During the whole of the journey back to Wapping, Moris Klaw regaled me with anecdotes of travels in the Yucatan Peninsula. I had never met a man before who had ventured fully to explore those deadly swamps; but Moris Klaw chatted about the Izamal temples as unconcernedly as another man might chat about the Paris boulevards. Isis took no part in the conversation, from which I gathered that, although she seemed to accompany her father everywhere, she had not accompanied him into the jungles of Yucatan.
“In the heart of those forests, Mr. Searles,” he whispered, “are stranger things than these headless mummies. Do you know that the secret of those great temples buried in the swamps and the jungles and guarded only by serpents and slimy, crawling things, is a door which science has yet to unlock? What people built them, and what god was worshipped in them? Suppose”--he bent to my ear--“I hold the key to that riddle; am I assured to be immortal? Yes? No?”
His conversation, although it often seemed to be studiously eccentric, was always that of a man of powerful and unusual mind, a man of vast and unique experience. I was rather sorry when we arrived at our destination.
As the cab drew up at the head of the court, I saw that the shop of Moris Klaw was in darkness; but again telling the man to wait, we walked down past the warehouse, beyond whose bulk tided muddy Thames, and my eccentric companion producing a key from one of the bulging pockets of his caped coat inserted it into the lock of a door which looked less like a door than a section of a dilapidated hoarding.
The door swung open.
“Ah!” he hissed. “It was not locked!”
Klaw struck a match and peered into the odorous darkness.
“William!” he rumbled. “William!”
But there was no reply. Isis suddenly laid her hand upon my arm, and it occurred to me that for once her wonderful composure was shaken.
“Something has happened!” she whispered.
Her father lighted a gas-burner, and the yellow light flared up, reclaiming from the gloom furniture, pictures, cages, glass cases, statuettes, heaps of cheap jewellery and false teeth, books, and a hundred-and-one other items of that weird stock-in-trade.
Then, under the littered counter we found William lying flat on his back with his arms spread widely.
“Ah! cochon!” muttered Klaw; “beer-swilling pig!”
He stooped to raise the head of the prostrate man, and then to my surprise dropped upon his knees beside him, stooped yet lower, and sniffed suspiciously. Again Isis Klaw seized my arm, and her dark eyes were opened very widely as she leaned forward watching her father. He stood up, holding a glass in his hand which yet contained some drops of what was apparently beer. At this, too, he sniffed. He walked over to the gaslight and examined the fluid closely, whilst Isis and I watched him, together. Finally Moris Klaw inserted a long white forefinger into the dirty glass and applied the tip to his tongue.
“Opium!” he said. “Many drops of pure opium were put in this beer.”
He turned to me with a curious expression upon his parchment-coloured face.
“Mr. Searles,” he said, “my second idea was a good idea. I shall now surprise you.”
He led the way through that neat and businesslike office which opened out of the unutterably dirty and untidy shop. Although within the shop and in front of it only gaslight was used, in the office he switched on an electric lamp. But we did not delay long in Moris Klaw’s sanctum, lined with its hundreds of books, its obscure works of criminology, its records of strange things: we proceeded through another door and up a thickly carpeted stair.
I had never before penetrated thus far into the habitable portion of Moris Klaw’s establishment; the book-lined office hitherto had marked the limit of my explorations. But now, as more electric lights were switched on, I saw that we stood upon a wide landing panelled in massive black oak. Armoured figures stood sentinel-like against the walls, and several magnificent specimens of Chinese porcelain met my gaze. I might have thought myself in some old English baronial hall. Next we entered a big, rectangular room, which I wholly despair of describing. Apparently it was used as a study, a library, a laboratory, and a warehouse for all sorts of things, from marble Buddhas to innumerable pairs of boots. Also, there was in it a French stove; and upon a Persian coffee table stood a frying pan containing a cooked sausage solidified in its own fat. There was clear evidence, moreover, in the form of a rolled-up hammock, that the place served as a bedroom.
Altogether there were four mummies in the apartment. One of these, partly unwrapped, lay amongst the litter on the floor--headless!
