The Mummy Snatcher of Memphis (25 page)

“He will not hurt it. We Egyptians have worshipped snakes since the time of the Pharaohs. He will take it away. To the other side of Ezbekiya Gardens,” Ahmed explained. “This man is very good with all wild things.”

“Why does everything happen to you, Kit?” Waldo
exclaimed, jealously. I was about to explode at him, to tell him it was actually horribly frightening to wake up with a great snake in one's mosquito net when Ahmed interrupted:

“It was my cousin, Ali. He put the snake in your mosquito net.”

“What?” I gaped at him. “Why do you say that?”

“This bears all the marks of Ali. It is just his style. I tell you, Kit, I remember his sense of humor from when he came to stay at our house during the holidays. I am sure it was him. I know it in my bones.”

“My bedroom door was unlocked,” I said slowly. “I'm absolutely sure I locked it before I went to bed. And my mosquito net. I remember now. Someone had torn it so there was a hole for the snake to crawl through. You think it was Ali?”

“Nonsense,” said my aunt Hilda who had joined the group just in time to witness the gardener's dispatch of the snake. “You're saying Ali put a cobra in Kit's bed? Sheer nonsense. He's one of the best guides I've ever had. Terribly knowledgeable chap, not to mention trustworthy.”

“Trustworthy!” Ahmed snorted, but I shushed him gently.

“Where is he then?” he went on angrily. “Where is he, if he is such a fine man?”

The excitement with the snake over, most people had returned to their bedrooms. The hall was empty. Only the boy who slept in the corridor lay curled up on the bare floor. Ahmed strode over to him and questioned him in Arabic. A few minutes later he returned and beckoned us to join him. We climbed a flight of back stairs, not carpeted in red velvet like the front ones, but bare and dingy, and emerged in another corridor. Room number 33. Ahmed tapped on it. There was no answer. He tried the door knob, which opened without resistance.

“See for yourselves!” he said, standing aside. “My cousin's room.”

A curtain fluttered in the breeze from the wide open window. The bed was disheveled, blankets and sheets pushed to one side and spilling on to the floor. The basin from the washstand had tipped over, water collected in a puddle under it. Of valises and suitcases, of clothes and personal possessions, there was no sign. Except for one polished leather shoe, which half protruded from the pile of bedclothes. Someone had cleared out in a hurry, judging by the way they had forgotten a fine shoe.

Why had Ali tried to murder me, if indeed he had placed the cobra in my net? He didn't know me, had no grudge against me. If Ali was the culprit he must be working for someone else. Like the Baker Brothers. But
why had he disappeared like this? Surely the logical thing was for the villains to have left him here to spy on us. Unless he was scared that Ahmed had unmasked him. My head was full of questions, a cloud of buzzing gnats.

“Now do you believe me?” Ahmed said, staring my aunt fiercely in the face. “This man Ali, he betrayed my father, his own flesh and blood. He would think nothing of murdering Kit.”

Chapter Twenty-seven

“Zis is ze only life.” Monsieur Champlon smiled back at me on my old donkey, struggling to keep up as his stallion cantered smoothly over the golden sands. “Ze nomad way, it speaks to ze soul.”

“If you enjoy torturing yourself,” I muttered. How I longed for my own pony, Jesse. Trust my aunt to make sure she and Champlon rode Arab steeds while us “children” had donkeys. We had been riding through the desert since dawn and were finally approaching Memphis. Dust was irritating my eyes, I was parched and my head was throbbing. The heat was so relentless as we trotted toward our destination, I felt I was being roasted in some celestial furnace.

While my friends and I sweltered and suffered, the Frenchman, Ahmed and my aunt, were taking the pace in their stride. Monsieur Champlon in his pale flowing robes, turban wound magnificently over his head like a large red and yellow pillow, looked as if he had been
born to this life.

“You enjoy?” Champlon went on.

“Of course Kit is enjoying it. She's a Salter!” my aunt boomed, turning back on her fine mare. “Why, this is hardly proper desert at all. Just a little canter through the dunes, if you ask me.”

“I'm having the time of my life,” I said firmly. I did not want to give my aunt any cause for pitying remarks. “It's magnificent.”

Magnificent our trip had truly been, through the rim of Cairo past the great pyramids of Giza, to which we had given scarcely a glance as we sped by on our mounts. How I wished we could stop. The pyramids. The last one remaining of the seven ancient wonders of the world. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Colossus of Rhodes may have vanished in the sea of time, but the mighty pyramids still remain. What did I feel as I first saw them? Incredible as it might seem, I was a bit disappointed. You see, I had imagined them so many times that when I first glimpsed them it was something of an anti-climax. Almost like paper boxes buried in a child's sandbox.

