The Deeds of the Disturber - Elizabeth Peters [53]
Emerson was not in the Reading Room or in his ‘study.’ I had not expected he would be, so I proceeded at once to the Egyptian Galleries on the upper floor.
The Second Egyptian Gallery was even more crowded than it had been the first time I visited it. The gathering was cosmopolitan (and even polyglot, for there were one or two turbaned Hindoos present, and the dialects of Yorkshire, Scotland, and other remote districts can hardly be considered identical with English). Fashionable ladies, gossiping and tittering behind gloved hands, rubbed elbows with stolid tradesmen and clerks nattily attired in checked unmentionables. There were a number of children, as well as a few individuals bearing the unmistakable stamp of journalists; and even a photographer, with only his legs visible under the black hood of the camera. It required very little intelligence to deduce that some special event was about to take place.
It was impossible to see, much less approach, the celebrated mummy case. I made my way through the throng until I had reached a dark-complexioned gentleman sporting a purple turban and an enormous black beard.
‘Hallo, Peabody,’ he said. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I might ask you the same, Emerson.’
‘Why, I saw the notice in the newspaper, as I assume you did. Mr Budge is to give a talk. How could I resist the opportunity to improve my understanding of Egyptology?’
The awful sarcasm of his voice is not to be described.
I replied, ‘Leaving that aside, Emerson, I might rather ask what you are doing here in that unusual costume. The beard is somewhat excessive, don’t you think?’
Emerson stroked the appendage in question lovingly. He had had a beard when I first met him; he had shaved it off at my request, but I had always wondered if he missed it.
‘It is a splendid beard, Peabody. I will brook no criticism of it.’
‘You don’t want Mr Budge to recognize you, is that it?’
‘Oh, come, Peabody, let us not fence,’ Emerson growled. ‘I am here for the same reason you are. The lunatic is bound to show up; he must read the newspapers, and he won’t be able to resist a confrontation like this. I intend to catch the rascal and put an end to this nonsense.’
‘The beard should be a great help, Emerson.’
Emerson was prevented from replying by a bustle at the far end of the gallery, heralding the arrival of Mr Budge. He was surrounded by guards, who, in a somewhat brusque manner, cleared a space between the exhibit case and the camera. Mr Budge struck a pose; a flash and puff of smoke betokened the taking of a picture.
One could only hope it would flatter him. He was at that time in his late thirties, but he looked older. To quote an American colleague of ours (Mr Breasted from Chicago, whom Emerson considered one of the most promising of the younger generation of Egyptologists), Budge was ‘pudgy, logy, and soggy-faced,’ and his handshake ‘had all the friendly warmth of a fish’s tail.’ Narrowed, cold eyes squinted suspiciously at the world from behind his thick spectacles. His superiors at the Museum regarded him with a mixture of approval and distaste; approval because he filled the Museum halls with choice objects, distaste because his methods of acquiring them brought him into disrepute with every respectable member of the archaeological community. He had written authoritatively and inaccurately on practically every scholarly subject, in Assyriology as well as Egyptology. Tales of his dubious practices, which ranged from bribery and customs fraud to downright theft, provided tea-table gossip for the entire world of Oriental scholarship.
This, then, was the man who confronted his audience and prepared to lecture on mummification in ancient Egypt.
The lecture