Ron Goulart - The Curse of the Obelisk

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THE CURSE OF THE
OBELISK
Ron Goulart
Copyright © 1987 by Ron Goulart
CHAPTER 1
Paris in the spring of 1897 was a city of gaiety, light and movement,
pervaded with an air of joyous living. An immense city, full of broad
handsome streets, magnificent buildings, grand open spaces with
fountains and statues, great public gardens and parks, miles and miles of
stores and shops filled with the most beautiful and interesting things that
are made or found in any part of the world.
Harry Challenge didn't much want to be there.
As he went striding along the twilight Boulevard Saint Germain, unlit
cigar clenched in his teeth, he made a list of places he'd rather be.
A lean man of middle height, Harry was dark haired and clean shaven.
His tan, weather-beaten face tended to give people the impression he was
a few years older than his thirty-one years. He wore, as he usually did, a
dark suit. His hat was soft brimmed, and in his snug shoulder holster
rested a Colt .38 revolver.
"Fool's errand," Harry muttered to himself. Not for the first time.
An open carriage rolled by, the horses' hooves clacking on the smooth
pavement. The satin-clad woman in the carriage glanced approvingly at
Harry, and the light of a street lamp made the diamonds in her tiara and
on the collar of her little white Maltese dog sparkle. Scowling, the dog
yapped at Harry.
He tipped his hat to both of them and hurried on.
The street was crowded. People strolling, people sitting at the little
tables in front of cafés, workmen in blue blouses and wooden shoes
heading homeward, even a priest in long black clothes and a broad felt hat
taking the air.
Absently Harry patted the pocket of his vest that contained a folded
copy of the latest cable from his father in New York. The message had
been waiting for him when he checked into his far too fancy Paris hotel
this afternoon. What it said was:
Dear son: Get off your rump. Go see our half-wit client. Name is
Maurice Allegre. He runs the Musée des Antiquités on Rue Balbec. If you
ask me he's got bats in his bonnet, but his money's good. You find out
what's really going on. I doubt his museum is haunted. Your loving
father, the Challenge International Detective Agency.
An earlier message, which had reached Harry while he was finishing up
a case in the capital city of the small sovereign nation of Orlandia had
mentioned a mummy that roamed the museum by night.
Harry'd handled several supernatural cases of late, too many in fact,
and he was hoping M. Allegre would turn out to be, as his father implied,
suffering from hallucinations.
He passed the Café de Flor, dropped a few centimes in the dented
copper cup of the ragged blind man standing just beyond its bright Art
Nouveau facade and turned onto the Rue Balbec.
The dusk was deepening. From a sharply slanting tile roof a clutter of
sparrows rose up into the oncoming night. Someone was playing a
mournful tune on a rusty violin in a lamplit parlor up in a thin building on
his left.
Cutting across the cobblestoned street, Harry started through a public
garden. A greened brass plate on the stone column at its entrance
proclaimed it the Jardin Reve.
According to his red-bound Baedeker, the museum he sought was on
the opposite side of this shadowy, block-square little park.
The light was fading faster. Darkness and quiet came closing in on
Harry. He seemed to be the only person walking through the Jardin Reve.
Yet Harry was commencing to feel a shade uneasy, wondering if he really
wasn't alone.
The white gravel path wound through a thick grove of trees. In among
them lurked pale white figures that Harry decided, after reaching into his
coat for his .38 revolver and then thinking better of it, were statues.
He recognized, quickening his pace, a pudgy Venus and a muscle-bound
Hercules.
Through the dark trees ahead he spotted now the two glowing electric
lamps that framed the arched doorway of the Musée des Antiquités.
From behind him came a rustling sound.
Halting, he spun around. He drew his Colt and stared into the darkness
behind him.
Harry had the impression something large and dark had settled into the
high branches of one of the big trees a few hundred yards away.
He stood still, eyes narrowed and gun ready, watching.
The shape he thought he'd noticed wasn't there. Or if it was, the new
night masked it.
He waited nearly a full minute before holstering his gun and continuing
on his way.
Not quite ten seconds after that a young woman screamed. Two pistol
shots rang out.
Harry dived to the ground, rolled across the grass and came to a
squatting position behind a wide tree trunk. His Colt was once again in
his right hand.
"Well, damn," he remarked aloud.
Rising up above the treetops was an immense birdlike creature. Its
body was nearly man-size and it had bat wings that creaked and made
bellows sounds as it flapped them.
Harry sprinted back to the gravel path for a better look.
Down out of the night sky fell a drop of something hot and sticky. It
splashed him on the cheek.
"Serves me right." He yanked out his pocket handkerchief, wiped at his
face and stuffed the cloth away.
The giant bird or bat or whatever it was was flying away over the
rooftops of Paris. The glow of street lamps and window lights illuminated
it until the creature rose too high. Darkness swallowed it.
