“Have you seen him since he returned?” questioned Lucy, while Braddock and Cockatoo strained at the lid, now nearly off.

“Why, I ain’t set eyes on him,” moaned the widow dismally, “and summat tells me as I never will.”

“Don’t talk rubbish, woman,” said Archie tartly, for he did not wish Lucy to be upset again by this ancient ghoul.

“Woman indeed, sir.  I’d have you know,—­oh!” the widow jumped and quavered as the lid of the packing case fell on the floor with a bang.  “Oh lor, sir, the start you did give me!”

But Braddock had no eyes for her, and no ears for anyone.  He pulled lustily at the straw packing, and soon the floor was littered with rubbish.  But no green case appeared, and no mummy.  Suddenly Widow Anne shrieked again.

“There’s my Sid—­dead—­oh, my son, dead! dead!”

She spoke truly.  The body of Sidney Bolton was before them.

CHAPTER V

MYSTERY

After that one cry of agony from Widow Anne, there was silence for quite one minute.  The terrible contents of the packing case startled and terrified all present.  Faint and white, Lucy clung to the arm of her lover to keep herself from sinking to the ground, as Mrs. Bolton had done.  Archie stared at the grotesque rigidity of the body, as though he had been changed into stone, while Professor Braddock stared likewise, scarcely able to credit the evidence of his eyes.  Only the Kanaka was unmoved and squatted on his hams, indifferently surveying the living and the dead.  As a savage he could not be expected to have the nerves of civilized man.

Braddock, who had dropped chisel and hammer in the first movement of surprise, was the quickest to recover his powers of speech.  The sole question he asked, revealed the marvelous egotism of a scientist, nominated by one idea.  “Where is the mummy of Inca Caxas?” he murmured with a bewildered air.

Widow Anne, groveling on the floor, pulled her gray locks into wild confusion, and uttered a cry of mingled rage and grief.  “He asks that? he asks that?” she cried, stammering and choking, “when he has murdered my poor boy Sid.”

“What’s that?” demanded Braddock sharply, and recovering from a veritable stupor, which the disappearance of the mummy and the sight of his dead assistant had thrown him into.  “Kill your son:  how could I kill your son?  What advantage would it have been to me had I killed your son?”

“God knows!  God knows!” sobbed the old woman, “but you—­”

“Mrs. Bolton, you are raving,” said Hope hastily, and strove to raise her from the floor.  “Let Miss Kendal take you away.  And you go, Lucy:  this sight is too terrible for your eyes.”

Lucy, inarticulate with nervous fear, nodded and tottered towards the door of the museum; but Widow Anne refused to be lifted to her feet.

“My boy is dead,” she wailed; “my boy Sid is a corp as I saw him in my dream.  In the coffin, too, cut to pieces—­”