The Ape Who Guards the Balance (26 page)

“This isn’t getting us anywhere. If any of the Gurnawis knew those fellows they won’t admit it. Layla is our best lead. We must find her. Where can she have gone?”

Sir Edward had come with us, since no one had told him not to. He cleared his throat. “Doesn’t it seem likely that she would have crossed over to Luxor? The villages on the West Bank are small and close-knit; strangers are noticed. There is a certain part of Luxor . . . Forgive me. I ought not to have referred to it while there are ladies present.”

“Oh, that part of Luxor,” I said. “Hmmm.”

“The thought had occurred to me,” Ramses said, with a hostile look at Sir Edward, who smiled amiably back.

“Well, you are not to go there,” I declared. “Nor David.”

I did not forbid Nefret to go, because it would never have occurred to me that she would. Autopsies and mangled bodies, yes; the abodes of hardened criminals, certainly; but a house of illicit affection . . .

I cannot imagine how I could have been so dense.

Sir Edward took leave of us at the place where we had stabled our horses with one of Abdullah’s innumerable young relatives. He did not renew his offer of assistance, but the meaningful look he gave me was sufficient assurance that it held and would hold. He looked very well on horseback, and Nefret’s eyes were not the only ones that followed his erect figure as he rode off toward the ferry.

We turned our horses in the direction of home and Cyrus said, “I don’t want to speak out of turn, Emerson, but darned if I can understand why you didn’t jump at Sir Edward’s offer. He’s a husky young fellow and a smart one, too.”

“I won’t have him hanging about making eyes at my wife,” Emerson growled. “Or Nefret.”

“Well, now,” said Cyrus, in his quiet drawl, “I don’t recollect that there’s any law against a fellow paying polite attentions to a lady so long as she doesn’t object. And I have a feeling that if Miss Nefret did object she’d let him know in no uncertain terms.”

“Damn—er—absolutely right,” said Nefret. “Don’t talk like a Victorian papa, Professor darling. We need Sir Edward. Especially if Lia and Aunt Evelyn and Uncle Walter join us.”

“There won’t be room in the house,” Emerson muttered. It was the last dying rumble of the volcano; Emerson has his little weaknesses but he is not a fool, and he recognized the inevitable.

“There will be ample room if we can prevent our loved ones from coming,” I said. “Sir Edward is at the Winter Palace, is he not? We will call on him, or leave a message, accepting his offer.”

For once there was no argument about what we should do next. It was imperative that we attempt to locate Layla, and the sooner the better. In my opinion Luxor was her most likely destination and it was there we stood the best chance of finding a trace of her. My suggestion that Ramses should go home and rest was met with stony silence on his part and a critical comment from Nefret.

“I wouldn’t trust him to stay there, Aunt Amelia. We had better let him come along so we can keep our eyes on him.”

I had not intended to take her with us, but when I came to think of it, I did not trust her either. So we rode directly to the dock and two of our men took us across the river in the small boat we kept for that purpose.

     
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From Manuscript H

“How are we going to get away from them?” Nefret demanded.

They were waiting outside the railway ticket office while the senior Emersons interrogated the stationmaster. The platform, the station house, and the path leading to it were teeming with people waiting to catch the train to Assuan. The sun was high overhead and the air was thick with dust. Nefret had taken off her hat and was fanning herself with it.

“This is a waste of time,” she went on. “How can the stationmaster possibly remember one veiled woman? They all look alike in those black robes. Anyhow,
they
knew she had betrayed them, and the railway station is one of the first places they would have looked. If she is as clever as all you men seem to think, she would go into hiding until things quiet down, and there is only one logical place where she would go.”

“Nefret, will you please be reasonable?” Ramses kept his voice low. “I agree that Layla might have sought refuge among her old—er—acquaintances. The only way we can manage a visit to the place is with Father’s cooperation. He means to go there himself, which would not be a good idea. David and I may be able to convince him we can be more effective than he, but there is no way on earth he would consent if he thought you were going with us.”

“I wouldn’t consent either,” David said. He stood slightly behind Ramses, his eyes moving suspiciously over the hurrying figures that passed.

