Lucian Sorrel
1897
Little information exists about LUCIAN SORREL, a writer of short stories and serials, except what can be gleaned from his publications. Sorrel published in a range of popular magazines, including the ancestors of what would become the pulps. He wrote in a range of genres, including what we would today term crime fiction, supernatural fiction, and weird fiction, but rarely memorably. The following story is of note primarily because it is a very early example of the genre of the Pharaoh's Curse, anticipating by 25 years a genre that would explode once Sorrel's contemporary, Marie Corelli, used a mix of pulp fiction tropes and medieval Arab legends to create the Curse of Tutankhamen following the death by blood poisoning of Lord Carnarvon. Sorrel's story owes an obvious debt to Arthur Conan Doyle's "Lot No. 249," the most successful rampaging mummy story of its time, but Sorrel's version offers a quasi-skeptical scientific explanation for a seemingly supernatural event.
PHARAOH’S CURSE
I.
When I left the London Hospital, I entered the service of the Red Flag Steamship Company, as surgeon on their boat, the Arab. It was during my second voyage that I fell in with Dr. Felsbrigger, the celebrated Egyptologist, whose name is known and honoured in every country of Europe.
The Doctor is, of course, an old traveller, and long before most of the passengers who set out from Suez had recovered from mal de mer, he and I were on terms of considerable intimacy. One night we were smoking our after-dinner cigars together on the hurricane deck, when he confided to me the object of his return to England.
“You must have noticed with some surprise,” he said, “that among the many treasures contained in the cabin I have engaged for their transport, is a huge coffin-like box. Possibly you may have guessed that it contains an Egyptian mummy; though of the value of the contents you can have no idea. That box holds all that is mortal of the great Pharaoh, Ammon-Nekab.”
The Professor paused for a moment; perhaps to see the effect of this announcement; perhaps in doubt whether to take me further into his confidence. At last he continued:
“I need hardly tell you that I did not gain this prize without considerable trouble. It was difficult, in the first place, to find out where the mummy was hidden; and even when I had discovered its location, the natives of the district would not hear of its removal. It appears that there is some curious legend extant, to the effect that Pharaoh believed that he would live again at the expiration of some thousands of years—”
“Like King Arthur, for instance,” I suggested.
“Yes—and like Charlemagne. Well, in this hope Ammon-Nekab is said to have had his coffin filled with treasure, in order that he might not revisit the world empty-handed. Doubtless this report would have tempted the cupidity of the natives many centuries back, had it not been for the terrible curse pronounced by Pharaoh against anyone who interfered with his remains. You are aware, of course, of the extraordinary and superstitious terror all the Pharaohs had lest their bodies should see corruption. In this case the singular belief of the dead monarch appears to have increased his terrors tenfold, and his curse is said to doom anyone who disturbs his last resting-place to a speedy and agonising death. One man, and one only, say the natives, has dared to risk his displeasure. This was three hundred years ago, when Elizabeth was reigning in England; and tradition says that the man fell a victim to his foolhardiness. I only give you the story for what it is worth. The portrait, and the inscriptions on the exterior of the coffin, speedily assured me that the remains were really those of Ammon-Nekab, and the wealth of which I am fortunately possessed soon enabled me to overcome the scruples of the natives— though I doubt whether any local Egyptian insurance office, if such existed, would set a very high valuation on my life. But perhaps you would like to see the coffin more closely than you have yet done?”
We made our way below, to the spare cabin next his own in which the Professor kept his Egyptian treasures; and in a few moments I was standing before this most interesting relic of the past. The huge coffin was completely covered with hieroglyphics, save where the face and figure of the deceased monarch were portrayed in still vivid colours.
“I am unable to show you more at present,” said the Professor, when I had spent some time in examining the coffin, “but immediately on my arrival in England I intend to have it opened in the presence of the foremost savants of the day, and I shall be glad if you can be my guest on that occasion.”
A stay of two or three days in London before journeying northward to my home exactly suited my convenience; and I gladly accepted Dr. Felsbrigger’s invitation. During the remainder of the voyage our friendship by no means diminished; in fact, we were usually together whenever my professional duties did not demand my presence elsewhere.
Two rather singular occurrences disturbed the remainder of our voyage. One was the theft of Lady Lovett’s jewels, which were stolen from their case in her cabin, though all efforts to trace the thief proved futile. The other was the supposed suicide of a job-hand who had come on board at Suez. The night before our arrival at the Docks, as we were nearing the mouth of the river, Dr. Felsbrigger and I were leaning over the bridge of the vessel, watching the play of the green portlight on the foaming waters, when we heard a splash, and noticed at the same time a dark body cleaving the water. The cry “Man overboard” went round at once; a life-belt was thrown out, and a boat lowered; but they searched for the body in vain. Inquiries proved afterwards that the man Lloyd was missing.
