The Mummy Case - Elizabeth Peters [63]
“If tourists would stop buying from these dealers, they would have to go out of business,” he cried. “The looting of tombs and cemeteries would stop. Look at this.” He pointed an accusing finger at the mummy case. “Who knows what vital evidence the tomb robber lost when he removed this mummy from its resting place?”
The baroness gave me a conspiratorial smile. “But he is magnificent, the professor. Such passion! I congratulate you, my dear.”
“I fear I must add my reproaches to those of the professor.” The statement was so unexpected it halted Emerson’s lecture and turned all eyes toward the speaker. David continued, in the same soft voice, “Carrying human remains about as if they were cordwood is a deplorable custom. As a man of the cloth, I cannot condone it.”
“But this poor corpse was a pagan,” said Kalenischeff, smiling cynically. “I thought you men of the cloth were only concerned about Christian remains.”
“Pagan or Christian, all men are the children of God,” was the reply. All the ladies present—except myself—let out sighs of admiration, and David went on, “Of course, if I believed the remains were those of a fellow-Christian, however misled by false dogma, I would be forced to expostulate more forcibly. I could not permit—”
“I thought he was a Christian,” the baroness interrupted. “The dealer from whom I bought him said so.”
A general outcry arose. The baroness shrugged. “What is the difference? They are all the same, dry bones and flesh—the cast-off garments of the soul.”
This shrewd hit—it was shrewd, I admit—was wasted on David, whose German was obviously poor. He looked puzzled, and de Morgan said soothingly, in the tongue of Shakespeare, “No, there is no question of such a thing. I fear the dealer deceived you, Baroness.”
“Verdammter pig-dog,” said the baroness calmly. “How can you be sure, monsieur?”
De Morgan started to reply, but Emerson beat him to it. “By the style and decoration of the mummy case. The hieroglyphic inscriptions identify the owner as a man named Thermoutharin. He was clearly a worshiper of the old gods; the scenes in gilt relief show Anubis and Isis, Osiris and Thoth, performing the ceremony of embalming the dead.”
“It is of the Ptolemaic period,” said de Morgan.
“No, no, later. The first or second century A.D.”
De Morgan’s lean cheekbones flushed with annoyance at Emerson’s dogmatic tone, but he was too much of a gentleman to debate the point. It was young David Cabot who peppered my husband with questions—the meaning of this sign or that, the significance of the inscriptions, and so on. I was surprised at his interest, but I saw nothing sinister in it—then.
Before long the baroness became bored with a conversation of which she was not the subject. “Ach!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands. “So much fuss over an ugly mummy! If you feel so strongly, Professor, you may have it. I give it as a gift. Unless Brother David wants to take it, to bury it with Christian rites.”
“Not I,” David said. “The professor has convinced me; it is pagan.”
“Nor I,” said Emerson. “I have enough damned—that is, er…Give it to the Museum, Baroness.”
“I will consider doing so,” said the lady, “if it will win your approval, Professor.”
I could have told her that her elephantine flirtatiousness would have no effect on Emerson. Tiring finally of a game in which she was the only player, she invited her guests to view her new pet, which was kept in a cage on the deck. Emerson and I declined; and when the others had gone, I turned to my unhappy spouse. “You have done your duty like an English gentleman, Emerson. I am ready to leave whenever you are.”
“I never wanted to come in the first place, Peabody, as you know. As I suspected, my martyrdom was in vain. The confounded woman has no demotic papyri.”
“I know. But perhaps your appeals on behalf of antiquities will affect not only the baroness but the other tourists who were present.”
Emerson snorted. “Don’t be naive, Peabody. Let us go, eh? If I remain any longer in this storehouse