Whenever in London my practice for years had been to put up at my friend Dixon Hubbard's rooms in Bruton Street. We had been schoolfellows. He was one of the most fortunate and unfortunate creatures in the world. Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he had inherited from some cross-grained ancestor a biting tongue and a gloomy disposition. He was an incurable misanthrope and unpopular beyond words. At college he had been detested. Being a sickly lad, his tongue had earned him many a thrashing which he had had to endure without other reprisal than sarcasm. Yet he had never spared that. His spirit was unconquerable. I believe that he would have taunted his executioners while they burned him at the stake. I used to hate him myself once. But one day after giving him a fairly good hammering I fell so in love with the manly way in which he immediately thereafter gave me a sound excuse for wringing his neck that I begged his pardon for being a hulking bully in having lifted hand against a weaker body but a keener brain and more Miller gave me the look of a dog that wants but does not dare to lick your hand. His gratitude was pathetic. I shut the door in his face. Hubbard did not rise. He did not even offer to shake hands. He half closed his eyes and murmured in a tired voice: "The bad penny is back again, and uglier than ever." I crossed the room and threw open a window. Then I marched into his bedroom, seized a water jug, returned and put out the fire. "You've been coddling yourself too long," I remarked. "Get up and put on your hat. It's almost one. You are going to lunch with me at Verrey's." "I have a stiff leg," he remonstrated. "Fancy! Mere fancy," I returned. The room was full of steam and smoke. Hubbard said a wicked thing and got afoot, coughing. I found his hat, crammed it on his skull and crooked my arm in his. He declined to budge and wagged a blistering tongue, but I laughed and, picking him up, I carried him bodily downstairs to a cab. He called me forty sorts of cowardly bully in his gentle sweetly courteous tones, but before two blocks were passed his ill-humour had evaporated. He remembered he had news to give me. We had not met "I am very willing," I said. He impaled an oyster on a fork and sniffed at it with brutal indifference to the waiter's feelings. Satisfied it was a good oyster, he swallowed it. "I am no longer a bachelor," said he. "I have taken unto myself a wife." "The deuce!" I cried. "Exactly," he said. "But the prettiest imp imaginable." "My dear Hubbard, I assure you——" "My dear Pinsent, you have blundered on the truth." "But——" He held up a warning finger. "It occurred a year ago. We lived together for six weeks. Then we compromised. I gave her my house in Park Lane and returned myself to Bruton Street. Pish! man, don't look so shocked. Helen and I are friends—I see her once a week now at least, sometimes more often. I assure you I enjoy her conversation. She has a natural genius for gossip and uses all her opportunities. She has already become a fixed star in the firmament of society's smartest set and aspires to found a new solar system. I allow her fifteen "Do I know her, Hubbard?" "No; you are merely acquainted. Her maiden name was Arbuthnot." "Lady Helen Arbuthnot!" I cried. He smiled and shrugged his shoulders. "You will find her changed. Marriage has developed her. I remember before you went away—was it to Egypt?—she tried her blandishments on you. But then she was a mere apprentice. Heaven help you now—if she marks you for her victim." "Poor wretch!" I commented. "I suppose you can't help it. But you ought to make an effort, Hubbard, really." "An effort. What for?" "To conceal how crudely in love with your wife you are." He bit his lips and frowned. "Children and fools speak the truth," he murmured. Then he set to work on the champagne and drank much more than was good for him. The wine, however, only affected his appearance. It brought a flush to his pallid cheeks and made his dull eyes sparkle. He deluged me with politics till three o'clock. Then we drove to Park Lane. Lady Helen kept us waiting for twenty minutes. In the meantime, two other It was May Ottley. She did not see me at once. Lady Helen utterly engrossed her. I had, therefore, time to recover from the unexpected shock of her appearance. I was ridiculously agitated. I slipped into an alcove and picked up a book of plates. At first my hands shook so that I could hardly turn the pages. Hubbard glided to my side. I felt his smile without seeing it. "I smell a brother idiot," he whispered. I met his eyes and nodded. "In Egypt, of course?" "Yes." "She marries a guardsman next month, I hear." "Indeed." "The poor man," murmured Hubbard. "Come out and let us drink his health." "No, thank you." "You'd rather stay and singe your wings, poor moth." "And you?" "Mine," said he, "were amputated in St. James Church. She is a lovely creature, Pinsent." "Which?" He chuckled without replying. A footman pompously announced: "Mrs. Carr—Lord Edward Dutton." "Bring the tea, please," said Lady Helen's voice. "She is staring this way at you," murmured Hubbard. "She recognises