But both those catastrophes were forgotten in the excitement of landing the next morning, and the novelty of driving once more through London streets to Dr. Felsbrigger’s house in Park Lane.
The Doctor is, of course, an old traveller, and long before most of the passengers who set out from Suez had recovered from mal de mer, he and I were on terms of considerable intimacy. One night we were smoking our after-dinner cigars together on the hurricane deck, when he confided to me the object of his return to England.
“You must have noticed with some surprise,” he said, “that among the many treasures contained in the cabin I have engaged for their transport, is a huge coffin-like box. Possibly you may have guessed that it contains an Egyptian mummy; though of the value of the contents you can have no idea. That box holds all that is mortal of the great Pharaoh, Ammon-Nekab.”
The Professor paused for a moment; perhaps to see the effect of this announcement; perhaps in doubt whether to take me further into his confidence. At last he continued:
“I need hardly tell you that I did not gain this prize without considerable trouble. It was difficult, in the first place, to find out where the mummy was hidden; and even when I had discovered its location, the natives of the district would not hear of its removal. It appears that there is some curious legend extant, to the effect that Pharaoh believed that he would live again at the expiration of some thousands of years—”
“Like King Arthur, for instance,” I suggested.
“Yes—and like Charlemagne. Well, in this hope Ammon-Nekab is said to have had his coffin filled with treasure, in order that he might not revisit the world empty-handed. Doubtless this report would have tempted the cupidity of the natives many centuries back, had it not been for the terrible curse pronounced by Pharaoh against anyone who interfered with his remains. You are aware, of course, of the extraordinary and superstitious terror all the Pharaohs had lest their bodies should see corruption. In this case the singular belief of the dead monarch appears to have increased his terrors tenfold, and his curse is said to doom anyone who disturbs his last resting-place to a speedy and agonising death. One man, and one only, say the natives, has dared to risk his displeasure. This was three hundred years ago, when Elizabeth was reigning in England; and tradition says that the man fell a victim to his foolhardiness. I only give you the story for what it is worth. The portrait, and the inscriptions on the exterior of the coffin, speedily assured me that the remains were really those of Ammon-Nekab, and the wealth of which I am fortunately possessed soon enabled me to overcome the scruples of the natives— though I doubt whether any local Egyptian insurance office, if such existed, would set a very high valuation on my life. But perhaps you would like to see the coffin more closely than you have yet done?”
We made our way below, to the spare cabin next his own in which the Professor kept his Egyptian treasures; and in a few moments I was standing before this most interesting relic of the past. The huge coffin was completely covered with hieroglyphics, save where the face and figure of the deceased monarch were portrayed in still vivid colours.
“I am unable to show you more at present,” said the Professor, when I had spent some time in examining the coffin, “but immediately on my arrival in England I intend to have it opened in the presence of the foremost savants of the day, and I shall be glad if you can be my guest on that occasion.”
A stay of two or three days in London before journeying northward to my home exactly suited my convenience; and I gladly accepted Dr. Felsbrigger’s invitation. During the remainder of the voyage our friendship by no means diminished; in fact, we were usually together whenever my professional duties did not demand my presence elsewhere.
Two rather singular occurrences disturbed the remainder of our voyage. One was the theft of Lady Lovett’s jewels, which were stolen from their case in her cabin, though all efforts to trace the thief proved futile. The other was the supposed suicide of a job-hand who had come on board at Suez. The night before our arrival at the Docks, as we were nearing the mouth of the river, Dr. Felsbrigger and I were leaning over the bridge of the vessel, watching the play of the green portlight on the foaming waters, when we heard a splash, and noticed at the same time a dark body cleaving the water. The cry “Man overboard” went round at once; a life-belt was thrown out, and a boat lowered; but they searched for the body in vain. Inquiries proved afterwards that the man Lloyd was missing.
But both those catastrophes were forgotten in the excitement of landing the next morning, and the novelty of driving once more through London streets to Dr. Felsbrigger’s house in Park Lane.
II.
