Lord of the Silent: A Novel of Suspense (12 page)

of my coat. The glow of light surrounding us came, as I discovered, from Emerson's torch, which he had propped on the seat. With the gentleness and efficiency that mark his movements, he bound strips of cloth around my upper arm, muttering all the while. "Not so bad as I feared. My darling girl, what a bloody idiot you are! Hang on, my love, I'll have you back at the Club in a few minutes and we will find a physician-" "There is no need for that," I replied. "Where is my parasol? Find my parasol, Emerson, I think I may have dropped it." Swearing vehemently with relief and exasperation, Emerson located the object and tossed it into the cab before he mounted the box. The poor horse was in an extreme state of agitation, but Emerson's firm hands and calm voice soon had it under control. As he drove he kept turning to look back at me, uttering exclamations of concern and complaint. "How many times have I told you not to attack an armed man with that confounded parasol? Are you conscious, sweetheart? You have no more sense of self-preservation than Ramses, and considering that you are only half his size, your impetuosity verges on feeblemindedness. I ought to have you locked up. Speak to me, my darling. Have you fainted?" "Certainly not. It is only a scratch. Curse it, I believe I have lost my second-best hat." 6

"What an inept, amateurish attack," Emerson remarked sourly. "And after all the trouble we went to," I agreed. Meeting one another's eyes, we simultaneously burst out laughing. It had been a ridiculous performance, especially the ending, when we tiptoed through the darkened house like a pair of burglars in order to avoid waking Fatima or Gargery. I doubted we could conceal the truth from them indefinitely, though. Emerson's thick hair had absorbed the worst of the blow and the bump was not very conspicuous, but my nice ensemble was ruined and even if I managed to hide it, Fatima would notice it was missing and demand to know what I had done with it. I allowed Emerson to help me out of my bloodstained garments and tend to my little wound. Wrapped in a comfortable but becoming rose silk dressing gown, with a glass of whiskey in my hand, and my husband sitting close by me on the settee, I felt fully restored and ready to discuss the events that had transpired. "The most interesting aspect of the evening," Emerson went on, "is that we seem to have attracted a new group of enemies. I don't believe Asad had a hand in the business." "Their intent may have been to keep him from approaching us." "That doesn't make sense, Peabody. One of them took the place of our driver, which could be easily accomplished. The other must have been nearby, waiting and watching; if Asad had tried to get to us, the second man had only to knock him on the head or drag him away. By all accounts he's a timid, undersized chap. We, on the other hand, are known to be formidable fighters. Why tackle us-and with only two men? By Gad, it's a confounded insult!" "Perhaps the attack was not meant to succeed. The fellow who attempted to pull me out of the carriage did not draw a weapon until after I had him pinned against the wall with six inches of steel in his body." Emerson let out another guffaw and threw his arm round my shoulders. "Don't exaggerate, Peabody. If you had put six inches of steel into him he wouldn't have been able to scamper away so handily. I am profoundly sorry I ever gave you that damned sword-parasol." "You are confusing the issue, my dear." "Hmmm, yes." Emerson put his glass on the table and took out his pipe. "You have a theory, do you, as to who is behind this latest encounter?" "An idea only. What Cyrus would call a hunch." "Ah. Would you care to tell me what it is?" "No, I would not." Emerson removed his arm and drew a little away. "I have a hunch too." "I expected you would." "I am not going to tell you either." "I expected you would not." Emerson scooped me up and put me on his knee. Holding me close, he remarked, "I could go on sparring with you all night, my darling, but you need to rest. You lost a half cup or so of blood tonight. Before I tuck you in, tell me what you want to do about this. Are we going to tell the children?" "Oh, Emerson, I don't know ..." I had not realized how weary I was until I lay against his broad breast and felt his strong arms enclosing me. "We agreed not to keep things from one another, but if Ramses and Nefret discover that we have been attacked they will come dashing back to Cairo in order to protect us." "I suppose they might," Emerson said, in tones of mild surprise. "No need, of course, but .. .Well. Hmmm. What about Gargery and Fatima and the others?" "I would like to keep it from them if we can, and I believe we have a good chance of doing so if I can get rid of that suit. I will bundle it up and take it to the dig tomorrow and bury it." "Won't Fatima notice it is missing?" "By the time she does, I will have thought of something." "I'm sure you will. Good Gad, life would be much simpler if we didn't have to deceive our friends as well as our enemies." He rose and carried me into the next room. Naturally I felt perfectly well next morning and was ready to return to work. Some persons might have found it strange that we would go on with our excavations as if nothing had happened, but for the moment we were at an impasse. There was no way of tracing the men who had attacked