The Eye of Osiris Part 40

"Of course I don't," she replied. "I am rather pleased. We have so many a.s.sociations with the dear old Museum, haven't we?" She looked at me for a moment with a strange and touching wistfulness and then turned to descend the stone stairs.

At the Temple gate I hailed a hansom, and we were soon speeding westward and north to the soft twinkle of the horse's bell.

"What are these experiments that Doctor Thornd.y.k.e refers to?" she asked presently.

"I can only answer you vaguely," I replied. "Their object, I believe, is to ascertain whether the penetrability of organic substances by the X-rays becomes altered by age; whether, for instance, an ancient block of wood is more or less transparent to the rays than a new block of the same size."

"And of what use would the knowledge be, if it were obtained?"

"I can't say. Experiments are made to obtain knowledge without regard to its utility. The use appears when the knowledge has been acquired.

But in this case, if it should be possible to determine the age of any organic substance by its reaction to X-rays, the discovery might be found of some value in legal practise--as in demonstrating a new seal on an old doc.u.ment, for instance. But I don't know whether Thornd.y.k.e has anything definite in view; I only know that the preparations have been on a most portentous scale."

"How do you mean?"

"In regard to size. When I went into the workshop yesterday morning, I found Polton erecting a kind of portable gallows about nine feet high, and he had just finished varnis.h.i.+ng a pair of enormous wooden trays each over six feet long. It looked as if he and Thornd.y.k.e were contemplating a few private executions with subsequent post-mortems on the victims."

"What a horrible suggestion!"

"So Polton said, with his quaint, crinkly smile. But he was mighty close about the use of the apparatus all the same. I wonder if we shall see anything of the experiments, when we get there. This is Museum Street, isn't it?"

"Yes." As she spoke, she lifted the flap of one of the little windows in the back of the cab and peered out. Then, closing it with a quiet, ironic smile, she said:

"It is all right; he hasn't missed us. It will be quite a nice little change for him."

The cab swung round into Great Russell Street, and, glancing out as it turned, I saw another hansom following; but before I had time to inspect its solitary pa.s.senger, we drew up at the Museum gates.

The gate porter, who seemed to expect us, ushered us up the drive to the great portico and into the Central Hall, where he handed us over to another official.

"Doctor Norbury is in one of the rooms adjoining the Fourth Egyptian Room," the latter stated in answer to our inquiries: and, providing himself with a wire-guarded lantern, he prepared to escort us thither.

Up the great staircase, now wrapped in mysterious gloom, we pa.s.sed in silence with bitter-sweet memories of that day of days when we had first trodden its steps together; through the Central Saloon, the Medieval Room and the Asiatic Saloon, and so into the long range of the Ethnographical Galleries.

It was a weird journey. The swaying lantern shot its beams abroad into the darkness of the great, dim galleries, casting instantaneous flashes on the objects in the cases, so that they leaped into being and vanished in the twinkling of an eye. Hideous idols with round, staring eyes started forth from the darkness, glared at us for an instant and were gone. Grotesque masks, suddenly revealed by the s.h.i.+mmering light, took on the semblance of demon faces that seemed to mow and gibber at us as we pa.s.sed. As for the life-sized models--realistic enough by daylight--their aspect was positively alarming; for the moving light and shadow endowed them with life and movement, so that they seemed to watch us furtively, to lie in wait and to hold themselves in readiness to steal out and follow us. The illusion evidently affected Ruth as well as me, for she drew nearer to me and whispered:

"These figures are quite startling. Did you see that Polynesian? I really felt as if he were going to spring out on us."

"They are rather uncanny," I admitted, "but the danger is over now. We are pa.s.sing out of their sphere of influence."

We came out on a landing as I spoke and then turned sharply to the left along the North Gallery, from the center of which we entered the Fourth Egyptian Room.

Almost immediately, a door in the opposite wall opened; a peculiar, high-pitched humming sound became audible, and Jervis came out on tiptoe with his hand raised.

"Tread as lightly as you can," he said. "We are just making an exposure."

The attendant turned back with his lantern, and we followed Jervis into the room from whence he had come. It was a large room, and little lighter than the galleries, for the single glow-lamp that burned at the end where we entered left the rest of the apartment in almost complete obscurity. We seated ourselves at once on the chairs that had been placed for us, and, when the mutual salutations had been exchanged, I looked about me. There were three people in the room besides Jervis: Thornd.y.k.e, who sat with his watch in his hand, a gray-headed gentleman whom I took to be Dr. Norbury, and a smaller person at the dim farther end--undistinguishable, but probably Polton. At our end of the room were the two large trays that I had seen in the workshop, now mounted on trestles and each fitted with a rubber drain-tube leading down to a bucket. At the farther end of the room the sinister shape of the gallows reared itself aloft in the gloom; only now I could see that it was not a gallows at all. For affixed to the top cross-bar was a large, bottomless gla.s.s basin, inside which was a gla.s.s bulb that glowed with a strange green light; and in the heart of the bulb a bright spot of red.

