern, it was dimly lit by a lamp swung from the roof by bronze chains. To afford the stronger light necessary for the study of ancient inscriptions, a smaller lamp stood on each of two small tables, the incongruous effect of their electric wiring being mitigated by their antique shape. These lamps, however, illuminated only their immediate neighborhood, leaving the greater part of the huge room in semi-obscurity.

Round the room were placed at regular intervals mummies and mummy-cases, whose grave immobility seemed but a mask which they could tear off at will, descending to move about the hall with measured steps and to converse on topics that had been of living importance to a long-dead civilization.

In the center of the hall stood a great stone table, curiously grooved and hollowed, and between the mummies were placed objects of metal and earthenware, the uses of which Annette could only guess.

In this strange room March would pass hour after hour. Annette soon learned to understand and accommodate herself to his methods. The sharp sound of an electric bell in her room would bring her to the Hall of the Dead, notebook and pencil in hand. The heavy door, controlled by an automatic mechanism, would roll back as she approached, closing silently behind her as she entered and took her seat, without a word, at one of the smaller tables.

Acknowledging her presence only by a gesture, March would stride up and down the room with his quick tread, pausing now and again to examine a document or to apply a magnifying glass to the inscription on a mummy-case, muttering to himself as he resumed his rapid pacing. Suddenly, without warning, he would commence to dictate, in sharp, staccato sentences, admirably lucid and without a superfluous word.

He would cease as suddenly as he had begun, and for perhaps half an hour, or longer, he would remain buried in thought, resuming his dictation as unexpectedly as he had ceased, but without ever losing the sequence of his ideas.

Sometimes this would go on for hours. On such occasions he would recollect himself suddenly, glance at the ancient water-clock on its carved pedestal, and dismiss Annette with a word of apology for his forgetfulness.

Once an incident occurred which revealed yet another side of this man’s complex character.

Annette had received a lengthy piece of dictation, and had been at work in her office for nearly an hour, transcribing her notes. She was a competent writer of shorthand, but some of the technical expressions which March used were quite unfamiliar, and she did not care to interrupt him, preferring to wait until he had finished before asking him any questions. On this occasion it had seemed fairly plain sailing, but toward the end of her notes she came across a sign the significance of which completely baffled her.

Finding that the context was of no assistance, and not wishing to delay the work, which she knew the Professor required as quickly as possible, she resolved to consult him.

It was the first time she had visited the Hall of the Dead unbidden, and she was uncertain how to attract his attention from outside, for there was no knocker or bell on the great door. The mechanism which controlled it, however, either did not depend on the person inside, or could be so set as to work independently, for as she reached the threshold some concealed spring was put into operation and the door opened before her as usual. Still standing on the threshold, she was about to enter, when she stopped as though turned into stone.

Inside the hall she saw Julius March kneeling before one of the mummy-cases—the mummy-case of a woman. His head rested against the knees of the image, and his body was shaken by great sobs.

Amazed, moved by the strange sight, Annette turned and fled to her own room. Behind her the door of the Hall of the Dead swung noiselessly into its frame.

* * * * *

A week later, Annette entered the little-used drawing-room of Professor March’s house shortly before seven o’clock in the evening, and sat down near the bright fire ready to receive his guests. For March was giving one of his rare dinner-parties.

A few moments later the door opened, and the servant ushered in Attorney Sturges and a friend of his, a pleasant, rather simple-looking man named Sims.

“I fear we are a little early, Miss Grey,” said Sturges, when he had presented his friend.

“Not at all,” Annette replied easily. “Professor March asked me to make his excuses to you; he was detained at the British Museum and only arrived a few minutes ago. He is dressing, and will be down in a few minutes. Meanwhile, I must play hostess.”

“And most adequately,” murmured Sturges, with old-fashioned courtesy.

Then, as the door closed behind the servant, he spoke rapidly:

“We came a little early on purpose,” he explained. “You are prepared, Miss Vane?”

“Quite,” said the girl calmly.

“Good. Inspector Sims agrees with me that if we are ever to discover the mystery of your sister’s disappearance, it will be tonight. Sims has been practising his part, and does it admirably.”

The Scotland Yard man smiled.

“I think I can play it,” he said. “And I congratulate you, Miss Vane, on the way you have handled the matter. This idea is an excellent one, and I admit I should never have thought of it myself. I hope, too,” he went on, without the slightest alteration in his tone, as a step sounded outside and the door opened, “that Professor March will not deny me a peep at the wonderful treasures be keeps here.”

