The Ape Who Guards the Balance (27 page)

I
have never succumbed to the lazy Eastern habit of sleeping in the afternoon, but I firmly believe that an active mind is in need of brief intervals of relaxation. After we had returned home after our busy, if fruitless, investigations, I lay down on my bed and picked up a book.

I was roused from the meditative state into which I had fallen by sounds that made me start up with heart pounding. Steel ringing on steel—raised voices—the sounds of mortal combat! Rushing to the door, as I believed, I found myself tugging at the window shutters, which I had closed against the heat of the afternoon sun.

This momentary confusion was soon overcome and I emerged into the courtyard, where I stood transfixed. The sight was terrible: Ramses and David, barefooted, stripped to trousers and shirt, striking fiercely at one another with the long knives used by the Tourag. Mute and motionless with horror, I saw Ramses’s knife drive home against David’s breast.

The paralysis broke. I shrieked.

“Good afternoon, Mother,” said Ramses. “I am sorry if we woke you. Confound it, David, you were holding back. Again.”

David rubbed his chest. “Honestly, I was not. Good afternoon, Aunt Amelia. I am sorry if we—”

“Oh, good Gad!” I exclaimed. He was upright and smiling, without so much as a drop of blood spotting the white fabric. On a bench against the wall Nefret and Emerson sat side by side, like spectators at a performance.

“Hallo, Peabody,” Emerson said. “Here, boys, let me have a go.”

He jumped up and began tugging at his shirt. A button popped off and fell to the ground. Emerson’s hasty method of removing his garments makes it necessary for me to spend far too much time sewing on buttons. When I fix them firmly, the fabric tears instead, ruining the shirt.

“Please, Emerson,” I said automatically. “Not another shirt. What the devil is going on here?”

I saw now that the knives had been blunted by strips of leather bound round the edge and sharp tip. Emerson said cheerfully, “Ramses wanted some practice at fighting left-handed. It is a useful skill, don’t you agree, Peabody?”

“Quite,” I said.

Emerson removed his shirt, losing only one more button in the process, and tossed it onto the bench. “Let me have your knife, Ramses.”

“Take David’s,” said my son. Perspiration beaded his face and trickled down his throat. He had discarded the sling, and I observed that the bandage on his hand was a peculiar shade of green. “He can’t even attack
me
as hard as he ought; sheer awe of you would paralyze him.”

“But not you, eh?” Emerson grinned. “Right! Have at you, my boy!”

Taking the knife from David’s limp grasp, he stood poised, his knees flexed and his arms outstretched.

I made my way to the bench and sat down next to Nefret. “Those leather strips . . . What if they came undone?”

“I fastened them on myself.” Nefret’s brow was slightly furrowed. “Ramses was keen on the idea, so . . . They look splendid, don’t they?”

I suppose they did. Emerson’s magnificent muscles slid smoothly under his bronzed skin as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Ramses matched him in height if not in bulk; he was breathing rather quickly, but he was as light on his feet as his father. They circled one another slowly. Ramses was the first to attack; his knife drove at Emerson’s ribs. Emerson twisted aside and struck Ramses’s arm away. Ramses jumped back, throwing out his other arm to maintain his balance, and his father slashed at his unguarded breast. It was not a hard blow, but Ramses dropped his knife and doubled over, clutching his side.

“Oh, curse it,” Emerson said, hurrying to him. “Forgive me, my boy. Come and sit down.”

Ramses pulled away from his father’s affectionate grasp and straightened. The blunted tip of Emerson’s knife had caught in the opening of his shirt and pulled it apart. The bruise over his rib cage was the size and color of a tarnished silver saucer. “It’s quite all right, sir. Shall we try again?”

Emerson began, “I will not take advantage—”

“The point of this exercise,” said Ramses, breathing hard, “is learning to deal with an opponent who is delighted to take any advantage he can. I daresay I have had more practice at this than you, Father. Don’t be afraid of hurting me again. I won’t let you.”

“That’s enough,” Nefret said, jumping up. “Curse you, Ramses, you bloody idiot!”

“More than enough,” said Emerson. “Ramses, my boy—”

“No harm done, sir, I assure you.” Ramses picked up his knife. “If you will excuse me, I will go and clean up.”

