The Snake, the Crocodile, and the Dog (8 page)

A number of establishments in the suk sold various versions of native Egyptian robes, for they were popular with tourists. I had to search for some time before I found an ensemble that was not only completely authentic, but particularly suitable to Emerson's tall frame and individualistic character. Though he denies it, he has a secret penchant for disguises and a certain taste for the theatrical. I fancied this costume would appeal to him, for the embroidered jubba and woven kaftan, the gold-trimmed hezaam and loose trousers might have been worn by a prince of the Touareg— those extremely virile
and violent desert raiders who are known to their despairing victims as "The Forgotten of God."
They are also called "The Veiled Ones," because of the blue veils that provide protection against heat and blowing sand. It was this feature that had determined me to select the costume, for it would serve in lieu of a mask, which I felt sure Emerson would not consent to wear. The headdress, called a khafiya, was a square of cloth bound in place by a rope. It framed the face becomingly and, with the veil, would leave only his eyes exposed.
Emerson studied it in silence. "We will go well together," I said cheerfully. "My trousers and your skirts."

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The ballroom was decorated in the style of Louis XVI and featured a superb chandelier whose thousands of crystals reflected the lights in a dazzling shimmer. The brilliant and fantastical garb of the guests filled the room with color. There were plenty of ancient Egyptians present, but some of the guests had been more inventive, I saw a Japanese samurai and a bishop of the Eastern Church, complete with miter. My own dress provoked considerable comment, however. I had no lack of partners, and as I circled the floor in the respectful grasp of one gentleman or another, I was delighted at how neatly I could perform the vigorous steps of polkas and schottisches.
Emerson does not dance. From time to time I would catch a glimpse of him wandering around the perimeter of the room, or talking to someone who shared his disinterest in terpsichorean exercise. Then I saw him no more and concluded he had got bored and gone off in search of more congenial company.
I was sitting in one of the little alcoves screened by potted plants, recuperating from my exertions and chatting with Lady Norton, when he appeared again. "Ah, my dear, there you are," I said, glancing over my shoulder at the tall veiled form. "Permit me to present you to— "
I was permitted to say no more. Arms like steel snatched me up out of my chair, stifled, breathless, enveloped in folds of billowing cloth, I was carried rapidly away. I heard a shriek from Lady Norton, and exclamations of surprise and amusement from the other guests— for my abductor's path led him straight across the ballroom toward the door.
I was not amused. Emerson was not the man to play such a silly trick, and I had known, the moment the person touched me, that the grasp was not that of my spouse. He felt me stiffen, heard the sharp intake
of my breath without slackening his pace he shifted his hold in such a fashion that my face was crushed against his breast and my cry was muffled by folds of fabric.
Astonishment and incredulity weakened my limbs, I could not believe what was happening. Could a person be abducted out of Shepheard's Hotel, under the very noses of hundreds of watchers?
The attempt might have succeeded by its very audacity. What else could the audience assume but that
my notoriously eccentric spouse had entered into the spirit of the masque and was playing the role his costume had inspired? I heard one idiotic woman shriek, "How romantic!" My struggles were taken for part of the charade, and they weakened as I grew faint from lack of oxygen.
Then a voice rang out— a voice famous throughout the length of Egypt for its resonance and audibility.
It reassured, it inspired me, my strength returned, my struggles were renewed. The grip that held me loosened. I felt myself flying through the air, reached out, groping and blinded, braced myself for the impact I knew must follow . . . And struck a solid but yielding surface with a force that drove the last of the straining breath from my lungs. I clutched at it, it recoiled from me with a grunt of effort and then, recovering, caught and held me.
I opened my eyes. I had not needed to see him to know whose arms enclosed me, but the sight of the beloved face— crimson with choler, eyes blazing like sapphires— left me too weak to speak. Emerson drew a deep, shuddering breath. "Damnation!" he roared. "Can't I leave you alone for five minutes, Peabody?"

CHAPTER 4

"No woman really wants a man to carry her off,
she only wants him to want to do it."

