M
rs. Athelstone was not in the office when he came down the next day—she had gone to Washington on the Society's affairs, Brander said—and so he moped about, finding the place dreary without her brightening presence. In fact, when Brander went out, he slipped into the sunlit ante-chamber, for companionship, he told himself; but in his heart he knew that he did not want to be alone with that thing behind the altar. He had satisfactorily explained its mechanism to himself, but there was something else about it which he could not explain.
Naylor had telegraphed that very morning: "Get story. Come home. What do you think you're doing?" and he tried to make up his mind to end the whole affair by taking the night train to Boston. But he hated to go back empty-handed from a four days' assignment. Besides, though he knew himself a fool for it, he wanted to see Mrs. Athelstone once more.
So it happened that he was lingering on in the outer office when the postman threw the afternoon mail on the desk. Simpkins was alone at the moment, and he ran over the letters carelessly until he came to one addressed to Brander in Mrs. Athelstone's writing. The blue card of the palace car company was in a corner of the envelope.
"Why the deuce is she writing that skunk before she's well out of town?" he thought, scanning the envelope with jealous eyes. Then he held it up to the light, but the thick paper told nothing of what was within. Frowning, he laid the letter down, fingered it, withdrew his itching hand, hesitated, and finally put it in his pocket.
Simpkins went straight from the office to his hotel, for, though he told himself that the letter contained some instructions which Mrs. Athelstone had forgotten to give Brander before leaving, he was anxious to see just how those instructions were worded. Alone in his little room, he ripped open the letter and ran over its two pages with bewilderment growing in his face. He finished by throwing it down on the table and exclaiming helplessly: "Well, I'll be damned!"
The first sheet, without beginning or ending, contained only a line in Mrs. Athelstone's handwriting, reading: "I had to leave in such a hurry that I missed seeing you."
There was not an intelligible word on the second sheet; it was simply a succession of scrawls and puerile outline pictures, such as a child might have drawn.
To Simpkins' first aggrieved feeling that his confidence had been abused, the certainty that he had stumbled on something of importance quickly succeeded. He concluded a second and more careful scrutiny of the letter with the exclamation, "Cipher! all right, all right," and, after a third, he jumped up excitedly and rushed off to Columbia University.
An hour later, Professor Ashmore, whose well-known work on "Hieratic Writings" is so widely accepted an authority on that fascinating subject, looked across to Simpkins, who for some minutes had been sitting quietly in a corner of his study, and observed dryly:
"This is a queer jumble of hieroglyphics and hieratic writing, and is not, I should judge," and his eyes twinkled, "of any great antiquity."
"Quite right, Professor," Simpkins assented cheerfully. "The lady who wrote it is interested in Egyptology, and is trying to have a little fun with me."
"If I may judge from the letter, she seems to be interested in you as well," the professor went on smilingly. "In fact, it appears to be—ahem—a love-letter."
"Eh! What?" exclaimed Simpkins, suddenly serious, "Let's have it."
"Well, roughly, it goes something like this: 'My heart's dearest, my sun, my Nile duck—the hours are days without thee, the days an æon. The gods be thanked that this separation is not for long. For apart from thee I have no life. That thing that I have to do is about done. May the gods guard thee and the all-mother protect thee. I embrace thee: I kiss thine eyes and thy lips.' That's a fair translation, though one or two of the hieroglyphics are susceptible of a slightly different rendering; but the sense would not be materially affected by the change," the Professor concluded.
His words fell on inattentive ears; for Simpkins was sitting stunned under the revelation of the letter. Now that he had his story, he knew that he had not wanted it.
But he roused himself when he became conscious that the professor was peering at him curiously over the top of his glasses, and said:
"Pretty warm stuff, eh! Good josh! Great girl! Ought to know her. She's daft on this Egyptian business."
"Her letter is perhaps a trifle er—impulsive," the professor answered. "But she combines the ancient and the modern charmingly. I congratulate you."
"Thanks, Professor," Simpkins answered awkwardly, and took his leave.
Once in the street, he plunged along, head down. It was worse than he had suspected. He had felt all along that the boy's surmises about Brander were correct; now he knew that his suspicions of Mrs. Athelstone were well founded. But he would keep her from that hypocrite, that hawk, that—murderer! Simpkins stopped short at the intrusion of that word. It had come without logic or reason, but he knew now that it had been shaping in his head for two days past. And once spoken, it began to justify itself. There was the motive, clear, distinct and proven; there were the means and the man.
Next morning Simpkins was earlier than usual at the Oriental Building, where he found the youth waiting for Brander to come and open up the inner office.
"Parson's late, eh?" he threw out by way of greeting.
