Crocodile on the Sandbank - Elizabeth Peters [107]
“Wake up, Peabody! If you fall asleep, I shall slap you till you howl. Curse it, don’t you understand that we have been drugged?”
“Drugged?” I repeated stupidly.
“I have been fighting sleep myself for an hour, and a hard fight it was. Have you nothing in that medicine box of yours to counteract the effects of laudanum?”
I tried to think. Something was certainly dulling my mind.
“My smelling salts,” I said, with an effort. “They are extremely strong….”
“Oh, damnation,” said Emerson. “A pretty picture that will be! Well, it’s better than nothing. Go fetch them. Hurry.”
To hurry was impossible. I could barely drag myself along. But I found the smelling salts, and then had a look at Evelyn. A single glance told me Emerson was right. She was sleeping too soundly. I shook her, without effect. Either she had received a larger dose of the drug, or her delicate constitution was more susceptible to it than mine. It would be difficult to awaken her.
I applied the bottle to my own nose. It was certainly effective. Feeling much more alert, I hastened back to Emerson, who was leaning up against the cliff with his arms and legs at strange angles and his eyes slightly crossed. I thrust the bottle at him. He started back, banging his head against the rock, and made several profane remarks.
“Now tell me what is wrong,” I said, recapping the bottle. “What is it you fear will happen? If your reasoning is correct—”
“My reasoning was damnably, stupidly, fatally wrong,” Emerson replied forcibly. “I am missing a vital clue—a piece of information that would make sense of the whole business. I suspect you hold that clue, Peabody. You must tell me—”
He stopped speaking; I suppose the expression on my face struck him dumb. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rising. I was facing the lower end of the path; and there, barely visible, around the corner of the cliff, something moved. A low moan echoed through the air.
Emerson spun around. The moaning cry came again.
It was a frightening sound, but I knew, after the first moment, that it did not come from the throat of the Mummy. This cry held human anguish and pain; I could not have resisted its appeal if a thousand gibbering, gesticulating Mummies had stood in my way.
Quickly as I moved, Emerson was before me. He went more cautiously than I would have done, his arm holding me back, and when we reached the bottom of the path he thrust me away while he went on to investigate. The object I had seen, whatever it was, had disappeared from sight; Emerson followed it into invisibility, and for a moment I held my breath. Then I heard his low exclamation—not of fear, but of horror and distress. Rounding the rock corner, I saw him kneeling on the ground beside the prostrate body of a man. I knew the man, although, God forgive me, I had almost forgotten him. It was our vanished servant—the dragoman, Michael.
“Oh, heavens,” I cried, flinging myself down beside the recumbent form. “Is he dead?”
“Not yet. But I fear…”
Emerson raised his hand, which had been resting on the back of Michael’s head. The stains on his fingers looked like ink in the moonlight.
Michael was wearing the same faded blue-and-white-striped robe that he had worn the day of his disappearance. It was now torn and crumpled. I reached for his wrist, to feel his pulse, but a closer sight of his outflung arm made me exclaim aloud. The bared wrist was swollen and bloody.
“He has been a prisoner,” I said, forcing my fingers to touch the torn flesh. “These are the marks of ropes.”
“They are. How is his pulse?”
“Steady, but feeble. He must have medical attention at once. I will do what I can, but my skill is so small…. Can we carry him up to the tomb? Perhaps Lucas will help.”
“I can manage.”
Emerson turned Michael over; with a single heave of his broad shoulders he lifted the dragoman’s slight form into his arms, and rose.
And then—dear Heaven, I can scarcely write of it now without a reminiscent