Guardian of the Horizon - Elizabeth Peters [48]
Ramses had picked up his suitcases and gone off to find a room for himself. He was back almost at once, sans luggage. “You’ll never guess who I found,” he said.
“That’s not difficult,” retorted Emerson. “I told Merasen to meet us here and asked the ma’mur to look after him. Where is he?”
“He was asleep. Bare and innocent as a baby. I took the liberty of waking him and announcing our arrival. He’ll be along as soon as he puts on some clothes.”
Merasen professed himself as delighted to see us, and indeed his broad smile and deep bows confirmed it. He had arrived in Halfa only two days before us. When Emerson inquired why it had taken him so long, he replied with wide-eyed candor that he had stayed over for a few days in Aswan, “to see the sights.” Observing, from Emerson’s expression, that this was not well received, he reached into the breast of his galabeeyah and produced a handful of coins.
“Here is the rest of the money you gave me, Father of Curses.”
“Your expenses were heavy,” said Emerson dryly.
“I bought gifts.” Again he dipped into a pocket. “For Nefret and the Sitt.”
Strings of beads, very pretty and very cheap.
Nefret and I went off to inspect the hospital. It consisted of two widely separated buildings, the smaller of which was the native hospital. I daresay the doctor was doing his best, but we declined his kind offer to add another bed to the overcrowded ward. The flies were as thick as raindrops in a brisk shower, and the temperature was in the high nineties.
When we returned I summoned the others, including Selim and Daoud, to a council of war. “The first thing is to make arrangements for Hassan,” I said, as Emerson dispensed whiskey. (He had assured me our host had no objection to our indulging in this deplorable practice so long as we did it in private.) “The hospital is impossible. He must be sent home as soon as he is able to travel, and one of us must stay with him. I wouldn’t trust a stranger, however well intentioned, to look after him properly.”
“I can’t,” Nefret said wretchedly. “You know I can’t, Aunt Amelia.”
“But you can tell Ibrahim what to do,” said Selim. “And give him medicines.”
Among the medicines, I felt sure, would be the green ointment made by Daoud’s wife Kadija from a secret recipe passed down by the women of her Sudanese family. Hassan would have demanded it even if Nefret had not come to believe in its efficacy. So it was agreed. After Selim and Daoud had gone off to discuss the matter with the others, I said soberly, “We will now be without two of our men. Was it an accident?”
Nefret looked up. “Hassan said someone pushed him. He couldn’t tell who. He may have been mistaken.”
Ramses was stretched out on the soft cushions of the divan. He was as agile as an eel underwater. Only that, and the fact that the crocodile had been busy with Hassan, had saved him from serious injury, but I suspected he had not come out of the encounter entirely unscathed. He had refused to allow me or Nefret to examine him. However, he had accepted a pot of the green ointment before he went to his room to change his wet clothing.
“There was a great deal of pushing and shoving,” he said without raising his head. “It is an odd coincidence, though.”
“And too cursed many suspects,” Emerson muttered. “Ramses mentioned several groups of people who might be aware of our ultimate goal, and by Gad, two such persons have already turned up. The Great White Hunter and the military, in the person of that fellow who, by another strange coincidence, was at the camp when Reggie Forthright was confiding in all and sundry. The only ones we haven’t encountered are representatives of the Egyptological community and the slavers!”
“You could hardly expect the latter to show themselves,” I said.
“My dear, a number of highly respectable persons deal on the sly with slave traders.”
“You aren’t suggesting that those stout German tourists are among them, are you?”
“I don’t like their looks,” Emerson grumbled. “They are too stereotypical to be genuine.