Read Ebook: The Perils of Pauline by Goddard Charles

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 2706 lines and 80458 words, and 55 pages

"Yes, Dr. Stevens is the receiver. He says I have exhausted my entire stock of nervous capital, that my account at the bank of physical endurance is overdrawn, nature has called her loans, and you might say that I am a nervous bankrupt."

"So All you need is rest," cried Pauline, "and you will be as strong as ever."

"Well, before I rest I want to assure myself about you children. Harry, you love Pauline, don't you?"

"You bet I do, father."

"Pauline, you love Harry, don't you?"

"Yes," answered Pauline slowly.

"And you will marry right away?"

"This very minute, if she would have me," said Harry.

"And you, Pauline?" queried the old man.

"Yes, father," for she loved him and felt toward him as if she were indeed his daughter. "Perhaps some time I'll marry Harry, but not for a year or two. I couldn't marry him now, it wouldn't be right."

"Wouldn't be right?? Well, I'd like to know why not."

Pauline was silent a moment. She hated to oppose this fine old man, but her will was as firm as his, and well he knew it. Harry spoke for her:

"Oh, she wants to see life before she settles down--wild life, sin and iniquity, battle, murder and sudden death and all that sort of stuff. I don't know what has gotten into women these days, anyway."

Then Polly, prettily, daintily, as she did all things, and with charming little blushes and hesitations, confessed her secret. In short, it was her ambition to be a writer, a writer of something worth while--a great writer. To be a great writer one must know life, and to know life one must see it--see the world. She ended by asking the two men if this were not so.

They looked at each other and coughed with evident relief it the comparative harmlessness of her whim.

"Yes, Polly," said old man Marvin, "a great writer ought to see life in order to know what he is writing about. But what makes you suspect that you have the ability to be even an ordinary writer?"

Marvin sire winked at Marvin son and Marvin son winked back, for no man is too old or too young to enjoy teasing a pretty and serious girl.

Pauline saw the wink, and her foot ceased tracing a pattern in the carpet and stamped on it instead.

"I'll show you what reason I have to think I can write. My first story has just been published in the biggest magazine in the country. I have had a copy of it lying around here for days with my story in it, and nobody has even looked at it."

Out she flashed, and Harry after her, almost upsetting the butler and gardener, who appeared in the library doorway. These two worthies advanced upon the statue of Pallas without noticing the master of the house sitting behind his big desk. The butler did notice that a large hound from the stable had followed the gardener into the room.

"That's what one gets for letting outdoor servants into the house," muttered the butler, as he hustled the big dog to the front door and ejected him.

"Is he addressing himself to me or to the pup, I wonder?" asked the gardener, a fat, good-natured Irishman, as he placed himself in front of the statue.

He read the name "Pallas," forced his rusty derby hat down over his ears in imitation of the statue's helmet, and mimicked the pose.

Together they staggered out with their burden. A moment later they returned, carrying, with the help of two other men, the mummy in its big case. Owen also entered, and Marvin, with the joy of an Egyptologist, grasped a magnifying glass and examined the case.

The old man's bobby had been Egypt, his liberal checks had assisted in many an excavation, and his knowledge of her relics was remarkable. Inserting a steel paper cutter in a crack he deftly pried open the upper half of the mummy's front. Beneath lay the mass of wrappings in which thousands of years ago the priests of the Nile had swathed some lady of wealth and rank. It was a woman, Marvin was sure, from the inscriptions on her tomb, and he believed her to be a princess.

The secretary excused himself and went to his room, where his precious morphine pills were hidden. The old man, left alone, deftly opened the many layers of cloth which bound the ancient form. A faint scent that was almost like a presence came forth from the unwrapped folds. Long lost balms they were, ancient spices, forgotten antiseptics of a great race that blossomed and Fell--thousands of years before its time.

"I smell the dead centuries," whispered Marvin to himself, "I can almost feel their weight. The world was young when this woman breathed. Perhaps she was pretty and foolish like my Polly--yes, and maybe as stubborn, too. Manetho says they had a good deal to say in those days. Ah, now we shall see her face."

He had uncovered a bit of the mummy's forehead when out of the bandages fell a tiny vial. Marvin quickly picked it up. The vial was carved from some sort of green crystal in the shape of a two-headed Egyptian bird god. Without effort the stopper came out and Marvin held the small bottle to his nostrils, only to drop it at the mummy's feet. It exhaled the odor of the mummy which the reek of the centuries intensified a thousand times.

It was too much for the old man. He had overtaxed his feeble vitality and felt his senses leaving him. With the entire force of his will he was able to get to a chair, into which he sank. The odor of the vial was still in his nostrils. His eyes were fixed and stared straight ahead, but he could see, in a faint, unnatural yellow light that bathed the room.

From the vial, lying at the mummy's feet a vapor appeared to rise. It floated toward the swathed figure, enveloped it and seemed to be absorbed by it.

"Perhaps this is death," thought Marvin, "for I cannot move or speak."

But something else moved. There was a flutter among the bandages of the mummy. The commotion increased. Something was moving inside. The bandages were becoming loosened. They fell away from the face, and then was Marvin amazed indeed. Instead of the tight, brown parchment-like skin one always finds in these ancient relics appeared a smooth, olive-tinted complexion. It was the face of a young and beautiful woman. The features were serene as if in death, but there was no sunken nose or mummy's hollow eyes.

