The Mummy by Max Allan Collins

indolent individual barely getting by on his yearly stipend from the family trust fund, mostly spent on bourbon, a flask of which he removed from his cream-colored jacket and sipped.
    She closed the sarcophagus lid, resisting the urge to slam it. “Have you no respect for the dead?”
    “Have you no respect for the dead drunk?”
    Steaming, she paced. “What are you doing here? I’m already in trouble. I just made a mess of the library . . .”
    “I heard. And I heard Dr. Bey scold you.” He sipped from his flask. “Pity.”
    She faced him, hands on hips. “Do you really want to ruin my career, the way you’ve ruined yours?”
    “Now that’s unfair, Sis.” He belched, excused himself, and added, “I’ll have you know that my career is thriving, at this very moment.”
    Evelyn smirked. “You haven’t been out on a dig for six months.”
    “Not true! I’ve been digging, my dear. Digging away.”
    “What, in bars again? Please, Jonathan, I’m just in no mood for your capering. The Bembridge Scholars . . .”
    He sat down heavily on the edge of a display. “Don’t tell me those fools had the bad sense to turn you down again.”
    She sat next to him. “They say I lack experience.”
    “Well, you’re getting it here, aren’t you?”
    “Fine. Just fine. I’ll stay on another year or two and try again . . . and what sort of reference do you think Dr. Bey will give me?”
    He beamed at her. “I’ve got just the thing to get you back in his good graces.” Jonathan began scrounging in his other jacket pocket.
    Shaking her head, Evelyn said, “Oh, no, no, not another worthless trinket, Jonathan. If I bring one more piece of junk to Dr. Bey, on your behalf—”
    But Jonathan had withdrawn a small octagonal golden box, obviously ancient—New Kingdom, she’d say.
    She grabbed it from him; he made no attempt to stop her. “Where did you find this, Jonathan?”
    “On a dig . . . near Luxor.”
    Evelyn rolled the box around her in hands, examining it carefully, appreciating its carved surface, mumbling to herself as she translated the hieratics and hieroglyphs decorating it.
    They began tapping their feet together in nervous unison as she inspected the box.
    “I’ve been such a poor excuse for the son of Howard Carnahan, Evy . . . never came across a damn thing worth finding. Is it . . . is it something? Please tell me I’ve finally found something, old dear.”
    The box had tiny little slats on it, which she began to shift this way and that.
    “What is it, Evy? Is that a puzzle box?”
    As if in reply, the thing seemed to unfold itself, blossoming into an eight-sided key; and sitting within the open box was a folded piece of papyrus. Carefully, Evelyn unfolded it into what was clearly an ancient map: the Nile was obvious, as was a representation of the jackal-headed Anubis; an eagle and various other drawings, and hieroglyphs, indeed dated it to the New Kingdom.
    “Jonathan?”
    “Yes, Sis?”
    “You’ve found something.”
    Seated behind his desk in his cluttered, cubbyhole office, the curator used a jeweler’s eyepiece to examine the box. Evelyn, standing alongside Dr. Bey, demonstrated how to open and close the object, and pointed out the cartouche on its surface.
    “That’s the royal seal of Seti the First,” she said.
    The curator shrugged. “Perhaps.”
    “No ‘perhaps’ about it, Dr. Bey.”
    “Which pharaoh was Seti again?” Jonathan asked, smiling, seated across the desk from the curator. “Afraid I’ve forgotten. Was he rich, by any chance?”
    Evelyn could never be sure when Jonathan was joking. “He was the second pharaoh of the nineteenth dynasty. Some historians speculate he may have been the wealthiest of all rulers.”
    “What a splendid fellow, this Seti. I like him very much.” Jonathan’s grin, as he leaned into the dramatic glow of a candle on Bey’s desk, was rather mummylike; though the museum had electric lighting, the curator often kept an aromatic candle