The Golden One - Elizabeth Peters [121]
Emerson stamped into the room, flung himself into a chair, and took out his pipe. Nefret had left his thumb and fingers free of the cast, and by now he was using both hands, against her advice and my orders. The weight of the cast did not seem to bother him in the slightest. He proceeded to tamp tobacco into the pipe, making an even greater mess than usual. Ramses followed, his face unreadable. That withdrawn, “stone pharaoh” look was his reaction to bad news, just as poorly repressed fury was his father’s.
“Well?” I demanded. “What happened?”
Ramses’s features relaxed into a smile. “Father threatened to punch General Murray on the jaw.”
“Ah,” I said. “Well, that was only to be expected if the general accused your—er—Sethos of treachery.”
“Bastard,” said Emerson, round the stem of his pipe. I knew he was not referring to his brother.
“Stop swearing and tell me what transpired.”
“I will swear if I like,” Emerson said sullenly. “Murray would drive a nun to profanity.”
Nefret held out her hand to Ramses. He went at once to her and took her hand in his.
“You had better let me tell it, Father. It appears there was a problem of miscommunication. Murray wasn’t expecting us, and he was not at all pleased to have us turn up. He knew about the matter, but if we had asked for an appointment, in the usual way, the request would have been passed on to his chief of staff, who would have passed it on to the head of military intelligence in Cairo, who is—”
“Boisdragon-Bracegirdle,” I exclaimed.
“No, Mother. My old acquaintance, Captain, now Major, Cartright.”
“How extraordinary. It was on this business he telegraphed you in that brusque fashion? Then what does Brace—curse it, Smith—have to do with this?”
“I don’t know, and I didn’t ask,” Ramses said. “There is something odd about this business, and until we can make sense of it, the less we say the better. It may be only a question of interservice jealousy. That has caused more trouble than the enemy.”
“How much does Murray know?” I asked.
Emerson was still muttering curses, so Ramses answered the question. “He made no reference to our relationship with Sethos. Smith may have been telling the truth there. They know I’ve met him, though, and that I have had ample opportunity to observe him. It was Cartright who convinced Murray that I was the best man to track Sethos down. They’ve had trouble getting agents into and out of Turkish territory. None of their own people can pass as an Arab, and the locals they’ve recruited are unreliable and untrained.”
Emerson had got himself under control. “They’re a bunch of bumbling incompetents,” he declared. “Sometimes it takes weeks for information about Turkish movements to reach them, via the indirect channels they employ. They got the news about Sethos fast enough, though. I suggested to Murray that he might be a prisoner instead of a traitor, and that swine Murray—”
“That was when Father tried to hit him,” said Ramses, with a grin. “Cartright got us out of Murray’s office in a hurry.”
“I cannot believe Sethos passed on vital information willingly,” I exclaimed.
From behind a cloud of vile-smelling smoke, Emerson said, “The alternatives are almost as unpleasant, my dear.”
“Alternatives? I can only think of one.” I got up and moved to the window, where the air was not so thick. “Emerson, that pipe—”
“It calms my nerves, Peabody. However, anything to please you.” He knocked the thing out into a receptacle, sending sparks flying. “Torture is one possibility, certainly, though I don’t see how they could make a public spectacle of him if he was injured and under duress. There are other ways of forcing an individual to speak. Are you certain Margaret Minton is in France?”
“What a horrible idea!” I cried. “That the villains would use the threat of harm to the woman he loves!”
“It is a well-established technique, not only in the service but in popular fiction,” said Ramses.
“I beg, Ramses, that you will refrain from inappropriate attempts to be humorous. I will set about