"Always is," was the surly answer. "He's de 'rig'nal seven sleepers."
"Puts you behind with your cleaning, eh?"
"Naw; youse ought to know I don't do no cleanin'."
"You don't? I thought you tended to Mrs. Athelstone's rooms and—Mr. Brander's storeroom."
"Aw, go wan. I'm no second girl, an' de storeroom's never cleaned. Dere's nothin' to clean but a lot of stones an' bum mummies an' such."
"Brander can't sell much stuff; I never see anything being shipped."
"Oh! I don't know! We sent a couple of embammed dooks to Chicago last week."
"And last month?"
"Search me; I only copped out me job here last mont'; but seems as if his whiskers did say dere was somethin' doin'." And just then Mr. Brander came along.
Simpkins had found out what he wanted to know, and he decided that he must bring his plans to a head at once. Mrs. Athelstone was expected back the next day; he must search the storeroom that very night. If—well, he thought he could spoil one scoundrel.
He worked to good advantage during the day, and at nine o'clock that night, when he was back outside the Oriental Building, there were three new keys in his pocket.
He unlocked the door noiselessly, tiptoed up the staircase, and gained the friendly blackness of the ante-chamber quite unobserved. The watchman was half a block away, sitting by the only street entrance kept open at night.
Simpkins took off his shoes and found his sandals without striking a light, and then felt his way to the door leading into the hall. The knob rattled a little under his hand. All that evening he had been nerving himself to go in there alone and in the dark, but now he could have turned and run like a country boy passing a graveyard at night.
The hall was not utterly black, as he had expected. Light from the electric lamps without flickered through the stained-glass windows. Ghastly rays of yellow played over the painted faces on the walls and lit up the gilded features of the mummy by Mrs. Athelstone's desk. There were crimson spots, like blotches of blood, on the veil of Isis. And all about were moving shadows, creeping forward stealthily, falling back slowly, as the light without flared up or died down.
Step by step Simpkins advanced on the black altar, his muscles rigid, his nerves quivering, his eyes staring straight ahead, as a child stares into the dark for some awful shape which it fears to see, yet dares not leave unseen. Once past that altar he would be safe at the door of the storeroom.
How his heart was beating! He was almost at it. Steady! A few steps now and he would gain the storeroom. Good God! What was that!
In the blackness behind the altar two eyes flamed.
Simpkins stopped; he was helpless to turn or to advance. Perhaps if he did not move, it would not. A moment he stood there, tense with terror, then—straight from the altar the thing flew at his throat. But quick as it was: the involuntary jerk of his arm upward was quicker, and it received the blow. Snarling, the thing fell to the floor, and leaped back into the darkness. It was Mrs. Athelstone's cat.
So strong was Simpkins' revulsion of feeling, so great his relief, that he forgot the real cause of his terror, and sank down on the very steps of the altar, weakly exclaiming over and over again: "Only the cat! Only the cat! Great Scott! how it frightened me!"
He had been sitting there for a few minutes when he heard a soft click, click, just to his right. Some one was turning a key in the door leading from Mrs. Athelstone's apartments. As he jumped to his feet, he heard a hand grasp the doorknob. He looked around for a hiding-place, ran a few steps from the altar, doubled like a baited rat, and dove into the blackness behind the veil of Isis. There had been no time to choose; for hardly was he safe under cover and peeping out from between the folds of the veil than the door swung open slowly.
I
t was Mrs. Athelstone who came through the doorway. She was all in white, a soft, silken white, which floated about her like a cloud, drifting back from her bare arms and throat, and suggesting the rounded outlines of her limbs. Her black hair, braided, hung below her waist, and from her forehead the golden asp bound back the curls. Her arms were full of roses—yellow, white and red.
For an uncertain moment she stood just within the hall, bathed in the light that shone through from her apartments. Then she closed the door and walked toward the veil. As she came through the shafts of light from the windows, her gown was stained with crimson spots. She was at the altar now, and Simpkins could no longer see her without changing his position. Stealthily he edged along, careless of the statue just behind him. As he parted the folds of the veil he saw that the altar was heaped with flowers. Just beyond, the light playing fantastically on her upturned face, stood Mrs. Athelstone.
Simpkins closed the veil abruptly. There came to him the remembrance of the time when the boy had pulled the cat's tail, her anger and her curious exclamation; and again, the repetition of it in his case, when he had handled the mummy of Amosis roughly; and her affectation of Egyptian symbols as ornaments. "She's the simon-pure Blavatsky, all right," he concluded, as he pieced these things into what he had just seen. "All others are base imitations."
