CHAPTER VIII.

SPECIAL OPINIONS

“The last time the man Danbazzar was about,” said Countess Colonna, “the result was that a motor lorry and ten men arrived. The front doors were taken off their hinges and a stone figure as big as the Statue of Liberty was carried into the library.”

“I don’t think it will happen this time, Micky,” Barry assured her.

“I hope not,” was the reply. “I don’t like Danbazzar. I always imagine him living in a harem.”

“I haven’t met the sportsman,” said Jim Sakers, “but I am going to crash into the University Club to-night and look him over keenly. If I don’t approve, Barry, I shan’t hesitate to advise you to drop him. On the other hand, I may be favourably impressed. And as is only fair to him, if this should prove to be the case, I shall relieve your mind at once and let you know.”

“Thanks,” Barry replied. “I shall be in a frightfully unsettled state until I have your opinion.”

“That’s quite natural,” Jim agreed; “but I promise not to keep you in suspense.”

“It occurs to me, young Sakers,” Aunt Micky broke in, “that you and I are being deliberately kept in the dark about this thing. Young Cumberland here has a secret eye. It’s his left!”

Barry laughed.

“You hit the nail on the head, Micky,” he admitted. “Danbazzar has come across with a proposal about which I have promised to say nothing. It’s a very queer business--more than queer, in fact; but to-night I shall know more about it. Dad has invited him to join us at the University Club with Dr. Rittenburg of the Smithsonian, Horace Pain, the big Oriental man, and Dad’s old friend, Dr. Blackwell of Yale.”

“What a wild party!” Jim commented. “I suppose you are going on to the Earl Carroll Vanities after dinner?”

“On the contrary,” Barry assured him, “we are going on to Danbazzar’s place.”

“You can’t delude me,” cried Jim scornfully. “I see Dr. Rittenburg and Professor Blackwell dancing far into the small hours of the morning in some small but costly cabaret. I can see you all, haggard-eyed, flushed with wine, a really shocking Six, taking breakfast at Child’s on Fifth Avenue as the morning sun peeps in upon the end of your debauch. Barry, I’m sorry, but you are making the pace too fast.”

The dinner turned out more successful, however, than Jim had predicted. Barry’s father had never before so taken him into his confidence in regard to this hobby of his life, and under different circumstances he would certainly have come prepared to be bored. As it chanced, the company proved to be so amusing that he was amazed to find how quickly the time passed.

Horace Pain, the celebrated Orientalist, was all that he had expected of him; a dry, slow-spoken scholar, whose only enthusiasm was for his subject. But Dr. Rittenburg proved to be a comedian who would have rejoiced Jim’s heart. He was a round little man--a study in curves. His red face was round, his bald head was round, and he wore very round glasses. He and Professor Blackwell succeeded in keeping the party in a state of continuous laughter; for Professor Blackwell, tall, gaunt, and saturnine, had a fund of wit, as Barry knew, which seemed to be inexhaustible.

Danbazzar, too, was a delightful companion. There seemed to be few spots in the world, civilized or uncivilized, that he had not visited, from the headwaters of the Amazon to the monasteries of Thibet. The real purpose of the meeting was not touched upon, however, until the party had adjourned to the library of the club. Here, as they took their seats in an alcove, Barry observed Jim. Faithful to his promise, he had “crashed in.”

With an exaggerated air of secrecy, based upon the Charlie Chaplin tradition, he crept around the gallery above, turning his back swiftly whenever one of the party looked up, and apparently searching for some book which he always failed to find. Crouching low behind the rails, so that only the top of his head and his eyes were visible, he peered down intently. This amazing piece of pantomime was only interrupted by the decision of the party to adjourn serious discussion to Danbazzar’s apartment.

But, as they quitted the club and got into John Cumberland’s big car which waited outside, Jim Sakers, his face buried in an evening paper, hat brim pulled down over scowling features, stood beside the steps watching intently.

Danbazzar’s apartment, Barry had always been given to understand, contained a number of literally priceless objects, every one unique and irreplaceable, and any one of which he could have sold over and over again for incredible sums. Used to the orderly neatness of his father’s collection, he came prepared to find something similar, although probably on a smaller scale.