“Mon Dieu!” cried Isis, clasping her hands; “it is uncanny, this!”
She was evidently excited, for her French accent suddenly asserted itself to a marked degree. Moris Klaw, from somewhere amongst the rubbish at his feet, picked up the severed head of the mummy and stared at it intently. In the stillness I could hear the river noises very distinctly, and a sort of subterranean lapping and creaking which suggested that at high tide the cellars of the establishment became flooded. Moris Klaw dropped the head from his hands. It fell with a dull thud to the floor.
From the lining of his hat he took out the inevitable scent spray and moistened his brow with verbena.
“I need the cool brain, Mr. Searles,” he said. “I, the old cunning, the fox, the wily, am threatened with defeat. This slaughter of mummies it surpasses my experience. I am nonplussed; I am a stupid old fool. Let me think!”
Isis was looking about her in a startled way.
“It is horribly uncanny, Miss Klaw,” I said. “But the drugging of the man downstairs points to very human agency. Perhaps if we could revive him----”
“He will not revive,” interrupted Moris Klaw, “for twelve hours at least. In his beer was enough opium to render unconscious the rhinoceros!”
“Is there anything missing?” I asked.
“Nothing,” rumbled Klaw. “He came for the mummy. Isis, will you prepare for us those cooling drinks that help the fevered mind, and from downstairs bring me the seventh volume of the ‘Books of the Temples.’”
Isis Klaw immediately walked forward to the door.
“And Isis, my child,” added her father, “remove the tall cage to the top end of the shop. Presently that William’s snores will awake the Borneo squirrel.”
As the girl departed, Klaw opened an inner door and ushered me into a dainty white room, an amazing apartment indeed, a true Parisian boudoir. The air was heavy with the scent of roses, for bowls of white and pink roses were everywhere. Klaw lighted a silver table lamp with a unique silver gauze shade apparently lined with pale rose-coloured silk. Evidently this apartment belonged to Isis, and was as appropriate for her, exquisite Parisian that she seemed to be, as the weird barn through which we had come was an appropriate abode for her father.
When presently Isis returned I saw her for the first time in her proper setting, a dainty green figure in a white frame. Moris Klaw opened the bulky leather-bound volume which she had handed to him, and whilst I sat sipping my wine and watching him, he busily turned over the pages (apparently French MS.) in quest of the reference he sought.
“Ah!” he cried, in sudden triumph; “vaguely I had it in my memory, but here it is, the clue. I will translate for you, Mr. Searles, what is written here: ‘The “Book of the Lamps,” which was revealed to the priest, Pankhaur, and by him revealed only to the Queen’--it was the ancient Egyptian Queen, Hatshepsu, Mr. Searles--‘was kept locked in the secret place beneath the altar, and each high priest of the temple--all of whom were of the family of Pankhaur--held the key and alone might consult the magic writing. In the 14th dynasty, Seteb was high priest, and was the last of the family of Pankhaur. At his death the newly appointed priest, receiving the key of the secret place, complained to Pharaoh that the “Book of the Lamps” was missing.’”
He closed the volume and placed it on a little table beside him.
“Isis,” he rumbled, looking across at his daughter, “does the mystery become clear to you? Am I not an old fool? Mr. Searles, there is only one other copy of this work”--he laid a long white hand upon the book--“known to European collectors. Do I know where that copy is? Yes? No? I think so!”
There was triumph in his hoarse voice. Personally I was quite unable to see in what way the history of the “Book of the Lamps” bore upon the case of the headless mummies; but Moris Klaw evidently considered that it afforded a clue. He stood up.
“Isis,” he said, “bring me my catalogue of the mummies of the Bubastite priests.”
That imperious beauty departed in meek obedience.
“Mr. Searles,” said Moris Klaw, “this will be for Inspector Grimsby another triumph; but without these records of a poor old fool, who shall say if the one that beheads mummies had ever been detected? I neglected to secure the odic negative because I thought I had to deal with a madman; but I was more stupid than an owl. This decapitating of mummies is no madman’s work, but is done with a purpose, my friend--with a wonderful purpose.”
