The Green Mummy - Page 13/191

"Pouf! what an abominal smell!" exclaimed the widow, holding a

flimsy lace handkerchief to her nose. "Kind of camphor-sandal-wood

charnel-house smell. I wonder you are not asphyxiated. Pouf! Ugh!

Bur-r-r The Professor stared at her with cold, fishy eyes. "Did you speak?"

"Oh, dear me, yes, and you don't even ask me to take a chair. If I were

a nasty stuffy mummy, now, you would be embracing me by, this time.

Don't you know that I have come to dinner, you silly man?" and she

tapped him playfully with her closed fan.

"I have had dinner," said Braddock, egotistic as usual.

"No, you have not." Mrs. Jasher spoke positively, and pointed to a

small tray of untouched food on the side table. "You have not even had

luncheon. You must live on air, like a chameleon--or on love, perhaps,"

she ended in a significantly tender tone.

But she might as well have spoken to the granite image of Horus in the

corner. Braddock merely rubbed his chin and stared harder than ever at

the glittering visitor.

"Dear me!" he said innocently. "I must have forgotten to eat.

Lamplight!" he looked round vaguely. "Of course, I remember lighting the

lamps. Time has gone by very rapidly. I am really hungry." He paused to

make sure, then repeated his remark in a more positive manner. "Yes, I

am very hungry, Mrs. Jasher." He looked at her as though she had just

entered. "Of course, Mrs. Jasher. Do you wish to see me about anything

particular?"

The widow frowned at his inattention, and then laughed. It was

impossible to be angry with this dreamer.

"I have come to dinner, Professor. Do try and wake up; you are half

asleep and half starved, too, I expect."

"I certainly feel unaccountably hungry," admitted Braddock cautiously.

"Unaccountably, when you have eaten nothing since breakfast. You weird

man, I believe you are a mummy yourself."

But the Professor had again returned to examine the scarabeus, this time

with a powerful magnifying glass.

"It certainly belongs to the twentieth dynasty," he murmured, wrinkling

his brows.

Mrs. Jasher stamped and flirted her fan pettishly. The creature's soul,

she decided, was certainly not in his body, and until it came back he

would continue to ignore her. With the annoyance of a woman who is

not getting her own way, she leaned back in Braddock's one comfortable

chair--which she had unerringly selected--and examined him intently.

Perhaps the gossips were correct, and she was trying to imagine what

kind of a husband he would make. But whatever might be her thoughts, she

eyed Braddock as earnestly as Braddock eyed the scarabeus.

Outwardly the Professor did not appear like the savant he was reported

to be. He was small of stature, plump of body, rosy as a little Cupid,

and extraordinarily youthful, considering his fifty-odd years of

scientific wear and tear. With a smooth, clean-shaven face, plentiful

white hair like spun silk, and neat feet and hands, he did not look his

age. The dreamy look in his small blue eyes was rather belied by the

hardness of his thin-lipped mouth, and by the pugnacious push of his

jaw. The eyes and the dome-like forehead hinted that brain without much

originality; but the lower part of this contradictory countenance might

have belonged to a prize-fighter. Nevertheless, Braddock's plumpness did

away to a considerable extent with his aggressive look. It was certainly

latent, but only came to the surface when he fought with a brother

savant over some tomb-dweller from Thebes. In the soft lamplight he

looked like a fighting cherub, and it was a pity--in the interests of

art--that the hairless pink and white face did not surmount a pair of

wings rather than a rusty and ill-fitting dress suit.