Lord of the Silent - Elizabeth Peters [141]
“Do you think someone is concealing something?” I inquired as we mounted and started back to Giza.
“I rather doubt it, but should that be the case he wouldn’t speak up in front of the others. We will have to wait and see.”
Fatima had tea ready when we reached the house, where we found Daoud making serious inroads on a plate of sandwiches. Fatima had fed him the latest gossip along with the sandwiches, and he was fairly bursting with outrage at the effrontery of the man who had dared lay hands on the Little Bird. Naturally he was convinced he could have prevented it if he had not been in Luxor. We let him get it out of his system and then Emerson said, “You could not be in two places at once, Daoud. We sent you to Luxor to find out how matters are proceeding there. Make your report. Fatima, more sandwiches, if you please.”
Daoud held up his hand. “One,” he said, raising a finger twice the length and breadth of mine.
Without pausing for breath he proceeded to reel off the facts which, he added, Nur Misur had told him to relate. He had just finished the second of them when Sennia burst into the room, embraced us all, and settled herself comfortably on Daoud’s large lap. “How are they all?” she demanded. “Is Bertie better? Do they know we are coming?”
“Are we?” Daoud asked.
“Oh, yes, didn’t the Professor tell you? All of us, on the train tomorrow. Tell me how they are, Daoud. Do they miss me?”
“Very much,” Daoud assured her. “Mr. Bertie is better. Three. He has found a new interest. Her name is Jumana.”
I did not doubt he had repeated the message word for word. It was not at all what I had had in mind for Bertie, but Emerson’s well-shaped lips curved in one of those masculine smiles.
“The girl Nefret mentioned? Well, well, there is nothing like a pretty woman to—”
“Emerson, please!” With a gesture, I reminded him that there was an innocent child present. “Did you meet the young woman, Daoud?”
“Oh, yes. Nur Misur said you would want to know what I thought of her. She is very, very pretty.”
He took another sandwich.
“Is that all?” I demanded.
Daoud pondered the question. “She talks in a loud voice and says what she thinks. So it is likely Yusuf will not find a husband for her, though she is very, very—”
“Yes, I see. Oh, dear. Emerson, I foresee complications.”
“So long as it does not turn out to be another pair of confounded young lovers,” Emerson grunted. “We used to be infested with them, and a damn—er—deuced nuisance they were.”
“There is a more important thing,” said Daoud, who had no interest in young lovers. He added punctiliously, “It was not Nur Misur who told me of it.”
“Something about tomb robbing?” Emerson inquired.
Daoud cleared his throat. With the instincts of a master storyteller he had saved this bit of news for the last, and his solemn voice made it evident he was quoting. “It is known in Luxor that the Master has returned. His whereabouts no man knows. His true appearance no man knows. He has a thousand faces and ten thousand names.”
The silence that followed was broken by the crash of shattering china. Mr. Amherst had dropped his cup.
From Manuscript H
The soft sound brought Ramses instantly awake. The curtains at the window fluttered in the morning breeze. He had just enough time to swing his feet to the floor and make sure he was decently covered before the door opened.
Nefret sat up with a start. The candle Margaret held cast ugly shadows over her face, shaping black hollows under her cheekbones and lengthening her nose. “Come at once,” she ordered. “He’s awake.”
The window of the room where they had installed their guest faced east. It wasn’t quite as early as Ramses had thought; the sky over the eastern cliffs was pale with the approach of dawn. He had expected