Silver Tomb (The Lazarus Longman Chronicles Book 2) (13 page)

The people within were sitting quietly, evidently shocked by the sounds they had been hearing throughout the hotel, and were doing their best to wash away their fear with strong spirits. Lazarus scanned the room. They were mostly Europeans, sitting in small groups, dressed in their evening attire. They went up to the bar where an Egyptian in a tarboosh was serving drinks.

“There is trouble afoot, as you are no doubt aware,” Lazarus said to the barman in a quiet tone. “And it’s most likely coming this way. Do you have any firearms to hand?”

The barman’s eyes grew wide at this.

“Come now, man, my friend is serious,” said von Eichendorf.

The Egyptian nodded and fumbled with a key in his pocket, then disappeared into a back room.

Lazarus overheard some bore at a table near the door; “Why in God’s name have they started letting bloody gippie women in here? The staff are quite tolerable but do we have to put up with their wives sauntering around here in their morbid garb, or has she just wandered in off the street to beg? I’ll give her bloody
baksheesh
if she comes back!”

Lazarus’s eyes swiveled. The cloaked form exited the bar and swung the double doors shut behind it. “Quick!” he yelled, whacking his knuckles against von Eichendorf’s barrel chest.

They slammed against the doors which didn’t give an inch. There was the sound of wrenching iron in the corridor beyond. Lazarus hauled on the handles but found the doors jammed fast. People were rising from their seats behind them.

“Crafty bugger,” said von Eichendorf.

”Yes,” Lazarus agreed. “First we locked him in and now he has returned the favor.”

“Gentlemen, if you please!” said the bartender, approaching with a twelve gram William Powell and Son double-barreled shotgun in his hand. Lazarus and von Eichendorf dived for cover as he aimed it where the two doors joined, and fired off both rounds. The wood flew away in splinters. Sparks briefly showed from where the pellets tore through whatever iron implement the creature had fastened the doors with.

Coughing through the smoke, Lazarus booted the doors open and stepped out into the corridor, sweeping left and right with his revolver. The mangled remains of a cast iron coat rack lay in two halves on either side of the door. That the long implement had been twisted by some incredibly powerful force around the door handles elicited a great deal of discussion from the men and women who were filing out into the corridor.

“Bloody superhuman!” he head one of them say.

They heard gunshots from the other side of the floor and broke into a run. “Damn!” Lazarus said. “He tricked us into the bar and now he’s headed back to get at Katarina.”

They headed towards von Eichendorf’s room, and found the door smashed open and the room empty.

“This way!” said the Baron, heading for the stairwell where the sounds of a struggle could be heard.

There they found Petrie engaged with the creature, his face slowly turning purple as the iron claws dug into his neck. It was trying to force him backwards over the banister where fifty feet of open space yawned behind him.

Lazarus and von Eichendorf hurled themselves at the creature and tried to prize its arms away, but it was too strong. It knocked them both in opposite directions; von Eichendorf against the wall of the stairwell and Lazarus over the banister. He grabbed at the brass railing and found himself dangling over the drop, his fingers clutching at the slippery metal.

The creature had released Petrie and the Egyptologist lay on the floor, barely conscious enough to register the monster’s advances. Lazarus struggled to pull himself up over the railing before the creature could harm his friend more but a gunshot was fired from somewhere and the creature’s glass orb exploded, releasing a spatter of the green liquid. It stumbled in its death throes and fell against the banister mere feet from where Lazarus dangled precariously.

A further two bullets struck the creature, making it topple backwards and fall, sliding over the railing and flapping past Lazarus as it plummeted to the marble floor below.

A hand extended itself to Lazarus and he grasped it, pulling himself up. He found himself looking into the face of Katarina, a smoking gun held in her other hand.

“Another one you owe me, Longman,” she said as he scrambled over the railing, eager to find solid ground to stand on.

“And it won’t be the last, I fear,” he replied. “My thanks. But where the devil did you get to?”

