The Golden One - Elizabeth Peters [213]
We were all on our feet, except for Nefret, who had given me her word she would not expose herself to gunfire. Emerson pointed his rifle toward the temple and pulled the trigger.
The men with Albion broke like a drop of quicksilver, scattering in all directions. “Let them go,” said Emerson, plunging down the slope. “It’s Albion I want.”
However, he was too late. I would never have supposed such a round, elderly man could move so fast. The bullet Emerson aimed at his heels only made him run faster.
“Emerson,” I said, tugging at his arm. “We had better do something about Sebastian, don’t you think?”
Emerson looked up and let out an exclamation.
The men who had started to follow Sebastian up to the platform were dropping to the ground, but Sebastian himself was still there—hanging by his hands from the edge of the platform and screaming at the top of his lungs. Quite a number of people were shouting, so his cries had been lost in the uproar. He must have lost his balance when the gun went off.
“I’ll get him,” Ramses said.
“Give him a hand, Bertie,” Emerson ordered. “You’ll need to get a rope round the bloody idiot. There’s plenty in the supply shed. I wonder how much longer he can hold on,” he added with mild interest.
Nefret and I set about freeing our men, who set about collecting fallen tomb robbers. Some of them had dropped quite a distance, so there were sprains and a broken bone or two, which Nefret treated in her usual efficient fashion.
“Have they got him?” she asked, referring to Sebastian. He was still screaming. “I can’t see from here.”
“Bertie got a rope around him,” Cyrus said. “They don’t seem to be in any hurry to pull him up, though.”
Leaving the robbers in Selim’s charge, we took a silent, shivering Sebastian back to his ma and pa. As Emerson declared, he had not finished with Mr. Albion, not by a damned sight. We all went along, naturally. No one wanted to miss the denouement.
There was no response to Emerson’s emphatic knocks on the door of the Albions’s sitting room. Fearing that he would wake the poor convalescent officers, I announced in low but penetrating tones, “We have your son. If you want him back you must let us in.”
The door was flung open by Mrs. Albion. Despite the lateness of the hour she was fully dressed and bejeweled. “What have you done to him?” she cried, seizing hold of the young man.
“He did it to himself,” I replied, pushing mother and son out of the way. Mr. Albion was sitting on the sofa. He must have arrived just before we did, since he was breathless, disheveled, and very red in the face.
“Now you’ve brought him back, get out,” he said.
“This is not a presentation, it is an exchange,” said Emerson. “Peabody, my dear, may I invite you to take a chair, since no one else has had the courtesy to do so? Albion, I want the artifacts you got from Jamil.”
“Be damned to you!” Albion growled.
Having determined that her son was intact, Mrs. Albion turned indignantly on Emerson. “Mr. Albion paid for those objects, sir. Are you a common thief?”
“Not at all common, madam,” said Emerson, with a smile that reminded me of his brother. “I propose not to press charges for armed assault and purchasing illegal antiquities, in return for the objects that were stolen—and for your promise to leave Luxor immediately. Your husband and your son are extremely inept criminals, but I cannot have this sort of thing. It interferes with my work. Come now, Albion, you are a practical man. Admit you’ve lost.”
“Lost?” Mrs. Albion gasped. “Mr. Albion does not lose. Mr. Albion—”
“Is a practical man,” her husband said, with difficulty. “All right, then. I’ll get them.”
“And I will come with you,” Emerson declared. “To make sure you don’t overlook anything.”
They returned with a heavy box, which Emerson handed to Cyrus. “All there. All yours. Shall we go, my dears?”
Mrs. Albion appeared to be in a state of shock. Her eyes had a bewildered look and she kept murmuring, “Mr. Albion does not lose. Mr. Albion . . .”
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