Page:Strange Tales Volume 02 Number 03 (1932-10).djvu/26

Suddenly Neil flung himself down before the coffin. His hands clasped the sides of the wooden case. He looked into the face of the dead princess, and a sobbing moan came from his lips.

"Amen-Ra! Amen-Ra!" he cried. "I love you still, and ever I have awaited you. I have been true to the oath we swore together, and Horus, whom we trusted, will yet restore us to one another! Do you not know me? Wake from your long sleep and speak to me. Look at me, and tell me that you love me still."

And then strange sounds burst in impassioned utterance from his lips. I supposed it was ancient Egyptian that he was speaking. I moved forward and laid my hand upon his shoulder.

"Neil," I said, "you mustn't give way like this. Pull yourself together, man!"

But his whole form was rigid as a rock, or, rather, like that of a man in catalepsy. And as I hesitated, uncertain what to do, once more there came that horrid rending of claws against the outside of the shuttered windows.

Of course everything was perfectly clear in my mind. Neil Farrant's mind had become unhinged by brooding over his companions' death. He had lived with his mummies hourly, almost, since he had smuggled them out of Egypt—and he had lived alone. Again I sought to bring him back to himself, but with equal unsuccess.

"Do you not remember Menes, Princess Amen-Ra?" he asked, as he stroked the chill cheek. "Will you not wake, only for one little instant, and remember?"

And then something happened that I knew must be imagination, but I went staggering back like a tipsy man. I could have sworn that the eyelids of the dead princess fluttered slightly, and that the faint smile about the corners of her mouth deepened just the least bit in the world. And I stood helpless, while Neil kneeled there and fondled the mummy's cheek, and again I could have sworn that the eyelids fluttered.

From the sanitarium came the deep baying of one of the bloodhounds, and another and another took up the cry. I stood there, helpless, watching the living man make love to the dead woman.

It was the sharp ringing of the telephone in the next room that startled Neil from his spell. He leaped to his feet and stood staring from me to the mummy until his clouded brain seemed to clear.

"Well, Jim, you've seen her," he said; and I could tell from his tones that he was utterly unaware of the scene that had just been enacted. "Pretty little thing, wasn't she, and astonishingly lifelike, even yet. I've been waiting for you to come down and help me with my experiment to-night. Coyne believes in it. It explains all the mystery of the whole process of mummification—all that the explorers and Egyptologists have been trying to discover—"

But he broke off as the telephone began again to ring insistently, and moved toward the door. He was quite his normal self now.

"I guess that's Coyne," he said. "I forgot to tell you that I was to bring you over there to dinner to-night. Excuse me while I answer it."

He hurried out of the room. I was convinced that Neil recalled nothing of that wild outburst of his. He seemed like a man with a dual personality. No doubt in his alternating state of incoherence he had imagined himself to be the half-