The Mummy Snatcher of Memphis (19 page)

“Take your positions, gentlemen,” my aunt called out.

Rachel clutched my arm. We watched from the shade of a clump of elm trees, my friends and I.

“Do not be alarmed, Kit,” my father whispered in my ear. “Waldo is a fine young man. He will come through this ordeal splendidly.”

I glowered at him. Since when was Waldo a man? He was a boy. Sure he claimed to be a dab hand at the pistols, but these guns were not shooting blanks. How could my father and aunt put up with this? Naturally my father had jumped at Waldo's offer to fight in his place. As for Aunt Hilda, this was proof she had no conscience at all.

“Are you ready?” her voice sang out.

Courteously, Waldo moved to take off his top hat but Champlon gestured to him to keep it on.

“Take your positions. READY … AIM … FIRE!”

The bullets exploded, startling a flock of crows, which rose in a storm of black feathers. The sharp tang of cordite filled my nostrils and I was vaguely aware of a bullet streaking through the air, fast and deadly, making straight for one of the men. It sliced clear through him. He fell, clutching at his head. A bullet to the brain.

“Waldo!” I screamed, as I ran toward him, Rachel at my side.

His golden curls were wet, lying dark over his fine face. How instantly life can be shut off. I found myself
hugging him, clutching at his shirt. Remorse crashed over me. Why had I allowed this? I should have done something to stop it. I was to blame, I—

“Gerroff me.” He squirmed, struggling away.

Waldo alive and well?

“So you do care, Kit?” His blue eyes shone with amusement.

Drawing back, I saw that Waldo's hat had now fallen on the grass. His new top hat. Straight through the center was a hole the size of a carrot.

Champlon put his gun back in his holster, work done. He regarded us with a fishy stare: “You zee now?”

“See what?” Aunt Hilda said, defiantly.

“You zee I mean business.”

My father coughed apologetically. “We certainly do, Monsieur Champlon.”

There was no sign of the shot from Waldo's gun. He must have missed by a mile.

“Zees was a warning only. I do not shoot children. But madame, if I hear any more lies about me in your newspapers, next time it will be—” Champlon paused. “Next time it will be ze death!”

The French explorer turned his back on us. Accompanied by his taciturn second he stomped off down the hill, toward the lake which lay before Hampstead village. We watched him go in silence. Even
my aunt seemed uncharacteristically subdued.

Or so I hoped. In fact I was giving her more credit for human sympathy than was her due. When Champlon had vanished into the fog, she turned to us. Unbelievably she wore a triumphant air.

“We've really got that French blighter rattled. Next time, my dear boy, you'll show him we mean business!”

Chapter Twenty

“Put your little toys away, Waldo,” I shouted above the deafening rat-a-tat of gunfire. “You lost. That's all there is to it.”

Waldo's face was shiny with sweat, his blond curls tousled, as he lowered the dueling pistols and glared at me. The figure of Gaston Champlon nailed to the oak tree in my aunt's garden was quite dead; riddled with so many holes, it could have served as a sieve. However, easier to shoot a wooden target than a real live man. Especially if, as Aunt Hilda had belatedly revealed, that man was one of the finest shots in the world.

“Champlon is a champion marksman,” I said more gently. “There's no need to feel humiliated.”

“Humiliation has nothing to do with it. This is about revenge,” Waldo muttered, before he turned his back on me and carried on his target practice. “Anyway you're just a girl. I don't expect you to understand.”

“A better shot than you, I bet,” I murmured under my
breath, but I turned away and trudged inside. When would that infuriating American realize that girls were every bit as good as boys? I admit that, at times, I almost liked Waldo. Then he would turn round and treat me with lordly condescension. I was “just a girl.” I didn't “understand.” As if I was a pea-brain, someone who couldn't join up my letters or eat my soup without a bib. Yet I was every bit as smart as him. In fact, frankly, I was smarter.

Anyway, I had no time for his foul moods. I needed a bit of quiet to concentrate on our quest for the scarab. I went up to the solitude of Aunt Hilda's library. It was wonderfully peaceful: no Frenchmen here, or Americans who fancied themselves cowboys. I would rest a while in one of the squashy armchairs by the bay window.

It was not to be. Ahmed was curled up in one of the armchairs absorbed in a thick, leather-bound book.

“What are you doing here?” I blurted.

He looked up, startled. Then he blushed to his collarbone.

“Ahmed?”

Our Egyptian guest hadn't wanted to come with us to Hampstead Heath, claiming he feared guns. Now he gaped at me like a child caught stealing sweets. I took the book from his hands and looked at the title. It was a
tome of ancient Egyptian history.

“What have you been reading, Ahmed?”

Something wasn't right. Ahmed was just learning to speak English. As far as we were aware, he didn't even recognize our alphabet. No way could he read a complicated, learned book.

“I was just looking at the pictures.”

“Oh, I see,” I said and handed the book back to him. There wasn't a single picture on the pages he'd been looking at. I needed help with this. Help from someone who wasn't scared of a confrontation. I ran off to fetch Waldo—if nothing else this would serve to distract him from his pistols.

“You've been lying to us, Ahmed,” I said, once we had returned.

The young Egyptian looked at me, his gaze firm and clear. I thought he would deny it, but he nodded.

“You've betrayed our trust,” Waldo said.

