The Mummy Case - Elizabeth Peters [30]
He spoke softly; but oh, how wonderfully, blessedly comforting was that calm English voice! “Nadurgiyya?” I repeated.
“The lookout. He took us for police spies. The ghurza will close down until the supposed danger is past. Are you sorry you came, Peabody?”
The street was so narrow we could not walk side by side and so dark I could scarcely make out the vague outline of his form. I sensed, rather than saw, the hand stretched toward me. Clasping it, I replied truthfully, “Not at all, my dear Emerson. It is a most interesting and unusual experience. But I confess that if you were not with me I would be conscious of a certain trepidation.”
“We are almost there,” Emerson said. “If this is a wild-goose chase, Peabody, I will hold it over you for the rest of your life.”
Like all the others, Abd el Atti’s shop was dark and seemingly deserted. “What did I tell you?” Emerson said.
“We must go round to the back,” I said.
“The back, Peabody? Do you take this for an English village, with lanes and kitchen doors?”
“Don’t play games, Emerson. I am quite confident you know where the back entrance is located. There must be another entrance; some of Abd el Atti’s clients would hardly choose to walk in the front door with their goods.”
Emerson grunted. Holding my hand, he proceeded along the street for a distance and then drew me toward what appeared to be a blank wall. There was an opening, however, so narrow and opaque that it looked like a line drawn with the blackest of ink. My shoulders brushed the walls on the other side. Emerson had to sidle along sideways.
“Here it is,” he said, after a moment.
“Where? I can’t see a thing.”
He directed my hand toward an invisible surface. I felt wood under my fingers. “There is no knocker,” I said, groping.
“Nor a doorbell,” Emerson said sarcastically. He tapped lightly.
There was no response. Emerson, never the most patient of men, let out an oath and struck his fist against the door.
The panel yielded. A scant inch, no more, and in utter silence it moved; and through the slit came a pallid light, so dim it did not penetrate the darkness where we stood.
“The devil,” Emerson muttered.
I shared his sentiments. There was something strange and sinister about the movement of the door. From within came not the slightest whisper of sound. It was as if a pall of horror lay over the region, silencing even breath. More prosaically, the yielding of the portal held ominous implications. Either the person who had opened it was concealed behind it, or the door had not been latched in the first place. It was inconceivable that a merchant in that quarter would leave his shop unlocked at night, unless…
“Stand back, Peabody,” Emerson ordered. He reinforced the command with an outthrust arm that flung me back against the wall with rather more force than was necessary. Before I could protest, he raised his foot and kicked the door.
If he had intended to pin a would-be assassin between door and inner wall he failed. The portal was so heavy it responded sluggishly to his attack, opening only halfway. Emerson cursed and clutched his foot.
I went to his side and looked in. A single lamp, one of the crude clay bowls that have been used since ancient times, lit the room; the flickering, smoking flame created an eerie illusion of surreptitious movement in the shadows. The place was in the wildest