It was filled to the top with broken stone.
Ramses lost the last remnants of his calm. “Father!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. “Mother, for God’s sake -”
Daoud stopped digging. In the silence Ramses heard sounds of activity behind that ominous blockage. An irregular gap, less than two inches deep, appeared, and an eerily distorted, very irritated voice was heard.
“Ramses, is that you? I trust you did not allow him to escape. Is Daoud with you? He will have to empty the entire shaft, the cursed stones keep trickling down into the passage. Though ‘trickle’ is perhaps an inappropriate word.”
After Ramses had drawn his first full breath in what felt like hours, he persuaded his garrulous mother to retreat farther down the passage. She continued to shout instructions and questions, and they shouted questions back at her – a fairly futile exercise, since Daoud had gone back to work with renewed energy and the crash and rattle of stone drowned out most of the words. Ramses shouted along with the rest of them. He had been utterly taken aback by the intensity of his relief when he heard his mother’s voice, and a distant bellow from Emerson. This wasn’t the first time they had been in trouble, not by a long shot, and he had always worried about them, but for some reason he had never fully realized how much he loved and needed them. The very qualities that sometimes irritated him were the qualities he would miss most: his mother’s infuriating self-confidence and awful aphorisms, his father’s belligerence and awful temper. After all the adventures they had survived with their usual aplomb, it would be horribly ironic if they met their final defeat (he couldn’t even think the other word) at the hands of the most contemptible opponent they had ever faced.
I’m getting to be as superstitious as Mother, he thought. It hasn’t happened. It isn’t going to happen.
His mother’s half-heard orders had provided enough information to save valuable time. Some of their followers ran off and came back with enough wood to make a litter as well as a splint for Emerson’s arm. The light of several torches brightened the increasing darkness and one overly enthusiastic helper got a basketful of rock square on the chin as he leaned over the shaft offering unnecessary advice.
As soon as the space was clear enough, Ramses dropped down and crawled into the passage. It was half-filled with bits of stone, which sloped down toward the far end. His mother hadn’t sat waiting to be rescued; she had scooped the stuff out from below as Jamil dumped it in above. She hadn’t been able to keep up with him, but that was his mother for you – “every little bit helps,” she would have told herself, and, “Never give up hope.” Something caught in his throat. He hurried on toward the square opening at the far end, which glowed with faint light.
He took in the scene in a single glance, by the light of the failing torch – the pile of rugs on which Emerson was lying, the jars, the stores of food – and his mother, sitting on the floor with her back against the wall, dredging peas out of a tin with her fingers.
“Ah, there you are, my dear,” she said. “And Nefret too? How nice.”
Her face was filthy, her hair gray with stone dust. Arms and shoulders were bare and as dirty as her face; the garment that more or less covered the upper part of her body had narrow ruffled straps, yards of lace, and several little pink bows.
Ramses was unable to speak or move. Nefret had gone at once to Emerson and was examining his arm. She let out a choked laugh. “She’s used the ribs and shaft of the parasol for a splint!”
“Once again proving, if proof were needed, the all-round usefulness of a good stout parasol,” said his mother.
Peas went flying as Ramses snatched her up and hugged her.
“All’s well that ends well,” I remarked, sipping my whiskey and soda.
The axiom was trite, I confess, but I do not believe it deserved the general grumble of disapproval it received. They were all there on the veranda, even Katherine. Dinner was going to be very late, since Fatima had been too agitated to instruct the cook when she learned that not only we, but Ramses and Nefret and Daoud and Selim, had vanished into thin air, somewhere between Sheikh Abd el Gurneh and the western cliffs. Cyrus and Bertie had waited less than an hour before going in pursuit; finding the horses still in Mohammed’s charge and with no idea of where to look next, they had returned to the house in the hope that some or all of us had returned.
I cannot say that anyone behaved sensibly. Cyrus had sent for his wife, Sennia demanded that she be allowed to take the Great Cat of Re out to look for Ramses, and Gargery had to be forcibly restrained from dashing wildly out of the house waving a pistol. His grumbles, on the monotonous theme of “going off like that without me” were the loudest of all.
“Do be still, Gargery,” I said sternly. “And the rest of you. We had no choice but to act at once.”
“Quite,” said Emerson, who was having some difficulty smoking his pipe and drinking his whiskey with only one serviceable arm. Nefret had tended to him; he had a nice neat cast and a proper sling. Nefret had admitted, in confidence, that she had made the cast twice as heavy and thick as was usual, since she knew he would keep hitting it against things. I saw the logic of this, though I knew it would mean a few more shirts ruined. I had had to cut a long slit in the sleeve of the one he was wearing so he could get it over the cast.
“Well, mebbe so,” Cyrus conceded. “But you four should have left word with someone. You knew we’d be worried.”
Ramses began, “I’m very -”
“Sorry be damned,” said his father gruffly. “For all you knew, there was not a moment to lose. Ramses, my boy – er – thank you. Again.”
Ramses’s thin brown face broke into a smile. “It wasn’t me, Father, it was Daoud and Jumana. Sherlock Holmes couldn’t have done better.”
Daoud beamed. “Who is Sherlock Holmes?” he asked.
“The greatest detective who ever lived,” Ramses replied. None of us laughed, for fear of hurting Daoud’s feelings, but Ramses directed another smile at me. “Except for Mother.”
Then we could laugh. I joined in as heartily as the others, my heart swelling with affection.
“Sennia, it is long past your bedtime,” I said. “Off you go.”
She had to give everyone a good-night kiss and of course she had to have the last word. “The Great Cat of Re would have found you.”
“Ha,” I said, but I said it under my breath. The kitten had grown very fat and lazy. Curled up on Ramses’s lap, it resembled a shapeless bundle of spotted gray fur.
After Sennia had gone I took another cucumber sandwich. I was ravenous, for the peas and the foie gras that had preceded them had done very little to assuage the hunger resulting from long hours of strenuous manual labor.
“Let us now,” I said, “discuss what we have learned. It has not been wasted effort, though we did let Jamil get away from us.”
“I haven’t learned a blamed thing except that you two are incorrigible,” Cyrus grumbled.
“Not at all, Cyrus. First, there is the interesting matter of Jamil’s costume. He was not wearing Jumana’s clothes. They would have been far too small for him. He cannot have purchased them because… Need I explain my reasoning?”
“No,” Katherine said. “Aside from the question of how he could pay for them, I can’t see him going into one of the shops and trying on blouses and skirts.”
“That is right. We will leave that matter for the moment. I think I know the answer, and it can easily be proved. The second clue… Ramses, at one time you were able to recall the entire contents of a crowded storeroom some hours after you had seen it. Do you remember what was in Jamil’s hideout?”