“Precisely what I expected,” the doctor said calmly; “a fire elemental sent upon its mission in the days of Thebes, centuries before Christ, and tonight, for the first time all these thousands of years, released from the spell that originally bound it.”
We stared at him in amazement, Colonel Wragge opening his lips for words that refused to shape themselves.
“And, if we dig,” he continued significantly, pointing to the floor where the blackness had poured up, “we shall find some underground connection—a tunnel most likely—leading to the Twelve Acre Wood. It was made by—your predecessor.”
“A tunnel made by my brother!” gasped the soldier. “Then my sister should know—she lived here with him—” He stopped suddenly.
John Silence inclined his head slowly. “I think so,” he said quietly. “Your brother, no doubt, was as much tormented as you have been,” he continued after a pause in which Colonel Wragge seemed deeply preoccupied with his thoughts, “and tried to find peace by burying it in the wood, and surrounding the wood then, like a large magic circle, with the enchantments of the old formulae. So the stars the man saw blazing—”
“But burying what?” asked the soldier faintly, stepping backwards towards the support of the wall.
Dr. Silence regarded us both intently for a moment before he replied. I think he weighed in his mind whether to tell us now, or when the investigation was absolutely complete.
“The mummy,” he said softly, after a moment; “the mummy that your brother took from its resting place of centuries, and brought home—here.”
Colonel Wragge dropped down upon the nearest chair, hanging breathlessly on every word. He was far too amazed for speech.
“The mummy of some important person—a priest most likely—protected from disturbance and desecration by the ceremonial magic of the time. For they understood how to attach to the mummy, to lock up with it in the tomb, an elemental force that would direct itself even after ages upon anyone who dared to molest it. In this case it was an elemental of fire.”
Dr. Silence crossed the floor and turned out the lamps one by one. He had nothing more to say for the moment. Following his example, I folded the table together and took up the chairs, and our host, still dazed and silent, mechanically obeyed him and moved to the door.
We removed all traces of the experiment, taking the empty bowl back to the house concealed beneath an ulster.
The air was cool and fragrant as we walked to the house, the stars beginning to fade overhead and a fresh wind of early morning blowing up out of the east where the sky was already hinting of the coming day. It was after five o’clock.
Stealthily we entered the front hall and locked the door, and as we went on tiptoe upstairs to our rooms, the Colonel, peering at us over his candle as he nodded good night, whispered that if we were ready the digging should be begun that very day.
Then I saw him steal along to his sister’s room and disappear.
IV
But not even the mysterious references to the mummy, or the prospect of a revelation by digging, were able to hinder the reaction that followed the intense excitement of the past twelve hours, and I slept the sleep of the dead, dreamless and undisturbed. A touch on the shoulder woke me, and I saw Dr. Silence standing beside the bed, dressed to go out.
“Come,” he said, “it’s teatime. You’ve slept the best part of a dozen hours.”
I sprang up and made a hurried toilet, while my companion sat and talked. He looked fresh and rested, and his manner was even quieter than usual.
“Colonel Wragge has provided spades and pickaxes. We’re going out to unearth this mummy at once,” he said; “and there’s no reason we should not get away by the morning train.”
“I’m ready to go tonight, if you are,” I said honestly.
But Dr. Silence shook his head.
“I must see this through to the end,” he said gravely, and in a tone that made me think he still anticipated serious things, perhaps. He went on talking while I dressed.
“This case is really typical of all stories of mummy-haunting, and none of them are cases to trifle with,” he explained, “for the mummies of important people—kings, priests, magicians—were laid away with profoundly significant ceremonial, and were very effectively protected, as you have seen, against desecration, and especially against destruction.
“The general belief,” he went on, anticipating my questions, “held, of course, that the perpetuity of the mummy guaranteed that of its Ka—the owner’s spirit—but it is not improbable that the magical embalming was also used to retard reincarnation, the preservation of the body preventing the return of the spirit to the toil and discipline of earth-life; and, in any case, they knew how to attach powerful guardian-forces to keep off trespassers. And anyone who dared to remove the mummy, or especially to unwind it—well,” he added, with meaning, “you have seen—and you will see.”
I caught his face in the mirror while I struggled with my collar. It was deeply serious. There could be no question that he spoke of what he believed and knew.
“The traveller-brother who brought it here must have been haunted too,” he continued, “for he tried to banish it by burial in the wood, making a magic circle to enclose it. Something of genuine ceremonial he must have known, for the stars the man saw were of course the remains of the still flaming pentagrams he traced at intervals in the circle. Only he did not know enough, or possibly was ignorant that the mummy’s guardian was a fire-force. Fire cannot be enclosed by fire, though, as you saw, it can be released by it.”
“Then that awful figure in the laundry?” I asked, thrilled to find him so communicative.
“Undoubtedly the actual Ka of the mummy operating always behind its agent, the elemental, and most likely thousands of years old.”
“And Miss Wragge—?” I ventured once
