The Hippopotamus Pool - Elizabeth Peters [162]
I had had to leave my parasol behind, but I had my usual tools, and as I hesitated in the dark opening, I knew I must risk striking a match.
The room was a sleeping chamber, skimpily furnished with cots and a few tables and an assortment of pottery vessels. It resembled a dormitory in one of the cheaper boarding schools. Quarters for the thugs, I decided, and served them right, too. It was lucky we had come when we did; a few hours from now the room might be filled with sleeping men.
It behooved me to make haste, in case one of them decided on an early night. I paused only long enough to light my dark lantern. Then I tiptoed to the door and eased it open.
The room was on a corridor that ran around four sides of an open stairwell. From below I heard voices and saw a glow of light. Indecision, which rarely afflicts me, struck me now. Should I attempt to open the front door, or should I immediately pursue my search for Ramses?
In fact, the decision was not difficult. There were people below; reaching the door unobserved and undoing bolts, bars and/or locks would be difficult if not impossible.
I had another reason for preferring the second alternative. I need not explain that reason to any parent.
I was nerving myself to leave the illusory safety of the room when something pushed against my ankle and a sound like the buzzing of a giant insect struck my ears. I whirled round, my knife raised, and saw a dark form silhouetted against the window opening.
‘It is I, Sitt, and the cat Bastet. Do not strike!’
I swallowed my heart – at least that was how it felt – and managed to speak. ‘David! How did you get here?’
‘I climb.’ He came to my side, silent as a shadow, on bare feet. ‘Mr Walter Emerson says, open the door. If you do not he climb too.’
I felt a little easier, coward that I was, at having him – both of them – with me. It is very lonely in a dark house filled with foes.
The cat was still purring. (It is a well-known fact that familiar sounds are not easy to identify in unfamiliar surroundings.) I bent over to stroke her head.
‘I don’t think we can get to the door,’ I whispered. ‘The most important thing is to find Ramses, if he is here.’
‘He is here. The cat Bastet know. She climb on my shoulder. Now you hear, she purr.’
‘Too loudly. Bastet, stop purring at once.’
She obeyed. Walter would have said it was coincidence.
‘We must not be discovered, David. If Ramses is not in the house, we dare not let Riccetti know we were here. And for heaven’s sake, speak Arabic! Your English is coming along nicely, but this is no time to practise a new language.’
I sensed rather than saw him nod. ‘Sitt, you hold the knife wrong. Strike up, not down.’
It was good practical advice under the circumstances, though not what I had expected. ‘I know,’ I said meekly. ‘I forgot.’
‘Do not forget. Come now.’
Confound the boy, he was beginning to sound just like Ramses, trying to order me around and take charge. So was the cat (but that is the habit of cats). She preceded us along the corridor, her tail switching, and led the way up the stairs.
The doors on this level were closer together and the floor was splintered and worn. Every step produced a squeak or a groan that seemed to echo like a pistol shot. I used my dark lantern as sparingly as possible; every time I opened the shutter, I felt as if the light must be visible throughout the entire house.
The cat Bastet moved on, past door after closed door. She appeared very confident – but that, again, is a characteristic of cats. My faith in her began to waver. How could she possibly know where she was going? This upper floor, bare and comfortless as it was, was not the most logical place for a prisoner to be confined. I would have expected Riccetti’s tastes to run to something more unpleasant –a dank, dismal den far underground, with water dripping from the walls, and rats, and snakes . . .
So dreadful and pervasive was this mental image that David had to catch me by the sleeve before I saw