The Curse of the Pharaohs (3 page)

The newspaper story for which I searched was no longer on the front page, though it had occupied this position for some time. I think I can do no better than relate what I then knew of the case, as if I were beginning a work of fiction; for indeed, if the story had not appeared in the respectable pages of the
Times,
I would have thought it one of the ingenious inventions of Herr Ebers or Mr. Rider Haggard—to whose romances, I must confess, I was addicted. Therefore, be patient, dear reader, if we begin with a sober narrative of facts. They are necessary to your understanding of later developments; and I promise you we will have sensations enough in due course.

Sir Henry Baskerville (of the Norfolk Baskervilles, not the Devonshire branch of the family), having suffered a severe illness, had been advised by bis physician to spend a winter in the salubrious climate of Egypt. Neither the excellent man of medicine nor his wealthy patient could have anticipated the far-reaching consequences of this advice; for Sir Henry's first glimpse of the majestic features of the Sphinx inspired in his bosom a passionate interest in Egyptian antiquities, which was to rule him for the remainder of his life.

After excavating at Abydos and Denderah, Sir Henry finally obtained a firman to excavate in what is perhaps the most romantic of all Egyptian archaeological sites—the Valley of the Kings at Thebes. Here the god-kings of imperial Egypt were laid to rest with the pomp and majesty befitting their high estate. Their mummies enclosed in golden coffins and adorned with jewel-encrusted amulets, they hoped in the secrecy of their rock-cut tombs, deep in the bowels of the Theban hills, to escape the dreadful fate that had befallen their ancestors. For by the time of the Empire the pyramids of earlier rulers already gaped open and desolate, the royal bodies destroyed and their treasures dispersed. Alas for human vanity! The mighty pharaohs of the later period were no more immune to the depredations of tomb robbers than their ancestors had been. Every royal tomb found in the Valley had been despoiled. Treasures, jewels, and kingly mummies had vanished. It was assumed that the ancient tomb robbers had destroyed what they could not steal, until that astonishing day in My of 1881, when a group of modem thieves led Emil Brugsch, of the Cairo Museum, to a remote valley in the Theban mountains. The thieves, men from the village of Gurneh, had discovered what archaeologists had missed—the last resting place of Egypt's mightiest kings, queens, and royal children, hidden away in the days of the nation's decline by a group of loyal priests.

Not all the kings of the Empire were found in the thieves' cache, nor had all their tombs been identified. Lord Baskerville believed that the barren cliffs of the Valley still hid kingly tombs—even, perhaps, a tomb that had never been robbed. One frustration followed another, but he never abandoned his quest. Determined to dedicate his life to it, he built a house on the West Bank, half winter home, half working quarters for his archaeological staff. To this lovely spot he brought his bride, a beautiful young woman who had nursed him through a bout of pneumonia brought on by his return to England's damp spring climate.

The story of this romantic courtship and marriage, with its Cinderella aspect—for the new Lady Baskerville was a young lady of no fortune and insignificant family—had been prominently featured in the newspapers at the time. This event occurred before my own interest in Egypt developed, but naturally I had heard of Sir Henry; his name was known to every Egyptologist. Emerson had nothing good to say about him, but then Emerson did not approve of any other archaeologists, amateur or professional. In accusing Sir Henry of being an amateur he did the gentleman less than justice, for his lordship never attempted to direct the excavations; he always employed a professional scholar for that work.

In September of this year Sir Henry had gone to Luxor as usual, accompanied by Lady Baskerville and Mr. Alan Armadale, the archaeologist in charge. Their purpose during this season was to begin work on an area in the center of the Valley, near the tombs of Ramses II and Merenptah, which had been cleared by Lepsius in 1844. Sir Henry thought that the rubbish dumps thrown up by that expedition had perhaps covered the hidden entrances to other tombs. It was his intention to clear the ground down to bedrock to make sure nothing had been overlooked. And indeed, scarcely had the men been at work for three days when their spades uncovered the first of a series of steps cut into the rock.

(Are you yawning, gentle reader? If you are, it is because you know nothing of archaeology. Rock-cut steps in the Valley of the Kings could signify only one thing—the entrance to a tomb.)

