George Horace Lorimer - The False Gods
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George Horace Lorimer >> The False Gods
"Does look sort of funny," Simpkins replied, sympathetic, but not too
interested. "When was it Doc. left? Last week?"
"Last week, not; more'n a mont' ago, an' he ain't peeped since, for I've
skinned every mail dat's come in, an' not a picture-postal, see?"
"That isn't very affectionate of Doc., but I wouldn't mention it to any
one else; it might get you into trouble," was Simpkins' comment. "You
better--Holy, jumping Pharaoh! what a husky pussy!" As he spoke a big
black cat, with blinking, tawny eyes, sprang from the floor and curled
itself up on the youth's desk. "Where'd that----"
A snarl interrupted the question; for the temptation to pull the cat's
tail had proved too strong for the boy. Bowed over his desk in a fit of
laughter at the result, he did not see the door behind him open, but
Simpkins did. And he saw Mrs. Athelstone, her eyes blazing, spring into
the room, seize the youth by the collar and shake him roughly.
"You nasty little brute!" she cried. "How dared you do that to a----"
And then catching sight of Simpkins, she dropped the frightened boy back
into his chair.
"I can't stand cruelty to animals," she explained, panting a little from
her effort. "If anything of this sort happens again, I'll discharge you
on the spot," she added to the boy.
"Shame!" Simpkins echoed warmly. "Didn't know what was up or I'd have
stopped him."
"I'm sure of it," she answered graciously, and, stooping, she picked up
the now purring cat and left the room.
Simpkins followed her back to his desk and went on with his addressing,
but he had something worth thinking about now. Not for nothing had he
been educated in that newspaper school which puts two and two together
and makes six. And by the time he was through work for the day and back
in his room at the hotel, he had his result. He embodied it in this
letter to Naylor:
_Dear Mr. Naylor_:
I am in the employ of Mrs. Athelstone. How I managed it is a yarn
that will keep till I get back. [He meant until he could invent the
story which would reflect the most credit on his ingenuity, for
though he knew that the whole thing had been a piece of luck he had
no intention of cheapening himself with Naylor by owning as much.]
I had intended to return to Boston to-night, but I'm on the track of
real news, a lovely stink, something much bigger than the Sunday story.
There's a sporting parson, quite a swell, in the office here who's gone
on Mrs. A., and I'm inclined to hope she is on him. Anyway, the Doc.
left in a hurry after some sort of a row over a month ago, and hasn't
written a line to his wife since. She's as cool as a cucumber about it
and handed me a hot one right off the bat about poor old Doc.'s having
gone away for a rest _a few days ago_. I've drawn cards and am going
to sit in the game, unless you wire me to come home, for I smell a large,
fat, front-page exclusive, which will jar the sensitive slats of some of
our first families both here and in dear old London.
Yours,
SIMPKINS.
He hesitated a few minutes before he mailed the letter. He really did
not want to do anything to involve _her_ in a scandal, but, after
all, it was simply anticipating the inevitable, and--he pulled himself
up short and put the letter in the box. He could not afford any mawkish
sentiment in this.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
IV
Simpkins received a monosyllabic telegram from Naylor, instructing him
to "stay," but after working in the Society's office for another three
days he was about ready to give up all hope of getting at the facts.
Some other reason, he scarcely knew what, kept him on. Perhaps it was
Mrs. Athelstone herself. For though he appreciated how ridiculous his
infatuation was, he found a miserable pleasure in merely being near her.
And she was pleased with her new clerk, amused at what she called his
quaint Americanisms, and if she noticed his too unrepressed admiration
for her, she smiled it aside. It was something to which she was
accustomed, an involuntary tribute which most men who saw her often
rendered her.
She never referred, even indirectly, to her husband, but Simpkins,
as he watched her move about the hall, divined that he was often in
her thoughts. And there was another whom he watched--Brander; for he
felt certain now that the acting president's interest in his handsome
secretary was not purely that of the Egyptologist. And though there was
nothing but a friendly courtesy in her manner toward him, Simpkins knew
his subject well enough to understand that, whatever her real feelings
were, she was far too clever to be tripped into betraying them to him.
"She doesn't wear her heart on her sleeve--if she has a heart," he
decided.
He was trying to make up his mind to force things to some sort of a
crisis, one morning, when Mrs. Athelstone called him to her desk and
said rather sharply:
"You've been neglecting your work, Simpkins. Isis looks as if she hadn't
been dusted since you came."