“Did you sleep well last night?” asked the Professor, when I appeared at breakfast. “My man Reynolds tells me some absurd story about old Ammon-Nekab roaming the house over while we were all asleep, and swears that he heard him getting out of his coffin and banging about among the furniture. Reynolds is more or less given to superstition, and he says that he was too frightened to turn out and interview the monarch, and so stayed in bed, with the blankets over his head. I rather fancy that keyhole listening may have had something to do with his dreams. Have some more coffee? No? Then suppose we adjourn to the library for a quiet pipe? You won’t mind my putting a few finishing touches to my paper before my guests arrive?”
Letters had been sent from one of our ports of call to the leading scientists and antiquarians of the day, inviting them to be present, during this Saturday afternoon to witness the opening of the coffin. Soon after luncheon they began to arrive, and I found myself the only nonentity in a company that included many of our most famous men.
The huge coffin was on trestles in the centre of the drawing-room, and Dr. Felsbrigger seated himself conveniently near it, with his carefully prepared manuscript spread out on a baize-covered table before him. As soon as all were seated, he cleared his throat, and commenced to read his paper, the greater part of which had been prepared during the voyage. Hitherto I had known the Doctor solely as a modest and unaffected friend, and as a hospitable and genial host. I now saw the man of science, the antiquarian, the author whose articles in the reviews, and whose less ephemeral contributions to modern literature are known to every reader of culture.
Dealing first with the history of other famous mummies, he worked the subject skilfully round to his discovery of this, the mummy of Ammon-Nekab; a veritable Koh-i-Nor among mummies, of more interest to the scientific world than all the produce of Golconda. He described his difficulties, from the outset of the expedition to his return to London, and his triumph over the customs, who were induced to pass the coffin unopened, gave the gist of the hieroglyphics on the case, and pointed out the value of the discovery, both in regard to the history of the Pharaohs, and to Egyptian and Biblical chronology, always a matter of dispute among antiquarians.
His peroration moved to admiration even those among his audience who did not agree with his deductions. Placing one hand on the coffin, he pointed out, in a voice tremulous with emotion, the interest that would attach to the discovery, even had the mummy been that of the meanest of Ammon-Nekab s subjects—interest that all must feel in seeing before them in a perfect state of preservation the body of one who had lived and moved and had his being in the early childhood of the world.
“But the body, my lords and gentlemen,” he continued, “is the body of a monarch, of a great monarch, ruler over a great people, of a monarch whose slightest wish was law, whose power over his subjects was boundless, whose only conqueror and only master was death. Think, gentlemen, of the days in which Pharaoh lived; of the pomp and ceremony by which he was surrounded; of the long ago in which this parched form beside us was full of warm, human life, ready for the chase of the lion on the desert sands that have shrouded him these many centuries; ready for battle amid his glittering legions; ready for evening dallying with dark-eyed beauties on the bosom of old Nile, or in sumptuous palaces, lulled by the strains of softest music. Since then, dynasties have risen and fallen, nations have waxed and waned, young men and maidens, strong men and matrons, have acted out their little parts on the world’s stage, have loved, and fought, and laughed, and wept, and put on finery, and donned the garb of mourning, as if their little day were the only one in the history of this old, old world, and so have passed out into the darkness. It is we who are privileged to brush aside the dust of all these ages, to view the object round which so many legends have clustered, to behold that which the eyes of Egyptian workmen, closed long ages in death, were the last to see.”
As Dr. Felsbrigger finished his paper, Reynolds advanced to the centre of the room, and assisted his master to raise the lid of the coffin. For a moment there was breathless silence; then all rushed forward to see what was to be seen.”
What was the meaning of that sudden cry of disappointment, that look of blank dismay? I peered into the dark recesses of the coffin, and saw there—nothing, nothing, save only a slip of yellow parchment!
Dr. Felsbrigger was completely unmanned; while sympathy, elation, doubt, surprise, were to be seen on the faces of his rivals and colleagues.
“The body was there yesterday, of that I am certain,” the Professor exclaimed, as soon as he recovered his voice. “The weight of the thing alone would have been sufficient to tell me that.”
“Possibly Ammon-Nekab has come to life again, as he predicted,” someone suggested. I noticed that Reynolds shook his head solemnly in approval of this remark,
“Wouldn’t it be better to read the parchment before we hazard any solutions?” I suggested. Dr. Felsbrigger unrolled the little yellow scrap, and he and his colleagues puzzled diligently over it for some minutes. Then they read out its meaning, which in rough-andready English was as follows;
“I, Pharaoh Ammon-Nekab, Lord of the Upper and Lower Lands, (give) warning to the strangers that follow. Know by the word of Osiris that I shall live again; and the death of the beast shall be to those that touch my body.”
