“It was much worse a minute ago,” exclaimed the attendant at Mr. Buzzby’s elbow. “The smoke was thicker and had a most awful smell. Like them dinosaur eggs smelt when you first unpacked ’em last spring, sir.”
The attendants had now reached the base of the staircase and were peering cautiously into the lavatory. For a moment they peered in silence, and then one of them shouted up at Mr. Buzzby. “The smoke’s dreadfully dense here, sir. We can’t see any flames. Shall we go in, sir?”
“Yes, do!” Mr. Buzzby’s voice was tragically shrill. “Do all you can. Please!”
The attendants disappeared into the lavatory and the curator waited with an agonized and expectant air. His heart was wrung at the thought of the fate which had in all probability overtaken his distinguished guest, but he could not think of anything further to do. Sinister forebodings crowded into his mind, but he was powerless to act.
Then it was that the shrieks commenced. From whatever cause arising they were truly ghastly, but they began so suddenly, so unexpectedly, that at first the curator could form no theory as to what had caused them. They issued so horribly and suddenly from the lavatory, echoing and reechoing through the empty corridors, that the curator could only stare and gasp.
But when they became fairly coherent, when the screams of affright turned to appeals for mercy, for pity, and when the language in which they found grim expression changed too, becoming familiar to the curator but incomprehensible to the man beside him, a dreadful incident occurred which the latter has never been able to consign to a merciful mnemonic oblivion.
The curator fell upon his knees, literally went down upon his knees at the head of the staircase and raised both arms in an unmistakable gesture of supplication. And then from his ashen lips there poured a torrent of grotesque gibberish:
“sdmw stn Osiris! sdmw stn Osiris! sdmw stn Osiris! sdm-f Osiris! Oh, sdm-f Osiris! sdmw stn Osiris!”
“Fool!” A muffled form emerged from the lavatory and ponderously ascended the stairs. “Fool! You — you have sinned irretrievably!” The voice was guttural, harsh, remote, and seemed to come from an immeasurable distance.
“Sir Richard! Sir Richard!” The curator got stumblingly to his feet and staggered toward the ascending figure. “Protect me, Sir Richard. There’s something unspeakable down there. I thought — for a moment I thought — Sir Richard, did you see it? Did you hear anything? those shrieks—”
But Sir Richard did not reply. He did not even look at the curator. He brushed past the unfortunate man as though he were a mere meddling fool, and grimly began to climb the stairs that led to the Hall of Egyptian Antiquities. He ascended so rapidly that the curator could not catch up with him, and before the frightened man had reached the half-way landing his steps were resounding on the tiled floor above.
“Wait, Sir Richard!” shrieked Buzzby. “Wait, please! I am sure that you can explain everything. I am afraid. Please wait for me!”
A spasm of coughing seized him, and at that moment there ensued a most dreadful crash. Fragments of broken glass tinkled suggestively upon the stone floor, and awoke ominous echoes in the corridor and up and down the winding stairway. Mr. Buzzby clung to the banisters and moaned. His face was purplish and distorted with fear and beads of sweat glistened on his high forehead. For a moment he remained thus cowering and whimpering on the staircase. Then, miraculously, his courage returned. He ascended the last flight three steps at a time and dashed wildly forward.
An intolerable thought had abruptly been born in the poor, bewildered brain of Mr. Buzzby. It had suddenly occurred to him that Sir Richard was an impostor, a murderous madman intent only upon destruction, and that his collections were in immediate danger. Whatever Mr. Buzzby’s human deficiencies, in his professional capacity he was conscientious and aggressive to an almost abnormal degree. And the crash had been unmistakable and susceptible of only one explanation. Mr. Buzzby completely forgot his fear in his concern for his precious collections. Sir Richard had smashed one of the cases and was extracting its contents! There was little doubt in Mr. Buzzby’s mind as to which of the cases Sir Richard had smashed. “The Luxor remains can never be duplicated,” he moaned. “I have been horribly duped!”
Suddenly he stopped, and stared. At the very entrance to the Hall lay an assortment of garments which he instantly recognized. There was the blue Chinchilla coat and the Alpine Homburg with its high tapering crown, and the blue silk muffler that had concealed so effectively the face of his visitor. And on the very top of the heap lay a pair of yellow suede gloves.
“Good God!” muttered Mr. Buzzby. “The man has shed all of his clothes!”
He stood there for a moment staring in utter bewilderment and then with long, hysterical strides he advanced into the hall. “A hopeless maniac,” he muttered, under his breath. “A sheer, raving lunatic. Why did I not—”
Then, abruptly, he ceased to reproach himself. He forgot entirely his folly, the heap of clothes, and the smashed case. Everything that had up to that moment occupied his mind was instantly extruded and he shriveled and shrank with fear. Never had the unwilling gaze of Mr. Buzzby encountered such a sight.
Mr. Buzzby’s visitor was bending over the shattered case and only his back was visible. But it was not an ordinary back. In a lucid, unemotional moment Mr. Buzzby would have called it a nasty, malignant back, but in juxtaposition with the crown that topped it there is no Aryan polysyllable suggestive enough to describe it. For the crown was very tall and ponderous with jewels and unspeakably luminous, and it accentuated the vileness of the back. It was a green back. Sapless was the word that ran through Mr. Buzzby’s mind as he stood and stared at it. And it was wrinkled, too, horribly wrinkled, all crisscrossed with centuried grooves.
Mr. Buzzby did not even notice his visitor’s neck, which glistened and was as thin as a beanpole, nor the small round scaly head that bobbed and nodded ominously. He saw only the hideous back, and the unbelievably awesome crown. The crown shed a fiery radiance upon the reddish tiles of the dim, vast hall, and the starkly nude body twisted and turned and writhed shockingly.
Black horror clutched at Mr. Buzzby’s throat, and his lips trembled as though he were about to cry out. But he spoke no word. He had staggered back against the wall and was making curious futile gestures with his arms, as though he sought to embrace the darkness, to wrap the darkness in the hall about him, to make himself as inconspicuous as possible and invisible to the thing that was bending over the case. But apparently he soon found to his infinite dismay that the thing was aware of his presence, and as it turned slowly toward him he made no further attempt to obliterate himself, but went down on his knees and screamed and screamed and screamed.
Silently the figure advanced toward him. It seemed to glide rather than to walk, and in its terribly lean arms it held a queer assortment of brilliant scarlet bones. And it cackled loathsomely as it advanced.
And then it was that Mr. Buzzby’s sanity departed utterly. He groveled and gibbered and dragged himself along the floor like a man in the grip of an instantaneous catalepsy. And all the while he murmured incoherently about how spotless he was and would Osiris spare him and how he longed to reconcile himself with Osiris.
But the figure, when it got to him, merely-stooped and breathed on him. Three times it breathed on his ashen face and one could almost see the face shrivel and blacken beneath its warm breath. For some time it remained in a stooping posture, glaring glassily, and when it arose Mr. Buzzby made no effort to detain it. Holding the scarlet bones very firmly in its horribly thin arms it glided rapidly away in the direction of the stairs. The attendants did not see it descend. No one ever saw it again.