The Third Grave Read online

  I shrugged. “Of course.”

  “Well, then. It is that secret knowledge for which I am looking. It is not buried as deeply as you might presume. Granted it revolved around religion and death, but that does not preclude value. It enhances it, rather, for all life revolves around—and gravitates toward—death. What is a man, after all, but a corpse supported by a soul?”

  “A nice phrase. Have you made any progress?”

  “Some. A beginning.” He frowned. “I’m hampered by the fact that my knowledge does not include a command of old Egyptian; that I require help with certain translations. I do understand demotic Egyptian, but—”

  “I would have thought it more valuable to have studied the old language.”

  “Yes, you would,” he muttered. “Just as you think it more appropriate to live like a savage while you’re here in the desert. Does it not occur to you that the pharaohs lived a life of luxury? That, by denying oneself the pleasures of life, one erects a stark hindrance to understanding the kings of former ages? You study the past for the sake of the past, regarding it as a puzzle, an abstract proposition to be probed with cold instruments.” He paused and shook his head. “That limited viewpoint blinds you. My work is in the present. I wish to bring a sense of immediacy to bear on these findings of another time. Men lived then, and they died. They had their hopes, their dreams, their thoughts and fears. To see them as withered mummies is to take a one-­dimensional attitude. One should rather make dynamic studies.”

  “Poetic, sir. But scientific?”

  “More than you can know.”

  “Can you tell me more?”

  He scowled and replied portentously, “You may waste your time on crumbling ruins if you like. I prefer to know the life that passed through those ruins in their time of glory. You may value an ancient writing because the papyruses are durable; because the scroll is an object from the past. I care nothing for objects. I want to know the knowledge contained in that writing, the secret meaning in the obscure symbols. The eternal truths, if you will.”

  “All very admirable,” I said. My cigar was finished, my glass empty. I rose from the table. Mallory shrugged, as if the gesture could serve as a dismissal, and so it did. I thought him a strange man indeed.

  After leaving Mallory, I worked some time on the inscriptions surrounding the winged disk of the sarcophagus and then, as was my habit, took a brisk walk. I found the exercise a good method of clearing away the thoughts of the day before attempting sleep and also enjoyed the fanciful mood of adventure that is always present in the desert. I strolled past the excavation and then along the base of the escarpment, keeping the lights of the camp in sight. The land rose gradually here, converging toward the top of the cliff at an elongated angle with the sand jammed in against the weathered rock. Peering out over the landscape, I saw that the entire desert had become suffused with a silvery lunar radiance; the rugged terrain subdued, the shrubs and small trees transformed into apparitions of mystic beauty. I paused to fill my pipe and then light it, with some difficulty in the dry wind. The smoke was torn from the bowl and shredded away in the distance. As I stood there a figure approached, and in a moment I recognized Mallory’s servant. He halted beside me.

  “Enjoyin’ a walk, sir?”

  “Good evening, Sam.”

  “A good thing to stretch the old legs after spendin’ a day on that blasted camel,” he said. “If ever God has made a worthless beast, it’s the camel.”

  “It takes a while to get used to their gait, eh?”

  “It does that. And the smell, that’s the worst part. Did you know, sir, that goats have been known to faint at the odor of the camel’s breath?”

  I smiled.

  “I didn’t know that, no.”

  “It’s the God’s honest truth.”

  “Have you been in Egypt long?”

  “Why, I was here durin’ the war, you know.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yes,” he grunted. “Fightin’ the malignant Hun. That’s what Churchill called them, you know, sir. Malignant Huns. I reckon that’s pretty correct. Yes, sir, I was here then and I’m here now and I didn’t like it then and I don’t like it now. Still, a man has to go where his duty and his work takes him, and there’s nothin’ to be done for it.” Sam shrugged. “The cities now, Cairo and all, they are a bit all right. It’s this bloody desert that isn’t fit for mankind. I was always afraid I’d be killed here. During the war, I mean. I wasn’t afraid of gettin’ killed itself, you know. It was just that I didn’t fancy bein’ buried here in Egypt. Imagine bein’ buried here? Lord! The least a man can expect is to be buried in England, where there’s a bit of life, wouldn’t you say, sir?”