“Why, of course not,” cried March heartily, as he entered the room. “I caught your last words, Mr. Sims,” he went on, “—for I am sure you are Sturges’ psychic friend—and I shall be delighted to show you round my little museum. Well, Sturges, I must apologize to you both for keeping you waiting like this; but you have been in good hands.”

He bowed courteously to Annette.

“It is very good of you, Mr. Sims,” he went on, “to come and visit a recluse like this. Sturges has told me of your powers of necromancy, and I confess I am hoping to see something very wonderful.”

The words were polite and were uttered with perfect civility, but the old lawyer laughed gently.

“It’s no good, March,” he said; “you cannot quite get the true ring. You scientific fellows always scoff at the unseen, and decline to believe anything that cannot be set down in writing, like an algebraic equation.”

“Not at all,” replied the Professor, with sudden gravity. “On the contrary, my researches have convinced me that there are mysteries to which, if we only had the clue—but we’ll talk of that later,” he added, with a sudden change of tone. “My first duty, as your host, is to feed you; come and help me perform the sacred rite of hospitality.”

Laughing, he opened the door and bowed Annette to the head of the little procession to the dining-room, where they were presently seated round a candle-lit table of richly-polished mahogany.

It was a strange dinner-party, at which two, at least, of the diners found it difficult to appreciate the sallies of the host. Mr. Sims, however, expanded under the influence of the Professor’s geniality. March was in unusually high spirits, for he had just succeeded in translating a hieroglyphic inscription which had defeated the Museum authorities, and he devoted himself to the sport of drawing out his psychic guest with a delicate irony which, to do him justice, never passed the bounds of good taste.

The innocent Mr. Sims responded to this subtle flattery with a readiness which delighted the Professor, and even Annette and the lawyer could not refrain from smiling at the naïveté with which Sims played his part.

At last the dinner drew to a close, and March rose.

“I am not going to let you off, Mr. Sims,” he said. “I am eager to learn something of the methods of the modern spiritualists, for I admit I am more familiar with those of the past. But I think we ought to have a more suitable atmosphere for the _seance_,” he added, chuckling. “Miss Grey, I hope you will not leave us? I think my Egyptian room would form an admirable background for Mr. Sims’ experiments.”

Annette smiled, with something of an effort, and led the way to the Hall of the Dead.

Despite himself, Sims could not repress an exclamation of awe at the sight of the great, gloomy room, with its solemn figures and mysterious shadows.

The Professor rubbed his hands, well pleased at the effect he had produced.

“Now, Mr. Sims,” he said, “here is a carved chair on which a Pharaoh once sat. Enthrone yourself there. We will sit, metaphorically, at your feet, and listen to what you are pleased to tell us.”

Sims bowed, but did not return the Professor’s smile. Gravely he seated himself in the heavy wooden chair, rested his elbow on one of the quaintly-carved arms, and let his head sink onto his hand. The others grouped themselves near and waited, in a heavy silence.

Sensitive to impressions, the Professor’s gay mood faded gradually into a tense expectancy that made his long fingers work nervously. He startled as Sims’ voice broke the silence sharply.

“I am aware, Professor March,” said Sims in a hard, level tone that startled his hearers, “that you are a skeptic.”

The Professor murmured something, but Sims went on, without heeding him.

“I feel tonight that I am going to prove to you that I can see things that are hidden....”

He paused, and again the silence was broken only by the sound of heavy breathing. As suddenly as before, Sims spoke again:

“Listen!” he said. “I see a great room, half lit by a lamp in the roof. There is a brighter light near a table in the center of the room. It is a stone table, such as was used in ancient Egypt by the embalmers.”

The Professor drew in his breath with a sharp gasp, but the voice went steadily on:

“Beside the table I see a man. He is bending over something—something white. It is the body of a woman—”

“_Stop_, damn you!” screamed the Professor; and Sims, springing from his chair, took something from the pocket of his dinner-jacket.

The Professor laughed discordantly—the laugh of a madman.

“Put up your pistol,” he cried. “You will not need it. I don’t know who you are, and, damn you, I don’t care! Do you hear that? _I don’t care!_ Listen, all of you; listen, I say! Today I have completed my task; I have learned the secret which I have sought so patiently. I am going to join my Princess, my Hora.”