This was the fact. Simpkins never passed the black altar without a
backward glance, as if he were fearful of an attack from behind. And he
had determined that nothing should tempt him to a tete-a-tete with the
statue behind the veil. But having so senseless, so cowardly a feeling
was one thing, and letting Mrs. Athelstone know it another. So he only
replied:
"I'm very sorry; afraid I have been a little careless about the statue."
And taking up a soft cloth, he walked toward the altar.
It was quite dark behind the veil; so dark that he could see nothing at
first. But after the moment in which his eyes grew accustomed to the
change, he made out the vague lines of the statue in the faint light
from above. He set to work about the pedestal, touching it gingerly at
first, then more boldly. At length he looked up into the face, blurred
in the half-light.
When he had finished with the pedestal he pulled himself up between the
outstretched arms, and perhaps a trifle hurriedly now, as he saw the
face more distinctly, began to pass the cloth over the arms and back.
Then, quick as the strike of a snake, the arms crushed him against the
stone breast. He could not move; he could not cry out; he could not
breathe. The statue, seen from the level of the pedestal, had changed
its whole expression. Hate glowed in its eyes; menace lived in every
line of its face. The arms tightened slowly, inexorably; then, as
quickly as they had closed, unclasped; and Simpkins half-slid, half-fell
to the floor.
When the breath came back into his lungs and he found himself unharmed,
he choked back the cry on his lips, for in that same moment a suspicion
floated half-formed through his brain. He forced himself to climb up on
the pedestal again, and made a careful inspection of the statue--but
from behind this time.
The arms were metal, enameled to the smoothness of the body, and
jointed, though the joints were almost invisible. The statue was one of
those marvelous creations of the ancient priests, and once, no doubt, it
had stood behind the veil in some Egyptian temple to tempt and to punish
the curiosity of the neophyte.
Though Simpkins could find no clew to the mechanism of the statue, he
determined that he had sprung it with his feet, and that during his
struggles a lucky kick had touched the spring which relaxed the arms.
"Did any one beside himself know their strength?" he asked himself, as
he stepped out into the hall again. Mrs. Athelstone was bent over her
desk writing; Brander was yawning over a novel in his corner, and
neither paid any attention to him. So he busied himself going over the
mummy-cases, and by the time he had worked around to the two beside Mrs.
Athelstone he had himself well in hand, outwardly. But he was still so
shaken internally that he knocked the black case rather roughly as he
dusted.
"What way is that to treat a king?" demanded Mrs. Athelstone; and the
anger in her voice was so real that Simpkins, startled, blundered out:
"I really meant no disrespect. Very careless of me, I'm sure." He looked
so distressed that Mrs. Athelstone's anger melted into a delicious
little laugh, as she answered:
"Really, Simpkins, you musn't be so bungling. These mummies are
priceless." And she got up and made a careful inspection of the case.
Simpkins, rather crestfallen, went back to his desk and began to address
circulars, his brain busy with the shadow which had crept into it. But
there was nothing to make it more tangible, everything to dispel it,
and he was forced to own as much. "It's a lovely little cozy corner,"
was his final conclusion; "but keep out of it, Simp., old boy. These
mechanical huggers are great stuff, but they're too strong for a fellow
that's been raised on Boston girls."
[Illustration]
[Illustration ]
V
Mrs. Athelstone was not in the office when he came down the next
day--she had gone to Washington on the Society's affairs, Brander
said--and so he moped about, finding the place dreary without her
brightening presence. In fact, when Brander went out, he slipped into
the sunlit ante-chamber, for companionship, he told himself; but in his
heart he knew that he did not want to be alone with that thing behind
the altar. He had satisfactorily explained its mechanism to himself, but
there was something else about it which he could not explain.
Naylor had telegraphed that very morning: "Get story. Come home. What do
you think you're doing?" and he tried to make up his mind to end the
whole affair by taking the night train to Boston. But he hated to go
back empty-handed from a four days' assignment. Besides, though he knew
himself a fool for it, he wanted to see Mrs. Athelstone once more.
So it happened that he was lingering on in the outer office when the
postman threw the afternoon mail on the desk. Simpkins was alone at the
moment, and he ran over the letters carelessly until he came to one
addressed to Brander in Mrs. Athelstone's writing. The blue card of the
palace car company was in a corner of the envelope.
"Why the deuce is she writing that skunk before she's well out of town?"
he thought, scanning the envelope with jealous eyes. Then he held it up
to the light, but the thick paper told nothing of what was within.
Frowning, he laid the letter down, fingered it, withdrew his itching
hand, hesitated, and finally put it in his pocket.
