The Mummy and Miss Nitocris | Page 5

pale ruby radiance in the light of the electric cluster that
hung above his writing-desk. He set the flagon down, and as he raised

the goblet to his lips, he heard his own voice saying in the ancient
language of Khem:
"As was, and is, and ever shall be; ever, yet never--never, yet ever.
Nitocris the Queen, in the name of Nebzec I greet thee! From thy hands
I take the gift of the Perfect Knowledge!"
As he drained the goblet he turned towards the mummy-case. It might
have been fancy, it might have been the effect of that miraculous old
wine of Cos which, if he had really drunk it, must now be more than
thirty centuries old: it might have been the result of the hard thinking
that he had been doing now for several days and half-nights; but he
certainly thought that the Queen's head suddenly became endowed with
life, that the eyes opened, and the grey of the parchment skin softened
into a delicate olive tinge with a faint rosy blush showing through it.
The brown, shrivelled lips seemed to fill out, grow red, and smile. The
eyelids lifted, and the eyes of the Nitocris of old looked down on him
for a moment. He shook his head and looked, and there was the
Mummy just as it had been when he opened the case.
"Really, this is strange, almost to the point of bewilderment," he went
on. "I wonder if there is any more of that wine left?"
He took up the flagon and poured out another goblet, filled and drank
it.
"Yes," he continued, speaking as though under some strange exultation
of the mind rather than of the senses, "yes, that is the wine of Cos. I
drank it. I, Ma-Rim[=o]n, the priest-student of the Higher Mysteries; I,
whose feet faltered on the threshold of the Place of the Elect, and
whose heart failed him at the portal of the Sanctuary, even though
Amen-Ra was beckoning me to cross it."
"Good heavens, what nonsense I am talking! Whatever there was in
that wine or wherever it came from, I think it is quite time I was off,
not to old Egypt, but the Land of Nod. It seems to--no, it has not got
into my head; in fact I am beginning to see that, after all, Hartley might
very possibly be right about that forty-seventh proposition. Well, I will

do as the Russians say, take my thoughts to bed with me, since the
morning is wiser than the evening. It is all very mysterious. I certainly
hope that Annie won't find these things here in the morning when she
comes to clear up. I wonder what the Museum would give me for them
if they were not, as I think they are, the unsubstantial fabric of a
vision?"
When he got into his room and turned the electric light on, he stood
under the cluster and held up his closed hand so that the light fell upon
a curiously engraved scarab set in a heavy gold ring which had been
given to him on his last birthday by Lord Lester Leighton, a wealthy
and accomplished young nobleman who had devoted his learned leisure
to Egyptian exploration and research. It was he who had sent the
Mummy of Queen Nitocris to the house on Wimbledon Common
instead of adding it to his own collection--not altogether unselfishly, it
must be confessed, for he was very much in love with the other Nitocris
who was still in the flesh.
"Now," he said, fingering the scarab, "if I was not dreaming, and if by
some mysterious means Her Highness's promise is to be actually
fulfilled, I ought to be able to take this ring off without opening my
hand. Certainly, any fourth dimensional being could do it."
As he spoke he pulled at the setting of the scarab--and, to his
amazement, the ring came off whole. There was no scar on his
finger--no break in the ring.
"Good heavens!" he exclaimed, staring with something like fear in his
eyes, first at his hand, and then at the ring. "Then it is true!" He was
silent for a full minute; then he put the ring down on the dressing-table
and whispered: "What a terrible power--and what an awful
responsibility! Well, thank God, I am a fairly honest man!"
As he undressed he was conscious of a curious sense of reminiscence
which he had never experienced before. His brain was not only
perfectly clear, but almost abnormally active, and yet the current of his
thoughts appeared to be turned backward instead of forward. The things
of his own life, the life that he was then living, seemed to drift behind

him. The facts which he had learned in his long and minute study