Page:Weird Tales volume 36 number 02.djvu/107

 and modern languages changed in that many years. Compare your Latin of today with that of the time of the Roman empire. Compare your Chaucerian English with the English of today—"

"You have a translation of this papyrus?" Hanley asked, bluntly.

Professor Blythe hesitated, then reached under his tan smock and brought forth a folded sheet of paper. He handed it to Hanley, who opened it and glanced at the typed transcript. He had read less than a paragraph when he exclaimed in amazement. "This is absurd. Surely, you're not—"

EHIND him Professor Shepard chuckled and Hanley whirled in time to see the former let fall the edge of the sheet covering the long object on the table.

Hanley was conscious again of the acrid smells in the room and as the significance of it all struck him his face blanched.

"You're not contemplating—" He stared in bewilderment at Professor Shepard's evil face, then continued, "on bringing back to life the mummy?"

Professor Blythe came up beside him and gripped his arm. "You saw the sarcophagus, Eric. In fact, you helped me smuggle it out of Egypt. You knew that it was in an unusually splendid state of preservation. You attributed that to the dry locale in which we found the tomb. You didn't know about—the Book of the Dead."

"Let me have it straight," Hanley said, slowly. "I can't grasp it—"

"All right, my boy," said Professor Blythe in a more composed tone. "You've already guessed, but I'll verify your guess. The sarcophagi contained the mummy of an unusual person. A distinctive one for the 18th Dynasty. We knew that from the hieroglyphics and the accoutrements of the tomb. A king or noble, we thought at first. We were wrong. The mummy is the mortal remains of a much more important person—Ramahadin!"

"Ramahadin, the last of the great high-priests?"

Blythe nodded. "When he died, the decline of Egypt began. There was never another great savant of whom there is record. We knew that, and let it go at that. We didn't try to determine the cause. Well, we found it—when we opened the sarcophagus. We thought it was so large because there were other, fitted casings inside. There weren't. There was just the mummy and a mass of papyri, which it will take years to study. So far we've studied only the one, the Book of the Dead, which was buried with Ramahadin. The reason—because Ramahadin's followers in their despair decided to bury all knowledge with the master. And the greatest of all that knowledge is the Book of the Dead, the translation of which you hold in your hand!"

"But this—this purports to tell how to bring Ramahadin back to life, when the world again needs this knowledge."

"That time is now!" cried Professor Shepard, "and—behold...!"

He suddenly caught hold of the sheet on the table and with a violent jerk swept it off, revealing the object on the table. Eric Hanley uttered a low cry and then reeled back.

On the table, clad in yellow, musty robes lay the body of a man. Hanley took a step forward, stared down at the olive-colored skin, the firm flesh; cold perspiration broke out on his body.

"I—don't—believe—it—!" he said.

"Neither did I, at first," cried Professor Blythe. "No mummy was ever found in such a state of preservation, after twenty-four centuries. But—the papyrus tells the secret. The embalming of the dead was a closely-guarded secret even in the 18th Dynasty. The art died out completely just a few centuries later and even in the 18th