mummy's tomb?"
"I would have been surprised had they not. Curses of some kind have been found in every tomb in Egypt. They are as common as quotations from the Holy Bible on the gravestones of Christians in England. For as long as history has been written there have been tales of spells and curses. Read Plato's Republic and you will find he noted that if anyone in his time wished to injure an enemy, for a small fee one could hire a sorcerer to bring harm to an individual through an incantation, sign, or effigy to bind the gods to serve the purpose. All of this nonsense about curses in Egyptian tombs began in the imagination of a writer of horror stories named Jane Loudon Webb. After visiting a bizarre theatrical show in Piccadilly Circus in 1821, in which several mummies were unwrapped, this woman penned a science-fiction novel entitled The Mummy. Set in the twenty-second century, it featured a vengeful mummy that came to life and threatened to strangle the book's hero. This fantastic tome was followed in 1828 by publication of an anonymous children's book, The Fruits of Enterprize, in which mummies were set ablaze to illuminate the interior of an Egyptian tomb. The understandably irate mummies went on a rampage.
"The latest of these flights of imagination was the handiwork of a quite distinguished American author. In 1868, Louisa May Alcott published a short story, 'Lost in a Pyramid, or The Mummy's Curse.' In this grotesque fantasy, an explorer used a flaming mummy to light his way into the interior chamber of a tomb, where he found a golden box containing three seeds that were taken back to America and planted. They produced flowers which his fianc茅e wore at her wedding. When she inhaled the perfume, she lapsed into a coma and was transformed into a living mummy. It is a pitiful comment on our age, gentlemen, that people do actually believe in all this rot.
"Now we find the shelves of our bookstores and our libraries filled with novels about monsters assembled from body parts and brought to life by mad scientists, and tales of werewolves and vampires. Even one of our country's promising new writers of stories, Arthur Conan Doyle, has dabbled in tales of the occult and supernatural, much of it apparently inspired by the American scribbler and lunatic, Mr. Edgar Allan Poe."
"You are obviously a man with strong opinions," said Holmes.
"If you seek an explanation for the unhappy events associated with the Porter-Broadmoor expedition, you would do well to look beyond the mummy's curse to the obvious explanation. It is human imagination that has discerned horror in happenstance. I refer you to a recent inventive newspaper article that appeared following the unfortunate murder of Professor Broadmoor. The item drew upon an interview in which the nephew of the financier of the expedition referred to the curse that had been found in the tomb. Suddenly, a murderous attack upon Broadmoor was in the mind of a reporter for a sensation-seeking newspaper the latest in a sequence of mysterious occurrences ominously linked to a mummy's curse. What a comment that is on the gullibility of the English people."
"You inquired as to whether Dr. Watson and I were sent to see you by Lord Porter. May I ask why you thought so?"
"I called upon him and his nephew several weeks ago in an attempt to persuade him that he bore an obligation to share his findings with the entire world by turning over the results of his expedition to the British Museum. My argument was along the line that he must choose between the transitory pleasures of personal wealth and the lasting glory of knowing that his name could forever be honoured by the naming of a wing of the Museum for him. I left his home feeling quite encouraged that he would come round to my position on the matter. A few days later, to my great delight, he sent me a letter stating that I would presently be hearing from his solicitor, the Honourable Dudley Walsingham, concerning creation of just such a permanent exhibition. When you appeared, my hope was that you were his agents. I'm afraid now that my expectation that his remarkable collection might take the form of an exhibition for the Museum is groundless. What a great loss that is, gentlemen."
Leaving Flinders Petrie to resume his examination of the mummy, Holmes asked, "Well, Watson, what do you make of our professor of Egyptology?"
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