Brad back in tow, we all waited until nightfall after the Foundation shut its doors, then launched our planned infiltration plot. It was supposed to be a quick heist, and Bridget had the keys to get into the rooms and building proper, so it wasn't too hard. The fog was thick as hell that evening, pervasive and grey as the Thames. It was cool, semi-cloudy. Bridget, knowing the roads of London far better than the rest of us, took to the wheel and drove, much to everyone's concern...
"Uh, you sure this is safe with all this fog?" Brad asked, gazing at the pea soup thick swirling vapor.
"Oh, nonsense," Bridget replied calmly, a true Brit through and through. "I drive through this all the time. Besides, this is nothing compared to last week..."
Brad wisely didn't ask about Bridget's driving skills in the fog after that.
We arrived safely and parked in the alley nearby, Bridget cutting the lights as she did so. To be honest, I don't know why she's helping... curiosity at Gavigan's close watch of Clayton earlier, I guess. It was simple enough to get out and skulk around, looking for any guards... and we found them. Four or five burly, Arabic-speaking men guarding the front door and loading docks, plus one Englishman with a flashlight circling the grounds. Bridget knew how to get in through the back, and assured us she could get us out of any scrapes. Thanks to the fog, sneaking around back was easy... well, for most of us. Clayton and Bridget seemed to have quite a bit of difficulty with it.
"Bridget," he murmured, glancing at the flashlight beam coming his way, "Don't ask questions. Just follow my lead, okay?"
"What are you tal-?" She began, only for Clayton to grab her and engage in a passionate kiss. Don't ask me how I stifled my laughter, but between you and me, I think they'd make quite a nice couple... Besides, the guard didn't think much of it and instead shooed the "lovebirds" away with his flashlight. Not that they didn't sneak back moments later... Once everyone rejoined, Ralph and Brad set to work on the back door lock, hoping to pick it adroitly before the guard returned on his patrol. Brad had trouble, unfortunately, but Ralph managed to get it jimmied easily and quickly ushered us into the building.
The halls of a museum like the Penhew Foundation are incredibly quiet at night, silent save for the footsteps of guards traversing it. Sneaking as best as possible, we crept to hide in the nearby stairwell to the upstairs. Ralph then brought up a good point.
"Hey," he whispered, his tone serious, "I think we should look through the upstairs file... maybe there's some evidence on Gavigan's acquisitions there."
This seemed a good idea, so we moved to the Egyptian collection upstairs. Have I mentioned how spooky a pharonic death mask appears at night? It looks like a weird glimmering spirit staring you down. And the canopic jars and carvings of gods don't make you feel any better; it's like a bunch of creepy dead animals looking at you... but at least they're all just fictional, right? No such thing as baboon-headed men... or ibis-headed men either. Bridget, with her keys, was able to get everyone into the file rooms easily... well, all but herself, that is. As she tripped and stumbled, so too did Clayton... who quickly made himself scarce behind a glass case and remained there as the guard came to investigate the noise.
"Oi, who's there?" the guard asked, shining his flashlight beam... and pausing when he saw Bridget. Confusion marred his face a moment. "Ms. Atwater? What are you doing here so late at night?"
Bridget was caught on the spot. I don't know if she was scared of getting in trouble, but she's certainly not good at lying... Her stammered attempts to convince the guard she was only working late didn't do anything to persuade him.
"Wait a tick... you never work late!" He said, incredulous. "And didn't Mr. Gavigan give you the week off?"
"Well he did, yes," Bridget continued, finally regaining her composure, "But you see, something came up and I had to come back to finish my research on an old project..."
"Well, alright... but I'll need to tell Mr. Gavigan about this, you know he doesn't like employees up here too long after hours."
"I'm well aware, Richard..."
"Just lock up when you leave. Good evening, Ms. Atwater."
"Good evening..."
With that, Bridget stepped aside, letting the guard go on his way, but Ralph was waiting as he passed the door. He'd realized that he'd need to knock the guard out if they stood any chance of Gavigan not knowing we'd been there, so he snuck up behind the guy with his nightstick and coshed him over the head. The man dropped like a leaden weight with a soft groan of pain.
"Goodness!" Bridget exclaimed, watching as Ralph and Clayton emerged from hiding. "Did you really have to do that to poor Richard?"
"Yes, he'd have told Gavigan," Ralph replied bluntly, and with that he and Clayton started moving the unconscious guard into one of the nearby examination rooms.As Ralph picked up the man, however, his keen eyes happened to glimpse something ominous on the guard's forearm, tattooed there in black and red ink...
"Guys! Psst!" he murmured, pointing our attention to it sharply, and then we all saw it, clear as day. It was an inverted ankh, stylized in form just as we had seen before so many times in connection to this Brotherhood of the Pharaoh... Was this guard also a cultist? Bridget even was shocked, having no idea Ralph was consorting with such disreputable types... Did Gavigan know his employees were Brotherhood members? Or, worse yet... was he consorting with the Brotherhood? Could he somehow have ties to them?