“Why? Why have you tricked us?” I couldn't keep my voice steady.

Still Ahmed held his tongue, looking straight at us with that steady, unashamed gaze. It was all coming together in my mind. The unbelievable speed at which he'd learned English. His sophistication. I was convinced now. Ahmed was not who he claimed to be. Maybe he was actually a treasure hunter. But instead of shrinking
and cringing when we confronted him with his treachery, the opposite was happening. He was stretching out, seeming to become taller and more composed.

“Yes,” he said at last. “I admit it, I lied.”

His accent had dropped away. Except for a tinge of something foreign about the vowels he could have been educated at an English boarding school.

“You could always speak English,” I blurted.

“Yes, I have a gift for languages. I am also tolerably capable in French and am a student of Farsi—no easy tongue to master, by the way.”

I studied Ahmed's face. The high cheekbones, the doe eyes, the silky curtain that fell over his brow. How could we have ever believed he was a son of the soil—accustomed to scratching the earth for his living? Those soft hands had been nowhere near a plow.

“You're no more of a peasant than I am.”

“Certainly no one could accuse you of being a peasant. Your manners, as Miss Minchin will agree, are far too refined.”

“How dare you laugh at me!” Suddenly I was furious, my hurt feelings boiling over into rage. “You—you traitor!”

“What's your game anyway?” Waldo cut in roughly. “You after treasure?”

Ahmed tensed, becoming very still.

“So, now we find you are not a farmer. You weren't
even a stowaway on the
Maharani
, were you? How could we ever have thought that was possible? I mean how would you have survived for weeks in the hold without food or water? Not to mention the toilet. What were we thinking?”

“I am amazed it took you so long, Kit.”

“Miss Salter to you.”

“I apologize. Miss Salter.”

“Let's see, what other lies have you told us? I suppose the story of the scarab's curse was bunkum too.”

“I may have used a little dramatic license, but in essence—”

“And your sick father,” I cut Ahmed off. “I suppose that was a lie too, something you made up to pull at our heartstrings?”

“No! Believe me. My father had a heart attack when he heard of the theft of the mummy of Ptah Hotep. He has not spoken nor moved since that day. At this moment he is in a coma, more in the world of the dead than in the living.”

“You're lying,” I muttered.

“Poor Father,” he said looking down at the floor. “He had already lost my brother—my older brother—Khalil. He died in a hunting accident when I was just ten years old. Khalil was always Father's golden boy, brave, generous, reckless. His death broke half father's heart. What
was left was destroyed by the theft of the scarab.”

“I'm not interested in your excuses,” I snapped.

But Ahmed continued, as if he was talking to himself: “You see, Father blamed himself. He thought the theft of the scarab was all his fault. He is a proud man and—”

“Enough!” I cut him off. He sounded so sincere. But how could I really tell? Ahmed could be the finest actor I'd ever met. “Why did you do this to us?” I asked. The anger was draining away leaving me wretched. “We took you in, fed you, clothed you. Waldo fought a duel over this whole business. I thought you were our friend.”

Ahmed hung his head.

“Why treat us like
this?”

“I am sorry. Really, believe me, I am sorry. You've been kind. I too, feel true friendship for you.”

“If this is how you treat your friends, thank goodness I'm not your enemy.”

“I will tell you the truth now. The whole truth.”

“We're listening,” I said.

“My father is a doctor, a learned man, who also happens to be the headman of our tribe. We live in a village near the ruins of the Pharaoh's old capital, Memphis. But we are no village idiots. Memphis is not far from Cairo, we travel, I go to school.”

“It is true that my father's brother lives in Cairo and that he has a wastrel son. This son Ali was employed by
your aunt Hilda. Well, to cut a long story short he is a bad fellow, a real idle layabout. He looted the secret rock tomb of Ptah Hotep, after my father was indiscreet enough to reveal its hidden location. His gang of robbers got away with the sage's mummy and other wonderful relics. But these riches are as nothing compared with the treasures still hidden.”

“Finally,” breathed Waldo. “We're getting to the point.”

Ahmed ignored the interruption “You know about the scarab?”

“Of course.”

“This beetle is the charm that Ptah Hotep wore next to his heart, buried deep under layers of linen wrappings. It has lain undisturbed for thousands of years—time immemorial.”

“I thought we asked you to get to the point!”

“I am, Kit—Miss Salter, I am. My family contains many learned scholars. You see, we are Berbers. We are descended from the great Pharaohs. Their ancient blood lives on in our veins. It was my great-grandfather who entrusted my father with the scarab's secret. It contains the clue to buried treasure.”

“So this scarab isn't just your villagers' lucky charm?” I asked.

“Far from it,” he replied. “It is a kind of map. If you can read it, it will take you to treasure. This secret is known
only to a few Egyptian scholars—somehow the Baker Brothers must have learned about it!”

“What treasure?” I asked.

“I do not know, except that it is meant to be fabulous.”

“You want it, don't you?” I said. “You're as bad as the Bakers yourself.”

“NO!”

In his agitation Ahmed jumped right out of his chair and began to pace the room. “You've got it all wrong. You must have seen what your fellow ‘explorers' and ‘Egyptologists' have done to our ancient heritage. They have pillaged priceless mastabas, wrecked pyramids. You have heard of ‘The Great Belzoni'? The circus strongman?”