The Ape Who Guards the Balance (47 page)

“Hmph,” I said, groping for the hairpin. “I suppose I ought to have suspected that Sethos was your master. Did he send you here?”

A gust of wind rattled the shutters. Sir Edward glanced at the window.

“Since we have nothing better to do at the moment, I may as well answer your questions. Yes, he sent me. But do let us say ‘chief,’ shall we? ‘Master’ is really a bit much. After Mme. Bertha got away, with quite a lot of cash and several of his most valuable antiquities, he thought it possible she would go after you. He was rather busy disposing of Mr. Romer’s collection, but please believe, my dear Mrs. Emerson, if he had been certain you were in imminent danger he would not have left you to a subordinate, even one as talented as I.”

“Curse him,” I muttered. The hairpin had slipped down out of reach. I extracted another from my hair.

“At first I believed affectionate concern had misled him,” Sir Edward resumed. “For I failed to find any trace of the lady in our old haunts in Cairo. What I did not know was that she had secretly made arrangements of her own. The people she recruited this time were the dregs of the Cairo underworld. They knew of her connection with Sethos and she swore them to secrecy with threats of his vengeance. They were clumsy fools, however. If our people had laid that ambush in Cairo, your son and his friends would not have got away.”

“I am not so sure of that,” I said.

“Well, perhaps you are right. Ramses is developing into quite an interesting individual, and Miss Nefret . . . My chief is not easily surprised, but he was struck momentarily speechless when I told him of her part in that affair.”

“You told him? When was that?”

Sir Edward smiled. “You won’t catch me out that way, Mrs. Emerson. However, as you are aware, I did not know of that business until you informed me of it, and it was not until after I had reached Luxor that I realized Madame was here and up to her old tricks.

“What I failed to realize—as did you—was that her crude attacks were feints, designed to focus your attention on criminals and cults, stolen antiquities and—er—fallen women. All the while she sat in her harmless-appearing web, waiting for you to come to
her
. Fatima was the innocent dupe who she hoped would lead you into her hands. One of her tricks almost succeeded. Miss Nefret would never have returned from her visit to the kindly Mme. Hashim if the boys had not called for her. None of them recognized her, naturally. They had never seen her before, and at that time you had no reason to suspect Madame Hashim.”

“No,” I said. “Why should I have done? There are many women like that, unrecognized and unrewarded, laboring earnestly to light the lamps of learning—”

“Quite,” said Sir Edward. “I hope it will console you to learn, Mrs. Emerson, that my chief and I were also ignorant of Madame Bertha’s extracurricular activities. He trusted her, you see. She did not trust him. Oh, she loved him, in that tigerish fashion of hers—that is why she hated you, because she suspected he would never care for her as he does for you—but past experiences, I do not doubt, had convinced her no man was completely trustworthy. Several years ago, without his knowledge or mine, she began forming a criminal organization of her own. She found allies, witting or unwitting, in the growing movements for women’s rights in England and in Egypt. The school here in Luxor was one of the activities she began at that time.”

“I ought to have known,” I said angrily. “She used the suffragist movement in England in the same way, cynically and for her own purpose.”

“You don’t understand her, Mrs. Emerson. In her own twisted fashion she is genuinely dedicated to the cause of women’s rights. She hates men, and believes she is helping women to fight back against male oppression. My master, as you are pleased to call him, was the sole exception; but now she considers he has betrayed her, like all the others.”

The hairpins kept bending. I had used four now, with no perceptible result. My interest in his narrative distracted me, perhaps.

“Then the girl who was murdered was one of her students?”

“I believe that is the case. I don’t know whether it was Miss Nefret’s charm or your son’s offer of a reward that won her over, but she was prepared to betray her mistress. It may have been one of the other girls who betrayed
her
.” Sir Edward shifted position slightly, trying, as I supposed, to ease the strain on his aching shoulders. “How are you getting on?” he asked politely.

I tossed another bent hairpin away and flexed my cramped fingers. “I have plenty of hairpins.”

