The Golden One - Elizabeth Peters [50]
“What the devil—” he began.
“He’s up there.” Ramses handed his father the binoculars he had snatched up. I saw the figure now, atop the cliff. It was too far away for me to make out details, but it was capering and prancing, waving its arms and kicking up its heels, as if in a grotesque dance. Small bits of rock rattled down the sheer face.
I took the binoculars from Emerson and when I raised them to my eyes the bizarre figure took on form and substance. Its only garment was a short skirt or kilt. The body was human. The head was not. Pricked ears and protruding muzzle were covered with coarse brown hair, and fanged teeth fringed the jaws.
Ramses ran toward the cliff. I knew what he intended, and I felt reasonably certain that Emerson would follow after him. Handing Nefret the binoculars, I drew my little pistol from its holster, aimed, and fired.
I did not expect I would hit the creature. Obviously I did not, for a long mocking laugh, almost as unpleasant as the animal scream, followed, and the monstrous figure vanished from sight.
“Come back here this instant, Ramses,” I shouted. “Emerson, if you attempt to climb that rope I will—I will shoot you in the leg.”
“Don’t fire that damned pistol again,” Emerson exclaimed, hurrying toward me. “Give it to me.”
“I wouldn’t really have shot you,” I said, as he carefully removed the weapon from my hand. “But really, Emerson, haven’t you better sense than to climb a cliff when there is someone up above who could knock you off the rope with a few well-placed rocks?”
“That’s reasonable,” Emerson conceded.
“Right,” said Ramses, who had obviously had second thoughts. “We’ll go up and around. No, not you, Bertie, you’ve done your bit for today.”
“Nor you, Peabody,” my husband added. “Stay here and—and head him off if he comes down.”
“Give me back my pistol, then,” I shouted, as he and Ramses went trotting off, accompanied by Selim. Emerson did not pause but his reply was clearly audible. “Hit him with your parasol.”
I patted Nefret on the shoulder. “Don’t be concerned, my dear. He will have taken himself off by the time they get to the top.”
“Then what is the point of their going?” Nefret demanded. “Oh, I know; it’s Father, of course. He is determined to get into that bloody damned tomb one way or another.”
“Well now, you can’t blame him,” Cyrus said. “There must be something in there the fellow doesn’t want us to find or he wouldn’t have tried to scare us off.”
“It was an afrit, a demon,” Jumana muttered, twisting her slim brown hands together.
It was not one of her better performances, but Daoud, utterly without guile himself, patted her reassuringly. “Where the Father of Curses walks, no afrit dares approach.”
“That was no afrit, it was a man, wearing some sort of mask,” Bertie said coolly. “How could he have supposed such a silly stunt would frighten us away?”
I had wondered myself.
Knowing it would be some time before Emerson finished rooting around in the disgusting tomb, I found a (comparatively) comfortable seat and invited the others to do the same. We were able to observe some of their activities, rather like spectators in the pit of a theater or opera house, but after they had descended into the cleft, all three were out of sight. We saw no one else. I had not expected we would.
When they finally rejoined us, descending by means of the rope, they were all three in an appalling state of filth. Emerson, naturally, was the worst. He had removed his coat early in the day; he was now without his shirt. I recognized this garment in the bundle he carried under one arm. The bronzed skin of his chest and back was smeared with a disgusting paste compounded of dust, perspiration, bat guano, and blood from a network of scratches and scrapes, and his hands were even nastier. He did not smell very nice.
“Good Gad, Peabody, you won’t believe what a mess they made of the place,” he exclaimed. “The floor of the burial chamber looks like a rubbish heap, with chunks of rotted wood and soggy bones mixed with bits of stone.”
He squatted and began unwrapping his bundle.