The Curse of the Pharaohs - Elizabeth Peters [77]
“Under the slab,” replied Vandergelt. “We seem to have here a case of poetic justice, Mrs. Amelia—a thief who was caught in the act in the most literal sense.”
I looked up at the ceiling. The rectangular gap in the surface formed a pocket of deeper darkness. “Could it have been an accident?” I asked.
“Hardly,” Emerson replied. “As we have learned to our sorrow, the rock here is dangerously brittle. However, the symmetrical shape of this block shows that it was deliberately freed from the matrix and balanced so that it would fall if a thief inadvertently disturbed the triggering mechanism. Fascinating! We have seen other such devices, Peabody, but never one so effective.”
“Looks as if the slab is a couple of feet thick,” Vandergelt remarked. “I opine there won’t be much left of the poor rascal.”
“Quite enough, however, to rattle our workmen,” Emerson replied.
“But why?” I asked. “They have excavated hundreds of mummies and skeletons.”
“Not under these particular circumstances. Could there possibly be a more convincing demonstration of the effectiveness of the pharaoh’s curse?”
His last word echoed from the depths beyond: “Curse… curse…” and yet again the faintest murmured “curse…” before the final sibilant faded into silence.
“Hey, cut it out, Professor,” Vandergelt said uneasily. “You’ll have me gibbering about demons in a minute. What do you say we quit for the night? It’s getting late, and this appears to be a sizable job.”
“Quit? Stop, you mean?” Emerson stared at him in surprise. “No, no, I must see what is under the slab. Peabody, fetch Karl and Abdullah.”
I found Karl sitting with his back against the fence, making a fair copy of an inscription. Urgent as Emerson’s summons had been, I could not help pausing for a moment to admire the rapidity with which his hand traced the complex shapes of the hieroglyphic signs: tiny birds and animals and figures of men and women, and the more abstruse symbols derived from flowers, architectural shapes, and so on. So absorbed was the young man in his task that he did not notice my presence until I touched him on the shoulder.
With the aid of Karl and the reis we managed to lift the slab, though it was a delicate and dangerous procedure. By means of levers and wedges it was gradually raised and at last tipped back onto its side, exposing the remains of the long-dead thief. It was hard to think of those brittle scraps as having once been human. Even the skull had been crushed to fragments.
“Curse it, this is when we need our photographer,” Emerson muttered. “Peabody, go back to the house and—”
“Be reasonable, Professor,” Vandergelt exclaimed. “This can wait till morning. You don’t want the missus wandering around the plateau at night.”
“Is it night?” Emerson inquired.
“Permit that I make a sketch, Herr Professor,” Karl said. “I do not draw with the grace and facility of Miss Mary, but—”
“Yes, yes, that is a good idea.” Emerson squatted. Taking out a little brush, he began to clean the muffling dust from the bones.
“I don’t know what you expect to find,” Vandergelt grunted, wiping his perspiring brow. “This poor fellow was a peasant; there won’t be any precious objects on his body.”
But even as he spoke a brilliant spark sprang to life in the dust Emerson’s brush had shifted. “Wax,” Emerson snapped. “Hurry, Peabody. I need wax.”
I moved at once to obey—not the imperious dictates of a tyrannical husband, but the imperative need of a fellow professional. Paraffin wax was among the supplies we commonly kept on hand; it was used to hold broken objects together until a more permanent adhesive could be applied. I melted a considerable quantity over my small spirit lamp and hastened back to the tomb to find that Emerson had finished clearing the object whose first glitter had told us of the presence of gold.
He snatched the pan from me, careless of the heat, and poured the liquid in a slow stream onto the ground. I saw only flashes of color—blue and reddish orange and cobalt— before the hardening wax hid the object.
Emerson transferred the mass to