Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [34]
“It certainly looks authentic to me!”
“You’re kind to say so. But listen and you will hear the clockwork. It’s all Bryson gears and a rotating oriete of my own design. A fairground diversion, nothing more. Still, if I time it right, you will think it is responding to my commands. But please do be seated.”
There were three armchairs arranged before the fire, two in a semicircle facing the cheerful blaze, my own somewhat to the right so I could survey the whole room: the single door, the heavily fastened drapes that deadened most of the street noise, the darkly shrouded shape over by the southern wall.
Even as Kray took the armchair nearest my own, I called, “Ramose, the port, if you please,” and the mummiform stirred, moved forward once more, propping and stilting, half toppling along, very much like one of those clever manikins you sometimes saw in the better klatsches and salons mécaniques off Fleet Street.
The port had been poured out earlier by Mrs. Danvers, of course, three sets of glasses on three separate trays, all placed carefully out of sight of where Kray now sat. (Ramose was far from having the dexterity to actually pour drinks from a decanter.) This way the bandaged form need only lean forward and bring up the first tray, then do a slow turn, which put it close by Kray’s elbow.
With an admiring chuckle at the cleverness of the whole thing, the antiques dealer took a glass, crying, “Bravo! Truly marvelous!”
Ramose straightened, moved behind the semicircle of chairs, and brought the tray and the other glass to me.
Herbert Kray sipped his port, then set his glass on the small occasional table before the chairs. “Dashed clever. I’d love to know the trick of it. But to business, Mr. Trenton. Your message said that you might have a prime antiquity to sell.”
I too set aside my glass. “Let us let Ramose do his other party trick first.” I made sure Kray saw me take out my timepiece, seem to be consulting and calculating an exact timing. “Ramose, please show our guest the WH38.”
Again, as if responding to the spoken command, the mummiform jerked into life. With a whirring of gears and the distinctive click-shift-lock of the Bryson armatures, he stiff-legged to the shrouded shape looming behind the curve of the armchairs. Kray craned about to follow the whole thing, showing the same wide-eyed delight as before, watching as the mummy stopped, raised one bandaged, hook-clawed hand and seized the black velvet dust-cloth covering the tall shape beneath. The claw-hand closed, clenched, pulled. Ramose took one, two steps back, tottering slightly as the shroud came fully away.
In my mind I applauded silently. Exactly as rehearsed.
“Ah my!” Kray said, and yet again stared in wonder. Before him—behind him more correctly, though by now he was out of his chair and standing once more—was an unadorned wooden Egyptian burial casket propped upright, held at a gentle eight degrees in a gleaming brass frame consisting of rods, brackets, intricate clamps and gears, all fitted close, keeping it secure.
“Wonderful!” Kray said. “But that frame. I see clockwork. What on earth—?”
“Just some new conservation techniques I’m trying, Dr. Kray. Precautions against the local humidity, vibrations caused by traffic, doors closing, that sort of thing. I keep my guest in the drawing room here to offset the effects of damp. Hence the heavy drapes I’ve had installed. The subdued lighting.”
“Of course. Of course. Has it been opened?”
“It never has. Please feel free to examine the seals, if you wish. They are Twentieth Dynasty.”
Kray did so, moving in close. His zeal was impossible to hide. He was seeing a lost king, a queen, another of the marvelous reinterred royal mummies of the kind officially discovered by Maspero in 1881, or those from the Loret cache seven years later. “You are prepared to sell this?”
“Dr. Bendeck and yourself are reputable experts in this business. I thought I should come to you first.”
“Yes, yes. Capital! But contents unseen?