  I laughed.

  “Well, that’s life,” he said.

  “Have you been with Mallory long?”

  “A few years now. Cooper’s my name. Sam Cooper.”

  We shook hands.

  “I imagine Mallory is a difficult man to work for?”

  “Oh, it’s not so bad.”

  “He’s an—interesting fellow.”

  “Aye. A man of genius. Peculiar maybe, but a genius.”

  “Has he made any discoveries recently?”

  “Things, sir, such as you’ve never dreamed.”

  “I don’t suppose you can be specific?”

  Sam looked at me and scratched his head.

  “I’m not at liberty to talk about that,” he said. Then he broke into a wide grin. “Truth is, I don’t really understand much of it, anyhow. Take some understanding these things do. I only know they are things of genius.”

  I nodded, deciding that Mallory had completely dumbfounded the man, that he had a disciple, rather than a servant, and that undoubtedly was just the way Mallory wished it. We talked for a few minutes longer and then strolled back to the camp together. I retired to my tent then and slept soundly, and when I awoke in the morning, Mallory and his man already had departed. I did not think about Mallory at that time, however, for I had awakened under unusual circumstances; I had, in fact, been suddenly roused by Sir Harold’s cry of surprise and anguish—

  “Sacrilege!” Sir Harold wailed.

  I rushed from my tent to find him hopping about in an excess of emotion. Everyone had gathered around, but no one cared to interrupt his rage. He was too excited to speak coherently for some time, an unusual state for a man who was normally calm and self-­assured. Eventually he settled sufficiently to grasp my arm, and pointing toward the tent where the mummy was kept, he said, “Our mummy—our fine mummy—vandals—” He was grinding his teeth, pale with outrage. I walked over to the tent and looked in. It appeared that somehow during the night a vandal had indeed obtained access to our precious find. The sarcophagus was thrown open, and the mummy had been disturbed. A long gash had been made down the front of the torso, the linen wrappings were unpeeled, and the ancient flesh had been opened wide. The cut itself was clean, almost surgical, and the marcescent innards overflowed from the corpse like the sawdust from a rag doll, spilling in a dry cascade down the withered chest and into the sides of the sarcophagus. The corpse had been mummified too long for this to be disgusting, of course, but the act itself was shocking. I well understood Sir Harold’s use of the word sacrilege and that his outburst was justified. The vandalism seemed pointless and incomprehensible.

  Sir Harold spent the day in gloom, trying to discover who the culprit was and having no success. The damage itself was not irreparable, but the question remained, why should it have been inflicted? We discussed various possibilities. Certainly nothing had been gained by the act, and it seemed purely malicious. Finally we concluded that one of the workers, nursing a grievance against Sir Harold and knowing how enraged he would be by the vandalism, had done it expressly for spite. But we could conceive of no occurrence which might have given rise to the deed. Only one alternative suggested itself; n
amely that someone, resenting the disturbance of the ancient dead, had chosen this method to avenge the corpse. That did not seem likely, however, in that the mummy itself had been further defiled—hardly the means one would choose to manifest respect for one’s ancestors. Only later did a third possibility occur to me. Thinking of Mallory and knowing him for an antagonistic man, I wondered if professional jealousy could have been responsible. I didn’t really believe this, however, and did not choose to disclose my conjecture to anyone else.

  In the end, it turned out all right for Sir Harold.

  The newspapers fastened upon the vandalism and presented the story in rather sensational terms, hinting darkly of an ancient cult and of curses awaiting those who disturbed the dead. Sir Harold became more famous than ever. Perhaps that was as it should be. It was, after all, his expedition.

