Part 14

“I have no occasion to remind you, Mr. Klaw,” said Coram, “that the Menzies Museum is a hard nut for any burglar to crack. We have a night watchman, you will remember, who hourly patrols every apartment. For any one to break into the Egyptian Room, force one of the cases and take out a mummy, would be a task extremely difficult to perform undetected.”

“This mummy hunter,” replied Klaw, “can perform it with ease; but because we shall all be waiting for him he cannot perform it undetected.”

“I shouldn’t think there is much likelihood of any attempt during the day?” I said.

“There is no likelihood,” agreed Klaw; “but I like to see that Grimsby busy! The man with the knife to decapitate mummies will come to-night. Without fear he will come, for how is he to know that an old fool from Wapping anticipates his arrival?”

We quitted the Museum together. The affair brought back to my mind the gruesome business of the Greek Room murders, and for the second time in my life I made arrangements to watch in the Menzies Museum at night.

On several occasions during the day I found myself thinking of this most singular affair and wondering in what way the “Book of the Lamps,” mentioned by Moris Klaw, could be associated with it. I was quite unable to surmise, too, how Klaw had divined that the Menzies Museum would become the scene of the next outrage.

We had arranged to dine with Coram in his apartments, which adjoined the Museum buildings, and an oddly mixed party we were, comprising Coram, his daughter, Moris Klaw, Isis Klaw, Grimsby, and myself.

A man had gone on duty in the Egyptian Room directly the doors were closed to the public, and we had secretly arranged to watch the place from nightfall onward. The construction of the room greatly facilitated our plan; for there was a long glass skylight in the centre of its roof, and by having the blinds drawn back we could look down into the room from a landing window of a higher floor--a portion of the curator’s house.

Dinner over, Isis Klaw departed.

“You will not remain, Isis,” said her father. “It is so unnecessary. Good-night, my child!”

Accordingly, the deferential and very admiring Grimsby descended with Coram to see Isis off in a taxi. I marvelled to think of her returning to that tumble-down, water-logged ruin in Wapping.

“Now, Mr. Grimsby,” said Moris Klaw, when we four investigators had gathered together again, “you will hide in the case with the mummies!”

“But I may find myself helpless! How do we know that any particular case is going to be opened? Besides, I don’t know what to expect!”

“Blessed is he that expecteth little, my friend. It is quite possible that no attempt will be made to-night. In that event you will have to be locked in again to-morrow night!”

Grimsby accordingly set out. He held a key to the curator’s private door, which opened upon the Greek Room, and also the key of a wall case. Moris Klaw had especially warned him against making the slightest noise. In fact, he had us all agog with curiosity and expectation. As he and Coram and I, having opened, very carefully, the landing window, looked down through the skylight into the Egyptian Room, Grimsby appeared beneath us. He was carrying an electric pocket torch.

Opening the wall case nearest to the lower end of the room, he glanced up rapidly, then stepped within, reclosing the glass door. As Klaw had pointed out earlier in the evening, an ideal hiding place existed between the side of the last sarcophagus and the angle of the wall.

“I hope he has refastened the catch,” said our eccentric companion; “but not with noisiness.”

“Why do you fear his making a noise?” asked Coram, curiously.

“Outside, upon the landing,” replied Moris Klaw, “is a tall piece of a bas-relief; it leans back against the wall. You know it?”

“Certainly.”

“To-night, you did not look behind it, in the triangular space so formed.”

“There’s no occasion. A man could not get in there.”

“He could not, you say? No? That exploits to me, Mr. Coram, that you have no eye for capacity! But if you are wrong, what then?”

“Any one hiding there would have to remain in hiding until the morning. He could not gain access to any of the rooms; all are locked, and he could not go downstairs, because of the night attendant in the hallway.”

“No? Yes? You are two times wrong! First--someone is concealed there!”

“Mr. Klaw!” began Coram, excitedly.

“_Ssh!_” Moris Klaw raised his hand. “No excitement. It is noisy and a tax upon the nerves. Second--you are wrong, because presently that hidden one will come into the Egyptian Room!”

“How? How in Heaven’s name is he going to _get_ in?”

