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By Root 1601 0

who did the dirty work, Bendeck the main investor. But Herbert Kray, as several reliable sources had it, had been the mastermind behind all that had happened in the tomb in the rocky defile at Wadi Hatas that day. Minchin and his fellahin may have done the actual deed, Bendeck may have sold the artefacts, but Kray had undoubtedly planned the whole affair. I had simply been an awkwardness, an additional complication to be dealt with, someone to be left behind when they had finished plundering the tomb and sealed it up again. They knew nothing of the two goatherds who had followed us, brothers to the one who had sold me the papyrus. Instead of robbing me themselves as they had originally intended, they had become my liberators.

I pretended to sip my port, began directing the small talk that would crown the afternoon’s events. “Dr. Kray, do you know what a Shaddowwes Box is?”

“No, Trenton. I can’t say that I do.”

“The great Elizabethan alchemist John Dee was said to have had one. And Aleister Crowley, our Great Beast. It’s a sealed box containing nothing but darkness. A sort of memento mori, really. A reminder of what awaits us all unless we believe in a Creator. Even Shakespeare was said to own one. And it’s spelt ‘shaddowwe’ with the double d and w after one of the Bard’s favoured spellings for shadow.”

“I see.” Kray didn’t see at all, and my rhapsodic tone clearly troubled him.

I gestured at the coffin behind his chair. “I must say that having an unopened casket standing there for the past three weeks has given me a shudder or two. I mean, have you ever wondered about what truly happened to that Unknown Man E in the DB320 cache?”

Kray had to come back from where his own thoughts had taken him. “The Unknown Man? I have to say I know very little about it. He’s the chap they found screaming, yes?”

“Indeed. Wrapped in a sheepskin—something ritually unclean to the Ancient Egyptians—bound hand and foot, it seems. Some say it’s Pentewere, the conspirator son of Ramesses III who was captured when the Harem Conspiracy against his father failed. Some accounts say he was made to take poison, others that he was buried alive in an unmarked casket.”

“Awful business either way.”

“Indeed. But it makes you think. Both versions may be correct. The poison could have been a sedative and Pentewere awoke in darkness to find himself entombed alive.”

“Yes, well.” Now Herbert Kray was the one to bring out his timepiece, an impressive gold one, and check the time. “Elleston will be here soon. This mechanical mummy of yours will really take his fancy. He has always loved automata.”

Again I pretended to sip my port. “I’m pleased to hear it. And do excuse my rambling on like this. It’s having that casket in here. I’m not one to worry about mummies coming back to life, but the darkness now, that is another thing. It bothers me. Have you ever wondered what might happen in total darkness, Dr. Kray?”

Irritation showed briefly in Kray’s eyes, though it was brought quickly under control. “Presumably nothing, sir. The workings of air and silence, I suppose. Time doing its thing. In windowless rooms the movement of dust particles. In caves the drip of water, I suspect. The formation of stalactites. You tell me.”

“But that is unconsidered darkness surely. The darkness of nature, chance, and random circumstance. What of the considered kind?”

Herbert Kray had no idea how to respond to such a question or, ultimately, even what it meant. Things were taking a definitely queer turn, but if there were treasures, even trinkets, to be gained, he had resolved to be politeness itself. “If you mean to tell me, sir, pray do. I admit that your exact point escapes me.”

“If I consider it, I change it.”

“Really? How so?”

“By the participating mind, Dr. Kray. Our minds, our very thoughts, galvanise the thing observed at its most basic level. There are religions that turn on this way of thinking. Someday it will be proven beyond doubt as a scientific fact as well.”

Kray chuckled. “I’m sure. So I might argue that I could affect this rather fine port by reflecting