Page:Strange Tales Volume 02 Number 03 (1932-10).djvu/25

had passed, slid off, disclosing a plainer and unpainted coffin. The lid of this Neil removed in turn, and I saw before me the mummy of the young girl, swathed in the rotting linen fabric, which diffused an almost unbearable odor of natron and spices.

Only the contours were visible. The linen swathed the whole head and body like a winding sheet. Yet I could see that it had been unwound and wound repeatedly, and, I imagined, by Neil.

His hands were shaking. He no longer seemed aware of my presence. Nor of the sudden fluttering of wings without the shuttered windows, and the rending of claws against the bars.

SOMEHOW the proximity of the hawks seemed to me to be connected with what Neil was doing. I shuddered at the sound. But it was not repeated, and I watched Neil begin to unwind the upper layer of linen, so that the contours of the mummy's head gradually grew plainer.

I saw tufts of dark hair appear, and I was amazed at its perfect preservation. It was the eeriest experience I had ever known, to stand there and see this figure of the long-dead Egyptian princess gradually coming to light.

Of a sudden Neil stopped in the midst of his work, looked around and saw me. For an instant he stared at me as if he did not recognize me, as if I was some hostile intruder. And I, in turn, was astonished at the transformation that had come over him.

He looked again as he had looked at the moment of our meeting in the doorway. That lean, cadaverous form of his looked rather like that of a desert sheik than of a twentieth-century American.

"Jim—what the devil!" he began, and then seemed to recollect me. He pulled himself together with a visible effort.

"I'm all worked up over this business, Jim," he said. "Excuse me if I seem queer. I was going to show you the mummy of Amen-Ra, but I guess she'll keep."

"Now that you’ve gone so far, I'd like to see the rest," I answered. But he was already staring into space as if I had vanished completely from his consciousness. And mechanically his hands went on unwinding the linen shroud.

One more turn, I thought—but there were several, for the material was now as fine as silk, and perfectly preserved. Another turn, and another, and still two more; and then, just as I was beginning to wonder when the process would come to an end, the last layer fell away, and the face and torso of the Amen-Ra were revealed to me.

I STARED at the face and gasped. This a mummy? This the face of a girl who had died countless centuries before? Why, she might only just have died. The skin, with its delicate olive tinge, was perfectly preserved, it even seemed slightly flushed, as if the blood pulsated underneath its peach-smooth surface. The eyes were closed, but there was the hint of a pupil beneath the white eyelid, shaded with long, black lashes.

And it seemed to me as if the ghost of a smile hovered about the mouth, a smile, a loving, mocking smile, as if the dead girl's last thoughts had been of the man to whom she had sworn by the god Horus that neither life nor death should separate them!

I looked at that face, with its beauty and high breeding, and the tragedy of the old story gripped my heart. This girl seemed so alive! It was incredible that all this had happened in the dim dawn of history.