“And Jack Ketch will get them, Cleek, if I know anything about it.  Your hazard was right.  I’ve examined the caliph’s mummy-case; the mummy itself has been removed—­destroyed—­done away with utterly—­and the poor creature’s body is there!”

And here the poor, dumfounded, utterly bewildered Major found voice to speak at last.

“Mummy-case!  Body!  Dear God in heaven, Mr. Cleek, what are you hinting at?” he gasped.  “You—­you don’t mean that she—­that Zuilika—­killed him?”

“No, Major, I don’t,” he made reply.  “I simply mean that he killed her!  The body in the mummy-case is the body of Zuilika, the caliph’s daughter!  This is the creature you have been wasting your pity on—­see!”

With that he laid an intense grip on the concealing yashmak, tore it away, and so revealed the close-shaven, ghastly-hued countenance of the cornered criminal.

“My God!—­Ulchester—­Ulchester himself!” said the Major in a voice of fright and surprise.

“Yes, Ulchester himself, Major.  In a few more days he’d have withdrawn the money, and got out of the country, body and all, if he hadn’t been nabbed, the rascal.  There’d have been no tracing the crime then; and he and the Senorita here would have been in clover for the rest of their natural lives.  But there’s always that bright little bit of Bobby Burns to be reckoned with.  You know:  ‘The best laid schemes of mice and men,’ et cetera—­that bit.  But the Yard’s got them, and—­they’ll never leave the country now.  Take them, Mr. Narkom, they’re yours!”

* * * * *

“How did I guess it?” said Cleek, replying to the Major’s query, as they sat late that night discussing the affair.  “Well, I think the first faint inkling of it came when I arrived here yesterday, and smelt the overpowering odour of the incenses.  There was so much of it, and it was used so frequently—­twice a day—­that it seemed to suggest an attempt to hide other odours of a less pleasant kind.  When I left you last night, Dollops and I went down to the mummy-chamber, and a skeleton key soon let us in.  The unpleasant odour was rather pronounced in there.  But even that didn’t give me the cue, until I happened to find in the fireplace a considerable heap of fine ashes, and in the midst of them small lumps of gummy substance, which I knew to result from the burning of myrrh.  I suspected from that and from the nature of the ashes that a mummy had been burnt, and as there was only one mummy in the affair, the inference was obvious.  I laid hands on the two cases and tilted them.  One was quite empty.  The weight of the other told me that it contained something a little heavier than any mummy ought to be.  I came to the conclusion that there was a body in it, injected full of arsenic, no doubt, to prevent as much as possible the processes of decay, the odour of which the incense was concealing.  I didn’t attempt to open the thing; I left that until the arrival of the men