They helped Petrie to his feet. “The monster got past you two, as I expected and came in on us as if the door were firewood,” Katarina explained. “Petrie was unable to get a bullet through its heart but not for lack of trying, so I entangled it in a curtain and we made our escape. I went back to my room to fetch my revolver while Petrie led it on a wild goose chase around the floor.”

“A chase I lost, I fear,” said Petrie, loosening his collar as his face reverted to its normal color.

They looked down at the smashed remains of the mechanical mummy in the broken crater it had made in the marble floor below. One metal limb had come loose and lay a few feet away. Its furnace was dimming and its split boiler swept the floor with steaming liquid. Von Eichendorf groaned and joined them at the railing, rubbing the back of his head where it had struck the wall. He grasped the railing and blinked down at what he was seeing.

“What exactly is the line of work you and Miss Mikolavna are involved in, Mr. Longman?” he asked.

Chapter Thirteen

In which plans are made to thwart Dr. Lindholm

The police arrived, as predicted, far too late to offer any resolution to the situation other than to ask the same questions of everybody more than once. It was Captain Hassanein who headed the investigation, and he was about as happy to see Lazarus and his companions as they were to see him. His success in cracking the ring of antique dealers had given him an even greater sense of self importance, and his attitude was insufferable. Émile Brugsch may have had his name splashed all over the newspapers as the Egyptologist who had discovered the Deir el-Bahari cache, but Hassanein’s assistance, although unaccredited by the press, had no doubt earned him more than his share of recognition in his own circles.

The reaction of the police to the mangled remains of the creature paralleled that of those who had seen it when it had been moving about; horrified, appalled shock. Hassanein demanded to know what the creature was, where it had come from and what its connection was to the three foreigners he was coming to realize spelled bad news whatever they were doing.

Lazarus had briefed Katarina and Petrie before the captain had arrived, and they had their cover story sealed tight. They each answered Hassanein’s tedious questions as honestly as possible, but mentioned nothing of their visit to the City of the Silver Aten, and kept utterly silent about Eleanor Rousseau. The creature, they insisted, seemed to be of an American make, confirmed by the mechanite furnace.

After spending the night walking around in circles in the verbal sense of the term, Hassanein reluctantly admitted that he had got all that could be had from the hotel’s residents. The creature, whatever it was, was a highly offensive fusion of Egypt’s ancient heritage and the industrial oppressiveness of the western world. It was not worth bothering to ask where the mummy had been obtained—mummies were all too easily available to foreigners—and Lazarus smiled to think of how oblivious Hassanein was that this particular mummy came from that very same cache, the discovery of which he was currently milking.

No, the most interesting thing was the mechanite. How had that come into Egypt? Stolen from the Americans? Smuggled here by an American? Had an American put the thing together or had it been a British scientist? Or an Egyptian carried away by the influence more developed countries had exerted on Egypt in recent years? Lazarus offered no theories on this.

When Hassanein and his men finally left, Lazarus, Katarina and Petrie joined Baron von Eichendorf for brandies in his room. They felt like they needed a drink more due to the captain’s grilling than to their encounter with the mummy.

“Well, I hope tonight has put paid to your ideas about Eleanor Rousseau being behind the attacks,” Lazarus told Katarina.

“Why would it?” she replied.

“She’s on her way back to the dig! Her boat is far from Cairo. And besides, there is no room on board it for a mechanical mummy’s sleeping quarters.” As soon as he had finished his sentence he realized his error.

“So you’ve seen the interior of her boat, have you?” Katarina snapped. “Well, I suppose that answers the question of what you’ve been doing with your evenings lately. Isn’t she the fiancé of your friend? Funny way to treat a friend.”

“How dare you!” Lazarus protested weakly, knowing that this was another argument he was not going to win.

Katarina was on her feet and heading towards the door. “And for your information, Longman,” she said by way of parting, “she could have been keeping that creature somewhere else in the city. The lack of arrangements for it on her
dahabeah
doesn’t prove a damn thing!”