“We shall see.”

Utterly mystified, Coram and I stared at Moris Klaw, for we stood one on either side of him; but he merely wagged his finger enjoining us to silence, and silent perforce we became.

The view was a cramped one, and standing there looking out at the clear summer night, I for one grew very weary of the business. But I was sustained by the anticipation that the mystery of the headless mummies was about to come to a climax. I felt very sorry for poor Grimsby, cramped in the corner of the Egyptian Room, for I knew him to be even more hopelessly in the dark respecting the purpose of these manœuvres than I was myself. In vain I racked my brain in quest of the link which united the ancient “Book of the Lamps” with the singular case which had brought us there that night.

Coram began to fidget, and I knew intuitively that he was about to speak.

“_Ssh!_” whispered Moris Klaw.

A beam of light shone out beneath us, across the Egyptian Room!

I concluded that something had attracted the attention of Grimsby. I leaned forward in tense expectancy, and Coram was keenly excited.

The beam of light moved; it shone upon the door of the very case in the corner of which Grimsby was hiding, but upon the nearer end, fully upon the face of a mummy.

A small figure was dimly discernible, now, the figure of the man who carried the light. Cautiously he crossed the room. Evidently he held the key of the wall case, for in an instant he had swung the door back and was hauling the mummy on to the floor.

Then out upon the midnight visitor leapt Grimsby. The light was extinguished--and Moris Klaw, drawing back from the window, seized Coram by the arm, crying, “The key of the door! The key of the door!”

We were down and into the Egyptian Room in less than half a minute. Coram switched on all the lights; and there with his back to the open door of the wall case, handcuffed and wild-eyed, was--Mr. Mark Pettigrew!

Coram’s face was a study--for the famous archæologist whom we now saw manacled before us was a trustee of the Menzies Museum!

“Mr. Pettigrew!” he said, hoarsely. “Mr. Pettigrew! there must be some mistake----”

“There is no mistake, my good sir,” rumbled Moris Klaw. “Look, he has with him a sharp knife to cut off the head of the priest!”

It was true. An open knife lay upon the floor beside the fallen mummy!

Grimsby was breathing very heavily and looking in rather a startled way at his captive, who seemed unable to realize what had happened. Coram cleared his throat nervously. It was one of the strangest scenes in which I had ever participated.

“Mr. Pettigrew,” he began, “it is incomprehensible to me----”

“I will make you to comprehend,” interrupted Moris Klaw. “You ask”--he raised a long finger--“why should Mr. Pettigrew cut off the head of his own mummy? I answer for the same reason that he cut off the head of the one at Sotheby’s. You ask why did he cut off the head of the one at Sotheby’s? I answer for the same reason that he cut off the head of the one at my house, and for the same reason that he came to cut off the head of this one! What is he looking for? He is looking for the ‘Book of the Lamps’!” He paused, gazing around upon us. Probably, excepting the prisoner, I alone amongst his listeners understood what he meant.

“I have related to Mr. Searles,” he continued, “some of the history of that book. It contained the ritual of the ancient Egyptian ceremonial magic. It was priceless; it gave its possessors a power above the power of kings! And when the line of Pankhaur became extinct it vanished. Where did it go? According to a very rare record--of which there are only two copies in existence--one of them in my possession and one in Mr. Pettigrew’s!--it was hidden _in the skull of the mummy of a priest or priestess of the temple!_”

Pettigrew was staring at him like a man fascinated.

“Mr. Pettigrew had only recently acquired that valuable manuscript work in which the fact is recorded; and being an enthusiast, gentlemen”--he spread wide his hands continentally “--all we poor collectors are enthusiasts--he set to work upon the first available mummy of a priest of that temple. It was his own. The skull did not contain the priceless papyrus! But all these mummies are historic; there are only five in Europe.”

“_Five?_” blurted Pettigrew.

“Five,” replied Klaw; “you thought there were only four, eh? But as a blind you called in the police and showed them how your mummy had been mutilated. It was good. It was clever. No one suspected you of the outrages after that--no one but the old fool who knew that you had secured the second copy of that valuable work of guidance!

