The Ape Who Guards the Balance - Elizabeth Peters [159]
He thought he knew where his father was going, and he cursed himself for telling Emerson about the small silver disk. He had found it lying near the abandoned rifle. There was no doubt in his mind it had been deliberately placed there. The idea of a woman, jingling with silver and clad in long robes, scampering around the cliffs of the Valley and accidentally losing one of her ornaments, was absurd.
The silver disk was meant to lead them back to the House of the Doves. For obvious reasons, he had been careful to conceal it from his mother. Ordinarily Nefret and David would have been his confidantes, but poor David was half out of his mind with romantic frustration and Nefret couldn’t be trusted to act sensibly when her feelings were so deeply involved. Someone had to be told, though, because, unlike his mother, he wasn’t fool enough to go back there alone. That left his father. Emerson had nodded and mumbled and said he’d think about what they should do. And now he was doing it—alone, as he believed, and without taking sensible precautions. It would have been hard to say which of them was more difficult, his mother or his father.
The only question was, had Emerson made an appointment beforehand, or did he plan to drop in without notice? If the latter was the case, he probably wouldn’t run into anything he couldn’t handle, but if he had been stupid enough to warn them. . . . No, Ramses admitted, Father isn’t stupid. It’s that bloody awful self-confidence of his that gets him into . . .
Speaking of self-confidence, he thought, as a pair of large hands closed round his windpipe and he was slammed up against a wall.
“Damnation!” said Emerson, peering into his face. “It’s you!”
“Yes, sir.” Ramses rubbed his throat. “What did I do wrong?”
“You were a bit too close on my heels. Thinking of something else, were you?” Emerson pondered the situation. “I suppose you may as well come along. Follow me at a discreet distance and don’t come in the house.”
“People are staring at us, Father.”
“Hmmm, yes.” His father cuffed him across the face. “How dare you try to rob the Father of Curses!” he shouted in Arabic. “Thank Allah that I do not beat you to a jelly!”
He strode off. Ramses skulked along after him “at a discreet distance.” The carefully calculated blow had looked more painful than it felt, but his cheek stung.
He had not been mistaken about his father’s destination. At this time of day there weren’t many customers, but a couple of men stood by the door fahddling and smoking. As Emerson strode briskly toward the entrance, one dropped his cigarette and both stared, first at Emerson, then at one another. As one man they turned and trotted away.
The curtains flapped wildly as Emerson pushed through them. Ramses stepped back in time to avoid the rush of another man, who bolted out of the house and ran off. Ramses smiled behind his sleeve. “When the Father of Curses appears, trouble follows.” Daoud had a long collection of such sayings, which were now current in Luxor and surroundings.
He picked up the cigarette end the other fellow had dropped, but he didn’t put it in his mouth. Verisimilitude had its limits, and he was already unhappily aware of the fleas inhabiting his borrowed garments. Scratching absently, he drew nearer to the door and listened. He could hear only a low murmur of voices. One was his father’s. The other was that of a woman.
As the minutes dragged by Ramses became increasingly uneasy. Polite conversation with the ladies was all very well, but it could be a delaying tactic, and there was only one reason he could think of for someone wanting to delay the Father of Curses—the need to collect enough men to overpower him. The hell with orders, Ramses thought. His mother would kill him if his father came to harm through his negligence—if he didn’t kill himself first.
Stripping off the galabeeyah and turban, he ran his fingers through his disheveled hair and pushed through the curtain. The room was empty except for the proprietress and his father. The latter swung round.
“Curse it, I told