The reporter had gathered from his little reading that behind these monstrous gods and this complex symbolism there was something near akin to Christianity in a few great essentials, and he understood how a woman of Mrs. Athelstone's temperament, engrossed in the study of these things and living in these surroundings, might be affected by them. Even he, shrewd, hard Yankee that he was, had felt the influence of the place, and there was that behind him then which made his heart beat quicker at the thought.
When he looked out again Mrs. Athelstone was gone. He was impatient to get to his work in the storeroom; but first he peeped out again to make sure that she had returned to her room. She was still in the hall, walking about in the corner where she ordinarily worked. There was something methodical in her movements now that woke a new interest in Simpkins. "What the dickens can she be up to?" he thought.
She had lit a lamp, and had shaded it, so that its rays were contracted in a circle on the floor. From a cupboard let into the wall she was taking bottles and brushes, a roll of linen bandages and some boxes of pigments. After laying these on the floor, she walked over to the big black mummy case by her table, and pushed until she had turned it around with its face to the wall.
What heathen game was this? Simpkins' interest increased, and he poked his head out boldly from the sheltering veil.
Mrs. Athelstone was standing directly in front of the case now, pulling and tugging in an effort to bring it down on her shoulders. Finally, she managed to tilt it toward her, and then, straining, she lowered it until it rested flat on the floor.
"Sorry I couldn't have lent a hand," thought the gallant Simpkins; "the old buck must weigh a ton. Now what's she bothering around that passé, three-thousand-years-dead sport for?"
Her back was toward him; so, cautious and catlike, he stole from behind the veil and glided to the shelter of a post not ten feet from her. He peered around it eagerly. Still panting from her efforts, she was on her knees beside the case, fumbling a key in the Yale lock, a curious anachronism which Simpkins, in his cleaning, had found on all the more valuable mummy cases.
The lid was of sycamore wood, comparatively light, and she lifted it without trouble. Then the rays of the lamp shone full into the open case, and Simpkins looked over the shoulders of the kneeling woman at the mummy of a man who had stood full six feet in life. He stared long at the face, seeking in those shriveled features a reason for the horror which grew in him as he gazed, trying to build back into life again that thing which once had been a man. For there was something about it which seemed different from those Egyptians of whom he had read. Slowly the vaguely-familiar features filled out, until Simpkins saw—not the swarthy, low-browed face of an Egyptian king, but the ruddy, handsome face of an Englishman, and—at last he was sure, a face like that of a photograph in his pocket. And in that same moment there went through his mind a sentence from the curious picture letter: "That thing that I have to do is about done."
Already, in his absorption, he had started out from the shelter of the pillar, and now he crept forward. He was almost on her, and she had heard nothing, seen nothing, but suddenly she felt him coming, and turned. And as her eyes, full of fear in the first startled consciousness of discovery, met his, he sprang at her, and pinioned her arms to her side. But only for a moment. Fear fought with her, and by a mighty effort she half shook herself free.
"Suddenly she felt him coming, and turned.""Suddenly she felt him coming, and turned."
Simpkins found himself struggling desperately now to regain his advantage. Already his greater strength was telling, when the lamp crashed over, leaving them in darkness, and he felt the blow of a heavy body striking his back. Claws dug through his clothes, deep into his flesh. Something was at his head now, biting and tearing, and the warm blood was trickling down into his eyes. A stealthy paw reached round for his throat. He could feel its silken surface passing over his bare flesh, the unsheathing of its steel to strike, and, as it sank into his throat, he seized it, loosening, to do this, his hold on Mrs. Athelstone, quite careless of her in the pain and menace of that moment.
Still clutching the great black cat, though it bit and tore at his hands, he gained his feet. In the darkness he could see nothing but two blazing eyes, and not until the last spark died in them did his fingers relax. Then, with a savage joy, he threw the limp body against the altar of Isis, and turned to see what had become of Mrs. Athelstone. She lay quite still where he had left her, a huddled heap of white upon the floor.
Simpkins righted and lit the overturned lamp and lifted the unconscious woman into a chair. There he bound her, wrapping her about with the linen bandages, until she was quite helpless to move. The obsidian eyes of the mummy seemed to follow him as he went about his task. Annoyed by their steady regard, he threw a cloth over the face and sat down to wait for the woman to come back to life.
T
hough her gown was torn and spotted with his blood, Mrs. Athelstone had never looked more lovely. But Simpkins was quite unmoved by the sight of her beauty. His infatuation for her, his personal interest in her even, had puffed out in that moment when he had discovered in the mummied face a likeness to Doctor Athelstone. He was regarding her now simply as "material," and fixing in his mind each detail of her appearance, that he might the more effectively describe her in his story. And what a splendid one it was! The Blavatsky "spread," with the opportunity which it afforded to ridicule two rather well-known women—that was good stuff; the scandal which had unfolded as he worked—that was better still; but this "mysterious murder," with its novel features—this was the superlative of excellence in Yellow Journalism. "Talk about Teddy's luck," thought the reporter; "how about the luck of Simp., old boy?"
