Night Train to Memphis - Elizabeth Peters [155]
Neither was his. ‘Yes, thank you, I am experiencing temporary relief. Suppose we postpone further treatment? I can’t stand this ghastly place much longer.’
‘Is it safe to leave?’
‘Oh, I should think so. Maxie’s a man of his word – when it suits him to keep it.’
‘Are we going to keep ours? To give him an hour?’
‘I didn’t give him my word. However, annoying Max would not be a sensible move on my part. I shan’t turn him in, but there’s no reason why we have to wait out the time here.’
‘Okay. Wait just a minute.’
The earrings were hard to see against the complex pattern of the rug. I finally found both of them. One of the wires was broken.
‘It can be repaired,’ said John, over my shoulder. ‘Though I shouldn’t think you’d want them now.’
‘Are you kidding? They’re the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.’
‘How did you know I meant them for you?’
‘She told me. That just made me want them more.’
‘Vindictive little creature, aren’t you?’
‘Vindictive, yes. Little, no.’ The light ran softly along the tiny golden faces. I closed my fingers carefully around them. ‘Over twenty centuries they have probably been in worse hands. And ears.’
The house was uncannily quiet and as eerie as a mausoleum. Dust covers shrouded most of the furniture and our footsteps echoed in the silence. It was hard for me to believe the place was really deserted; I kept expecting someone to jump out at us from the shadows huddling in those vast, high-ceilinged rooms. When we reached the door without meeting anyone John let out his breath.
‘There are television crews and newspaper reporters all around the house,’ he said. ‘I would offer to carry you out in a fainting condition, but appealing to the tender mercies of the press might not be as effective as making a run for it.’
‘We’ll run,’ I said. ‘I won’t even ask where.’
‘That’s an encouraging sign. Stay close.’
He put his arm around me and opened the door.
The limo was big and black and long. As we raced towards it, hotly pursued by assorted newspapers, the door opened. John tripped a reporter and pushed me into a pair of waiting arms.
‘Hi, Schmidt,’ I said. ‘I had a feeling you’d be here.’
When I woke next morning it wasn’t morning, but afternoon. I was lying on my side, facing the window, with my back to John. I could tell by his breathing he was still asleep, so I lay still, enjoying . . . enjoying the fact that I could hear him breathing and that I was doing the same.
The scenery wasn’t bad, though. Few hotels in the world can boast such view: the Great Pyramid of Giza, golden in the late sunlight, seeming so close it might have been right outside the bedroom window. Trust Schmidt to come up with the fanciest suite in one of the most elegant hotels in the country, on short notice and during the height of the tourist season.
We hadn’t arrived at Mena House until 4 a.m. Our first stop, at John’s insistence, had been at the hospital. The legal process which would clear Feisal might take some time, and the least we owed him and his family was to tell them at the earliest possible moment that it was under way.
It required a call to the minister to get us past the guards who were still on duty, and when I saw Feisal’s father I felt so sorry for him I couldn’t hold on to my anger. His mother was there too; they were sitting side by side on a hard bench in the corridor, and her arm was around his bowed shoulders. They both broke down when Schmidt told them the good news and everybody except John the imperturbable started crying and hugging one another indiscriminately. Feisal was under deep sedation, but when I kissed his cheek and whispered in his ear I think he heard me.
It had been John’s suggestion that I be allowed to see Feisal. (‘If anything can rouse him it will be a woman.’) When I suggested that so long as we were there he might let a doctor have a look at him, he glowered and made a pointed remark about other kinds of therapy, but with Schmidt’s assistance I managed to bully him into giving in. There would be time for another kind of therapy later.