"Dear lady, I am glad to see you. You have--you have"--the Professor
reflected, and then came back with a rush to the present century--"you
have come to dinner, if I mistake not."
"Lucy asked me a week ago," she replied tartly, for no woman likes to be
neglected for a mere beetle, however ancient.
"Then you will certainly get a good dinner," said Braddock, waving his
plump white hands. "Lucy is an excellent housekeeper. I have no fault
to find with her--no fault at all. But she is obstinate--oh, very
obstinate, as her mother was. Do you know, dear lady, that in a papyrus
scroll which I lately acquired I found the recipe for a genuine Egyptian
dish, which Amenemha--the last Pharaoh of the eleventh dynasty, you
know--might have eaten, and probably did eat. I desired Lucy to serve it
to-night, but she refused, much to my annoyance. The ingredients, which
had to do with roasted gazelle, were oil and coriander seed and--if my
memory serves me--asafoetida."
"Ugh!" Mrs. Jasher's handkerchief went again to her mouth. "Say no
more, Professor; your dish sounds horrid. I don't wish to eat it, and be
turned into a mummy before my time."
"You would make a really beautiful mummy," said Braddock, paying what
he conceived was a compliment; "and, should you die, I shall certainly
attend to your embalming, if you prefer that to cremation."
"You dreadful man!" cried the widow, turning pale and shrinking. "Why, I
really believe that you would like to see me packed away in one of those
disgusting coffins."
"Disgusting!" cried the outraged Professor, striking one of the
brilliantly tinted cases. "Can you call so beautiful a specimen of
sepulchral art disgusting? Look at the colors, at the regularity of
the hieroglyphics--why, the history of the dead is set out in this
magnificent series of pictures." He adjusted his pince-nez and began
to read, "The Osirian, Scemiophis that is a female name, Mrs.
Jasher--who--"
"I don't want to have my history written on my coffin," interrupted the
widow hysterically, for this funereal talk frightened her. "It would
take much more space than a mummy case upon which to write it. My life
has been volcanic, I can tell you. By the way," she added hurriedly,
seeing that Braddock was on the eve of resuming the reading, "tell me
about your Inca mummy. Has it arrived?"
The Professor immediately followed the false trail. "Not yet," he said
briskly, rubbing his smooth hands, "but in three days I expect The Diver
will be at Pierside, and Sidney will bring the mummy on here. I shall
unpack it at once and learn exactly how the ancient Peruvians embalmed
their dead. Doubtless they learned the art from--"
"The Egyptians," ventured Mrs. Jasher rashly.
Braddock glared. "Nothing of the sort, dear lady," he snorted angrily.
"Absurd, ridiculous! I am inclined to believe that Egypt was merely a
colony of that vast island of Atlantis mentioned by Plato. There--if
my theory is correct--civilization begun, and the kings of
Atlantis--doubtless the gods of historical tribes--governed the whole
world, including that portion which we now term South America."