'So there's a way out then, up above,' said Doyle, encouraged.
'We'll have to find a door first.' 'Jack, what in God's name were those—' 'Not now, Doyle,' said Sparks, leaping lightly down off the box. 'Up and on, Larry, we're not clear of this yet.'
Larry roused himself to his feet, and they set off trailing after Sparks.
'You all right, guv?' Larry asked Doyle. 'Nothing a few stiff yards of scotch wouldn't set right,' said Doyle.
His stoicism seemed to put the starch back in Larry's step.
'Second the motion. Thought for a minute you was goin' to chuck the sponge.'
'If you hadn't been so quick with that lock, we'd have all turned up our toes by now.'
'Easy as winking. Should've had it off before trouble turned the corner.'
'No worry,' said Doyle. 'Worse things happen at sea.'
They hustled to catch up to Sparks, who led them by torchlight willy-nilly through the immense storeroom. There were no paths to follow, no aisles or columns through which to plot a course. The cavern's wonders seemed to have been scattered recklessly, without benefit of any discernible design. Each turn through the dreamworld delivered them to a cargo of new wonders: a colony of urns as big as boxcars, others as delicate as acorns; ponderous sarcophagi of silver and lead inlaid with precious stones, baroque coronation carriages of alabaster and gold leaf, catafalques of ebony, ivory, and shining steel, headless mannequins in ceremonial costume from Africa, Asia, and the subcontinent; immense tapestries illustrating wars of lost and legendary kingdoms; a comprehensive zoography of savage animals taxidermed to passive domesticity—bears from every corner of the earth, great cats, ravenous wolves, rhinoceroses, elephants and ostriches, crocodiles and emus, and a spate of stranger, night- dwelling species undreamt-of or never seen before; a gallery of epic paintings in gilded frames assaying every imaginable scene, battles, seductions, royal births and deaths, bucolic Arcadias and nightmarish holocausts. At one juncture, they wandered through a ghostly fleet of skeletal ships, stripped to the ribs, awaiting resurrection. Gigantic cannons, engines of war, battering rams, catapults, and siege machines. A cityscape of uprooted walls, huts, houses, transplanted tombs, and reconstructed temples. Great stone heads. Hying machines. Feathered serpents. Instruments of music or torture. In its breathtaking totality, the chamber's contents added up to nothing less than an exhaustive anthropology of the known and unknown worlds, all of it shrouded in a thick dust of contumely and neglect.
'Have you ever seen the like?' said Doyle in amazement.
'No. I've heard rumors of the existence of such a storeroom for many years,' said Sparks, as they stopped again in a clearing, not a foot closer to finding an exit.
'Like civilization's graveyard,' said Larry.
'The spoils of the expansion of British Empire,' said
Doyle.
'Lord have mercy on the white man. Looks like we brung back every last stick we could carry and then some,' said
Larry.
'That's exactly what we've done; plundered the world's countinghouses and looted its tombs, and what booty we don't display upstairs in pride of conquest we covet from view down here in shame,' said Sparks.
'Just as every other dominant culture in history has done in its ascendancy,' said Doyle.
'I daresay the world above's a poorer place for it,' said Larry, sadness magnified by his intimate acquaintanceship with unlawful greed.
'Let it be no cause for worry,' said Sparks. 'Another conquering civilization will come along soon enough to relieve us of our burden.'
'It looks as if no one's been down here in years,' said Doyle, wiping a black thumbprint's worth of dust off the toe of a warlike Athena.
'Someone has: long enough to steal that statue of Tuamutef, at the very least,' said Sparks, laying that mystery to rest. 'If not a great deal more.' 'How's that, Jack?'
'Although the arrangement of these items seems willfully haphazard to the eye, there is still a loose, categorical method to it. And there were significant pieces missing from nearly every valuable collection we encountered. Here's an example, do you see?'
Sparks drew their attention to a quintet of Hellenic statues depicting a series of animated and sensuous nymphs. 'Calliope, Clio, Erato, Euterpe, and I believe this sprightly lass is Terpsichore,' said Sparks.
'The Nine Muses,' said Doyle. 'I had an uncle played the calliope,' said Larry. 'And only five of them left in attendance. You can clearly see here by these marks on the floor that the four missing ladies—help me, Doyle: Polyhymnia, Melpomene—'
'Thalia and Urania.'
'Thank you—you can see by these marks that the other four previously resided here alongside their sisters.'
'You think the others were stolen?'
'I do. I've noticed similar patterns of selective larceny throughout. As you've observed, Doyle, the curators of this circus are largely absentee. The members of the Brotherhood inserted that shaft into the tunnel in order to gain access to this room; they could siphon a steady stream of treasures out of this trove from now until doomsday and not so much as a teaspoon would be missed.'
'But to what purpose?'
'One of two reasons: to keep for themselves or sell off. You could hardly begin to put a price on what's in here.'
'Is that the Brotherhood's purpose then? Cornering the market on antiquities?' asked Doyle.
'To assemble an elite circle of movers and shakers like the heavyweights on that list to run a fencing operation, no matter how ambitious, strikes me as a tiny bit prosy, wouldn't you say, Larry?'
'Like the great chefs of Europe gettin' together to bake hot cross buns.'
'Quite. I suspect the reasons behind these thefts are twofold: the acquisition of specific and sacred items they believe necessary as their bridge to the mystic plane—i.e., our friend Tuamutef—and the profitable illicit sale of those items they don't require to finance the rest of their efforts.'
'But as you pointed out, they are all enormously wealthy,' said Doyle.
'And I'll acquaint you with the first ironclad rule of the enormously wealthy: Never spend one's own money.'
'Amen to that,' said Larry, the memory if not the light of larceny shining in his eyes.
'Pardon me, Larry. That principle is undoubtedly a good deal less class-conscious than I just stated.'
'No offense taken,' said Larry. ' 'Fink I'll have a peepers.' He lit his candle off the torch and wandered off around the next cluster of boxes.
'We can put a stop to their wanton thievery, that much is certain,' said Doyle.
'Sealing that tunnel will put an end to the robberies, though I fear the worst has already been done and the trail gone cold: Witness the ruined condition of that padlock on the iron doors.'
Doyle nodded, conceding the point.
'Whether or not we can successfully bring charges to bear against the firm of Rathborne and Sons for these crimes is a good deal less certain. It may not in fact be in our best interest.'
'How so, Jack?'
'Without a shred of physical evidence to support the accusation, an assault on the venerated, unsullied names of the Brotherhood through the plodding course of the courts will only vouchsafe their acquittal and drive them deeper to ground, while heaping untold ridicule upon ourselves. If we're to pursue them to the heart of their purpose, it's best we keep our efforts from public view until the moment we can strike decisively.'
A low whistle came from Larry on the other side of the bend. 'Have a muggins at this, then.'
Sparks and Doyle traced the light of Larry's candle and joined him, climbing up onto a barrier of crates that seemed to be a shield for the sight that greeted them. Sparks held high the torch, and they looked down at a solid square block of identical mummies' coffins, at least twenty in number, set shoulder to shoulder like cots in a crowded flophouse. The lids had been removed and stashed in a heap to one side. Two of the boxes still held their occupants: rangy, blackened, and withered corpses sheathed in rotting bandages. The rest were
empty.
