Chapter 10: The Red Marble Hall

We passed through an interminable series of stairs and corridors following M. Le Mesge.

“You lose all sense of direction in this labyrinth,” I muttered to Morhange.

“Worse still, you will lose your head,” answered my companion sotto voce. “This old fool is certainly very learned; but God knows what he is driving at. However, he has promised that we are soon to know.”

M. Le Mesge had stopped before a heavy dark door, all incrusted with strange symbols. Turning the lock with difficulty, he opened it.

“Enter, gentlemen, I beg you,” he said.

A gust of cold air struck us full in the face. The room we were entering was chill as a vault.

At first, the darkness allowed me to form no idea of its proportions. The lighting, purposely subdued, consisted of twelve enormous copper lamps, placed column-like upon the ground and burning with brilliant red flames. As we entered, the wind from the corridor made the flames flicker, momentarily casting about us our own enlarged and misshapen shadows. Then the gust died down, and the flames, no longer flurried, again licked up the darkness with their motionless red tongues.

These twelve giant lamps (each one about ten feet high) were arranged in a kind of crown, the diameter of which must have been about fifty feet. In the center of this circle was a dark mass, all streaked with trembling red reflections. When I drew nearer, I saw it was a bubbling fountain. It was the freshness of this water which had maintained the temperature of which I have spoken.

Huge seats were cut in the central rock from which gushed the murmuring, shadowy fountain. They were heaped with silky cushions. Twelve incense burners, within the circle of red lamps, formed a second crown, half as large in diameter. Their smoke mounted toward the vault, invisible in the darkness, but their perfume, combined with the coolness and sound of the water, banished from the soul all other desire than to remain there forever.

M. Le Mesge made us sit down in the center of the hall, on the Cyclopean seats. He seated himself between us.

“In a few minutes,” he said, “your eyes will grow accustomed to the obscurity.”

I noticed that he spoke in a hushed voice, as if he were in church.

Little by little, our eyes did indeed grow used to the red light. Only the lower part of the great hall was illuminated. The whole vault was drowned in shadow and its height was impossible to estimate. Vaguely, I could perceive overhead a great smooth gold chandelier, flecked, like everything else, with sombre red reflections. But there was no means of judging the length of the chain by which it hung from the dark ceiling.

The marble of the pavement was of so high a polish, that the great torches were reflected even there.

This room, I repeat, was round a perfect circle of which the fountain at our backs was the center.

We sat facing the curving walls. Before long, we began to be able to see them. They were of peculiar construction, divided into a series of niches, broken, ahead of us, by the door which had just opened to give us passage, behind us, by a second door, a still darker hole which I divined in the darkness when I turned around. From one door to the other, I counted sixty niches, making, in all, one hundred and twenty. Each was about ten feet high. Each contained a kind of case, larger above than below, closed only at the lower end. In all these cases, except two just opposite me, I thought I could discern a brilliant shape, a human shape certainly, something like a statue of very pale bronze. In the arc of the circle before me, I counted clearly thirty of these strange statues.

What were these statues? I wanted to see. I rose.

M. Le Mesge put his hand on my arm.

“In good time,” he murmured in the same low voice, “all in good time.”

The Professor was watching the door by which we had entered the hall, and from behind which we could hear the sound of footsteps becoming more and more distinct.

It opened quietly to admit three Tuareg slaves. Two of them were carrying a long package on their shoulders; the third seemed to be their chief.

At a sign from him, they placed the package on the ground and drew out from one of the niches the case which it contained.

“You may approach, gentlemen,” said M. Le Mesge.

He motioned the three Tuareg to withdraw several paces.

“You asked me, not long since, for some proof of the Egyptian influence on this country,” said M. Le Mesge. “What do you say to that case, to begin with?”

As he spoke, he pointed to the case that the servants had deposited upon the ground after they took it from its niche.

Morhange uttered a thick cry.

