After that one cry of agony from Widow Anne, there was silence for
quite one minute. The terrible contents of the packing case startled
and terrified all present. Faint and white, Lucy clung to the arm of
her lover to keep herself from sinking to the ground, as Mrs. Bolton had
done. Archie stared at the grotesque rigidity of the body, as though he
had been changed into stone, while Professor Braddock stared likewise,
scarcely able to credit the evidence of his eyes. Only the Kanaka was
unmoved and squatted on his hams, indifferently surveying the living
and the dead. As a savage he could not be expected to have the nerves of
civilized man.
Braddock, who had dropped chisel and hammer in the first movement of
surprise, was the quickest to recover his powers of speech. The sole
question he asked, revealed the marvelous egotism of a scientist,
nominated by one idea. "Where is the mummy of Inca Caxas?" he murmured
with a bewildered air.
Widow Anne, groveling on the floor, pulled her gray locks into wild
confusion, and uttered a cry of mingled rage and grief. "He asks that?
he asks that?" she cried, stammering and choking, "when he has murdered
my poor boy Sid."
"What's that?" demanded Braddock sharply, and recovering from a
veritable stupor, which the disappearance of the mummy and the sight of
his dead assistant had thrown him into. "Kill your son: how could I
kill your son? What advantage would it have been to me had I killed your
son?"
"God knows! God knows!" sobbed the old woman, "but you--"
"Mrs. Bolton, you are raving," said Hope hastily, and strove to raise
her from the floor. "Let Miss Kendal take you away. And you go, Lucy:
this sight is too terrible for your eyes."
Lucy, inarticulate with nervous fear, nodded and tottered towards the
door of the museum; but Widow Anne refused to be lifted to her feet.
"My boy is dead," she wailed; "my boy Sid is a corp as I saw him in my
dream. In the coffin, too, cut to pieces--"
"Rubbish! rubbish!" interrupted Braddock, peering into the depths of the
packing case. "I can see no wound."
Mrs. Bolton leaped to her feet with an agility surprising in so aged a
woman. "Let me find the wound," she screamed, throwing herself forward.
Hope caught her back and forced her towards the door. "No! The body must
not be disturbed until the police see it," he said firmly.
"The police--ah, yes, the police," remarked Braddock quickly, "we must
send for the police to Pierside and tell them my mummy has been stolen."
"That my boy has been murdered," screeched Widow Anne, waving her skinny
arms, and striving to break from Archie. "You wicked old devil to kill
my darling Sid. If he hadn't gone to them furren parts he wouldn't be a
corp now. But I'll have the lawr: you'll be hanged, you--you--"