He ceased, and threw his arms out in a great gesture to the mummy-case in front of which he had been standing. Huge drops of sweat stood out on his forehead, and he tore open his linen collar with a madman’s strength. But it was in a controlled, almost tender voice that he went on:

“Listen to me, and I will tell you a wonderful thing. Countless years ago I—I who speak to you here tonight—was a priest in Egypt. I was vowed to the service of Isis. But one day there came to the temple, where I ministered, a woman. A woman? Nay, a goddess! A being of such beauty that my heart leaped within me at the sight of her loveliness.

“She was the Princess Hora. We loved. Ten thousand words could say no more. But an evil fate tore her from me; the Pharaoh had seen her, and coveted her. Sooner than lie in his foul embrace she plunged a dagger into her white bosom....”

He paused, and for a few moments covered his face with his hands, his shoulders quivering. Then he tore his hands away and stretched them once more toward the painted image that looked so calmly down at him.

“Hora, my Hora!” he cried passionately. “I have sought thee for centuries, through age after age. And now, at last thou hast come to me—and gone again. But only for a little while, a few brief moments, for I follow thee tonight.”

Again he paused, and again he resumed, mastering his emotion:

“She came to me here, here in this house, where I have labored so long, striving to regain my knowledge of that past which is sometimes so clear, and sometimes, O Isis, so terribly dark! She came to me, my beautiful Hora; came clad in the garb of today, bearing the name of Beatrice.”

A low sob broke from Annette, but he went on, unheeding:

“I told you, Hora, I _tried_ to tell you—but your eyes were filmed by the gods. You could not understand.... You spurned me. Then it was that I understood that for us there could be only one way. One touch of this little knife, steeped in a poison so deadly that your soul had flown ere your body had fallen into my arms.

“Tenderly I bathed you and poured into your veins the secret essences that keep the flesh firm and fair as in life, and bore you to the tomb where you sit, waiting for me. But in another world, Hora, you wait for me, a thousand times more beautiful, and knowing that I, your lover, have sought you and found you at last. Hora, _I come_!”

With a wild cry, he raised the little dagger which he had drawn from his pocket. Sims sprang forward, but before he could reach him Professor Julius March had buried it in his heart. Hardly had the blade touched his flesh than he swayed, stumbled and crashed down at the feet of the mummy-case.

For a moment the others gazed at the prostrate form. Then Inspector Sims sprang forward and fumbled with trembling fingers at the fastenings of the mummy-case. Suddenly the front fell forward, and Annette uttered a terrible cry.

In the case, thus revealed, sat the girl who had been Beatrice Vane. She was nude, the chaste beauty of her lovely form standing out against the dark interior of the case. So wonderfully had the madman done his work that no scar marred the grace of the firm bosom, the long, rounded limbs, the head set proudly on the ivory neck. She sat as might have sat the Princess Hora, had she so wished, beside the Pharaoh himself on his Egyptian throne.

Sims drew back and bowed his head reverently as Annette, stumbling forward, laid her head on her dead sister’s knees in a grief too terrible for tears.

_The_ Parlor Cemetery

_A Grisly Satire_

_By_ C. E. Howard

“Good morning! I’m getting the information for the new city directory. May I step in and rest a moment while I’m asking you a few questions?”

“Well, ye—es, I reckon yuh kin come in and set,” conceded the old lady who had answered my knock, “but I won’t give yuh no order, Mister. I haint much of a booker.”

“Oh, I don’t sell the books,” I hastened to assure her, as I laid my sample volume on the floor by my chair and placed my hat on it. “I just go around from house to house gathering the names for it. The company publishes and sells the book. I don’t have anything to do with that part of it.”

“Oh, you jes’ do th’ authorin’? It must take yuh consid’ble time to write as big a book as that! Do yuh do it all ’lone?”

“No; we have fifty-four men working on it now, and it will take about two months to get it all. Now may I ask—?”

“How much does it cost?”

“This year they will sell for fifteen dollars—”

“_Apiece!_” she shrilled. “My land o’ livin’! Whoever buys th’ things?”

“All the big stores keep them, especially the drug stores, for the benefit of the public, you know. Now your name is—?”

“Well, what’s it all ’bout, anyhow?” she insisted. “An’ what’s it fur? Is it a tillyphone dickshanary?”

“Something like that. It contains the names and addresses of everybody living in this city, and all the big establishments keep one so that if anybody wishes to find out where anyone else lives they just go in some store and look in this directory and there it is. Now, will you give me your name for the new book, please?”

“_My_ name? W’y, my name is—Now, is this a-goin’ to cost me anything? Yuh know I said I wouldn’t take none afore I let yuh in.”