Lazarus followed her out into the corridor. “You are so devilishly eager to place the blame at her doorstep, aren’t you?” He didn’t care if they woke the whole hotel arguing in the corridor like this in the small hours. This beef between them needed to be hammered out. “You’ll drum up any theory that suits you!”

“No, I’m just not blind to the facts as you seem to be,” she replied.

“And how exactly am I blind?”

“Because you’re so in love with her that you can’t see beyond the end of your own nose anymore!”

“My God, you’re jealous!” said Lazarus.

Her mouth fell open. “What on Earth...?”

“Come on, Katarina! You know as well as I that there has been something brewing between us ever since Arizona. That journey in the
Santa Bella
was as agonizing for you as it was for me. I don’t know why we didn’t just admit our feelings for each other and made the trip a glorious romance, but we didn’t and now it drives you mad to see me with another woman.”

Her face trembled with rage and she spoke in a slow, cold voice. “You’ve got some funny ideas about yourself, Longman. And about women.” She turned and left him standing in the corridor.

The newspapers for the rest of the week were full of the incident of the ‘Steam-man at the Grand Continental’. Many wild theories were tossed around, but few were taken seriously by the public, who remained as much in the dark about matters as the police.

When Eleanor’s boat docked the following Tuesday, Lazarus met her for lunch in a prearranged cafe. At once it was like old lovers reuniting after a long time apart. The public setting restrained Lazarus from embracing her and kissing her on the mouth. It took every ounce of his self-control, and he had to make do with the memories of their night together on her
dahabeah
while they drank tea, ate sandwiches and made small talk.

“Is everything arranged for the transport of my goods, darling?” she asked him. “All is packed up in crates on my boat, Kiya and all.”

Lazarus was suddenly alarmed by the notion of Eleanor sleeping in such close proximity to that horrible, withered old mummy, but he put his anxiety down to his recent experiences with the more animated brand of dead Egyptian. He reminded himself that Kiya was just a regular embalmed corpse and not one of Lindholm’s abominations.

“All is prepared,” he told her. “I have booked passage for you and your cases on a steamer headed for Marseille, where a train will take to you Paris.”

“Thank you! I knew I could count on you!” Her hand touched his over the small round table that held their tea and sandwiches and he briefly grasped it, conscious of eyes looking in their direction from the other tables. He had noticed before how soft and smooth her skin was, like pale silk. And her perfume... he didn’t know what it was but every time he smelled it he wanted to gulp down great lungfuls.

“For the time being, I think you should stay at the Continental,” he told her. It’s too dangerous down at the docks with Lindholm’s monsters running about. If he gets an inkling that you have departed the site, he might send them after you.”

“Very well,” she said. “I have some information for you in return.”

“Oh?”

“Lindholm is making moves to abandon the site himself. He has had empty crates shipped to him. I have no doubt he is planning to pack his monstrous creations and all his equipment into them for transport.”

“Any markings on the crates?”

“Yes, the name of the Bulaq Museum!”

“What?”

“I don’t know what he is planning. Perhaps he is not intending to ship them to America at all.”

“No, I believe that is his intention. But I can’t see where the museum figures into it. They surely can’t be aiding him. Maspero would never allow it. And Brugsch knew nothing of Lindholm’s involvement in the robbing of the Deir el-Bahari cache. These crates must be forgeries to conceal their contents.”

“But why mask them as the property of the museum? What could that achieve? Do you think he is intending to sneak them into the museum?”

“I don’t know. I don’t see his reasoning in this but I will find out. Now, we must turn our thoughts to another pressing matter.”

“And that is?”

“What is to become of us once I have halted Lindholm in his tracks and you have fled to Paris?”

She looked down at the tablecloth for a moment, tracing the arabesque patterns with a delicate finger. “I don’t know. Your work for the British government would surely keep you very busy.”

“I’m not sure that I can continue working for them if I go against Lindholm.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was warned off him. The government doesn’t want their friendship with the Confederacy jeopardized.”