us; they had only to lose themselves in the crowded byways of Cairo. We had left the cab at the Turf Club, in charge of the doorman, on the assumption that its owner (assuming he was still alive) would look for it there, since it was there we had hired him. Such proved to be the case, as we learned later that day from the driver himself, who came looking for us to remind us that he had not been paid. He added, somewhat plaintively, that we owed him something extra for the inconvenience. I could not but agree. Being struck over the head, bundled up in a sack, and thrust into a dark corner behind a rubbish heap is unquestionably inconvenient. Unfortunately the driver had nothing useful to contribute. He had not even seen the man who took his place, for he had been asleep when he was knocked unconscious. It had taken him some time to free himself. The actual work of excavation was proceeding well enough. William Amherst had proved to be a great help, and I took a certain modest pride in having being instrumental in his reformation. However, his abilities were limited. He was a fair copyist-though not in Ramses's league-and a trained excavator, but he was no use at all when it came to bones, and we were getting a lot of them. The day after our little adventure we cleared the third of the burial shafts and found another set of bones, enclosed in a rather attractive wooden coffin. The bones themselves were not attractive. Bits of them protruded at ungainly angles from the mass of rotten mummy wrappings, and the skull had been separated from the body. It had been placed at the foot of the coffin, between two large cylinder jars. Its fleshless grin was the first thing we saw when the lid was raised. "Dear me," I remarked. "How odd. Was the injury pre- or postmortem, do you think?" "I don't know," Emerson growled. "And I won't, until Nefret can examine the cursed thing. There's another skeleton behind the coffin. No sign of mummy wrappings . .." It took the rest of the morning to get the coffin out and up the narrow shaft. I feared that the bones had got shaken up in the process, but I did not look, since we were about to stop for luncheon. After the men had taken the coffin off to the house we opened the picnic basket and William said, "I will get on with clearing the burial chamber this afternoon, sir, if you like." "Photographs first," Emerson grunted. "That second skeleton is all jumbled about." "We might leave it in situ," I suggested. "Until Nefret gets back. And perhaps it might be advisable to wait for her before we investigate the other burial shafts." Emerson's eyes narrowed. "And wait for Ramses before we clear the chapel? Curse it, Peabody, I can read your mind like an open book. What alternative were you about to propose? If it is one of the queens' pyramids-" "You promised me I could have one of them." Emerson removed his pith helmet, flung it onto the ground, wiped his sweating forehead with his sleeve, and took a deep breath- preparatory, I presumed, to a long, loud lecture. His broad breast swelled. "Buttons, Emerson," I reminded him. "Some of them are about to pop off, and I do get tired of sewing them on." "What? Oh." Emerson looked down. "Peabody, you have a positive genius for getting me off the track." "I beg your pardon, my dear. Do go on." "Hmph. I was about to say that there is nothing in those damned pyramids, that they are in a dangerous state of collapse, and that they are not mine to dispose of. We are here on sufferance as it is." "That is just an excuse. They are part of Herr Junker's concession, and you have never hesitated to break the terms of a concession when you felt like it. Who is going to prevent you?" "Prevent you, you meant. He stands before you, Peabody." "It was only a suggestion," I said, for I had learned that the best way of handling Emerson when he gets his back up is to wait awhile and come at him from another direction at another time. "We will, of course, finish with the mastaba." And then I made the fatal mistake of adding, "We've been hauling the fill all the way out to the edge of the escarpment. Perhaps we could find a dump site closer at hand. The one to the southwest, for instance. Junker and Reisner have both used it." Emerson said, "Hmmmm," and stroked his chin. I did not see him again until late afternoon. William had finished clearing the burial chamber, and wanted to know what he should do next. He had become fairly comfortable with me, but he would not have dared pick up a potsherd without Emerson's permission. Not until after I had scanned the farther terrain and shouted his name several times did I behold the familiar form striding toward me. He was bareheaded, as usual, and covered with dust from the top of his black hair to his boots. The pockets of his shirt and trousers bulged. His hands looked like those of a laborer, the nails torn and the fingers scraped raw. "For pity's sake, Emerson, what have you been up to now?" I demanded. "Digging," said Emerson. "That is the occupation of an archaeologist, my dear. I found-" "Where are your gloves?" "Cursed if I know. Stop fussing, Peabody. I decided to investigate the dump you were talking about. Do you know that none of our predecessors bothered sifting the fill? That heap of rubble is full of objects they overlooked. I found several interesting things." He began unloading his pockets. At first glance the fragmentary scraps of stone looked like rubbish, but