The Snake, the Crocodile, and the Dog - Elizabeth Peters [103]
I glanced at his window as I strolled by and saw it too was unlighted. Perhaps he was still in the saloon, which opened onto the upper deck.
I need not have strolled alone in the moonlight. Since only the silent watchers could see me, I permitted myself to smile and shake my head. Dr. Schadenfreude’s treatment had not cured Cyrus of his romantic weakness. Being something of an amateur psychologist myself, I wondered if the bluff American’s tendency to fall in love with wholly unsuitable ladies was born of his unconscious desire to remain a bachelor. Modest woman that I am, I could not help having observed his increasingly soft glances and his chivalrous indignation on my behalf, but I was well aware that his growing attachment was based solely on friendship and on the rough-hewn gallantry for which Americans are well-known. Any “lady in distress” between the ages of eighteen and forty-eight would have aroused the same instincts. Cyrus knew he was perfectly safe from the toils of matrimony with me, not only while Emerson lived but ever after. Could I, having known such a man, be the bride of another?
The moonlight was making me morbid. Moonlight has that effect when one enjoys it alone. I went to my room, wrote out the telegrams to Gargery and Walter, penned a peremptory letter to my son, and put the notes I had taken on the dig that day into proper form. By the time I finished, my eyelids were heavy; nevertheless, I gave my hair the usual hundred strokes, took a long (cold) bath, and applied cream to my skin. (This is not vanity but necessity in Egypt, where sun and sand have a frightful effect on the complexion.) I had hoped energetic employment would prevent me from dreaming. However, it did not. I am sure I need not specify the theme of those dreams to the sympathetic Reader.
To a female in the pink of condition, as I always am, a disturbed night is of no consequence. I arose fresh and alert, ready to face the difficulties I felt sure were about to ensue. Emerson had been biding his time, trying to get us off guard by performing his archaeological duties; but he is not a patient man, and I suspected he was about to carry out his ridiculous plan. There was no way I could prevent him from doing so, for reasoned argument has no effect whatever on him when he has got some silly idea into his head. All I could do was anticipate the worst and take steps to prevent it from happening. There was one advantage to his scheme; the farther we went from the river, the more difficult it would be for Kevin O’Connell to get at us.
My first sight of Emerson that morning strengthened my hunch that today was the day. He was eating his breakfast with the air of a man stoking himself with food in anticipation of strenuous activity ahead, and he was in a suspiciously genial mood, complimenting René on the quickness with which he was learning excavation methods, and praising Charlie’s plan of the site. From time to time he tossed a scrap of sausage to Anubis, who snapped it out of the air like a trout rising to a fly. I wished the confounded beard did not hide his mouth. Emerson’s mouth always gives him away when he is contemplating something underhanded; he cannot control the corners of it.
He saw me staring. “Does something offend you, MISS Peabody? Crumbs in my beard, are there? Or is it the beard itself? Come, come; don’t be shy of expressing your opinion.”
“Since you ask,” I began.
“I do, I do. Having strong opinions myself, I can hardly object to others’ possessing them.”
“Ha!” I said. “Well, then, I must say that yours is one of the most unprepossessing examples of an unattractive appendage I have ever beheld. Beards are unsanitary, unsightly, hot—or so I would suppose; dangerous—to smokers; and indicative of masculine insecurity. Men grow them only because women cannot, I believe.”
Emerson’s eyes narrowed with