The colossal height of the mummy case accentuated my friend’s littleness. Somehow (I don’t know why the image should have presented itself) I thought of the opium-haunted De Quincey walking wearily about the streets of London, a grotesque little midget in carpet slippers who carried a world within his head. Professor Dewey bore an amazing resemblance to De Quincey. His forehead was high and shrunken, and covered with wrinkles, and the skin on his lean cheeks was stretched as taut as yellow parchment. His nose could scarcely be described as Roman: it was so excessively Hebraic that a strain of Jewish blood unquestionably formed a measure of his heritage. His smile, when he did smile, was grim and lifeless; and very few people would have been attracted to him. But beneath his almost repulsive exterior the little chap had a good heart, and I found his companionship delightfully stimulating.

Professor Dewey’s hobby was Egyptology, and he imported large quantities of mummies annually, and I am sorry to add, illegally. No prying customs officer ever laid his sternly official hand on one of Professor Dewey’s acquisitions. No blue-eyed and impertinent government clerk ever questioned Professor Dewey as to the value of his queer and often repulsive property. The professor had made arrangements with a dozen sly and secretive skippers whose Levantine dealings were seldom above reproach, and as a result of his careful bargaining he never lost a mummy or scarab or precious stone. In the course of a single year eighty-three mummies had been successfully smuggled into his stately brownstone mansion on Riverside Drive.

We stood in Professor Dewey’s mummy-room, a great hall carpeted with red velvet and lined with rather sinister black curtains. It seemed ridiculous to me that the professor should furnish this repository with the trappings of occult melodrama, but I have always been singularly incapable of fathoming my friend’s amusing whims. Beneath his whimsicality and eccentricity, he was reasonably genuine, and it is unfair to expect common sense or restraint from a man of genius.

The mummy before us was unusually tall. It fairly towered in the yellowish gloom of the great room, and it bore unmistakable characteristics of great age. And it was oddly shaped—its breast swelled out curiously and its nose was gigantic. Indeed, the latter member almost protruded through the aromatic and evil-smelling wrappings. “An Egyptian Cyrano,” I remarked, and permitted a grin to disturb my usually severe and solemn features (the professor often assured me that my features were severe and being a very young man, I took pardonable pride in the fact!). “How the ladies must have hated him!” I added, seeing my friend scowl.

“This is a serious matter,” he said after a pause that seemed interminable. “Nothing like this has ever come out of Egypt. I—do—not—like—it!”