The Curse of the Pharaohs - Elizabeth Peters [108]
The others took their chairs. No one spoke, though Vandergelt’s lips were twitching suspiciously as he watched Emerson bustling about in his trailing finery. I had feared Madame Berengeria would be unable to resist the opportunity to make a spectacle of herself, but she sat down in silence and folded her arms across her breast like a pharaoh holding the twin scepters. The flames were beginning to die down, and in the growing gloom her bizarre costume was much more effective than it had been in the brightly lighted hotel. As I studied her somber and unattractive countenance I found a new source of uneasiness. Had I, after all, underestimated this woman?
With a loud “hem!” Emerson called us to attention. My heart swelled with affectionate pride as I looked on him, his hands tucked in his flowing sleeves like a Chinese mandarin, the silly cap perched on top of his thick black hair. Emerson’s impressive presence invested even that absurd garb with dignity, and when he began to speak no one had the slightest inclination to laugh.
He spoke in English and in Arabic, translating phrase by phrase. Instead of making the audience impatient, this deliberate pace was all the more effective theatrically. He mocked the cowardice of the men of Gurneh and praised the courage and intelligence of his own men, tactfully omitting their recent lapse.
Then his voice rose to a shout that made his audience jump.
“I will tolerate this no longer! I am the Father of Curses, the man who goes where others fear to tread, the fighter of demons. You know me, you know my name! Do I speak the truth?”
He paused. A low murmur responded to this peculiar jumble of ancient formulas and modern Arabic boasting. Emerson went on.
“I know your hearts! I know the evildoers among you! Did you think you could escape the vengeance of the Father of Curses? No! My eye can see in the blackness of night, my ear can hear the words you think but do not utter!”
He strode quickly back and forth, moving his arms in mystic gestures. Whenever his steps took him toward the staring crowd, those in the front ranks drew back. Suddenly he came to a complete standstill. One arm lifted, the forefinger rigid and quivering. An almost visible current of force emanated from this extended digit; the awestruck watchers fell back before it. Emerson bounded forward and plunged into the crowd. The blue and white robes undulated like waves. When Emerson emerged from the human sea he was dragging a man with him—a man whose single eye glared wildly in the firelight.
“Here he is,” Emerson bellowed. “My all-seeing eye has found him where he cowered among his betters.”
The surrounding cliffs flung his words back in rumbling echoes. Then he turned to the man he held by the throat.
“Habib ibn Mohammed,” he said. “Three times you have tried to kill me. Jackal, murderer of children, eater of dead man’s bones—what madness seized you, that you dared to threaten me?”
I doubt that Habib could have produced a reply worthy of that eloquent demand even if he had been capable of speaking. Turning again to the circle of rapt faces, Emerson cried, “Brothers! What punishment does the Koran, the word of the Prophet, decree for a murderer?”
“Death!” came the answer, thundering among the echoing cliffs.
“Take him away,” Emerson said and flung Habib into the waiting arms of Feisal.
A sigh of pure delight went up from a hundred throats. No one appreciates a good theatrical performance more than an Arab. An audience of Luxor men had sat enthralled through Romeo and Juliet—in English—a few years earlier. This was much more entertaining. Before they could turn to their friends and begin an animated critique of the show, Emerson spoke again.
“Habib was not the only evildoer among us,” he called out.
Agitated eddies appeared here and there, as certain members of the audience hastily headed for the obscurity of darkness. Emerson made a contemptuous gesture.
“They are even smaller