“So you did not hesitate to use the keys you had procured in your capacity as trustee to gain access to this fourth mummy here.” He turned to Grimsby and Coram. “Gentlemen,” he said, “there will be no prosecution. The fever of research is a disease; never a crime.”

“I agree,” said Coram, “most certainly there must be no prosecution; no scandal. Mr. Pettigrew, I am very, very sorry for this.”

Grimsby, with a rather wry face, removed the handcuffs. A singular expression proclaimed itself upon Pettigrew’s shrivelled countenance.

“The thing I’m most sorry for,” he said, dryly, but with the true fever of research burning in his eyes, “if you will excuse me saying it, Coram, for I’m very deeply indebted to you--is that I can’t cut off the head of this fourth mummy!”

Mr. Mark Pettigrew was a singularly purposeful and rudely truculent man.

“It would be useless,” rumbled Moris Klaw. “I found the fifth mummy in Egypt two years ago! And behold”--he swept his hand picturesquely through the air--“I beheaded him!”

“What!” screamed Pettigrew, and leapt upon Klaw with blazing eyes.

“Ah,” rumbled Klaw, massive and unruffled, “that is the question--_what?_ And I shall not tell you!”

From his pocket he took out the scent spray and squirted verbena into the face of Mr. Pettigrew.

NINTH EPISODE. CASE OF THE HAUNTING OF GRANGE

I

A large lamp burned in the centre of the table; a red-shaded candle stood close by each diner; and the soft light made a brave enough show upon the snowy napery and spotless silver, but dispersed nothing of the gloom about us. The table was a lighted oasis in the desert of the huge apartment. One could barely pick out the suits of armour and trophies which hung from distant panelled walls, and I started repeatedly when the butler appeared, silent, at my elbow.

Of the party of five, four were men--three of them (for I venture to include myself) neatly groomed and dressed with care in conventional dinner fashion. The fourth was a heavy figure in a dress coat with broad satin lapels such as I have seen, I think, in pictures of Victorian celebrities. I have no doubt, judging from its shiny appearance, that it was the workmanship of a Victorian tailor. The vest was cut high and also boasted lapels; the trousers, though at present they were concealed beneath the table, belonged to a different suit, possibly a mourning suit, and to a different sartorial epoch.

The woman, young, dark, and exceedingly pretty, wore a gown of shimmering amber, cut with Parisian daring. Her beautiful eyes were more often lowered than raised, for Sir James Leyland, our host, was unable to conceal his admiration; his face, tanned by his life in the Bush, was often turned to her. Clement Leyland, the baronet’s cousin, bore a striking resemblance to Sir James, but entirely lacked the latter’s breezy manner. I set him down for a man who thought much and said little.

However, conversation could not well flag at a board boasting the presence of such a genial colonial as Sir James and such a storehouse of anecdotal oddities as Moris Klaw. Mr. Leyland and myself, then, for the most part practised the difficult art of listening; for Isis Klaw, I learned, could talk almost as entertainingly as her father.

“I am so glad,” said Moris Klaw, and his voice rumbled thunderously about the room, “that I have this opportunity to visit Grange.”

“It certainly has great historic interest,” agreed Sir James. “I had never anticipated inheriting the grand old place, much less the title. My uncle’s early death, unmarried, very considerably altered my prospects; I became a landed proprietor who might otherwise have become a ‘Murrumbidgee whaler’!”

He laughed, light-heartedly, glancing at Isis Klaw, and from her to his cousin.

“Clem had everything in apple-pie order for me,” he added, “including the family goblin!”

“Ah! that family goblin!” rumbled Moris Klaw. “It is him I am after, that goblin!”

The history of Grange, in fact, was directly responsible for Moris Klaw’s presence that night. An odd little book, “Psychic Angles,” had recently attracted considerable attention among students of the occult, and had proved equally interesting to the general public. It dealt with the subject of ghosts from quite a new standpoint, and incidentally revealed its anonymous author as one conversant apparently with the history of every haunted house in Europe. Few knew that the curio-dealer of Wapping was the author, but as Grange was dealt with in “Psychic Angles,” amongst a number of other haunted homes of England, a letter from Sir James Leyland, forwarded by the publisher, had invited the author to investigate the latest developments of the Leyland family ghost.