It was all clear enough so far. The peculiar sound that filled the air was the hum of the interrupter; the bulb was, of course, a Crookes tube, and the red spot inside it, the glowing red-hot disc of the anti-cathode. Clearly an X-ray photograph was being made; but of what?

I strained my eyes, peering into the gloom at the foot of the gallows, but though I could make out an elongated object lying on the floor directly under the bulb, I could not resolve the dimly seen shape into anything recognizable. Presently, however, Dr. Norbury supplied the clue.

"I am rather surprized," said he, "that you chose so composite an object as a mummy to begin on. I should have thought that a simpler object, such as a coffin or a wooden figure, would have been more instructive."

"In some ways it would," replied Thornd.y.k.e, "but the variety of materials that the mummy gives us has its advantages. I hope your father is not ill, Miss Bellingham."

"He is not at all well," said Ruth, "and we agreed that it was better for me to come alone. I knew Herr Lederbogen quite well. He stayed with us for a time when he was in England."

"I trust," said Dr. Norbury, "that I have not troubled you for nothing.

Herr Lederbogen speaks of 'our erratic English friend with the long name that I can never remember,' and it seemed to me that he might be referring to your uncle."

"I should hardly have called my uncle erratic," said Ruth.

"No, no. Certainly not," Dr. Norbury agreed hastily. "However, you shall see the letter presently and judge for yourself. We mustn't introduce irrelevant topics while the experiment is in progress, must we, Doctor?"

"You had better wait until we have finished," said Thornd.y.k.e, "because I am going to turn out the light. Switch off the current, Polton."

The green light vanished from the bulb, the hum of the interrupter swept down an octave or two and died away. Then Thornd.y.k.e and Dr.

Norbury rose from their chairs and went toward the mummy, which they lifted tenderly while Polton drew from beneath it what presently turned out to be a huge black paper envelope. The single glow-lamp was switched off, leaving the room in total darkness until there burst out suddenly a bright orange red light immediately above one of the trays.

We all gathered round to watch, as Polton--the high priest of these mysteries--drew from the black envelope a colossal sheet of bromide paper, laid it carefully in the tray and proceeded to wet it with a large brush which he had dipped in a pail of water.

"I thought you always used plates for this kind of work," said Dr.

Norbury.

"We do, by preference; but a six-foot plate would be impossible, so I had a special paper made to the size."

There is something singularly fascinating in the appearance of a developing photograph; in the gradual, mysterious emergence of the picture from the blank, white surface of plate or paper. But a skiagraph, or X-ray photograph, has a fascination all its own. Unlike the ordinary photograph, which yields a picture of things already seen, it gives a presentment of objects. .h.i.therto invisible; and hence, when Polton poured the developer on the already wet paper, we all craned over the tray with the keenest curiosity.

The developer was evidently a very slow one. For fully half a minute no change could be seen in the uniform surface. Then, gradually, almost insensibly, the marginal portion began to darken, leaving the outline of the mummy in pale relief. The change, once started, proceeded apace. Darker and darker grew the margin of the paper until from slaty gray it had turned to black; and still the shape of the mummy, now in strong relief, remained an enlongated patch of bald white. But not for long. Presently the white shape began to be tinged with gray, and, as the color deepened, there grew out of it a paler form that seemed to steal out of the enshrouding gray like an apparition, spectral, awesome, mysterious. The skeleton was coming into view.

"It is rather uncanny," said Dr. Norbury. "I feel as if I were a.s.sisting at some unholy rite. Just look at it now!"

The gray shadow of the cartonnage, the wrappings and the flesh was fading away into the background and the white skeleton stood out in sharp contrast. And it certainly was rather a weird spectacle.

"You'll lose the bones if you develop much farther," said Dr. Norbury.

"I must let the bones darken," Thornd.y.k.e replied, "in case there are any metallic objects. I have three more papers in the envelope."

The white shape of the skeleton now began to gray over and, as Dr.

Norbury had said, its distinctness became less and yet less. Thornd.y.k.e leaned over the tray with his eyes fixed on a point in the middle of the breast and we all watched him in silence. Suddenly he rose. "Now, Polton," he said sharply; "get the hypo on as quickly as you can."

Polton, who had been waiting with his hand on the stop-c.o.c.k of the drain-tube, rapidly ran off the developer into the bucket and flooded the paper with the fixing solution.

"Now we can look at it at our leisure," said Thornd.y.k.e. After waiting a few seconds, he switched on one of the glow-lamps, and as the flood of light fell on the photograph, he added: "You see we haven't quite lost the skeleton."

"No." Dr. Norbury put on a pair of spectacles and bent down over the tray; and at this moment I felt Ruth's hand touch my arm, lightly at first, and then with a strong nervous grasp; and I could feel that her hand was trembling. I looked round at her anxiously and saw that she had turned deathly pale.

"Would you rather go out into the gallery?" I asked; for the room with its tightly shut windows was close and hot.

"No," she replied quietly. "I will stay here. I am quite well." But still she kept hold of my arm.