Putting away his gun, Harry went trotting back the way he'd come.
"Now where the hell's the lady who hollered?"
She was slumped on a wrought iron bench, a derringer lying in the
grass at her feet. A slim and very pretty young woman she was, her hair a
pale reddish gold. It had tumbled down from under the checkered cap she
was wearing. The cap matched the man's Norfolk jacket and tweedy
knickers she had herself decked out in.
"Jennie Barr." Harry's tone was not especially cordial. "You were too
busy to have dinner with me tonight. You had to get to work immediately
on your story for the New York Daily Inquirer. You lied to me."
Taking a deep breath, Jennie sat up straighter and tucked her hair back
up under the cap. "Well, I suppose I did fib some, yes."
"We travel all the way from Zevenburg to Paris together," he continued,
angry. "I even, behaving like what my father would classify as a
nincompoop, declare that I'm fond of you. I entertain the half-wit notion
that I can trust you not to be a newspaper reporter above all else. But you
were just conning me, Jennie, so you could—"
"Fond of me? What you did on the Zevenburg-Paris Express, Harry, was
tell me you loved me."
"Okay, I do love you," he admitted. "Fact is, I was in the process of
telling you that again just a few hours ago. But you told me you had to get
right to work on your assignment. No time for romance, no time for the
gaiety, light and movement of Paris. So it turns out this damn story of
yours has to do with my private—"
"Hey, I just saved your life."
"Thanks," he said. "Now tell me why you're dressed like a guy and
tailing me."
Jennie grinned. "Did pretty darn well, didn't I? I followed you all the
way from the Hotel Grand-Luxe and you never even tumbled."
"You did, huh?" He made a face and shook his head. "There's one thing
my father's right about. Getting involved with a woman dulls your—"
"Your father, if you'll forgive my reminding you of the fact, is a sour
ball, Harry," the reporter put in. "One of the things that scares the heck
out of me is the possibility you'll grow more like him as you get older.
Spending my declining years with a curmudgeon isn't my idea of—"
"You won't even spend the rest of the damn evening with me unless you
explain what's going on."
Reaching up, she took hold of his arm and pulled herself to her feet.
"Take me to a nearby café and over coffee I'll tell all," Jennie promised.
"I'm on my way to see a client. Don't have time for—"
"Let me give you some advice." She bent, grimacing, scooped up her
tiny gun and tucked it away under her jacket. "Don't pout that way. You
don't have the face for it. I think it's an attractive face, albeit a mite
beat-up and—"
"Okay, I'll take you someplace." When they started to walk, he noticed
the red-haired young woman was limping. "Did that critter hurt you?"
"Nope, but I twisted my ankle while I was running and shooting at it.
That's why I fell and dropped my gun."
"You can't faze a gigantic bird with a dinky gun like that anyway."
"Wasn't a gigantic bird," she assured Harry. "It was a gigantic bat."
Jennie poked at her raspberry ice with her spoon. "It is, you have to
admit, the sort of story I do well." She'd taken off the cap and the faint
night breeze brushed at her hair.
Across the small outdoor table from her Harry lit his cigar. "A curse?"
He blew smoke at the marble tabletop.
"Three weeks ago the noted French archaeologist Reynard Courdaud
met a strange end at his villa near Nice," said the reporter. "Then five days
ago Sir Munson Bellhouse died in a fall while hunting in Scotland."
"A death in Nice, another in Scotland. Why does that prompt the Daily
Inquirer to send you here to Paris?"
After savoring a spoonful of the ice, she answered, "You haven't done,
Harry, sufficient research into this affair."
The light spilling out through the stained glass window of the sidewalk
café gave a pale golden glow to her face. Harry looked away for a moment,
toward a plump German tourist who was sipping a solitary absinthe.
"Was Bellhouse an archaeologist, too?"
Jennie nodded. "He was one of the five men who headed the expedition
to the Valley of Jackals in 1895," she said. "They found considerable
treasures, including the dornick that's been dubbed the Osiris Obelisk."
"Is it anything like the one in Central Park or the one right here in town
at the Place de la Concorde?"
"This is a miniature version, only about six feet high. Thing is, one of
the inscriptions started the rumor that—"
"Wait now. Is there a curse on the thing?"
"There was a lot of talk to that effect, back when the Courdaud
expedition first broke into the tomb it was standing in front of. My editors
believe there's a—"
"Awful slow for a curse. Don't they work faster than that?" He rested his
elbows on the tabletop, watching her faintly freckled face. "Waiting two
years before striking isn't my idea of—"
"Let me give you a few details about Reynard Courdaud's death." She
set her spoon aside. "His valet swears that Courdaud was attacked on his
terrace at dusk by a giant bat. That's one reason I hollered and started
shooting when I saw that thing tonight lurking over your—"
"A giant bat?" Harry sat up.
