m above hadn't come down, I'm sure I
don't know what I should have done with you."

"Ah, it's Abercrombie Smith," said Bellingham, glancing up at him. "How
very good of you to come in! What a fool I am! Oh, my God, what a fool I
am!"

He sunk his head on to his hands, and burst into peal after peal of
hysterical laughter.

"Look here! Drop it!" cried Smith, shaking him roughly by the shoulder.

"Your nerves are all in a jangle. You must drop these little midnight
games with mummies, or you'll be going off your chump. You're all on
wires now."

"I wonder," said Bellingham, "whether you would be as cool as I am if
you had seen----"

"What then?"

"Oh, nothing. I meant that I wonder if you could sit up at night with a
mummy without trying your nerves. I have no doubt that you are quite
right. I dare say that I have been taking it out of myself too much
lately. But I am all right now. Please don't go, though. Just wait for a
few minutes until I am quite myself."

"The room is very close," remarked Lee, throwing open the window and
letting in the cool night air.

"It's balsamic resin," said Bellingham. He lifted up one of the dried
palmate leaves from the table and frizzled it over the chimney of the
lamp. It broke away into heavy smoke wreaths, and a pungent, biting
odour filled the chamber. "It's the sacred plant--the plant of the
priests," he remarked. "Do you know anything of Eastern languages,
Smith?"

"Nothing at all. Not a word."

The answer seemed to lift a weight from the Egyptologist's mind.

"By the way," he continued, "how long was it from the time that you ran
down, until I came to my senses?"

"Not long. Some four or five minutes."

"I thought it could not be very long," said he, drawing a long breath.
"But what a strange thing unconsciousness is! There is no measurement to
it. I could not tell from my own sensations if it were seconds or weeks.
Now that gentleman on the table was packed up in the days of the
eleventh dynasty, some forty centuries ago, and yet if he could find his
tongue, he would tell us that this lapse of time has been but a closing
of the eyes and a reopening of them. He is a singularly fine mummy,
Smith."

Smith stepped over to the table and looked down with a professional eye
at the black and twisted form in front of him. The features, though
horribly discoloured, were perfect, and two little nut-like eyes still
lurked in the depths of the black, hollow sockets. The bl