your back. No, not quite, she is puzzled." "She has never seen me in civilised apparel," I explained. "Are you afraid of her, my boy?" "Yes." "Well, you are honest." I began to listen for her voice. The air was filled with scraps of conversation. "Three thousand, I tell you. He cannot go on like that. Shouldn't wonder if he went abroad. Like father, like son. Old Ranger had the same passion for bridge." "You can say what you like, names tell one nothing. In my opinion the man is a Jew. What if he does call himself Fortescue? Consider his nose. I am tired of these rich colonials. I have no time for them. Heaven knows what they are after." "She will spoil her lower register completely if she keeps on. Her voice is a mezzo and nothing else. You should have seen the way old Delman sneered when he listened to her last night." "My test of a really fine soprano is the creepy feeling the high C gives one in the small of the back. Delicious. She never thrills me at all." "Oh! Lord Edward, how malicious. What has the poor man done to you?" "He plays billiards too well to have been anything but a marker in his youth. I believe he kept a saloon somewhere in the States." "They say it will end in the divorce court. That is what comes of marrying a milkmaid. And, after all, she did not present him with a son. Ah, well, it's an ill wind that blows nobody any good. Young Carnarvon is his heir still, and his chances of succeeding grow rosier every day." "My dear Mrs. Belvigne, if it was not for her red hair, she would be as commonplace as—as my dear friend Mrs. Sorenson. What you men see in red hair——" "Conscience, Lady Helen, is a composition of indulgences. It is a marriage de convenance between the conventional instinct and the appetite." "Dr. Pinsent," said Miss Ottley, "is it really you?" I turned and looked into her eyes. They were all aglow and her cheeks were suffused with colour. She gave me both her hands. The room was already crowded. People entered every minute. Hubbard pointed significantly at the tea-cups. Miss Ottley and I drifted to the divan. We watched the crowd through the parted curtains, sipping our tea. We might as well have been in a box at the theatre watching the play. "I knew you would escape," she murmured, "They consoled themselves, no doubt?" "My father especially." "Did he recover his Arab?" "What Arab?" "The creature he had imprisoned in the sarcophagus." "The mummy, you mean. The body of Pthames? Oh, yes, that was safe enough, but he was in a fearful state until we found the punt. He feared that you would either steal or destroy the mummy, I believe." "Miss Ottley!" I cried. "You must not blame him too much," she murmured; "you know how he had set heart——" "Look here!" I interrupted. "Do you mean to tell me that you found the mummy in the sarcophagus?" "Certainly. Why?" "Did you see it?" "Yes." "The mummy?" "Why, of course." "A dead body, a mummy?" "Dr. Pinsent, how strangely you insist." "I'll tell you the reason. When I opened the sarcophagus——" "Yes." "It contained not a mummy, but a living man." "Impossible." "You think so? The Arab was the very man who frightened you so often in the temple at the Hill of Rakh." "Dr. Pinsent!" "When I removed the lid he leaped out of the sarcophagus, sprang ashore and fled to the desert. I followed him for several miles. But I could not catch him. I was compelled to give up the chase. And now you tell me that you afterwards found a mummy in the coffin which I had left empty." "One of us is dreaming," said the girl. "What was this mummy like?" "A tall man—with a curious conical-shaped head—and eyes set hideously far apart in its skull—but you have seen the Arab who frightened me—and indeed he attacked you at your camp. His mummified counterpart." "And some of his ribs were broken?" "I do not know." "But his body was bandaged. Otherwise he was almost nude." "Good heavens!" she exclaimed. She put down her cup. "You make me very unhappy. You force me to recall my horror—in the cave temple. The wretched uncanny sense of the supernatural that oppressed me there. You make me remember that I was tortured into a fancy that the mummy "He is in London?" "Yes." "And the mummy?" "Yes." "And Dr. Belleville?" "He is staying with us." "Captain Weldon?" She turned aside her head. "He is in London, too." "You are shortly to be married, I am informed." She stood up. "I must really be going," she observed constrainedly; then she held out her hand. I watched her pick her way through the crowd to our hostess. It was a well-bred crowd, but it stared at her. She was worth looking at. She walked just as a woman should and she bore herself with the proper touch of pride that is at the same time a personal protection and a provocative of curiosity. Some people call it dignity. Hubbard materialised from the shadow of a neighbouring curtain. "My wife has invited me to dinner," he announced. "You, too. I have made her your excuses because I have a money matter to discuss that should not be postponed." "You have my deepest sympathy," I answered, and left him as puzzled to know what I meant as I was. Something was whispering over and over |