The Mystery of the Whispering Mummy Page 2

  In an open space near the windows stood a wooden mummy case with a lid, on which was carved the features of the mummy inside. It was a very plain mummy case with no gold leaf or painted colours to make it look rich and luxurious. It was, however, a mummy case that held a mystery. It was the pride of Professor Robert Yarborough, a small, somewhat plump man with a dignified-looking goatee and gold-rimmed spectacles.

  When he was younger, Professor Yarborough had headed many expeditions to Egypt.

  On these expeditions he had discovered lost tombs carved into rocky hillsides, holding the mummies of long-dead pharaohs and their wives and servants, together with jewels and other objects. He kept the relics in his museum, where he was writing a book about his discoveries.

  The mummy case and the mummy inside it had arrived just a week earlier. Professor Yarborough had discovered this mummy fully twenty-five years before. But since he was busy at that time, working on a long and difficult assignment, he had loaned the mummy to a museum in Cairo, Egypt. When he retired, he had asked the Egyptian government to send the mummy to him for further study. Now that he had time, he wanted to see if he could unravel the mystery that surrounded it.

  On this particular afternoon, two days before the boys had received Alfred Hitchcock’s letter, Professor Yarborough was standing in the museum room, nervously tapping a pencil against the lid of the mummy case – a lid that could be lifted off like the lid of a chest.

  Indeed, the mummy case was really nothing but a special wooden chest in which the mummy rested.

  With the professor was Wilkins, his butler, a tall, thin man who had worked for him for years.

  “Are you sure you want to do this, sir, after the shock you had yesterday?” Wilkins asked.

  “I must see if it happens again, Wilkins,” Professor Yarborough said firmly. “First, please open the windows. I hate a closed room.”

  “Yes, sir.” Wilkins swung open the nearest French windows. Many years before, Professor Yarborough had been caught in a closed tomb for two days, and since then he had had a strong aversion to being in a closed room of any kind.

  When the windows were opened, Wilkins lifted off the lid of the mummy case and leaned it against the case. Both men bent to peer in.

  Some people might not enjoy looking at a mummy, although there is nothing offensive about one. Soaked in bitumen and other substances to preserve them, then carefully wrapped in linen, the bodies of dead kings and nobles of ancient Egypt were preserved almost intact through the centuries. It was part of the religious belief of the time that they must be so preserved for their proper entrance into the next world. For this same reason many clothes, ornaments, tools, and jewels that they owned in life were buried with them –

  to be used in the world to come.

  The mummy inside bore the name Ra-Orkon. The linen cocoon in which it was wrapped had been partly opened so that the professor could see Ra-Orkon’s face. It was an elderly, sensitive face, that looked as if it were carved from some dark wood. The lips were slightly parted, as if it were about to speak. The eyes were shut.

  “Ra-Orkon looks very peaceful, sir,” Wilkins commented. “I do not think he will speak to you to-day.”

  “I hope not.” Professor Yarborough set his lips. “It is not natural, Wilkins, for a mummy dead for three thousand years to talk. Even to whisper. It is not natural at all.”

  “Very unnatural, sir,” the butler agreed.

  “Yet he did whisper to me yesterday,” the professor said. “When I was alone in the room with him. He whispered in some unknown tongue, but he sounded very urgent, as if he wished me to do something.”

  He leaned over and spoke to the mummy.

  “Ra-Orkon, if you wish to speak to me, I am listening, I will try to understand.”

  A minute passed. Two. The only sound was a buzzing fly.

  “Perhaps it was only my imagination after all,” the professor said. “Yes, I’m sure it must have been. Bring me the small saw from the workshop, Wilkins. I’m going to cut a corner off the mummy case. My friend Jennings at the University of California will try to place the date when Ra-Orkon was buried by using the radio-active-carbon dating test on the wood.”

  “Very good, sir.” The butler went out.

  Professor Yarborough moved round the mummy case, tapping it, deciding just where to cut off the piece of wood he needed. In one place he thought he detected a slightly hollow sound, in another an apparent looseness, as if dry rot had set in.

  As he worked, he became aware of a low murmuring issuing from the mummy case. He stood upright, looked startled, then placed his ear near the mummy’s mouth.

