A Visitor from Egypt
by Frank Belknap Long, Jr.
On a dismal rainy afternoon in August a tall, very thin gentleman tapped timidly on the frosted glass window of the curator’s office in a certain New England museum. He wore a dark blue Chinchilla overcoat, olive-green Homburg hat with high tapering crown, yellow gloves, and spats. A blue silk muffler with white dots encircled his neck and entirely concealed the lower portion of his face and virtually all of his nose. Only a small expanse of pink and very wrinkled flesh was visible above the muffler and below his forehead, but as this exposed portion of his physiognomy contained his eyes it was as arresting as it was meager. So arresting indeed was it that it commanded instant respect, and the attendants, who were granted liberal weekly emoluments for merely putting yards of red tape between the main entrance and the narrow corridor that led to the curator’s office, waived all of their habitual and asinine inquiries and conducted the muffled gentleman straight to what a Victorian novelist would have called the sacred precincts.
Having tapped, the gentleman waited. He waited patiently, but something in his manner suggested that he was extremely nervous and perturbed and decidedly on edge to talk to the curator. And yet when the door of the office at last swung open, and the curator peered out fastidiously from behind gold-rimmed spectacles, he merely coughed and extended a visiting-card.
The card was conservatively fashionable in size and exquisitely engraved, and as soon as the curator perused it his countenance underwent an extraordinary alteration. He was ordinarily a supremely reticent individual with long, pale face and lugubrious, condescending eyes, but he suddenly became preposterously friendly and greeted his visitor with an effusiveness that was almost hysterical. He seized his visitor’s somewhat flabby gloved hand and gave it a Babbittesque squeeze. He nodded and bowed and smirked and seemed almost beside himself with gratification.
“If only I had known, Sir Richard, that you were in America! The papers were unusually silent — outrageously silent, you know. I can not imagine how you managed to elude the reporters. They are usually so persistent, so indecently curious. I really can not imagine how you achieved it!”
“I did not wish to talk to idiotic old women, to lecture before mattoids, to have my photo reproduced in your absurd papers.” Sir Richard’s voice was oddly high-pitched, almost effeminate, and it quivered with the intensity of his emotion. “I detest publicity, and I regret that I am not utterly unknown in this... er... region.”
“I quite understand, Sir Richard,” murmured the curator soothingly. “You naturally desired leisure for research, for discussion. You were not interested in what the vulgar would say or think about you. A commendable and eminently scholarly attitude to take, Sir Richard! A splendid attitude! I quite understand and sympathize. We Americans have to be polite to the press occasionally, but you have no idea how it cramps our style, if I may use an expressive but exceedingly coarse colloquialism. It really does, Sir Richard. You have no idea — but do come in. Come in, by all means. We are honored immeasurably by the visit of so eminent a scholar.”
Sir Richard bowed stiffly and preceded the curator into the office. He selected the most comfortable of the five leather-backed chairs that encircled the curator’s desk and sank into it with a faintly audible sigh. He neither removed his hat nor withdrew the muffler from his pinkish visage.
The curator selected a seat on the opposite side of the table and politely extended a box of Havana panetelas. “Extremely mild,” he murmured. “Won’t you try one, Sir Richard?”
Sir Richard shook his head. “I have never smoked,” he said, and coughed.
There ensued a silence. Then Sir Richard apologized for the muffler. “I had an unfortunate accident on the ship,” he explained. “I stumbled in one of the deck games and cut my face rather badly. It’s in a positively unpresentable condition. I know you’ll pardon me if I don’t remove this muffler.”
The curator gasped. “How horrible, Sir Richard! I can sympathize, believe me. I hope that it will not leave a scar. One should have the most expert advice in such matters. I hope — Sir Richard, have you consulted a specialist, may I ask?”
Sir Richard nodded. “The wounds are not deep — nothing serious, I assure you. And now, Mr. Buzzby, I should like to discuss with you the mission that has brought me to Boston. Are the predynastic remains from Luxor on exhibition?”
The curator was a trifle disconcerted. He had placed the Luxor remains on exhibition that very morning, but he had not as yet arranged them to his satisfaction, and he would have preferred that his distinguished guest should view them at a later date. But he very clearly perceived that Sir Richard was so intensely interested that nothing that he could say would induce him to wait, and he was proud of the remains and flattered that England’s ablest Egyptologist should have come to the city expressly to see them. So he nodded amiably and confessed that the bones were on exhibition, and he added that he would be delighted and honored if Sir Richard would view them.
“They are truly marvelous,” he explained. “The pure Egyptian type — dolichocephalic, with relatively primitive features. And they date — Sir Richard, they date from at least 8,000 B. C.”
“Are the bones tinted?”
“I should say so, Sir Richard! They are wonderfully tinted, and the original colors have scarcely faded at all. Blue and red, Sir Richard, with red predominating.”
“Hm. A most absurd custom,” murmured Sir Richard.
Mr. Buzzby smiled. “I have always considered it pathetic, Sir Richard. Infinitely amusing, but pathetic. They thought that by painting the bones they could preserve the vitality of the corruptible body. Corruption putting on incorruption, as it were.”
“It was blasphemous!” Sir Richard had arisen from his chair. His face, above the muffler, was curiously white, and there was a hard, metallic glitter in his small dark eyes. “They sought to cheat Osiris! They had no conception of hyperphysical realities!”
The curator stared curiously. “Precisely what do you mean, Sir Richard?”
Sir Richard started a trifle at the question, as though he were awakening from some strange nightmare, and his emotion ebbed as rapidly as it had arisen. The glitter died out of his eyes and he sank listlessly back in his chair. “I... I was merely amused by your comment. As though by merely painting their mummies they could restore the circulation of the blood!”
“But that, as you know, Sir Richard, would occur in the other world. It was one of the most distinctive prerogatives of Osiris. He alone could restore the dead.”
“Yes, I know,” murmured Sir Richard. “They counted a good deal on Osiris. It is curious that it never occurred to them that the god might be offended by their presumptions.”