The Falcon at the Portal - Elizabeth Peters [180]
I took stock of the situation. It was not encouraging. Nefret knelt beside Jack, who was halfway between us and the entrance to the substructure. Fists clenched and brow thunderous, Emerson was almost as far distant, a good ten feet away, with Lia and David behind him. The only one who was close enough to present a danger to Geoffrey was my son, and he dared not move because of the threat to me. Behind that mask of his I knew he was coolly calculating the odds and trying to think of ways of shifting them in our favor. He glanced at his father and then returned his gaze to Geoffrey.
“I did underestimate you,” he admitted.
“It only goes to show how misleading physiognomy can be,” Geoffrey said, with that sweet boyish smile. “I have the looks of an aesthete, don’t I? When I was younger I tried to measure up to the family standards, but no matter how skilled I became at hunting and shooting and riding, the old man sneered at my accomplishments and my girlish face. So I decided to go my own way and use my defects to my advantage. I was doing rather well until you came along. You can understand why I will enjoy killing as many of you as possible before I am captured.”
“That is foolish,” I said disapprovingly. “Your doom is not certain at the present time; if you harm no one else, the possibilities of escaping justice—”
“Peabody, will you please refrain from making suggestions?” Emerson shouted.
“Emerson, will you please be quiet?”
Nefret got slowly to her feet. “Geoffrey, you know I will stand by you if you don’t hurt anyone else. For better or worse, do you remember? Give Aunt Amelia … No, give Ramses the gun.”
His face softened and his eyes turned to her.
Emerson had been waiting for just such a moment. With a shout of “Down, Peabody!” he leaped forward.
Not until later did I fully appreciate the heroic courage of that gesture. It was a deliberate, calculated attempt to draw Geoffrey’s fire away from me and from his son. Emerson knew that Ramses would have risked an attack rather than see me shot down in cold blood, and at that range Geoffrey could not have missed him.
We all reacted precisely as my valiant spouse had known we would. The bullet whistled over me as I dropped to hands and knees. I heard a grunt from Emerson, and a scream from Nefret; I saw Ramses leap forward, striking the weapon from Geoffrey’s hand and simultaneously hitting him very hard on the chin.
Geoffrey reeled back. He had been dangerously close to the edge of the shaft; the last step took him over. I had a flashing glimpse of a face, openmouthed in a silent scream of terror, and a pair of flailing arms. At the same instant Ramses flung himself flat onto the ground and reached out.
Time seemed to stop. As the cloud of dusty sand settled over Ramses’s black head and sweat-soaked shirt, I saw that his arms and half his body, almost to the waist, were over the edge. His hands grasped Geoffrey’s right wrist. That grip was the only thing between the miserable creature and a hideous death; the side of the shaft was too smooth to permit him to find a foothold. He appeared to have fainted; his entire dead weight hung limp and his head was bowed.
I could hear Emerson swearing, which relieved my worst fear. Another was almost as acute, for it seemed to me that Ramses was too far off balance to pull himself back, much less himself and Geoffrey. I took hold of his belt and shouted for help.
It was there. Half-blinded by sand and in a considerable state of agitation, I had not seen David and Selim running toward me. With a cry of alarm, our young reis grasped Ramses round the legs and tried to pull him back. David lay flat and reached down. “Geoffrey! Give me your other hand,” he called.
Geoffrey raised his head. He had not fainted; he was conscious and aware. Safety lay within his grasp. The man he had tried to murder held him fast, and the hand of the man he had traduced was held out to aid him.
His delicate