The Hammer Horror Omnibus (35 page)

“It . . . it would be ungracious of me not to accept,” she said haltingly.

He touched her hand. She did not withdraw it. With a light pressure between his fingers he lifted her hand and kissed it.

Annette moved away across the room. She was trembling. When she spoke to John she was startled by the loudness of her own voice. Too eagerly, too unsteadily, she said:

“John . . . look. Isn’t it beautiful?”

John looked at the jewel. His mind full of other treasures and an utterly different beauty, he said: “Hm. Yes.”

His mug was empty. Adam came to take it from him and refill it. He smiled sideways at Annette. The implication was that she and he were in a half joking, half conspiratorial alliance against John. This was not what she wanted.

But was she sure she knew what she did want?

Adam raised his mug of punch. “May I propose a toast? To the success of the exhibition of Ra.”

John and Annette raised their mugs.

“And,” said Adam, “may the gods smile down upon our newfound friendship.”

They went to bed early that night. Annette fell asleep before she could fully savor the joy of lying in such blissful comfort in such a room.

The next day she and John started work in earnest.

Alexander King had organized the erection of a huge tent in a corner of Hyde Park. Certain objections had been raised to the questionable commercial elements in this exhibition, but King had ploughed through them. He had made great play with the cultural aspects of his show and enlisted the aid of some eminent savants, largely by hinting that if he did not get his own way in this matter he would transport the whole exhibition at once to the United States without allowing anyone in England so much as a glimpse of the fabulous treasures.

Now the treasures themselves were to be uncrated. King insisted that John should supervise every stage of this. There was no need for such insistence: John could not have borne that anyone else should be responsible. While King took away the breath of contractors in his demands for immediate installation of the tent, the erection of barriers, and the provision of stands and showcases, John concentrated on the careful unpacking of the tomb objects.

Annette knew that John was not happy. He found this rush undignified. There was still a great deal of cataloguing to be done, and in his view it was more important that the exhibition should be scientifically laid out than that it should draw in crowds of the uncritical public. But King was boss. King made that very clear. This was a road show, and if John wanted to preserve certain important elements he would have to do so within the context of that show.

Even before the supports of the tent were safely pegged, King was pacing up and down inside barking orders. The mummy was to be the centre-piece and he knew exactly where he wanted it placed. He wanted lights in such and such a place. A platform here, the panels of hieroglyphics to form a mural along this side of the tent, the unguent jars to be raised on a pedestal just so . . .

“There you are, John!” The great bellow rang out down the tent, louder even than the crack of the canvas as it flapped and then was stretched tight. “Come and give me a hand. I’m getting nowhere with these workmen. You’d better try them in their own language.”

“Ancient English,” John murmured ruefully to Annette.

It was John who had to strike a balance between King’s pressing demands and the surly slowness of the workmen. He also had to preserve the peace when King changed his mind about some essential part of the display and the carpenters had to be told to start all over again. There was an unrelenting hammering and banging, and in the middle of it all the treasures of the tomb were gradually unveiled.

The dog head of Anubis looked down on this utterly foreign scene. Pert little Cockneys scrambled about under the golden gaze of a prince of Egypt. John was a constant bundle of nerves, waiting for something irreplaceable to be broken, trying to supervise a score of things at once, averting one minor disaster after another and always sure that sooner or later there would be some major catastrophe.

But gradually the pattern established itself. Built around the awe-inspiring centre-piece, the mummiform coffin itself, the grave furniture formed a coherent picture which must evoke dread and an almost religious admiration in even the most materialistic beholder.

King grew expansive and affable again. He slapped John on the shoulder and congratulated him. “I knew we could do it. Knew we’d get it set up on time.”

Immediately inside the entrance to the tent, shielding the exhibition from anyone who might peep in, stood the doors of the gilded shrine. Visitors to the exhibition would see the whole story of the life of Ra told on the panels of the doors, and would then turn left to pick out the individual items of rich furnishing.