I had had the privilege to be associated with Moris Klaw in another case of apparent haunting--that which I have dealt with in an earlier paper: the haunting of The Grove. He had courteously invited me, then, to assist him (his own expression) in the inquiry at Grange. I welcomed the opportunity, for I was anxious to include in my annals at least one other case of the apparent occult.

“We shall without delay,” continued the eccentric investigator, “endeavour to meet him face to face--this disturber of the peace. Sir James, it is with the phenomena you call ghosts the same as with valuable relics, with jewels, with mummies--ah, those mummies!--with beautiful women!”

“To liken a beautiful woman to a relic,” said Sir James, “would be--well”--he glanced at Isis--“hardly complimentary!”

“It would be true!” Moris Klaw assured him, impressively. “Nature, that mystic process of reproduction, wastes not its models. Sir James, all beauty is duplicated. Look at my daughter, Isis.” Sir James readily obeyed. “You see her, yes? And what do you see?”

Isis lowered her eyes, but, frankly, I was unable to perceive any evidence of embarrassment in this singularly self-possessed girl.

“Perhaps,” resumed her father, “I could tell you what you see; but I will only tell you what it is you _may_ see. You may see a beauty of your Regency or a favourite of your Charles; the daughter of a Viking, an ancient British princess; the slave of a Cæsar, the dancer of a Pharaoh!”

“You believe in reincarnation?” suggested Clement Leyland, quietly.

“Yes, certainly, why not, of course!” rumbled Moris Klaw. “But I do not speak of it now, not I; I speak of Nature’s reproduction; I tell you how Nature wastes nothing which is beautiful. What has the soul to do with the body? I tell you how the reproduction goes on and on until the mould, the plate, the die, has perished! So is it with ghosts. You write me that your goblin has learned some new tricks. I answer, your goblin can never learn new tricks; I answer, this is not he, it is another goblin! Nature is conservative with her goblins as with her beautiful women; she does not disfigure the old model with alterations. What! Chop them about? Never! she makes new ones.”

Clement Leyland smiled discreetly, but Sir James was evidently interested.

“Of course I’ve read ‘Psychic Angles,’ Mr. Klaw,” he said; “consequently, your novel theories do not altogether surprise me. I gather your meaning to be this: a haunted house is haunted in exactly the same way generation after generation? Any new development points to the presence of a new force or intelligence?”

“It is exactly quite so,” Moris Klaw nodded, sympathetically. “You have the receptive mind, Sir James; you should take up ghosts; they would like you. There is a scientific future for the sympathetic ghost-hunter, for--I will whisper it--these poor ghosts are sometimes so glad to be hunted! It is a lonely life, that of a ghost!”

“The Grange ghost,” Sir James assured him, “is a most gregarious animal. He doesn’t go in for lonely groanings in the chapel or anything of that kind; he drops into the billiard room frequently, he’s often to be met with right here in the dining room, and of late he’s been sleeping with me regularly!”

“So I hear,” rumbled Moris Klaw; “so I hear. It is quaint, yes; proceed, my friend.”

Isis Klaw sat with her big eyes fixed upon Sir James, as he continued:

“The traditional ghost of Grange was a gray monk who, on certain nights--I forget the exact dates--came out from the chapel beyond the orchard carrying a long staff, walked up to a buttress of the west wall, and disappeared at the point where formerly there was a private entrance. In fact, there used to be a secret stair opening at that point and communicating with a room built by a remote Leyland of the eighth Henry’s time--a notorious roué. The last Leyland to use the room was Sir Francis, an intimate of Charles II. The next heir had the wing rebuilt, and the ancient door walled up.”

“Yes, yes,” said Moris Klaw. “I know it all, but you tell it well. This is a most interesting house, this Grange. I have recorded him, the gray monk, and I learn with surprise how another spook comes poaching on his preserves! Tell us now of these new developments, Sir James.”

Sir James cleared his throat and glanced about the table.

