Tomb of the Golden Bird - Elizabeth Peters [14]
“I am wondering about a number of things.” Emerson turned to look down the road to the little guardhouse they had built the year before. It was a humble mud-brick shelter, designed to discourage uninvited visitors. Wasim, the man on duty that day, squatted in the open doorway, placidly smoking his water pipe.
“I had a word with Wasim,” Emerson went on. “I thought he was looking pleased with himself, and he frankly admitted to having extracted a tidy amount of baksheesh from a fellow who was asking questions about recent visitors.”
“A fellow named Mahmud?”
“The description didn’t match. Wasim said he spoke Arabic fluently but with a strange accent.”
“Odd,” Ramses repeated. “What did Wasim tell him?”
“‘The truth, O Father of Curses.’ That we have had no visitors since we arrived.”
“We’re being watched.”
“It seems that way,” Emerson agreed. “People hanging about the vicinity of the house at odd hours last night.”
“You noticed too? I was tempted to go out and run them off, but…”
“But they weren’t doing anything illegal,” Emerson finished. “Quite. This sheds rather a new light on your mother’s claim that our rooms in Cairo were searched.”
“And on the amiable Mahmud?”
Emerson frowned. “He can’t have hoped to carry the child off, not with so many people about.”
“But he might have asked her the same questions the other man asked Wasim. She’s a chatty little creature.”
“Did she tell you what they chatted about?”
Ramses laughed. “That’s the disadvantage of Charla’s chattiness. She doesn’t answer questions, or even hear them. She carries on a monologue. Anyhow, we haven’t had any visitors.”
“True.”
“It’s all very tenuous, Father. A possible search of our rooms, an unknown person asking possibly harmless questions of Wasim, a postulated but unproven attempt to question Charla.”
“Two such attempts,” Emerson corrected. “We never identified the nice man who gave her money in the suk.”
“We may be letting our imaginations run away with us.”
“Possibly.” Emerson chewed on the stem of his pipe. “Better safe than sorry, though, as your mother would say. If there is any basis to our suspicions, the suspects will have to try something more direct sooner or later. At the moment we can only wait and see; there are too many possibilities to allow speculation.” Emerson chuckled. “Perhaps it’s Howard Carter, suspecting me of designs on his firman.”
It wasn’t until the following afternoon that Emerson’s prediction proved correct. The message wasn’t from Howard Carter, however.
“The old familiar anonymous letter,” Ramses said, perusing the paper his father handed him. “Does Mother know about this?”
“Good Gad, no. And she mustn’t find out. She’d insist on coming with us.”
“You mean to respond? This is an open invitation to an ambush, Father.”
“It’s an invitation to a solution,” Emerson retorted. “I’m tired of subterfuge and mystery. I cannot conceive of any danger the two of us couldn’t handle.”
The implicit compliment was so flattering, Ramses abandoned his half-hearted objections. Emerson was an army unto himself, but as the saying went, “A friend does not leave a friend’s back exposed.” He said only, “How do you propose to get away from Mother—and Nefret?”
“Hmmm.” Emerson frowned. “That does present a difficulty. Have you any suggestions?”
“We might try telling them the truth.”
“Good Gad, are you serious?” Emerson thought it over. “It’s a new approach, at any rate.”
Somewhat to Ramses’s surprise, it succeeded. Emerson waited until after dinner to break the news. His wife had also noticed the surveillance to which they had been subjected—or so she claimed. (She always claimed to know everything, and who would have the temerity to call her a liar?) In this case it was a tactical error, of which Emerson took immediate advantage.
“The fellow didn’t tell me to come alone, but we cannot suppose he will appear if the whole lot of us turn up. I take you into my confidence, Peabody—and you, Nefret—because you know that to be true. I trust in your good sense, as you must trust in mine.”
“Bah,” said his wife.