Simpkins went straight from the office to his hotel, for, though he
told himself that the letter contained some instructions which Mrs.
Athelstone had forgotten to give Brander before leaving, he was anxious
to see just how those instructions were worded. Alone in his little
room, he ripped open the letter and ran over its two pages with
bewilderment growing in his face. He finished by throwing it down on
the table and exclaiming helplessly: "Well, I'll be damned!"
The first sheet, without beginning or ending, contained only a line in
Mrs. Athelstone's handwriting, reading: "I had to leave in such a hurry
that I missed seeing you."
There was not an intelligible word on the second sheet; it was simply a
succession of scrawls and puerile outline pictures, such as a child
might have drawn.
To Simpkins' first aggrieved feeling that his confidence had been
abused, the certainty that he had stumbled on something of importance
quickly succeeded. He concluded a second and more careful scrutiny of
the letter with the exclamation, "Cipher! all right, all right," and,
after a third, he jumped up excitedly and rushed off to Columbia
University.
An hour later, Professor Ashmore, whose well-known work on "Hieratic
Writings" is so widely accepted an authority on that fascinating
subject, looked across to Simpkins, who for some minutes had been
sitting quietly in a corner of his study, and observed dryly:
"This is a queer jumble of hieroglyphics and hieratic writing, and is
not, I should judge," and his eyes twinkled, "of any great antiquity."
"Quite right, Professor," Simpkins assented cheerfully. "The lady who
wrote it is interested in Egyptology, and is trying to have a little fun
with me."
"If I may judge from the letter, she seems to be interested in you as
well," the professor went on smilingly. "In fact, it appears to
be--ahem--a love-letter."
"Eh! What?" exclaimed Simpkins, suddenly serious, "Let's have it."
"Well, roughly, it goes something like this: 'My heart's dearest, my
sun, my Nile duck--the hours are days without thee, the days an aeon. The
gods be thanked that this separation is not for long. For apart from
thee I have no life. That thing that I have to do is about done. May the
gods guard thee and the all-mother protect thee. I embrace thee: I kiss
thine eyes and thy lips.' That's a fair translation, though one or two
of the hieroglyphics are susceptible of a slightly different rendering;
but the sense would not be materially affected by the change," the
Professor concluded.
His words fell on inattentive ears; for Simpkins was sitting stunned
under the revelation of the letter. Now that he had his story, he knew
that he had not wanted it.
But he roused himself when he became conscious that the professor was
peering at him curiously over the top of his glasses, and said:
"Pretty warm stuff, eh! Good josh! Great girl! Ought to know her. She's
daft on this Egyptian business."
"Her letter is perhaps a trifle er--impulsive," the professor answered.
"But she combines the ancient and the modern charmingly. I congratulate
you."
"Thanks, Professor," Simpkins answered awkwardly, and took his leave.
Once in the street, he plunged along, head down. It was worse than he
had suspected. He had felt all along that the boy's surmises about
Brander were correct; now he knew that his suspicions of Mrs. Athelstone
were well founded. But he would keep her from that hypocrite, that hawk,
that--murderer! Simpkins stopped short at the intrusion of that word.
It had come without logic or reason, but he knew now that it had been
shaping in his head for two days past. And once spoken, it began to
justify itself. There was the motive, clear, distinct and proven; there
were the means and the man.
Next morning Simpkins was earlier than usual at the Oriental Building,
where he found the youth waiting for Brander to come and open up the
inner office.
"Parson's late, eh?" he threw out by way of greeting.
"Always is," was the surly answer. "He's de 'rig'nal seven sleepers."
"Puts you behind with your cleaning, eh?"
"Naw; youse ought to know I don't do no cleanin'."
"You don't? I thought you tended to Mrs. Athelstone's rooms and--Mr.
Brander's storeroom."
"Aw, go wan. I'm no second girl, an' de storeroom's never cleaned.
Dere's nothin' to clean but a lot of stones an' bum mummies an' such."
"Brander can't sell much stuff; I never see anything being shipped."
"Oh! I don't know! We sent a couple of embammed dooks to Chicago last
week."
"And last month?"
"Search me; I only copped out me job here last mont'; but seems as if
his whiskers did say dere was somethin' doin'." And just then Mr.
Brander came along.
Simpkins had found out what he wanted to know, and he decided that he
must bring his plans to a head at once. Mrs. Athelstone was expected
back the next day; he must search the storeroom that very night.
If--well, he thought he could spoil one scoundrel.