Sir Edward threw his head back, laughing heartily. It was a strange sound in that dismal room. “Mrs. Emerson, you are a woman in a million. You are wasting your time, though, and putting an unnecessary strain on your wrists. I feel certain Madame is still in Luxor. If she wants to maintain the useful persona of a teacher, she’ll have to convince your loving family that you left the school of your own free will and—if I know the Professor—let them search the place from cellars to roof. It began raining a while ago and she doesn’t like to get her dainty feet wet. I doubt she’ll turn up until—”

“What!” I cried. “What did you say? Still in Luxor? Teacher? Dainty feet? It is Bertha of whom you are speaking, not Matilda. But Bertha is dead. She . . . Oh, good heavens!”

“Forgive me for not being more explicit,” Sir Edward said with great politeness. “I thought you understood. But, there, Mrs. Emerson, your normally quick wits are under something of a strain at present. No, Madame is not dead; she is alive and well and impatient to see you. Not only have I spoken with her quite recently, but it was I who examined the body and realized it could not be hers.”

“How did you do that? Or should I ask?”

“I am surprised at you, Mrs. Emerson! You may remember that Bertha has very fair skin. Every square inch of the body was covered, except for the face, and there wasn’t much left of that, but if your husband had thought to remove one of her gloves . . .”

“Good Gad,” I exclaimed. “She deliberately murdered one of those poor women in order to mislead us. Of all the cold-blooded, vicious—”

“An accurate assessment, I fear. I never believed she had killed herself. If she had been cornered, she would have fought to the end, with teeth and nails if she had no other weapon. So we went round to the morgue and had a look at the body. My friendly conversations with Fatima had aroused my suspicions of her teacher, so, like the fool I am, I trotted round to the school and got myself neatly caught.”

I too had been suspicious of the circumstances surrounding Bertha’s presumed demise, but this particular possibility had never occurred to me. How could I have been so dense? I ought to have known, as had Sir Edward, that a woman of her temperament would not surrender to fate so meekly. A little shiver ran through me as I remembered what she had said about “ingenious” methods of killing me. An even stronger shiver rippled along my limbs when I thought of Emerson. He would be easy prey for her now, his guard down, his suspicions directed elsewhere.

“What are we going to do?” I demanded.

Sir Edward tried to shrug. It is not an easy thing to do when hands and arms are tightly bound. “Wait. I doubt she’ll come before morning. Anyhow, she won’t harm you until she’s tried to collect the other members of the family. As you so intelligently surmised, mental torture is her present aim. She undoubtedly has other plans for me. She didn’t have time to finish questioning me earlier, so I expect she’ll want to have another go at it. We can only pray he reaches us first.”

“Ah,” I said. “So Sethos is here, in Luxor.”

“That was what Madame wanted to know.” Sir Edward’s voice was noticeably weaker. He had put on a credible show of nonchalance, but I knew he must be in considerable discomfort.

“Does he know where to look?”

“I certainly hope so,” said Sir Edward with genuine feeling.

Sir Edward said no more. Gradually his head drooped and his shoulders slumped. The shutters creaked and shook. Rainwater had seeped through them to darken the floor under the window. I continued to probe at the recalcitrant lock with fingers that had grown stiff and aching. It might be—it almost certainly was—a futile exercise, but it is not in my nature to wait passively for rescue, even if I had been certain rescue would arrive in time. Emerson would be looking for me too. Where was he now? If he did not know Bertha yet lived, he was in deadly danger.

I had used up most of my hairpins when the shutters creaked—not with the sounds they had made under the intermittent battering of the wind, but with a steady straining groan.

Sir Edward’s bowed head lifted. The shutters opened, admitting a burst of wind-driven rain, and a man who climbed over the sill and closed the shutters before turning to face us.

He was as drenched as if he had just emerged from the river. His flannel shirt and trousers clung to his body and arms. Slowly and carefully he pushed the dripping hair out of his face, and a puddle began to form around his booted feet as he looked quizzically from me to Sir Edward.

“Well, Edward. This is not one of your finer moments.”

•

Fifteen

•

T
he voice was Sir Edward’s. The admirable frame, defined by the clinging garments, resembled his; the wig was an excellent copy of his fair hair. The only feature that differentiated the two, at least to a casual observer, was the long bushy mustache that concealed the newcomer’s upper lip and altered the conformation of his face.

“No, sir,” Sir Edward mumbled. “It is good to see you.”

“I’ll wager it is.” Taking a penknife from his trouser pocket, Sethos cut the ropes that bound the other man to the chair and steadied him as he slumped forward. “Where is she?”

