The Mummy Read online

“If you’d like my resignation,” she said, “I’ll gladly offer it . . . though I doubt you could find anyone within a thousand miles who could put this particular Humpty Dumpty back together.”

  Brusquely, he said, “Straighten this up,” and stormed out.

  Irritated and embarrassed, but pleased that she’d made her point with Bey, Evelyn surveyed the scene of the disaster. She would have to gather all the books, check them for damage; one of the museum assistants would have to reposition the shelves themselves, they were much too large and bulky for her—

  A sound interrupted her planning: footsteps.

  She turned to look, to see if Dr. Bey had returned, but no one was there. The silence became eerie, as it frequently could in this sprawling turn-of-the-century building where room after room was lined with the coffins of kings, their embalmed bodies often exposed to view.

  There it was again!

  Someone was walking, but it was a slow, ominous shuffle, as if a bad leg were being dragged; it seemed to come from the gallery across the way.

  “Dr. Bey?” she called.

  Nothing.

  “Abdul?”

  Still nothing.

  “Mohammed? . . . Bob?”

  She moved through the connecting room into the area where treasures from the Middle Kingdom were on display; this was after hours, and the gas lighting was subdued, flickery, throwing shadows, making a haunted house of this room filled with the plundered possessions of the ancient dead. She moved down the aisle, past a closed sarcophagus, skirting cases of artifacts.

  Another noise!

  Was someone was in this room—a prowler? A thief? There certainly were treasures here to steal: great cases of gold and silver ornaments taken from tombs, golden coiled-snake armlets, necklaces, girdles, chains, the sort of jewelry the Israelites had borrowed to melt into the golden calf that had so annoyed Jehovah.

  She would get Dr. Bey.

  Moving past a statue of Anubis, another of Horus, both staring down at her menacingly in the dim lighting, she headed out. But on her way to the exit, she caught sight of a sarcophagus, leaned against the wall, exposing its hideous, rotted mummy.

  Not every one of these mummy cases was meant to stand open; in fact, a room upstairs was dedicated to mummies, in glass cases, and tourists were warned of the disturbing nature of the displays. Grown men had been known to go running out of there, sweating at the sight of grinning mummies.

  She sighed. Was this a prank, or the careless action of some assistant curator? In either case, the footsteps she’d heard might have belonged to whoever had opened the sarcophagus; she leaned forward, peeking in at the decayed mummy, which really was quite nasty, thinking, This one won’t do for display, and the mummy seemed to lurch at her, accompanied by an unearthly screech that sent her reeling back, and screaming!

  “Quiet, Sis,” Jonathan Carnahan said, slipping out from behind the sarcophagus, “or you’ll attract that dreadful little man back here again.”

  “Jonathan! You bloody idiot!”

  “Such language, sis.” Dapper, dissipated, Jonathan had strong eyes and a weak chin; he was thirty, but looked closer to forty, a cheerfully indolent individual barely getting by on his yearly stipend from the family trust fund, mostly spent on bourbon, a flask of which he removed from his cream-colored jacket and sipped.

  She closed the sarcophagus lid, resisting the urge to slam it. “Have you no respect for the dead?”

  “Have you no respect for the dead drunk?”

  Steaming, she paced. “What are you doing here? I’m already in trouble. I just made a mess of the library . . .”

  “I heard. And I heard Dr. Bey scold you.” He sipped from his flask. “Pity.”

  She faced him, hands on hips. “Do you really want to ruin my career, the way you’ve ruined yours?”

  “Now that’s unfair, Sis.” He belched, excused himself, and added, “I’ll have you know that my career is thriving, at this very moment.”

  Evelyn smirked. “You haven’t been out on a dig for six months.”

  “Not true! I’ve been digging, my dear. Digging away.”

  “What, in bars again? Please, Jonathan, I’m just in no mood for your capering. The Bembridge Scholars . . .”

  He sat down heavily on the edge of a display. “Don’t tell me those fools had the bad sense to turn you down again.”

  She sat next to him. “They say I lack experience.”

  “Well, you’re getting it here, aren’t you?”

  “Fine. Just fine. I’ll stay on another year or two and try again . . . and what sort of reference do you think Dr. Bey will give me?”

