The Green Mummy. Hume Fergus

An’ who asked charity, you bald-headed jelly-bag?”

      Braddock grew scarlet with fury. “If you speak to me like that, you ruffian, I’ll throw you out.”

      “What? – you?”

      “Yes, me,” and the Professor stood on tip-toe, like the bantam he was.

      “You make me smile, and likewise tired,” murmured Hervey, admiring the little man’s pluck. “See here, Professor, touching that mummy?”

      “My mummy: my green mummy. What about it?” Braddock rose to the fly thrown by this skilful angler.

      “That’s so. What will you shell out if I pass along that corpse?”

      “Ah!” The Professor again stood on tip-toe, gasping and purple in the face. He almost squeaked in the extremity of his anger. “I knew it.”

      “Knew what?” demanded the skipper, genuinely surprised.

      “I knew that you had stolen my mummy. Yes, you needn’t deny it. Bolton, like the silly fool he was, told you how valuable the mummy was, and you strangled the poor devil to get my property.”

      “Go slow,” said the captain, in no wise perturbed by this accusation. “I would have you remember that at the inquest it was stated that the window was locked and the door was open. How then could I waltz into that blamed hotel and arrange for a funeral? ‘Sides, I guess shooting is mor’n my line than garrotting. I leave that to the East Coast Yellow-Stomachs.”

      Braddock sat down and wiped his face. He saw plainly enough that he had not a leg to stand on, as Hervey was plainly innocent.

      “‘Sides,” went on the skipper, chewing his cheroot, “I guess if I’d wanted that old corpse of yours, I’d have yanked Bolton overside, and set down the accident to bad weather. Better fur me to loot the case aboard than to make a fool of myself ashore. No, sir, H.H. don’t run ‘is own perticler private circus in that blamed way.”

      “H.H. Who the devil is H.H.?”

      “Me, you bet. Hiram Hervey, citizen of the U.S.A. Nantucket neighborhood for home life. And see, don’t you get m’hair riz, or I’ll scalp.”

      “You can’t scalp me,” chuckled Braddock, passing his hand over a very bald head. “See here, what do you want?”

      “Name a price and I’ll float round to get back your verdant corpse.”

      “I thought you were going to the South Seas?”

      “In three months, pearl-fishing. Lots of time, I reckon, to run this old circus I want you to finance.”

      “Have you any suspicions?”

      “No, ‘sept I don’t believe in that window business.”

      “What do you mean?” Braddock sat upright.

      “Well,” drawled the Yankee, “y’see, I interviewed the gal as told that perticler lie in court.”

      “Eliza Flight. Was it a lie she told?”

      “Well, not exactly. The window was snibbed, but that was done after the chap who sent your pal to Kingdom Come had got out.”

      “Do you mean to say that the window was locked from the outside?” asked Braddock, and then, when Hervey nodded, he exclaimed “Impossible!”

      “Narry an impossibility, you bet. The chap who engineered the circus was all-fired smart. The snib was an old one, and he yanked a piece of string round it, and passed the string through the crack between the upper and lower sash of the window. When outside he pulled, and the snib slid into place. But he left the string on the ground outside. I picked it up nex’ day and guessed the racket he’d been on. I tried the same business and brought off the deal.”