He worked to good advantage during the day, and at nine o'clock that
night, when he was back outside the Oriental Building, there were three
new keys in his pocket.
He unlocked the door noiselessly, tiptoed up the staircase, and gained
the friendly blackness of the ante-chamber quite unobserved. The
watchman was half a block away, sitting by the only street entrance kept
open at night.
Simpkins took off his shoes and found his sandals without striking a
light, and then felt his way to the door leading into the hall. The knob
rattled a little under his hand. All that evening he had been nerving
himself to go in there alone and in the dark, but now he could have
turned and run like a country boy passing a graveyard at night.
The hall was not utterly black, as he had expected. Light from the
electric lamps without flickered through the stained-glass windows.
Ghastly rays of yellow played over the painted faces on the walls and
lit up the gilded features of the mummy by Mrs. Athelstone's desk. There
were crimson spots, like blotches of blood, on the veil of Isis. And all
about were moving shadows, creeping forward stealthily, falling back
slowly, as the light without flared up or died down.
Step by step Simpkins advanced on the black altar, his muscles rigid,
his nerves quivering, his eyes staring straight ahead, as a child stares
into the dark for some awful shape which it fears to see, yet dares not
leave unseen. Once past that altar he would be safe at the door of the
storeroom.
How his heart was beating! He was almost at it. Steady! A few steps now
and he would gain the storeroom. Good God! What was that!
In the blackness behind the altar two eyes flamed.
Simpkins stopped; he was helpless to turn or to advance. Perhaps if he
did not move, it would not. A moment he stood there, tense with terror,
then--straight from the altar the thing flew at his throat. But quick as
it was: the involuntary jerk of his arm upward was quicker, and it
received the blow. Snarling, the thing fell to the floor, and leaped
back into the darkness. It was Mrs. Athelstone's cat.
So strong was Simpkins' revulsion of feeling, so great his relief, that
he forgot the real cause of his terror, and sank down on the very steps
of the altar, weakly exclaiming over and over again: "Only the cat! Only
the cat! Great Scott! how it frightened me!"
He had been sitting there for a few minutes when he heard a soft click,
click, just to his right. Some one was turning a key in the door leading
from Mrs. Athelstone's apartments. As he jumped to his feet, he heard a
hand grasp the doorknob. He looked around for a hiding-place, ran a few
steps from the altar, doubled like a baited rat, and dove into the
blackness behind the veil of Isis. There had been no time to choose; for
hardly was he safe under cover and peeping out from between the folds of
the veil than the door swung open slowly.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
VI
It was Mrs. Athelstone who came through the doorway. She was all in
white, a soft, silken white, which floated about her like a cloud,
drifting back from her bare arms and throat, and suggesting the rounded
outlines of her limbs. Her black hair, braided, hung below her waist,
and from her forehead the golden asp bound back the curls. Her arms were
full of roses--yellow, white and red.
For an uncertain moment she stood just within the hall, bathed in the
light that shone through from her apartments. Then she closed the door
and walked toward the veil. As she came through the shafts of light from
the windows, her gown was stained with crimson spots. She was at the
altar now, and Simpkins could no longer see her without changing his
position. Stealthily he edged along, careless of the statue just behind
him. As he parted the folds of the veil he saw that the altar was heaped
with flowers. Just beyond, the light playing fantastically on her
upturned face, stood Mrs. Athelstone.
Simpkins closed the veil abruptly. There came to him the remembrance
of the time when the boy had pulled the cat's tail, her anger and her
curious exclamation; and again, the repetition of it in his case, when
he had handled the mummy of Amosis roughly; and her affectation of
Egyptian symbols as ornaments. "She's the simon-pure Blavatsky, all
right," he concluded, as he pieced these things into what he had just
seen. "All others are base imitations."
The reporter had gathered from his little reading that behind these
monstrous gods and this complex symbolism there was something near akin
to Christianity in a few great essentials, and he understood how a woman
of Mrs. Athelstone's temperament, engrossed in the study of these things
and living in these surroundings, might be affected by them. Even he,
shrewd, hard Yankee that he was, had felt the influence of the place,
and there was that behind him then which made his heart beat quicker at
the thought.
When he looked out again Mrs. Athelstone was gone. He was impatient to
get to his work in the storeroom; but first he peeped out again to make
sure that she had returned to her room. She was still in the hall,
walking about in the corner where she ordinarily worked. There was
something methodical in her movements now that woke a new interest in
Simpkins. "What the dickens can she be up to?" he thought.
