“Morris! Wait!” Bulke tried to ship the radio, dropped it instead, and heaved along after Morris, putting one huge slow thigh after the other, desperately trying to overcome the inertia of his enormous body. He could hear the tearing, smashing, screaming thing coming up behind him, fast.
“Wait! Morris!”
A shelf covered with specimen jars went over with a massive crash behind him, and there was the sudden ripping stench of alcohol and rotting fish.
“No!”
Bulke lumbered forward as awkwardly as a walrus, groaning with both fear and effort, his fleshy arms and chest jiggling with each footfall.
Another scream, feral and chillingly inhuman, tore the darkness just behind him. He turned but could see nothing in the darkness except the flash of metal, the dim blur of movement.
“Noooo!”
He tripped and fell, the flashlight hitting the floor and rolling away, the beam wobbling crazily off the rows of jars before spotlighting a gape-mouthed fish floating upside down in a jar. He struggled, clawing the floor, trying to rise, but the screaming thing fell upon him as swiftly as a bat. He rolled, swatting feebly at it, hearing the tearing of cloth and then feeling the sudden biting sting of his flesh being slashed.
“Noooooooo—!”
24
Nora sat at a small baize-covered table in an open vault of the Secure Area, waiting. She was surprised at how easy it had been to gain access—Menzies had been instrumental in helping her with the paperwork. The fact was that very few curators, even the top ones, were allowed access without jumping through all sorts of bureaucratic hoops. The Secure Area wasn’t just used for storing the most valuable and controversial collections—it was also where some of the museum’s most sensitive papers were kept. It was a mark of how important the Tomb of Senef was to the museum that she had gotten access so quickly—and after five o’clock, at that, even while the museum was in a state of high alert.
The archivist appeared from the gloomy file room carrying a yellowing folder, placed it in front of her. “Got it.”
“Great.”
“Sign here.”
“I’m expecting my colleague, Dr. Wicherly,” she said, signing the form and handing it back to the archivist.
“I have the paperwork for him all ready to go.”
“Thank you.”
The woman nodded. “I’ll lock you in now.”
The archivist shut the vault door, leaving Nora in silence. She stared at the slender file, feeling a prickle of curiosity. It was marked simply Tomb of Senef: correspondence, documents, 1933-35.
She opened it. The first item was a typewritten letter, on elaborate stationery with a gold and red embossing. It was written by the Bey of Bolbassa, and it must have been the one described in the newspaper articles Nora had seen, full of assertions that the tomb was cursed—an obvious ploy to get the tomb back for Egypt.
She turned to the next documents: lengthy police reports from one Detective Sergeant Gerald O’Bannion, handwritten in the beautiful script once standard in America. She scanned the reports with interest, then reviewed the mass of papers beyond: memos and letters to city officials and the police in what appeared to have been a successful effort to squelch the real story described in the police reports and keep it from the press. She paged through the documents, fascinated by the tale they told, finally understanding why the museum had been so anxious to shut down the tomb.
She jumped when a faint tone announced that the vault door was opening. Turning, she saw the sleek, dapper form of Adrian Wicherly, leaning against the metal jamb, smiling.
“Hello, Nora.”
“Hi.”
He straightened up, giving his suit a little tug, adjusting his already perfect Windsor knot. “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a dusty old place like this?”
“Have you signed in?”
“Je suis en règle,” he said with a little laugh, coming forward and leaning over her shoulder. She could smell expensive aftershave and mouthwashed breath. “What have we here?”
The archivist looked in. “Ready to be locked in?”
“Do. Lock us in.” And Wicherly winked at Nora.
“Why don’t you take a seat, Adrian?” she said coolly.
“Don’t mind if I do.” He pulled an old wooden chair up to the table, dusted the seat with a swipe of a silk handkerchief, and eased himself down.
“Any skeletons in the closet?” he asked Nora, leaning in.
“Definitely.”
Wicherly was a bit too close and Nora edged away as subtly as she could. Although Wicherly had initially come across as the acme of good breeding, lately his smarmy winks and fingertip caresses had led her to believe he was operating more on the glandular level than she had initially thought. Still, things had remained on a professional level and she hoped they would continue that way.