Free The Mummy by Max Allan Collins

at first frowned, then smiled.
    The warden took his seat and Evelyn sat next to him; Jonathan preferred to stand.
    Evelyn said to Hassan, “I will give you fifty pounds more to let him live than the legion’s paying you to kill him.”
    Jonathan could barely believe his ears. One hundred pounds for that lout? Of course, if he could lead them to Hamanaptra . . .
    The warden’s nose twitched like a big dark bunny’s. “I would pay one hundred pounds to see the insolent pig hang.”
    “Two, then,” she said.
    “Two hundred pounds?” Jonathan asked. Now he sat down, heavily, next to his sister.
    “Two hundred pounds,” Evelyn said, nodding curtly.
    The warden shook his head, dismissively, and raised a hand. “Proceed!” he called to the hangman, who stood near his deadly lever. O’Connell’s forehead was tensed and beaded with sweat; he could hear every word of the negotiation between the warden and Jonathan’s sister.
    “Three hundred pounds!” Evelyn said.
    Jonathan clutched his sister’s arm, whispering, “Are you mad? A year’s stipend for that blackguard?”
    Evelyn looked daggers at her brother and her mouth formed, but she did not speak the word, “Hamanaptra.”
    The warden, however, did not even reply to this latest offer. Down on the gallows, the hangman was saying to O’Connell, “Any last request?”
    “Yeah—could we do this tomorrow, instead? That fish-head lunch just isn’t settling.”
    That stopped the hangman cold—he’d never had such a request—and he turned, and yelling, repeated the plea for the balcony, though the warden and his guests had heard every word.
    Interrupting, the warden said, “No, he can’t wait until tomorrow. Get on with it!”
    Embarrassed, the hangman gave O’Connell a why-I-oughta look, and grabbed the trapdoor lever.
    “Five hundred pounds,” Evelyn said firmly.
    Jonathan covered his face with a hand.
    The warden looked at Evelyn, calling out to the hangman, “A moment! . . . Five hundred pounds?”
    “Yes.”
    Hassan placed a hand on Evelyn’s leg, just above the knee. “I will consent, if you grant me some other inducement, not financial . . . a personal kindness. I am a lonely man in a difficult job.”
    Evelyn plucked his greasy paw from her leg with the thumb and middle finger of her right hand, as if removing a particularly odious bug. She turned away and made a sound in her chest that conveyed her revulsion.
    The warden had his pride, which was wounded by rude, crude laughter from the windows where prisoners had witnessed the rebuff. In the thumbs-down gesture that had been good enough for Nero, Hassan cued his hangman to pull the lever.
    Which the hangman did.
    The trapdoor fell away, under O’Connell’s boots, and as Evelyn screamed, “Nooooo!”, the former corporal of the Foreign Legion dropped through the hole, the rope jerking tight.
    O’Connell’s body snapped at the end of the rope . . .
    . . . but he was clearly alive, struggling, kicking!
    “Ah!” the warden said, and touched the fingers of his hands together playfully, “a rare treat: His neck did not break. We have the pleasure of watching him take his time strangling to death.”
    The audience in the barred windows gave the show mixed reviews: Some were amused, and hooting with laughter; others were angry, possibly outraged that the prisoner should be tortured so slowly, or was it annoyance over having the fun of seeing a neck broken denied them? Jonathan certainly took no pleasure in seeing the beggar turning various shades of red, struggling so piteously.
    Evelyn was whispering in the warden’s ear. Surely she wasn’t telling him about . . .
    “Hamanaptra?” the warden said, eyes wide. “You lie!”
    “Never! I’m a respectable woman.”
    Hassan frowned. “This filthy godless son of a pig knows where to find the City of the Dead, and all its treasures?”
    “Yes . . . and if you cut him down, we will give you five percent.”
    O’Connell, strangling and