"My apologies to master Silvio on this occasion; but I am still puzzledto know why he is so keen against that mummy. Is he the same towardthe other mummies in the house? There are, I suppose, a lot of them.I saw three in the hall as I came in."
"There are lots of them," she answered. "I sometimes don't knowwhether I am in a private house or the British Museum. But Silvionever concerns himself about any of them except that particular one. Isuppose it must be because it is of an animal, not a man or a woman."
"Perhaps it is of a cat!" said the Doctor as he started up and wentacross the room to look at the mummy more closely. "Yes," he went on,"it is the mummy of a cat; and a very fine one, too. If it hadn't beena special favourite of some very special person it would never havereceived so much honour. See! A painted case and obsidian eyes--justlike a human mummy. It is an extraordinary thing, that knowledge ofkind to kind. Here is a dead cat--that is all; it is perhaps four orfive thousand years old--and another cat of another breed, in what ispractically another world, is ready to fly at it, just as it would ifit were not dead. I should like to experiment a bit about that cat ifyou don't mind, Miss Trelawny." She hesitated before replying:
"Of course, do anything you may think necessary or wise; but I hope itwill not be anything to hurt or worry my poor Silvio." The Doctorsmiled as he answered:
"Oh, Silvio would be all right: it is the other one that my sympathieswould be reserved for."
"How do you mean?"
"Master Silvio will do the attacking; the other one will do thesuffering."
"Suffering?" There was a note of pain in her voice. The Doctor smiledmore broadly:
"Oh, please make your mind easy as to that. The other won't suffer aswe understand it; except perhaps in his structure and outfit."
"What on earth do you mean?"
"Simply this, my dear young lady, that the antagonist will be a mummycat like this one. There are, I take it, plenty of them to be had inMuseum Street. I shall get one and place it here instead of thatone--you won't think that a temporary exchange will violate yourFather's instructions, I hope. We shall then find out, to begin with,whether Silvio objects to all mummy cats, or only to this one inparticular."
"I don't know," she said doubtfully. "Father's instructions seem veryuncompromising." Then after a pause she went on: "But of course underthe circumstances anything that is to be ultimately for his good mustbe done. I suppose there can't be anything very particular about themummy of a cat."
Doctor Winchester said nothing. He sat rigid, with so grave a look onhis face that his extra gravity passed on to me; and in itsenlightening perturbation I began to realise more than I had yet donethe strangeness of the case in which I was now so deeply concerned.When once this thought had begun there was no end to it. Indeed itgrew, and blossomed, and reproduced itself in a thousand differentways. The room and all in it gave grounds for strange thoughts. Therewere so many ancient relics that unconsciously one was taken back tostrange lands and strange times. There were so many mummies or mummyobjects, round which there seemed to cling for ever the penetratingodours of bitumen, and spices and gums--"Nard and Circassia's balmysmells"--that one was unable to forget the past. Of course, there wasbut little light in the room, and that carefully shaded; so that therewas no glare anywhere. None of that direct light which can manifestitself as a power or an entity, and so make for companionship. Theroom was a large one, and lofty in proportion to its size. In itsvastness was place for a multitude of things not often found in abedchamber. In far corners of the room were shadows of uncanny shape.More than once as I thought, the multitudinous presence of the dead andthe past took such hold on me that I caught myself looking roundfearfully as though some strange personality or influence was present.Even the manifest presence of Doctor Winchester and Miss Trelawny couldnot altogether comfort or satisfy me at such moments. It was with adistinct sense of relief that I saw a new personality in the room inthe shape of Nurse Kennedy. There was no doubt that that business-like,self-reliant, capable young woman added an element of security to suchwild imaginings as my own. She had a quality of common sense thatseemed to pervade everything around her, as though it were some kind ofemanation. Up to that moment I had been building fancies around thesick man; so that finally all about him, including myself, had becomeinvolved in them, or enmeshed, or saturated, or... But now that she hadcome, he relapsed into his proper perspective as a patient; the roomwas a sick-room, and the shadows lost their fearsome quality. The onlything which it could not altogether abrogate was the strange Egyptiansmell. You may put a mummy in a glass case and hermetically seal it sothat no corroding air can get within; but all the same it will exhaleits odour. One might think that four or five thousand years wou
ldexhaust the olfactory qualities of anything; but experience teaches usthat these smells remain, and that their secrets are unknown to us.Today they are as much mysteries as they were when the embalmers putthe body in the bath of natron...
All at once I sat up. I had become lost in an absorbing reverie. TheEgyptian smell had seemed to get on my nerves--on my memory--on my verywill.
