The Mummy (8 page)

Gallows Humor

J
onathan Carnahan may have been a bit of a dilettante where Egyptology was concerned, and an utter fraud as an archaeologist, but one thing he did know: every watering hole in Cairo. From the plush cocktail lounges of the Continental and Sheapard hotels to waterfront dives few cultured Englishmen had dared enter (and fewer still had ever exited), Jonathan—and his thirst, and his money—were welcome guests.

This gave him access not only to alcoholic libation, but information; so it was that he knew a certain Richard O’Connell was a guest at the most dreadful lodgings possible in a city noted for its dreadful lodgings: the Cairo prison.

So, too, was Jonathan able to arrange—at rather short notice, with a handful of phone calls—an audience with the host of the city’s worst hellhole, Warden Gad Hassan, a thickset greasy man whose porcine features were distinguished by glittering dark eyes, a mustache flecked with the memories of several meals, and black-stubbled cheeks that apparently crossed paths with a razor no more than once a week.

The warden, his rumpled cream-colored suit stained with sweat, food, and other substances quite unimaginable, had taken Evelyn’s arm in a fashion at once gentlemanly and lascivious as he ushered the Carnahans across a small, penlike courtyard in a sprawling stone structure from which moans of agony and ghastly smells emanated. It was Jonathan’s theory that close proximity to the smells might be creating the moans.

His sister, hugging an alligator purse, looked rather lovely in another cardigan-and-dress ensemble, topped off by a large flat-brimmed hat that sat at a sun-shielding tilt. Perhaps, Jonathan thought,
too
lovely to be visiting a pigsty like this . . .

“Welcome to my humble home, Miss Carnahan,” the warden said. “It is a rare honor to have a woman of your elegance step across my lowly threshold.”

Despite the musical accent so common when Arabs spoke English, the warden’s command of Jonathan’s native language was impressive. But then again, a man this gross—the chief difference between Hassan and his worst prisoners was that Hassan was in charge—did not achieve so prominent a position without brains.

As they walked, the warden’s palm cradling Evelyn’s elbow, Hassan gestured with his other hand about the crushed-stone area. “This is our visitors’ area . . .”

“Charming,” Evelyn said, the sarcasm so faint even Jonathan couldn’t be sure of it.

Evelyn still seemed to be pouting. She had been irritated, even accusatory, when she learned that her brother had found the puzzle box not on a dig near Luxor, but in an establishment known as the Sultan’s Casbah, a dump catering to European rabble in one of the less reputable corners of the French Quarter.

“You lied to me!” she had said, sounding wounded.

Why did that surprise the silly girl? It was hardly the first time. Lying to one’s family, after all, was where the art of fabrication began; if one couldn’t deceive the gullible sods who loved one, how could one hope to pull the wool over a stranger’s eyes?

Jonathan had explained that he’d lifted the box from the pocket of the unconscious O’Connell, who had been involved in a drunken brawl, after which he (O’Connell) had been arrested. Evelyn—following the requisite expression of shock that her “own brother” could commit such a horrendous act—had insisted the box’s previous owner be interviewed at the prison (but said nothing about
returning
that box).

This had seemed a less than smashing idea to Jonathan, having stolen the box, knowing that in Cairo the penalty for picking pockets thereafter made scratching one’s nose (or anywhere else, for that matter) a physical impossibility.

The warden ushered them toward a barred cage that would not have been out of place in a monkey house at a zoo; the heavily barred pen was attached to the prison wall, where presumably a prisoner would be brought out to meet with visitors.

Evelyn asked Hassan, “Why is Mr. O’Connell in custody? My understanding is he was arrested after behavior that might be termed ‘drunk and disorderly.’ ”

The warden shrugged. “Why don’t you ask him? His only excuse is that he was ‘looking for adventure.’ I will say this: Your visit is well timed. I saw his name on the list today.”

“For his trial, you mean?”

“Trial?” The warden laughed explosively; his teeth were that shade of green so attractive in jade jewelry, less so in a smile. “How very droll, Miss Carnahan. So seldom does a woman of your grace and beauty have so keenly developed a sense of humor . . .”

They had reached the cage when the interior doors on the wall of the prison burst open and four Arab guards dressed in khaki dragged in a handsome, unshaven young white man, heavily shackled at the wrists and ankles, in what had been a white shirt and jodphurs, before they had become filthy and torn from a week in captivity.

