“Well?” Emerson demanded. “Did you?”
Nefret drank deeply from the water bottle before replying. “Fractured skull. The back of his head was… I won’t go into detail.”
“Thank you,” Cyrus muttered, eyeing his sandwich with distaste.
“There were a number of broken bones,” Nefret went on. “I looked for a bullet or knife wound, but it wasn’t easy to… Well, I won’t go into that either. The head injury was enough to have killed him.”
“Fall or blunt instrument?” I inquired.
Nefret shrugged. “Impossible to determine. I did the best I could, but without the proper instruments -”
“Yes, quite,” said Emerson.
Selim returned to announce that Hassan had gone on with the cart and its burden, and we continued with our lunch. Daoud soon joined us. He had come round the long way, since he was not fond of climbing ropes, up or down.
“Are there more tombs in these cliffs?” Bertie asked, accepting another sandwich.
“Unquestionably,” Ramses replied. “If this area was used for the burials of royal females during the Eighteenth Dynasty, which seems likely, there are a number of known queens whose mummies have never been found, and Heaven knows how many unknown princesses and kings’ lesser wives.”
“Not to mention princes,” Nefret added, her eyes shining with archaeological fervor. “And royal mothers and sisters and -”
“Cousins and aunts,” I said, with a chuckle, reminded of one of my favorite Gilbert and Sullivan arias.
The others acknowledged my little joke with smiles and nods, except for Emerson, who sat like a boulder, staring off into space, and Selim, who was growing restless.
“The horses will not run away,” he said. “Not our horses. But we should not leave them there too long.”
Emerson jumped up. “Quite right, quite right. I will – er – this will only take a minute.”
I had expected Emerson would want to get into the cursed tomb. I was not the only one who attempted to make him see reason, but he waved all objections aside. “I only want to have a look.”
“Put on your pith helmet, Emerson,” I called after him.
“Yes, yes,” said Emerson, not doing so.
He started to climb the rope, moving with an agility remarkable in so heavy a man. He had not got very far when the quiet air was rent by a prolonged, high-pitched scream. It was not an animal. No creature in Egypt made a sound like that. Emerson lost his grip on the rope and dropped down, staggering a bit before he got his balance.
“What the devil -” he began.
“He’s up there.” Ramses handed his father the binoculars he had snatched up. I saw the figure now, atop the cliff. It was too far away for me to make out details, but it was capering and prancing, waving its arms and kicking up its heels, as if in a grotesque dance. Small bits of rock rattled down the sheer face.
I took the binoculars from Emerson and when I raised them to my eyes the bizarre figure took on form and substance. Its only garment was a short skirt or kilt. The body was human. The head was not. Pricked ears and protruding muzzle were covered with coarse brown hair, and fanged teeth fringed the jaws.
Ramses ran toward the cliff. I knew what he intended, and I felt reasonably certain that Emerson would follow after him. Handing Nefret the binoculars, I drew my little pistol from its holster, aimed, and fired.
I did not expect I would hit the creature. Obviously I did not, for a long mocking laugh, almost as unpleasant as the animal scream, followed, and the monstrous figure vanished from sight.
“Come back here this instant, Ramses,” I shouted. “Emerson, if you attempt to climb that rope I will – I will shoot you in the leg.”
“Don’t fire that damned pistol again,” Emerson exclaimed, hurrying toward me. “Give it to me.”
“I wouldn’t really have shot you,” I said, as he carefully removed the weapon from my hand. “But really, Emerson, haven’t you better sense than to climb a cliff when there is someone up above who could knock you off the rope with a few well-placed rocks?”
“That’s reasonable,” Emerson conceded.
“Right,” said Ramses, who had obviously had second thoughts. “We’ll go up and around. No, not you, Bertie, you’ve done your bit for today.”
“Nor you, Peabody,” my husband added. “Stay here and – and head him off if he comes down.”
“Give me back my pistol, then,” I shouted, as he and Ramses went trotting off, accompanied by Selim. Emerson did not pause but his reply was clearly audible. “Hit him with your parasol.”
I patted Nefret on the shoulder. “Don’t be concerned, my dear. He will have taken himself off by the time they get to the top.”
“Then what is the point of their going?” Nefret demanded. “Oh, I know; it’s Father, of course. He is determined to get into that bloody damned tomb one way or another.”
“Well now, you can’t blame him,” Cyrus said. “There must be something in there the fellow doesn’t want us to find or he wouldn’t have tried to scare us off.”
“It was an afrit, a demon,” Jumana muttered, twisting her slim brown hands together.
It was not one of her better performances, but Daoud, utterly without guile himself, patted her reassuringly. “Where the Father of Curses walks, no afrit dares approach.”
“That was no afrit, it was a man, wearing some sort of mask,” Bertie said coolly. “How could he have supposed such a silly stunt would frighten us away?”
I had wondered myself.
Knowing it would be some time before Emerson finished rooting around in the disgusting tomb, I found a (comparatively) comfortable seat and invited the others to do the same. We were able to observe some of their activities, rather like spectators in the pit of a theater or opera house, but after they had descended into the cleft, all three were out of sight. We saw no one else. I had not expected we would.
When they finally rejoined us, descending by means of the rope, they were all three in an appalling state of filth. Emerson, naturally, was the worst. He had removed his coat early in the day; he was now without his shirt. I recognized this garment in the bundle he carried under one arm. The bronzed skin of his chest and back was smeared with a disgusting paste compounded of dust, perspiration, bat guano, and blood from a network of scratches and scrapes, and his hands were even nastier. He did not smell very nice.
“Good Gad, Peabody, you won’t believe what a mess they made of the place,” he exclaimed. “The floor of the burial chamber looks like a rubbish heap, with chunks of rotted wood and soggy bones mixed with bits of stone.”
He squatted and began unwrapping his bundle. Selim, who was far more fastidious in his habits than my husband, set about scrubbing his hands and arms with sand.
“If there was nothing left, what were you doing all that time?” Nefret asked, handing Ramses a dampened handkerchief.
“Taking measurements and notes.” He wiped his mouth before he went on. “Father managed to salvage a few odds and ends.”
Still squatting, Emerson studied the motley objects he had collected. They included a rim fragment from a stone vessel, scraps of gold foil, and a number of jewelry elements, beads and inlays and spacers. Rapt in contemplation of these uninspiring artifacts, he did not so much as twitch when I uncorked my bottle of alcohol and trickled the liquid down his scraped back. I honestly believe I could amputate one of Emerson’s limbs without his taking notice if he had found something of archaeological interest.
“We had some trouble getting into the descending passage,” Ramses explained. “It had been blocked with stones, and the thieves removed only enough for them to wriggle through. It was rather a tight squeeze for Father.”