Guardian of the Horizon - Elizabeth Peters [121]
I made out several forms standing on the terrace, looking down at us. As Emerson pounded onward, one of them turned and vanished within. The others were quick to follow, and indeed, the sight of Emerson charging forward, with me under one arm like a cumbersome parcel, would have been enough to strike terror into the heart of the boldest.
“Barge straight ahead,” shouted Emerson, doing so. “Are you with me, Daoud? Selim?”
I had never been in the house Tarek had occupied while crown prince, but the plan was similar to that of other noble dwellings: beyond the terrace was a series of anterooms and then a corridor that turned first to the right and then to the left. Emerson was moving at a dead run, and I could hear Daoud’s ponderous footsteps behind us. The servants fled before us; Emerson herded them, as a dog herds sheep, into a handsome reception room, pillared and painted. Some huddled at the far end, crying out in alarm; others escaped through one or another of the curtained doorways along the walls of the room. Emerson set me on my feet.
“Try that one,” he said, indicating one of the doorways and plunging through another.
The room I entered was a bedchamber, luxuriously appointed but unoccupied except for two servants who were trying to push through the far wall. A quick glance round told me there was nothing unusual about the furnishings; garments folded carefully over the footboard of the bed resembled those Merasen had worn the day before. Emerson had been right; this was his house. I was about to investigate further when a shout of triumph made me hasten back to the reception room. Emerson entered at the same moment, dragging a man who was struggling in a vain attempt to free himself from the hands that gripped him. He wore a linen robe and woven sandals, but I recognized him immediately, despite the distortion of his features.
It was Captain Moroney, the former veterinary surgeon’s assistant.
Of course I had suspected him all along.
Ten
“You did not know!” Emerson bellowed. “Don’t tell me you knew!”
“I had strong suspicions—”
“Of everybody!” Emerson transferred his inimical gaze from me to Moroney and dropped him unceremoniously onto the floor. “You are a disgrace to your uniform, a vile deceiver and a murderer. What have you to say for yourself?”
Moroney sat up, rubbing his shoulder. Having discovered that he was not in imminent danger of strangulation, he had regained his nerve, and his countenance was that of the pleasant young officer I had known.
“But not as a veterinarian’s assistant,” I exclaimed. “I remember now where I saw you—at the general’s luncheon party, when Wallis Budge talked of the Lost Oasis.”
“Aha,” said Emerson. “Was that what set you on the track? You had better tell me everything. You murdered one of my men and tried to kill another. Only a full confession will save you.”
Moroney sprang to his feet. “Sir, you must believe me! I am guilty of greed and deceit, but not of murder. It was Newbold who pitched your man into the jaws of the crocodile, and Merasen who cut the other young fellow’s throat. He was dead before I arrived on the scene, or I assure you I would have prevented it.”
“He lies,” growled Daoud.
“Innocent until proven guilty,” said Emerson regretfully. “Go on, Moroney, let’s hear the rest of it. Be convincing,” he added, putting out a hand to hold Daoud back.
Moroney made a clean breast of it. Budge’s reference to the Lost Oasis at that long-ago luncheon party had been one of his ill-mannered jokes, but when Reggie Forthright told a similar story and announced his intention of going out into the desert to look for his missing uncle, it had stirred Moroney’s imagination—which was, unfortunately for us, unusually well developed for that of a military person. Our subsequent disappearance into the wild and our eventual return with a mysterious young English girl were also, as he put it, suspicious. However, there was no way he could confirm his suspicions