These questions unfortunately went unanswered as nobody found anything of import in the file rooms. Lacking any more interest upstairs, we cleaned up the place and returned to the main hallway. Most of the offices were locked, though there was a storage closet where we saw only boxes and crates once Brad got the lock jimmied open. Far more interesting, and more curious, was that Gavigan's waiting room was unlocked... and so was his office door.
It was the same inside Gavigan's office at night as it was during the day. Even the floor safe was left open. The desk yielded no clues, so Clayton moved towards the safe, looking inside. Five pound notes, hundreds of them, littered the inside in thick stacks... enough to make anyone a very rich man if they took them. But Clayton is only interested in treasures of an ancient bent, not plain money... and he was even less interested when he realized something else fishy about the notes.
"Wait a second," he replied, motioning Ralph over. "All these bills have the same number on them... a palindrome!"
"Marked bills," Ralph replied, examining the currency. "These are a honeypot... he must have thought someone would break in and steal from him... you don't think he was expecting us, do you?"
"Well I hope not, or our goose is cooked," Clayton replied, setting the bills back where they belonged. "We better finish up in here, and fast, before someone notices."
"Speaking of noticing," Bridget murmured, pointing a book on the shelf out, "Come take a look at this, you lot..."
Our gazes turned to the bookshelf, and to the book she found in particular. She knocked on it and it echoed with a dull thump. It was hollow and recently moved... a false book. Carefully, Bridget pulled out the book, and a segment of shelf moved away. A secret passage, as we all suspected. And inside? Well, we entered carefully as possible, scared that Gavigan was waiting to ambush us. But alas, all we found was the other side of the storage crates, and a very odd, dusty sarcophagus in the center of the room.
It was magnificent, but bizarre. Black and gold and red, decorated with hieroglyphs and with a strange malevolence, it lay in the middle of the floor like a dead man. But its face... the death mask was strange. The pharaoh's eyes were red like rubies, and glimmered with malice... but that was the only facial feature it had. The rest was a blank, black stone mask, out of which those eyes appeared to watch everyone and everything. Bridget had no idea what Pharaoh it referred to, and didn't want to find out by translating the hieroglyphs. Nobody dared approach it... not until Ralph noticed dusty marks near the sarcophagus, indicated that it had been recently moved. Then he noticed the footprints in the dust nearby, and edged over, scrutinizing.
"Guys," he responded, a slight smirk crossing his harsh Mohawk features. "There's a hidden button in one of the eyes."
He pressed it, and up and out swung the sarcophagus... clearly, it was a mere replica, not the real thing. Underneath, a set of stairs led down into the dark abyss, into the basement we had to assume... Nervous and careful, we crept down the stairs one by one, until a pull string hit Ralph in the face and he tugged on it, shutting the sarcophagus behind us and illuminating a bizarre cache of treasures.
The scope of this place... I wish I could explain how many strange Egyptian artifacts we found, but I fear I will only be able to explain a few. The place held statues of bizarre beasts, relics of strange blank-faced death masks, and a sinister-looking fresco chipped from a temple wall that held carvings of a faceless, inky black pharaoh holding aloft a strange jewel, with images of familiar monsters beside him...
"Wait, I know this figure," Bridget murmured, looking it over. "This is Nefr-ren-Ka, he was supposedly a wicked man who usurped the pharaoh's throne and took over, sometimes known as the Black Pharaoh... But nobody actually believed he existed, he's only a legend..."
"I dunno, Bridget, that stone looks awful real to me," Ted replied, tapping on it. "No way this is a replica, this is the real deal..."
"So, they're the Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh, then," Bridget muttered, and we all realized the sinister nature of such a thing. If these people supported a legendary usurper and traitor, then there was no way they were up to anything good... as if their tailing us around hadn't proven that already.
Besides the statues and fresco, there was jewelry as dark and alluring as it was beautiful, and all with that inverted ankh. The scope of it was staggering. If anything proved Gavigan had Brotherhood ties, this was surely it... the shock alone made us reel, especially Bridget, but none more so than Brad. He observed it all, taking it in slowly, but it was the carving of the serpentine winged creature that drew his eye, and he suddenly began to violently shake as memories of New York flooded back to haunt him.
"O-Oh... God, that... that thing," he murmured, and Ralph stepped aside to console him as the rest of us kept exploring.
Bridget's interest was drawn to the hieroglyphs on the fresco, and she began to translate. Meanwhile, it was Ted who found the fake passports hidden in a small chest, five of them to be exact. They all belonged to Edward Gavigan, and aside from them there were enough supplies down here for him to hide out in this cache for a good long while. Clayton's attention turned to two strange crates as Ted followed to investigate.
"Hey, look at this," he said, pointing at the shipping labels. One label read "Randolph Shipping Co." and had an Australian address. The other read "Ho Fong Imports" and had a Shanghai address. "Maybe there's something hidden in there..."
