The Deeds of the Disturber - Elizabeth Peters [128]
Instead of returning immediately to the house I remained at the gate. The night air was damp and permeated with the acrid smell of burning coal, but I am sure I need not tell the Reader why I lingered. If there is any among you who has not, on one occasion or another, stood by a window or at a door, watching with bated breath for a returning wanderer – whose heart has not quickened at the sight of every vehicle turning into the street, or any pedestrian whose form bears the slightest resemblance to the one awaited – who has not felt the sickening pain of disappointment when the vehicle passes without stopping and the form is that of another – then I heartily congratulate that individual on the tranquillity of his or her existence.
Gargery stood in the doorway, watching as intently as I. It was a futile exercise, and well I knew it; after a few moments I gave a deep sigh and started to turn.
The shrubbery beside the gate, now fully leaved, swayed as if in a sudden breeze. But there was no wind. The leaves on the bushes opposite hung limp and still. Something that might have been a giant snow-white spider crawled out of the enclosing branches. It was not a spider; it was a hand, of leprous pallor and skeletal thinness. And it held a piece of paper.
The moment I took the paper the hand disappeared; a faint rustling sound, which would have been inaudible to anyone who was not straining her ears to hear it, faded into silence as the messenger retreated the same way he had come, crawling in reptilian fashion flat on the ground.
Ayesha had said I would know her messenger. It was hardly likely that anyone else would deliver a letter in such a distinctive fashion.
Gargery had not seen anything unusual. I felt sure he would have shouted or run to me if he had. Concealing the paper in the folds of my skirt, I hastened back to the house and went directly to the library.
The paper had been folded twice but not sealed. There was no superscription on the outside. On the inside was a single line of bizarre symbols.
My blurred vision took an unconscionably long time to focus. The symbols were, as I might have expected, those of hieroglyphic writing, but the signs were clumsily written, as though by someone only superficially acquainted with the graceful picture writing of ancient Egypt, and the spelling – if I may use that word to describe a language which is not primarily alphabetic – was appalling. I had to puzzle over it for some time before I deciphered it. The obelisk was unmistakable – there could be only one such in London – but no Egyptian would have used the phrase ‘the middle of the night’ to refer, as I assumed this did, to midnight. There was only one other group of signs – the walking legs, used as determinatives for verbs descriptive of motion, and a single stroke.
‘Come alone?’ There could be no other meaning. It was the sort of unoriginal suggestion writers of anonymous messages were always making, especially to people they hoped to lure into a trap. An assignation at midnight, on the Embankment, made by a woman who had no cause to love me and every cause to feel otherwise, might well be such a trap.
I decided to arrive at the rendezvous at half past eleven. When one anticipates an ambush, it is strategically advantageous to be on the spot beforehand.
There are few times in my long and (I am happy to say) adventurous life I recall with less pleasure than that spring evening in London. Anticipation and apprehension warred within my breast, and never have the hours dragged so slowly. I dined alone – though to use that verb would be misleading, for Gargery, in a state of perturbation almost equal to my own, whisked the dishes on and off the table so rapidly I could not have eaten of them even if I had felt like eating, which I did not. When I passed through the hall to the stairs, I saw him at his post by the window. He had pulled the curtains back into a bunch and was creasing them horribly, but I did not have the heart to complain.
I hesitate to record the wild theories that barraged