“If you will excuse
me,
” said Nefret to us, “I will go and deal with Ramses. I
told
him not to take those bandages off!”

Emerson cleared his throat. “Er—Nefret, my dear, I know you mean well, but don’t you think he might be more amenable if you—er—asked him nicely instead of—er—calling him names?”

“Hmph,” said Nefret—but she looked a little self-conscious. “All right, sir, I will try. Come and help me, David. If gentle persuasion doesn’t do the job, you will have to hold him down.”

“What’s wrong, Peabody?” Emerson inquired. “I am a confounded clumsy idiot, but I don’t believe he is much hurt.”

“I am sure he is not.”

My voice was not entirely steady. Emerson put a manly arm round my shoulders and made comforting noises. He seldom gets the chance to treat me like a timid little woman, and he enjoys it very much.

Absolute nonsense, of course. I am quite accustomed to deadly weapons of all varieties. I carry several myself: pistol and knife, and of course my parasol. Nor had my conscious mind been misled by the mock combat between the two boys; I had seen them practice before, with bare hands and with knives, and I knew either of them would have rather died than harm the other. Why then had I felt a sensation as of icy hands closing over my heart? Could it be that I had beheld not the harmless present but the deadly future—the portent of an encounter yet to come?

At dinner that evening David again raised the question of what we were to do about those dear ones who were even then on their way to us. I assured him I had not forgot the matter, but had only postponed it since we had had more pressing problems to deal with.

“They sailed from Marseilles yesterday morning and will not arrive in Alexandria until Monday next,” I explained. “That gives us two more days.”

“One,” said Ramses. “The steamer arrives early in the morning, so if we want to head them off one of us should take the train to Cairo on Sunday.”

“I believe we became a bit overexcited the other evening,” I said. “The danger to them is surely minimal, and they will be disappointed not to come on.”

“Especially Lia,” Nefret said. “She has looked forward to this so much. She has been studying Arabic all this past winter.”

“They must be warned, at least,” I said. “I will take the train—”

“Not on any account, Peabody,” said Emerson, glowering at me. “Do you suppose I don’t know what you intend? Your mind is an open book to me. I will not have you perambulating around Cairo interrogating antiquities dealers and harassing the police and—”

“One of the boys could come with me.”

“No,” said Nefret, as emphatically as Emerson. “Never mind Cairo, the journey itself is too risky. Fourteen hours on the train, with several stops—good Gad, all it would take is a gun in your ribs or a knife at your back.”

“Then what do you propose?” David asked with unusual heat. “One of us must go, there is no question of that, and surely I am the most logical person. They won’t bother with me.”

I believe the others were as taken aback as I. For a moment the only sound that broke the silence was the fluttering of insects round the lamp. A moth, drawn by the fatal lure of the flame, dropped down the glass chimney and expired in a brief burst of glory.

“Don’t talk like a damned fool,” Ramses said brusquely.

“I would not have put it that way, but I endorse the sentiment most emphatically,” I said. “David, how can you suppose we would be indifferent to a threat directed at you? You are one of us.”

“Quite,” said Emerson. “None of us is going. I would take on the job myself, but I cannot trust the rest of you to behave yourselves. I am sending Selim and Daoud.”

“Brains and muscle,” I said, smiling. “That is the ideal solution, Emerson. They can carry a letter from me, explaining the situation and urging Walter to take the next boat back to England. Unless, of course, we can solve the case before then.”

“Before Sunday morning?” Ramses inquired, raising his eyebrows.

“Don’t be absurd, Peabody,” Emerson grunted.

“Hmmmm,” said Nefret.

“We can at least make a start,” David said. “Tomorrow in Luxor—”

“What are you talking about?” Emerson stared at him. “Tomorrow is a workday.”

“Oh, come, Emerson, you surely don’t intend to resume work as if nothing had happened,” I exclaimed.

“I do not intend,” said Emerson, “to allow anyone, male, female, or fiend in human form, to stop my excavations. What the devil is wrong with you, Peabody? What the devil is wrong with all of you?” He raked our faces with his glittering blue gaze. “We’ve been in situations as difficult as this before, and faced enemies as unscrupulous. Riccetti and Vincey and—”

“Never mind the rest,” I said. “It is a long list, Emerson, I admit. Perhaps you are right. We will not huddle in the house starting at shadows. We will not be intimidated!”

