together. His uncle Lawrence, whom he loved more than his father.
"But I want you to know that you will always be my nephew, my beloved nephew ..."
Dear God, was he losing his mind? For a moment he did not even know where he was. He could have sworn someone else was in this room with him. Who was it?
That thing in the mummy case. Don't look at it. Like a witness. Get back to the business at hand.
The papers are signed; the stock can be sold; and now there is all the more reason for Julie to marry that stupid twit Alex Savarell. And all the more reason for Henry's father to take Stratford Shipping completely in hand.
Yes. Yes. But what to do at the moment? He looked at the desk again. Everything as it was. And those six glittering gold Cleopatra coins. Ah, yes, take one. Quickly, he slipped it into his pocket. A little flush warmed his face. Yes, the coin must be worth a fortune. And he could fit it into a cigarette case; simple to smuggle. All right.
Now get out of here immediately. No, he wasn't thinking. He couldn't still his heart. Shout for Samir, that was the appropriate action. Something horrible has happened to Lawrence. Stroke, heart attack, impossible to tell! And this cell is like a furnace. A doctor must come at once.
"Samir!" he cried out, staring forward like a matinee actor at the moment of shock. His gaze fell directly again on that grim, loathsome thing in the linen wrappings. Was it staring back at him? Were its eyes open beneath the bandages? Preposterous! Yet the illusion struck a deep shrill note of panic in him, which gave just the right edge to his next shout for help.
URTIVELY THE clerk read the latest edition of the London Herald, the pages folded and held carefully out of sight behind his darkly lacquered desk. The office was quiet now because of the board meeting, the only sound the distant clack of a typewriting machine from an adjoining room.
MUMMY'S CURSE KILLS
STRATFORD SHIPPING MAGNATE
"RAMSES THE DAMNED" STRIKES DOWN
THOSE WHO DISTURB HIS REST
How the tragedy had caught the public imagination. Impossible to walk a step without seeing a front-page story. And how the popular newspapers elaborated upon it, indulging in hastily drawn illustrations of pyramids and camels, of the mummy in his wooden coffin and poor Mr. Stratford lying dead at his feet.
Poor Mr. Stratford, who had been such a fine man to work for; remembered now for this lurid and sensational death.
Just when the furore had died down, it had been given another infusion of vitality:
HEIRESS DEFIES MUMMY'S CURSE" RAMSES THE DAMNED" TO VISIT LONDON
The clerk turned the page now quietly, folding the paper into a narrow thick column width again. Hard to believe Miss Stratford was bringing home ail the treasure to be placed on exhibit in her own home in Mayfair. But that is what her father had always done.
The clerk hoped that he'd be invited to the reception, but there was no chance of it, even though he had been with Stratford Shipping for some thirty years.
To think, a bust of Cleopatra, the only authenticated portrait in existence. And freshly minted coins with her image and name. Ah, he would have liked to see those things in Mr. Stratford's library. But he would have to wait until the British Museum claimed the collection and put it on display for lord and commoner alike.
And there were things he might have told Miss Stratford, if ever there had been an opportunity, things perhaps old Mr. Lawrence would have wanted her to know.
For instance, that Henry Stratford hadn't sat behind his desk for a year now, yet he still collected a full salary and bonuses; and that Mr. Randolph wrote him cheques on the company funds at random and then doctored the books.
Randolph could not bear to see her crying like this. Dreadful to be pressing her with papers to sign. She looked all the more fragile in her black mourning; her face drawn and shimmering as if she were feverish; her eyes full of that odd light that he had first seen when she told him that her father was dead.