Emerson's eye cannot be faulted. A closer look assured me that one bit was a miniature foot that must have been part of a statuette. "Very nice," I said. "But hardly worth the effort." "That statement," said Emerson, giving me a stern look, "violates every principle of archaeology I have endeavored to teach you. No scrap is too small, no effort too great." "The stela fragment Sennia found was planted, Emerson." Emerson flinched. He hates it when I appear to read his thoughts. "That was Gargery's theory. What does he know about excavation? I rather enjoyed it, you know. It has been a long time since I got my hands dirty." "Nonsense, you are always getting them dirty-and scraped and bruised and cut. You might at least have worn your gloves." "What gloves?" A hideous foreboding filled me. "Emerson, you are not planning to move and re-excavate that dump, are you? It is twenty feet high and covers hundreds of square feet!" "Someone will have to do it someday, Peabody. Can't leave a thing like that standing. There may be tombs under it." "There are plenty of tombs right here. And pyramids." Emerson was beginning to react unfavorably to that word. After he had finished expressing himself, he announced we would go back to clearing the chapel before we opened another burial shaft, and I congratulated myself on finding something with which to distract him from his wretched dump heap. Little did I know that we were about to come on something that would distract him even more effectively. We found it an hour later. To be strictly accurate, the discoverer was Ismail, one of Daoud's young sons, whom he was training as a basket man. Working under the critical eye of his father, Ismail was removing the fill from the interior of a small chamber that had been added to the larger adjoining mastaba at a much later date by a man who could not afford a separate tomb of his own. Like most of the later additions, it was in wretched condition, and if there had been any reliefs on the upper parts of the walls, they were completely gone. Many excavators demanded no particular skill from the men who performed this heavy task, but our men were taught to watch for'anything that might be an artifact or a piece of one. Sometimes, if one of them came across a particularly interesting item, he would call out. Ismail did not call out; he screamed at the top of his lungs. His cry was echoed by a bellow from Daoud that brought Emerson running and jolted me out of the dreamy state which generally affects me after several hours of sifting rubbish. When I arrived on the scene, Emerson was down into the pit brushing sand away from something and William had joined me, and Daoud was shaking the afflicted Ismail. "What way is that for a man to behave? You will not hear the Sitt Hakim scream when she finds a dead body." "No," Emerson said. "She is accustomed to them. Don't scold the boy, Daoud. Let's have some light down here." "What is it?" William asked. "Another skeleton?" He turned on his torch and aimed it at the corner where Emerson was kneeling. I was able to catch the torch before he dropped it. I had been conscious of the smell for several minutes. It was no skeleton Ismail had found, nor an ancient mummy. Some of them can be rather nasty looking, but a fresh corpse in which the process of decay is well advanced is even nastier. The unfortunate youth had uncovered, not a hand or foot, which would have been bad enough, but a face. The eye sockets and open mouth were filled with sand. I heard the unmistakable sounds of someone being violently sick, and deduced, since he was no longer beside me, that the sufferer was William. I was not feeling very well either, but I kept the torch steady. Emerson rose to his feet and held up an object for my inspection. It was the twisted wire frame of a pair of eyeglasses. FROM LETTER COLLECTION T Dearest Mother and Father, I write from your "open-air drawing room" on the upper deck of the Amelia. It is late afternoon, almost teatime, and the awning has been rolled back; there is a lovely breeze and the cliffs on the east bank are turning gold. We will stop tonight at el- Til and spend a few days at Amarna checking on the condition of the tombs and "making our presence known," as you suggested. We will of course invoke the dread names of the Father of Curses and the Sitt Hakim, and I don't doubt that will be all the authority we need. I meant to begin this letter earlier and give you a kind of running journal of the voyage, to be posted when we reach Luxor. Laziness is my only excuse-if that is an acceptable excuse! It is astonishing how quickly the time passes on the river, and how easy it is for even energetic persons to relapse into a pleasant languor. Mother and Father, I cannot tell you how grateful I am to you for suggesting and arranging this-especially for arranging it as you did. Believe me, I know how complicated it was, especially with regard to Sennia. I love the dear little thing, but she would have been all over the boat, hanging from the rail and trying to climb the mast and coaxing the crew to tell her stories, with Gargery puffing and panting in her wake. Ramses is looking better than he has for a long time. He is even putting on a bit of weight, if you can believe it! Fatima must have taught Maaman some of her favorite recipes, and instructed him to feed us every few hours. Two days later. I've lost track of the date. Isn't that shameful? The