The address proved to be situated amid some of the loudest noises of New York. He had thought vaguely, before, that it was an odd spot to live in. But he had not allowed for the fact that Danbazzar lived on the roof. Here, like a priest of Bel, high above all the buildings surrounding him, Danbazzar from a cloudy silence looked down upon teeming streets, thousands of lighted windows, dwarfed sky signs.

His apartment was virtually a bungalow from the porch of which one stepped into a sort of Japanese garden, with flowering vines and tortuous, spiny cacti. A large pond was approached through a loggia and peopled by golden carp. From little arbours around the wall one might look down upon a muted New York. An Arab servant, who apparently knew not one word of English, attended upon the guests; and presently they entered a large, low room, in which the famed collection was housed.

Here, Barry had a shock. The value of the statuettes, vases, mummies, caskets, items of jewellery, and other nameless relics of Egypt he could not dispute. But instead of being formally lined up in wall cases and cabinets, they were littered about the place in the utmost confusion.

A magnificently painted sarcophagus had been converted into a cupboard to contain bottles of Scotch whisky, old brandy, champagne, and other material comforts. Cigar butts disfigured the polished floor. There were books and papers lying about anywhere and everywhere.

The effect was that of a second-hand dealer’s establishment in which somebody had been trying to rope a steer. He was unable to conceal his amazement, and:

“Did you ever see anything like it, Barry?” his father said, speaking in a low voice.

“Never!” he confessed. “Are these things really valuable?”

“Valuable!” exclaimed Dr. Rittenburg, who stood near. “There is a fortune in this room.”

Danbazzar cleared a space upon a large table and set out the papyrus.

“Now, gentlemen,” he said in his courtly manner, “let us get to the business of the evening. I have given you, Dr. Rittenburg, and you, Mr. Pain, an opportunity of examining and testing this piece of writing. I await your opinion.”

“I have anticipated it,” said John Cumberland, in a voice that betrayed suppressed excitement.

Horace Pain removed the cigar from between his teeth, cleared his throat, and:

“I know Professor Rittenburg’s opinion,” he said, “and he knows mine. The papyrus is undeniably genuine. It has points of resemblance to the Turin Papyrus which I shall presently point out, as I have already pointed them out to my friend Dr. Rittenburg. Respecting the claims of its writer, or writers, I shall have nothing to say. This is outside my province. As, I take it”--turning to John Cumberland--“it is outside yours? I mean, your interest, like mine, is in the writing itself, not in what it states.”

“Partly,” John Cumberland replied, glancing swiftly in Danbazzar’s direction.

“Well,” Pain went on, in his dry, hard voice, “I mean to say that a parallel is the medical papyrus in Berlin. No one would think of making up a prescription from it. You agree with me, Professor?”--turning in the direction of Professor Blackwell.

“I agree with you entirely,” was the reply. “It contains among other things a prescription for a hair restorer which, I will guarantee, would turn Paderewski bald in a fortnight.”

“Exactly,” Dr. Rittenburg agreed. “I look upon this business of the sleeping Princess as a sort of religious ritual, Cumberland, similar to the worship of the Apis Bull--only kept up for political reasons to delude the people, and to preserve the immortal name of Seti. Something of that kind.”

“Quite beside the point, gentlemen,” Danbazzar’s deep voice broke in. “The fact that the papyrus is genuine and, in your opinion, dates from the time of the Pharaoh mentioned in it is the thing of interest to Mr. Cumberland and to myself.”

“Of this I am certain.”

Dr. Rittenburg nodded his round head vigorously.

“So am I,” Horace Pain admitted. “Of course, its publication will create a profound sensation, and the museums of the world will outbid one another to get it.”

“They will bid in vain,” Danbazzar replied. “Mr. John Cumberland has acquired it.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Dr. Rittenburg. “But of course you will publish a reproduction? Every student in the world is entitled to access to such a discovery.”

John Cumberland smiled happily. No triumph that his business had offered or could offer compared with the thrill of such a moment as this.

“In due course,” he said, “but not yet.”