“And you are disobeying your orders? Not for me, I hope. I shall be far out of his reach soon.”

“No, not just for you. I have to stop him. After having fought against his creatures, I cannot let him continue his research, especially back in the safety of his homeland, orders or no.”

“But what will happen to you once you return to England? Dismissal? Imprisonment? Oh, Lazarus, I could not bear it!”

“Neither could I, believe me. That is why I was thinking of accompanying you to Paris.”

A strange expression passed across her face at his words, as if they presented some deep problem to her. But she quickly beamed at him. “That would be wonderful! We could marry!”

“Steady on!” said Lazarus, unable to conceal his grin at her eagerness. “You’re still engaged to Henry. Christ, I will come out of all this looking like the greatest of cads, won’t I? But I don’t care. Not if it means that I can be with you.”

“Yes, poor Henry. I will write to him. We are awful though, aren’t we? Wicked and wrong.”

“Listen, if we can make each other happy in this God-forsaken world, then nobody in it has the right to keep us apart.”

Lazarus returned to his room and penned a letter of resignation addressed to Morton. He felt guilty at betraying the old man. It resembled desertion. But the thought of no more gallivanting around the globe on the orders of Her Majesty’s government made him giddy with happiness.

He met with Petrie that night and told him of their plans. He trusted the Egyptologist more than any man in Cairo and, although he was still met with stern disapproval, he knew that Flinders would support him and not betray his confidence.

“By the way, Flinders,” said Lazarus. “Do you know of any large shipments the museum is making in the near future?”

“None that I’m aware of. I’m hopelessly out of the loop since I lost out on the Deir el-Bahari cache.”

Lazarus still felt bad for his friend. The newspapers had found something new to scream about since the incident at the Grand Continental, but the pain at missing out on the biggest find in living memory clearly still burned deep in Petrie’s bosom. Lazarus promised himself that he would try to make amends in any way possible once this business was all taken care of. “Lindholm is using the museum’s stamp to disguise his creations as antiquities for shipment.”

“Makes sense, really. They are antiquities. Bits of them, anyway.”

“I know I’ve asked a lot of you in recent days, particularly in the matter of discretion.”

Petrie said nothing.

“But do you think you could try and find out how Lindholm might be able to conceal a dozen large packing cases marked with the museum’s stamp? Is there some large consignment leaving the country in which they may be concealed?”

“I’ll have an ask around. I still have some friends up at the museum. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank you, Flinders. For everything.”

The following day Petrie caught up with Lazarus in Azbekya Gardens. They walked together and watched the crows in the trees.

“Well, I have found out something which will no doubt help your case,” said the Egyptologist.

“Indeed?”

“Maspero’s fuming about the whole business, but the orders have come from the Khedive himself. I’m forced to side with Maspero on this one, although I have no personal standing on the matter of the C.S.A. Of course, you may feel differently.”

“What’s the news, Flinders?”

“It’s all to do with this visit from the Confederacy, you see. The
CSS
Scorpion II
landing.”

Lazarus snapped his fingers in irritation at his own stupidity. “Of course! Why didn’t I see it sooner! What better way to smuggle items to America than on board a diplomatic vessel! No doubt the crew and captain are in on it, probably under the same orders as Lindholm. But how is he planning on getting the items on board under the eyes of the Egyptian and British authorities?”

“That’s what I’m telling you, Lazarus. As a special gift to the C.S.A. and in recognition of their visit, the Khedive is giving them a collection of Egyptian antiquities; everything from mummies and jars to busts and statues! It’s an outrageous waste! What appreciation will these items find in a land ravaged by war as you have described?”

But Lazarus wasn’t thinking along those lines. “I don’t believe the antiquities will ever leave Egypt,” he said, “so you have no need to worry about them. Lindholm will no doubt switch the cases for his own and leave the gifts aside. But how is he planning to make the switch? When is the
Scorpion II
due to leave?”

“In two day’s time.”