The Romance of Golden Star | Page 6

success, how shall we talk with our Inca revenant?
Have I not heard you say that the Aymaru dialect of the Quichua
tongue is lost as completely as the Inca treasures?'
'Not quite, though I believe I am now the only white man on earth who
understands it.'
'Good! then let me get to work at once, and in a week--well, in a week
we shall see.'
II
A PHYSIOLOGICAL EXPERIMENT
Laurens Djama dined with the professor that night, and the small hours
were growing large before they ended the long talk of which their
strange bargain, and the still stranger experiment which was to result
from it, formed the subject. The next day the packing-case containing
the mummy was transferred to Djama's laboratory, and then for a whole
week neither the professor nor any of his friends or acquaintances had
either sight or speech of him.
Every caller at his house in Brondesbury Park was politely but firmly
denied admittance on professional grounds, and three letters and two
telegrams which the professor had sent to him, after being himself
denied admittance, remained unanswered.
At last, on the Thursday following the Friday on which the mummy
had been sent to the laboratory, the professor received a telegram

telling him to come at once to the doctor. Three minutes after he had
read it he was in a hansom and on his way to Kilburn, wondering what
it was that he was to be brought face to face with during the next half
hour.
This time there was no denial. The door opened as he went up the steps,
and the servant handed him a note. He tore it open and read,--
'Come round to the laboratory and make a new acquaintance who will
yet be an old one.'
His heart stood still, and he caught his breath sharply as he read the
words which told him that the unearthly experiment for which he had
furnished the subject had been successful.
The doctor's laboratory stood apart from the house in the long, narrow
garden at the back, and as he approached the door he stopped for a
moment, and an almost irresistible impulse to go away and have
nothing more to do with the unholy work in hand took possession of
him. Then the love of his science and the longing to hear the marvels
which could only be heard from the lips that had been silent for
centuries overcame his fears, and he went up to the door and knocked
softly.
It was opened by a haggard, wild-eyed man, whom he scarcely
recognised as his old friend. Djama did not speak; he simply caught
hold of the sleeve of his coat with a nervous, trembling grasp, drew him
in, shut the door, and led him to a corner of the room where there was a
little camp bed, curtained all round with thin, transparent muslin,
through which he could see the shape of a man lying under the sheets.
Djama pulled the curtain aside, and said in a hoarse whisper,--
'Look, it has been hard work, and terrible work, too, but I have
succeeded. Do you see, he is breathing!'
The professor stared wide-eyed at the white pillow on which lay the
head of what, a week before, had been his mummy. Now it was the

head of a living man; the pale bronze of the skin was clear and moist
with the dew of life; the lips were no longer brown and dry, but faintly
red and slightly parted, and the counterpane, which was pulled close up
under the chin, was slowly rising and falling with the regular rhythm of
a sleeper's breathing. He looked from the face of him who had been
dead and was alive again to the face of the man whose daring science
and perfect skill had wrought the unholy miracle, and then he shrank
back from the bedside, pulling Djama with him, and whispering,--
'Good God, it is even more awful than it is wonderful! How did you do
it?'
'That is my secret,' whispered Djama, his dry lips shaping themselves
into a ghastly smile, 'and for all the treasures that that man ever saw, I
wouldn't tell it to a living soul, or do such hideous work again. I tell
you I have seen life and death fighting together for two days and nights
in this room--not, mind you, as they fight on a deathbed, but the other
way, and I would rather see a thousand men die than one more come
back out, of death into life. You see, he is sleeping now. He opened his
eyes just before daybreak this morning--that's nearly ten hours ago--but
if I lived ten thousand years I should never forget that one look he gave
me before he