You who have followed these records will have made the acquaintance of Coram, the curator of the Menzies Museum; and it was through Coram that I first came to hear of the inexplicable beheading of mummies, which, commencing with that of Mr. Pettigrew's valuable mummy of the priestess Hor-ankhu, developed into a perfect epidemic. No more useless outrage could well be imagined than the decapitation of an ancient Egyptian corpse; and if I was surprised when I heard of the first case, my surprise became stark amazement when yet other mummies began mysteriously to lose their heads. But I will deal with the first instance, now, as it was brought under my notice by Coram.
He rang me up early one morning.
"I say, Searles," he said; "a very odd thing has happened. You've heard me speak of Pettigrew the collector; he lives out Wandsworth way; he's one of our trustees. Well, some demented burglar broke into his house last night, took nothing, but cut off the head of a valuable mummy!"
"Good Heavens!" I cried. "What an original idea!"
"Highly so," agreed Coram. "The police are hopelessly mystified, and as I know you are keen on this class of copy I thought you might like to run down and have a chat with Pettigrew. Shall I tell him you are coming?"
"By all means," I said, and made an arrangement forthwith.
Accordingly, about eleven o'clock I presented myself at a gloomy Georgian house – standing well back from the high road, and screened by an unkempt shrubbery. Mr. Mark Pettigrew, a familiar figure at Sotheby auctions, was a little shriveled man, clean-shaven and with the complexion of a dried apricot. His big spectacles seemed to occupy a great proportion of his face, but his eyes twinkled merrily and his humor was as dry as his appearance.
"Glad to see you, Mr. Searles," he said. "You've had some experience of the outre, I believe, and where two constables, an imposing inspector, and a plain-clothes gentleman who looked like a horse, have merely upset my domestic arrangements, you may be able to make some intelligent suggestion."
He conducted me to a large gloomy room in which relics, principally Egyptian, were arranged and ticketed with museum-like precision. Before a wooden sarcophagus containing the swathed figure of a mummy he stopped, pointing. He looked as though he had come out of a sarcophagus himself.
"Hor-ankhu," he said, "a priestess of Sekhet; a very fine specimen, Mr. Searles. I was present when it was found. See – here is her head!"
Stooping, he picked up the head of the mummy. Very cleanly and scientifically it had been unwrapped and severed from the trunk. It smelt strongly of bitumen, and the shriveled features reminded me of nothing so much as of Mr. Mark Pettigrew.
"Did you ever hear of a more senseless thing?" he asked. "Come over and look at the window where he got in."
We crossed the dark apartment, and the collector drew my attention to a round hole, which had been drilled in the glass of one of the French windows opening on a kind of miniature prairie which once had been a lawn.
"I am having shutters fitted," he went on. "It is so easy to cut a hole in the glass and open the catch of these windows."
"Very easy," I agreed. "Was anyone disturbed?"
"No one," he replied excitedly; "that's the insane part of the thing. The burglar, with all the night before him and with cases containing portable and really priceless objects about him, contented himself with decapitating the priestess. What on earth did he want her head for? Whatever he wanted it for, why the devil didn't he take it?"
We stared at one another blankly.
"I fear," said Pettigrew, "I have been guilty of injustice to my horsey visitor, the centaur. You look as stupid as the worst of us!
"I feel stupid," I said.
"You are," Pettigrew assured me with cheerful impertinence. "So am I, so are the police; but the biggest fool of the lot is the fool who came here last night and cut off the head of my mummy."
That, then, is all which I have occasion to relate regarding the first of these mysterious outrages. I was quite unable to propound any theory covering the facts, to Pettigrew's evident annoyance; he assured me that I was very stupid, and insisted upon opening a magnum of champagne. I then returned to my rooms, and since reflection upon the subject promised to be unprofitable, had dismissed it from my mind, when some time during the evening Inspector Grimsby rang me up from the Yard.
"Hullo, Mr. Searles," he said; "I hear you called on Mr. Pettigrew this morning?"
I replied in the affirmative.
"Did anything strike you?
"No; were you on the case?"
"I wasn't on the case then, but I'm on it now."
"How's that?"
"Well, there's been another mummy beheaded in Sotheby's auction rooms!
II.
I knew quite well what was expected of me.
"Where are you speaking from?" I asked.
"The auction-rooms."
"I will meet you there in an hour," I said, "and bring Moris Klaw if I can find him."
"Good," replied Grimsby, with much satisfaction in his voice; "this case ought to be right in his line."
I chartered a taxi and proceeded without delay to the salubrious neighborhood of Wapping Old Stairs. At the head of the blind alley which harbors the Klaw emporium I directed the man to wait. The gloom was very feebly dispelled by a wavering gaslight in the shedlike front of the shop. River noises were about me. Somewhere a drunken man was singing. An old lady who looked like a pantomime dame was critically examining a mahogany chair with only half a back, which formed one of the exhibits displayed before the establishment.
A dilapidated person whose nose chronically blushed for the excesses of its owner hovered about the prospective purchaser. This was William, whose exact position in the Klaw establishment I had never learned, but who apparently acted during his intervals of sobriety as a salesman.
"Good-evening," I said. "Is Mr. Moris Klaw at home?"
"He is, sir," husked the derelict, "but he's very busy, sir, I believe, sir."
"Tell him Mr. Searles has called."
"Yes, sir," said William; and, turning to the dame, "Was you thinking of buyin' that chair, mum, after you've quite done muckin' it about?"
He retired into the cavernous depths of the shop, and I followed him as far as the dimly seen counter.
"Moris Klaw, Moris Klaw! The devil's come for you!"
Thus the invisible parrot hailed my entrance. Indescribable smells, zoo-like, with the fusty odor of old books and the unclassifiable perfume of half-rotten furniture, assailed my nostrils; and mingling with it was the distinct scent of reptile life. Scufflings and scratchings sounded continuously about me, punctuated with squeals. Then came the rumbling voice of Moris Klaw.
"Ah, Mr. Searles – good-evening, Mr. Searles! It is the Pettigrew mummy, is it not?"
He advanced through the shadows, his massive figure arrayed for traveling in the caped coat, his toneless beard untidy as ever, his pince-nez glittering, his high bald brow yellow as that of a Chinaman.
"There has been a second outrage," I said, "at Sotheby's."
"So?" said Moris Klaw, with interest; "another mummy is executed!"
"Yes, Inspector Grimsby has asked us to join him there."
Moris Klaw stooped, and from beneath the counter took out his flat-topped brown bowler. From its lining he extracted a cylindrical scent-spray and mingled with the less pleasing perfumes that of verbena.
"A cooling Roman custom, Mr. Searles," he rumbled, "so refreshing when one lives with rats. So it is Mr. Grimsby who is puzzled again? It is Mr. Grimsby who needs the poor old fool to hold the lantern for him, so that he, the clever Grimsby, can pick up the credit out of the darkness. And why not, Mr. Searles, and why not? It is his business. It is my pleasure."