The Mummy and Miss Nitocris | Page 3

were mad or sane according
to a standard which, somehow, no one had thought of inventing
before--the standard of common-sense.
The voice, strangely like his daughter's and his dead wife's also,
appeared to come from nowhere and yet from everywhere, and it had a
faint and far-away echo in it which harmonised most marvellously with
other echoes which seemed to come up out of the depths of his own
soul.
Where had he heard it before? Somewhere, certainly. There was no
possibility of mistaking tones which were so irresistibly familiar, and,
moreover, why did they bring back to him such distinct memories of
tragedies long forgotten, even by him? Why did they instantly draw
before the windows of his soul a long panorama of vast cities, splendid
palaces, sombre temples, and towering tombs, in which he saw all these
and more with an infinitely greater vividness of form and light and

colour than he had ever been able to do in his most inspired hours of
dream or study?
Had the voice really come from those long-silenced lips of the Mummy
of Nitocris, that daughter of the Pharaohs who had so terribly avenged
her outraged love, and after whom he had named the only child of his
marriage?
"It is certainly very strange," he said, going to his writing-table and
taking up his pipe. "I know that voice, or at least I seem to know it, and
it is very like Niti's and her mother's; but where can it have come from?
Hardly from your lips, my long-dead Royal Egypt," he went on, going
up to the mummy-case and peering through his spectacles into the rigid
features. He put up his hand and tapped the tightly-drawn lips very
gently, then turned away with a smile, saying aloud to himself: "No, no,
I must have been allowing what they call my scientific imagination to
play tricks with me. Perhaps I have been worrying a little too much
about this confounded fourth dimension problem,--and yet the thing is
exceedingly fascinating. If the hand of Science could only reach across
the frontier line! If we could only see out of the world of length and
breadth and thickness into that other world of these and something else,
how many puzzles would be solved, how many impossibilities would
become possible, and how many of the miracles which those old
Egyptian adepts so seriously claimed to work would look like the
merest commonplaces! Ah well, now for the realities. I suppose that's
Annie with the whisky."
As he turned round the door opened, and he beheld a very strange sight,
one which, to a man who had had a less stern mental training than he
had had, would have been nothing less than terrifying. His daughter
came in with a little silver tray on which there was a small decanter of
whisky, a glass, and a syphon of soda-water.
"Annie has gone to the post, and I thought I might as well bring this
myself," said Miss Nitocris, walking to the table and putting the tray
down on the corner of it.
Beside her stood another figure as familiar now to his eyes as her's was,

dressed and tired and jewelled in a fashion equally familiar. Save for
the difference in dress, Nitocris, the daughter of Rameses, was the
exact counterpart in feature, stature, and colouring of Nitocris, the
daughter of Professor Marmion. In her hands she carried a slender,
long-necked jar of brilliantly enamelled earthenware and a golden
flagon richly chased, and glittering with jewels, and these she put down
on the table in exactly the same place as the other Nitocris had put her
tray on, and as she did so he heard the voice again, saying:
"Time was, is now, and ever shall be to those for whom Time has
ceased to be--which is a riddle that Ma-Rim[=o]n may even now learn,
since his soul has been purified and his spirit strengthened by earnest
devotion through many lives to the search for the True Knowledge."
Both voices had spoken together, the one in English and the other in the
ancient tongue of Khem, yet he had heard each syllable separately and
comprehended both utterances perfectly. He felt a cold grip of fear at
his heart as he looked towards the mummy-case, and, as his fear had
warned him, it was empty. Then he looked at his daughter, and as their
eyes met, she said in the most commonplace tones:
"My dear Dad, what is the matter with you? If advanced people like
ourselves believed in any such nonsense, I should be inclined to say
that you had seen a ghost; but I suppose it's only that silly fourth
dimension puzzle that's worrying you. Now, look here, you must really
take your whisky and go