“The Professor slipped silently ashore and into the room. The two men relighted the candle and pulled down the blind. They then placed the corpse of Sidney in the packing case, and screwed the same down in silence. When this was completed, they were about to carry the mummy in its coffin—the lid of which they had replaced—to the boat, when they heard distant footsteps, probably those of a policeman on his beat. At once they extinguished the candle, and—as Braddock told Mrs. Jasher—he, for one, sat trembling in the dark. But the policeman—if the footsteps were those of a policeman—passed up another street, and the two were safe. Without relighting the candle, they silently slipped the mummy through the window, Cockatoo within and Braddock without. The case and its contents were not heavy, and it was not difficult for the two men to take it to the boat. When it was safely bestowed, Cockatoo—who was as cunning as the devil, according to his master returned to the bedroom, and unlocked the door. He afterwards passed a string through the joining of the upper and lower windows, and managed to shut the snib. Afterwards he came to the boat and rowed it back to Gartley. On the way Cockatoo told his master that Sidney had left instructions that the packing case should be taken next morning to the Pyramids, so there was nothing to fear. The mummy was hidden in a hole under the jetty and covered with grass.”
“Why didn't they take it up to the house?” asked Random, on hearing this.
“That would have been dangerous,” said Hope, looking up from the manuscript, “seeing that the mummy was supposed to have been stolen by the murderer. It was easier to hide it amongst the grasses under the jetty, as no one ever goes there. Well”—he turned over a few pages—“that is practically all. The rest is after events.”