The Green Mummy - Fergus Hume (best love novels of all time txt) 📗

to see the business through.”

“Do you mean to say that some one asked you to steal it?”

“No,” put in Braddock unexpectedly, “for I was the friend.”

“You!” Don Pedro swung round in great astonishment, but the Professor faced him with all the consciousness of innocence.

“Yes,” he remarked quietly, “as I told you, I was in Peru thirty years ago. I was then hunting for specimens of Inca mummies. Vasa - this man now called Hervey - told me that he could obtain a splendid specimen of a mummy, and I arranged to give him one hundred pounds to procure what I wanted. But I swear to you, De Gayangos,” continued the little man earnestly, “that I did not know he proposed to steal the mummy from you.”

“You knew it was the green mummy?” asked Don Pedro sharply.

“No, I only knew that it was a mummy.”

“Did Vasa get it for you?”

“I guess not,” said the gentleman who confessed to that name. “The Professor went to Cuzco and got into trouble - “

“I was carried off to the mountains by some Indians,” interpolated the Professor, “and only escaped after a year’s captivity. I did not mind that, as it gave me the opportunity of studying a decaying civilization. But when I returned a free man to Lima, I found that Vasa had left the country with the mummy.”

“That’s so,” assented Hervey, waving his hand. “I got a berth as second mate on a wind-jammer sailing to Europe, and as the country wasn’t healthy for me since I’d looted the green mummy, I took it abroad and yanked it to Paris, where I sold it for a couple of hundred pounds. With that, I changed my name and had a high old time. I never heard of the blamed thing again until the Professor here turned up with Mr. Bolton at Pierside, asking me to bring it in The Diver from Malta. It was what you’d call a coincidence, I reckon,” added Hervey lazily; “but I did cry small when I heard the Professor here had paid nine hundred for a thing I’d let slip for two hundred. Had I known of those infernal emeralds, I’d have ripped open the case on board and would have recouped myself. But I knew nothing, and Bolton never told me.”

“How could he,” asked Braddock quietly, “when he did not know that any jewels were buried with the dead? I did not know either. And I have explained why I wanted the mummy. But it never struck me until I hear what you say now, that this mummy,” he nodded towards the green case, “was the one which you had stolen at Lima from De Gayangos. But you must do me the justice, Captain Hervey, to tell Don Pedro that I never countenanced the theft.”

“No! you were square enough, I guess. The sin is on my own blessed shoulders, and I don’t ask it to be shifted.”

“What did you do with the copy of the manuscript?” asked Don Pedro.

Hervey ruminated.

“I can’t think,” he mused. “I found a screed of Latin along with the mummy, when I looted it from your Lima house, but it dropped out of my mind as to what became of it. Maybe I passed it along to the Paris man, and he sold it along with the corpse to the Maltese gent.”

“But I tell you this copy was found in Sir Frank’s room,” insisted De Gayangos. “How did it come to be there?”

Captain Hervey rose and took a turn up and down the room. When Cockatoo came in his way he calmly kicked him aside.

“What do you think, Mr. Hope?” he asked, coming to a full stop before Archie, while Cockatoo crept away with a very dark scowl.

“I don’t know what to think,” replied that young gentleman promptly, “save that Sir Frank is my very good friend, and that I take his word that he knows nothing of how the manuscript came to be hidden in his bookcase.”

“Huh!” said Hervey scornfully, and took another turn up and down the room in silence. “I surmise that your friend isn’t a white man.”

Hope leaped to his feet.

“That’s a lie,” he said distinctly.

“I’d have shot you for that down Chili way,” snapped the skipper.

“Possibly,” retorted the artist dryly, “but I happen to be handy with my revolver also. I say again that you lie. Random is not the man to commit so foul a crime.”

“Then how did the manuscript get into his room?” questioned Hervey.

“He is trying to learn, and, when he does, will come here to let us all know, Captain Hervey. But I ask you on what grounds you accuse him? Oh I know all you said to-day,” added Hope scornfully, waving his hand; “but you can’t prove that Random got the manuscript.”

