“My mummy! My mummy! You shall hear him orate. Has he tapped before I came this evening?”
I was paralyzed with fear, believing that I was in the presence of a spiritualistic maniac. But I maintained my composure as the surest means of safeguard, and held my tongue.
The strange professor took from his pocket a bunch of keys, unlocked his valise, produced an instrument not unlike the phonograph, attached a long rubber tube to it, the tube having two metal balls at the other end; these balls he carried to the closet door, unlocked it and drew out the case of an Egyptian mummy! The professor turned off the lights. What he did, I know not. I heard him start his machine. I heard him rummage in the closet and say, “Here is your suit of modern clothes!”
After long trying moments for me, he turned on the lights, and a man with a yellow complexion sat between us; and the mummy case was empty. I swear it upon my oath.
“Tell the gentleman who you are,” demanded the strange professor, “make for him your oration, as you did for me. Are you able to stand alone now?”
The man arose and said:
“I belong to the Undying Ones. I am the Thracian, named Zalmoxis, of whom Herodotus tells. I could not endure the civilization of my time, and had a subterranean hall built in which to reside. The people of my day believed that I never died. But I did die, though I contracted with an Egyptian priest to embalm and mummify me. And here is my secret. I took with me the power to return at the end of certain cycles of years to the land of the living. How I came by that power, I reveal to no man, neither do I reveal the term of my cycles, lest the living plot against me. Besides this, I learned the art wherewith to speak the language of whatever land or age in which I may arise. The last I spoke was Arabic. At another time I was a contemporary of Cartaphilus, the Usher of the Divan in Jerusalem. He was Pilate’s door-keeper at the time of Christ’s trial. I myself saw him strike Jesus on the neck when the young men were leading Him from the hall of judgment. I hear that this Jew who smote Jesus has also lived since.
“Ah, if you could believe that with these eyes of mine, I have seen the ancient caliphs of Babylon; that with these legs I have traveled the empire of the Saracens; that with these arms, I fought throughout the wars in the Holy Land. I was a compatriot of the bravest man who ever walked the earth, Godfrey de Bouillon.”
“Tell us,” said the strange professor, cutting him short, “in your various revisits to this land of the living, what impresses you the most?”
“I look back with surprise and wonder at the intricate systems of the theology of the ancient Greek and Roman, and can scarcely credit the credulity which could receive them as truths and cherish them with reverence from age to age. I marvel at my own faith in them. Yet the doctrines of the Trinity and of the Resurrection, no whit less dark and intricate, and requiring nothing less of credulity, I see you receive with religious reverence, and respect as revelations of Deity.