Читать книгу The Scarab Murder Case - Willard Huntington Wright - Страница 5

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SCARABÆMUS SACER

(Friday, July 13; noon)

Vance frowned slightly and studied the small black figure for a moment.

“It may mean nothing—surely nothing supernatural—but the fact that this particular statue was chosen for the murder makes me wonder if there may be something diabolical and sinister and superstitious in this affair.”

“Come, come, Vance!” Markham spoke with forced matter-of-factness. “This is modern New York, not legendary Egypt.”

“Yes ... oh, yes. But superstition is still a ruling factor in so-called human nature. Moreover, there are many more convenient weapons in this room—weapons fully as lethal and more readily wielded. Why should a cumbersome, heavy statue of Sakhmet have been chosen for the deed? ... In any event, it took a strong man to swing it with such force.”

He looked toward Scarlett, whose eyes had been fastened on the dead man with a stare of fascination.

“Where was this statue kept?”

Scarlett blinked.

“Why—let me see....” He was obviously trying to collect his wits. “Ah, yes. On the top of that cabinet.” He pointed unsteadily to the row of wide shelves in front of Kyle’s body. “It was one of the new pieces we unpacked yesterday. Hani placed it there. You see, we used that end cabinet temporarily for the new items, until we could arrange and catalogue ’em properly.”

There were ten sections in the row of cabinets that extended across the rear of the museum, each one being about two and a half feet wide and a little over seven feet high. These cabinets—which in reality were but open shelves—were filled with all manner of curios: scores of examples of pottery and wooden vases, scent bottles, bows and arrows, adzes, swords, daggers, sistra, bronze and copper hand-mirrors, ivory game boards, perfume boxes, whip handles, palm-leaf sandals, wooden combs, palettes, head rests, reed baskets, carved spoons, plasterers’ tools, sacrificial flint knives, funerary masks, statuettes, necklaces, and the like.

Each cabinet had a separate curtain of a material which looked like silk rep, suspended with brass rings on a small metal rod. The curtains to all the cabinets were drawn open, with the exception of the one on the end cabinet before which the dead body of Kyle lay. The curtain of this cabinet was only partly drawn.

Vance had turned round.

“And what about the Anûbis, Scarlett?” he asked. “Was it a recent acquisition?”

“That came yesterday, too. It was placed in that corner—to keep the shipment together.”

Vance nodded, and walked to the partly curtained cabinet. He stood for several moments peering into the shelves.

“Very interestin’,” he murmured, almost as if to himself. “I see you have a most unusual post-Hyksos bearded sphinx.... And that blue-glass vessel is very lovely ... though not so lovely as yon blue-paste lion’s-head.... Ah! I note many evidences of old Intef’s bellicose nature—that battle-ax, for instance.... And—my word!—there are some scimitars and daggers which look positively Asiatic. And”—he peered closely into the top shelf—“a most fascinatin’ collection of ceremonial maces.”

“Things Doctor Bliss picked up on his recent expedition,” explained Scarlett. “Those flint and porphyry maces came from the antechamber of Intef’s tomb....”

At this moment the great metal door of the museum creaked on its hinges, and Sergeant Ernest Heath and three detectives appeared at the head of the stairs. The Sergeant immediately descended into the room, leaving his men on the little landing.

He greeted Markham with the usual ritualistic handshake.

“Howdy, sir,” he rumbled. “I got here as soon as I could. Brought three of the boys from the Bureau, and sent word to Captain Dubois and Doc Doremus^[7] to follow us up.”

“It looks as if we might be in for another unpleasant scandal, Sergeant.” Markham’s tone was pessimistic. “That’s Benjamin H. Kyle.”

Heath stared aggressively at the dead man and grunted.

“A nasty job,” he commented through his teeth. “What in hell is that thing he was croaked with?”

Vance, who had been leaning over the shelves of the cabinet, his back to us, now turned round with a genial smile.

“That, Sergeant, is Sakhmet, an ancient goddess of the primitive Egyptians. But she isn’t in hell, so to speak. This gentleman, however,”—he touched the tall statue of Anûbis—“is from the nether regions.”

“I mighta known you’d be here, Mr. Vance.” Heath grinned with genuine friendliness, and held out his hand. “I’ve got you down on my suspect list. Every time there’s a fancy homicide, who do I find on the spot but Mr. Philo Vance! ... Glad to see you, Mr. Vance. I reckon you’ll get your psychological processes to working now and clean this mystery up pronto.”