Annette, tired of stumbling over planks and boxes or of being bumped into by workmen, retreated to the entrance and once more studied the panels. It was the first time she had allowed herself to contemplate the grim but magnificent story since the death of her father. Now she felt herself returning to life; and at the same time it seemed that the golden pictures from the past took on life, the men and women of a vanished age moved from their eternally fixed postures and enacted a story as real now as it had been then, and the world of Ra Antef took on significance once more.

The first panel showed Rameses VIII being presented by obsequious women with his twin sons Ra and Be. Ra was the elder by a matter of minutes. The two boys grew up in the same environment but as very different characters, both physically and mentally. Ra became a thinker, a searcher for truth and the secret of eternal life. But Be was a sensualist who spent his time seeking only the pleasures of the body.

Down the ages there had been writings and poems and tales in Egypt of the legend of the brothers. Here, from their own time, were the pictures which told the story with a dramatic immediacy.

Be was jealous of his elder brother’s position and popularity. He jeered at Ra’s profound thinking and deep wisdom, and continually conspired to have him branded as a sorcerer. His circle of sycophants did all they could to aid him in this. In the end he was so successful that the ageing Rameses, in an effort to avoid a civil war, was forced to accept the insinuations of his worried advisers and banish his favorite son.

After months of wandering in the desert, Ra and a small band of faithful followers were befriended by an ancient nomadic people in the remote wastes of the Sahara. These wanderers never ventured to the fertile pastures of the Nile. They knew the oases of the deepest desert, and had hardened themselves to the rigorous life which they considered preferable to subservience to an autocratic Pharaoh.

As time passed the respect of the nomads for Ra grew. They realized that they had a prince in their midst. His philosophy became their philosophy. Noble in themselves, they recognized in him an even greater nobility. They asked him to become their king and rule over them.

At Ra’s coronation he was presented with the most precious object which the nomads possessed. They scorned all valuables save this one. It was a small medallion on which had been inscribed the sacred words of life, a secret which had been in their possession for centuries. It was said that in certain circumstances it had the power to confer immortality, but this power could only be invoked by one blessed by the gods with the awareness of it.

After years with these devoted followers, Ra made plans to return to his homeland so that he could set right the wrongs which had been done to him. He prayed to Bubastis, the powerful cat-headed immortal who would do all things for him. He asked for spiritual guidance and for the strength to use the secrets of the words of life wisely. He then turned towards his own land with the assurance that he would be able to accomplish his mission.

But Be had heard rumors of his brother’s plans on the desert wind. None of Ra’s followers had betrayed him: there were other nomads, less proud and less courageous, and their jealousy led them to give spiteful warning. Be sent assassins into the desert to find and kill Ra.

The most intricately designed panel on the gilded doors showed an interwoven turmoil of men stabbing and slaying. The stylized emotionless faces conveyed a greater terror than could have been achieved by would-be realistic expressions. Ra kneeled between two priests with his head bowed. The enemy pressed in from all sides, caught forever on the golden panel in the accursed motion of killing.

They showed no mercy. They killed nomads and priests alike, and at last they reached their main victim. They slew Ra, and as he lay dying they cut off his left hand on which he wore his rings of high birth. This hand they took back to Be as proof that their cruel work was done.

The burial of Ra Antef was a hurried and unworthy affair. But later, when close to death, Rameses sent for the body to be removed to a magnificent burial chamber and surrounded with all the splendors that were the due of a royal prince.

“And now the mummy has been disinterred once more,” said a voice close beside Annette.

She was transported from the past to the present. Adam Beauchamp stood on her left, scanning the story that unfolded on the magnificent doors.

“Annette . . . !”

It was John calling. She indicated that Adam should come with her, and together they made their way round the screen formed by the doors. The coffin was in position now, raised so that the wooden head stared out at the audience, its expression one of sorrow but the overall effect one of blazing majesty as a result of the inlays of glass paste and semi-precious stones.

Annette and Adam stopped before this splendid sight. The workmen who had been fussing around it were reduced to silence. Now that it was in place, the sarcophagus dominated not merely the dead relics all round it but the living beings who had brought it here.

