The Jewel of Seven Stars by Bram Stoker (ebook and pdf reader .txt) 📖
- Author: Bram Stoker
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living. The second that he had some purpose or expectation with regard
to it, which he would not disclose, even to his daughter, till complete.
Again it was to be borne in mind that this sarcophagus differed
internally from all the others. What meant that odd raised place? I
said nothing to Miss Trelawny, for I feared lest I should either
frighten her or buoy her up with future hopes; but I made up my mind
that I would take an early opportunity for further investigation.
Close beside the sarcophagus was a low table of green stone with red
veins in it, like bloodstone. The feet were fashioned like the paws of
a jackal, and round each leg was twined a full-throated snake wrought
exquisitely in pure gold. On it rested a strange and very beautiful
coffer or casket of stone of a peculiar shape. It was something like a
small coffin, except that the longer sides, instead of being cut off
square like the upper or level part were continued to a point. Thus it
was an irregular septahedron, there being two planes on each of the two
sides, one end and a top and bottom. The stone, of one piece of which
it was wrought, was such as I had never seen before. At the base it was
of a full green, the colour of emerald without, of course, its gleam.
It was not by any means dull, however, either in colour or substance,
and was of infinite hardness and fineness of texture. The surface was
almost that of a jewel. The colour grew lighter as it rose, with
gradation so fine as to be imperceptible, changing to a fine yellow
almost of the colour of “mandarin” china. It was quite unlike anything
I had ever seen, and did not resemble any stone or gem that I knew. I
took it to be some unique mother-stone, or matrix of some gem. It was
wrought all over, except in a few spots, with fine hieroglyphics,
exquisitely done and coloured with the same blue-green cement or pigment
that appeared on the sarcophagus. In length it was about two feet and a
half; in breadth about half this, and was nearly a foot high. The
vacant spaces were irregularly distributed about the top running to the
pointed end. These places seemed less opaque than the rest of the
stone. I tried to lift up the lid so that I might see if they were
translucent; but it was securely fixed. It fitted so exactly that the
whole coffer seemed like a single piece of stone mysteriously hollowed
from within. On the sides and edges were some odd-looking protuberances
wrought just as finely as any other portion of the coffer which had been
sculptured by manifest design in the cutting of the stone. They had
queer-shaped holes or hollows, different in each; and, like the rest,
were covered with the hieroglyphic figures, cut finely and filled in
with the same blue-green cement.
On the other side of the great sarcophagus stood another small table of
alabaster, exquisitely chased with symbolic figures of gods and the
signs of the zodiac. On this table stood a case of about a foot square
composed of slabs of rock crystal set in a skeleton of bands of red
gold, beautifully engraved with hieroglyphics, and coloured with a blue
green, very much the tint of the figures on the sarcophagus and the
coffer. The whole work was quite modern.
But if the case was modern what it held was not. Within, on a cushion
of cloth of gold as fine as silk, and with the peculiar softness of old
gold, rested a mummy hand, so perfect that it startled one to see it. A
woman’s hand, fine and long, with slim tapering fingers and nearly as
perfect as when it was given to the embalmer thousands of years before.
In the embalming it had lost nothing of its beautiful shape; even the
wrist seemed to maintain its pliability as the gentle curve lay on the
cushion. The skin was of a rich creamy or old ivory colour; a dusky
fair skin which suggested heat, but heat in shadow. The great
peculiarity of it, as a hand, was that it had in all seven fingers,
there being two middle and two index fingers. The upper end of the
wrist was jagged, as though it had been broken off, and was stained with
a red-brown stain. On the cushion near the hand was a small scarab,
exquisitely wrought of emerald.
“That is another of Father’s mysteries. When I asked him about it he
said that it was perhaps the most valuable thing he had, except one.
When I asked him what that one was, he refused to tell me, and forbade
me to ask him anything concerning it. ‘I will tell you,’ he said, ‘all
about it, too, in good time-if I live!’”
“If I live!” the phrase again. These three things grouped together, the
Sarcophagus, the Coffer, and the Hand, seemed to make a trilogy of
mystery indeed!
At this time Miss Trelawny was sent for on some domestic matter. I
looked at the other curios in the room; but they did not seem to have
anything like the same charm for me, now that she was away. Later on in
the day I was sent for to the boudoir where she was consulting with Mrs.
Grant as to the lodgment of Mr. Corbeck. They were in doubt as to
whether he should have a room close to Mr. Trelawny’s or quite away from
it, and had thought it well to ask my advice on the subject. I came to
the conclusion that he had better not be too near; for the first at all
events, he could easily be moved closer if necessary. When Mrs. Grant
had gone, I asked Miss Trelawny how it came that the furniture of this
room, the boudoir in which we were, was so different from the other
rooms of the house.