He looked at his watch anxiously. He had plenty of time—the paper did not go to press until two. Relieved, he glanced toward Mrs. Athelstone again. How still she was! She was taking an unreasonably long time about coming to! The shadows in the room began to creep in on him again, and to oppress him with a vague fear, now that he was sitting inactive. He got up, but just then the woman stirred, and he settled down again.
Slowly she recovered consciousness and looked about her. Her eyes sought out Simpkins last, and as they rested on him a flash of anger lit them up. Simpkins returned their stare unflinchingly. They had quite lost their power over him.
"So you're a thief, Simpkins—and I thought you looked so honest," she began at last, contempt in her voice.
"Not at all," Simpkins answered, relieved and grateful that she had only suspected him of being a thief, that there had been no tears, no pleadings, no hysterics; "I'm nothing of the sort. I'm just your clerk."
"Then, what are you doing here at this time of night? And why did you attack me? Why have you bound me?"
"I'll be perfectly frank, Mrs. Athelstone." (Simpkins always prefaced a piece of duplicity by asseverating his innocence of guile.) "I've blundered on something in there," and he motioned vaguely toward the coffin, "that is reason enough for binding you and turning you over to the police, sorry as I should be to take such a step."
"And that something?"
"The body of your husband."
"You beastly little cad," began Mrs. Athelstone, anger flaming in her face again. Then she stopped short, and her expression went to one of terror.
The change was not lost on Simpkins. "That's better," he said. "If a fellow has to condone murder to meet your standards of what's a perfect little gentleman, you can count me out. Now, just you make up your mind that repartee won't take us anywhere, and let's get down to cases. There may be, I believe there are, extenuating circumstances. Tell him the whole truth and you'll find Simp. your friend, cad or no cad."
As he talked, Mrs. Athelstone regained her composure, and when he was through she asked calmly enough: "And because you've blundered on something you don't understand, something that has aroused your silly suspicions, you would turn me over to the police?"
"It's not a silly suspicion, Mrs. Athelstone, but a cinch. I know your husband was murdered there," and he pointed to the altar. "And you're not innocent, though how guilty morally I'm not ready to say. There may be something behind it all to change my present determination; that depends on whether you care to talk to me, or would rather wait and take the third degree at headquarters."
"But you really have made a frightful mistake," she protested, not angrily now, but rather soothingly.
"Then I'll have to call an officer; perhaps he can set us straight." And he stood up.
"Sit down," she implored. "Let me explain."
"That's the way to talk; you'll find it'll do you good to loosen up," and Simpkins sat down, exulting that he was not to miss the most striking feature of his story. Until it was on the wire for Boston, and the New York papers had gone to press, he had as little use for officers as Mrs. Athelstone. "Remember," he added, as he leaned back to listen, "that I know enough now to pick out any fancy work."
"It's really absurdly simple. The cemented surface of this mummy had been damaged, as you can see"——Mrs. Athelstone began, but Simpkins broke in roughly:
"Come, come, there's no use doping out any more of that stuff to me. I want the facts. Tell me how Doctor Athelstone was killed or the Tombs for yours." He was on his feet now, shaking his fist at the woman, and he noticed with satisfaction that she had shrunk back in her chair till the linen bandages hung loosely across her breast.
"Yes—yes—I'll tell," was the trembling answer; "only do sit down," and then after a moment's pause, in which she seemed to be striving to compose herself, she began:
"I, sir, was a queen, Nefruari, whom they called the good and glorious woman." And she threw back her head proudly and paused.
This was better than he had dared hope. Yet it was what he had half-believed; she was quite mad. He felt relieved at this final proof of it. After all, it would have hurt him to send this woman to "the chair"; but there would be no condemned cell for her; only the madhouse. It might be harder for her; but it made it easier for him. He nodded a grave encouragement for her to continue.
"This is my mummy," she went on, nodding toward the gilded case, "the shell from which my soul fled three thousand years ago. Since then it has been upon its wanderings, living in birds and beasts, that the will of Osiris might be done."
Again she paused, pleased, apparently, with the respectful interest which Simpkins showed. And, indeed, he was interested; for his reading on early Egyptian beliefs enabled him to follow the current of her madness and to trace it back to its sources. So he nodded again, and she continued:
"Through all these weary centuries, Amosis, my husband, has been with me, first as king—ah! those days in hundred-gated Thebes—and when at last my soul lodged in this body he found me out again. As boy and girl we loved, as man and woman we were married. And the days that followed were as happy as those old days when we ruled an empire. Not that we remembered then. The memory of it all but just came back to me two months ago."