Nefret slapped her hat onto her head and tied the ribbons under her chin. “We’ll see about that. Here they come. What luck, Professor?”

“Better than I had expected,” was the reply. “A woman purchased a ticket to Cairo early this morning. Her ornaments and clothing were those of a peasant, but the clerk remembered her because she was traveling alone and she paid for a second-class ticket. A woman of that sort would ordinarily travel third class, if she traveled at all. I am going to telegraph Cairo and ask the police to meet the train.”

It took a good deal of maneuvering and distraction, and several outright lies, to arrange the matter as Ramses wished. After the telegraph office they went to the Winter Palace. Sir Edward was not there, so they decided to have luncheon at the hotel; and it was while the ladies had retired to freshen up that Ramses had the opportunity to talk with his father. The initial reaction was what he had expected—a flat, profane refusal.

“You can’t mean to go yourself, Father,” Ramses said. “They wouldn’t talk to you.”

Emerson fixed him with an icy stare. “They would feel more at ease with you?”

“Yes, sir. I believe so.”

“Everyone in Luxor is in awe of you, Professor,” David added. “They might be afraid to speak freely.”

“Bah,” Emerson said. “No. No, it is impossible. I shudder to think what your mother would say if she found out I let you boys visit a bordello.”

“What will she say if she finds out you mean to visit one, Father?” Ramses asked.

“Er—hmph,” said Emerson, stroking his chin and glancing uneasily at the door of the Ladies’ Parlor.

“He’s got you there, Emerson,” said Vandergelt, grinning. “You’re not a good liar. She’d see through any excuse you gave her, and she’d insist on going along. We sure don’t want her traipsing around the—er—hmmm. Let the lads handle it.”

Ramses had been in an Egyptian brothel only once—in the course, it should be said, of a criminal investigation. The place had sickened him, though it had been one of the less offensive of its kind, catering as it did to Europeans and wealthy Egyptians. This one was worse. The main room opened directly onto the street and was separated from it by a kind of curtain made of strips of cloth. The shutters were closed and the only light came from a pair of hanging lamps. The room reeked of dirt and sweat and cheap perfume. It swarmed with flies, whose buzzing formed an incessant droning.

Their appearance produced another sound—a musical jingle of the ornaments adorning the breasts and ears and hair of the women who reclined on the cushioned divan that was the room’s principal article of furniture. Wide dark eyes framed in kohl stared curiously at them, and one of the women rose, smoothing the thin fabic over her hips in a mechanical gesture of seduction. A curt word from another woman made her cringe back. The speaker stood up and came toward them. She was older than the others. Rolls of fat wobbled as she moved, and the coinlike disks that dangled from her headdress and necklace were of gold.

David cleared his throat. They had agreed it would be better for him to speak first, but he was hoarse with embarrassment. “We are looking for a woman.”

A muted chorus of laughter followed this ingenuous remark, and the proprietress chuckled. “Of course, young masters. Why else are you here?”

“It’s a good thing I came,” said a cool voice behind them. “You had better let me do the talking, David.”

Ramses spun round. She had thrown back the hood of her cloak and her hair glimmered in the streaks of sunlight that filtered through the curtained door. She was like a flower that had sprung up in the middle of a cesspool; his first impulse was to snatch her up and carry her out of the foul place. Knowing how she would react—kicking and screaming would be the least of it—he took hold of her arm. “What in the name of God are you doing here?”

“I followed you. Mrs. Vandergelt took Aunt Amelia to the shops, and I slipped away. You’re hurting me,” she added reproachfully.

“David, get her out of here.”

“Don’t you dare touch me, David!”

By that time they had a fascinated and augmented audience. Several other women had slipped into the room. They were dressed like the others, in flimsy, brightly colored garments. Their uncovered faces ranged in shade from blue-black to creamy brown, and their hands and feet were stained with henna.

Nefret addressed the gaping proprietress in her rapid, simple Arabic.

“We search for a friend, Sitt, a woman who did us a great service and who is in danger because of it. Her name is Layla. She lived in Gurneh, but she ran away from her house last night. We must find her before she comes to harm. Please help us. Have any of you seen her?”

