, struck a match and
set the fire alight. Bellingham sat staring, with amazement and rage
upon his bloated face.

"Well, really now, you make yourself at home," he gasped.

Smith sat himself deliberately down, placing his watch upon the table,
drew out his pistol, cocked it, and laid it in his lap. Then he took the
long amputating knife from his bosom, and threw it down in front of
Bellingham.

"Now, then," said he, "just get to work and cut up that mummy."

"Oh, is that it?" said Bellingham with a sneer.

"Yes, that is it. They tell me that the law can't touch you. But I have
a law that will set matters straight. If in five minutes you have not
set to work, I swear by the God who made me that I will put a bullet
through your brain!"

"You would murder me?"

Bellingham had half risen, and his face was the colour of putty.

"Yes."

"And for what?"

"To stop your mischief. One minute has gone."

"But what have I done?"

"I know and you know."

"This is mere bullying."

"Two minutes are gone."

"But you must give reasons. You are a madman--a dangerous madman. Why
should I destroy my own property? It is a valuable mummy."

"You must cut it up, and you must burn it."

"I will do no such thing."

"Four minutes are gone."

Smith took up the pistol and he looked towards Bellingham with an
inexorable face. As the secondhand stole round, he raised his hand, and
the finger twitched upon the trigger.

"There! there! I'll do it!" screamed Bellingham.

In frantic haste he caught up the knife and hacked at the figure of the
mummy, ever glancing round to see the eye and the weapon of his terrible
visitor bent upon him. The creature crackled and snapped under every
stab of the keen blade. A thick yellow dust rose up from it. Spices and
dried essences rained down upon the floor. Suddenly, with a rending
crack, its backbone snapped asunder, and it fell, a brown heap of
sprawling limbs, upon the floor.

"Now into the fire!" said Smith.

The flames leaped and roared as the dried and tinder-like debris was
piled upon it. The little room was like the stoke-hole of a steamer and
the sweat ran down the faces of the two men; but still the one stooped
and worked, while the other sat watching him with a set face. A thick,
fat smoke oozed out from the fire, and a heavy smell of burned rosin and
singed hair filled the air. In a quarter of an hour a few charred and
brittle sticks were all that was left of Lot No. 249.