The Ape Who Guards the Balance - Elizabeth Peters [149]
Ramses immediately launched into an interminable monologue. Happily, this prevented Emerson from launching into an interminable tirade against all the persons involved with the tomb; but as Ramses went on and on and on, listing every item in the burial chamber, even Emerson stopped scowling and listened openmouthed.
“The so-called crown is in fact a collar or pectoral,” Ramses concluded. “Why it was placed on the head of the mummy is open to conjecture. It was of thin gold in the shape of a vulture—the vulture goddess Nekhbet, to be precise—so it could be bent to fit the contours of the skull. Oh—I neglected to mention a heap of approximately forty beads which had apparently fallen from a necklace or bracelet.”
Cyrus eyed him askance. “Now see here, young fellow, you can’t possibly remember all that. How many times were you in the burial chamber?”
Ramses’s reply—“Once, sir, for approximately twenty minutes”—made Cyrus look even more skeptical. However, I recalled the time Ramses had rattled off the entire inventory of an antiquities storeroom after having been in the place for less time than that. I had forgot about this attribute—natural talent or acquired skill, as the case may be—and apparently Emerson had too. He gazed at his son in dawning speculation.
“A word with you later, Ramses,” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
The ladies from the Mission left early, in order to be safely removed from worldly temptation before midnight, when the Sabbath began. Miss Buchanan repeated her invitation to visit the school, which I promised I would do.
The Vandergelts were driving the ladies back to the boat landing in their carriage, but I managed to draw Katherine aside for a few words in private.
“We must make a formal appointment, it seems,” I declared. “I have seen too little of you, and I have much to tell you.”
“I feel the same,” Katherine replied. “I believe Cyrus means to go to the Valley tomorrow. I will come with him, and perhaps we can find the opportunity for a chat.”
I stood on the verandah waving farewell until the carriage disappeared into the darkness. I hoped the others would have gone to their rooms by the time I returned to the parlor, but they were still there, and I braced myself for additional questions and reproaches.
“We were wondering, Mother, whether you had heard from Uncle Walter.”
Ramses was the speaker, but I knew who had prompted him to ask. My reply was directed impartially at them all.
“I am sorry I neglected to mention it. Yes, Walter telegraphed from Cairo this afternoon, and for a wonder the message was promptly delivered. They had a safe journey and they have booked passage on the steamer from Port Said on Tuesday next.”
“All of them?” Nefret exclaimed. “I thought Uncle Walter intended to return to Luxor.”
“I persuaded him not to do so,” said Emerson, looking particularly smug.
None of us asked how he had accomplished that. I really did not care how. I did not doubt Walter’s courage or his devotion to us, but it would have been deuced awkward to have him underfoot. He was a scholar, not a man of action, and every mention of Lia’s name would have been—well—awkward.
“Well done, Emerson,” I said.
Emerson looked pleased. David murmured a few words that might have been “Good night,” and left the room.
Emerson does not brood. He has a happy facility for concentrating on the business of the moment and ignoring the things he can do nothing about. He was up next morning full of energy and ready to go back to work.
By the time Katherine and Cyrus joined us in the Valley we had put in two good hours’ work. Cyrus inspected number Five without great enthusiasm. “It’ll take years to get through that debris, and then the ceiling will probably fall in on you,” he declared.
“It is not like you to be so pessimistic,” I said.
“Well, consarn it, Amelia, I’m getting discouraged. All those years here in the Valley without any luck, and I’m having the same kind of thing over at Dra Abu’l Naga, right near where you-all found