Ted agreed, and helped Clayton lever the larger crate open. Inside... well, they found a strange statue, and wouldn't let me see it when I asked. But according to them, it was a bronze oriental statue of a grotesquely bloated slug-woman of some sort, holding a folded fan and with several Chinese sickles on her belt. Neither one could stand to look at the hideous thing for long, and they put the thing back before quickly turning their attention to the small crate. Meanwhile, Ralph had calmed Brad down enough to help investigate, and together they all opened the small crate. Inside was a strange octopoid statue which nobody could identify, but which Clayton felt compelled to touch... and just as soon let go of, claiming it had shocked him. Ralph was curious, and picked it up with insulated hands to be sure it wasn't electrically wired, but found nothing that could have delivered any sort of shock, and instead turned to investigate a nearby chest. Inside this one, he found a gun and 50 bullets for it, along with some bizarre objects... a set of strange, lustrous silver daggers, and a jar of oddly glimmering powder. Concerned the powder was narcotic, he took both it and one of the daggers as evidence, letting Ted have the second one.
Clayton became interested in Bridget's work as the others puzzled over the bizarre statues, and walked over to help puzzle out the translation. What they translated was strange: descriptions of flaming living stars, of star-steeds that came from the skies, of charnel feeders that lived below ground and of great serpentine beings that served this Black Pharaoh figure... and, most dreadful of all, a long passage about the terrible Black Pharaoh himself, claiming that he was a many-masked god who came to Egypt in the 2nd dynasty and ruled with an iron fist under the given name Nefr-ren-Ka. It all seemed to make a bizarre and eerie sort of sense, but there was one part about it we couldn't quite translate or place.
Her eyes glanced over the glyphs, scanning, and she mouthed syllables silently to herself as she translated.
"I think... based on this glyph," she replied, touching a carven lion symbol, "This says, ni har lut hotep. It's a name..."
"Ni har lut hotep? That's what I thought, but that's just gibberish," Clayton murmured, confused. "I mean, hotep is a word in Egyptian, it means 'peace' or 'satisfaction', but the rest is just nonsense."
"No it isn't," Bridget insisted, an eyebrow raised. "It has meaning... it translates to, 'There is no peace at the gateway', and ni-har is intended to be pronounced as a slurred set of syllables..."
Clayton turned away, and started turning the strange syllables over in his mouth. "Ni-har... Niar-lut-hotep... Nyarlathotep?"
The room darkened, and we all felt a chill down our spine at that name. None of us could explain it, but the sound of it... was wrong. Terribly, dreadfully wrong, as if a dark presence had suddenly fixed its gaze upon us. Brad, realizing the weight of what Bridget had said... went silent. Suddenly silent... Could this have been the real name of the Black Pharaoh, the one this Brotherhood apparently took as a figurehead?
Then, we all heard the footsteps upstairs, followed by a familiar voice speaking to a guard - the voice of Edward Gavigan. His footsteps were getting closer to the shelf, and we all panicked.
"The book!" Ralph hissed sharply, "Who took the false book?"
"We gotta get out of here before he comes down!" Ted replied, already drawing his weapon in case of attack.
Then, Clayton saved the day, pointing out a hidden door in the floor. Quickly, we opened it, and found ourselves in the crawlspace, hands and knees muddied... and not a second too soon as we all heard Gavigan's steps hit the first step down into his cache. What in the hell was he doing here this late at night? We had no time to question.
I don't want to tell you how damn terrifying it is to nearly get caught stealing from a renowned Egyptologist, but getting out of the building was all that was on our minds at that point. Bridget found us a way out of the crawlspace, and into the basement proper. Unfortunately, a guard was apparently notified, and he was coming downstairs too - we heard the elevator in the corner rumbling...
"The coal chute!" Ralph murmured sharply, and we all clambered towards and up it. It took a good deal of climbing, and to be honest I don't know how we managed to make no noise even after two of us slipped back down, but made it we did. Out into the foggy night we crept, dirty and frightened, back to our car and away from the Penhew Foundation... but as we drove off, Ted noticed something.
"Hey, it's Gavigan," he said, and pointed to the figure leaving by the front door. He was right. Sure enough, we could all see Gavigan, looking a bit concerned, strolling out of the front doors and heading down the street.
"Someone tail him!" Ralph whispered harshly, and Ted nodded before getting out.
"Leave the Yankee to me," Ted replied. "I'll meet up with y'all back at Bridget's. If I don't come back in a few hours, assume I'm dead in the Thames..."
With that, the Southerner slipped into his bounty hunting mode, just as easily as he slipped into the fog, and he vanished. The rest of us, meanwhile, headed home for the evening, wary of being tailed. We were exhausted, and Bridget looked completely terrified of both us and what we had found besides. I can only imagine what she must think of us after this little episode... But it's no matter. We could all use some rest for now. The worst is, after all, behind us until tomorrow...