The Curse of the Pharaohs - Elizabeth Peters [73]
Vandergelt continued to beg Lady Baskerville to join us, and, when she refused, offered to stay with her.
“My dear Cyrus,” she said, with an affectionate smile, “you are burning to get to your nasty, dirty tomb. Not for the world would I deprive you of this opportunity.”
A prolonged and foolish discussion ensued; it was finally decided that Arthur would stay with the ladies. So Vandergelt and I started out and at the last minute Mary joined us, breathless and apologetic. Made even more anxious by the delay, I set a pace that even the long-legged American was hard pressed to match.
“Whoa, there, Mrs. Amelia” (or perhaps it was “Gee”— some American cattle term, at any rate). “Poor little Miss Mary is going to be all tuckered out before she starts working. There’s no cause for alarm, you know; we’d have heard by this time if some early bird had found the Professor weltering in his gore.”
Though the thought was meant to be comforting, I did not think it particularly well expressed.
After a night spent apart I expected that Emerson would greet me with some degree of enthusiasm. Instead he stared at me blankly for a moment, as if he could not remember who I was. When recognition dawned, it was immediately followed by a scowl.
“You are late,” he said accusingly. “You had better get to work at once; we are far ahead of you, and the men have already turned up a considerable number of small objects in the rubble.”
“Have they?” Vandergelt drawled, stroking his goatee. “Doesn’t look too salubrious, does it, Professor?”
“I said before that I suspected the tomb had been entered by robbers in antiquity,” Emerson snapped. “That does not necessarily mean—”
“I get you. How about letting me have a gander at what has been done? Then I promise I’ll get to work. I’ll even tote baskets if you want.”
“Oh, very well,” Emerson said in his most disagreeable manner. “But be quick.”
No one but the most fanatical enthusiast would have found the effort of inspection worthwhile, for the interior of the passage, now cleared to a length of about fifteen metres, had reached an unbelievable degree of discomfort. It sloped sharply down into abysmal and stifling darkness lighted only by the wan glow of lanterns. The air was foul with the staleness of millennia, and so hot that the men had stripped off all their garments except those required by decency. Every movement, however slight, stirred up the fine white dust left by the limestone chips with which the corridor had been filled. This crystalline powder, clinging to the men’s perspiring bodies, gave them a singularly uncanny appearance; the pallid, leprous forms moving through the foggy gloom resembled nothing so much as reanimated mummies, preparing to menace the invaders of their sleep.
Partially concealed by the rough scaffolding, the procession of painted gods marched solemnly down into the darkness. Ibis-headed Thoth, patron of learning, Maat, goddess of truth, Isis and her falcon-headed son Horus. But what caught my attention and made me forget the extreme discomfort of heat and stifling air was the pile of rubble. In the beginning this had entirely closed the passageway. Now it had shrunk to a height barely shoulder high, leaving a gap between its top and the ceiling.
After a quick glance at the paintings, Vandergelt caught up a lantern and went straight to the pile of rubble. Standing on tiptoe, I peered over his arm as he moved the light forward, over the top of the pile.
The debris sloped sharply downward from that point on. In the shadows beyond the lantern rays loomed a solid mass —the end of the passageway, blocked, as the entrance had been, by a barrier of stone.
Before either of us could comment, Emerson made a commanding gesture and we followed him out into the vestibule at the foot of the stairs. Wiping dust from my streaming brow, I gazed reproachfully at my husband.
“So this is the true explanation for your decision to remain on guard last night! How could you, Emerson? Have we not always shared the thrill of discovery? I am cut to the quick by your duplicity!”
Emerson