“Ah!” the warden said. “Here’s your friend, now.”

The guards hurled the young man against the bars; the prisoner struck the steel with a nasty clang, but his face registered no pain.

“I say,” Jonathan said to Hassan, “was that necessary?”

The warden beamed greenly at Evelyn. “I see your brother’s sense of humor is also well developed. This is Mr. O’Connell, formerly of Chicago, Illinois, and more lately, the French Foreign Legion. He’s a deserter, your friend.”

Evelyn was looking O’Connell over; he was doing the same to her, from (it seemed to Jonathan) a slightly different perspective.

She asked her brother, “Is this him? The one you stole it from?”

Jonathan laughed nervously, glancing at the warden. “My sister and her sense of humor . . . Yes, dear, this is the blighter who
sold
it to me.”

O’Connell wedged his face between two bars, frowning as he studied Jonathan. “Sold what to you?”

“Warden,” Jonathan said, “would it be possible for us to have a few minutes alone with our friend?”

“What friend?” O’Connell asked.

Jonathan extended a hand with a pound note in it to the warden, for the man to shake, and take.

“Certainly, sahib.” Hassan bowed. “I’ll leave you now . . . you have five minutes.”

“It won’t be the same without you,” O’Connell said to the warden, and blew him a kiss.

The warden did not smile, greenly or otherwise; he waved a finger in the air. “A sense of humor in prisoners I do not appreciate.”

O’Connell laughed. “What are you going to do about it, fatso? Not change my sheets?”

The warden nodded to the scruffy, sleepy-eyed guard standing behind O’Connell, and the guard slammed the prisoner into the metal bars again, where his face bounced like a rubber ball off pavement. But O’Connell still registered no pain, though he did toss the guard a glare.

“Unwise, sir,” the warden said, and began walking away, adding to himself, “most unwise.”

Jonathan, watching Hassan go, said to O’Connell, “You might not want to get on his bad side, old man.”

“Where have I seen you before?” O’Connell asked Jonathan.

“I’m just a, uh, local missionary spreading the good word.”

“And who’s the dame?”

Evelyn frowned. “Dame?”

Jonathan gestured. “This is my charming sister, Evy.”

“Evelyn,” she corrected.

O’Connell glanced at her and shrugged. “Yeah? Well, maybe with her hair down she wouldn’t be a total loss.”

Evelyn’s eyes widened. “Well, I never!”

“That wouldn’t surprise me,” O’Connell said. To Jonathan, he said, “You look mighty familiar . . .”

Jonathan laughed giddily. “I just have one of those terribly common faces, old boy.”

“No, I know you from somewhere.”

Evelyn said, “Mr. O’Connell, allow me to explain why we’ve come.”

Face striped with the shadows of prison bars, O’Connell half-smirked. “Till I heard your British accents, I was kinda hoping you were from the American embassy.”

“Sorry, no,” she said. “We’re here about your box.”

“My what?”

“Your puzzle box. A little gold knickknack with eight sides? You see we, uh, that is my brother . . .
found
your box . . .”

“Now I remember,” O’Connell said, nodding, smiling, and, shackled or not, the prisoner managed to throw a short, sharp right jab into Jonathan’s jaw. Pugilism had never been a long suit of Jonathan’s, and the punch dropped him to the ground. He sat there rubbing his jaw, not quite unconscious.

“At any rate,” Evelyn continued, “we found your puzzle box and we’ve come to ask you about it.”

O’Connell was looking at her with renewed interest. “I just decked your brother, you know.”

“Yes, well, and I’m sure he deserved it. He is my sibling; I would know.”

O’Connell half-smiled at her. “I guess you would at that, Evy.”

“That’s ‘Miss Carnahan,’ if you please. Now about the box—”

“Don’t you mean, about Hamanaptra?” White teeth flashed in the unshaven, deeply tanned face.

Jonathan, finally getting to his feet, brushing himself off, replacing his hat which had been knocked off, said, “Keep your voice down, man! The walls have ears.”

Actually, it was the scruffy hood-eyed guard standing in the cell with O’Connell who had ears, and while English may have been foreign to those ears, the word “Hamanaptra” might be all too familiar.

“What an interesting thing to say, Mr. O’Connell,” Evelyn said, coyly. “Whatever was it about that box that brought, uh, that mythical place to mind?”

“Maybe it was because I was at that mythical place when I found it.”

