The Mummy and Miss Nitocris | Page 4

to bed. If you go on bothering any longer
about 'N to the fourth,' you will have one of your bad headaches
to-morrow and won't be able to finish your address for the Institute."
She put her hand out and took up the decanter. It passed without any
apparent resistance through the jar. She lifted it from the same place,
and poured out the usual modicum of whisky into the glass, which was
standing just where the flagon was. Then she pressed the trigger of the
syphon, and the familiar hiss of the soda-water brought the Professor,
as he thought, back to his senses.
But no! There could be no doubt about it. There in material form on the
corner of his table was a point-blank, tangible contradiction of the

universally accepted axiom that two bodies cannot occupy the same
space, and that, come from somewhere or nowhere, there were two
plainly material objects through which his daughter's hand, without her
even knowing it, had passed as easily as it would have done through a
little cloud of steam. Happily she had no idea of what he had seen and
heard, and so for her sake he made a strong effort to control himself,
and said as steadily as he could:
"Thank you, Niti, it is very good of you. Yes, I think I am a little tired
to-night. Good-night now, and I promise you that I will be off very
soon; I will just have one more pipe, and drink my whisky, and then I
really will go. Good-night, little woman. We'll have a talk about the
Mummy in the morning."
As soon as his daughter had closed the door, Professor Marmion
returned to his writing-table. The decanter of whisky, the tumbler, and
the syphon of soda-water were still standing on the corner of the table,
occupying the same space as the enamelled flagon of wine and the
drinking goblet which the long-dead other-self of Miss Nitocris had
placed on the little silver salver.
He looked about the room anxiously, with a feeling nearer akin to
physical dread than he had ever experienced before; but his worst fears
were not fulfilled. Nitocris the Queen had vanished and the Mummy
was back in its case, blind, rigid, and silent, as it had been for fifty
centuries.
For several moments he looked at the hard, grey, fixed features of the
woman who had once been Nitocris, Queen of Middle Egypt, half
expecting, after what he had seen, or thought he had seen, that the soul
would return, that the long-closed eyes would open again, and that the
long-silent lips would speak to him. But no! For all the answer that he
got he might as well have been looking upon the granite features of the
Sphinx itself. He turned away again towards the table, and murmured:
"Ah well! I suppose it was only an hallucination, after all. One of these
strange pranks that the over-strained intellect sometimes plays with us.
Perhaps I have been thinking too much lately. And now I really think I

had better follow Niti's advice, and take my night-cap and go to bed."
But as he put out his hand to take the whisky decanter he stopped and
pulled it back.
"What on earth is the matter with me?" he said, putting his hand to his
head. "That decanter is mine--it is the same, and yet it is standing in
just the same place as that other thing--and I remember that, too. Look
here, Franklin Marmion, my friend, if you were not a rather
over-worked man I should think you had had a good deal too much to
drink. Two bodies cannot occupy the same space. It is ridiculous,
impossible!"
As he said the last word, his voice rose a little, and, as it seemed, an
echo came back from one of the corners of the room:
"Impossible, impossible?"
There seemed to be a sarcastic note of interrogation after the last word.
"Eh? What was that?" and he looked round at the mummy-case. Her
long-dead Majesty was still reclining in it, silent and impassive.
"Oh, this won't do at all! Hartley and the fourth dimension be hanged!
It strikes me that this way madness lies if you only go far enough. I'll
have that night-cap at once and go to bed."
He put out his hand, took hold of the whisky decanter, and as he drew
back his arm he saw that instead he held the enamelled flagon in his
grasp.
"Well, well," he said, looking at it half-angrily, "if it is to be, it must
be."
He put out his left hand and took hold of the goblet, tilted the flagon,
and out of the curved lip there fell a thin stream of wine, which
glittered with a