  He beamed at her. “I’ve got just the thing to get you back in his good graces.” Jonathan began scrounging in his other jacket pocket.

  Shaking her head, Evelyn said, “Oh, no, no, not another worthless trinket, Jonathan. If I bring one more piece of junk to Dr. Bey, on your behalf—”

  But Jonathan had withdrawn a small octagonal golden box, obviously ancient—New Kingdom, she’d say.

  She grabbed it from him; he made no attempt to stop her. “Where did you find this, Jonathan?”

  “On a dig . . . near Luxor.”

  Evelyn rolled the box around her in hands, examining it carefully, appreciating its carved surface, mumbling to herself as she translated the hieratics and hieroglyphs decorating it.

  They began tapping their feet together in nervous unison as she inspected the box.

  “I’ve been such a poor excuse for the son of Howard Carnahan, Evy . . . never came across a damn thing worth finding. Is it . . . is it something? Please tell me I’ve finally found something, old dear.”

  The box had tiny little slats on it, which she began to shift this way and that.

  “What is it, Evy? Is that a puzzle box?”

  As if in reply, the thing seemed to unfold itself, blossoming into an eight-sided key; and sitting within the open box was a folded piece of papyrus. Carefully, Evelyn unfolded it into what was clearly an ancient map: the Nile was obvious, as was a representation of the jackal-headed Anubis; an eagle and various other drawings, and hieroglyphs, indeed dated it to the New Kingdom.

  “Jonathan?”

  “Yes, Sis?”

  “You’ve found something.”

  Seated behind his desk in his cluttered, cubbyhole office, the curator used a jeweler’s eyepiece to examine the box. Evelyn, standing alongside Dr. Bey, demonstrated how to open and close the object, and pointed out the cartouche on its surface.

  “That’s the royal seal of Seti the First,” she said.

  The curator shrugged. “Perhaps.”

  “No ‘perhaps’ about it, Dr. Bey.”

  “Which pharaoh was Seti again?” Jonathan asked, smiling, seated across the desk from the curator. “Afraid I’ve forgotten. Was he rich, by any chance?”

  Evelyn could never be sure when Jonathan was joking. “He was the second pharaoh of the nineteenth dynasty. Some historians speculate he may have been the wealthiest of all rulers.”

  “What a splendid fellow, this Seti. I like him very much.” Jonathan’s grin, as he leaned into the dramatic glow of a candle on Bey’s desk, was rather mummylike; though the museum had electric lighting, the curator often kept an aromatic candle burning.

  On the curator’s desk lay the golden map, stretched out as if the trio were planning a trip. Dr. Bey lifted it nearer the candlelight for a better look.

  “This map is almost three thousand years old, Doctor,” she told him. “And the hieratics over here indicate exactly what is being charted . . .”

  Dr. Bey looked up at her.

  With a nervous grin and a little shrug, she ventured into dangerous waters. “It shows the way to Hamanaptra.”

  The map trembled, or rather Dr. Bey’s hands holding it did; he seemed rather shaken by her statement, but only for a moment. Then he smiled and laughed, shaking his head.

  “My dear girl, don’t be ridiculous,” Bey said. “I’m surprised at you, a
scholar of your qualities, of your seriousness. That’s a myth, Hamanaptra—told by ancient Arabs to amuse Greek and Roman tourists.”

  “Let’s not confuse the myth of Hamanaptra, Doctor,” she said, “with the very real possibility that the temple, and its necropolis, may have existed. Of course, I don’t take that silly blather seriously—a mummy’s curse, a place of evil—pure nonsense, obviously.”

  “Hold on, there,” Jonathan said, candlelight flickering on his suddenly keenly interested face, “you’re not talking about the Hamanaptra? City of the Dead sort of thing? Hiding place for the wealth of the early pharaohs?”

  Evelyn was amused. “Amazing how your Egyptology has improved.”

  “Where treasure is concerned, dear girl, I’m a bloody expert. Anyway, every schoolchild knows of Hamanaptra and its wonderful big underground treasure chamber. You suppose it’s true that the pharaohs had it rigged so the whole place could disappear under the dunes, flick o’ the switch?”

