tragic irony, he was crushed under the wheels of a horse-drawn ambulance just two days before the grand opening in 1872.
Nora took a break from her perusal of the documents. It was not quite three o’clock, and she was making better progress than she’d expected. If she could get this done by eight, she might have time to share a quick bite with Bill at the Bones. He would love this dark, dusty history. And it might make a good piece for the Times’s cultural or metropolitan section when the tomb’s opening neared.
She moved along to the next bundle, all museum documents and in much better condition. The first set of papers dealt with the opening of the tomb. In it were some copies of the engraved invitation:
The President of the United States of America
the Honorable General Ulysses S. Grant
The Governor of the State of New York the Honorable John T. Hoffman
The President of the New York Museum of Natural History
Dr. James K. Moreton
The Trustees and the Director of the Museum
Cordially invite you to a Dinner and Ball in honor of the opening of the
GRAND TOMB OF SENEF
Regent and Vizier to the Pharaoh Thutmosis IV,
Ruler of Ancient Egypt
1419-1386 B.C.
The Diva Eleonora de Graff Bolkonsky will perform Arias
from the New and Celebrated Opera Aida
by Giuseppe Verdi
Egyptian Costume
Nora held the crumbling invitation in her hand. It amazed her that the museum commanded such a presence in those days that the president himself signed the invitation. She shuffled further and discovered a second document-a menu for the dinner.
Hors d’oeuvres Varies
Consomme Olga
Kebab Egyptien
Filet Mignon Lili
Vegetable Marrow Farcie
Roast Squab amp; Cress
Pate de Foie Gras en Croute
Baba Ghanouj
Waldorf Pudding
Peaches in Chartreuse Jelly
There were a dozen blank invitations in the file. She set one aside, along with the menu, in a “to be photocopied” folder. This was something Menzies should see. In fact, she thought, it would be marvelous if they could duplicate the original opening-without the costume ball, perhaps-and offer the same menu.
She began reading the press notices of the evening. It had been one of those great social events of late-nineteenth-century New York, the likes of which would never be seen again. The guest list read like a roll call at the dawn of the Gilded Age: the Astors and Vanderbilts, William Butler Duncan, Walter Langdon, Ward McAllister, Royal Phelps. There were engravings from Harper’s Weekly showing the ball, with everyone dressed in the most outlandish interpretations of Egyptian costume…
But she was wasting time. She pushed the clippings aside and opened the next folder. It also contained a newspaper clipping, this time from the New York Sun, one of the scandal sheets of the time. It had an illustration of a dark-haired man in a fez, with liquid eyes, dressed in flowing robes. Quickly she scanned the article.
Sun Exclusive
Tomb in New York Museum Is Accursed!
Egyptian Bey Issues Warning
The Malediction of the Eye of Horus
New York-On a recent visit to New York by His Eminence Abdul El-Mizar, Bey of Bolbassa in Upper Egypt, the gentleman from the land of the pharaohs was shocked to find on display at the New York Museum the Tomb of SENEF.
The Egyptian and his entourage, who were being given a tour of the museum, turned away from the tomb in horror and consternation, warning other visitors that to enter the tomb was to consign oneself to certain and terrible death. “This tomb carries a curse well known in my own country,” El-Mizar later told the Sun.
Nora smiled. The article went on in the same vein, mingling a stew of dire threats with wildly inaccurate historical pronouncements, ending, naturally, with a “demand” by the alleged “Bey of Bolbassa” that the tomb be returned forthwith to Egypt. At the conclusion, almost as an afterthought, a museum official was quoted as saying that several thousand visitors entered the tomb every day and that there had never been an “untoward incident.”
This article was followed by a flurry of letters from various people, many of them clearly cranks, describing “sensations” and “presences” they had experienced while in the tomb. Several complained of sickness after visiting: shortness of breath, sweats, palpitations, nervous disorders. One, which merited a file all its own, told of a child who fell into the well and broke both his legs, one of which had to be amputated. An exchange of letters from lawyers resulted in a quiet settlement with the family for a sum of two hundred dollars.
She moved to the next file, which was very slender, and opened it, surprised to find inside a single yellowed piece of cardboard with a label pasted on it:
Contents moved to Secure Storage
March 22, 1938
Signed: Lucien P. Strawbridge
Curator of Egyptology
Nora turned this card over in surprise. Secure Storage? That must be what was now known as the Secure Area, where the museum kept its most valuable artifacts. What inside this file could have merited being locked away?
She replaced the piece of cardboard and put the file aside, making a mental note to follow up on this later. There was just one final bundle to go. Unsealing it, Nora found it to be full of correspondence and notes on the building of the pedestrian tunnel connecting the IND line subway station to the museum.
The correspondence was voluminous. As Nora read through it, she began to realize that the story the museum told-that the tomb had been sealed off because of the construction of the tunnel-was not exactly true. The truth, in fact, was just the opposite: the city wanted to route the pedestrian walkway from the front of the station well past the entrance of the tomb-a quicker and cheaper alternative. But for some reason, the museum wished to situate the tunnel toward the far end of the station. Then they argued that the new route would cut off the tomb’s entrance and force its closure. It seemed as if the museum wanted to force the closure of the tomb.
She read on. Toward the end of the file, she found a handwritten note, from the same Lucien P. Strawbridge who’d placed the earlier file in Secure Storage, scribbled on a memo from a New York City official asking why the museum wanted the pedestrian walkway in that particular location, given the extra costs involved.
The marginalia read:
Tell him anything. I want that tomb closed. Let us not miss our last, best chance to rid ourselves of this damnable problem.
L. P. Strawbridge
Damnable problem? Nora wondered just what kind of problem Strawbridge was referring to. She flipped through the file again, but there didn’t seem to be a problem connected with the tomb, beyond the