"Did you tell the Doctor about it?" asked Simpkins, in the wheedling tone of a physician asking a child to put out her tongue.
"I tried to stir his memory gently, by careless hints, a word dropped here and there, recalling some bright triumph of his reign, some splendid battle, but there was no response. And so I waited, hoping that of itself his memory might quicken, as mine had."
"Did Brander know anything about this—er—extraordinary swapping around of souls?"
"Not then——" began the woman, but Simpkins cut her short by jumping to his feet with a cry of "What's that!" and his voice was sharp with fear. For in that silent second, while he waited for her answer, he had heard a noise out in the hall, the sound of stealthy feet behind the veil, and he had seen the woman's eyes gleam triumph.
Again the terror that had mastered him an hour before leaped into life, and quakingly he faced the darkness. But he saw nothing—only the shifting shadows, the crimson blotches crawling on the veil, and the vague outlines of the coffined dead.
He looked back to the woman. Her face was masklike. It must have been a fancy, a vibration of his own tense nerves. But none the less, he rearranged the light, that while its rays shone clear on Mrs. Athelstone, he might be in the shadow, and set his chair back close against the wall, that both the woman and the hall might be well in his eye. And when he sat down again one hand clutched tight the butt of a revolver.
"Y
ou seem strangely disturbed, Simpkins," said Mrs. Athelstone quietly; but he fancied that there was a note of malicious pleasure in her voice. "Has anything happened to alarm you?"
"I thought I heard a slight noise, as if something were moving behind me. Perhaps a mummy was breaking out of its case," he answered, but his voice was scarcely steady enough for the flippancy of his speech.
"Hardly that," was the serious answer; "but it might have been my cat, Rameses."
"Not unless it was Rameses II., because—well, it didn't sound like a cat," he wound up, guiltily conscious of his other reason for certainty on this point. "Perhaps Isis has climbed down from her pedestal to stretch herself," and he smiled, but his eyes were anxious, and he shot a furtive glance toward the veil.
"It's hardly probable," was the calm reply.
"What? Can't the thing use its legs as well as its arms?"
"Ah! then you know——"
"Yes; she reached for me when I was dusting her off, but I kicked harder than Doctor Athelstone, I suppose, and so touched the spring twice."
"You beast!"
"Well, let it go at that," Simpkins assented. "And let's hear the rest." He was burning with impatience to reach the end and get away, back to noisy, crowded Broadway.
But Mrs. Athelstone answered nothing, only looked off toward the altar. It almost seemed as if she waited for something.
"Go on," commanded Simpkins, stirred to roughness by his growing uneasiness.
"You will not leave while yet you may?" and her tone doubled the threat of her words.
"No, not till I've heard it all," he answered doggedly, and gripped the butt of his revolver tighter. But though he told himself that her changed manner, this new confidence, this sudden indifference to his going, was the freak of a madwoman, down deep he felt that it portended some evil thing for him, knew it, and would not go, could not go; for he dared not pass the ambushed terror of that altar.
"You still insist?" the woman asked with rising anger. "So be it. Learn then the fate of meddlers, of dogs who dare to penetrate the mysteries of Isis."
Simpkins took his eyes from her face and glanced mechanically toward the veil. But he looked back suddenly, and caught her signalling with a swift motion of her head to something in the darkness. There could be no mistake this time. And following her eyes he saw a form, black and shapeless, steal along to the nearest post.
Revolver in hand, he leaped up and back, upsetting his chair. The thing remained hidden. He cleared the partitioning sarcophagus at a bound, and, sliding and backing, reached the centre of the hall, never for one instant taking his eyes from that post or lowering his revolver. Step by step, back between the pillars, he retreated, stumbling toward the door and safety.
Half-way, he heard the woman hiss: "Stop him! Don't let him escape!" And he saw the thing dart from behind the post. In the uncontrollable madness of his fear he hurled, instead of firing, his revolver at it, and turned and ran.
Tapping lightly on the flags behind, he heard swift feet. It was coming, it was gaining, but he was at the door, through it and had slammed it safely behind him. A leap, a bound, and he was through the ante-chamber, and, as the door behind him opened, he was slipping out into the passageway. He went down the stairs in great jumps. Thank God! he had left the street door unlocked. But already the sound of pursuit had stopped, and he reached the open air safely.