“It will not cost you a cent,” I told her earnestly, “and it may do you some good. See”—running through the leaves of the book in which I entered the statistics—“how many people I have interviewed this morning, and all of them gave me the information I asked for. Now you will see all there is to it; right down here on this top line I write your name—what did you say it was?”

“I never said yit; but it was Cook.”

“Ah!” We were off at last! “Cook”—I paused at the “k” and asked, “Do you spell it the short way or with an ‘e’?”

“Which?”

“How do you spell it? ‘C-double-o-k,’ or ‘C-double-o-k-e’?”

“No; not with no ‘e’ on to it! That would be cooky! It was jes’ plain Cook—C-o-o-k.”

I was willing to let it go at that and wrote it down. “And your first name now?”

“My fust name? I don’t tell my fust name to no strangers—’specially _men_!”

“I beg your pardon, but I am not asking that from impertinence, Mrs. Cook,” I explained carefully. “We do not mean to pry into people’s personal affairs—such things are of no concern to us—but you see there are probably a hundred or more Cooks in this city and if we didn’t have their first names there would be no telling them apart. All the ladies so far have told me their first names,” I declared, holding my book toward her with the evidence.

After peering at it intently for some time she relaxed in her chair, reassured. “Well, ’tain’t no name to be ’shamed of, if _’tis_ old-fashioned. It’s Ann.”

“Ann—‘A-n-n’.” I spelled aloud, to give her the chance to correct me if necessary. Thinking of the famous query connected with that name and thankful I didn’t have to ask that, too, I continued:

“You have a husband?”

“No, not now. I’ve had ’em, though.”

“Ah, a widow, then—that is, I presume your husband is not alive, Mrs. Cook?” I essayed gently, avoiding, as always, the direct interrogation as to grass-widowship.

“No; they’re all on ’em dead now; but, Mister, my name ain’t Cook—it’s Hay!”

“What!” I exclaimed. “Why, I understood you to say it was Cook?”

“Well, yuh understood right. It _was_ Cook—that what’s yuh asked me, what it _was_—but it’s Hay now. ’Bout two years after Cook went up in smoke I married a feller named Hay, see?”

* * * * *

“Oh yes,” I smiled cheerfully, and, reversing my pencil I endeavored to rub off the former husband’s name.

Of course the flimsy paper tore. I yanked out the sheet and began again.

“‘H-a-y,’ Hay,” I put down, writing lightly with an eye to more erasures or corrections. “Just the plain, short Hay, I presume?”

“Yes, jes’ th’ plain Hay—not timothy ner alfalfy ner none o’ them fancy hoss brekfus foods. My lan’!” she broke out in astonishment, “I sh’uld think the’ comp’ny’d git men to do this work that c’uld spell!”

“That is one of the things we are told to be most careful about, Mrs.—ah—Hay. We must always ask everybody’s name and just how they spell it, even if we think we know. Often people having the same sounding name spell it differently, and if it goes in the directory wrong they generally blame us. And now, may I ask,” I said sympathetically, recalling the peculiar way in which she had spoken of the late Mr. Cook’s decease, “if your former husband lost his life in a fire?”

“Who, Cook? Oh, yuh mean what’d I mean when I spoke o’ ’im goin’ up in smoke? No, he was plumb dead—I was sattyfied o’ that, afore he was burned. That’s th’ way I’ve had ’em all done; kin’ of a habit I got into, I reckon, but seems to me ’twas a pretty good habit. That’s Cook, second from th’ right-hand end,” she said calmly, pointing to an object on the humble mantel as though she were indicating a specimen in a museum.

“_How! What?_” I gasped, as every separate hair on my head arose and tried to spring from its root-cell.

“W’y, I had all my husban’s’ bodies consoomed by fire—what d’yuh call it, cremated?—w’en they up an lef’ me, an’ that’s the’ ashes of all on ’em in them dishes there! Seems t’ me that’s th’ bes’ way t’ do with dead folks—have your own cem’terry right in your house where it’s handy. It’s ’specially nice when one moves ’round a good deal like I’ve done. I never c’uld a-forded t’ gone visitin’ here an’ there t’ that many graves scattered ’bout in dif’rent states. Besides, it saves tumstones an’ th’ ’spense o’ takin’ care o’ the lots.”