  “None of it’s true,” Bey said, chuckling, but still examining the map, holding it closer to the light. “As the Americans would say, it’s bunk . . . hooey . . . hokum.”

  “Are you sure that’s English, old man? Say! Watch it!”

  The corner of the map had touched the candle’s flame . . . and now the map was on fire! Bey bolted to his feet and tossed the burning papyrus off the desk, onto the floor, where Jonathan dropped to his knees and patted it quickly out with his hands. Then Jonathan held the smoldering papyrus up and the left third of the map was gone.

  “Oh dear,” Evelyn said, fingers touching her lips.

  Jonathan’s frown was more like a pout. “You burned it! You bloody fool, you burned off the best part!”

  “I am sorry.” Bey bowed. “It was an accident.”

  “Rameses destroying Syria,” Evelyn said coldly, “that was an accident.”

  “Perhaps it’s for the best.” Bey sat back down, shrugging. “We are scholars, not treasure hunters, after all. Many men have wasted their lives in pursuit of foolishness like this. No one has ever found Hamanaptra, and many who’ve tried failed even to return.”

  Evelyn arched an eyebrow. “My research indicates the temple city may have existed.”

  Jonathan was holding up the map, staring at its charred edge with the expression of a child who has just broken his first toy, Christmas morning. “You burned off the lost city,” he said accusingly to the curator, who merely shrugged again.

  “I’m sure it was a forgery, a fake. Really, Miss Carnahan, I thought better of you than to be fooled so easily . . . However, as for this box . . .”

  And the curator reached toward the golden octagonal artifact on his desk.

  “. . . I may be able to offer a modest sum.”

  Jonathan’s expression perked up, but Evelyn snatched the box from Dr. Bey’s grasp and glared at him.

  “No thank you, Doctor,” she said. “Suddenly, it is not for sale.”

  And she quickly exited, with Jonathan—scorched map in hand—trailing bemusedly after.

  5

  Gallows Humor

  Jonathan Carnahan may have been a bit of a dilettante where Egyptology was concerned, and an utter fraud as an archaeologist, but one thing he did know: every watering hole in Cairo. From the plush cocktail lounges of the Continental and Sheapard hotels to waterfront dives few cultured Englishmen had dared enter (and fewer still had ever exited), Jonathan—and his thirst, and his money—were welcome guests.

  This gave him access not only to alcoholic libation, but information; so it was that he knew a certain Richard O’Connell was a guest at the most dreadful lodgings possible in a city noted for its dreadful lodgings: the Cairo prison.

  So, too, was Jonathan able to arrange—at rather short notice, with a handful of phone calls—an audience with the host of the city’s worst hellhole, Warden Gad Hassan, a thickset greasy man whose porcine features were distinguished by glittering dark eyes, a mustache flecked with the memories of several meals, and black-stubbled cheeks that apparently crossed paths with a razor no more than once a week.

  The warden, his rumpled cream-colored suit stained with sweat, food, and other substances quite unimaginable, had taken Evelyn’s arm in a fashion at once gentlemanly and lascivious as he ushered the Carnahans across a small, penlike courtyard in a sprawling stone structure from which moans of agony and ghastly smells emanated. It was Jonathan’s theory that close proximity to the smells might be creating the moans.

  His sister, hugging an alligator purse, looked rather lovely in another cardigan-and-dress ensemble, topped off by a large flat-brimmed hat that sat at a sun-shielding tilt. Perhaps, Jonathan thought, too lovely to be visiting a pigsty like this . . .

  “Welcome to my humble home, Miss Carnahan,” the warden said. “It is a rare honor to have a woman of your elegance step across my lowly threshold.”

  Despite the musical accent so common when Arabs spoke English, the warden’s command of Jonathan’s native language was impressive. But then again, a man this gross—the chief difference between Hassan and his worst prisoners was that Hassan was in charge—did not achieve so prominent a position without brains.

  As they walked, the warden’s palm cradling Evelyn’s elbow, Hassan gestured with his other hand about the crushed-stone area. “This is our visitors’ area . . .”

  “Charming,” Evelyn said, the sarcasm so faint even Jonathan couldn’t be sure of it.