“That bears out the legend, certainly,” said Dr. Felsbrigger, “but it doesn’t throw much light on existing circumstances. However, we must put up for the present with our disappointment. In the meantime, Sir Stanley Briggs, I may as well show you and any others who care to see them, my collections of coins and antiquities, which I believe you were anxious to examine.”
The Professor led the way to his museum, and held open the door while one by one we filed into the room. Here another terrible surprise was awaiting us.
The Museum was in a state of pitiful confusion, with boxes, cabinets and drawers heaped together in a broken mass upon the floor; while of the magnificent collections of jewellery, antiquities, and gold and silver coins, scarcely a specimen remained! Of course the police were at once communicated with, but it did not seem at all likely that their efforts to trace the stolen property would be successful. It was a mystery to us how the robbery could have been planned and carried out so easily, though we naturally associated the disappearance of Ammon-Nekab with the loss.
I felt that under the circumstances my visit could not be prolonged; and the next morning I bade my kind host adieu, with an earnestly expressed hope that the property might soon be recovered. He shook his head mournfully.
“I’m afraid that’s too much to expect,” he said, “but at least we can hope that Ammon-Nekab’s curse may take effect on the person who has disturbed the remains.”
He spoke half jestingly, little thinking how soon his words were to be realised. As I stepped into my hansom, a woman rushed up to the house, and asked eagerly for Dr. Nicholls.
“Wait a minute, Nicholls; this seems to be a case for you,” said the Professor, “though how anyone knew you were here is beyond me.”
The woman, who was trembling with nervousness and excitement, told me in a few words that a lodger of hers was dying in great agony and had asked for me. I repeated the address she gave me to the cabman; he urged his horse into a rattling pace, and twenty minutes later we alighted at a little alley in the thick of the densest and lowest slums in the West End of London.
The man’s room was right at the top of the building, up several flights of rickety stairs; and I could hear his cries and groans long before we reached the apartment.
“The curse is killing me! The curse is killing me!” he shrieked, as we entered the room. “Cut off my arm—tear the wound out! It burns, it burns!” the poor wretch screamed in his agony, writhing with pain until the bedstead shook beneath his weight; and trying himself to pluck the flesh from the injured limb. I examined the wound of which he complained, and found that it was a small jagged cut or scratch on the left arm. The appearance of the wound, and the swollen state of the arm, showed me that some very malignant poison must have been injected; and I sent the woman with a prescription to the nearest chemist. During her absence the man, who gradually grew calmer, but seemed so certain of his impending death that he unburdened his mind to me quite freely, related a most singular and almost incredible story.
From his early youth, which he had spent in New York, he had been used to all varieties of crime; had knocked about in every quarter of the globe; and had finally drifted to Suez, “the wickedest little place on earth,” as it has not without reason been called. Here he took ship in the Arab for London, with no definite plan of campaign, save a resolution to take advantage of anything that might turn up. On board he stole Lady Lovett’s jewels; and in doubt where to put his ill-gotten gains, hit upon the expedient of concealing them in the capacious coffin of the dead Pharaoh. This suggested to him later on in the voyage an ingenious though dangerous plan. He happened to overhear the story of Pharaoh’s treasure; he also knew of Dr. Felsbrigger’s enormous wealth. He made all his arrangements carefully beforehand, even down to boring minute holes for ventilation in the coffin; and on the night before our arrival in London carried his plan into execution, by shooting the shrivelled body of the monarch into the sea, and concealing himself, with a supply of provisions, Lady Lovett’s jewels, and Pharaoh’s treasure, in the coffin. Once in Dr. Felsbrigger’s drawing-room, all was plain sailing; he ransacked the museum of the coins and jewellery, all of which could be easily disposed of; replaced the lid of the coffin, after abstracting the treasure contained in it; and leaving the drawing-room untouched, in order that he might gain a few hours’ start, sought a hiding-place in the heart of London.
But Nemesis, the result of the dead Egyptian’s curse, followed him. In getting out of the coffin, it appears that he tore his arm slightly against a projecting nail; and this produced a wound of which, shortly after my visit, he died.
Dr. Felsbrigger supposes that Pharaoh, in order that his curse might be no dead letter, caused the coffin to be impregnated with a deadly poison. In the course of ages the potency of this had almost vanished; but the piercing of the skin had injected some into the blood of the man, and had thus caused his death. The theory may seem absurd; but of course, in a case like this, one is only able to conjecture. The fact remains that the man died, the avenging arm of Pharaoh reaching him thus across forty centuries; though Professor Felsbrigger himself has taken no harm as yet from the many and valuable mementoes of the dead monarch that his collection now boasts.
