Lord of the Silent - Elizabeth Peters [65]
Then she tightened her grasp and something hit him on the back of the head.
“You didn’t drop the torch,” he murmured.
“Darling, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to smack you with it.”
“Quite all right. I suppose we’d better get on with the job, though. I was thinking,” he went on, as the light reappeared, “that it might make a nice little hobby to kiss you in every tomb in Luxor.”
“What a lovely idea. One down, how many hundreds to go?”
“We’ll keep track as we proceed. Everything seems to be in order here. We might come back another day and take a few photographs for Father.”
They made their way back to the entrance. Ramses closed and locked the gates. He took out his own torch and moved the beam slowly and methodically over the locks and the hinges. “I don’t see any signs of tampering, do you? Remarkable. I rather expected some of the local lads would have a go at breaking in.”
“They know we removed everything that was portable. And didn’t Father put a curse on the place?”
“One of his best. He invoked every god in the pantheon from Anubis to . . . Well, I’ll be damned. Somebody’s been here. Look at that.”
Cut deep into the rock above the doors was the same odd device they had seen near several of the Amarna tombs—a circle divided by a sinuous waving line.
“He didn’t get in,” Nefret said practically.
“But how did he get here in the first place? One wouldn’t want to climb up from below, the rock is too unstable. From above the only practicable method is sliding down a rope, and I wouldn’t want to tackle that without help.”
“You wouldn’t, but some of these he-man explorer types behave very stupidly. We can ask around. If he hired any of the locals, they’ll tell you.” Drops of perspiration slid down her face. He knew her throat must be as dry as his, and that she was anxious to get into the open air, but the oddity of the little cryptogram held him.
“What does it remind you of?” he asked.
Nefret blinked wet lashes and wiped her eyes with her handkerchief. “Something. I can’t think . . . Oh, I know! It’s like the yin and the yang symbol—the opposing forces, masculine and feminine, dark and light, that make up the world. Perhaps our busy tourist is Chinese.”
“Someone is making his presence known, certainly. All right, love, down you go. Be careful.”
“You too.” Her foot already on the topmost rung, she smiled up at him. “You can let go my wrist now.”
Ramses waited until she had reached the bottom before he started his descent. Further examination of the odd little symbol had told him nothing he did not already know or suspect. He hadn’t mentioned it to Nefret because he didn’t want to put ideas into her head. If she came to the same conclusion independently, it would be confirmation of his . . . One couldn’t even call it a theory, not yet. There were not enough data. He knew what he was looking for, but he still didn’t know how to go about it.
• • •
Seven
• • •
As we stood staring down at the gruesome thing and Ismail sniveled in the corner, with his back to the scene, Emerson said, “That takes care of the question of whether or not to consult Russell. The police will have to be told of this.”
I was not at all averse to a little chat with Mr. Thomas Russell, the Assistant Commissioner of Police. I did not hold him wholly accountable for getting my son half killed (a number of other people shared the blame for that, including Ramses himself), but I had not had a chance to express my recriminations as forcibly as I would have liked.
“It is the usual procedure after one has discovered a corpse,” I remarked.
“Hmmm, yes. Shall we telephone or send someone?”
“The latter, I think. We must stay here with the body.”
“It isn’t necessary for both of us to stay. You go back to the house and—”
“You go.”
“Oh, bah,” said Emerson. “Very well. Selim!”
Selim was within earshot—by that time most of the men had gathered round, drawn by Ismail’s howls of woe—but Emerson shouts as a matter of habit. Selim was as unwilling as we to leave the scene, so he delegated one of the other men as messenger, and Emerson