Crocodile on the Sandbank - Elizabeth Peters [83]
“Let us abandon that idea once and for all. Mohammed was not the Mummy.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Its height,” Emerson replied calmly. “For a moment Walter was close enough so that I could measure their comparative height. It was as tall as he, or taller. Mohammed and the other villagers are small people. Bad diet and poor living conditions….”
“How can you be so cool? Discussing diet, at such at a time….”
“Why,” said Emerson, puffing away, “I am beginning to enjoy myself. Lord Ellesmere’s sporting instincts have infected me; he reminds me that an Englishman’s duty is to preserve icy detachment under any and all circumstances. Even if he were being boiled to provide a cannibal’s dinner it would be incumbent upon him to—”
“I would expect that you would be taking notes on the dietary habits of aborigines as the water bubbled around your neck,” I admitted. “But I cannot believe you are really so calm about Walter’s injury.”
“That is perceptive of you. In fact, I mean to catch the person who is responsible for injuring him.”
I believed that. Emerson’s voice was even, but it held a note that made me glad I was not the person he referred to:
“You have left off your bandages,” I said suddenly.
“You are absolutely brilliant tonight, Peabody.”
“I am sure you should not—”
“I cannot afford to pamper myself. Matters are approaching a climax.”
“Then what shall we do?”
“You, asking for advice? Let me feel your brow, Peabody, I am sure you must be fevered.”
“Really, your manners are atrocious,” I exclaimed angrily.
Emerson raised one hand in a command for silence.
“We had better take a stroll,” he said. “Unless you want to waken Miss Evelyn. I don’t know why you can’t carry on reasonable discussion without raising your voice.”
He offered me a hand to help me rise; but the jerk with which he lifted me to my feet was not gentle; for a moment my weight dangled from his arm in an undignified manner. He set me on my feet and walked off. I followed, and caught him up at the bottom of the cliff. We strolled along in silence for a time. Even Emerson was moved by the beauty of the night.
Before us, the moonlight lay upon the tumbled desolation of sand that had once been the brilliant capital of a pharaoh. For a moment I had a vision; I seemed to see the ruined walls rise up again, the stately villas in their green groves and gardens, the white walls of the temples, adorned with brilliantly painted reliefs, the flash of gold-tipped flagstaffs, with crimson pennants flying the breeze. The wide, tree-lined avenues were filled with a laughing throng of white-clad worshipers, going to the temple, and before them all raced the golden chariot of the king, drawn by matched pair of snow-white horses…. Gone. All gone, into the dust to which we must all descend when our hour comes.
“Well?” I said, shaking of my melancholy mood. “You promised me the benefit of your advice. I await it breathlessly.”
“What would you say to striking camp tomorrow?”
“Give up? Never!”
“Just what I would have expected an Englishwoman to say. Are you willing to risk Miss Evelyn?”
“You think the Mummy has designs on her?”
“I am unwilling to commit myself as to its original intentions,” said Emerson pedantically. “But it seems clear that the Mummy is now interested in her. I am afraid it is not attracted by your charms, Peabody. It must have known you were in the tent; I was watching, and I thought for a time, seeing the walls bulge and vibrate, that you would have the whole structure down about your ears. What were you doing—physical knee jerks?”
I decided to ignore his childish malice.
“I was looking for evidence of what had happened to Michael,” I explained. “I found this.”
I showed him the crucifix, pointing out the break in the chain. He looked grave.
“Careless of the attacker, to leave such a clue.”
“You believe Michael was