The stairway went down into the rock at a steep angle. It had been completely filled with rock and rubble. By the following afternoon the men had cleared mis away, exposing the upper portion of a doorway blocked with heavy stone slabs. Stamped into the mortar were the unbroken seals of the royal necropolis. Note that word, oh, reader—that word so simple and yet so fraught with meaning. Unbroken seals implied that the tomb had not been opened since the day when it was solemnly closed by the priests of the funerary cult.

Sir Henry, as his intimates were to testify, was a man of singularly phlegmatic temperament, even for a British nobleman. The only sign of excitement he displayed was a muttered, "By Jove," as he stroked his wispy beard. Others were not so blase. The news reached the press and was duly published.

In accordance with the terms of his firman, Sir Henry notified the Department of Antiquities of his find; when he descended the dusty steps a second time he was accompanied by a distinguished group of archaeologists and officials. A fence had been hastily erected to hold back the crowd of sightseers, journalists, and natives, the latter picturesque in their long flapping robes and white turbans. Among the latter group one face stood out—that of Mohammed Abd er Rasul, one of the discoverers of the cache of royal mummies, who had betrayed the find (and his brothers) to the authorities and had been rewarded by a position in the Antiquities Department. Onlookers remarked on the profound chagrin of his expression and the gloomy looks of other members of the family. For once, the foreigners had stolen a march on them and deprived them of a potential source of income.

Though he had recovered from the illness that had brought him to Egypt and was (as his physician was later to report) in perfect health, Sir Henry's physique was not impressive. A photograph taken of him on that eventful day portrays a tall, stoop-shouldered man whose hair appears to have slid down off his head and adhered somewhat erratically to his cheeks and chin. Of manual dexterity he had none; and those who knew him well moved unobtrusively to the rear as he placed a chisel in position against the stone barricade and raised his hammer. The British consul did not know him well. The first chip of rock hit this unlucky gentleman full on the nose. Apologies and first aid followed. Now surrounded by a wide empty space, Sir Henry prepared to strike again. Scarcely had he raised the hammer when, from among the crowd of watching Egyptians, came a long ululating howl.

The import of the cry was understood by all who heard it. In such fashion do the followers of Mohammed mourn their dead.

There was a moment's pause. Then the voice rose again. It cried (I translate, of course): "Desecration! Desecration! May the curse of the gods fall on him who disturbs the king's eternal rest!"

Startled by this remark, Sir Henry missed the chisel and hit himself on the thumb. Such misadventures do not improve the temper. Sir Henry may be excused for losing his. In a savage voice he instructed Armadale, standing behind him, to capture the prophet of doom and give him a good thrashing. Armadale was willing; but as he approached the milling crowd the orator wisely ceased his cries and thereby became anonymous, for his friends all denied any knowledge of his identity.

It was a trivial incident, soon forgotten by everyone except Sir Henry, whose thumb was badly bruised. At least the injury gave him an excuse to surrender his tools to someone who was able to use them more effectively. Mr. Alan Armadale, a young, vigorous man, seized the implements. A few skillful blows opened an aperture wide enough to admit a light. Armadale then respectfully stepped back, allowing his patron the honor of the first look.

It was a day of misadventures for poor Sir Henry. Seizing a candle, he eagerly thrust his arm through the gaping hole. His fist encountered a hard surface with such force that he dropped the candle and withdrew a hand from which a considerable amount of skin had been scraped.

Investigation showed that the space beyond the door was completely filled with rubble. This was not surprising, since the Egyptians commonly used such devices to discourage tomb robbers; but the effect was distinctly anticlimactic, and the audience dispersed with disappointed murmurs, leaving Sir Henry to nurse his barked knuckles and contemplate a long, tedious job. If this tomb followed the plans of those already known, a passageway of unknown length would have to be cleared before the burial chamber was reached. Some tombs had entrance passages over a hundred feet long.

Yet the fact that the corridor was blocked made the discovery appear even more promising than before. The
Times
gave the story a full column, on page three. The next dispatch to come from Luxor, however, rated front-page headlines.