Gradually, I grasped the woman’s meaning as she continued to rock back and forth and utter her placid Mrs. Jarley explanation. The men who had been so unfeelingly abrupt as to “up an’ leave” this poor creature had evidently, each in his turn, been cremated, and now their ashes, side by side, served to adorn the mantel and comfort the heart of the faithful widow. “Imperial Caesar, dead and turned to clay....” I gazed at the row of assorted receptacles with awe and back at the woman with feelings still more curious.

“Some folks thinks them’s odd kin’ o’ coffins,” she continued, “but I d’know what c’uld be more ’propriate. Yuh see, I’ve tried t’ have each one sort o’ repasent either th’ man hisself or his trade. Now, for instance, this here one,” she explained, rising and placing her hand on a small stone jar at the left end of the line—there were five of these unique memorials altogether—“this was my fust husban’, John Marmyduke. Th’ label on th’ crock, yuh’ll notice, is ‘Marmylade’, an’ that’s purt’ near his name, an’ then it almose d’scribes his dispazishun, too. Th’ grocer tol’ me that marmylade was a kin’ o’ English jam, an’ John was sort o’ sweet-tempered, fer a man, so I thought one o’ them stun things ’ud do fine to keep him in.

“This is William Thompson here,” she continued, tapping a small tea caddy with her thimble. “He was a teacher, an’ I always called ’im Mr. T. so w’en he departed I thinks to myself, thinks I, ‘One o’ them little chests that Chinymens packs tea in is jes’ th’ ticket fer _yuh’_—tea standin’ for both his name an’ his callin’, do you see?”

I expressed my admiration for this delightful idea, and she proceeded with her cataloguing:

“This third cuhlection, in th’ fruit jar, is Mason. That was his name an’ his trade, an’ he belonged to that lodge an’ that’s the make o’ th’ jar, so, considerin’ all them facks, I d’know what c’uld be a fitter tum fer _’im_. Mason fell off a roof one day an’ broke his back, an’ though he lived six months, somehow, he was never much ’count arter that. He was a big man—weighed 225 afore breakfus—an’ he made such a pile o’ ashes, spite o’ their keepin’ him in the oven double time, that it took a gallon jar to hol’ his leavin’s. I had some quart jars on hand already an’ ’spected to put ’im in one of ’em, but I never begrudged buyin’ a bigger one fer he was always, or purt near always gen’rous with me, an’ then I knew I was savin’ an undertaker’s bill, anyhow.

“Now, I wa’n’t altogether sattyfied with th’ coffin I fin-ly chose fer Cook,” she said, looking at me doubtfully, as she motioned toward the small japanned tin bread-box that was the next mortuary souvenir on the shelf. “I worried over th’ matter th’ hull time he was sick, but I never got a mite o’ help from _’im._ Ev’ry time I tried to git that man to suggest what he thought he’d rest cumft-ble in he’d go on frightful. Doctor said his temper prob’bly shortened his life.

“Well, at last I _dee_-cided on the bread box as comin’ as near to repasentin’ him as anything I c’uld think on—his name bein’ Cook an’ him havin’ occupated as a baker as long’s he was ’live. What’s your ’pinion ’bout it, Mister?”

I declared that if Mr. Cook did not now rest in peace and content he was certainly a hard man to please.

* * * * *

“Th’ las’ one there, as I tole yuh,” she went on, with something like animation, “is Mr. Hay, an’ I do feel consid’able proud over _his_ casket—it sure was a happy thought o’ mine. See?” She took down the object and held it in the sunlight where I could get a plainer view. “He died jes’ las’ year.”

Mr. Hay’s ashes reposed in one of the large square glass perfume bottles such as most druggists carry, and the ornate label thereon had become the painfully true epitaph, “New Mown Hay”!

When I could trust my voice, I inquired, “was he ill long?”

“No; he wa’n’t ill a-tall. He left me kinda on’spectedly. However, he always _was_ a great man fer doin’ things on th’ impulse o’ th’ moment. We was livin’ out on a farm then, an’ one day Mr. Hay was cutting grass in th’ orchard an’ I ’spose he must ’a’ struck a nest o’ bees. Anyhow, somethin’ started th’ team an’ they run ’way an’ throwed him off in front o’ th’ knives, an’ th’ horses stepped on him a few times an’ th’ machine finished it up. He cert’inly was most completely dead when we reached him. Hired man tole me he had to gether him up with a rake an’ wheelbarrer. Only forty-six years ol’, too, he was—mowed down in his prime!

