The Mummy (Ramses the Damned 1)

She studied them only a second or two in the light from the windows. More of the flawless Cleopatra coins.

"Oh, no," she said, "these are worth far too much for us to spend them. Put them away. You are my guest here. I shall take care of everything."

She took him by the hand and led him up the stairs. Once again, he studied everything about him. Only this time he paused to examine the porcelain whatnots on the shelf. He stopped beneath her father's portrait in the upstairs hall.

"Lawrence," he said. Then, looking intently at her: "Henry? Where is Henry?"

"I shall take care of Henry," she said. "Time and the courts of law ... . judicium.... justice shall take care of Henry."

He indicated he was not satisfied with this answer. He drew the paring knife out of his pocket and ran his thumb along the blade. "I, Ramses, shall kill Henry."

"No!" Her hands flew to her lips. "No. Justice. Law!" she said. "We are a people of courts and laws. When the time comes ..." But she broke down. She could say no more. The tears welled in her eyes. It was hitting her again. Henry robbed Father of this triumph, this mystery, this very moment. "No," she said as he tried to steady her.

He put his hand on his chest. "I, Ramses, am justice," he said. "King, court, justice."

She sniffled, trying to stop her tears. She wiped at her lips with the back of her hand.

"You're a very fast learner of words," she said, "but you cannot kill Henry. I cannot live if you kill Henry."

Suddenly he took her face in his hands, and forcing her to him, he kissed her. It was brief, yet absolutely devastating. She reeled, and turned her back on him.

Quickly, she walked to the end of the hall and opened her father's door. She did not turn around and look at him again as she took the clothing out of the wardrobe. She laid out the shirt, the trousers, the belt. Socks, shoes. She pointed to the pictures on the wall, all the old photographs her father had treasured of himself and Elliott and Randolph and other cronies, from Oxford days to the present. The coat, she'd forgotten the coat. She dragged that out too and laid it down on the bed.

Then and only then did she look up. He stood in the door, watching her. The robe was open now to his waist; surely there was something profoundly primitive in the way he stood there, arms folded, feet apart, yet it seemed at the moment the very height of decorous sophistication.

He moved into the room now, surveying it with the same curiosity with which he approached everything else. He saw the photographs of her father, along with Randolph and Elliott at Oxford. He turned to look at the clothing laid out on the bed. Clearly he was comparing the clothes with that of the men in the pictures.

"Yes," she said, "you should dress like that."

His eyes darted to the Archaeology Journal on the dressing table. He picked it up and leafed through it, stopping at a full engraving of the great pyramid at Giza which contained also the Mena Hotel. What in the world was he thinking? He closed it.

"RRRRR ... kay ... ology," he said. With the utter guilelessness of a child, he smiled.

His eyes positively glittered as he looked at her. There was a scant bit of hair on his massive chest. She must get out of here now.

"You dress, Ramses. Like the pictures. I'll help you later if you make any mistakes."

"Very well, Julie Stratford," he said in that paralyzingly perfect British accent. "I dress alone. I have done this before."

Of course. Slaves. He had always had them, hadn't he? Probably by the dozens. Well, there was nothing to be done about it. She could not start removing that robe with her own hands. Her cheeks were burning. She could feel it. She hurried out, and quietly shut the door.

ENRY WAS now as drunk as he had ever been in his life. He had finished the bottle of Scotch which he had taken without permission from Elliott, and the brandy was going down like water. But it did not help. He was smoking one Egyptian cheroot after another, filling Daisy's flat with the pungent fragrance he had grown accustomed to in Cairo. And all it did was make him think of Malenka, and how he wished he was with Malenka, though he also wished he had never set foot in Egypt, that he had never entered that chamber in the side of the mountain where his uncle Lawrence had been poring over a stack of ancient scrolls.

That thing had been alive! That thing had seen him slip the poison into Lawrence's cup. No mistaking now the memory of those eyes open under the bandages; no mistaking that the thing had come out of its coffin in Julie's house and clamped its filthy hand on his neck.

No one understood the danger he was in. No one understood because no one knew the thing's motive! Never mind the reason for its filthy existence! The thing knew what he had done. And that Reginald Ramsey--though he could not entirely associate the man with the filthy creature that had tried to strangle him--he knew intellectually they were one and the same. Would the man disappear into the rotted linen bandages again when it came to get him?

God! He shuddered all over. He heard Daisy say something, and when he looked up he saw her standing by the mantel shelf, posing, as it were, in her corset and silk stockings, her breasts pouring over the lace cups of the corset, her blond ringlets tumbling onto her shoulders. Ought to be quite something to look at, to touch. It meant nothing.

"And you're telling me a bloomin' mummy came righ

t out of the mummy case and put its bloomin' hands around your throat! And you're telling me it's got on a bloomin' robe and slippers and is walking around the bloomin' house!"

Go away, Daisy. In his mind's eye, he saw himself taking the knife out of his pocket, the knife with which he'd killed Sharples, and he saw himself stabbing Daisy with it, in the throat.

The bell sounded. She wasn't going to the door in that getup, was she? Perfect idiot. What the devil did he care! The door. He shrank back in the chair, fumbling in his pocket for the knife.

Flowers. She came back with a big bouquet of flowers, babbling about an admirer. He slumped back in the chair. What was she doing? Staring at him like that?