The Mummy Case - Elizabeth Peters [56]
Tenderly de Morgan lowered Ramses into my arms. I dropped him immediately and dusted off my hands. “Where did you find him?” I inquired.
“Midway between this place and my own excavations. In the middle of nowhere, to be precise. When I inquired of him where he thought he was going, he replied he had decided to pay me a visit. C’est un enfant formidable! Truly the son of my dear collègue—a splinter off the old English block of wood, n’est pas?”
Emerson came trotting up in time to hear the final compliment. The look he gave de Morgan would have withered a more sensitive man. De Morgan only smiled and twirled his mustaches. Then he began to congratulate Emerson on the intelligence, daring, and excellent French of his son.
“Humph, yes, no doubt,” Emerson said. “Ramses, what the devil—that is to say, you must not wander off in this careless fashion.”
“I was not wandering,” Ramses protested. “I was aware at all times of my precise location. I confess I had underestimated de distance between dis place and Dahshoor. What I require, Papa, is a horse. Like dat one.”
De Morgan laughed. “You would find it hard to control a steed like Mazeppa,” he said, stroking the stallion’s neck. “But a mount of some kind—yes, yes, that is reasonable.”
“I beg you will not support my son in his ridiculous demands, monsieur,” I said, giving Ramses a hard stare. “Ramses, where is Selim?”
“He accompanied me, of course,” said Ramses. “But M. de Morgan would not let him come on de horse wit’ us.”
De Morgan continued to plead Ramses’ case, probably because he saw how much his partisanship annoyed Emerson. “What harm can come to the lad, after all? He has only to follow the line of the cultivation. A little horse, madame—Professor—a pony, perhaps. The boy is welcome to visit me at any time. I do not doubt we will have more interesting—we will have interesting things to show him.”
Emerson made a sound like a bull about to charge, but controlled himself. “Have you found the burial chamber yet?”
“We have only just begun our search,” said de Morgan haughtily. “But since the burial chambers are generally located directly under the exact center of the pyramid square, it is only a matter of time.”
“Not that it will matter,” Emerson grunted. “Like all the others, it will have been robbed and you will find nothing.”
“Who knows, mon cher? I have a feeling—here—” De Morgan thumped the breast of his well-tailored jacket—“that we will find great things this season. And you—what luck have you had?”
“Like you, we have only begun,” I said, before Emerson could explode. “Will you come to the house, monsieur, and join us in a cup of tea?”
De Morgan declined, explaining that he had a dinner engagement. “As you know, Dahshoor is a popular stop for tourists. The dahabeeyah of the Countess of Westmoreland is there presently, and I am dining with her tonight.”
This boast failed to wound Emerson; he was not at all impressed by titles, and considered dining out a painful chore, to be avoided whenever possible. But the Frenchman’s other digs had hit the mark, and his final speech was designed to twist the knife in the wound. He wished us luck, told us to visit his excavations at any time, and repeated his invitation to Ramses. “You will come and learn how to conduct an excavation, n’est pas, mon petit?”
Ramses gazed worshipfully at the handsome figure on the great stallion. “T’ank you, monsieur, I would like dat.”
With a bow to me and a mocking smile at Emerson, de Morgan wheeled the horse and rode off into the sunset. It was the wrong direction entirely, and I had to agree with Emerson when he muttered, “These