prisoners--nicely trussed, you see,
so that they can't get at the little popguns they carry--and a worse
pair of rogues never went into the hands of Jack Ketch!"

"And Jack Ketch will get them, Cleek, if I know anything about it. Your
hazard was right, your guess correct. I've examined the caliph's
mummy-case; the mummy itself has been removed--destroyed---- done away
with utterly--and the poor creature's body is there!"

And here the poor, dumbfounded, utterly bewildered major found voice to
speak at last.

"Mummy-case! Body! Dear God in heaven, Mr. Cleek, what are you hinting
at?" he gasped. "You--you don't mean that she--that Zuilika--killed
him?"

"No, Major, I don't," he made reply. "I simply mean that he killed her!
The body in the mummy-case is the body of Zuilika, the caliph's
daughter! This is the creature you have been wasting your pity on--see!"

With that he laid an intense grip on the concealing yashmak, tore it
away, and so revealed the closely shaven, ghastly hued countenance of
the cornered criminal.

"My God! Ulchester himself!" said the major in a voice of fright and
surprise.

"Yes, Ulchester himself, Major. In a few more days he'd have withdrawn
the money, and got out of the country, body and all, if he hadn't been
nabbed, the rascal. There'd have been no tracing the crime then, and he
and the Senorita here would have been in clover for the rest of their
natural lives. But there's always that bright little bit of Bobby
Burns's to be reckoned with. You know: 'The best laid schemes of mice
and men,' etcetera--that bit. But the Yard's got them, and they'll never
leave the country now. Take them, Mr. Narkom, they're yours!"

* * * * *

"How did I guess it?" said Cleek, replying to the major's query, as they
sat late that night discussing the affair. "Well, I think the first
faint inkling of it came when I arrived here yesterday, and smelt the
overpowering odour of the incenses. There was so much of it, and it was
used so frequently--twice a day--that it seemed to suggest an attempt to
hide other odours of a less pleasant kind. When I left you last night,
Dollops and I went down to the mummy chamber, and a skeleton key soon
let us in. The unpleasant odour was rather pronounced in there. But even
that didn't give me the cue, until I happened to find in the fireplace a
considerable heap of fine ashes, and in the midst of them small lumps of
a gummy substance, which