"Think of it, my friend," rumbled the other; "if it makes you laugh go on thinking of it, and you will grow fat!"
Grimsby openly winked at me. He was out of his depth himself, and was not displeased to find the omniscient Moris Klaw apparently in a similar position.
"I am not resentful," continued Klaw, "and I will capture for you the mummy man."
"What?" cried Grimsby. "Are you on the track?"
"I will tell you something, my laughing friend. You will secretly watch this Egyptian Room like the cat at the mouse-hole, and presently – I expect it will be at night – he will come here, this hunter of mummies!"
Grimsby stared incredulously.
"I don't doubt your word, Mr. Klaw," he said; "but I don't see how you can possibly know that. Why should he go for the mummies here rather than for those in one of the other museums or in private collections?"
"Why do you order a bottle of Bass," rasped Klaw, "in a saloon, rather than a bottle of water or a bottle of vinegar? It is because what you want is a bottle of Bass. Am I a damn fool? There are others. I am not alone in my foolishness!"
The group broke up: Grimsby, very puzzled, going off to make arrangements to have the Egyptian Room watched night and day, and Coram, Klaw, and I walking along in the direction of the Greek Room.
"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 man – a 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 tonight. 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 center 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 marveled to think of her returning to that tumbledown, waterlogged 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 tonight. In that event you will have to be locked in again tomorrow 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."
"Tonight, 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 hall-way."
"No? Yes? You are two times wrong! First, some one 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 bidden 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, 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 maneuvers 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 onto 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!"