The arrival of Eugene Corbeck, a colleague of Abel’s freshly returned from Egypt, sheds some light on the situation and raises the stakes considerably. More troubling, Margaret Trelawny seems to gradually be falling under the influence of this same threat, as her personality shifts subtly but unmistakably. Ross and the others realize they are guarding against a deadly and likely supernatural threat - and have no real defense against it. The latter directive turns out to be prophetic: the following night, even with people in the room, Abel is attacked again by an unseen force. Abel Trelawny is in a cataleptic state unfamiliar to medical science, but seems to have anticipated trouble: he has left explicit written instructions that he is not to be moved from his Egyptian room, and furthermore he is to be guarded at all times by no less than one man and one woman. A Doctor Winchester has already been called to tend to the patient, and Ross quickly calls a sharp police officer, Sergeant Daw, to assist in the investigation. Abel has been found in his room of Egyptian antiquities, lying on the floor near his safe with his wrist horribly mauled by some animal. When Malcolm Ross arrives at the Trelawny house, he finds a scene in near chaos. The Jewel of Seven Stars is relatively unknown, which is surprising - it is one of the earlier stories about the reanimation of an ancient Egyptian mummy, and it is quite a thrilling tale! It also uses state-of-the-art science of the time to bolster the story - with rather amusing results. (And there’s this one that I recently acquired and am dying to read.) He wrote a number of other supernatural thrillers, The Lair of the White Worm being perhaps the next best known. Stoker is, of course, best known for his influential 1897 novel Dracula, which really sparked the entire modern vampire craze (though there were precursors). Cover of the first edition of “The Jewel of Seven Stars”.

The jewel of seven stars by bram stoker