Not a flower, Ramses thought—a ray of sunlight in a dark cell. No stain of sin or sorrow could touch the shining compassion that filled her, or dim the brightness of her presence.

For a few seconds not even the sound of a drawn breath broke the stillness. Then someone moved; he couldn’t tell which of them it was, only the soft tinkle of her ornaments betrayed the fact that movement had occurred.

The older woman folded her plump arms. “Get out,” she said harshly. “We cannot help you. What sort of men are you, to let one such as she come to this place?”

“Excellent point,” said Ramses, recovering himself. He’d been reading too damned much poetry, that was his trouble. “Nefret, it’s no good. Come away.”

She stood her ground. “You know who we are, where we live. If any of you know anything—if you want to leave this terrible life—come to us, we will help you escape—”

The old woman burst into a flood of invective and shook her fists at them. Nefret didn’t budge. She raised her voice and went on talking until Ramses and David dragged her out the door.

“That was brilliant,” Ramses said, once they had retreated to a safe distance. “Nefret, may I venture to suggest once again that you hold your tongue and control your emotions until you’ve given some little thought to what you are doing? You might have endangered yourself, and us.”

“They wouldn’t dare attack us,” Nefret muttered.

“Perhaps not. The women are another matter.”

“But I didn’t mean . . . Oh, good heavens, do you think . . .”

She looked so stricken he hadn’t the heart to continue scolding her. “All I’m saying is that we didn’t go there on a rescue expedition, admirable as that aim might have been. We were attempting to extract information, and trying to remove the merchandise is not the way to win a merchant’s confidence.”

“How can you joke about it?” Her blue eyes shone with tears of rage and compassion.

“The only alternative is to curse God. Neither does any good.” His hands lingered as he adjusted the hood of her cloak over her bright head. “Let me try once more.”

“You are not going in there alone, Ramses,” David announced.

“You can keep watch. Wait for me here.”

“If you aren’t out in five minutes I’ll come after you,” Nefret said.

He was out in less than five minutes. “Nothing,” he reported. “No one saw her, no one would admit knowing her.”

“I’ll try another place,” David said heroically. His face was pinched with disgust.

“No. I haven’t the stomach for more either,” Ramses admitted. “The word will spread now—and one of the words I mentioned was ‘reward.’ I didn’t suppose any of them would dare speak up before the others. Come, let’s get out of this.”

When they reached the riverbank David had found a new source of worry. “Aunt Amelia will want to know where we were. What shall we tell her?”

“That we went to the Luxor garden for a cup of tea,” Nefret said. “We’ll go there now, so it won’t be a lie.”

She was more composed now, her face pensive instead of angry. After they had found a table and ordered tea, she said, “I did make a mess of things, didn’t I?”

“Not necessarily,” Ramses said. “One never knows; an impulsive word from you may have had more effect than my methods.”

“I won’t ask what methods you used.” She smiled at him and took his bandaged hand gently in hers. “I’ve been wanting to ask you about this—and a few other things. You must have hit someone very hard to do so much damage.”

“There were two of them,” Ramses said, wondering what she was getting at.

“In the house, you mean? You took on both of them at once? That was very brave of you.”

“Not very.”

“And what was Layla doing while you fought two men?”

Her eyes were wide and innocent and as blue as the sea, and that was where she had maneuvered him—between the devil and the deep blue sea. He tried to think of a convincing lie and failed miserably; he couldn’t remember precisely how much he had told them, but he must have said enough to get that quick, intuitive mind of hers on the right track.

“Precisely what you suspect,” he said with a sigh. “At least that was what she intended to do. Don’t despise me, Nefret, I got there in time to prevent it. How the devil do you know these things?”

Her fingers stroked his wrist, sending tremors all the way up his arm. “I know you, my boy.”

“Don’t let your emotions get the better of you, Nefret. There’s Mother. I might have known she’d track us down.” His mother was advancing with her usual brisk stride; there was only time for him to add with a faint smile, “I hadn’t much choice, dear. If you ever found out I had slunk away and left her, you’d have used my skin for a rug.”

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