“Well”—there was one voice that nothing could still—“what have you got to say about that, hey?”

“Most impressive.” Adam was lost in contemplation.

“We’ll have the whole of London filing through here,” said King jubilantly.

Adam emerged from his brief trance. “And will you open the coffin?”

“I sure will. Do you want to see what the act is?”

Before they could speak, King snapped his fingers in the air. Lights blazed and then went slowly green and sinister. In a curtained enclosure to one side, pipes and reeds began to play eastern music of dubious origin, interspersed with deep reverberations from a gong.

King snapped his fingers again and held out his hand. A girl handed him a knife. He went towards the mummy case and there was a metallic roar of thunder from an effects sheet behind the curtain.

Annette glanced disconsolately at Adam. His face was inscrutable. With his impeccable good taste he must have been disgusted by this barnstorming crudity; but he gave no sign.

“What’s ’appenin’, Bert?” came a whisper from behind.

“They’re openin’ that coffin.”

“Well, they can do without me.”

“Without me an’ all.”

The workmen withdrew into the shadows, away from the lurid lights and that dignified, implacable, royal head.

Alexander King bent towards the seal that was meant to protect the dead prince from all harm. He raised the knife. For a moment he hesitated, then turned to wink at John, Adam, and Annette as they watched him.

“Better rehearse it right the way through. Don’t want it to go wrong on the opening night.”

He cut the seal. Its two halves parted. King stood back and made a melodramatic gesture which summoned two Nubians from the shadows. They took hold of the lid and stepped back with it.

Inside lay the mummy, swathed in the bandages of his embalming. He was less impressive than the symbolic carving on the coffin lid—nothing but a white, featureless, dead thing in the middle of all this pomp and brilliance. But this very pomp was a testimony to what he had once been.

King struck the side of the coffin possessively. “He’s worth ten cents of anybody’s money!”

Adam remained silent, confronting the mummy as though waiting for some message from beyond the grave. The incongruous music went on, and the metal sheet roared a few more times.

Annette said: “Mr. King, you’re . . . incredible.”

“Well, some of us have got it, and the others ride home in a horse cart.”

Adam touched Annette’s arm. He turned away. She took it that he had had enough. He was a decisive man, wasting no time when he had seen or heard his fill. She moved away with him, then waved to John in the background.

“Coming back with us?”

“I’ve got some tidying up to do. I’ll join you later.”

With a twinge of guilt Annette realized that she was not displeased by this. She was glad that Adam had come when he did, and she was not going to ask whether his prime purpose had been to see the exhibition before it opened to the public or to fetch her.

They waited for some time in the expectation of John’s putting in an appearance, and then Adam ordered dinner to be served.

Annette had changed into a dress which she had not worn since leaving France. It was a simple, severely cut green velvet dress which her father had liked and which he fondly imagined was in the latest fashion. Annette had refrained from telling him that its main advantage was its practicality and the fact that it did not date too obviously—a very necessary factor, in view of their unsettled, peripatetic life. But it was true that she looked well in it, and she wanted to look well for Adam.

Its simplicity demanded some added ornament. The jewel which Adam had given her was far too striking. Something small and unpretentious, in a color that would not clash, was what she needed.

At the bottom of her case she found a small disc in a dull ochre hue like sullen gold. She had forgotten its existence since leaving Egypt. Or perhaps, to be frank with herself, she had deliberately buried it under her clothes and made herself repudiate it. It was another memory of her father. He had given it to her the day before he was killed. Neither of them could identify it—it was a humble trifle compared with the treasures they were busily excavating from the tomb—and Professor Dubois had not even got round to telling her its origin. He might have picked it up in a bazaar or among the innumerable shards and battered trinkets which were so easily turned up on the approaches to the Valley of the Kings. Now Annette found that, hung on a chain round her neck so that it lay on the bosom of her dress, it was more striking than she had at first realized. It was far more effective against the green velvet than any brooch could have been.