Down the deserted street to Broadway he ran. There he hailed a cab and directed the driver to the telegraph office. Then he leaned back and looked at the garish lights, the passing cabs, the theatre crowds hurrying along home, laughing and chatting as if the world held no such horror as that which he had just escaped. That madwoman's words rang through his brain, drowning out the voices of the street; the tapping of those flying feet sounded in his ears above the rattle of the cab. That or this must be unreal; yet how far off both seemed!
Gradually the rough jolting of the cab shook him back to a sense of his surroundings and their safety. He began to regain his nerve, and to busy himself knotting the strands of the story into a connected narrative. And when, a few minutes later, he handed a message to the manager of the telegraph office and demanded a clear wire into theBanneroffice, he was quite the old breezy Simpkins.
Then, coat off, a cigar between his teeth, he sat down beside the operator and began to write his story, his flying fingers keeping time with the clicking instrument. He made no mention of the fears that had beset him in the hall and the manner of his exit from it. But there was enough and to spare of the dramatic in what he sent. After a sensational half-column of introduction, fitting the murder on Mrs. Athelstone, and enlarging on the certainty of one's sin finding one out, provided it were assisted by aBannerreporter, he swung into the detailed story, dwelling on the woman's madness and sliding over the details of the murder as much as possible.
Then he described how, for more than a month, Mrs Athelstone had labored over the body, hiding it days in the empty case and dragging it out nights, until she had finished it, with the exception of some detail about the head, into a faithful replica of the mummy of Amosis, the original of which she had no doubt burned. It all made a vivid story; for never had his imagination been in such working order, and never had it responded more generously to his demands upon it. About two in the morning he finished his third column and concluded his story with:
"So this awful confession of madness and murder ended. I left the woman bound and helpless, sitting in her chair, her victim at her feet, to wait the coming of the police." Then he added to Naylor personally, "Going notify police headquarters now and go back to hall."
Naylor, who had been reading the copy page by page as it came from the wire, and who, naturally, was taking a mere cold-blooded view of the case than Simpkins, telegraphed back:
"What share did Brander have in actual murder? You don't bring that out in story."
"Couldn't get it out of her," Simpkins sent back, truthfully enough.
"Find out," was the answer. "Get back to hall quick. Brander may have looked in to help Mrs. A. with her night work while you were gone. Will hold enough men for an extra."
Simpkins called a cab and started for police headquarters at breakneck speed, but on the way he stopped at Brander's rooms; for a miserable suspicion was growing in his brain. "If that really was Isis," he was thinking, "it's funny she didn't nail me before I got to the door, even with the start I had."
On his representation that he had called on a matter of life and death, the janitor admitted him to Brander's rooms. They were empty, and the bed had not been slept in.
I
t was just after three o'clock when Simpkins, an officer on either side, entered the Oriental Building again, and hurried up the stairs to the Society's office.
There they were halted, for Simpkins had left his key sticking in the spring lock inside and slammed the door behind him, a piece of carelessness over which the officers were greatly exercised; for he had not confided to them that he had started off in a hurry. In the end, they sent the door crashing in with their shoulders and preceded Simpkins—and he was scrupulously polite about this—into the ante-chamber.
There an incandescent lamp over the youth's desk gave them light and Simpkins momentary relief. The men used hard language when they found the second door in the same condition as the first, but Simpkins took their rating meekly. They tried their shoulders again, but the oak was stout and long withstood their assaults. When at last it yielded it gave way suddenly, and they all tumbled pell-mell into the hall. Simpkins jumped up with incredible agility, and was back in the lighted ante-chamber before the others had struggled to their feet. Suddenly they stopped swearing. They looked around them. Then they, too, stepped back into the ante-chamber.
"Ain't there any way of lighting this place?" asked one of them rather sullenly.
"Nothing but three incandescents over the desks," answered Simpkins.
"Use your lantern then, Tom; come on now, young feller, and show us where this woman is," he said roughly, and he pushed Simpkins through the door.
As the officers followed him, he fell back between them and linked his arms through theirs. And silently they advanced on the altar, a grotesque and rather unsteady trio, the bull's eyes on either side flashing ahead into the darkness.
"The lamp's still burning," whispered Simpkins. They were far enough into the hall now to see the glow from it in the corner. "Flash your lights around those pillars, boys. There, over there!"
The bull's eyes jumped about searching her out. "There! now! Hold still!" cried Simpkins as they focused on the chair.
The black mummy lay as he had left it, the cloth still on the face, but the chair was empty. Straight to the veil the reporter ran, and pulled the cord. Light broke from above, and beat down on an altar heaped with dying roses and the statue of a woman, smiling. And at her feet there crouched a great black cat, that arched its back and snarled at Simpkins.
