Lord of the Silent Death

Death came out of a box and stalked through the streets of Chicago.
Samuel Morton found the box in Asia Minor, in a niche in the tomb of a forgotten Sumerian king, and not being able to open it, brought it back to this country with him. Morton was an archeologist, on the staff of the Asia Museum, located in South Chicago.
After months of effort, he succeeded, one hot August afternoon, in opening the box. But the death that lurked in it did not strike then. It waited.
Morton was alone that night, in the basement of the museum, trying to decipher the hieroglyphics engraved on the lid of the box—hieroglyphics written in no known language—when the silence came. The first sound to disappear was the rattle of the street cars on the surface line a block distant.
Morton was too engrossed in his work to notice that he could no longer hear the cars.
Then the soft rustle of the blower fan pushing cool air into the hot basement went into silence.
He still didn't notice the cessation of sound, did not realize that incredible death was creeping closer to him every second.
Even when the energetic tick of the alarm clock sitting on a mummy case was no longer audible, Morton did not sense that death was near. He was lost in his work.
But when he could no longer hear the scratch of his pen on the paper, he realized that something was happening. He looked up.
Morton was a solidly built, craggy giant. His face burned a deep brown by the sun of the Arabian desert, a shock of white hair that for days was undisturbed by brush or comb, he sat in his chair, every sense suddenly alert. His eyes raced over the room, seeking the cause of the uncanny silence.
He saw nothing.
But he recognized the presence of danger and reached for the telephone. It was the last move he ever made. As his fingers closed around the instrument, the silence hit him.