right-a scream which once released would never stop.
  
  I killed him. / poisoned him.
  
  And now that great hideous and immovable obstacle to my plan is no more.
  
  Bend down; feel the vein. Yes, he's dead. Quite dead.
  
  Henry straightened, fighting a sudden wave of nausea, and quickly took several papers 
from his briefcase. He dipped his uncle's pen and wrote the name Lawrence Stratford 
neatly and quickly, as he had done several times on less important papers in the past.
  
  His hand shook badly, but so much the better. For his uncle had had just such a tremor. 
And the scribble looked all the better when it was done.
  
  He put the pen back and stood with his eyes closed, trying to calm himself again, 
trying to think only, It is done.
  
  The most curious thoughts were flooding him suddenly, that he could undo this! That it 
had been no more than an impulse; that he could roll back the minutes and his uncle would 
be alive again. This positively could not have happened! Poison ... coffee ... Lawrence 
dead.
  
  And then a memory came to him, pure and quiet and certainly welcome, of the day 
twenty-one years ago when his cousin Julie had been born. His uncle and he sitting in the 
drawing room together. His uncle Lawrence, whom he loved more than his father.
  
  "But I want you to know that you will always be my nephew, my beloved nephew ..."
  
  Dear God, was he losing his mind? For a moment he did not even know where he was. He 
could have sworn someone else was in this room with him. Who was it?
  
  That thing in the mummy case. Don't look at it. Like a witness. Get back to the 
business at hand.
  
  The papers are signed; the stock can be sold; and now there is all the more reason for 
Julie to marry that stupid twit Alex Savarell. And all the more reason for Henry's father 
to take Stratford Shipping completely in hand.
  
  Yes. Yes. But what to do at the moment? He looked at the desk again. Everything as it 
was. And those six glittering gold Cleopatra coins. Ah, yes, take one. Quickly, he 
slipped it into his pocket. A little flush warmed his face. Yes, the coin must be worth a 
fortune. And he could fit it into a cigarette case; simple to smuggle. All right.
  
  Now get out of here immediately. No, he wasn't thinking. He couldn't still his heart. 
Shout for Samir, that was the appropriate action. Something horrible has happened to 
Lawrence. Stroke, heart attack, impossible to tell! And this cell is like a furnace. A 
doctor must come at once.
  
  "Samir!"  he cried out, staring forward like a matinee actor at the moment of shock. 
His gaze fell directly again on that grim, loathsome thing in the linen wrappings. Was it 
staring back at him? Were its eyes open beneath the bandages? Preposterous! Yet the 
illusion struck a deep shrill note of panic in him, which gave just the right edge to his 
next shout for help.
  
  URTIVELY THE clerk read the latest edition of the London Herald, the pages folded and 
held carefully out of sight behind his darkly lacquered desk. The office was quiet now 
because of the board meeting, the only sound the distant clack of a typewriting machine 
from an adjoining room.
  
  MUMMY'S CURSE KILLS
  
  STRATFORD SHIPPING MAGNATE
  
  "RAMSES THE DAMNED"  STRIKES DOWN
  
  THOSE WHO DISTURB HIS REST
  
  How the tragedy had caught the public imagination. Impossible to walk a step without 
seeing a front-page story. And how the popular newspapers elaborated upon it, indulging 
in hastily drawn illustrations of pyramids and camels, of the mummy in his wooden coffin 
and poor Mr. Stratford lying dead at his feet.
  
  Poor Mr. Stratford, who had been such a fine man to work for; remembered now for this 
lurid and sensational death.
  
  Just when the furore had died down, it had been given another infusion of vitality:
  
  HEIRESS DEFIES MUMMY'S CURSE" RAMSES THE DAMNED"  TO VISIT LONDON
  
  The clerk turned the page now quietly, folding the paper into a narrow thick column 
width again. Hard to believe Miss Stratford was bringing home ail the treasure to be 
placed on exhibit in her own home in Mayfair. But that is what her father had always done.
  
  The clerk hoped that he'd be invited to the reception, but there was no chance of it, 
even though he had been with Stratford Shipping for some thirty years.
  
  To think, a bust of Cleopatra, the only authenticated portrait in existence. And 
freshly minted coins with her image and name. Ah, he would have liked to see those things 
in Mr. Stratford's library. But he would have to wait until the British Museum claimed 
the collection and put it on display for lord and commoner alike.
  
  And there were things he might have told Miss Stratford, if ever there had been an 
opportunity, things perhaps old Mr. Lawrence would have wanted her to know.
  
  For instance, that Henry Stratford hadn't sat behind his desk for a year now, yet he 
still collected a full salary and bonuses; and that Mr. Randolph wrote him cheques on the 
company funds at random and then doctored the books.
  
  But perhaps the young woman would find out all this for herself. The will had left her