The Ape Who Guards the Balance - Elizabeth Peters [40]
“They keep things from us, don’t they?” Ramses had fallen behind the other two so that he could indulge himself in the pleasure of watching Nefret walk. She claimed it made her nervous when he stared at her as he sometimes did—like a specimen under a microscope, as she described it. She’d have been even more unnerved if she had known why he stared. From any angle and in every detail she was beautiful—the tilt of her head under that absurdly becoming hat, the curls that brushed her neck, the square little shoulders and trim waist and rounded hips and . . . Good God, it’s getting worse every day, he thought in disgust, and forced himself to listen to what David was saying.
“I don’t feel right about deceiving them. I owe them so much—”
“Stop feeling guilty,” Ramses said. “They’ll blame me in any case, they always do. Let’s not say anything until after we’ve left Cairo. Father will raise bloody hell with Maspero for failing to shut down the black market in antiquities, and Mother will snatch up her parasol and go looking for Yussuf Mahmud.”
“You haven’t been looking for him, have you?” Nefret asked.
“Not as Ali the Rat, no. We agreed it would be advisable for that engaging character to lie low for a time.”
Nefret pulled away from David and turned on Ramses. “Not as Ali? As who, then? Confound it, Ramses, you gave me your word.”
“I’ve not broken it. But you know perfectly well our only chance of finding out where the papyrus came from is to start with Yussuf Mahmud.”
“Stop goading her, Ramses,” David said. He took Nefret’s arm. “Honestly, you two are enough to drive a sensible person wild. Shouting at one another in a public place!”
“I wasn’t shouting,” Nefret said sullenly. She let him lead her on. “Ramses would try the patience of a saint. And I’m no saint. What have you been up to?”
“Trying to buy antiquities,” David said. “Ramses as a very rich, very stupid tourist and I as his faithful dragoman.”
“Tourist,” Nefret repeated. Again she stopped and whirled round, so suddenly that Ramses had to rock back on his heels to avoid running into her. She shook her finger under his nose. “Not the silly-looking Englishman with straw-colored hair who ogled me through his monocle and said—”
“ ‘By Jove, but that’s a dashed handsome gel,’ ” Ramses agreed, in the silly-looking Englishman’s affected drawl.
Nefret shook her head, but could not help smiling. “What did you find out?”
“That a tourist with plenty of money and no scruples can find all the antiquities he wants. We’ve not been offered anything of the same quality as the papyrus, though, despite the fact that I sneered at everything I was shown and kept on demanding something better. Yussuf Mahmud never showed his face. He is usually one of the first to prey on gullible tourists.”
“They murdered him,” Nefret breathed.
“Or he has gone into hiding,” said Ramses. “Do shut up, Nefret, there is Mother. She can hear a word like ‘murder’ a mile away.”
:
Though the arrangements were all that could be desired, I did not enjoy our annual dinner party as much as usual. So many old friends were gone, into the shadows of eternity or less permanent exile. Howard Carter was not there, nor Cyrus Vandergelt and his wife; the knowledge that we would meet all three in Luxor did not entirely compensate for their absence. As for M. Maspero, I had of course invited him, but was secretly relieved when he pleaded a previous engagement. Though I knew resentment was unreasonable, I could not help feeling that emotion, and listening to the others wax enthusiastic about their pyramids and mastabas and rich cemetery sites, while we contemplated another tedious season among the lesser tombs of the Valley, only increased my vexation with the Director.
Mr. Reisner very kindly invited me to visit Giza, where he held the concession for the Second and Third Pyramids, but I declined, with the excuse that we were to sail on the next day but one. In fact, I saw no point in tantalizing