Lot No. 249

What if the most brilliant mind on campus chose the dead as his weapon?

First published in 1892, Lot No. 249 helped define the modern mummy genre long before Hollywood's bandaged monsters. In this gripping novella, the quiet world of academia collides with ancient sorcery when Edward Bellingham-eccentric Egyptologist and target of cruel pranks-decides to punish his rivals through arcane secrets buried beneath three thousand years of sand.

Told from the viewpoint of Bellingham's wary classmate, the story unfolds in fog-shrouded quadrangles, lamp-lit libraries, and narrow dormitory passages where something huge drags its bandaged limbs in the darkness. Each new attack leaves the university authorities baffled and the students terrified, until a desperate showdown forces reason to confront the supernatural.

This modern translation sharpens Conan Doyle's taut prose while preserving every pulse of suspense, dry wit, and period detail.

What You'll Discover in This Modern Translation:
A pioneering mummy tale that predates-and inspires-20th-century cinemaAn atmospheric clash of science, scholarship, and the occultThemes of intellectual arrogance, colonial plunder, and karmic revengeRazor-edged pacing and an unforgettable climactic duelConan Doyle's rarely seen gift for outright horror beyond Sherlock Holmes
Dread, scholarship, and ancient wrath converge in a novella that still feels frighteningly fresh.