  Although we persevered for another month at the site, no further noteworthy finds were unearthed. My translations served somewhat to explain this, confirming that our mummy had been a minor figure, a priest or physician—the names being interchangeable at the time, which showed how much their science and religion were interdependent—who had earned the pharaoh’s favor to the degree that he was rewarded by mummification, but not to the extent that he merited an elaborate tomb. That, or possibly growing fear of grave robbers, explained why the sarcophagus had been uncovered, isolated, in the natural rock cliff and why there were few other finds in the immediate area. When I revealed this information to Sir Harold he decided there was little point in further work at the dig. He was not displeased. The publicity attending the vandalism had been greater than Sir Harold had enjoyed on any of his more successful expeditions, and he was entertaining pleasant expectations of his return to England. His strength was in retrospect; his value to his science was in public relations, and to give him credit, he undoubtedly realized that. Thus our work came to an end. We broke camp and returned to Cairo.

  There was some delay in shipping our equipment and supplies, and we found it necessary to hold over in Cairo for several days. Sir Harold called a press conference, his agents arranged for the transport, and I welcomed this brief respite in what—at least by comparison to the camp—was civilization and decided to occupy several days as a tourist. It was during this period that I chanced to meet Mallory for the second time.

  I had stopped rather late in the evening at one of those nightclubs that still retain a colonial atmosphere by the reverse method of being stylized as native. The waiters wore white jackets and red fez, and the tables were low, the surface tiled, arranged around all four walls. One sat upon cushions. In the depressed center of the room, exposed to view from all sides, the belly dancers gyrated with nubile torsos and bored faces. I was guided to a seat and ordered a drink. The room was heavily scented with smoldering fragrance and darkly illumined, so that at first I could see only the lissome oiled-copper dancers amid shadows. At length my eyes adjusted. Curious about the clientele, I glanced at the adjacent table. The man seated there wore Arab dress. I leaned out slightly to see beyond him and, as I did so, noticed his face. It was none other than Lucian Mallory.

  I addressed him, more through my surprise than any desire to solicit conversation, and he turned in his peculiar fashion, his head rotating on the swivel of his spine; he recognized me and extended greeting in a cheerful manner. It was immediately apparent that he was rather the worse—or the better—for drink. There was a carafe of white liquid and two glasses before him. As he shifted position, I saw he was in the company of a woman.

  For a startled instant, I believed her to be naked.

  Then I saw she wore an exiguous outfit of silk and tassels, and understood her to be one of the dancers. Her face was veiled. She clung possessively to Mallory’s arm and nuzzled at his ear.

  Mallory saw my look, and laughed.

  “You see, it is as I told you in the wilderness,” he said. “I seek to know the dynamic flow of the land.”

  “Quite.”

  “Will you take a drink with me?”

  “I’ve already ordered,” I said, just as the waiter appeared with my Scotch. Mallory frowned without malice and gestured at his carafe, then snapped his fingers at the waiter.

  “Arrack,” he said. “How can you know the people when you cling to things foreign even in your drink?”

  “I’m rather fond of Scotch.”

  “Arrack is the thing!”

  I couldn’t resist rejoining, “Arrack, yes. Derived from the Arabic araq. The word means ‘sweat.’ ”

  Mallory chuckled.

  “I don’t like it,” his companion murmured petulantly. “Why do you not buy me champagne?”

  “Later, my dear.”

  “Champagne is better.”

  “She gets a commission on all the champagne she drinks, you understand,” Mallory said. “Somehow even Moslems manage to justify alcohol if a commission is involved.”

  “Yes, I am not allowed to drink,” said the girl. “I do it only to please you.”

  “Tell me, Ashley. How did your work go?”

  “Well enough. Nothing startling.”

  “No more mummies?”

  “No. A curious thing happened, however. It occurred the night you were at the camp, in fact. You may have heard something of it?”

  “Can’t say I have.”

  “Our mummy was vandalized.”

  Mallory betrayed no surprise.

  “Indeed?”