“Bravely spoken, Mother.” Ramses sounded amused, though his countenance did not display that emotion or any other. “However, I trust you won’t object to taking a few precautions.”

“Such as?”

“The same precautions Mrs. Vandergelt suggested. Guards, several of them, here at the house by night and by day. None of us is to go anywhere alone, or with only one other person. Keep your eyes open and trust no one.”

“That applies to you and David as well,” said Emerson, studying him keenly. “You are coming with us tomorrow, to the Valley.”

“Yes, sir.”

Emerson had not expected such ready agreement. His stern face relaxed into a smile. “You’ll enjoy it, my boy. We have cleared the entrance to tomb Five, and Ayrton has found a cache of storage jars!”

“Indeed. That is exciting news, sir.”

“Yes. You know the terrain.” Emerson pushed his plate away and took a handful of fruit from the bowl. “Here is number Five, this fig is the entrance to Ramses the Sixth. . . .”

Not even a threat of murder can distract Emerson indefinitely from the joy of excavation. I did not object when he poured a pile of sugar onto the table and demonstrated the approximate location of Ned Ayrton’s find. His superb self-confidence had restored mine. I felt ashamed of myself for yielding, however briefly, to weakness. And how foolish had been that earlier fantasy of discord! We were utterly devoted to one another. Brothers could not be closer than Ramses and David.

     
(xiv)
    
From Manuscript H

Sitting on the window ledge he waited for a long time, watching the slits of light that showed through the shuttered window of his parents’ room. They must be arguing. Nothing surprising about that. It would end as it always did, but it was taking them devilish long tonight.

The courtyard lay quiet under the moon. His father had brushed aside his mother’s suggestion that it be lighted, and he was in full agreement. The best possible solution was not to deter invaders but to catch them in the act. It wasn’t likely that anything of that sort would happen, though. “They” wouldn’t risk entering the house when there were easier ways.

A few of the precautions he had suggested had been taken. There were bars on the outer windows now, those of his—formerly Nefret’s—room and of his parents’. They could be removed, but not without making a lot of noise. The gates were barred and the glow of a cigarette in one corner betokened the presence of Mustafa, Daoud’s second son.

Finally the slits of light at his parents’ window disappeared. He waited a little longer before lowering his feet to the ground.

Nefret was still awake. She was not alone. The voices were soft, he couldn’t make out the words. Was she talking to the damned cat? Somehow he didn’t think so.

Eavesdropping was a despicable habit. But, as he had once told his mother, cursed useful. I oughtn’t do this, he thought, as he put his ear against the panel.

“You should tell him, David. It isn’t fair not to.”

“I know.” David’s voice was so low he could barely make out the words. “I’ve tried, but—”

He was not consciously aware of pressing the latch. The door seemed to open by itself. They were sitting side by side on the bed. Nefret’s arm was around David, and he had covered his face with his hands.

David lowered his hands. “Ramses!”

“Excuse me.” He stepped back. “I didn’t know you were here.”

“We were just about to go looking for you,” Nefret said, jumping up. “Come in and close the door.”

“No. I apologize for intruding. I’ll go.”

“What’s the matter?” Nefret asked. “Is your hand bothering you?”

“No, not at all. I—”

“Close the damned door.”

She did it for him and pushed him into the nearest chair. “I want to dress your hand again. David, get me a basin of water, will you?”

She cut through the cloth and guided his hand into the water. A green stain spread out, and Nefret eased the bandage off. “Amazing,” she murmured. “The confounded stuff does seem to be effective. The swelling has gone down.”

“It looks horrible,” David said in a smothered voice.

“That’s because it’s green,” Nefret explained.

“It does rather suggest rotting flesh,” Ramses agreed. “But it feels considerably better. I suppose Kadija gave you the ointment this morning?”

“She slipped it to me while Aunt Amelia wasn’t looking. Daoud got it from her, did you know that? She says the women of her family have handed the recipe down for generations. One of these days I must take a sample home and have it analyzed. Now, this is going to hurt. What shall we talk about that will prove sufficiently distracting? I know! Sir Edward. Do you think he’s the Master Criminal in disguise?”