“If it’s in his room, as you acknowledge, I can,” said Hervey, speaking in a much more cultivated tone. “See here. As I said before, that copy must have been passed along with the corpse to the Maltese man. Well, then, the Professor here bought the corpse, and with it the manuscript.”

“No,” contradicted the little man, prodigiously excited. “Bolton wrote to me full particulars of the mummy, but said nothing about any manuscript.”

“Well, he wouldn’t,” replied Hervey calmly, “seeing that he’d know Latin.”

“He did know Latin,” admitted Braddock uneasily; “I taught him myself. But do you mean to say that he got that manuscript and read it and intended to keep the fact of the emeralds secret?”

Hervey nodded three times, and twisted his cheroot in his mouth.

“How else can you figure the business out?” he demanded quietly, and with his eyes fixed on the excited Professor. “Bolton must have got that manuscript, as I can’t remember what I did with it, save pass it along with the corpse. He - as you admit - doesn’t tell you about it when he writes. Well, then, I reckon he calculated getting this corpse to England, and intended to steal the emeralds when safely ashore.”

“But he could have done that on the boat,” said Archie quickly.

“I guess not, with me about,” said Hervey coolly. “I’d have spotted his game and would have howled for shares.”

“You dare to say that?” demanded De Gayangos fiercely.

“Keep your hair on. I dare to say anything that comes up my darned back, you bet. I’m not going to knuckle down to a yellow-stomach - “

Out flew Don Pedro’s long arm, and Hervey slammed against the wall. He slipped his hand around to his hip pocket with an ugly smile, but before he could use the revolver he produced, Hope dashed up his arm, and the ball went through the ceiling. “Lucy!” cried the young man, knowing that the drawing-room was overhead, and in a moment was out of the door, racing up the stairs at top speed. Some sense of shame seemed to overpower Hervey as he thought that he might have shot the girl, and he replaced the revolver in his pocket with a shrug.

“I climb down and apologize,” he said to Don Pedro, who bowed gravely.

“Hang you, sir; you might have shot my daughter,” cried Braddock. “The drawing-room, where she is sitting, is right overhead, and-”

As he spoke the door opened, and Lucy came in on Archie’s arm. She was pale with fright, but had sustained no damage. It seemed that the revolver bullet had passed through the floor some distance away from where she was sitting.

“I offer my humble apologies, miss,” said the cowed Hervey.

“I’ll break your neck, you ruffian!” growled Hope, who looked, and was, dangerous. “How dare you shoot here and - “

“It’s all right,” interposed Lucy, not wishing for further trouble. “I am all safe. But I shall remain here for the rest of your interview, Captain Hervey, as I am sure you will not shoot again in the presence of a lady.”

“No, miss,” muttered the captain, and when again invited by the angry Professor to speak, resumed his discourse in low tones. “Wal, as I was saying,” he remarked, sitting down with a dogged look, “Bolton intended to clear with the emeralds, but I guess Sir Frank got ahead of him and packed him in that blamed case, while he annexed the emeralds. He then took the manuscript, which he looted from Bolton’s corpse, and hid it among his books, as you say, while he left the blamed mummy in the garden of the old lady you talked about. I guess that’s what I say.”

“It’s all theory,” said Don Pedro in vexed tones.

“And there isn’t a word of truth in it,” said Lucy indignantly, standing up for Frank Random.

“It ain’t for me to contradict you, miss,” said Hervey, who was still humble, “but I ask you, if what I say ain’t true, how did that copy of the manuscript come to be in that aristocrat’s room?”

There was no reply made to this, and although every one present, save Hervey, believed in Random’s innocence, no one could explain. The reply came after some further conversation, by the appearance of the soldier himself in mess kit. He walked unexpectedly into the room with Donna Inez on his arm, and at once apologized to De Gayangos.

“I called to see you at the inn, sir,” he said, “and as you were not there, I brought your daughter along with me to explain about the manuscript.”

“Ah, yes. We talk of that now. How did it come into your room, sir?”

Random pointed to Hervey.

“That rascal placed it there,” he said firmly.