The Golden One - Elizabeth Peters [189]
“I’ll try not to. But you know how she—”
“Yes, yes, I do know. But this time, by Gad, I think I’m one step ahead of her. Come over here where she can’t hear us.”
His mother was two hundred feet away but Ramses let his father draw him aside. “Well, sir?”
Emerson took out his pipe. “It struck me as somewhat strange that the Albions would select that particular part of the valley. There is no more reason to expect a big find there than anywhere else. Unless they had a hint from someone.”
He lit a match and puffed. “A hint such as the fragment of wall painting?” Ramses asked. “Khonsu. He is a god and he has human hands.”
“As do many other gods,” Emerson said. “But the Albions, for all Sebastian’s book learning, haven’t much experience, and at the moment they are at a loss as to where to look.”
“For Jamil’s tomb?”
“I see the idea does not surprise you. What made you think of it?”
“I don’t like the Albions,” Ramses said. “Any of them.”
“I am glad to see you are beginning to trust your instincts,” his father said approvingly.
“As Mother would say—” Emerson’s scowl made him abandon that thought. “I don’t like their behavior toward Jumana,” Ramses elaborated. “Their attitude toward Egyptians is characteristic of their class and nationality—bigoted and prejudiced, in other words. After his initial blunder Sebastian has leaned over backward to be polite to her. Nefret thinks it is because they hope to ingratiate themselves with us, but there could be another reason.”
His father nodded. “Go on.”
“Let’s go at it from another direction. Jamil was getting financial support from someone. We assumed it was Yusuf, but there were those interesting items of European manufacture among his supplies. The Albions asked you to introduce them to a few tomb robbers. I don’t believe it was a joke. They had been asking around Gurneh, and Albion mentioned that ‘Mohammed’ had put them on to someone. What if that someone was Jamil?”
“Mohassib’s first name is Mohammed,” Emerson said.
“It might have been Mohassib, or Mohammed Hassan—or any one of several other Mohammeds. Those two are the most likely, however. Both had spoken with Jamil, both were afraid of him. What better way of conciliating him than to introduce him to a wealthy patron? Then Jamil was inconsiderate enough to get himself killed before he disclosed the location of the tomb. The Albions believe there’s a chance he confided in Jumana. An outside chance, but that’s what they have been reduced to.”
“And Jamil promised that in exchange for their support he would sell them the objects from the tomb once he’d cleared it. My thought exactly.”
“If I know Albion, he’d insist on more than promises,” Ramses said.
“Oh, well done,” Emerson said approvingly. “Yes, he’d want proof of the find, and—a little something on account? Something as fine as the cosmetic jar?”
“Possibly. It’s all conjecture, and we can’t . . . Father, no!”
“Can’t do what?” said Emerson, fumbling with his pipe. He was too late; his face had betrayed him.
“Search their rooms. Don’t deny it, Father, that is what you were thinking.”
“You thought of it, too, or you wouldn’t have been so quick to read my mind.”
The accusation was accurate, the grin conspiratorial, but Ramses tried to look stern. “That sort of thing is more in Mother’s line.”
“We can’t have her doing something like that,” Emerson said. “It’s against the law.”
Ramses couldn’t resist the grin. He began to laugh. “It’s a tempting thought, but not really practical. Even if we found illegal antiquities, we couldn’t confiscate them or prove where they came from. Jamil may have dropped enticing hints to the Albions, but they don’t seem to know any more than we do.”
His father’s abstracted expression told him he hadn’t got the point across. “This is all conjecture,” he insisted. “Logical and consistent, but without substantiating evidence. We can’t even be certain that Jamil told the Albions about the hand of the god. It may have been pure coincidence that they chose to dig in that spot.”
“Well, we will soon