Beyond, the lights were still burning in Mrs. Athelstone's apartment, but there was no one in the rooms. Some opened drawers in the bureau and the absence of her toilet articles from the table told of preparations for a hasty flight.
They did not linger long over their examination of the rooms. But after replacing the broken doors as best they could and sealing them, they went out by the main entrance to question the watchman, whom they found dozing in his chair.
Had he seen anything of Mrs. Athelstone? Sure; he'd called a cab for her about an hour ago and she'd driven off with her brother.
"Her brother!" echoed Simpkins.
"Yep," yawned the watchman; "you know him—parson—Doctor Brander. What's up?"
"Nothing," Simpkins returned sourly, but to himself he added, "Oh, hell!"
O
nce in the street again, after a word of explanation to the watchman, the officers and Simpkins separated, they to report and send out an alarm for Mrs. Athelstone and Brander, he to call up his office before rejoining them. His exultation over his beat was keyed somewhat lower, now that he understood what Brander's real interest in Mrs. Athelstone was. Mentally, he wrung the neck of Buttons for not having known it; figuratively, he kicked himself for not having guessed it; literally, he damned his employers for their British reserve, their cool assumption that because he was their clerk he was not interested in their family affairs. "Cuss 'em for snobs," he wound up finally, a deep sense of his personal grievance stirring his sociable Yankee soul.
Of course, this sickening brother and sister business wouldn't touch the main fact of the story, but it knocked the "love motive" and the "heart interest" higher than a kite, utterly ruining some of his prettiest bits of writing, besides letting him in for a call-down from Naylor. Still, the old man couldn't be very hard on him—he'd understand that some trifling little inaccuracies were bound to creep into a great big story like this, dug out and worked up by one man.
At this more cheerful conclusion, a newsboy, crying his bundle of still damp papers, came along, and Simpkins hailed him eagerly. Standing under a lamp on the corner, skipping from front page to back, then from head to head inside, with an eye skilled to catch at a glance the stories which a loathed contemporary had that theBannerhad missed, he ran through the bunch. TheSun—not a line about Athelstone in it. Bully! TheAmerican—he was a little afraid of theAmerican. Safe again. TheWorld—Sam Blythe's humorous descriptive story of the convention led. He stopped to pity Sam and the New York papers, as he thought of the Boston newsboys, crying his magnificent beat, till all Washington Street rang with the glory of it. And he could see the fellows in Mrs. Atkinson's, letting their coffee grow cold as they devoured theBanner, stopping only here and there to call across to each other: "Good work, Simp., old boy! Great story!"
Then—Simpkins turned the page. Accident—ten killed—bank robbed—caught—Mrs. Jones gets divorce.... What!
NOTED SCIENTIST SECURES IMPORTANT RIGHTSDOCTOR ATHELSTONE ARRANGES FOR ROYAL SOCIETYTO EXPLOIT RECENT DISCOVERIES
Simpkins stuttered around for an exclamation; then looked up weakly. Instinct started him on the run for the nearest long-distance telephone, but before he had gone twenty feet he stopped. The paper was long since off press and distributed. He had no desire to know what Naylor was saying. He could not even guess. There are heights to which the imagination cannot aspire.
Then came a faint ray of hope. That was an Associated Press dispatch—a late one probably. But if it had reached the New York papers in time to catch the edition, Naylor must have received it soon enough to kill his story. But even as this hope came it went. The news interest of the dispatch was largely local. Doubtless it had been sent out only to the New York papers.
Simpkins forced himself to read the body of the message now, although he gagged over every line of it:
London, etc. Dr. Alfred W.R. Athelstone, well known in London as the president of the American branch of the Royal Society of Egyptian Exploration and Research, arrived here this morning and is stopping at the Carlton. He announces that the Khedive has been graciously pleased to grant to his society the sole right to excavate the tombs recently discovered by one of its agents in the Karnak region. Doctor Athelstone left home quietly some weeks ago, and held back any announcement of the discoveries, which promise to be very important, while the negotiations, now brought to a happy conclusion, were pending. He sails for New York on the Campania tomorrow.
