The Snake, the Crocodile, and the Dog - Elizabeth Peters [180]
He had been treated with perfect courtesy, he assured us. The food had been prepared by an excellent chef and served by servants who did everything for him except answer his questions.
“I was beginning to wonder if I’d spend the rest of my life there,” Cyrus admitted. “I went to bed as usual last night— I guess it was last night—and if you can believe it, I woke up this morning in a first-class compartment on the Cairo-to-Luxor express. I raised a commotion, as you might expect; the conductor grinned and leered at me and informed me I’d been a little under the weather when my friends put me on the train. They’d handed him my ticket, straight through to Luxor, so that was all right. Folks, I was in something of a daze, I tell you, but I decided I might as well come on here and then try to figure out what was going on. I have a feeling you can tell me.”
“I have a feeling we can,” said Emerson, glancing at me.
I was bereft of speech. Visibly pleased at being the chosen narrator, Emerson launched into his tale. Not a word, scarcely a breath, was heard until he finished.
“Aw, shucks!” Cyrus gasped. “I tell you flat out, Emerson, I wouldn’t believe a yarn like that if anybody else had told it. I don’t think I believe it anyhow. How could anybody fool you into thinking he was me? You’ve known me for years.”
I had been studying Cyrus’s lean, lined face. The years had not been as kind to my old friend as I had believed. I ought to have known that trim, tall (but not so tall by several inches) body and that remarkably well-preserved face were not his. The goatee had not been his either! How relieved Sethos must have been to dispense with it.
Naturally I put the matter more tactfully. “We had not seen you for several of those years, Cyrus. His imitation of your speech and mannerisms was perfect; he is a natural mimic, and he had several days to study you, from hiding, before he left Cairo. His most useful weapon, however, was psychological. People see what they expect to see—what they have been told they are seeing. And once they have convinced themselves of that belief, no evidence to the contrary can persuade them they are wrong.”
“Never mind the psychological mumbo-jumbo, Amelia,” Emerson growled. “I suppose, Vandergelt, you do not have individuals named Rene D’Arcy and Charles H. Holly on your staff?”
“Staff? I don’t have one. Hoffman left me last year to work for the Egypt Exploration Fund. I was going to look for an assistant in Cairo. There is a young fellow named Wei-gall—”
“No, no, he won’t do,” Emerson exclaimed. “He is not without ability, but his propensity for—”
“Emerson, please don’t wander off the subject,” I said. “Like Cyrus, I am finding this difficult to credit. Both those pleasant young men were lieutenants of… of…”
Emerson tried very hard to get the words out, but could not manage it. “… of the… of the Master… Er— yes. We ought to have known they were not archaeologists. Holly’s fear of heights was suspicious, and neither of them displayed the degree of knowledge they ought to have had; but there are few excavators who are worth a damn these days. I don’t know what the field is coming to, what with one thing and… Yes, Peabody, I know; I am wandering from the subject. They were—er—his men, as I began to suspect when they hustled him away so precipitately. The crewmen of the dahabeeyah were hired, like the guards.”
“Oh, dear,” I murmured helplessly. “Cyrus—Emerson— I do hope you will forgive me, but I am quite beyond sensible thought at this moment. Perhaps we should all have a good night’s sleep and discuss this further in the morning.”
Cyrus was too much of a gentleman (in his rough-hewn American way) to resist such an appeal. Assuring me that the servants had our rooms prepared, he escorted me to the door.