She blinked. “You were there?”

“Yeah, and if a caravan of diggers out of Cairo hadn’t stumbled across me in the desert, I wouldn’ta lived to tell the tale.”

Jonathan, jaw aching, feeling irritable toward the chap, snapped, “How do we know this isn’t a load of pig swallow?”

“Well, for one thing, I have no idea what pig swallow is. And for another, step over here near the bars again . . .”

“No thank you,” Jonathan said, taking a step back.

But Evelyn had no compunction about stepping near the bars, closer to the filthy prisoner. She asked, “You were there? At Hamanaptra?”

He flashed her another big grin. “I sure as hell was, lady. Seti’s joint. City of the Goddamned Dead.”

“You swear?”

“I’m afraid so—every goddamn day.”

She frowned in frustration. “No, no, what I mean to say is, do you take an oath that—”

“I know what you mean. I’m just pulling your leg. Or anyway, I’d like to . . .”

Her chin lifted, her gaze traveled to him down her fine nose. “You’re hardly in a position to make flirtatious remarks, Mr. O’Connell. This is strictly business.”

“Is it, now?”

“What did you find?”

“Sand. A lot of sand.”

“Well, then, what did you see?”

“Death. Lot of that, too. They aren’t kidding when they say that place is cursed.”

“Superstition, Mr. O’Connell, is the hallmark of the small mind. My interest is in research. My brother and I are Egyptologists.”

“Really? Well, then—I bet you’d like to go there. To Hamanaptra, I mean.”

Jonathan crossly said, “Will the two of you keep your voices down?”

Evelyn was very near the bars of the cage. “Could you tell me how to get there? The exact location?”

“Better than that. I’ll take you there.”

“But Mr. O’Connell—you are rather indisposed.”

“That’s one way to put it.”

“Couldn’t you just tell us how to get there? Give us the exact location?”

“Have you opened the box?”

“Well, uh . . . yes we have.”

“Then you have the map.”

Evelyn glanced at her brother, who shrugged.

“About the map, old boy,” Jonathan said, keeping his distance, “I’m afraid there was a slight mishap—a portion of it was burned away . . . the, uh, portion including the particular site of interest, shall we say.”

“Come closer, Jonathan,” O’Connell said, crooking his finger, smiling tightly, “I can’t hear you . . .”

Jonathan stepped back a pace.

Evelyn said to the prisoner, “You’ve been there. You can point the way.”

O’Connell nodded. “I can take you there.”

“How?”

“Well, you might start by, oh, I don’t know, maybe by . . .”

She leaned closer. “Yes? Yes?”

“Getting me the hell out of here!”

Evelyn reared back. “Well, you needn’t be rude, Mr. O’Connell.”

“Forgive me. A man loses all sense of propriety in a place like this. Would you really like to know the way?”

“Oh yes.”

He nodded to her, to come closer, his eyes indicating he didn’t want the guard to hear. She leaned in to him and he kissed her full on the lips.

Then he grinned at her, rakishly, and winked. “Get me the hell outa here, honey, and we’ll both go on an adventure.”

The guard had witnessed this forbidden physical familiarity with a visitor, and as O’Connell was speaking to Evelyn, the scruffy fellow was stepping forward to throttle the prisoner again.

But this time O’Connell was ready: He grabbed the man and yanked him head first into the bars and let the guard’s face slam into steel for a change. In an instant, other guards were hustling into the pen, grabbing O’Connell and dragging him out.

O’Connell shouted out, “Nice meeting you!”

Then he was gone, disappearing around the corner, into the fetid darkness of the prison, hauled away by angry Arab guards.

Suddenly the warden was back at her side.

“Oh dear,” Evelyn said. “Will they beat him?”

“No, no, Miss Carnahan,” the warden said pleasantly. “There’s no time for that.”

“No time?”

“Yes, he’s being taken to be hanged.”

“Hanged?”

“He’s a deserter from the Foreign Legion, as I told you. That’s a hanging offense.”

Jonathan said, “But the French Foreign Legion have no jurisdiction here. This isn’t Algeria, for heaven’s sake . . .”

“We’ve civilized people, Mr. Carnahan, Miss Carnahan—we have . . . what is the word? A reciprocal arrangement with the legion—for fifty of your pounds, we waive them the trouble of extradition. And now, I’m afraid, my presence is required at the execution—a formality, but I am so a stickler for doing things right.”