Letters had been sent from one of our ports of call to the leading scientists and antiquarians of the day, inviting them to be present, during this Saturday afternoon to witness the opening of the coffin. Soon after luncheon they began to arrive, and I found myself the only nonentity in a company that included many of our most famous men.
The huge coffin was on trestles in the centre of the drawing-room, and Dr. Felsbrigger seated himself conveniently near it, with his carefully prepared manuscript spread out on a baize-covered table before him. As soon as all were seated, he cleared his throat, and commenced to read his paper, the greater part of which had been prepared during the voyage. Hitherto I had known the Doctor solely as a modest and unaffected friend, and as a hospitable and genial host. I now saw the man of science, the antiquarian, the author whose articles in the reviews, and whose less ephemeral contributions to modern literature are known to every reader of culture.
Dealing first with the history of other famous mummies, he worked the subject skilfully round to his discovery of this, the mummy of Ammon-Nekab; a veritable Koh-i-Nor among mummies, of more interest to the scientific world than all the produce of Golconda. He described his difficulties, from the outset of the expedition to his return to London, and his triumph over the customs, who were induced to pass the coffin unopened, gave the gist of the hieroglyphics on the case, and pointed out the value of the discovery, both in regard to the history of the Pharaohs, and to Egyptian and Biblical chronology, always a matter of dispute among antiquarians.
His peroration moved to admiration even those among his audience who did not agree with his deductions. Placing one hand on the coffin, he pointed out, in a voice tremulous with emotion, the interest that would attach to the discovery, even had the mummy been that of the meanest of Ammon-Nekab s subjects—interest that all must feel in seeing before them in a perfect state of preservation the body of one who had lived and moved and had his being in the early childhood of the world.
“But the body, my lords and gentlemen,” he continued, “is the body of a monarch, of a great monarch, ruler over a great people, of a monarch whose slightest wish was law, whose power over his subjects was boundless, whose only conqueror and only master was death. Think, gentlemen, of the days in which Pharaoh lived; of the pomp and ceremony by which he was surrounded; of the long ago in which this parched form beside us was full of warm, human life, ready for the chase of the lion on the desert sands that have shrouded him these many centuries; ready for battle amid his glittering legions; ready for evening dallying with dark-eyed beauties on the bosom of old Nile, or in sumptuous palaces, lulled by the strains of softest music. Since then, dynasties have risen and fallen, nations have waxed and waned, young men and maidens, strong men and matrons, have acted out their little parts on the world’s stage, have loved, and fought, and laughed, and wept, and put on finery, and donned the garb of mourning, as if their little day were the only one in the history of this old, old world, and so have passed out into the darkness. It is we who are privileged to brush aside the dust of all these ages, to view the object round which so many legends have clustered, to behold that which the eyes of Egyptian workmen, closed long ages in death, were the last to see.”
As Dr. Felsbrigger finished his paper, Reynolds advanced to the centre of the room, and assisted his master to raise the lid of the coffin. For a moment there was breathless silence; then all rushed forward to see what was to be seen.”
What was the meaning of that sudden cry of disappointment, that look of blank dismay? I peered into the dark recesses of the coffin, and saw there—nothing, nothing, save only a slip of yellow parchment!
Dr. Felsbrigger was completely unmanned; while sympathy, elation, doubt, surprise, were to be seen on the faces of his rivals and colleagues.
“The body was there yesterday, of that I am certain,” the Professor exclaimed, as soon as he recovered his voice. “The weight of the thing alone would have been sufficient to tell me that.”
“Possibly Ammon-Nekab has come to life again, as he predicted,” someone suggested. I noticed that Reynolds shook his head solemnly in approval of this remark,
“Wouldn’t it be better to read the parchment before we hazard any solutions?” I suggested. Dr. Felsbrigger unrolled the little yellow scrap, and he and his colleagues puzzled diligently over it for some minutes. Then they read out its meaning, which in rough-andready English was as follows;
“I, Pharaoh Ammon-Nekab, Lord of the Upper and Lower Lands, (give) warning to the strangers that follow. Know by the word of Osiris that I shall live again; and the death of the beast shall be to those that touch my body.”