We had before us one of those cases designed for the preservation of mummies. The same shiny wood, the same bright decorations, the only difference being that here Tifinar writing replaced the hieroglyphics. The form, narrow at the base, broader above, ought to have been enough to enlighten us.

I have already said that the lower half of this large case was closed, giving the whole structure the appearance of a rectangular wooden shoe.

M. Le Mesge knelt and fastened on the lower part of the case, a square of white cardboard, a large label, that he had picked up from his desk, a few minutes before, on leaving the library.

“You may read,” he said simply, but still in the same low tone.

I knelt also, for the light of the great candelabra was scarcely sufficient to read the label where, none the less, I recognized the Professor’s handwriting.

It bore these few words, in a large round hand:

“Number 53. Major Sir Archibald Russell. Born at Richmond, July 5, 1860. Died at Ahaggar, December 3, 1896.”

I leapt to my feet.

“Major Russell!” I exclaimed.

“Not so loud, not so loud,” said M. Le Mesge. “No one speaks out loud here.”

“The Major Russell,” I repeated, obeying his injunction as if in spite of myself, “who left Khartoum last year, to explore Sokoto?”

“The same,” replied the Professor.

“And ... where is Major Russell?”

“He is there,” replied M. Le Mesge.

The Professor made a gesture. The Tuareg approached.

A poignant silence reigned in the mysterious hall, broken only by the fresh splashing of the fountain.

The three Negroes were occupied in undoing the package that they had put down near the painted case. Weighed down with wordless horror, Morhange and I stood watching.

Soon, a rigid form, a human form, appeared. A red gleam played over it. We had before us, stretched out upon the ground, a statue of pale bronze, wrapped in a kind of white veil, a statue like those all around us, upright in their niches. It seemed to fix us with an impenetrable gaze.

“Sir Archibald Russell,” murmured M. Le Mesge slowly.

Morhange approached, speechless, but strong enough to lift up the white veil. For a long, long time he gazed at the sad bronze statue.

“A mummy, a mummy?” he said finally. “You deceive yourself, sir, this is no mummy.”

“Accurately speaking, no,” replied M. Le Mesge. “This is not a mummy. None the less, you have before you the mortal remains of Sir Archibald Russell. I must point out to you, here, my dear sir, that the processes of embalming used by Antinea differ from the processes employed in ancient Egypt. Here, there is no natron, nor bands, nor spices. The industry of Ahaggar, in a single effort, has achieved a result obtained by European science only after long experiments. Imagine my surprise, when I arrived here and found that they were employing a method I supposed known only to the civilized world.”

M. Le Mesge struck a light tap with his finger on the forehead of Sir Archibald Russell. It rang like metal.

“It is bronze,” I said. “That is not a human forehead: it is bronze.”

M. Le Mesge shrugged his shoulders.

“It is a human forehead,” he affirmed curtly, “and not bronze. Bronze is darker, sir. This is the great unknown metal of which Plato speaks in the Critias, and which is something between gold and silver: it is the special metal of the mountains of the Atlantides. It is orichalch.”

Bending again, I satisfied myself that this metal was the same as that with which the walls of the library were overcast.

“It is orichalch,” continued M. Le Mesge. “You look as if you had no idea how a human body can look like a statue of orichalch. Come, Captain Morhange, you whom I gave credit for a certain amount of knowledge, have you never heard of the method of Dr. Variot, by which a human body can be preserved without embalming? Have you never read the book of that practitioner?[11] He explains a method called electro-plating. The skin is coated with a very thin layer of silver salts, to make it a conductor. The body then is placed in a solution, of copper sulphate, and the polar currents do their work. The body of this estimable English major has been metalized in the same manner, except that a solution of orichalch sulphate, a very rare substance, has been substituted for that of copper sulphate. Thus, instead of the statue of a poor slave, a copper statue, you have before you a statue of metal more precious than silver or gold, in a word, a statue worthy of the granddaughter of Neptune.”