  “Yes. It was cut open along the chest. Most peculiar. Not torn open, you know, but cut very neatly, almost surgically, as if someone had dissected it.”

  Mallory was intently regarding his drink. “Bit late for a postmortem, eh?”

  “By several thousand years.”

  “Ever find out who did it?”

  “No, we didn’t.”

  “That certainly is remarkable. Are you sure you won’t try some of this arrack? No? Well. I expect Sir Harold was quite cut up about it? The mummy, I mean?”

  “At first.”

  “Ah well, it was only a mummy, eh?”

  “What an astonishing thing to say.”

  He peered at me from the caverns.

  “Oh, it was a particularly fine specimen. I didn’t mean to disparage your find. But it was just another mummy like all the others already in museums. Just exactly like the others, I daresay.”

  There was an implication here which I didn’t comprehend.

  “The same preparation for the afterlife,” he continued. “The usual methods of embalming?”

  “Oh, yes. Of course.”

  Mallory hesitated; he seemed to be weighing his thoughts and gauging me at the same time. Then he leaned closer. I could smell the arrack on his breath.

  “What would you say if I told you I’d discovered a mummy—dating from the fourth millennium—that had been embalmed in a different manner?”

  “Different? In what way? I suppose the process did vary from age to age—”

  “A completely different way,” he interrupted.

  “But tell me how.”

  “Suppose a mummy was found which hadn’t been disemboweled before it was embalmed? Suppose, furthermore, that even the contents of the skull were intact?”

  “You mean that the internal organs were preserved?”

  “Precisely.”

  I digested this. It seemed an extraneous point at first, but then various possibilities began to occur. A new form of preparing the dead for the afterlife might have significant bearing on our understanding of the ancient religious beliefs as well as casting light on the practical knowledge possessed in the past.

  “Let me get this straight,” I said. “This corpse was opened, the internal structure preserved by embalming, and then closed up again before the flesh was treated?”

  Mallory nodded.

  “Are you telling me you’ve
found a mummy like this?”

  He shrugged.

  “I’m not yet certain,” he said evasively.

  ‘’It would have to be x-­rayed, of course.”

  “Oh, there are more direct methods. One does not, after all, have x-­ray equipment in the field.”

  “What do you mean by ‘more direct methods’?”

  “Why, one could always cut open the torso,” he said, and he was smiling and staring directly at me. Then he repeated his shrug and turned back to the girl. She wheedled for champagne. Mallory took a long swallow of arrack. I thought of our own mummy and of Mallory’s seemingly pointless visit to our camp; of the equally pointless mutilation of the mummy. It gave one pause for thought. But Mallory must have been pulling my leg. He was, after all, quite drunk.

  I turned from him and watched a bronze belly revolve before my table.

  Those were the sole occasions of my acquaintance with Lucian Mallory. Four years had passed. They were not eventful years. I was still employed by the museum, but since my presence was not often required in the buildings, I took a cottage at Wealdstone and found it convenient to do most of my work at home. And there it was, on a chill and stormy day, that Mallory’s letter found me. The envelope felt cold and was smudged with damp from the postman’s fingers. I turned it about in my hands, playing a guessing game with the contents and musing upon the strange man I had met in Egypt. I could conceive of no reason why he should have written. At length I tired of the game and opened the letter.

  He wrote:

  The Croft

  Farriers Bar

  Devonshire

  My dear Mr. Ashley,

  I am taking the liberty of addressing myself to you on a matter of mutual interest. I now have—have had for some time, but have only recently returned from the West Indies—in my possession several parchments and clay tablets of as yet indeterminate age, discovered in the necropolis at Tel-­el-Mose. The hieroglyphs are similar to what we know as the standard symbols of the time, but in certain ways they seem to vary. I find myself unable to render a satisfactory translation. I am aware you are considered one of the nation’s leading hieroglyphists—a fact, I fear, of which I wasn’t aware when we first met—and feel it would prove to our mutual advantage if you were to examine these writings and, if possible, effect a translation.