“Please smoke,” said Isis; “because I should like to smoke, too!”

“Yes, yes!” agreed Moris Klaw. “Remain, my child, we will all remain; do not let us move an inch. This banqueting hall is loaded with psychic impressions. Let us smoke and concentrate our minds upon the problem.”

Coffee and liqueurs were placed upon the table and cigarettes lighted. In deference to the presence of Isis, I suppose, no cigars were smoked; but the girl lighted an Egyptian cigarette proffered by Sir James with the insouciance of an old devotee of my Lady Nicotine. The butler having made his final departure, we were left--a lonely company in our lighted oasis--amid the shadow desert of that huge and ghostly apartment.

“All sorts of singular things have happened,” began Sir James, “since my return from Australia. Of course, I cannot say if these are recent developments, because my uncle, for seven or eight years before his death, resided entirely in London, and Grange was in charge of the housekeeper. It is notorious, is it not, that housekeepers and such worthy ladies never by any chance detect anything unseemly in family establishments with which they are associated? Anyway, when I was dug up out of the Bush, and all the formalities were through, good old Clement here set about putting things to rights for me, and I arrived to find Grange a perfect picture from floor to roof. New servants engaged, too, though the housekeeper and the butler, who have been in the family for years, remained, of course, with some other old servants. As I have said, everything was in apple-pie order.”

“Including the ghost!” interpolated his cousin, laughing.

“That’s the trouble,” said Sir James, banging his fist upon the table; “the very first night I dined in this room there was a most uncanny manifestation. Clement and I were sitting here at this very table; we had dined--not unwisely, don’t think that--and were just smoking and chatting, when----”

He ceased abruptly; in fact, the effect was similar to that which would have resulted had a solid door suddenly been closed upon the speaker. But the stark silence which ensued was instantly interrupted. My blood seemed to freeze in my veins; a horrid, supernatural dread held me fast in my chair. For, echoing hollowly around and about the huge, ancient apartment, rolled, booming, a peal of demoniacal laughter! From whence it proceeded I was wholly unable to imagine. It seemed to be all about, above us, and beneath us. It was mad, devilish, a hell-sound impossible to describe. It rose, it fell, it rose again--and ceased abruptly.

“My God!” I whispered. “What was it?”

II

In the silence that followed the ghostly disturbance we sat around the table listening. Sir James was the first to speak.

“A demonstration, Mr. Klaw!” he said. “This sort of thing happens every night!”

“Ah!” rumbled Moris Klaw, “every night, eh? That laughing? You have investigated--yes--no?”

“I tried to investigate,” explained the baronet, “but quite frankly I didn’t know where to begin.”

We were all recovering our composure somewhat, I think.

“You hear that laughter nowhere but in this room?” asked Klaw.

“I have always heard it when we have been seated at this table,” was the reply; “at no other time, but it can be heard clearly beyond the room. The servants have heard it. Excepting the housekeeper and the butler, they are leaving almost immediately.”

“Ah! _canaille!_” grunted Moris Klaw; “fear-pigs! It is always so, these servants. So you have not located the one that laughs, no?”

“No,” answered Sir James; “and he doesn’t stop at laughing--does he, Clem?”

Clement Leyland shook his head. He looked even paler than usual, I thought, and the uncanny incident seemed to have disturbed him greatly.

“What else?” rumbled Moris Klaw. “The gray monk is forgetting his manners. He becomes rude, eh--that gray monk?”

“The house has practically become uninhabitable,” said the baronet, bitterly. “None of the usual phenomena are missing. We have slamming doors, phantom footsteps, and, if the servants are to be believed, half the forces of hell loose here at night!”

“But your _own_ experiences?” interrupted Klaw.

“My own experiences in brief amount to this: I rarely sit at this table at night without hearing that beastly laughter, at least once. I never go into the billiard room, which opens out under the gallery yonder, without feeling a cold wind blowing upon my face or head, even in perfectly still weather, or with all the windows closed. To the left of the billiard room, and opening out of it, is a third centre of these disturbances. It’s the gun room, and guns have been fired there in the night, with the door locked, on no fewer than five occasions!”