Hope recollected that experts had decided the mode in which the mummy had been removed from the Pierside public-house. It had been passed through the window, according to Inspector Date and others, and, when taken across the narrow path which bordered the river, had been placed in a waiting boat. After that it had vanished until it had re-appeared in this arbor. But if taken by water once, it could have been taken by water again. There was a rude jetty behind the embankment, which Hope could easily see from where he stood. In all probability the mummy had been landed there and carried to the garden, while Mrs. Jasher was busy with her supper and her game of cards and her letters.
Also, the path from the shore to the house was very lonely, and if any care had been exercised, which was probable, no one from the Fort road or from the village street could have seen the stealthy conspirators bringing their weird burden. So far Hope felt that he could argue excellently. But who had brought the mummy to the garden and why had it been brought there? These questions he could not answer so easily, and indeed not at all.
While thus meditating, he heard, far away in the frosty air, a puffing and blowing and panting like an impatient motor-car.
Before he could guess what this was, Braddock appeared, simply racing along the marshy causeway, followed closely by Cockatoo, and at some distance away by Lucy. The little scientist rushed through the gate, which he flung open with a noise fit to wake the dead, and lunged forward, to fall with outstretched arms upon the green case. There he remained, still puffing and blowing, and looked as though he were hugging a huge green beetle.
Cockatoo, who, being lean and hard, kept his breath more easily, stood respectfully by, waiting for his master to give orders, and Lucy came in quietly by the gate, smiling at her father's enthusiasm. At the same moment Mrs. Jasher, well wrapped up in a coat of sables, emerged from the cottage.
"I heard you coming, Professor," she called out, hurrying down the path.
"I should think the whole Fort heard the Professor coming," said Hope, glancing at the dark mass. "The soldiers must think it is an invasion."But Braddock paid no heed to this jocularity, or even to Mrs.
Jasher, to whom he had been so lately engaged. All his soul was in the mummy case, and as soon as he recovered his breath, he loudly proclaimed his joy at this miraculous recovery of the precious article.
"Mine! mine!" he roared, and his words ran violently through the frosty air.
"Be calm, sir," advised Hope - "be calm."
"Calm! calm!" bellowed Braddock, struggling to a standing position. "Oh, confound you, sir, how can I be calm when I find what I have lost? You have a mean, groveling soul, Hope, not the soaring spirit of a collector.""There is no need to be rude to Archie, father," corrected Lucy sharply.
"Rude! Rude! I am never rude. But this mummy." Braddock peered closely at it and rapped the wood to assure himself it was no phantom. "Yes! it is my mummy, the mummy of Inca Caxas. Now I shall learn how the Peruvians embalmed their royal dead. Mine! mine! mine!" He crooned like a mother over a child, caressing the coffin; then suddenly drew himself upright and fixed Mrs.
Jasher with an indignant eye. "So it was you, madam, who stole my mummy," he declared venomously, "and I thought of making you my wife. Oh, what an escape I have had. Shame, woman, shame!"Mrs. Jasher stared, then her face grew redder than the rouge on her cheeks, and she stamped furiously in the neat Louis Quinze slippers in which she had in judiciously come out.
