"Thank you," said the widow very dryly and very tartly.
"I merely wish to point out," went on Archie in a conciliatory tone, "that, as the mummy in its case--as appears probable--was brought into your garden between the hours of eight and ten, less fifteen minutes, that you may have heard the voices or footsteps of those who carried it here."
"I heard nothing," said Mrs. Jasher, turning towards the path. "I had my supper, and played a game or two of patience, and then wrote letters, as I told you before. And I am not going to stand in the cold, answering silly questions, Mr. Hope. If you wish to talk you must come inside."
Hope shook his head and lighted a fresh cigarette.
"I stand guard over this mummy until its rightful owner comes," said he determinedly.
"Ho!" rejoined Mrs. Jasher scornfully: she was now at the door. "I understood that you bought the mummy and therefore were its owner. Well, I only hope you"ll find those emeralds Don Pedro talked about," and with a light laugh she entered the cottage.
Archie looked after her in a puzzled way. There was no reason to suspect Mrs. Jasher, so far as he saw, even though a woman had been seen talking to Bolton on the night of the crime. And yet, why should the widow refer to the emeralds, which were of such immense value, according to Don Pedro? Hope glanced at the case and shook the primitive coffin, anxious for the moment to open it and ascertain if the jewels were still clutched grimly in the mummy"s dead hands. But the coffin was fastened tightly down with wooden pegs, and could only be opened with extreme care and difficulty. Also, as Hope reflected, even did he manage to open this receptacle of the dead, he still could not ascertain if the emeralds were safe, since they would be hidden under innumerable swathings of green-dyed llama wool. He therefore let the matter rest there, and, staring at the river, wondered how the mummy had been brought to the garden in the marshes.
Hope recollected that experts had decided the mode in which the mummy had been removed from the Pierside public-house. It had been pa.s.sed through the window, according to Inspector Date and others, and, when taken across the narrow path which bordered the river, had been placed in a waiting boat. After that it had vanished until it had re-appeared in this arbor. But if taken by water once, it could have been taken by water again. There was a rude jetty behind the embankment, which Hope could easily see from where he stood. In all probability the mummy had been landed there and carried to the garden, while Mrs. Jasher was busy with her supper and her game of cards and her letters. Also, the path from the sh.o.r.e to the house was very lonely, and if any care had been exercised, which was probable, no one from the Fort road or from the village street could have seen the stealthy conspirators bringing their weird burden. So far Hope felt that he could argue excellently. But who had brought the mummy to the garden and why had it been brought there?
These questions he could not answer so easily, and indeed not at all.
While thus meditating, he heard, far away in the frosty air, a puffing and blowing and panting like an impatient motor-car. Before he could guess what this was, Braddock appeared, simply racing along the marshy causeway, followed closely by c.o.c.katoo, and at some distance away by Lucy. The little scientist rushed through the gate, which he flung open with a noise fit to wake the dead, and lunged forward, to fall with outstretched arms upon the green case. There he remained, still puffing and blowing, and looked as though he were hugging a huge green beetle.
c.o.c.katoo, who, being lean and hard, kept his breath more easily, stood respectfully by, waiting for his master to give orders, and Lucy came in quietly by the gate, smiling at her father"s enthusiasm. At the same moment Mrs. Jasher, well wrapped up in a coat of sables, emerged from the cottage.
"I heard you coming, Professor," she called out, hurrying down the path.
"I should think the whole Fort heard the Professor coming," said Hope, glancing at the dark ma.s.s. "The soldiers must think it is an invasion."
But Braddock paid no heed to this jocularity, or even to Mrs. Jasher, to whom he had been so lately engaged. All his soul was in the mummy case, and as soon as he recovered his breath, he loudly proclaimed his joy at this miraculous recovery of the precious article.
"Mine! mine!" he roared, and his words ran violently through the frosty air.
"Be calm, sir," advised Hope--"be calm."
"Calm! calm!" bellowed Braddock, struggling to a standing position. "Oh, confound you, sir, how can I be calm when I find what I have lost?
You have a mean, groveling soul, Hope, not the soaring spirit of a collector."