At that moment I had a thought which was like an inspiration. If I wasinfluenced in such a manner by the smell, might it not be that the sickman, who lived half his life or more in the atmosphere, had graduallyand by slow but sure process taken into his system something which hadpermeated him to such degree that it had a new power derived fromquantity--or strength--or...
I was becoming lost again in a reverie. This would not do. I musttake such precaution that I could remain awake, or free from suchentrancing thought. I had had but half a night's sleep last night; andthis night I must remain awake. Without stating my intention, for Ifeared that I might add to the trouble and uneasiness of Miss Trelawny,I went downstairs and out of the house. I soon found a chemist's shop,and came away with a respirator. When I got back, it was ten o'clock;the Doctor was going for the night. The Nurse came with him to thedoor of the sick-room, taking her last instructions. Miss Trelawny satstill beside the bed. Sergeant Daw, who had entered as the Doctor wentout, was some little distance off.
When Nurse Kennedy joined us, we arranged that she should sit up tilltwo o'clock, when Miss Trelawny would relieve her. Thus, in accordancewith Mr. Trelawny's instructions, there would always be a man and awoman in the room; and each one of us would overlap, so that at no timewould a new set of watchers come on duty without some one to tell ofwhat--if anything--had occurred. I lay down on a sofa in my own room,having arranged that one of the servants should call me a little beforetwelve. In a few moments I was asleep.
When I was waked, it took me several seconds to get back my thoughts soas to recognise my own identity and surroundings. The short sleep had,however, done me good, and I could look on things around me in a morepractical light than I had been able to do earlier in the evening. Ibathed my face, and thus refreshed went into the sick-room. I movedvery softly. The Nurse was sitting by the bed, quiet and alert; theDetective sat in an arm-chair across the room in deep shadow. He didnot move when I crossed, until I got close to him, when he said in adull whisper:
"It is all right; I have not been asleep!" An unnecessary thing tosay, I thought--it always is, unless it be untrue in spirit. When Itold him that his watch was over; that he might go to bed till I shouldcall him at six o'clock, he seemed relieved and went with alacrity. Atthe door he turned and, coming back to me, said in a whisper:
"I sleep lightly and I shall have my pistols with me. I won't feel soheavy-headed when I get out of this mummy smell."
He too, then, had shared my experience of drowsiness!
I asked the Nurse if she wanted anything. I noticed that she had avinaigrette in her lap. Doubtless she, too, had felt some of theinfluence which had so affected me. She said that she had all sherequired, but that if she should want anything she would at once let meknow. I wished to keep her from noticing my respirator, so I went tothe chair in the shadow where her back was toward me. Here I quietlyput it on, and made myself comfortable.
For what seemed a long time, I sat and thought and thought. It was awild medley of thoughts, as might have been expected from theexperiences of the previous day and night. Again I found myselfthinking of the Egyptian smell; and I remember that I felt a delicioussatisfaction that I did not experience it as I had done. Therespirator was doing its work.
It must have been that the passing of this disturbing thought made forrepose of mind, which is the corollary of bodily rest, for, though Ireally cannot remember being asleep or waking from it, I saw avision--I dreamed a dream, I scarcely know which.
I was still in the room, seated in the chair. I had on my respiratorand knew that I breathed freely. The Nurse sat in her chair with herback toward me. She sat quite still. The sick man lay as still as thedead. It was rather like the picture of a scene than the reality; allwere still and silent; and the stillness and silence were continuous.Outside, in the distance I could hear the sounds of a city, theoccasional roll of wheels, the shout of a reveller, the far-away echoof whistles and the rumbling of trains. The light was very, very low;the reflection of it under the green-shaded lamp was a dim relief tothe darkness, rather than light. The green silk fringe of the lamp hadmerely the colour of an emerald seen in the moonlight. The room, forall its darkness, was full of shadows. It seemed in my whirlingthoughts as though all the real things had become shadows--shadowswhich moved, for they passed the dim outline of the high windows.Shadows which had sentience. I even thought there was sound, a faintsound as of the mew of a cat--the rustle of drapery and a metallicclink as of metal faintly touching metal. I sat as one entranced. Atlast I felt, as in nightmare, that this was sleep, and that in thepassing of its portals all my will had gone.
All at once my senses were full awake. A shriek rang in my ears. Theroom was filled suddenly with a blaze of light. There was the sound ofpistol shots--one, two; and a haze of white smoke in the room. When mywaking eyes regained their power, I could have shrieked with horrormyself at what I saw before me.
Chapter IV
The Second Attempt
The sight which met my eyes had the horror of a dream within a dream,with the certainty of reality added. The room was as I had seen itlast; except that the shadowy look had gone in the glare of the manylights, and every article in it stood stark and solidly real.