  The mummy was whispering to him! Words were issuing from the slightly parted lips –

  words spoken by an Egyptian who had been dead for three thousand years.

  He could not understand the words. They were harsh and hissing syllables, in such a low voice he could barely hear them. But they rose and fell and seemed to be getting more and more urgent, as if the mummy were anxious to make him understand something.

  Tremendous excitement gripped the professor. The language was probably ancient Arabic – here and there he felt he could almost understand a word.

  “Go on, Ra-Orkon!” he urged. “I’m trying to understand.”

  “I beg your pardon, sir?”

  At the words from behind him, the professor whirled. Ra-Orkon fell silent. Wilkins was standing there, holding a small, sharp saw.

  “Wilkins!” Yarborough cried. “The mummy was whispering again! He started as soon as you left the room and ceased when you entered!”

  Wilkins looked grave. He frowned.

  “It’s as if he won’t speak unless you are alone, sir,” he suggested. “Could you understand what he was saying?”

  “No,” the other man groaned. “Almost, but not quite. I’m not a language expert. He may be speaking in ancient Arabic, or in some form of Hittite or Chaldean speech.”

  Wilkins glanced out the window. His gaze fell on a house on the opposite slope of the canyon – a new, white stucco house perched on the hillside.

  “Your friend, Professor Freeman, sir,” he said. He pointed to the house. “He’s our greatest authority on the languages of the Middle East. He could be here in five minutes, and if Ra-Orkon will speak for him, he might be able to tell you what Ra-Orkon is saying.”

  “Of course!” Professor Yarborough exclaimed. “I should have called him immediately.

  After all, his father was with me when I found Ra-Orkon. Poor chap – he was murdered a week later in the bazaars. Go and telephone Freeman, Wilkins. Ask him to come at once.”

  “Yes, sir.” The butler had hardly left the room before the uncanny whispering began again.

  Professor Yarborough made another futile attempt to understand what the mummy was saying, then gave up in despair. He looked through the open French window, across the canyon that separated him from the home of his younger friend, Professor Freeman. He could see Freeman’s house, which was built on a steep slope far below the level of the road.

  Yarborough watched his young friend leave his house by a side door, climb up a flight of stairs to his garage, and drive out a moment later on to the narrow road around the rim of the canyon. While Yarborough’s eyes were anxiously watching his friend, his ears were straining to hear the whisper.

  When the mummy fell silent, great anxiety gripped the little man. Was the mummy going to stop just when there was a chance that someone might help interpret what it was saying?

  “Keep talking, Ra-Orkon!” Professor Yarborough urged. “Please don’t stop. I’m listening, I’m trying to understand.”

  After a moment the whispering resumed. Then the professor heard a car stop outside.

  Presently a door opened and someone entered the room.

  “Is that you, Freeman?” he asked.

  “Yes, Yarborough, what is it?” A low, pleasant voice answered.

  “Come here quietly. I want you to hear something.” Then he felt the other man at his side.

  “Ra-Orkon!” Yarborough cried. “Keep on! Don’t stop now!”

  But the mummy remained as silent as it must have been for thirty centuries before it had entered that room.

  “I don’t understand,” Professor Freeman said as the older man turned. Freeman was a slender man of middle height, with a good-humoured face, and hair just beginning to grey.

  “You seemed to be listening to the mummy talk just now.”

  “I was!” Yarborough cried. “He was whispering to me in some unknown language and I hoped you could interpret it for me. But he stopped as soon as he saw you. Or –”

  He himself stopped, aware of the strange look his scientific friend was giving him.

  “You don’t believe it, do you?” he asked. “You don’t believe that Ra-Orkon was whispering to me?”

  Professor Freeman rubbed his chin.

  “It is hard to believe,” he said at last. “Of course, if I could hear him myself –”

  “Let’s try,” Yarborough said. “Ra-Orkon, speak again. We will try to understand.”

  Both men waited. The mummy remained silent.

  “It’s no use,” Professor Yarborough sighed. “He was whispering, I assure you of it. But he won’t speak unless I am alone with him. And I did hope you could hear him and interpret his speech.”

