The Last Camel Died at Noon (15 page)

Here I stopped, and gazed with a wild surmise upon my son, who returned my stare with an expression so limpid-eyed and innocent it was practically tantamount to a confession. The art of disguise was one of Ramses's hobbies. He was somewhat restricted in the practice of it, since his size limited him to imitating only the juvenile portion of the population, but I had a nasty feeling that as his height increased, so would his expertise.

'Ramses,' I began; but before I could proceed, Ramses produced another strange object.

'I also found this near the scene of the crime, Mama. To my mind it is even more provocative than the cap.'

Emerson let out a muffled exclamation and snatched the thing from the boy's hand. At first glance I could see nothing to explain the concentrated attention with which he regarded it. It was a shaft of what appeared to be reed, only a few inches long; the jagged end suggested it had been broken off a longer object. The other extremity ended in a bit of wood, to which was attached a blunt, rounded stone shaped like a miniature club. At the point where the wood joined the reed, a band of pierced decoration ornamented the shaft and, one presumed, helped to hold the two together.

'What on earth?' I exclaimed.

Emerson shook his head, not in denial but in dazed disbelief. 'It is an arrow, or part of one.' 'There is no point,' I objected.

'This is the point, or pile, as it is called in archery.' Emerson's fingernail flicked the rounded stone. 'It is attached to this piece of wood, which is in turn tanged to the shaft. Footed, in other words. The point is blunt because it was designed to stun, not to kill.'

'I see.' I leaned over to examine the object more closely, noting the delicacy of the decoration. 'It reminds me of something but I can't remember where I saw it.'

'No? Then I will refresh your memory.' Emerson's eyes remained fixed on the broken arrow. 'The hunting scenes in the Theban tombs - that is where you saw such an arrow. This is identical with the weapons used by the nobles of ancient Egypt when they hunted fowl in the marshes. Identical, Peabody. Except that it cannot be more than a few years old.'

The Ghost of a Bowman of Cush

Long after I had sought my couch Emerson sat silent in the lamplight, turning the broken shaft over and over in his hands with the absorbed fascination of a connoisseur inspecting the rarest of gems. He had thrown off his robe; shadows moulded the broad bands of muscles on his breast and arms; shadows sculpted his strong cheekbones and intellectual brow and deepened the dimple (or cleft, as he prefers to call it) in his manly chin. It was a sight to stir the strongest sensations, and since I was forced by circumstances to repress them, they left a lasting imprint upon my heart.

Well, of course I knew what he was thinking, even though he had refused to discuss the matter. For one thing, he was afraid I would remind him of his careless jest concerning Reggie's earlier injury. 'The ghost of one of the Bowmen of Cush,' he had said; and here, before our very eyes, was a fragment of an arrow that might have been carried by one of those very archers. Mayhap the bow had not been used in this area for a thousand years - I was willing to take Emerson's word for that - but one of the ancient names for Cush was 'Land of the Bow,' and 'Commander of the Bowmen of Cush' was a military tide of the Late Egyptian Empire.

I fell asleep at last, and when I awoke I was alone. An unnatural silence prevailed. No shouted commands, no sound the tuneless singing with which the men lightened their labours... Then I remembered that it was the day of rest, and that the men were gone. Still, it was strange that Emerson had taken pains not to waken me; stranger still that Ramses had managed to leave the tent without making a racket of some kind. A hideous foreboding seized me, and I hastened to rise.

For once my foreboding portended nothing in particular. I found Emerson seated in a chair before the tent calmly drinking tea. He greeted me with a cheerful good morning and the hope that I had slept well.

'Better than you,' I said, remembering my last glimpse of him the night before, and noting the shadows of sleeplessness diat darkened his eye sockets. 'Where is Ramses? How is Reggie getting on? Why didn't you wake me earlier? What - '

'The situation is under control, Peabody. I will make you a cup of tea while you change into more suitable attire.' 'Really, Emerson -'

'Mr Forthright will be joining us shortly. His injury was less severe than you believed. Curious, isn't it, that his injuries always are less severe than you believed them to be? I don't blame you for exposing yourself to him last night in that fetching but flimsy garment - I make all due allowances for your understandable state of agitation - but a repetition of the error might be taken amiss.' 'By you, you mean.' 'By me, my dear Peabody.'