“It’ll take more than psychology to solve this case, I’m afraid.” Vance had grasped the Sergeant’s hand cordially. “A smatterin’ of Egyptology might help, don’t y’ know.”

“I’ll leave that nifty stuff to you, Mr. Vance. What I want, first and foremost, is the finger-prints on that—that——” He bent over the small statue of Sakhmet. “That’s the damnedest thing I ever saw. The guy who sculped that was cuckoo. It’s got a lion’s head with a big platter on the dome.”

“The lion’s head of Sakhmet is undoubtedly totemistic, Sergeant,” explained Vance, good-naturedly. “And that ‘platter’ is a representation of the solar disk. The snake peering from the forehead is a cobra—or uræus—and was the sign of royalty.”

“Have it your own way, sir.” The Sergeant had become impatient. “What I want is the finger-prints.”

He swung about and walked toward the front of the museum.

“Hey, Snitkin!” he called belligerently to one of the men on the stair landing. “Relieve that officer outside—send him back to his beat. And bring Dubois in here as soon as he shows up.” Then he returned to Markham. “Who’ll give me the low-down on this, sir?”

Markham introduced him to Scarlett.

“This gentleman,” he said, “found Mr. Kyle. He can tell you all we know of the case thus far.”

Scarlett and Heath talked together for five minutes or so, the Sergeant maintaining throughout the conversation an attitude of undisguised suspicion. It was a basic principle with him that every one was guilty until his innocence had been completely and irrefutably established.

Vance in the meantime had been bending over Kyle’s body with an intentness that puzzled me. Presently his eyes narrowed slightly and he went down on one knee, thrusting his head forward to within a foot of the floor. Then he took out his monocle, polished it carefully, and adjusted it. Markham and I both watched him in silence. After a few moments he straightened up.

“I say, Scarlett; is there a magnifyin’ glass handy?”

Scarlett, who had just finished talking to Sergeant Heath, went at once to the glass case containing the Scarabs and opened one of the drawers.

“What sort of museum would this be without a magnifier?” he asked, with a feeble attempt at jocularity, holding out a Coddington lens.

Vance took it and turned to Heath.

“May I borrow your flash-light, Sergeant?”

“Sure thing!” Heath handed him a push-button flash.

Vance again knelt down, and with the flash-light in one hand and the lens in the other, inspected a tiny oblong object that lay about a foot from Kyle’s body.

SCARAB OF INTEF V

“Nisut Biti ... Intef ... Si Rê ... Nub-Kheper-Rê.” His voice was low and resonant.

The Sergeant put his hands in his pockets and sniffed.

“And what language might that be, Mr. Vance?” he asked.

“It’s the transliteration of a few ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. I’m reading from this scarab....”

The Sergeant had become interested. He stepped forward and leaned over the object that Vance was inspecting.

“A scarab, huh?”

“Yes, Sergeant. Sometimes called a scarabee, or scarabæid, or scarabæus—that is to say, beetle.... This little oval bit of lapis-lazuli was a sacred symbol of the old Egyptians.... This particular one, by the by, is most fascinatin’. It is the state seal of Intef V—a Pharaoh of the Seventeenth Dynasty. About 1650 B. C.—or over 3,500 years ago—he wore it. It bears the title and throne name of Intef-o, or Intef. His Horus name was Nefer-Kheperu, if I remember correctly. He was one of the native Egyptian rulers at Thebes during the reign of the Hyksos in the Delta.^[8] The tomb of this gentleman is the one that Doctor Bliss has been excavating for several years.... And you of course note, Sergeant, that the scarab is set in a modern scarf-pin....”

Heath grunted with satisfaction. Here, at least, was a piece of tangible evidence.

“A beetle, is it? And a scarf-pin! ... Well, Mr. Vance, I’d like to get my hands on the bird who wore that blue thingumajig in his cravat.”

“I can enlighten you on that point, Sergeant.” Vance rose to his feet and looked toward the little metal door at the head of the circular stairway. “That scarf-pin is the property of Doctor Bliss.”

[7]	Captain Dubois was then the finger-print expert of the New York Police Department; and Doctor Emanuel Doremus was the Medical examiner.

[8]

The daughter of this particular Pharaoh—Nefra—incidentally is the titular heroine of H. Rider Haggard’s romance, “Queen of the Dawn.” Haggard, following the chronology of H. R. Hall, placed Intef in the Fourteenth Dynasty instead of the Seventeenth, making him a contemporary of the great Hyksos Pharaoh, Apopi, whose son Khyan—the hero of the book—marries Nefra. The researches of Bliss and Weigall seem to have demonstrated that this relationship is an anachronism.