“Well, this is a funny world, ain’t it? Some women kin take one man an’ keep him ’live an’ whole fer fifty or sixty years, but I sure had bad luck with my batch o’ husban’s. It’s a comfort to me, though, that I kin have ’em with me in death, at least. I take down their monnyments ev’ry mornin’ an’ dust ’em off, an’ w’enever I go on th’ keers vis’tin’ anywheres I pack one in my valeese an’ carry it along. When I git it out an’ put it up in my room, w’erever I be, I feel right to hum.”

I succeeded in getting answers to the rest of my questions in another half hour, and I went on my way, dazed. And though, when my day’s work was over, I had no rarebit for supper, yet a vision came to me sometime between the dark and the daylight. I thought I saw myself fall ill and die, and my body was prepared for cremation.

I struggled to escape, to call out, but in vain. They slid me into a kiln and the inexorable heat dissolved flesh, blood and bone. Then some brutal, careless wretch came and swept me up on a dustpan, and put me in a sack and delivered me over to an eager old woman, whose face seemed strangely familiar.

This ghoulish woman bore me away to her home and went to work trying to pack me down in a catsup bottle. It was too small. It seemed to press on my throat. I was choking. I struggled. I shrieked.

And I awoke—to find, thank Heaven, that a large crayon portrait above my bed had fallen down and was now around my neck, and the man in the next room was hammering on the wall with his shoe and shouting and swearing at me.

Send Photographs by Radio

That pictures can be broadcast by radio was proved recently when photographs of President Harding, Vice President Coolidge and Governor Pinchot of Pennsylvania were sent from the Naval Radio Station in Washington, D. C., to a radio receiving station in Philadelphia.

_A “Haunted House” Story with a Touch of Humor_

Golden Glow

By Harry Irving Shumway

When you’re rolling along through the country at forty miles an hour, and have been so doing for several hours, any excuse to stop and stretch is a welcome excuse. It gives you an opportunity to light a longed-for pipe and takes the kinks out of your back. I lighted mine.

My friend, Doctor Wilbur Hunneker, whom I have never called anything but Hunky, vaulted from the driver’s seat without the formality of opening the door.

“Judas Iscariot!” he grunted, slapping the dust from his shoulders and digging at his eyes. “Some dust and some breeze!”

“What you stop here for?” I asked him, propping my feet up on the windshield. “Not that I don’t welcome any hesitation in the fierce procedure which you call touring. But why here?”

He grinned and pointed toward a tumbled-down, decrepit-looking cottage, almost entirely covered with woodbine. In front of it grew the most magnificent clusters of Golden Glow I have ever seen. There were hundreds of these beautiful yellow heads swaying in the sunlight, and they were in strange contrast to the drab and weather-beaten background of the house.

“Going to pick you a nosegay,” he said. “You haven’t energy enough to gather wild flowers for yourself, so I’ll do it for you.”

“Go to it,” I said, relieved, and sank back on the deep cushions in a cloud of my own smoke. “But look out for the pooch. Also day-time ghosts. That old shack may have both.”

“I’m not afraid of either,” he replied, and moved through the high grass toward the house.

Lazily, I watched him selecting the choicest blooms. Then my gaze wandered over the old squatty-looking house.

It was indeed a derelict, a perfect example of the abandoned home. I couldn’t imagine anyone having been near it or in it for a score of years. The small window-panes were covered with cobwebs and the marks of falling leaves and pelting rains of many years. The door in the center was innocent of paint, and great seams ran down and across its sections, witnesses of the battles it had put up against the roaring storms.

The stone slabs, slanted and sunken, which served as steps to the door were moss-covered and almost hidden from sight by the luxuriantly growing grass. Not a sound came from the place, or indeed from anywhere else.

Hunky returned to the car, grinning at me with a huge bunch of the golden flowers. He presented them with a sweeping gesture. Not to be outdone in courtesy, I rose and made him a mocking bow.

“Accept these tokens of my esteem, I prithee.”

“I do, Sir Knight, and go to hell,” I replied. “If you’re through with this horticultural business what d’you say we get to the fishing? That’s what we started out for—trout, not yellow bellies.”

He held up his hand in protest.

“There is no element of romance in your sordid make-up. You’re as flat in the head as the fish you catch. Take a look at that old house. What stories it might tell! What ghosts may have prowled about in its sombre interior! I see a broken pane in the quaint side window of the door. Adventure calls. Watch me.”

The nut! He noiselessly moved toward the door. Then he gingerly thrust his hand through the jagged opening in the side window and felt for the key. I saw by the smile on his face that he had found it. He removed his hand, turned the outside knob—and the door opened. He peered around, and then went inside.