To tell the truth though, we scarcely got a good impression. Just a snatched glance as we rode past. I'll come back to you, I promised the pyramids. Your mysteries shall not be forever hidden to me.

Finally we reached Memphis and again there was the sense of anti-climax.

“
This
is it?” I asked, joining the others in dismounting from my donkey. Champlon offered me a swig of water from his goatskin and I accepted with gratitude. Foolishly I had drunk all my precious liquid.

“The capital city of the ancient world,” Ahmed said, remaining on his donkey.

“But …” I began and stopped.

“Time …” Ahmed murmured.

He didn't need to complete his sentence: time was the great destroyer. Where once mighty palaces and temples had stood there was now just a few heaps of rubble. Mud, sand, desolation. In fact the only remnant of former glory, a reminder that Pharaohs once ruled Memphis, were two huge statues lying past a clump of palm trees, face down in pools of mud. The once mighty Colossus of Rameses.

“Can we go on now? My family …” Ahmed gestured across the sand, to the distance where we could see the peaks of more pyramids. Sakkara, the graveyard of the old kingdom of Memphis. We knew Ahmed's family lived just past it, in a small village.

“Of course,” Isaac said, hurriedly remounting the rather frisky donkey he had been given. Even though we were all weary and needed to stretch our legs, we understood.
Finally so close to home, Ahmed must be desperate to see his father.

There were several more miles of hard riding before we neared Sakkara. Our Egyptian friend had sped up his pace as he neared home, ignoring the peak of the Sakkara pyramids, ignoring the urchins who ran after us selling their “antiques.” They thrust scarabs and other treasures at us, even trying to get in front of our horses, but Ahmed yelled at them and they scattered. This vast graveyard stretched for miles around us. We could see that the earth was littered with shards of ancient pottery, bits of bones and a spongy substance, which according to my aunt was the decayed stumps of mummies.

Sand and ancient flesh were crunching under our horses' feet. We were riding over ancient bones.

Ahmed let out a whoop of joy. Finally he was home: a lush Nile-watered village of mud huts and modest stone dwellings. On the outskirts there rose a handsome house. Shining with fresh whitewash, adorned by curved windows and balconies intricately carved in wood. Its front was sheltered by rows of palms, their long necks swaying gently in the breeze. As we came closer we could see that the windows were shuttered, the whole house wore a forlorn air.

“Something is wrong.” Ahmed halted his horse outside the gate. Suddenly he was ashen-faced.

“You're nervous, that's all.” I tried to soothe him.

“My darling … Pepi …” Ahmed's voice trailed into a whisper.

“Who is—” I began, thinking perhaps he was mentioning some brother or friend I had not heard of, but he cut me off.

“My best friend. My hunting dog, Pepi. He is an Arabian Saluki. He always comes out barking like a mad thing. Nothing can stop him. He has a sense for my return. Turn back, Kit, I beg you … and you, Miss Salter. This is no place for ladies … Please.”

“We're not ladies, we're your friends. Whatever happens, Ahmed, we are with you.” I was wasting my breath. Ahmed wasn't listening. He pushed open the gate which was hanging brokenly off the latch. Without a backward glance, he strode toward the house. I believed, just then, he had forgotten our existence.

“Come on,” I said to the others. Waldo and Isaac followed me along with my aunt, who seemed scarcely bothered, as she trotted behind us.

“A nice 'ouse zis,” Champlon said, pausing by a bush that covered the wall and was absolutely packed with blossoms that looked like wisps of bright pink tissue paper. “Built of ze t'ick, solid limestone. I stayed in an 'ouse like zis in T'ebes. It vas perfectly cool in ze afternoon.”

“Try and think of other people for once,” I snapped and then I saw something that made me stop in my tracks. Lying half concealed by the flowering bush was an animal. A dog. Blood trickled from the bullet wound in its back to form a puddle under its haunches. Kneeling down, I touched it with the tip of my finger. The dog, a lean hunter, had died recently enough for its fur to be still warm. This must be Pepi, Ahmed's beloved dog.

A presentiment of danger surged through me. Shouting out at the top of my voice I raced to grab my friend and pull him back outside. My fingers closed on air. Ahmed had already pushed open the front door and disappeared inside his home.

Chapter Twenty-eight

Waldo shouldered ahead of me as I tried to follow Ahmed. The door banged behind us, blocking out all but a glimmer of light. We caught up with Ahmed as he entered the living room. It had been ransacked; shards of pottery over the floors, rugs torn to shreds, books turned out of their shelves and scattered. The stuffing of chairs had been ripped out and the wood itself smashed to smithereens. Not a single ornament or piece of furniture had been left unbroken.