"Your elbow." Jennie pointed. "You've got something sticky on it."
"Coffee." Fishing out his handkerchief, he wiped at his coat. "This seems
to be my night for . . . hmm."
"What is it?"
He'd brought the stained square of linen up to his nose and was sniffing
at it. "While I'm not an expert on bat lore, I'll bet their droppings don't
smell like machine oil."
She reached across and took the handkerchief. "That's oil sure enough.
What makes you think—"
"While that thing was flying away directly overhead, I looked up."
Crumpling the handkerchief, Jennie said, "This is commencing to look
like one of the oddest curses I've ever investigated."
"This guy in Scotland . . ."
"Sir Munson Bellhouse, one of the most respected archaeologists in
Britain. Haven't you ever heard of—"
"What caused his fall?"
"A gamekeeper from the estate where they were shooting swore he saw
a giant bird circling the spot where Sir Munson did his brodie. He wasn't
believed."
"Okay, and where do I tie in?" asked Harry. "Was that damn bat
planning to make me the next victim of the curse of the obelisk? And if so,
why?"
"Don't you know where the Osiris Obelisk is?"
Harry ground his cigar out in the pewter ashtray. "At the Musée des
Antiquités?"
"For five more days," she replied. "Then it's being shipped to the capital
of Urbania. The museum's sold it to a private collector. The whole
business has caused quite a stir."
Harry said, "You were trailing me because you figure the troubles at the
museum are linked with this curse."
"Seems likely, doesn't it?" There was a mixture of contriteness and
excitement in her voice. "Honestly, Harry, I don't like to trade on our
friendship, but so far nobody else knows the Challenge International
Detective Agency has been called in on this case. That exclusive angle'll
make my series of articles for the Daily Inquirer much more—"
"I'll make you a deal."
"You sound sort of grim."
"Instead of putting on half-wit disguises and skulking around, you can
come along to the museum with me," he said. "After I meet with M.
Allegre, in private, I'll see if he'll let you interview him."
"Well, that'd be fine, I guess. But you're scowling at me as though—"
"We've known each other for quite a spell. Back in New York and—"
"Known and liked. Even though sometimes—"
"When our paths crossed in Orlandia and it turned out we were both
interested in the prisoner of Blackwood Castle, I initially tried to ditch
you."
"Harry, I do . . . well, love you. And you can trust me," she assured him
in a quiet voice. "It's just that I'm a reporter, and a darn good one, and so
sometimes—"
"We'll forget what happened on the train from Orlandia to Paris." Harry
stood and signaled the gaunt, apronned waiter. "It never took place. We'll
go back to being rivals, friendly rivals."
"But, Harry, something did happen. We can't just—"
"I'm late for the meeting with my client. You coming along?"
She hesitated, then smiled tentatively. "Yes," she replied.
CHAPTER 2
After rubbing at his nose, Maurice Allegre tapped the drawing in the
newspaper open upon his desk. "My reputation is in shreds already, M.
Challenge," he said, wringing his small hands. "Just this past Monday here
in Le Figaro no less a formidable penman than Caran d'Ache depicted me
as a grave robber. You see?"
Harry leaned forward in his heavy wooden chair. "Doesn't resemble you
that much."
"Ah, but all Paris knows at whom this barb is aimed," said the forlorn
museum director. "Even though he's seen fit to give me an extremely large
Hebraic nose. It is sad enough to be blamed for selling that accursed
obelisk without being branded a Dreyfusard as well. If the outside world
were to learn of my latest sorrows . . ." He sighed.
"Suppose you detail your problem to me."
The office was shadowy, the furniture heavy and dark, the carpets and
drapes the color of deep autumn. Hovering in the dim corners that the
light from the faintly hissing gas lamps didn't reach were coffins, mummy
cases and at least one suit of Oriental armor.
Allegre patted at the part in his slick dark hair. "My two regular
watchmen had let me down," he said, taking another disheartened glance
at the cartoon attacking him. "After all, M. Challenge, I do not own this
Musée des Antiquités. Nay, I am but an employee. When the directors,
you understand, agreed to sell the obelisk to Baron Groll in Urbania, I
could only, meekly, go along with them." He poked a delicate finger at the
cartoon. "This is, after all, a private institution and not a public one. They
can sell whatever they wish and to whomsoever they wish. Therefore, when
this Caran d'Ache shows me looting tombs and selling the treasures of
France to foreigners, he errs in— "
"You told my father your museum was haunted."
Allegre said, "Your father, at least in his cablegrams, strikes one as a
highly intelligent man. I was halfway expecting that he himself would
journey here to Paris to handle the—"
"He rarely travels these days," said Harry. "Do you have ghosts?"
Allegre shrugged with both his shoulders and both hands. "Ah, but I
myself have seen not a one," he replied. "My addlepated watchmen, on the
other hand, insist that on several occasions some unusual incidents have
taken place."
"Such as?"
"Most, if not all, of this outré activity has allegedly occurred in our
Antiqués Égyptiennes Wing, M. Challenge," said the director. "Both
Gaspar and Albert have insisted they heard many strange sounds and,
furthermore, that they saw with their own eyes . . ." He shrugged once
again. "They saw one of the mummified corpses leave its resting place and
walk."
"When did these incidents begin?"
Allegre answered, "Approximately three weeks ago. Fortunately, I have
been able, thus far, to keep it quiet. I fear that—"
"I'd like to talk to Gaspar and Albert."
"Ah, but alas, monsieur, that is not possible," explained Allegre. "They
are no longer employed here. Albert, in point of fact, ran screaming from
this place three midnights ago. Though Gaspar made a less flamboyant
exit, he too is gone."
"Is midnight when the ghostly happenings usually happen?"
"Not every midnight, but far too many, yes," answered the museum
director. "You also cannot, I fear, interrogate either Gerard or Paul."
"The new watchmen?"
"Exactly, monsieur." He sighed his deepest sigh thus far. "Gerard and
Paul lasted but a single night. Thus, you have indeed arrived at a most
fortunate juncture in the affairs of our plagued institution."
Harry eyed him for a few seconds. "You want me to act as watchman
tonight?"
"Are you not ideally suited for such a task? A stalwart and manly fellow,
well versed in the handling of such unusual situations," said Allegre. "You
know how to deport yourself when faced with dangers of an unusual sort,
and you are not superstitious like Gaspar, Albert, Gerard and Paul."
"Have you ever spent a night here?"
The director shuddered. "I am, you understand, not a brave man," he
confided. "Were I to run screaming from the premises in the dead of night
it might lead to further scandal, providing fodder for yet another
unflattering caricature in Le Figaro and other vicious publications.
Besides, M. Challenge, since we are paying you such an enormous fee, it is
only fair that—"
"Substantial," corrected Harry, "not enormous. Okay, I'll stay here
tonight. That'll give me a chance to go over the Egyptian wing and the rest
of the museum."
"I appreciate that," said Allegre, allowing himself a small, sad smile.
"Will your quite charming young assistant who waits in the foyer be
sharing your nocturnal duties, monsieur?"
Harry grinned. "Yes, I seldom go anywhere without her."
The ceiling of the vast room was lost in shadows. The air was chill,
scented faintly with sandalwood and ancient dust.
"This particular chest is one of my favorites," Allegre was saying. "The
framework is of ebony, the inner panels of beautifully carved redwood.
Here we see the bronze and ivory blended to produce . . ."
Jennie whispered to Harry, "You're a rat."
He assumed a beatific expression and ignored her.
"Passing me off as an operative in your dim-witted detective agency
after promising me a chance to interview this guy." She delivered a
disappointed nudge to his ribs.
"He loathes the press. Now hush."
". . . the king, you see, is offering Omnophris a pot of perfume and a
lamp. Omnophris is, of course, but another guise of Osiris, who guards the
. . ."
"I'm not some pushy French news hound," persisted Jennie in an
annoyed whisper. "And if you don't tell him who I really am, then I myself
will."
"Listen, didn't I arrange for you to spend the whole damn night inside
this place? When the mummy does his jig, you'll be the only reporter on
hand."
"Yes, but—"
"You go telling him who you really are and you'll get nothing but the old
heave-ho."
"Ah, but I must be boring you by riding my hobbyhorse so vehemently."
The director turned away from the glass case that housed the chest.
"I'd like to see the case the mummy climbs out of at midnight," Harry
told him.
"But certainly, monsieur." Bowing slightly, Allegre led them past more
ornate chests, an alabaster casket, a case filled with glittering bracelets
and bangles.
In an alcove, illuminated by a single hanging lamp, a carved coffin with
a lid of gold, turquoise and crimson rested on a low platform.
Noticing something stuck to a nail on the platform, Harry bent and
took it. "Little hunk of linen," he said, passing it under his nose. "Doesn't
smell especially ancient."
The museum director blinked. "May I inspect that, monsieur?"
摘要：

THECURSEOFTHEOBELISKRonGoulartCopyright©1987byRonGoulartCHAPTER1Parisinthespringof1897wasacityofgaiety,lightandmovement,pervadedwithanairofjoyousliving.Animmensecity,fullofbroadhandsomestreets,magnificentbuildings,grandopenspaceswithfountainsandstatues,greatpublicgardensandparks,milesandmilesofstore...

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