  Professor Freeman tried to look as if he believed his friend, but it was obvious that he found the story difficult to credit.

  “I’d certainly like to help you if I could,” he said. Then he caught sight of the small saw in the other’s hand. “What is the saw for?” he asked, “Surely you weren’t going to saw Ra-Orkon open!”

  “No, no,” Professor Yarborough said. “Merely wanted to saw off a corner of the case for a carbon dating test to determine when Ra-Orkon was buried.”

  “Damage such a valuable relic!” the young man exclaimed. “I hope that won’t be necessary.”

  “I’m not sure Ra-Orkon and his case are valuable,” Professor Yarborough said. “Merely mysterious. In any case the carbon dating is necessary. But I’ll put it off until I can solve the mystery of this curious whispering. Frankly, Freeman, at this point I am puzzled. A mummy can’t whisper! But this one does. And only to me.”

  “Mmmm.” Professor Freeman frowned, trying to hide a look of pity for the older man.

  “Well now, would you like me to keep old Ra-Orkon at my place for a few days? Alone with me, he might talk some more. Then I might be able to understand him and tell you what he says.”

  Professor Yarborough shot a keen glance towards the younger man.

  “Thank you, Freeman,” he said with dignity. “I can see you are just humouring me. You believe I have been imagining all this. Well, perhaps I have. I will keep Ra-Orkon here until I am sure whether or not it is merely my imagination.”

  Professor Freeman merely nodded.

  “If you can get old Ra-Orkon to talk again,” he said kindly, “call me at once. I’ll drop whatever I’m doing and come over. Now I have to hurry. I have a conference at the university.”

  He bade Yarborough good-bye and left. Alone, the professor waited. Ra-Orkon remained silent. Presently Wilkins entered.

  “Shall I serve your dinner, sir?”

  “Yes, Wilkins.” Professor Yarborough replied. “And remember, you must say nothing to anyone of what has happened.”

  “I understand, sir.”

  “Freeman’s reaction tells me what my scientific colleagues would say if they heard I claimed a mummy was whispering to me. They would say I was getting old and senile. And imagine if the story got into the newspapers! My whole reputation as a scientist would be ruined.”

  “Indeed it would, sir,” Wilkins agreed.

  “Yet I must talk this over with someone.” Yarborough compressed his lips. “Someone who is not a scientist yet who knows that there are many mysteries in the world. I have it.

  To-night I’ll call on my old friend Alfred Hitchcock and tell him. At least he won’t scoff at me!”

  Alfred Hitchcock did not scoff. Instead, as we have seen, he wrote a letter to The Three Investigators.

  Chapter 3

  Jupiter Tries Mind Reading

  “HOW CAN a mummy whisper?” Pete repeated his earlier question. Bob could only shake his head. Both boys had read the letter twice. They would have thought it was a joke, except for the fact that it had come from Alfred Hitchcock, who assured them that his friend, Professor Yarborough, was badly upset by the mystery of the whispering mummy.

  Did The Three Investigators, Mr. Hitchcock asked, think they could help him?

  “In fact,” Pete went on, scowling, “how can a mummy talk at all?” He ran his fingers through his dark-brown hair. “I mean, a mummy is a mummy. It isn’t human. That is, it was human, but it’s not ––”

  “It’s not alive,” Bob put in. “What you don’t like is the idea that all mummies are dead, but here’s one that can talk.”

  “You bet I don’t like it!” Pete said emphatically. He took back the letter and studied it.

  “Professor Robert Yarborough,” he said. “An eminent Egyptol –– Egyptol ––”

  “Egyptologist.”

  “Egyptologist. Lives in Hunter Canyon near Hollywood. Has a private museum. Has a mummy that whispers to him but he can’t understand it. Is slowly getting very nervous from the strain of it. Well, I don’t blame him. I’m getting a little nervous just hearing about it! I don’t want to get mixed up with any talking mummies. We’ve been entangled in too many weird mysteries already. Let’s give our nerves a chance to calm down. Let’s go over to Santa Monica and help that lady find her lost Abyssinian cat.”

  Bob Andrews picked up the other letter, the one from Mrs. Banfry.