Torn between annoyance and amusement, I retired and followed his suggestion. When I returned I found them all assembled - Ramses squatting on the rug, Reggie seated in a chair next to Emerson. He leapt to his feet with an alacrity that went far to support Emerson's assessment of his condition, and insisted on offering me a chair before he reassumed his own.

It is a great relief to see you looking so well,' I exclaimed, taking the cup Emerson handed me. 'You had lost a great deal of blood -'

'Obviously the blood was not his,' said Emerson. (Lack of sleep always makes him short-tempered.)

'Quite right,' Reggie agreed. 'As I told you, I grappled with the fellow -'

'A most courageous act,' said Emerson. 'For you were unarmed, were you not? A man going for a peaceful moonlight stroll does not ordinarily carry a weapon.' 'No, not ordinarily. I - er - '

'Is the knife yours, Forthright?' Emerson whipped it out of his pocket and brandished it under Reggie's nose. 'No! That is.'

'For heaven's sake, Emerson, stop interrupting him,' I exclaimed. 'How can he explain what happened when you won't let him finish a sentence?

Emerson glowered at me. 'The implications of my questions must be obvious to you, Amelia. And to Mr Forthright. If he -' 'They are indeed obvious, Emerson. It is your tone to which I object. You do not ask, you interrogate, like - ' 'Curse it, Amelia - '

A burst of hearty laughter from Reggie ended the discussion. 'Please don't quarrel on my account, my friends. I understand what the professor is getting at, and I don't blame him for having doubts. As he says, a man bent on a peaceful errand does not go armed. I might claim that a sensible man would go armed in this region, but had I feared encountering a wild animal or wilder man, I would have strapped on my revolver or carried a rifle.' 'Precisely,' Emerson growled.

'It did not occur to me to take such a precaution,' Reggie continued. 'It happened just as I told you. Seeing the shadowy figure about to seize the boy, I flung myself upon him. He drew a knife; we struggled for possession of it, and after being wounded slightly I got it away from him. To be honest, I don't remember clearly what happened afterwards, but I have a vague recollection of striking a blow and hearing a muffled cry before unconsciousness overcame me.'

There was a brief silence. Then a voice murmured, '"Yet who would have thought the old man had so much blood in him..."'

Emerson nodded. 'Well put, Ramses. Your mama will no doubt be happy to hear you quote from a more literary source than your favourite thrillers. There was a great deal of blood.'

'And your retainer has disappeared,' said Reggie.

'What?' I exclaimed. 'Kemit has gone?'

'He and both his men,' Emerson said.

Another silence ensued, longer and more fraught with emotion. Finally Emerson squared his shoulders and addressed the group in the voice that never ceased to thrill me - the voice of a leader of men. 'Let us consider this situation coolly and rationally, without prejudice. Something deucedly peculiar is going on.' I started to speak; Emerson turned his burning blue gaze upon me. 'I will invite your comments, my dear Peabody, when I have finished. Until then I beg you - all of you - will permit me to speak without interruption.'

'Certainly, my dear Emerson,' I murmured.

'Hmph,' said Emerson. 'Very well. When Lord Blacktower called upon us with his preposterous story, I reacted as any sensible individual would - with incredulity. That very night an odd incident occurred. You know of it, Mr Forthright. No comment, please, a simple nod will suffice. Thank you. At the time I was unable to see any connection between this incident and Lord Blacktower's proposal, for the reason that no such connection was apparent.

'Nothing else untoward occurred until we reached Nubia. You may recall, Peabody, the curious incident of Ramses walking in his sleep.' He went on hastily, before I could reply. One such event might be dismissed as meaningless. A second similar event, such as occurred last night, raises certain doubts. Again Ramses claims to have heard a voice call him. He remembers responding to the call, but has no recollection of anything else.

Any attempt to concoct a theory that would weave these izarre events into a connected narrative would be no more than idle fiction.' The blazing blue eyes turned towards me; and such was their hypnotic effect that I made no attempt at rebuttal. 'However,' Emerson went on, 'one of the objects found at the scene of the crime last night is, to say the least, remarkable This fragment' - he took it from his pocket, with the air of a conjurer pulling a rabbit from his hat, and waved it before us -'this scrap of broken arrow changes the entire affair. I will stake my reputation - which is not inconsiderable - on the fact that nothing remotely like it is manufactured today by any known tribe of Nubia, Egypt, or the surrounding deserts!'