“That bears out the legend, certainly,” said Dr. Felsbrigger, “but it doesn’t throw much light on existing circumstances. However, we must put up for the present with our disappointment. In the meantime, Sir Stanley Briggs, I may as well show you and any others who care to see them, my collections of coins and antiquities, which I believe you were anxious to examine.”
The Professor led the way to his museum, and held open the door while one by one we filed into the room. Here another terrible surprise was awaiting us.
The Museum was in a state of pitiful confusion, with boxes, cabinets and drawers heaped together in a broken mass upon the floor; while of the magnificent collections of jewellery, antiquities, and gold and silver coins, scarcely a specimen remained! Of course the police were at once communicated with, but it did not seem at all likely that their efforts to trace the stolen property would be successful. It was a mystery to us how the robbery could have been planned and carried out so easily, though we naturally associated the disappearance of Ammon-Nekab with the loss.
I felt that under the circumstances my visit could not be prolonged; and the next morning I bade my kind host adieu, with an earnestly expressed hope that the property might soon be recovered. He shook his head mournfully.
“I’m afraid that’s too much to expect,” he said, “but at least we can hope that Ammon-Nekab’s curse may take effect on the person who has disturbed the remains.”
He spoke half jestingly, little thinking how soon his words were to be realised. As I stepped into my hansom, a woman rushed up to the house, and asked eagerly for Dr. Nicholls.
“Wait a minute, Nicholls; this seems to be a case for you,” said the Professor, “though how anyone knew you were here is beyond me.”
The woman, who was trembling with nervousness and excitement, told me in a few words that a lodger of hers was dying in great agony and had asked for me. I repeated the address she gave me to the cabman; he urged his horse into a rattling pace, and twenty minutes later we alighted at a little alley in the thick of the densest and lowest slums in the West End of London.
The man’s room was right at the top of the building, up several flights of rickety stairs; and I could hear his cries and groans long before we reached the apartment.
“The curse is killing me! The curse is killing me!” he shrieked, as we entered the room. “Cut off my arm—tear the wound out! It burns, it burns!” the poor wretch screamed in his agony, writhing with pain until the bedstead shook beneath his weight; and trying himself to pluck the flesh from the injured limb. I examined the wound of which he complained, and found that it was a small jagged cut or scratch on the left arm. The appearance of the wound, and the swollen state of the arm, showed me that some very malignant poison must have been injected; and I sent the woman with a prescription to the nearest chemist. During her absence the man, who gradually grew calmer, but seemed so certain of his impending death that he unburdened his mind to me quite freely, related a most singular and almost incredible story.
From his early youth, which he had spent in New York, he had been used to all varieties of crime; had knocked about in every quarter of the globe; and had finally drifted to Suez, “the wickedest little place on earth,” as it has not without reason been called. Here he took ship in the Arab for London, with no definite plan of campaign, save a resolution to take advantage of anything that might turn up. On board he stole Lady Lovett’s jewels; and in doubt where to put his ill-gotten gains, hit upon the expedient of concealing them in the capacious coffin of the dead Pharaoh. This suggested to him later on in the voyage an ingenious though dangerous plan. He happened to overhear the story of Pharaoh’s treasure; he also knew of Dr. Felsbrigger’s enormous wealth. He made all his arrangements carefully beforehand, even down to boring minute holes for ventilation in the coffin; and on the night before our arrival in London carried his plan into execution, by shooting the shrivelled body of the monarch into the sea, and concealing himself, with a supply of provisions, Lady Lovett’s jewels, and Pharaoh’s treasure, in the coffin. Once in Dr. Felsbrigger’s drawing-room, all was plain sailing; he ransacked the museum of the coins and jewellery, all of which could be easily disposed of; replaced the lid of the coffin, after abstracting the treasure contained in it; and leaving the drawing-room untouched, in order that he might gain a few hours’ start, sought a hiding-place in the heart of London.
But Nemesis, the result of the dead Egyptian’s curse, followed him. In getting out of the coffin, it appears that he tore his arm slightly against a projecting nail; and this produced a wound of which, shortly after my visit, he died.
Dr. Felsbrigger supposes that Pharaoh, in order that his curse might be no dead letter, caused the coffin to be impregnated with a deadly poison. In the course of ages the potency of this had almost vanished; but the piercing of the skin had injected some into the blood of the man, and had thus caused his death. The theory may seem absurd; but of course, in a case like this, one is only able to conjecture. The fact remains that the man died, the avenging arm of Pharaoh reaching him thus across forty centuries; though Professor Felsbrigger himself has taken no harm as yet from the many and valuable mementoes of the dead monarch that his collection now boasts.
