The Living Mummy

by Ambrose Pratt

Chapter XXIX Saved by fire

Belleville's first act, after tossing the Arab's corpse upon the floor and bolting the laboratory door, was to rush over to the couch and remove therefrom the mummy of Ptahmes. This he placed with careful haste upon a marble slab, and he commanded me, in Arabic, meanwhile, to carry the lady to the couch. I obeyed him in silence. He then ordered me to take up the body of the Englishman, Pinsent, and bring it to the sarcophagus. This gave me an opportunity to examine the Arab. I did so, and found him quite dead. Belleville's dagger had twice pierced his heart. I then raised the corpse and carried it to the great lead coffin. "What next, master?" I asked in guttural Arabic.

Belleville's voice answered from behind me. "Lift the carrion up! That is well. Now let it slip into the bath! Gently, Ptahmes, gently—or the stuff will splash. Here—I will help you."

"Where?" I demanded. I was trying to locate him.

"Wait," he replied—then "Here!" His voice sounded from across the sarcophagus.

A second later his hand brushed one of mine and passed. "I'll take the shoulders," he said. "You take the feet! Be careful, man—gently, gently!"

It was maddening to be so near and yet so far. But there was nothing for it except to follow his directions. I, therefore, grasped the corpse firmly by the ankles, when the greater weight of it had been transferred, and then I watched the great blood clot upon its chest—the only visible sign of its existence—sink down, down to the liquid contents of the coffin. Soon it rested there like a crimson lily on the surface of a pond. I let my fingers loose their hold and the unseen limbs of the corpse subsided on the liquid with an oily swish. The whole corpse seemed to be floating. Belleville realised this as soon as I. "Wait here!" he said to me—then added in English, speaking to himself, "Where the deuce did I put that glass rod? Ah! I remember." Then I heard the thud of his retreating steps, and a little later I saw waveringly approaching me from across the room, apparently of its own volition, a long, glass, solid bar, about four feet long and an inch thick. I was overjoyed at the sight, for my hands were free, Belleville could not see me, and the glass rod informed me exactly of his whereabouts. Quick as thought, I slipped around the sarcophagus and making a little detour, got behind the murderer. He went straight to the coffin and plunged the rod within it. Doubtless he was using it to submerge the corpse. I heard a hissing, bubbling sound, and Belleville saying, "Watch me closely, Ptahmes—for this is what you must do."

I crept upon him until I could hear his breathing quite distinctly, although he was not greatly exerting himself. Then came the time to act. "My God!" he suddenly exclaimed—"not Pinsent—Ptahmes—what's this?"

The glass rod was still. It stood bolt upright in the sarcophagus, and so rigidly motionless that I guessed Belleville's weight was leaning on it. I gave a swift glance into the coffin and almost shrieked with surprise. The liquid had made the dead Arab visible again, and his death-mask grinned up at us with a fixed and blood-curdling stare. On instant I opened my arms wide and threw them round my unseen enemy. He uttered a howl of rage and terror and turned within my grasp to fight me, biting and clawing like a savage beast. But very soon I mastered him. Disregarding his animal-like efforts, I seized him by the throat and beat his skull upon the edge of the sarcophagus until he had quite ceased to struggle. Then, anxious, of all things, to make sure of him by seeing him, I heaved him up and allowed him to slide headforemost down into the bath beside the Arab he had murdered in mistake for me. I reasoned that since the liquid there had made the Arab visible, it should produce a like effect on Belleville. But I was utterly unprepared for the result. The stuff must have been an acid of tremendous power. It awakened the senseless wretch to almost instant tortured consciousness. A series of dreadful shrieks filled the room with strange detonating echoes. Belleville was no sooner in the coffin than out of it and visible in part. His face and hands were plainly to be seen. They came out white and dripping wet, but a few seconds' contact with the air turned them red as blood. I seized the glass rod to defend myself, expecting an attack. But there was no need to use it. The shrieking wretch staggered down the room to the first dispensing cabinet. He tore the door open and clutched at a big phial, the contents of which he poured upon his hands and splashed upon his face, wailing all the while like a lost soul in the depths of Hell. Happily he did not keep this up for long. The drug that he applied to his hurts, whatever it was, must have salved them, for in a moment or two his heart-rending outcries subsided to a deep, low sobbing. Even that, however, was more than I could stand. I wanted Belleville dead, but I could not endure the sight and sound of his agony—agony that I, unwittingly, had caused.