The Living Mummy

by Ambrose Pratt

"There is some—presence in the room," she gasped. "Don't you feel it?"

And as I live, I did. I struck a match and sprang afoot. Three paces off a man's face glowered at us in the fitful glimmer of the lucifer. Its characteristics were so unusual that it is not possible ever to forget them. The eyes were large, dark and singularly dull. They were set at an extraordinary distance apart in the skull, six inches, I should say, at least. But the head, though abnormally broad thereabouts, tapered to a point in the chin and was cone-shaped above the wide receding temples. The cheek bones were high and prominent. They shone in the match light almost white in contrast with the dark skin of the more shaded portions of the countenance. The nose was long and aquiline, but the nostrils were broad and compressed at the base, pointing at negroid ancestry. The mouth, wide and thin-lipped, was tightly shut. The chin was long, sharp and hairless. The ears were bat-shaped.

Recovering from my first shock of amazement, I addressed the intruder in Arabic.

"What are you doing here? What do you want?" I cried.

He did not answer. Enraged, I started forward and hit out from the shoulder. Striking air. The match went out. I lit another. The man had vanished. I relighted the lamp and carefully examined the chamber. But our visitor had not left the slightest sign of his intrusion.

I shook my head and went over to Miss Ottley. She was leaning against the wall with her eyes shut, her bosom heaving painfully.

I touched her and she started—suppressing a shriek. Her lips were trickling blood where she had bitten them. Her face was ghastly and she seemed about to swoon.

"Pish!" I cried, "there is nothing to be frightened of. A rascally Arab—knows some secret way of entering this cavern, that is all."

She swayed towards me. I caught her as she fell and bore her to a stool. But though quite overcome she was not unconscious. Yet her fortitude was broken down at last and she was helpless. She could not even sit up unassisted. Placing her on the floor a while, I made her drink some spirit and then, lifting her upon my knee, I rocked her in my arms like a child and did my best to soothe her fears. Heavens, how she cried! My handkerchief was soon as wet as if I had soused it in a basin of water, and yet she still cried on. I spoke to her all the time. I told her that I would answer for her safety with my life, and all sorts of things. And thinking of her as a poor little child, I called her "dear" continually and "darling"—and I let her weep herself into an exhausted sleep upon my breast. And when that happened I did not need anyone to tell me that science was no longer the mistress of my fate or that I, a comparative pauper, had committed the unutterable folly of falling in love with the daughter of a millionaire—whose religion was Pride with a capital P. I held her so till dawn, staring dumbly at her face, and thus when her eyes opened they looked straight into mine. She did not move, and half-unwillingly my arms tightened round her. "The bad dream is over, little girl," I whispered. "See—the golden sunlight."