“Father’s forethought!” she answered. “When I first came, he thought,
and rightly enough, that I might get frightened with so many records of
death and the tomb everywhere. So he had this room and the little suite
off it-that door opens into the sitting-room-where I slept last night,
furnished with pretty things. You see, they are all beautiful. That
cabinet belonged to the great Napoleon.”
“There is nothing Egyptian in these rooms at all then?” I asked, rather
to show interest in what she had said than anything else, for the
furnishing of the room was apparent. “What a lovely cabinet! May I
look at it?”
“Of course! with the greatest pleasure!” she answered, with a smile.
“Its finishing, within and without, Father says, is absolutely
complete.” I stepped over and looked at it closely. It was made of
tulip wood, inlaid in patterns; and was mounted in ormolu. I pulled
open one of the drawers, a deep one where I could see the work to great
advantage. As I pulled it, something rattled inside as though rolling;
there was a tinkle as of metal on metal.
“Hullo!” I said. “There is something in here. Perhaps I had better not
open it.”
“There is nothing that I know of,” she answered. “Some of the
housemaids may have used it to put something by for the time and
forgotten it. Open it by all means!”
I pulled open the drawer; as I did so, both Miss Trelawny and I started
back in amazement.
There before our eyes lay a number of ancient Egyptian lamps, of various
sizes and of strangely varied shapes.
We leaned over them and looked closely. My own heart was beating like a
trip-hammer; and I could see by the heaving of Margaret’s bosom that
she was strangely excited.
Whilst we looked, afraid to touch and almost afraid to think, there was
a ring at the front door; immediately afterwards Mr. Corbeck, followed
by Sergeant Daw, came into the hall. The door of the boudoir was open,
and when they saw us Mr. Corbeck came running in, followed more slowly
by the Detective. There was a sort of chastened joy in his face and
manner as he said impulsively:
“Rejoice with me, my dear Miss Trelawny, my luggage has come and all my
things are intact!” Then his face fell as he added, “Except the lamps.
The lamps that were worth all the rest a thousand times… .” He
stopped, struck by the strange pallor of her face. Then his eyes,
following her look and mine, lit on the cluster of lamps in the drawer.
He gave a sort of cry of surprise and joy as he bent over and touched
them:
“My lamps! My lamps! Then they are safe-safe-safe! … But how, in
the name of God-of all the Gods-did they come here?”
We all stood silent. The Detective made a deep sound of intaking
breath. I looked at him, and as he caught my glance he turned his eyes
on Miss Trelawny whose back was toward him.
There was in them the same look of suspicion which had been there when
he had spoken to me of her being the first to find her father on the
occasions of the attacks.
Mr. Corbeck seemed to go almost off his head at the recovery of the
lamps. He took them up one by one and looked them all over tenderly, as
though they were things that he loved. In his delight and excitement he
breathed so hard that it seemed almost like a cat purring. Sergeant Daw
said quietly, his voice breaking the silence like a discord in a melody:
“Are you quite sure those lamps are the ones you had, and that were
stolen?”
His answer was in an indignant tone: “Sure! Of course I’m sure. There
isn’t another set of lamps like these in the world!”
“So far as you know!” The Detective’s words were smooth enough, but his
manner was so exasperating that I was sure he had some motive in it; so
I waited in silence. He went on:
“Of course there may be some in the British Museum; or Mr. Trelawny may
have had these already. There’s nothing new under the sun, you know,
Mr. Corbeck; not even in Egypt. These may be the originals, and yours
may have been the copies. Are there any points by which you can
identify these as yours?”
Mr. Corbeck was really angry by this time. He forgot his reserve; and
in his indignation poured forth a torrent of almost incoherent, but
enlightening, broken sentences:
“Identify! Copies of them! British Museum! Rot! Perhaps they keep a
set in Scotland Yard for teaching idiot policemen Egyptology! Do I know
them? When I have carried them about my body, in the desert, for three
months; and lay awake night after night to watch them! When I have
looked them over with a magnifying-glass, hour after hour, till my eyes
ached; till every tiny blotch, and chip, and dinge became as familiar to
me as his chart to a captain; as familiar as they doubtless have been
all the time to every thick-headed area-prowler within the bounds of
mortality. See here, young man, look at these!” He ranged the lamps in
a row on the top of the cabinet. “Did you ever see a set of lamps of
these shapes-of any one of these shapes? Look at these dominant figures
on them! Did you ever see so complete a set-even in Scotland Yard; even
in Bow Street? Look! one on each, the seven forms of Hathor. Look at
that figure of the Ka of
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