The Snake, the Crocodile, and the Dog - Elizabeth Peters [117]
“You have known Karl as long as I. I would no more doubt his word than I would that of Howard Carter or Mr. Newberry.”
“The more honest a man, the easier he can be bamboozled,” Cyrus grunted. “Just promise me, Amelia, that if Vincey asks you to meet him in some dark alley you won’t accept the invitation.”
“Now, Cyrus, you know I would never do such a silly thing.”
When I returned to the little faience ring I had been carefully removing from its position, I saw that the cat Anubis was stretched out along the wall. I had forgotten it until that moment, and so, evidently, had Mr. Vincey. Evidently his “faithful companion” was not so faithful as he had believed. Not that I blamed the intelligent animal for preferring Emerson’s and my company.
With brushes and tiny probes I freed the ring from the matrix of hardened mud that held it. Emerson came loping over to see how I was getting on, and I handed him the ring— or, to be more accurate, the bezel of a ring. These common objects, made of cheap fragile faience, had usually lost the thinner shank portion when we found them; it may have been because they were broken that they had been discarded. Sometimes they bore the name of the reigning pharaoh and were worn as a token of loyalty; in other cases the bezel was ornamented with the image of a god favored by the wearer. “Bes,” I said.
“Hmph,” said Emerson. “So Akhenaton’s devotion to his ‘sole god’ was not emulated by all the citizens of Amarna.”
“The appeal of the homely little gods of the household must have been difficult to combat.” I sat back on my haunches and rubbed my aching shoulders. “Witness the popularity of certain saints in Catholic countries. Bes, being the patron of jovial entertainment and—er—conjugal felicity—”
“Hmph,” said Emerson again. “All right, Peabody, don’t dawdle. There is a good-sized heap of sand to be sifted.”
I noted the ring on the record sheet and put it into the appropriate box, which had been labeled with the numbers assigned to the square, the house, and the particular room. As I bent again to my task, I was conscious of a strange sense of depression. I ought to have been encouraged by Emerson’s use of that loved and loving appellation—i.e., my maiden name, sans title. He was using it now as he had originally, with sarcastic intent, but even that was a step forward, for it tacitly awarded me the same equality he would have given a fellow worker who happened to be male.
It was not Emerson who had affected my mood, or even the startling discovery of Mr. Vincey’s innocence; though the knowledge that we now had to deal, not with an ordinary criminal, but with that enigmatic and unknown genius of crime who had evaded capture so often, was certainly discouraging. What disturbed me most was being forced to acknowledge I had been mistaken in my assessment of Sethos’s character. I had been gullible enough to believe in that strange man’s honor—to trust his word that never again would he impinge upon my life. Obviously he was no more to be trusted in that area than in any other. I ought not to have been surprised or disappointed. But I was.
The swollen globe of the sun hung low over the river, veiled by the rising mist of evening, when we started back to the dahabeeyah. Emerson had driven the men unmercifully and himself just as hard—and me even harder. I was so stiff and cramped with squatting I was glad to accept the offer of Cyrus’s arm. René had given his to Bertha; watching the oddly assorted pair—the slim, dapper young man and the perambulating bundle of shapeless cloth beside him—I said thoughtfully, “I have never been one to interfere with romantic attachments, Cyrus, but I do not approve of that relationship. His intentions cannot be serious—in the way of matrimony, I mean.”
“I hope not,” Cyrus exclaimed. “His mother is a member of some noble French house; the old lady would have a fit