“Well?” she snapped. “Speak, sir! It is insulting and ill-mannered to keep a lady waiting.”
“They are working on-” Kit hesitated again, uncertain how much to say.
“Their secret scientific experiments?” she snipped.
“You know about those?”
“I know all about them,” she replied carelessly. Her accent was softer than most of the others he had heard, and her manner of speaking more inclined to his own. She was easier to understand, and he understood that she was completely and utterly irate. “But I do not know you.”
“I’m, ah-” He caught himself this time. He forced a smile. “My name is Christopher. You can call me Kit.”
Her frown deepened.
“And you are?” he ventured.
“You may call me Lady Fayth,” she replied crisply and with a slight lift of her chin.
“Lady Fayth? Forgive me; I did not know Sir Henry was married.”
“I beg your pardon, sir!” she replied haughtily. “I am his niece-not that that is anything to you.”
“No, of course not, my lady,” replied Kit. On sudden inspiration, he bowed to her and, for all his lack of practice, managed some degree of elegance. “Pray, forgive my thoughtless and entirely reckless presumption. I do apologise.”
His conciliatory manner had the desired effect. She appeared to relax slightly, though she still regarded him warily. “What are you doing in my uncle’s private room? What have you done with Sir Henry?”
Before he could answer, a chime rang from somewhere in the house.
“Ah, saved by the bell,” remarked Kit under his breath. “Perhaps you would allow me to explain myself over dinner. May I escort you to the table, my lady?”
He presented his arm the way he had seen it done in old movies. To his amazement, she accepted-but with a distinctly diffident coolness. “We will discuss this further.”
“Nothing would please me more,” he told her, and meant every syllable.
PART FOUR
The Green Book
CHAPTER 20
In Which Luxor’s Nefarious Trade Is Advanced
Lord Burleigh sat mopping his brow with a limp handkerchief and tried yet again to remember why he had imagined that arriving in Egypt at the height of summer was a good idea. “If the heat doesn’t kill you,” he mused, “the flies surely will.” With that, he gave another informal gathering of the small, biting devils a swish of his horsehair swatter. “Cheeky blighters!”
He sipped from his tall glass of cool apple tea and loosened the starched collar of his second shirt of the day. From the palm-fringed comfort of the Om Seti Lounge of the Winter Palace Hotel, he sat in his big wicker chair and watched the hotel traffic traipsing through the lobby outside: European businessmen in dark suits and panama hats with decorative ladies on their arms, the women in crisp cream-coloured linen, high heels clicking on the polished marble floor; swarthy waiters in white kaftans bearing hookahs or tiny cups of tea on silver trays; sandal-shod bellboys in short satin trousers and red turbans; cigarette sellers with wooden trays of tobacco; wealthy Arabs in spotless white galabiyas.
All passed in languid procession. No one hurried. When merely ambling around in the heat of the day was considered foolhardy, rushing would be suicidal.
Overhead, a fan creaked as its woven rattan blades sifted the stifling air. Burleigh pulled his watch from the pocket of his waistcoat and clicked open the case. He would, he decided, give it another half hour and then call off the chase. If his quarry did not turn up, he would go down to the docklands and arrange shipping for the items held in storage since his last visit. With this thought in mind, he retrieved his wallet from the breast pocket of the jacket hanging on the back of the chair. He opened it and quickly counted his remaining funds and found that he still had a little more than eighty thousand Egyptian pounds.
The main problem with the trade in ancient artefacts was that everyone had a finger in the pie-the looters, the brokers, the warehousemen, the ship owners, museum curators, the police, and, last but by no means least, the customs officials. All had to be paid off before any sale could take place. It was an expensive business.
By dint of hard work, vigilance, innate good taste, and the uncanny ability to sniff out a trend before it developed, Burleigh had succeeded in a business that was growing more difficult by the day. Competition for the best pieces had increased season by season, with ignorant, heavy-handed freebooters moving in, driving up the prices unnecessarily and attracting greater attention from the authorities. It was to the point now where a fellow could not afford to put a foot wrong lest he find himself floating facedown in the Nile.
No honour among thieves, Burleigh concluded ruefully. The greedy morons would ruin it for everyone.
He finished his tea and cast a last quick glance around the hotel lobby. It was empty now. Anyone with any sense at all was resting from the heat.
Replacing his glass on the silver tray, he stood, drew on his coat, left the lounge, and walked to the front desk across the lobby. “I will be out for the afternoon,” he informed the concierge. “I shall want a cold bath when I return.”
“Of course, sir,” replied the man behind the marble countertop. “Will his lordship be dining in tonight?”
“I think so, yes. Have my table ready for eight o’clock.”
“Very good, sir.”
“And make sure you have a bottle of Bollinger chilled and waiting. It was warm last time, and I won’t have that again.” Receiving the hotel’s deepest apologies and assurance of better service, he strolled to the revolving doors and pushed through. The sun hit him like a sweaty slap in the face. He stiffened under its onslaught and signalled the white-coated porter in the plumed pith helmet to summon a taxi for him. In a moment, he heard the slow tap of hooves on pavement, and a mule-drawn trap rolled up to the foot of the hotel steps. He climbed into the back of the small carriage, saying, “Take me to the riverfront. I’ll tell you the place when we get there.”
The driver nodded and, with a flick of the reins, they jolted off through the narrow streets of Luxor, a shambling tangle of a city that was already ancient when Moses was a lad. They proceeded toward the river through progressively unsavoury neighbourhoods, dropping down the ladder of respectability rung by rung. Upon reaching the edge of the warehouse district, Lord Burleigh leaned forward and gave the taxi driver a street name. “I will tell you when to stop,” he added. A few minutes later they approached a large, dilapidated building. “This is it,” Burleigh told the driver. The carriage stopped outside the door. “Wait here and there will be a triple fare for you.” He held up three fingers to enforce the point.
“It will be done, effendi,” replied the driver, touching the fingertips of his right hand to his forehead.
Burleigh strode to the wide entrance door and gave a short series of rapid knocks. He stood examining the peeling plaster while he waited and at last heard the clink of a chain being unlocked and an iron bolt withdrawn. The door slid open to admit him, and he was met by a thin black Ethiope in a large red fez. “Lord Burleigh, the rich blessings of Allah be upon you,” said the man. “Marhaban.”
“A’salaamu `alaykum,” replied Burleigh.
“It is good to see you again, sir.”
“As ever, Babu, the pleasure is mine.”
The servant bowed low and stepped aside to allow him to enter. “My lord Hakim Rassoul is expecting you, sir. If you please to follow me.”
“After you, Babu.” Burleigh fell into step behind his guide. “Business is good?”
“Allah is ever generous, sir.”
The interior of the warehouse was dark, the air stale and dusty and hot. The little servant led him through rows of shelves stacked high with dusty objects: stone urns and jars; caskets; statues of owls, and cats, and hawks in wood and stone; boxes, chests, crates, and hemp-wrapped bundles of all sizes. Ali Baba the shipping clerk, thought Burleigh.