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The Mummy Case
by
He had already preceded me into the stifling fumes. With a last long breath of fresh air I plunged in after him, scarcely knowing what would happen to me. I saw the figure on the floor, seized it, and backed out of the room as fast as I could.
Dizzy and giddy from the fumes I had been forced to inhale, I managed to drag the form to the nearest window. It was Lucille White.
An instant later I felt myself unceremoniously pushed aside. Spencer had forgotten all about the millions of dollars’ worth of curios, all about the suspicions that had been entertained against her, and had taken the half-conscious burden from me.
“This is the second time I have found you here, Edouard,” she was muttering in her half-delirium, still struggling. “The first time- -that night I hid in the mummy-case, you fled when I called for help. I have followed you every moment since last night to prevent this. Edouard, don’t, DON’T! Remember I was–I am your wife. Listen to me. Oh, it is the absinthe that has spoiled your art and made it worthless, not the critics. It is not Mr. Spencer who has enticed me away, but you who drove me away, first from Paris, and now from New York. He has been only–No! No!–” she was shrieking now, her eyes wide open as she realised it was Spencer himself she saw leaning over her. With a great effort she seemed to rouse herself. “Don’t stay. Run–run. Leave me. He has a bomb that may go off at any moment. Oh–oh–it is the curse of absinthe that pursues me. Will you not go? Vite! Vite!”
She had almost fainted and was lapsing into French, laughing and crying alternately, telling him to go, yet clinging to him.
Spencer paid no attention to what she had said of the bomb. But I did. The minute was up, and Kennedy was in there yet. I turned to rush in again to warn him at any peril.
Just then a half-conscious form staggered against me. It was Craig himself. He was holding the infernal machine of the five glass tubes that might at any instant blow us into eternity.
Overcome himself, he stumbled. The sinking sensation in my heart I can never describe. It was just a second that I waited for the terrific explosion that was to end it all for us, one long interminable second.
But it did not come.
Limp as I was with the shock, I dropped down beside him and bent over.
“A glass of water, Walter,” he murmured, “and fan me a bit. I didn’t dare trust myself to carry the thing complete, so I emptied the acid into the sarcophagus. I guess I must have stayed in there too long. But we are safe. See if you can drag out Delaverde. He is in there by the mummy-case.”
Spencer was still holding Lucille, although she was much better in the fresh air of the hall. “I understand,” he was muttering. “You have been following this fiend of a husband of yours to protect the museum and myself from him. Lucille, Lucille–look at me. You are mine, not his, whether he is dead or alive. I will free you from him, from the curse of the absinthe that has pursued you.”
The fumes had cleared a great deal by this time. In the centre of the art-gallery we found a man, a tall, black-bearded Frenchman, crazy indeed from the curse of the green absinthe that had ruined him. He was scarcely breathing from a deadly wound in his chest. The hair-spring ring of the Apache pistol had exploded the cartridge as he fell.
Spencer did not even look at him, as he carried his own burden down to the little office of Dr. Lith.
“When a rich man marries a girl who has been earning her own living, the newspapers always distort it,” he whispered aside to me a few minutes later. “Jameson, you’re a newspaperman–I depend on you to get the facts straight this time.”