The Egyptologist - Arthur Phillips [66]
“I was glad of the opportunity, financially. Just the sort of thing our club likes, a winner, not without risk, but we’re protected, built-in protections. Thanks to my little girl, we got the chance to invest ahead of museums and banks and such. Any of them would have jumped at a chance like this, that’s sure, but we got first dibs. And, of course, I could see Maggie falling in love, whether she understood enough to put a name to it, and who am I to argue with love? When you have a little girl and a fellow like this comes along, you’ll understand, Mr. Ferrell.” The wedding would take place as soon as possible after Trilipush’s return from his dig.
Did Finneran think an Egyptian excavation was a safe investment? No, ha-ha, of course not, not usually, but there were unique circumstances here, advantages: “Trilipush found something during the War, with a friend of his, and it points right to a very likely tomb. The details of it are complex. I can’t say I understand all the scholarly stuff. It’s not like a treasure map, precisely, of course, you have to know how to read the historical evidence, what have you, I don’t claim to be a scholar, but Trilipush explained it all and he more than convinced the group that, as far as these things go, while there are never guarantees, everything points to a fast and lucrative find.”
Now all of this new information placed me in a bit of a predicament, you’ll notice if you stop thinking like his great-nephew for a minute and start thinking like my assistant again, Macy. See, I knew enough to stop that wedding right then and there: lies about Oxford, questions about military records, trouble with his Harvard chief. And what would follow from dropping a bomb like that? Well, here’s a tip, Macy: it’s never quite clear just who’ll get blown up in situations like this one. Think for a minute, because you should know how our business operates by now. First, I needed my questions answered, and I can’t get answers from an angry, panicked ex-father-in-law-to-be. Second, you and I are in a business that works by the clock; we can’t make a living selling information; we sell time. So, later in this conversation, when we proposed to Mr. Finneran that he become our new client, we set his expectations that a background investigation of his daughter’s fiancé would take some weeks. And, finally, information (and the time it takes to collect it) only has value if the buyer will pay for it. If I started telling Finneran the truth that day, he’d’ve seen me out the door in a rage. It was clear to me from day one that Finneran never wanted to hear anything true about his Trilipush, and later events proved me correct in this. No, I saw plain that Finneran would pay for reassurance. And a sensitive detective provides his clients what they need and will pay for. Lesson from Ferrell: satisfied clients pay.
Finally, between you and me as men, Macy, I didn’t want to cause any pain, and that’s the truth. It was clear that I was going to have to head off to Egypt to get to the bottom of the Caldwell and Marlowe deaths anyway, and to interrogate Trilipush about them. So I wanted an address and an itinerary for Trilipush, and that was all. There was nothing to be gained that day by revealing word one about English sodomists or fine young Australian men dead in the desert while English captains who lied about their education turned up safe and sound in Boston winning the