The Chickens of Atlantis and Other Foul and Filthy Fiends Read Online Free PDF Page A

mean?’
    I shook my head. ‘Of course I do,’ I said.
    And so we did skirtings about, through further deserted and lightning-lit galleries, eventually to come upon the most distant door of the Egyptian Gallery.
    Through which we furtively peeped.
    Mr Bell drew back of a sudden. ‘Well now, indeed,’ whispered he.
    ‘What did you see?’ I asked him.
    ‘What I had hoped not to see, but suspected that I might.’
    ‘Which is?’
    ‘Akhenaten himself,’ said Cameron Bell.
    And indeed, as the two of us now peeped forwards, there was certainly no doubt in my mind that my friend spoke the truth. My knowledge of ancient Egypt is not profound, but even I know that Akhenaten was the strange pharaoh. The one with the weird long face and un-Egyptian features. The one that never seemed to fit. The one who messed about with the ancient Egyptian religion. The being that now stood in the Egyptian Gallery, bathed in a curious yellow light and directing the Nubians to load the contents of the British Library into his own sarcophagus, could, in my opinion, be none other than Akhenaten the odd God-Pharaoh himself.
    I now became once more afraid. ‘Surely,’ I whispered, ‘his body lies in that sarcophagus. This must be the ghost of Akhenaten.’
    Mr Bell nodded without conviction.
    ‘This is not work for a detective,’ I further whispered. ‘This is work for a priest and exorcist.’
    Mr Bell said, ‘We shall see,’ and cocked his ray gun.
    Then he said, ‘Hold on tightly, Darwin,’ and marched through the open doorway.
    Akhenaten was a being of considerable height, towering well over six feet tall and surely nearing seven. He wore the robes that a pharaoh should wear and that curious hat with the cobra motif and the big, long, dangly ear flaps. His bodywas gaunt yet his belly was large, his arms gangled long and his fingers weighed heavy with rings.
    At first he did not notice Mr Bell, but merely kept right on directing his Nubians to load more books and still more books into the apparently bottomless sarcophagus.
    Mr Bell made loud coughing sounds, then uttered the words, ‘Good evening.’
    Akhenaten swung about and the coldest pair of eyes I have ever seen turned down their glare upon Mr Cameron Bell.
    ‘Gawd strike me down,’ said Mr Bell, affecting the manner of the cockney. ‘I fort you was Bill, me assistant. Can I be as ’elpin’ of you?’
    Akhenaten's eyes grew wide and his mouth fell hugely open.
    ‘I will ’ave to ask you, sir, to return them books to the library,’ said Mr Bell. ‘You can only take three out at a time and not wivout a ticket.’
    Akhenaten's mouth gaped wider still. And then he threw back his queerly shaped head and began to loudly guffaw. The Nubians had ceased their hands-to-handsings and their loadings-in and now stood like statues, blankly staring on.
    Akhenaten's guffaws suddenly ceased. He wiped away a tear from his eye and spoke to my companion.
    ‘Well, well, well,’ he said to him. ‘My old master, Mr Cameron Bell.’
    And, ‘Well, well, well,’ the other replied. ‘My old bootboy, Mr Arthur Knapton.’
    I looked from one to the other of them.
    ‘And this must be the famous Darwin,’ said Mr Arthur Knapton. ‘The talking anthropoid. Say ’ello, little fella.’
    ‘I am most confused,’ said I.
    To which Arthur Knapton, if such was this fellow, guffawed and guffawed again.
    ‘I recall well that most annoying laugh,’ said Mr Bell to myself. ‘Arthur was my bootboy when I was at Oxford, a lad of low breeding but high ambition.’
    ‘I ’eard that,’ said Arthur in the tones of a genuine cockney. ‘You always thought so well of yerself and thought so little of me.’
    ‘You were a petty thief,’ said Mr Bell. ‘The last I heard of you was that you had been shipped off to Australia for stealing a bunch of bananas.’
    ‘Ah,’ said I, ‘bananas.’
    ‘’Tis true enough,’ said Mr Arthur Knapton, now folding his arms and idly tapping a toe. ‘But as yer