She had lit a lamp, and had shaded it, so that its rays were contracted
in a circle on the floor. From a cupboard let into the wall she was
taking bottles and brushes, a roll of linen bandages and some boxes of
pigments. After laying these on the floor, she walked over to the big
black mummy case by her table, and pushed until she had turned it around
with its face to the wall.
What heathen game was this? Simpkins' interest increased, and he poked
his head out boldly from the sheltering veil.
Mrs. Athelstone was standing directly in front of the case now, pulling
and tugging in an effort to bring it down on her shoulders. Finally, she
managed to tilt it toward her, and then, straining, she lowered it until
it rested flat on the floor.
"Sorry I couldn't have lent a hand," thought the gallant Simpkins; "the
old buck must weigh a ton. Now what's she bothering around that passe,
three-thousand-years-dead sport for?"
Her back was toward him; so, cautious and catlike, he stole from behind
the veil and glided to the shelter of a post not ten feet from her.
He peered around it eagerly. Still panting from her efforts, she was on
her knees beside the case, fumbling a key in the Yale lock, a curious
anachronism which Simpkins, in his cleaning, had found on all the more
valuable mummy cases.
The lid was of sycamore wood, comparatively light, and she lifted it
without trouble. Then the rays of the lamp shone full into the open
case, and Simpkins looked over the shoulders of the kneeling woman at
the mummy of a man who had stood full six feet in life. He stared long
at the face, seeking in those shriveled features a reason for the horror
which grew in him as he gazed, trying to build back into life again that
thing which once had been a man. For there was something about it which
seemed different from those Egyptians of whom he had read. Slowly the
vaguely-familiar features filled out, until Simpkins saw--not the
swarthy, low-browed face of an Egyptian king, but the ruddy, handsome
face of an Englishman, and--at last he was sure, a face like that of a
photograph in his pocket. And in that same moment there went through his
mind a sentence from the curious picture letter: "_That thing that I
have to do is about done._"
Already, in his absorption, he had started out from the shelter of
the pillar, and now he crept forward. He was almost on her, and she
had heard nothing, seen nothing, but suddenly she felt him coming,
and turned. And as her eyes, full of fear in the first startled
consciousness of discovery, met his, he sprang at her, and pinioned her
arms to her side. But only for a moment. Fear fought with her, and by a
mighty effort she half shook herself free.
[Illustration: "Suddenly she felt him coming, and turned."]
Simpkins found himself struggling desperately now to regain his
advantage. Already his greater strength was telling, when the lamp
crashed over, leaving them in darkness, and he felt the blow of a heavy
body striking his back. Claws dug through his clothes, deep into his
flesh. Something was at his head now, biting and tearing, and the warm
blood was trickling down into his eyes. A stealthy paw reached round
for his throat. He could feel its silken surface passing over his bare
flesh, the unsheathing of its steel to strike, and, as it sank into
his throat, he seized it, loosening, to do this, his hold on Mrs.
Athelstone, quite careless of her in the pain and menace of that moment.
Still clutching the great black cat, though it bit and tore at his
hands, he gained his feet. In the darkness he could see nothing but two
blazing eyes, and not until the last spark died in them did his fingers
relax. Then, with a savage joy, he threw the limp body against the altar
of Isis, and turned to see what had become of Mrs. Athelstone. She lay
quite still where he had left her, a huddled heap of white upon the
floor.
Simpkins righted and lit the overturned lamp and lifted the unconscious
woman into a chair. There he bound her, wrapping her about with the
linen bandages, until she was quite helpless to move. The obsidian eyes
of the mummy seemed to follow him as he went about his task. Annoyed by
their steady regard, he threw a cloth over the face and sat down to wait
for the woman to come back to life.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
VII
Though her gown was torn and spotted with his blood, Mrs. Athelstone had
never looked more lovely. But Simpkins was quite unmoved by the sight of
her beauty. His infatuation for her, his personal interest in her even,
had puffed out in that moment when he had discovered in the mummied face
a likeness to Doctor Athelstone. He was regarding her now simply as
"material," and fixing in his mind each detail of her appearance, that
he might the more effectively describe her in his story. And what a
splendid one it was! The Blavatsky "spread," with the opportunity which
it afforded to ridicule two rather well-known women--that was good
stuff; the scandal which had unfolded as he worked--that was better
still; but this "mysterious murder," with its novel features--this was
the superlative of excellence in Yellow Journalism. "Talk about Teddy's
luck," thought the reporter; "how about the luck of Simp., old boy?"