"Why didn't you pursue the fellow?" I demanded.
Emerson kicked the bedroom door shut and dropped me unceremoniously onto the bed. He had carried me straight upstairs and he was breathing rather heavily. Our rooms were on the third floor, but I fancied it was exasperation rather than exertion that had quickened his breath. The tone in which he replied further strengthened this theory.
"Don't ask stupid questions, Peabody! He threw you straight at me, like a bundle of laundry. Would you rather I had let you fall to the floor? Even if I had been so cold-blooded, I reacted instinctively, and by
the time I had recovered myself he was long gone."
I sat up and began to straighten my disheveled hair. Somewhere along the way I had lost my pith helmet. I reminded myself to search for it next day, it was a new one and very expensive.
"The implied reproach was unfair, Emerson. I apologize. It would take him only a minute to achieve anonymity by divesting himself of his robes. They were not an exact copy of yours but they were close
enough."
"Confounded fancy dress!" Emerson had divested himself of bis robe, he tossed it into a corner and plucked the headdress from his head. I let out a cry.
"Is that blood on your face? Come here and let me see."
After some masculine grumbling he consented to let me have a look. (He likes being fussed over but refuses to admit it.) There was only a small trace of blood on his temple but it marked a tender spot that would no doubt blossom into a purple bruise before morning. "What the devil have you been up to?"
I asked.
Emerson stretched out on the bed. "I had a little adventure of my own You don't suppose it was Divine Guidance that brought me to your rescue in the traditional nick of time, do you?"
"I could believe in Divine Guidance, my dear. Are you not always at my side when danger threatens?"
Leaning over him, I pressed my lips to the wound "Ouch," said Emerson.
"What happened?"
"I had gone out for a smoke and some intelligent conversation,"
Emerson explained.
"Out of the hotel?"
"No one in the hotel—saving your presence, my dear—is capable of intelligent conversation. I thought Abdul or Ali might be hanging about. As I strolled innocently through the gardens, three men jumped me.
"Three? Was that all?"
Emerson frowned. "It was rather odd," he said. "The fellows were, I believe, ordinary Cairene thugs. If they had intended to murder me, they might have done some damage, for as you know, they all carry knives. They never used them, only their bare hands."
"Bare hands did not inflict this wound," I said, indicating his temple. "One of them had a club. The confounded headdress was of some use, it deflected the blow. I became a trifle annoyed then, and after
I had disposed of two of them, the third fled. I would have questioned them, but it occurred to me that you might be in similar straits and that I had better see what you were up to."
I got up and went to look for my medical kit. "Why should you suppose that? Your enemies are not necessarily mine, and I must say, Emerson, that over the years you have attracted quite a number of ... Where the devil did I put that box of bandages? The safragi has mixed up the luggage, nothing is where
I left it."
Emerson sat up. "What makes you think it was the safragi?"
I finally found the medicine box,- it was in the original container, but not in the original place. Emerson, who had been searching his own luggage, straightened. "Nothing appears to have been taken."
I nodded agreement. He was holding an article I had not seen before— a long narrow box of heavy cardboard. "Has something been added? Be careful opening it, Emerson!"
"No, this is my property. Ours, I should say." He removed the lid, and I saw a glitter of gold and a rich azure glow.
"Good heavens," I cried. "It is the regalia Nefret carried away with her from the Holy Mountain— the royal scepters. Why did you bring them?"
One scepter was shaped like a shepherd's crook, symbolizing the care of the king for his people. The materials were gold and lapis lazuli in alternating rings. The other object consisted of a short staff made
of gold foil and dark-blue glass over a bronze core, from which depended three flexible thongs of the same materials, gold beads alternating with blue, and ending in cylindrical rods of solid gold. The flail represented (as I have always believed) the other aspect of rule: power and domination. It certainly
would have inflicted a painful blow if it had been made of more durable materials, as the original whip undoubtedly was. No such objects had ever been found in Egypt, though they were known from countless paintings and reliefs.
"We agreed, did we not," said Emerson, "that it would be unconscionable to keep these remarkable objects from scholars They are unique, and they are two thousand years old if they are a day—