He paused for effect. This was a mistake, as he immediately realised; before he could resume, Ramses said, 'With all respect, Papa, I believe we all - with the possible exception of Mr Forthright - have followed your reasoning and anticipated your conclusion. If this arrow was not shaped by any known people, then it must have been made by some member of a group hitherto unknown. It is the second such unique artifact you have encountered; the armlet shown you by Mr Forth fourteen years ago was the first.'

'Good heavens!' The words burst from Reggie's throat. 'What are you getting at? You cannot mean -

'Curse it,' Emerson shouted. 'Be still, all of you! You have interrupted the reasoned discourse - '

'Well now, my dear, you were going on at quite unnecessary length,' I said soothingly. 'It is obvious, isn't it? This bit of arrow was broken off during the struggle last night, it must have been carried by Reggie's assailant, who was caught in the very act of luring Ramses out of his bed, for the second time since we arrived in Nubia. Why he wants Ramses I cannot imagine. that is to say, I do not know. But one might reasonably conclude that abduction rather than physical assault was his aim, for he had plenty of time to attack the boy on both occasions. As to why he wishes to kidnap Ramses - '

'Excuse me, Amelia,' said Emerson softly. His face was crimson and his voice shook with repressed emotion. 'Did I hear you say something about going on at unnecessary length?

'You are right to remind me, Emerson. I was about to commit the same error.' I brandished my teacup and raised my voice to a thrilling pitch. 'Let us cut through the cobwebs of speculation with the sharp sword of common sense! The lost civilisation Willoughby Forth set forth to find is a reality! He, and, let us hope, his wife, are prisoners of this mysterious people! One or more' of them has pursued us, from the wilds of Kent to the barren deserts of Nubia! Their occult powers, unknown to modern science, have enslaved Ramses, and even now - '

But here my audience cut me short with a chorus of comment. Dominating the other voices was the deep, infectious laughter of my spouse. Not until his whoops of mirth had subsided could any other sound be heard, and that sound, as one might have expected, was the voice of Ramses.

'Mama, I beg your pardon, but I must take exception to the word "enslaved," which is not only exaggerated and unsubstantiated but derogatory, implying as it does -'

'Never mind, Ramses,' said Emerson, wiping the tears of amusement from his eyes with the back of his manly hand. (Emerson never has a clean handkerchief.) 'Your mama did not mean, I am sure, to insult you. Her imagination - '

'I do not see that imagination enters into it,' I said loudly. 'If either of you can come up with a better explanation for the strange events of the past - '

Ramses and Emerson spoke at once, then fell silent; and Reggie remarked, as if to himself, 'Conversation with the Emerson family is stimulating, to say the least. May I say a word?' He went on without giving any of us an opportunity to reply. 'I take it, Professor, that you disagree with Mrs Emerson's conclusions.'

'What?' Emerson stared at him in surprise. 'No, not at all.'

'But, sir -'

'My amusement derived not from Mrs Emerson's deductions but from her manner of expressing them,' Emerson said. 'I can think of other explanations, but hers is certainly the most probable.'

Reggie shook his head dazedly. 'I don't understand.' 'It is difficult for an ordinary intelligence to follow the quickness of Mrs Emerson's thought,' Emerson said kindly. 'And she does - oh, yes, my dear, you do - she does exaggerate. There is no question of occult powers here; Ramses's odd behaviour is easily explained on the grounds of a post-hypnotic suggestion, instilled by the conjurer whom we encountered in Haifa. If we assume, as we now have reason to do, that the message from Willoughby Forth was genuine, it must have been brought to England by a member of the group that holds him prisoner, for otherwise the messenger would have identified himself and explained how the paper came into his hands. That same mysterious messenger may have shed the blood we found at our gate - but if he was wounded, who shot him, and why? Can we conclude that there are two different groups of people involved, one hostile to the other? The conjurer in Haifa and the presence in camp last night of a man carrying an arrow of an antique and unknown pattern indicate that some member of one of the postulated groups has followed us from England for purposes -er - for purposes impossible to explain at this time.'