"Keep a scoop like this out of the papers?" Burgess laughed aloud.
"You"re talking through your hat, Blount, it can"t be done."
In one terrible flash Pauline saw her name in capitals, her photograph almost life-size, photographs of her trunk, the gorilla, Blount, in head-liners, too, and Harry, furious, too far away for moral suasion; stern, cold, unforgiving, worse still, disgusted. She realized as she had never realized before that Harry was what counted most, Harry was the one thing she could not live without. To the terrors of these hours was added the terror of losing him.
She burst into wild sobs.
"I want Harry, I don"t want anything in the world but Harry! Oh, take me home, please take me home!"
Burgess got a taxi and went with her to the hotel, where She was put to bed, a doctor sent for, and where at last she fell asleep.
But it was not until noon the next day that she was able to take the train for New York. And then began, two hours and a half that Pauline remembered to the last hour of her life. Her photograph stared at her from the front page of every daily paper--even the gla.s.ses and thick veil she wore to conceal her ident.i.ty could not soften the conspicuous pictures. Newsboys called her name, and the gorilla story, Wrentz, and Blount"s names, together--every pa.s.senger in the car, it seemed to her, men, women, and children, were discussing her. There were silly jokes, contemptuous criticism, half-laughing suggestions that there was something "queer about Miss Marvin." just behind her, she heard one woman say to another, "But, then, my dear, what could you expect of any girl whose mother was an Egyptian" as if this equaled breaking the whole Decalogue.
Though she had wired Owen, the motor did not meet her, and feeling more than ever forlorn and forsaken, Pauline got into a taxi. Never had the old place looked so beautiful as today when she felt that it could never be her home again--she must tell Harry that her mother was an Egyptian and then even if he could forgive her this last adventure he would never marry her. Oh, how could she have been so silly, so conceited, so cruel to Harry! And what a fool she had been to go in search of experience in order to write. If she couldn"t write with all this beauty spread out before her, if she couldn"t write by living a real, human, everyday life, the sort of life that brings you close to normal people, how could she ever hope to write by living on excitement --on abnormal excitement and with abnormal people and situations?
She paid the driver and was walking slowly up the steps of the veranda, when, suddenly, she halted as if she had been struck. What was that?
It couldn"t be--yes, it was--funeral streamers hanging from the door-k.n.o.b!
With a scream that rang through the closed door, Pauline fainted. When she recovered consciousness she was in the library. Bemis and Margaret were bending over her, and strong, tender arms were around her.
"Harry," she murmured instinctively.
"Don"t try to talk, my darling, drink this. You go," to Bemis and Margaret.
"Oh, Harry, I thought you were dead."
"I"m very much alive," Harry said with a tremulous laugh.
"But Harry, what does all that black on the door mean?"
"It means," said Harry, savagely, "that though the mills of the G.o.ds grind slowly they grind surely--Owen"s dead."
"Owen!" Her eyes large with terror, Blount"s words ringing in her ears-- "I shouldn"t like to be the man at the bottom of this when Mr. Marvin hears of it." ""Owen," she repeated in a breathless whisper.
"Harry, you didn"t kill him?"
"He didn"t give me the chance. He was dead when I got here--overdose of morphine Dr. Stevens said. Seems he was a drug fiend."
"Why that was the reason," Pauline said, her filling with tears. "He was crazy, he didn"t know what he was doing. Poor Owen, poor Owen"-- then turned hastily to safer topics. "But I thought you went to Chicago for a week."
"I did, but, you"ll laugh, Pauline--I know it sounds fool--the Mummy came to me just as she came to me in Montana. I took the first train home. I knew you were in danger--I knew it was a warning.
I"ll ever trust, you out of my sight again--you"ve got to marry me now."
Pauline shrank back from his kisses. "No, no, Harry I can"t--I won"t --there was a woman on the train said my mother was an Egyptian."
Harry broke into a peal of laughter and caught her in his arms.
"Is that the only reason you won"t?"
"Harry, is it true?"
"I don"t know and I don"t care--what difference does it make who your mother was? You are you, that"s all I care for." His voice shook. "I love you so, Pauline, that I can"t stand this life any longer--another adventure--"
Pauline silenced him with a kiss.
"I"m all through with adventures," she declared. "Harry, I"m going to--"
"Marry me? Polly, do you mean it?"
"Yes, yes. Oh, my dearest, I"ve been a selfish, silly, conceited little pig, but I"m cured, I"m cured at last."
As he clasped her in his arms, the shutter swung violently to, and the case containing the Mummy fell with a clatter to the floor. Harry ran and lifted it as tenderly as if it had been a little child.
"I suppose we can hardly keep her here," he said regretfully, "but we"ll give, no, I can"t give her up entirely, we"ll lend her to the Metropolitan Art Museum where she"ll receive due honor. She"s been a faithful friend to us, Polly."
"And here"s another," exclaimed Pauline, as Cyrus ran frantically into the room, and leaping upon the couch with ecstatic barks of welcome, threatened again to take the place that belonged by right to Harry.
But this time Harry joined in Pauline"s caresses.
THE END