  Evelyn still seemed to be pouting. She had been irritated, even accusatory, when she learned that her brother had found the puzzle box not on a dig near Luxor, but in an establishment known as the Sultan’s Casbah, a dump catering to European rabble in one of the less reputable corners of the French Quarter.

  “You lied to me!” she had said, sounding wounded.

  Why did that surprise the silly girl? It was hardly the first time. Lying to one’s family, after all, was where the art of fabrication began; if one couldn’t deceive the gullible sods who loved one, how could one hope to pull the wool over a stranger’s eyes?

  Jonathan had explained that he’d lifted the box from the pocket of the unconscious O’Connell, who had been involved in a drunken brawl, after which he (O’Connell) had been arrested. Evelyn—following the requisite expression of shock that her “own brother” could commit such a horrendous act—had insisted the box’s previous owner be interviewed at the prison (but said nothing about returning that box).

  This had seemed a less than smashing idea to Jonathan, having stolen the box, knowing that in Cairo the penalty for picking pockets thereafter made scratching one’s nose (or anywhere else, for that matter) a physical impossibility.

  The warden ushered them toward a barred cage that would not have been out of place in a monkey house at a zoo; the heavily barred pen was attached to the prison wall, where presumably a prisoner would be brought out to meet with visitors.

  Evelyn asked Hassan, “Why is Mr. O’Connell in custody? My understanding is he was arrested after behavior that might be termed ‘drunk and disorderly.’ ”

  The warden shrugged. “Why don’t you ask him? His only excuse is that he was ‘looking for adventure.’ I will say this: Your visit is well timed. I saw his name on the list today.”

  “For his trial, you mean?”

  “Trial?” The warden laughed explosively; his teeth were that shade of green so attractive in jade jewelry, less so in a smile. “How very droll, Miss Carnahan. So seldom does a woman of your grace and beauty have so keenly developed a sense of humor . . .”

  They had reached the cage when the interior doors on the wall of the prison burst open and four Arab guards dressed in khaki dragged in a handsome, unshaven young white man, heavily shackled at the wrists and ankles, in what had been a white shirt and jodphurs, before they had become filthy and torn from a week in captivity.

  “Ah!” the warden said. “Here’s your friend, now.”

  The guards hurled the young man against the bars; the prisoner struck the steel with
a nasty clang, but his face registered no pain.

  “I say,” Jonathan said to Hassan, “was that necessary?”

  The warden beamed greenly at Evelyn. “I see your brother’s sense of humor is also well developed. This is Mr. O’Connell, formerly of Chicago, Illinois, and more lately, the French Foreign Legion. He’s a deserter, your friend.”

  Evelyn was looking O’Connell over; he was doing the same to her, from (it seemed to Jonathan) a slightly different perspective.

  She asked her brother, “Is this him? The one you stole it from?”

  Jonathan laughed nervously, glancing at the warden. “My sister and her sense of humor . . . Yes, dear, this is the blighter who sold it to me.”

  O’Connell wedged his face between two bars, frowning as he studied Jonathan. “Sold what to you?”

  “Warden,” Jonathan said, “would it be possible for us to have a few minutes alone with our friend?”

  “What friend?” O’Connell asked.

  Jonathan extended a hand with a pound note in it to the warden, for the man to shake, and take.

  “Certainly, sahib.” Hassan bowed. “I’ll leave you now . . . you have five minutes.”

  “It won’t be the same without you,” O’Connell said to the warden, and blew him a kiss.

  The warden did not smile, greenly or otherwise; he waved a finger in the air. “A sense of humor in prisoners I do not appreciate.”

  O’Connell laughed. “What are you going to do about it, fatso? Not change my sheets?”

  The warden nodded to the scruffy, sleepy-eyed guard standing behind O’Connell, and the guard slammed the prisoner into the metal bars again, where his face bounced like a rubber ball off pavement. But O’Connell still registered no pain, though he did toss the guard a glare.

  “Unwise, sir,” the warden said, and began walking away, adding to himself, “most unwise.”

  Jonathan, watching Hassan go, said to O’Connell, “You might not want to get on his bad side, old man.”

  “Where have I seen you before?” O’Connell asked Jonathan.

  “I’m just a, uh, local missionary spreading the good word.”

  “And who’s the dame?”