A strand of black hair fell down, and the movement beneath the bandages increased. Out of the folds came an arm, a woman's arm, slender, yet rounded, an arm with light bones and fine sinews, clearly an arm and hand that had never known work. Marvin was well aware that a mummy's arm is invariably a black skeleton claw.

At this point the old man made a mental note that he was not dead, for he could feel his own breathing. The arm rapidly and gracefully loosened and removed wrappings from the neck and breast. On the wrist gashed a bracelet made of linked scarabs. The arm now cast away the last covering of the bosom, neck and shoulders.

She freed her left hand, lifted out the bottom half of the case and slid the wrappings from her limbs. Barefooted and bare-ankled, clothed only in a shimmering white gown that scarcely covered bare knees, and a white head-dress with a green serpent head in front, she stepped somewhat stiffly into the room. Slowly she made several movements of limbs and body like the first steps of a dance. She rose on her toes, looked down at herself and swayed her lithe hips. It occurred to Marvin that all this was by way of a graceful little stretch after a few thousand years of sleep.

Marvin now observed that she was Pauline's height, and age, as well as general size and form. Slightly shorter she might have been, but then she lacked Pauline's high heels. The general resemblance was striking except in the color of the eyes and hair. Pauline's tresses were a light golden yellow, while this girl's hair was black as the hollow of the sphinx. Pauline's eyes were blue, but she who stood before him gazed through eyes too dark to guess their color.

The Egyptian had found a little mirror. She patted her hair, adjusted the head-dress, but Marvin waited in vain for the powder puff. From the mirror the girl's eyes wandered to a painting hanging above the desk. It was an excellent likeness of Pauline. The resemblance between the two was obvious, not only to Marvin but evidently to the black-haired girl. She turned to the old man and addressed him in a strange language. Not one word did he recognize, yet the syllables were so clearly and carefully pronounced that he felt he was listening to an educated woman. Some of the tones were like Pauline's, some were not, but all were soft, sweet, modulated.

The meaning was clear enough. She wished Marvin to see the resemblance, and she frowned slightly because the rigid, staring figure did not respond. Why should she be impatient, this woman of the Pharaohs who had lain stiff and unresponsive while Babylon and Greece and Rome and Spain had risen and fallen?

Soon she resorted to pantomime, pointed to herself and the picture, touched her eyes and nose and mouth and then the corresponding painted features. She felt of her own jet hair, shook her head and looked questioningly at the light coiffure of Pauline. She turned to the old man, evidently asking if the painting were true in this respect. Then she smiled a smile like Pauline's. Perhaps she was asking if Pauline had changed the color of her hair.

Now she became interested in a book on the corner of the desk. With little musical exclamations of delight she turned the printed pages and appreciated that the shelves contained hundreds more of these treasures. The typewritten letters lying about excited her admiration and then the pen and ink. She quickly guessed the use of the pen and ran eagerly to the mummy case. A moment's search brought forth a long roll of papyrus. Before Marvin's eyes she unrolled a scroll covered with Egyptian hieroglyphics.

There were footsteps in the hall and the Egyptian looked toward the door. Owen entered, looked at Marvin searchingly, placed him in a more comfortable position in the chair, spoke his name and walked out. What seemed most surprising to the sick, man was his secretary's oversight of the girl. He passed in front of her, almost brushing her white robe and yet it was clear that he did not see her.

But the Egyptian had seen him and the sight had excited her. She seemed desperately anxious to say something to Marvin, something about Pauline.

The mummy had a secret to reveal!

She tore the bracelet from her right wrist and tried to force it into Marvin's nerveless grasp. Try as she would, his muscles did not respond. There were voices in the hallway. Harry and Pauline were running downstairs. The Princess gave one last imploring glance at the paralyzed figure, passed her hand gently over his forehead; then she stepped quickly back to the case.

Harry and Pauline rushed in, followed less hastily by Owen. They grasped the old man's hands, and Harry, seizing the telephone, called Dr. Stevens. But to the surprise of everybody Marvin suddenly shook off the paralysis, spoke, moved and seemed none the worse for his seizure.

THE WILL

Old Mr. Marvin's faculties returned with a snap. There was the library just as it had been before his peculiar seizure. His son Harry was summoning on the telephone Dr. Stevens, the heart specialist, and Pauline, his adopted daughter, was on her knees chafing his hands and anxiously watching his face, while Owen, the secretary, was pouring out a dose of his medicine. But the peculiar yellow light had gone. And what about the mummy? It stood just as he had left it, the lower half of the case was in place, the upper half was out, revealing the loosened bandages and just a glimpse of the forehead.

One strand of jet black hair hung down. All was just as it was when the little vial had fallen out.

"I'm all right, I'm all right," protested Mr. Marvin, somewhat testily, as he twisted about in his chair to get a good view of the mummy. "Look out, Harry, don't step on that little bottle."

Harry looked down and picked up the tiny vial which had fallen from the bandages wrapped about the ancient form.

"Smell of it," his father ordered. Harry sniffed it and remarked that it smelled musty and passed it to Pauline. The girl carried it to her nostrils spin and again. She looked perplexed.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet