Read Online The Mummy by Max Allan Collins - Free Book Online

“Why don’t you ask him? His only excuse is that he was ‘looking for adventure.’ I will say this: Your visit is well timed. I saw his name on the list today.”
    “For his trial, you mean?”
    “Trial?” The warden laughed explosively; his teeth were that shade of green so attractive in jade jewelry, less so in a smile. “How very droll, Miss Carnahan. So seldom does a woman of your grace and beauty have so keenly developed a sense of humor . . .”
    They had reached the cage when the interior doors on the wall of the prison burst open and four Arab guards dressed in khaki dragged in a handsome, unshaven young white man, heavily shackled at the wrists and ankles, in what had been a white shirt and jodphurs, before they had become filthy and torn from a week in captivity.
    “Ah!” the warden said. “Here’s your friend, now.”
    The guards hurled the young man against the bars; the prisoner struck the steel with a nasty clang, but his face registered no pain.
    “I say,” Jonathan said to Hassan, “was that necessary?”
    The warden beamed greenly at Evelyn. “I see your brother’s sense of humor is also well developed. This is Mr. O’Connell, formerly of Chicago, Illinois, and more lately, the French Foreign Legion. He’s a deserter, your friend.”
    Evelyn was looking O’Connell over; he was doing the same to her, from (it seemed to Jonathan) a slightly different perspective.
    She asked her brother, “Is this him? The one you stole it from?”
    Jonathan laughed nervously, glancing at the warden. “My sister and her sense of humor . . . Yes, dear, this is the blighter who sold it to me.”
    O’Connell wedged his face between two bars, frowning as he studied Jonathan. “Sold what to you?”
    “Warden,” Jonathan said, “would it be possible for us to have a few minutes alone with our friend?”
    “What friend?” O’Connell asked.
    Jonathan extended a hand with a pound note in it to the warden, for the man to shake, and take.
    “Certainly, sahib.” Hassan bowed. “I’ll leave you now . . . you have five minutes.”
    “It won’t be the same without you,” O’Connell said to the warden, and blew him a kiss.
    The warden did not smile, greenly or otherwise; he waved a finger in the air. “A sense of humor in prisoners I do not appreciate.”
    O’Connell laughed. “What are you going to do about it, fatso? Not change my sheets?”
    The warden nodded to the scruffy, sleepy-eyed guard standing behind O’Connell, and the guard slammed the prisoner into the metal bars again, where his face bounced like a rubber ball off pavement. But O’Connell still registered no pain, though he did toss the guard a glare.
    “Unwise, sir,” the warden said, and began walking away, adding to himself, “most unwise.”
    Jonathan, watching Hassan go, said to O’Connell, “You might not want to get on his bad side, old man.”
    “Where have I seen you before?” O’Connell asked Jonathan.
    “I’m just a, uh, local missionary spreading the good word.”
    “And who’s the dame?”
    Evelyn frowned. “Dame?”
    Jonathan gestured. “This is my charming sister, Evy.”
    “Evelyn,” she corrected.
    O’Connell glanced at her and shrugged. “Yeah? Well, maybe with her hair down she wouldn’t be a total loss.”
    Evelyn’s eyes widened. “Well, I never!”
    “That wouldn’t surprise me,” O’Connell said. To Jonathan, he said, “You look mighty familiar . . .”
    Jonathan laughed giddily. “I just have one of those terribly common faces, old boy.”
    “No, I know you from somewhere.”
    Evelyn said, “Mr. O’Connell, allow me to explain why we’ve come.”
    Face striped with the shadows of prison bars, O’Connell half-smirked. “Till I heard your British accents, I was kinda hoping you were from the American embassy.”
    “Sorry, no,” she said. “We’re here about your box.”
    “My what?”
    “Your puzzle box. A little gold knickknack with eight sides? You see we, uh, that is my