The Curse of the Pharaohs - Elizabeth Peters [81]
Emerson claims that I shrieked out his name. I have no recollection of doing so, but I must admit he was instantly at my side, panting from the speed with which he had returned.
“Peabody, my dear girl, what is it? Are you injured?” For he assumed, as he afterward told me, that I had collapsed or been struck to the floor.
“No, no, not I—it is he. He is here, under the bed….”
Again I raised the coverlet, which in my shock I had let fall.
“Good Gad!” Emerson exclaimed. He grasped the limp hand that had been my first intimation of young Arthur’s presence.
“Don’t,” I cried. “He is still alive, but in dire straits; we dare not move him until we can ascertain the nature of his injury. Can we lift the bed, do you think?”
In a crisis Emerson and I act as one. He went to the head of the bed, I to the foot; carefully we lifted the bed and set it to one side.
Arthur Baskerville lay on his back. His lower limbs were stiffly extended, his arms pressed close to his sides; the position was unnatural, and horribly reminiscent of the pose in which the Egyptians were wont to arrange their mummified dead. I wondered if my appraisal had been too optimistic, for if he was breathing, there was no sign of it. Nor was there any sign of a wound.
Emerson slipped his hand under the young man’s head. “No mystery about this,” he said quietly. “He has been struck a vicious blow on the head. I fear his skull is fractured. Thank God you stopped me when I was about to drag him out from under the bed.”
“I will send for a doctor,” I said.
“Sit down for a moment, my love; you are as white as paper.”
“Don’t worry about me; send at once, Emerson, time may be of the essence.”
“You will stay with him?”
“I will not leave his side.”
Emerson nodded. Briefly his strong brown hand rested on my shoulder—the touch of a comrade and a friend. He had no need to say more. Again our minds were as one. The person who had struck Arthur Baskerville down had intended to commit murder. He (or she) had failed on this occasion. We must make sure he had no chance to try again.
II
It was past midnight before Emerson and I were able to retire to our room, and my first act was to collapse across the bed with a long sigh.
“What a night!”
“An eventful night indeed,” Emerson agreed. “I believe it is the first time I ever heard you admit you had encountered a case that was beyond your skill.”
But as he spoke he sat down beside me and began loosening my tight gown with hands as gentle as his voice had been sarcastic. Stretching luxuriously, I allowed my husband to remove my shoes and stockings. When he brought a damp cloth and began to wipe my face, I sat up and took it from his hand.
“Poor man, you deserve consideration too,” I said. “After a sleepless night on a rocky bed you worked all day in that inferno; lie down and let me take care of you. I am better, indeed I am; there was no reason for you to treat me like a child.”
“But you enjoyed it,” Emerson said, smiling. I gave him a quick, tactile demonstration of my appreciation. “I did. But now it is your turn. Get into bed and try to snatch a few hours’ sleep. I know that in spite of everything you will be up at daybreak.”
Emerson kissed the hand with which I was wiping his brow (as I have had occasion to remark, he is amazingly sentimental in private), but slipped away from me and began pacing up and down the room.
“I am too keyed up to sleep, Peabody. Don’t fuss over me; you know I can go for days without rest if need be.”
In his rumpled white shirt, open down the front to display his muscular chest, he was again the man I had first adored in the desert wilds, and I watched him for a time in tender silence. I sometimes compare Emerson’s physique to that of a bull, for his massive head and disproportionately wide shoulders do resemble that animal in form, as his fits of temper resemble it in disposition.