"There is no need to be rude to Archie, father," corrected Lucy sharply.
"Rude! Rude! I am never rude. But this mummy." Braddock peered closely at it and rapped the wood to a.s.sure himself it was no phantom. "Yes!
it is my mummy, the mummy of Inca Caxas. Now I shall learn how the Peruvians embalmed their royal dead. Mine! mine! mine!" He crooned like a mother over a child, caressing the coffin; then suddenly drew himself upright and fixed Mrs. Jasher with an indignant eye. "So it was you, madam, who stole my mummy," he declared venomously, "and I thought of making you my wife. Oh, what an escape I have had. Shame, woman, shame!"
Mrs. Jasher stared, then her face grew redder than the rouge on her cheeks, and she stamped furiously in the neat Louis Quinze slippers in which she had in judiciously come out.
"How dare you say what you have said?" she cried, her voice shrill and hard with anger. "Mr. Hope has been saying the same thing. Are you both mad? I never set eyes on the horrid thing in my life. And only to-night you told me that you loved--"
"Yes, yes, I said many foolish things, I don"t doubt, madam. But that is not the question. My mummy! my mummy!" he rapped the wood furiously--"how does my mummy come to be here?"
"I don"t know," said Mrs. Jasher, still furious, "and I don"t care."
"Don"t care: don"t care, when I look forward to your helping me in my lifework! As my wife--"
"I shall never be your wife," cried the widow, stamping again. "I wouldn"t be your wife for a thousand or a million pounds. Marry your mummy, you horrid, red-faced, crabbed little--"
"Hush! hush!" whispered Lucy, taking the angry woman round the waist, "you must make allowances for my father. He is so excited over his good fortune that he--"
"I shall not make allowance," interrupted Mrs. Jasher angrily. "He practically accuses me of stealing the mummy. If I did that, I must have murdered poor Sidney Bolton."
"No, no," cried the Professor, wiping his red face. "I never hinted at such a thing. But the mummy is in your garden."
"What of that? I don"t know how it came there. Mr. Hope, surely you do not support Professor Braddock in his preposterous accusation?"
"I bring no accusation," stuttered the Professor.
"Neither do I, Mrs. Jasher. You are excited now. Go in and sleep, and to-morrow you will talk reasonably." This brilliant speech was from Hope, and wrought Mrs. Jasher into a royal rage.
"Well," she gasped, "he asks me to be calm, as it I wasn"t the very calmest person here. I declare: oh, I shall be ill! Lucy," she seized the girl"s hand and dragged her towards the cottage, "come in and give me red lavender. I shall be in bed for days and days and days. Oh, what brutes men can be! But listen, you two horrors," she indicated Braddock and Hope, as she pushed open the door, "if you dare to say a word against me, I"ll have an action for libel against you. Oh, dear me, how very ill I feel! Lucy, darling, help me, oh, help me, and--and--oh--oh--oh!" She flopped down on the threshold of her home with a cry.
"Archie! Archie! She"s fainted."
Hope rushed forward, and raised the stout little woman in his arms.
Jane, attracted by the clamor, appeared on the scene, and between the three of them they managed to get Mrs. Jasher placed on the sofa of the pink drawing-room. She certainly was in a dead faint, so Hope left her to the administrations of Lucy and the servant, and walked out again into the garden, closing the cottage door after him.
He found the heartless Professor quite oblivious to Mrs. Jasher"s sufferings, so taken up was he with the newly found mummy. c.o.c.katoo had been sent for a hand-cart, and while he was absent Braddock expatiated on the perfections of this relic of Peruvian civilization.
"Will you sell it to Don Pedro?" asked Hope.
"After I have done with it, not before," snapped Braddock, hovering round his treasure. "I shall want a percentage on my bargain also."
Archie thought privately that if Braddock unswathed the mummy, he would find the emeralds and would probably stick to them, so that his expedition to Egypt might be financed. It that case Don Pedro would no longer wish to buy the corpse of his ancestor. But while he debated as to the advisability of telling the Professor of the existence of the emeralds, c.o.c.katoo returned with the hand-cart.