Sir Henry Baskerville was dead. He had retired in perfect health (except for his thumb and his knuckles). He was found next morning stiff and stark in his bed. On his face was a look of ghastly horror. On his high brow, inscribed in what appeared to be dried blood, was a crudely drawn uraeus serpent, the symbol of the divine pharaoh.

The "blood" turned out to be red paint. Even so, the news was sensational, and it became even more sensational after a medical examination failed to discover the cause of Sir Henry's death.

Cases of seemingly healthy persons who succumb to the sudden failure of a vital organ are certainly not unknown, nor, contrary to writers of thrillers, are they always due to the administration of mysterious poisons. If Sir Henry had died in his bed at Baskerville Hall, the physicians would have stroked their beards and concealed their ignorance in meaningless medical mumbo-jumbo. Even under these circumstances the story would have died a natural death (as Sir Henry was presumed to have done) had not an enterprising reporter from one of our less reputable newspapers remembered the unknown prophet's curse. The story in the
Times
was what one might expect of that dignified journal, but the other newspapers were less restrained. Their columns bristled with references to avenging spirits, cryptic antique curses, and unholy rites. But this sensation paled into insignificance two days later, when it was discovered that Mr. Alan Armadale, Sir Henry's assistant, had disappeared— vanished, as the
Daily Yell
put it, off the face of the earth!

By this time I was snatching the newspapers from Emerson each evening when he came home. Naturally I did not believe for an instant in the absurd tales of curses or supernatural doom, and when the news of young Armadale's disappearance became known I felt sure I had the answer to the mystery.

"Armadale is the murderer," I exclaimed to Emerson, who was on his hands and knees playing horsie with Ramses.

Emerson let out a grunt as his son's heels dug into his ribs. When he got his breath back he said irritably, "What do you mean, talking about 'the murderer' in that self-assured way? No murder was committed. Baskerville died of a heart condition or some such thing; he was always a feeble sort of fellow. Armadale is probably forgetting his troubles in a tavern. He has lost his position and will not easily find another patron so late in the season."

I made no reply to this ridiculous suggestion. Time, I knew, would prove me right, and until it did I saw no sense in wasting my breath arguing with Emerson, who is the stubbornest of men.

During the following week one of the gentlemen who had been present at the official opening of the tomb came down with a bad attack of fever, and a workman fell off a pylon at Karnak, breaking his neck. "The Curse is still operating," exclaimed the
Daily Yell.
"Who will be next?"

After the demise of the man who tumbled off the pylon (where he had been chiseling out a section of carving to sell to the illicit antiquities dealers), his fellows refused to go near the tomb. Work had come to a standstill after Sir Henry's death; now there seemed no prospect of renewing it. So matters stood on that cold, rainy evening after my disastrous tea party. For the past few days the Baskerville story had more or less subsided, despite the efforts of the
Daily Yell
to keep it alive by attributing every hangnail and stubbed toe in Luxor to the operation of the curse. No trace of the unfortunate (or guilty) Armadale had been found; Sir Henry Baskerville had been laid to rest among his forebears; and the tomb remained locked and barred.

I confess the tomb was my chief concern. Locks and bars were all very well, but neither would avail for long against the master thieves of Gurneh. The discovery of the sepulcher had been a blow to the professional pride of these gentlemen, who fancied themselves far more adept at locating the treasures of their ancestors than the foreign excavators; and indeed, over the centuries they had proved to be exceedingly skillful at their dubious trade, whether by practice or by heredity I would hesitate to say. Now that the tomb had been located they would soon be at work.

So, while Emerson argued zoology with Ramses, and the sleety rain hissed against the windows, I opened the newspaper. Since the beginning of
I'affaire Baskerville,
Emerson had been buying the
Yell
as well as the
Times,
remarking that the contrast in journalistic styles was a fascinating study in human nature. This was only an excuse; the
Yell
was much more entertaining to read. I therefore turned at once to this newspaper, noting that, to judge by certain creases and folds, I was not the first to peruse that particular article. It bore the title "Lady Baskerville vows the work must go on."