Lord of the Silent - Elizabeth Peters [87]
Nefret wasn’t too pleased when he stationed her behind the curtain that led into the front room of the shop and took up a position nearer the window, behind a wooden chest. (Or was it a coffin? It looked like one.) She wanted to be near him, ready to pitch in if there was a struggle. His excuse, that having her close would distract him, was only partly true. He had politely requested that she refrain from switching on her torch until he told her to. She hadn’t been pleased about that either.
Flat on the floor behind the chest—he preferred not to think of it as a coffin—he settled himself for a long wait, putting his watch near his hand and shielding it so the radium-painted numerals would not be visible from the window. He didn’t expect any activity before midnight, but he had been there less than an hour when a soft sound from outside drew his attention and a shadow darkened the window. He ought to have known. The fellow never did what one expected.
The shadow remained motionless for over a minute, which is quite a long time when one is counting seconds. Will he risk a light? Ramses wondered. I would. It is not a good idea to enter a dark room through a narrow window without making certain that someone isn’t inside ready to grab you by the throat.
When it came, the light was a pencil-thin circle, just bright enough to show the outlines of objects. Ramses didn’t dare turn his head; he felt certain Nefret had been watching through a gap in the curtain and hoped she had seen the shadow or the light in time to close it. The light flickered back and forth and went out, and the shadow moved.
He didn’t make much noise, but he couldn’t avoid the brush of cloth against plaster, or the creak of the old wood of the windowsill. Ramses moved at the same time, rising slowly to his feet. He waited until the dark form was half in and half out of the room before he abandoned silence for speed. Vaulting over the chest, he got a firm grip on the first body part that came to hand—it turned out to be a leg—and pulled. He didn’t want to hurt the fellow, he just wanted to make sure he couldn’t get away. The second part of the plan worked. Instead of trying to free himself, the other man let go his hold on the window frame and collapsed heavily onto Ramses.
Approximately a second and a half later it occurred to Ramses that he might have been guilty of a slight error in judgment. He was flat on his back, pinned by a body as hard as leather and steel, with a hand squeezing his right wrist. The bones felt as if they were about to crack.
The fellow was thirty years his senior. Sheer embarrassment made Ramses forget his kindly intentions. He raised his head sharply and felt his opponent’s nose bend with a nasty squashing sound. The grip on his wrist loosened. He pulled his hand free, grabbed a handful of hair and a fistful of sleeve, twisted his legs around the other pair of legs, and flipped the man over.
A sudden glare of light half blinded him. “Goddamn it, Nefret, I told you—”
“Shut up,” said his bride. “That’s enough. From both of you.”
Ramses looked down at the man whose limp body he straddled. He was not unconscious, just completely and infuriatingly relaxed. The face was unfamiliar and, at the moment, somewhat monstrous. His beard had been pulled loose, and the putty that had enlarged his nose had been mashed into a grotesque lump, like that of a boxer who has lost too many fights. The substance had probably saved him from a broken nose, but blood trickled from his nostrils. Ramses got awkwardly to his feet.
“That was a filthy trick,” his uncle said admiringly.
• • •
Nine
• • •
The arrival of Nefret’s second letter—or letters