  “You know which case Jupe will want to tackle, don’t you?” he asked.

  “I know,” Pete scowled. “The minute he reads the letter from Mr. Hitchcock, he’ll be telephoning the Rent-‘n-Ride Auto Rental Co. to send Worthington and the car so we can call on Professor Yarborough. But let’s outvote him. We have two votes to his one. We’ll vote to solve the mystery of the missing cat first.”

  “Jupe is awfully hard to outvote,” Bob said. “We tried that once, when we were investigating Terror Castle, and you know what happened.”

  “I know,” Pete agreed gloomily.

  “Where is he, anyway? He ought to be back by now.”

  “Let’s have a look around,” Pete suggested. “Up periscope!”

  He rose and strode across the tiny room to the corner. What seemed to be an ordinary length of small diameter stovepipe, ran up through the roof of the trailer. It ended in an elbow, and had two small pipes attached to it for handles. Looked at closely, it resembled the lower end of a submarine periscope – which was not surprising, for it actually was a crude but efficient periscope Jupiter had made the previous week.

  Headquarters was still a secret to the outside world, hidden as it was by artfully placed piles of salvage materials. However, one drawback to the secrecy had become apparent. No one could see the hidden trailer, but once the boys were inside, they could not see out.

  Jupiter had remedied this by building the periscope, which he named the “See-All”.

  Made out of stovepipe with mirrors installed at angles in it, it rose through the roof close to the ventilating hatch. Anyone looking at it would see only an ordinary stovepipe.

  Pete Crenshaw, tall and muscular, now

  worked the See-All up slowly, until the top of

  it cleared the highest piece of junk outside.

  Then he rotated it, walking round in a circle as

  he surveyed the entire scene outside.

  “Mrs. Jones is selling some pipe to a

  plumber,” he reported. “Hans is stacking

  second-hand lumber in the corner. And there’s

  Jupe.” Pete steadied the periscope. “He’s

  walking his bike back from town. Must have

  had trouble –– Yep, his front tyre is flat.”

  “Probably ran over a nail,” Bob suggested.

  “That’s what took him so long. Does he look

  grouchy?”

  “No, he’s listening to a transistor radio and

  smiling,” Pete observed. “That’s funny. I

  mean, Jupe hates to have things go wrong –

  even a flat tyre. He takes it as a reflection on

  his efficiency. Jupe likes to plan ahead so that

  everything goes as smooth as silk.”

  “Jupe is pretty terrific at planning,” Bob

  said. “I just wish he wouldn’t use such long

  words when he talks. Sometimes even I have

  trouble understanding him.”

  “Who doesn’t?” Pete retorted. He turned the See-All slightly as he followed the view outside. “Now Jupe is wheeling his bike inside the main gate. He’s giving something to Mrs. Jones. She’s pointing this way and nodding. I guess she’s telling him we’re in the workshop.”

  “Now he’s going into the office,” Pete said. “I wonder what’s taking him so long?” he fretted. “Oh, here he comes now.”

  “We’ll have some fun with Jupe,” Bob said. “I’ll keep the letter from Alfred Hitchcock in my pocket. We’ll show him the letter about Mrs. Banfry’s missing cat and get him all worked up about finding it. Then we’ll show him the letter Mr. Hitchcock sent about Professor Yarborough and his whispering mummy.”

  “And we’ll say, of course, that we can’t work on that case until after we find the cat!”

  Pete grinned. “I have another idea. Play along with me. It’s my turn to make some deductions.”

  They waited. Outside they heard Jupe moving the iron grille which hid the mouth of Tunnel Two, the large galvanized pipe which was their main entrance into Headquarters.

  Swiftly Pete Crenshaw lowered the periscope and took his seat at the desk. He and Bob heard the muffled sound of someone crawling through Tunnel Two, then the special rap on the trap-door. Following this, the trap-door lifted and Jupiter emerged into the trailer.

  Jupiter Jones was a stocky, heavily built boy with black hair and piercing dark eyes. His round features were pink and boyish, but when he held himself erect and set his chin, he could look quite a bit older than he was. He could also let himself go limp, and seem both fat and very, very stupid – an ability which often fooled people into seriously underestimating him.