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"But she combines the ancient and the modern charmingly. I congratulate you." "Thanks, Professor," Simpkins answered awkwardly, and took his leave. Once in the street, he plunged along, head down. It was worse than he had suspected. He had felt all along that the boy's surmises about Brander were correct; now he knew that his suspicions of Mrs. Athelstone were well founded.
I'm going to save the spread in the Sunday magazine for that story, and you don't want to slip up on the Athelstone end of it. That hall is just what the story needs for a setting. Get in and size it up." "You remember what happened to that Courier man who got in?" ventured Simpkins. "I believe I did hear something about a Courier man's being snaked out of a closet and kicked downstairs.
He was burning with impatience to reach the end and get away, back to noisy, crowded Broadway. But Mrs. Athelstone answered nothing, only looked off toward the altar. It almost seemed as if she waited for something. "Go on," commanded Simpkins, stirred to roughness by his growing uneasiness. "You will not leave while yet you may?" and her tone doubled the threat of her words.
At night Cosmo continued the concerts and the presentation of the Shakespearian dramas, and for an hour each afternoon he had a "conference" in the saloon, at which Theriade and Sir Athelstone were almost the sole performers.
Athelstone was bent over her desk writing; Brander was yawning over a novel in his corner, and neither paid any attention to him. So he busied himself going over the mummy-cases, and by the time he had worked around to the two beside Mrs. Athelstone he had himself well in hand, outwardly. But he was still so shaken internally that he knocked the black case rather roughly as he dusted.
And by the time he was through work for the day and back in his room at the hotel, he had his result. He embodied it in this letter to Naylor: Dear Mr. Naylor: I am in the employ of Mrs. Athelstone. There's a sporting parson, quite a swell, in the office here who's gone on Mrs. A., and I'm inclined to hope she is on him.
Then he described how, for more than a month, Mrs Athelstone had labored over the body, hiding it days in the empty case and dragging it out nights, until she had finished it, with the exception of some detail about the head, into a faithful replica of the mummy of Amosis, the original of which she had no doubt burned.
Athelstone explained: "This is our new clerk, Mr. Simpkins; Doctor Brander is our treasurer, and our acting president while my husband's away. He left a few days ago for a little rest." And Mrs. Athelstone turned back to her desk. Simpkins instantly decided to dislike the young clergyman beside him.
Athelstone regained her composure, and when he was through she asked calmly enough: "And because you've blundered on something you don't understand, something that has aroused your silly suspicions, you would turn me over to the police?" "It's not a silly suspicion, Mrs. Athelstone, but a cinch. I know your husband was murdered there," and he pointed to the altar.
Athelstone was not in the office when he came down the next day she had gone to Washington on the Society's affairs, Brander said and so he moped about, finding the place dreary without her brightening presence.
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