Lord of the Silent - Elizabeth Peters [112]
“Is this where you stay?” Nefret asked, accepting the single stool.
“Part of the time. I rent a room at Hussein Ali’s hotel—if you can call it that. I keep my clothes and notes there, and it is possible to have a bath, if one doesn’t mind curious onlookers and an occasional dead fish in the water. The tub’s in the courtyard.” Her look of disgust made him shout with laughter. “It’s not so bad. Not the way you people live, but it has a certain charm.”
“I’m sure it does,” said Ramses, who had lived under even less comfortable circumstances when he was engaged in certain of his undercover jobs. “We tried to reach Miss Minton this morning but were told she had gone off for the day. D’you have any idea where?”
His brusque tone sobered Kuentz. “She didn’t say anything to me. No reason why she should. Hold on, though . . . She was very curious about the German House. In fact, all she’d talk about was the illegal antiquities game. Said she was thinking of doing a series of feature stories about some of the more notorious players—the Rassuls, that Italian fellow your parents rounded up a few years back—what was his name?—and Sethos, of course.”
It was always startling to hear that name, but it wasn’t really surprising; the Emersons had tried for years to enlist the aid of the police and the Service des Antiquités in tracking down “the Master Criminal.” Those who had doubted his very existence to begin with had changed their minds after certain of Sethos’s activities became public. He had once written a letter to a London newspaper explaining, with the greatest politeness, that he was sorry to have offended Mrs. Emerson by robbing a well-known politician while she was picketing his house.
“I told her what I knew,” Kuentz went on. “She’d bought me a very good dinner and a quantity of excellent wine. She kept prodding me for more details, so I finally pointed out that you and your family knew more about the subject than I.”
“Not that much,” Ramses said. “Our encounters with Sethos and Riccetti are public knowledge.”
“Riccetti! That was the name. I wasn’t here at the time, but I heard about it. And about Sethos. Some of the stories rather strain one’s credulity. Is it true that he was after the Dahshur treasure, and would have got to it before de Morgan if you hadn’t stopped him?”
“The story has undoubtedly been exaggerated,” Ramses said.
Kuentz let out a whoop of laughter. “Not as much as Margaret will exaggerate it. Whatever happened to the fellow anyhow? Could he be the one behind the latest outbreak of thefts?”
“He’s dead,” Ramses said. He rose to his feet. “We mustn’t keep you any longer.”
They had to remove Jumana from the edge of the dig, where she sat scribbling in her notebook, to the barely contained indignation of the workers.
The ruins of the former German expedition house were behind the Ramesseum. The local people had rummaged through them, removing anything that was salvageable; all that was left was a pile of blackened ashes.
“I hadn’t realized they had done such a thorough job of it,” Nefret said.
“Complete destruction,” Ramses agreed. “One can’t help wondering why. Carter and Kuentz, if it was they, acted without authority—illegally, in fact.”
“I expect Margaret will make a dramatic tale of it.”
“Yes. There’s no sense hanging about here. Let’s go on.”
Minton had been on the west bank. Several of the people Ramses questioned had seen her with Sayid, and helpfully pointed them in various directions, none of which led to anything. Finally Nefret said, “This is a waste of time. If you’re all that determined to locate her, she’ll be at the hotel this evening. Shall I tell Maaman we are dining out?”
However, when they reached the Winter Palace, they discovered that the Sitt had not returned. Ramses tugged fretfully at his tie. He hated wearing evening dress almost as much as his father did.
“Where could she have gone?”
“Led on a wild-goose chase by Sayid, perhaps,” Nefret said. She didn’t share his concern; she knew the amiable willingness of