However, as
Cockatoo had brought in the Peruvian's card, Braddock expected
his visitor and wheeled to face him.
"How are you, sir?" said he, extending his hand. "I am glad to
see you, as I hear that you know all about this mummy of Inca
Caxas."
"Well, I do," answered De Gayangos, sitting down in the chair
which his host pushed forward. "But may I ask who told you that
this mummy was that of the last Inca?"
Braddock pinched his plump chin and replied readily, enough.
"Certainly, Don Pedro. I wished to learn the difference in
embalming between the Egyptians and the ancient Peruvians, and
looked about for a South American corpse. Unexpectedly I saw in
several European newspapers and in two English journals that a
green Peruvian mummy was for sale at Malta for one thousand
pounds. I sent my assistant, Sidney Bolton, to buy it, and he
managed to get it, coffin and all, for nine hundred. While in
Malta, and before he started back in The Diver with the mummy, he
wrote me an account of the transaction. The seller--who was the
son of a Maltese collector--told Bolton that his father had
picked up the mummy in Paris some twenty and more years ago. It
came from Lima some thirty years back, I believe, and, according
to the collector in Paris, was the corpse of Inca Caxas.
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