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 archeologist 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 realise what had happened. Coram cleared his throat nervously. It was one of the strangest scenes in which I had ever anticipated.
"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 I 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 – 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 shriveled 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.
HIS LAST BOW
Arthur Conan Doyle
No mystery author or detective character should need less of an introduction than Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) and his immortal creation, Sherlock Holmes. This most filmed, televised, and reprinted detective of all time is famous around the world. Actors like William Gillette, Basil Rathbone and Jeremy Brett have made entire careers on playing him. The nine volumes of Holmes' cases – from A Study in Scarlet (1887) through The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927)-are so sacred to mystery aficionados that they are collectively known as "the canon." But, despite their ubiquity, there are still many Sherlock Holmes stories that are little known to the general reader. Among them, "His Last Bow."
It was nine o'clock at night upon the second of August – the most terrible August in the history of the world. One might have thought already that God's curse hung heavy over a degenerate world, for there was an awesome hush and a feeling of vague expectancy in the sultry and stagnant air. The sun had long set, but one blood-red gash like an open wound lay low in the distant west. Above, the stars were shining brightly, and below, the lights of the shipping glimmered in the bay. The two famous Germans stood beside the stone parapet of the garden walk, with the long, low, heavily gabled house behind them, and they looked down upon the broad sweep of the beach at the foot of the great chalk cliff on which Von Bork, like some wandering eagle, had perched himself four years before. They stood with their heads close together, talking in low, confidential tones. From below the two glowing ends of their cigars might have been the smoldering eyes of some malignant fiend looking down in the darkness.
A remarkable man this Von Bork – a man who could hardly be matched among all the devoted agents of the Kaiser. It was his talents which had first recommended him for the English mission, the most important mission of all, but since he had taken it over those talents had become more and more manifest to the half-dozen people in the world who were really in touch with the truth. One of these was his present companion, Baron Von Herling, the chief secretary of the legation, whose huge 100-horse-power Benz car was blocking the country lane as it waited to waft its owner back to London.
"So far as I can judge the trend of events, you will probably be back in Berlin within the week," the secretary was saying. "When you get there, my dear Von Bork, I think you will be surprised at the welcome you will receive. I happen to know what is thought in the highest quarters of your work in this country." He was a huge man, the secretary, deep, broad, and tall, with a slow, heavy fashion of speech which had been his main asset in his political career.
Von Bork laughed.
"They are not very hard to deceive," he remarked. "A more docile, simple folk could not be imagined."
"I don't know about that," said the other thoughtfully. "They have strange limits and one must learn to observe them. It is that surface simplicity of theirs which makes a trap for the stranger. One's first impression is that they are entirely soft. Then one comes suddenly upon something very hard, and you know that you have reached the limit and must adapt yourself to the fact. They have, for example, their insular conventions which simply must be observed."
"Meaning, 'good form' and that sort of thing?" Von Bork sighed as one who had suffered much.