treasured relics. They belong not to us but to the world."
"Well, yes— we did agree in theory, and I am of the same mind still, but we cannot display them
without explaining where we found them."
"Precisely. We will find them. This season."
I caught my breath. "It is an ingenious idea, Emerson. Brilliant, even. No one is better able than you to arrange a convincing if misleading ambience."
Emerson fingered the cleft in his chin and looked a trifle uncomfortable. "Dishonesty goes against the grain, Peabody, I confess it,- but what else are we to do? Thebes seems the most likely place for such a— er— discovery, the Cushite conquerors of the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty remained there for some time. We must account in some way for the information about ancient Meroitic culture we acquired last winter.
Sooner or later one of us, or Walter, will let something slip, it is not humanly possible to write about the subject without displaying information we ought not to have."
"I agree. In fact, the article you sent to the
Zeitschrift
in June— "
"Devil take it, Peabody, I said nothing revealing in that article!"
"In any case," I said soothingly, "it will not be published for some time."
"These scholarly journals are always behind schedule," Emerson agreed. "So you are thinking along the same lines, Peabody?"
"What lines?" I began rummaging in my box of medical supplies. "I am surprised at you, Peabody. Usually you are the first to find portents of danger all around, and although I admit there are a number
of individuals who have reason to dislike us, recent incidents are beginning to suggest quite a different theory."
He sat down on the edge of the bed. I brushed the hair from his brow and applied antiseptic to his wound. Absorbed in his theory, he ignored attentions he was not ordinarily willing to receive without complaint.
"Our luggage appears to have been searched. Theft was not the object, nothing was taken. Tonight we were both attacked. Murder was not the object, we must assume, I think, that abduction of one or both
of us was. For what purpose?"
"Some of our old enemies may want to carry us off and watch gloatingly while hideous tortures are inflicted upon us," I suggested.
"Always cheerful, Peabody," Emerson said, grinning. "What are you doing? I won't have any confounded bandages."
I cut off a bit of sticking plaster. "Out with it, Emerson. You are beating around the bush."
"Not at all. I am simply admitting that the evidence is inconclusive. It is suggestive, though, don't you think?"
"I think this time it is your imagination that has got out of hand." I sat down next to him. "Unless you know something you haven't told me.
"I don't know anything," Emerson said irritably. "If I did, I would not be dithering like a nervous old spinster. All the same . . We covered our tracks as well as we could, Peabody, but there are several weak spots in the fictional fabric we wove. A good hard shove at any one of them would leave a gaping hole
of speculation."
"Are you by any chance referring to the Church of the Saints of the Son of God as a weak spot? Curse it, Emerson, I had to invent a religious sect, if we had claimed Nefret's kindly foster parents were Baptists
or Lutherans or Roman Catholics, the most cursory inquiry would prove no such family existed."
"Especially if you had claimed they were Roman Catholics," Emerson said. Seeing my expression, he added hastily, "It was very clever of you, my dear."
"Don't patronize me, Emerson! I cannot imagine what has got you into this morbid state of mind. The story I— we— invented is no more unbelievable than many true ... I do wish you would stop mumbling under your breath It is very rude. Speak up!"
"Map," said Emerson.
"Willoughby Forth's maps? You heard how Maspero and the others laughed at them the other night— "
"The map," said Emerson loudly, "that Reginald Forthright showed to half the bloo------- blooming
officers at Sanam Abu Dom. Everyone from General Rundle to the lowest subaltern knew when he went after his uncle that he had more to go on than vague rumors. He never came back, but WE did, with Forth's daughter. How long do you suppose it will take some inventive journalist to concoct a thrilling scenario out of those facts? I am only surprised your friend O'Connell hasn't already done so. His imagination is almost as rampageous as— "
"The implication is insulting and undeserved— especially coming from YOU. I have never heard such . . You are muttering again, Emerson. What did you say?"
With a shrug and a smile Emerson turned and answered, not the question but the underlying emotion
that had prompted it and my other (I admit) unfair accusations. A soft answer turneth away wrath, as
the Scripture says, but Emerson's methods were even more efficacious.

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