"Do I go off half-cocked? Am I yellow? Is a pup yellow?" groaned Simpkins, and he started off aimlessly toward the park, fighting his Waterloo over again and counting up his losses. That foolish, foolish letter! Why had he soiled his fingers by opening it! Of course, that line which loomed so large and fine in his story, that pointed the impressive finger of Fate at Crime, "That thing that I have to do is about done!" referred to Doctor Athelstone's silly negotiations. The letter must have been from him. Now, who could have known that a grown man would indulge in such fool monkey-business as writing love-letters in hieroglyphics to his own wife?... And that blame black mummy. Back to darkest Africa for his! If any one ever said mummy to him there'd be murder done, all right. Oh, for the happy ignorance of those days when he knew nothing about Egypt except that it was the place from which the cigarettes came!... Brander, no doubt, had gone out to send a cablegram of congratulation to Doctor Athelstone, and while he was away the woman had started in to repair a crack in that precious old Amosis of hers. Perhaps the moths had got into him! "And she thought that I was crazy, and was stringing me along, waiting till the Nile Duck got back," muttered the reporter, stopping short in his agony. "Oh! you're guessing good now, Simp., all right, because there's only one way to guess." And as he started along again he concluded: "Damn it! even the cat came back!"
If there was one thing in all the world that Simpkins did not want to see it was a copy of theBannerwith that awful story of his staring out at him from the first page, headed and played up with all the brutal skill in handling type of which Naylor was a master; but he felt himself drawn irresistibly to the Grand Central Station, where the Boston papers would first be put on sale.
Half an hour to wait. Gad! He could never go back and face Naylor!... Libel! Why, there wasn't money enough in the world to pay the damages the Athelstones would get against the paper. He'd take just one look at it and then catch the first train for Chicago. Perhaps he could get a job there digging sewers, or selling ribbons in Fields', or start a school of journalism. Any old thing, if they didn't nab him and put him in Bloomingdale before he could get away.... He made for the street again. He wouldn't look at theBanner. What malignant little devils the types were when they shouted your sins, not another fellow's, from the front page, or whispered them in a stage aside from some little paragraph in an obscure corner of the paper—a corner that the whole world looked into. Hell, he'd get out of the filthy business! Think of the light and frolicsome way in which he'd written up domestic scandals, the entertaining specials he'd turned out on unfaithful husbands, the snappy columns on unhappy wives, careless of the cost of his sensation in blood and tears! And now they'd write him up—Naylor would attend to that editorial himself, and do it in his most virtuous style—and brand him as a fakir, a liar, and a yellow dog.
Simpkins was back at the news-stand again and there were the Boston papers. He snatched aBannerfrom the top of the pile. No, he must have the wrong paper. He tore through it from front to back and then to front again, his heart bounding with joy. There was not a line of his story in it. They had received that Associated Press dispatch, after all. Yes, there it was, but oh, how differently it looked! It spelt damnation an hour ago, it meant salvation now.
After all, hadn't his mistake been a natural one? Hadn't he done his best for the paper? Wasn't it his duty to run down a lead like that? He'd made errors of judgment, perhaps, but he'd like to see the man who wouldn't have under the circumstances. Of course, mistakes would creep in occasionally and give innocent people the worst of it, but look at the good he'd done in his life by exposing scoundrels. How could he, how could any man, have acted differently who was loyal to his paper, whose first interests were the public good? If Naylor didn't appreciate a star man when he had him, he thought he knew an editor or two who did. Simp., old boy, wasn't going to starve.... Starve? It had been hungry work, so he'd just step across to the Manhattan, get a bite of breakfast, and look up the trains to Boston.
Naylor did know a good man when he had him, and likewise—quite as valuable a bit of knowledge—he knew when a man had had enough. So when Simpkins sat down that afternoon to tell him his experiences, he only smiled quizzically as the reporter wound up by asking, "Now, what doyouthink?" and answered:
"Well, for one thing, I think it did you a power of good to look behind that veil, because I reckon that for once in your life you've told me the truth as near as you know how."
"No, but aside from this pleasant personal conclusion," persisted Simpkins, modestly shedding the compliment.
"Well, I guess we won't bother with the Blavatsky story just now, but here's a clipping about a woman who's discovered what she calls soul aura—says we've got red, white and blue souls and all that sort of stuff. You're our soul expert now, so go over to the City Hall and ask the mayor and any politicians you meet what's the color of their souls. It ought to make a fair Sunday special." And Naylor swung around to his desk, for the city editor had just told him that the headless trunk of a woman had been picked up in the river—a find that promised a good story—and a newspaper man cannot waste time on yesterday.
Simpkins' face fell. That he had not been assigned to find the head was, he knew, the beginning of his punishment. But as he walked down the dingy hall to the street his step became more buoyant, and once in the open air he started off eager and smiling. For a good opening sentence was already shaping in his head, and as he stepped into the City Hall he was repeating to himself:
"Yesterday, when the Mayor was asked, 'What is the color of your soul?' he returned his stereotyped 'Nothing to give out on that subject,' and then added, 'But it would be violating no confidence to tell you that Boss Coonahan's is black.'"
To Simpkins it had been given to lift the veil and to know the truth; yet he was back again serving the false gods.