Sir Edward shook his head. His insouciance had been a gallant attempt to reassure me—and perhaps himself! Now that rescue had arrived, hope renewed weakened his voice and his body. “In Luxor, I suppose. Sir—I am sorry—”

“All right. Hang on a minute.” He crossed to the bed and stood, hands on hips, looking down at me. “Good evening, Mrs. Emerson. May I be so bold . . .”

I stiffened as his hands went to my waist. With a mocking smile he straightened, and let his arms fall to his sides. “Forgive me. I failed to observe you were not wearing your usual arsenal. What fond memories I have of that belt of tools!”

He was taunting me. Sethos did not fail to observe very much. He picked up the cup of beer, sniffed it, and wrinkled his nose fastidiously. “Not as pleasing to the palate as your brandy, Mrs. Emerson, or as effective, but it will have to serve. I trust you will overlook my lack of manners if I suggest Edward is more in need of it than you.”

It might have been the loathsome liquid, or the relief of rescue, or even the charismatic presence of his chief. After Sir Edward had finished the stuff, Sethos nodded with satisfaction.

“You’ll do. Go out the same way I came in. Thanks to the rain, there’s no one about. You know where to meet me.”

“Yes, sir. But don’t you want me to—”

“I will attend to Mrs. Emerson. Off with you now.”

Sir Edward rose stiffly to his feet and went to the window. Pausing only long enough to bow gracefully to me, he unfastened the shutters and climbed out into the lashing rain. I had the feeling that if Sethos had ordered him to climb into a volcano he would have obeyed as readily.

Sethos used the penknife to cut the ropes around my ankles. Then he sat coolly down on the bed next to me and examined the chain and the padlock. “Hairpins, Amelia? You will be the death of me yet. Come to think of it, you almost were. Hmmm. What have we here? A primitive lock, but impervious, I think, to hairpins. Never mind the padlock, I will just remove the handcuffs.”

I watched with considerable interest as he unscrewed the heel of his boot and examined the contents of the hollow interior.

“Ramses has developed something of the sort,” I remarked, as his deft fingers removed a narrow steel strip less than four inches long.

“Thanks to me,” Sethos muttered. He inserted the end of the steel strip into the lock of one of the handcuffs. It sprang open. “Had I but known how that young man would turn out, I would have gone to considerable lengths to prevent him from making use of my equipment. He has become . . . Ah.”

The other cuff opened. Sethos’s face darkened when he saw the marks on my wrists, but he said only, “A stage magician’s trick, my dear. If young Ramses has not turned to that source for inspiration, I recommend it to him. Now let’s be going.”

I started to ask where, but came to the conclusion that almost any alternative would be preferable to my present whereabouts. Disdaining the hand he offered, I swung my feet onto the floor and stood up. The fine effect of this gesture was spoiled by the fact that my numbed limbs would not support me. I would have fallen had he not caught me in his arms.

He was still extremely wet. The moisture in the fabric of his shirt soaked into my thin frock. For a moment he pressed me close, and I felt his chest rise in a long pent breath. My hands rested on his shoulders, but they were too weak to exert sufficient pressure against the tensed muscles of his arms and breast. I would be helpless to resist if he chose to take advantage.

He let his breath out and turned his head, pressing his lips to my bruised wrist. “You will forgive the liberty, I trust, and remember that it is the only one I have ventured to take. This way.”

With the support of his arm I made my way to the window. “I will go first,” he said, opening the shutters. “You will have to lower yourself and drop, I fear; there are footholds, but they are difficult to find in the dark. I will try to break your fall.”

Without further ado he swung himself out and disappeared into the darkness. Leaning out, I waited for his low-voiced call before I followed. His arms were waiting to catch me, but either he had underestimated my weight or his foot slipped, for we tumbled to the ground together.

Sethos scrambled to his feet and pulled me upright. I had the impression that he was laughing. The rain had slackened, but the wind still howled and it was so dark I could barely make out his outline. Like me, he was covered with a coating of slimy mud. A stream of water ran over my feet. I had no idea where I was. The darkness was almost palpable, for heavy clouds hid moon and stars. The only solid objects in the universe were the wall of the house behind me and the hard wet hand that clasped mine and led me forward.