Ron Goulart - The Curse of the Obelisk

THE CURSE OF THE OBELISK 1
CHAPTER 1
Paris in the spring of 1897 was a city of gaiety, light and movement, pervaded with an air of
joyous living. An immense city, full of broad handsome streets, magnificent buildings, grand open
spaces with fountains and statues, great public gardens and parks, miles and miles of stores and
shops filled with the most beautiful and interesting things that are made or found in any part of the
world.
Harry Challenge didn't much want to be there.
As he went striding along the twilight Boulevard Saint Germain, unlit cigar clenched in his
teeth, he made a list of places he'd rather be.
A lean man of middle height, Harry was dark haired and clean shaven. His tan, weather-beaten
face tended to give people the impression he was a few years older than his thirty-one years. He
wore, as he usually did, a dark suit. His hat was soft brimmed, and in his snug shoulder holster
rested a Colt .38 revolver.
"Fool's errand," Harry muttered to himself. Not for the first time.
An open carriage rolled by, the horses' hooves clacking on the smooth pavement. The satin-clad
woman in the carriage glanced approvingly at Harry, and the light of a street lamp made the
diamonds in her tiara and on the collar of her little white Maltese dog sparkle. Scowling, the dog
yapped at Harry.
He tipped his hat to both of them and hurried on.
The street was crowded. People strolling, people sitting at the little tables in front of cafés,
workmen in blue blouses and wooden shoes heading homeward, even a priest in long black clothes
and a broad felt hat taking the air.
Absently Harry patted the pocket of his vest that contained a folded copy of the latest cable
from his father in New York. The message had been waiting for him when he checked into his far
too fancy Paris hotel this afternoon. What it said was:
Dear son: Get off your rump. Go see our half-wit client. Name is Maurice Allegre. He runs the
Musée des Antiquités on Rue Balbec. If you ask me he's got bats in his bonnet, but his money's
good. You find out what's really going on. I doubt his museum is haunted. Your loving father,
the Challenge International Detective Agency.
An earlier message, which had reached Harry while he was finishing up a case in the capital
city of the small sovereign nation of Orlandia had mentioned a mummy that roamed the museum
by night.
Harry'd handled several supernatural cases of late, too many in fact, and he was hoping M.
Allegre would turn out to be, as his father implied, suffering from hallucinations.
He passed the Café de Flor, dropped a few centimes in the dented copper cup of the ragged
blind man standing just beyond its bright Art Nouveau facade and turned onto the Rue Balbec.