"You have lost Mrs. Jasher," said Hope, while he, a.s.sisted the Professor to hoist the mummy on to the cart.
"Never mind! never mind!" Braddock patted the coffin. "I have found something much more to my mind: something ever so much better. Ha! ha!"
CHAPTER XIV. THE UNEXPECTED HAPPENS
In spite of newspapers and letters and tape-machines and telegrams and such like aids to the speedy diffusion of news, the same travels quicker in villages than in cities. Word of mouth can spread gossip with marvelous rapidity in spa.r.s.ely inhabited communities, since it is obvious that in such places every person knows the other--as the saying goes--inside out. In every English village walls have ears and windows have eyes, so that every cottage is a hot-bed of scandal, and what is known to one is, within the hour, known to the others. Even the Sphinx could not have preserved her secret long in such a locality.
Gartley could keep up its reputation in this respect along with the best, therefore it was little to be wondered at, that early next morning every one knew that Professor Braddock had found his long-lost mummy in Mrs. Jasher"s garden, and had removed the same to the Pyramids without unnecessary delay. It was not particularly late when the hand-cart, with its uncanny burden, had pa.s.sed along the sole street of the place, and several men had emerged from the Warrior Inn ostensibly to offer help, but really to know what the eccentric master of the great house was doing. Braddock brusquely rejected these offers; but the oddly shaped mummy case, stained green, having been seen, it needed little wit for those who had caught a sight of it to put two and two together, especially as the weird object had been described at the inquest and had been talked over ever since in every cottage. And as the cart had been seen coming out of the widow"s garden, it naturally occurred to the villagers that Mrs. Jasher had been concealing the mummy. Shortly the rumor spread that she had also murdered Bolton, for unless she had done so, she certainly--according to village logic--could not have been possessed of the spoil. Finally, as Mrs. Jasher"s doors and windows were small and the mummy was rather bulky, it was natural to presume that she had hidden it in the garden. Report said she had buried it and had dug it up just in time to be pounced upon by its rightful owner. From which it can be seen that gossip is not invariably accurate.
However this may be, the news of Professor Braddock"s good fortune shortly came to Don Pedro"s ears through the medium of the landlady. As she revealed what she had heard in the morning, the Peruvian gentleman was spared a sleepless night. But as soon as he learned the truth--which was surprising enough in its unexpectedness--he hastily finished his breakfast and hurried to the Pyramids. As yet he had not intended to see Braddock so promptly, or at least not until he had made further inquiries at Pierside, but the news that Braddock possessed the royal ancestor of the De Gayangoses brought him immediately into the museum.
He greeted the Professor in his usual grave and dignified manner, and no one would have guessed from his inherent calmness that the unexpected news of Braddock"s arrival, and the still more unexpected information about the green mummy, had surprised him beyond measure. Being somewhat superst.i.tious, it also occurred to Don Pedro that the coincidence meant good fortune to him in the recovery of his long-lost ancestor.
Braddock, already knowing a great deal about Don Pedro from Lucy and Archie Hope, was only too pleased to see the Peruvian, hoping to find in him a kindred spirit. As yet the Professor was not aware of the contents of the ancient Latin ma.n.u.script, which revealed the fact of the hidden emeralds, since Hope had decided to leave it to the Peruvian to impart the information. Archie knew very well that Don Pedro--as he had plainly stated--wished to purchase the mummy, and it was only right that Braddock should know what he was selling. But Hope forgot one important fact perhaps from the careless way in which Don Pedro had told his story--namely, that the Professor in a second degree was a receiver of stolen goods. Therefore it was more than probable that the Peruvian would claim the mummy as his own property. Still, in that event he would have to prove his claim, and that would not be easy.
The plump little professor had not yet unsealed the case, and when Don Pedro entered, he was standing before it rubbing his fat hands, with a gloating expression in his face. However, as c.o.c.katoo had brought in the Peruvian"s card, Braddock expected his visitor and wheeled to face him.
"How are you, sir?" said he, extending his hand. "I am glad to see you, as I hear that you know all about this mummy of Inca Caxas."