The Deeds of the Disturber - Elizabeth Peters [94]
‘Sitt Hakim.’ She did not move; her voice was muffled and uneven.
‘Yes?’
‘You will know my messenger if he comes. But I do not promise he will come.’
‘Very good. I hope he will.’
‘Sitt Hakim?’
‘Yes.’
‘Before last night I had not seen Emerson Effendi for many years. It was in Egypt I knew him. Not in England. He has never visited me here.’
‘Oh, indeed? Well, I expect he will be along shortly.’
This time she did not call me back.
After retrieving my cloak from the maid I crossed Park Lane and found a seat in the park, facing the house I had just left. Would Emerson come? I was not certain he would. My parting shot had been designed by resentment and a desire to appear clever (for even I succumb to such failings of character at times, and considering the provocation, I felt that on the whole I had behaved very well).
I was sure it had been Emerson I saw entering Scotland Yard. Knowing I planned to go there, he had probably waited till he saw me leave. If he had waited a little longer I would not have noticed him, but that was so like Emerson; impatience was his greatest weakness.
Tit for tat, Professor Emerson, I thought. I too would wait awhile, to see if Emerson was following the same trail I had followed. But perhaps not for the same reasons . . .
I had not been there long before a cab drew up and Emerson bounded out. As soon as he had entered the house I took the precaution of hailing another cab. Getting in, I told the driver to wait. Emerson was not inside five minutes. He emerged even more precipitously than he had entered and stood on the pavement looking suspiciously about. Obviously Ayesha had told him of my visit, and he feared I might be lurking about.
I told my cabman to drive on. Peering out the small, dirty window, I watched Emerson cross the road and begin prowling the park. He was engaged in an altercation with a lady about my size and shape, whose old-fashioned, shovel-shaped bonnet he had attempted to remove, when the cab turned the corner into Upper Brook Street, and I beheld no more.
It is impossible to express fully the emotions that mingled within me following the interview with Ayesha (especially in the pages of a journal which may one day be published, though not, of course, before a great deal of editing takes place). My brain was a seething caldron of speculation.
If Ayesha had spoken the truth, I had nothing with which to reproach Emerson. It would have been entirely unreasonable to hold him accountable for anything he did or said or felt or thought prior to the unforgettable moment when he committed himself to me, body and soul, heart and hand.
But had she spoken the truth? Poor ruined beauty, she had every reason to lie and none whatever to reassure me. I wondered if she had felt the same reluctant sympathy for me that I had felt for her. We had something in common in addition to Emerson (and I freely confess that however sensible my reasoning on that subject might be, my emotional response did me no credit). She was a strong woman who had overcome even greater handicaps than the ones I had faced. If my knowledge of physiognomy was not at fault, she had English or European blood. A half-caste – for such is the opprobrious term – carries a double burden, despised by her mother’s people, unrecognized by her father’s. Add to this the position of women in her world – even more opprobrious than that of women in ‘enlightened’ England – and I could hardly blame her for using the only means possible to pull herself out of the degrading abyss of semislavery that would have been her fate had she followed the conventional career of an Egyptian female – premature marriage, incessant childbearing, boredom, misery, and early death.
She was a clever woman, but in her agitation she had made one little slip. How meaningful it might be remained to be seen, but it had certainly opened up new possibilities I meant to explore.
Upon reaching home I discovered I had missed Mr O’Connell. He had stayed quite some time – ‘stamping up and down the drawing room