Page:Weird Tales Volume 8 Number 5 (1926-11).djvu/126

 with red velvet and lined with rather sinister black curtains. It seemed ridiculous to me that the professor should furnish this repository with the trappings of occult melodrama, but I have always been singularly incapable of fathoming my friend's amusing whims. Beneath his whimsicality and eccentricity he was reasonably genuine, and it is unfair to expect common sense or restraint from a man of genius.

The mummy before us was unusually tall. It fairly towered in the yellowish gloom of the great room, and it bore unmistakable characteristics of great age. And it was oddly shaped—its breast swelled out curiously and its nose was gigantic. Indeed, the latter member almost protruded through the aromatic and evil-smelling wrappings. "An Egyptian Cyrano," I remarked, and permitted a grin to disturb my usually severe and solemn features (the professor often assured me that my features were severe, and being a very young man I took pardonable pride in the fact!). "How the ladies must have hated him!" I added, seeing my friend scowl.

"This is a serious matter," he said after a pause that seemed interminable. "Nothing like this has ever come out of Egypt. I—do—not—like—it!"

My friend's voice was distressingly hollow. It made me nervous, and I endeavored to quiet him. "There is nothing very unusual about this mummy," I replied. "Some very peculiar types undoubtedly existed among the Egyptians. I daresay they had their side-shows and circuses with the odd assortment of freaks that usually goes with such things. This poor fellow may have been a king's jester—it is really unfair to reproach him with his ugliness after all these years. I am sure his life was a very unhappy one."

The professor's scowl grew in volume. "You must be serious," he retorted. "This mummy is very unusual. I am not a sensationalist, my dear boy, but I may say that my enemies would give a great deal to use this thing to discredit me. We must be very wary about publishing the results of our experiments."

"Experiments?" I snatched at the word. I had a boyish and ridiculous eagerness for all varieties of research.

"I have some experiments in mind that will demand a great deal of courage. If you do not feel equal to them I shall want you to tell me so quite frankly. But first I must warn and prepare you, and describe what we have to deal with."

The professor lit an absurdly long panetela and puffed for several moments in silence. The smoke ascended spirally and formed a curious grayish nimbus above the mummy case. The mummy stood out in the depressing gloom like a sinister avenger of the eighty-three defenseless wretches that Professor Dewey had dissected and destroyed.

When my friend spoke again his voice had acquired a small measure of calm. He spoke slowly, punctuating his sentences with an occasional cough.

"There are few myths in the treasure-house of mankind that were not originally based upon solid objective facts. I do not believe that the imagination of primitive peoples is capable of creating bogies out of thin air. We are too easily deluded by modern science and altogether too apt to scoff at the legends of gods and goddesses that have come down to us. It is absurd to believe that the Egyptians created their monstrous bestial gods from mere observation of living animals. There is something so immense, so psychically terrible about the Egyptian gods that it is difficult to believe them simply the product of normal human imagination. They are either the imaginings of some