Whereupon a debate arose concerning certain papyri, with the mere names of which Barry was unacquainted, and their points of resemblance to this one. Much excellent old brandy aided the debate. The two experts disagreed fiercely; but at a late hour, Dr. Rittenburg and Horace Pain having departed quite reconciled:

“Now,” said John Cumberland, “with Danbazzar’s consent, I shall discuss this matter with you, Blackwell. Your province is rather physiological than archæological. We have had expert opinion on the papyrus itself, and now we should like to have your opinion upon the feasibility of the claims made in it.”

The silent Arab replenished the guests’ glasses, except the Professor’s; for Blackwell, who was already lost in thought, waved him aside. The distinguished scientist was a tall man, though not so tall as Danbazzar, and built bonily. He was clean-shaven, with a long strong nose; and from his high brow, hair which was beginning to go gray was carelessly brushed back. His clothes would have fitted someone else better than they fitted the Professor, and he wore a low double collar with his dinner jacket, allowing free play to an enormously developed Adam’s apple.

His eyes, behind the thick pebbles of his glasses, resembled two interrogation marks.

“I never jump to conclusions,” he began, thoughtfully selecting a cigar from a box which Danbazzar slid across the table in his direction.

The box was an Ancient Egyptian curiosity, but Professor Blackwell had not even noticed the fact: his thoughts were elsewhere.

“Life,” he went on, “considered in the abstract, is the one thing of which Science knows nothing. Adolf Weisman maintained that duration of life is dependent upon adaptation to external conditions. We may take the case of what is sometimes termed ‘mummy wheat.’ Personally, I cannot vouch for these stories.”

“_I_ can,” Danbazzar said gravely. “I myself have seen grains of wheat taken from a tomb of the fourteenth dynasty cultivated.”

“Did they yield any crop?” the Professor inquired.

“No,” Danbazzar acknowledged. “They shot up a very tender green to a height of six inches and then died.”

“Quite, quite,” murmured the Professor, “but the life principle was present, you see--dormant, but present. There is the case of a toad imprisoned in a rock cavity for several generations, vouched for by persons of repute, and I once examined, in India, a fakir who claimed the power to unhitch his spirit from his body. Under these conditions he presented every appearance of death and existed without visible wasting for a long period unsustained by food or drink of any kind. The question really is whether the tissues could be preserved over so long a period as this”--nodding toward the papyrus--“indicated.”

“If for three hundred years, why not for three thousand?” John Cumberland demanded.

“Quite, quite,” the professor murmured; “but unfortunately this fact rests upon what I may term ‘hearsay.’ The people who wrote it have been dead for some little time, you must remember!”

There was a short silence, broken by Danbazzar.

“Have you ever seen the mummy of Seti the First?” he demanded in his deep, impressive tone.

“Yes.” Professor Blackwell looked up slowly. “Curiously enough, I was thinking about him. He, of course, dates from somewhere about the same period as Princess Zalithea, and the preservation in this case is remarkable. But the system of mummifying employed on Seti could not be employed on a living person. It is very interesting, though--very interesting. A German physiologist whom I met in Berlin recently--I forget his name, but he was a knowledgeable man--was anxious to attempt some experiment of the kind, in a small way, upon a hypnotized subject. The difficulty, of course, was to find the subject.”

“Naturally!” said Barry, laughing.

The Professor glanced aside at him over his spectacles. And then:

“I pointed out to my German acquaintance,” he went on, “that normal processes of decay would proceed under these conditions quite inevitably. And if there is anything in the extraordinary claims made in this papyrus, I can only assume that some formula must have been invented to check these processes. Of course, it is frightfully empirical. One dare not raise such a thing seriously before modern science. It would spell ruin.”

“Nevertheless,” said Danbazzar, “you are right--there _was_ such a formula.”

“Ah!” exclaimed John Cumberland, “if only we could recover it.”

“I _have_ recovered it,” Danbazzar replied calmly.

“What!”

“I acquired it at the same time that I acquired this other papyrus. It is locked in that safe over there.”

“That settles it,” said Cumberland, standing up. “My other plans are made. What do you estimate it would cost, Danbazzar, to finance the expedition?”

“Two hundred thousand dollars,” was the prompt reply.

“Be ready in a fortnight,” said Cumberland. “I must start then or postpone the journey till next season.”