At least the sheik had paid attention. He told them they were free to go. He would have the police comb the metropolis for a man missing a turban and sporting a large lump on the side of his head.
“Tell them to look for a fellow showing symptoms of concussion,” Rupert said. “Mrs. Pembroke gave him a healthy thump, and the statue was solid stone.”
Beechey sent a dour look his way, but said nothing until later, when they set out. Night had long since fallen, and they were following Mrs. Pembroke’s entourage of police and servants to her house.
The secretary slowed his pace and said, “I had thought I’d made it clear that Mrs. Pembroke was to be shielded from embarrassment and distress at all costs.”
“She doesn’t like being shielded,” Rupert said. “She objects most strongly to being treated like a child.”
“That is no excuse for you to treat her as you would one of your sporting cronies,” said the secretary. “Did it not occur to you that other villains might have concealed themselves nearby, and that you should have summoned assistance immediately? While you were leaping headlong into an ambush you should have foreseen, she might have been attacked. She might have been killed or worse.”
Rupert came to a halt. “What could be worse than her being killed, do you think?”
“I thought I had communicated to you Mr. Salt’s opinions and wishes in the matter of Mr. Archdale’s disappearance,” Beechey said. “I thought I used easily comprehended terms.”
“You did,” Rupert said. “I told Mrs. Pembroke about it in much the same way.”
“You told —” After a pause, Beechey went on, his voice strained, “You cannot have revealed our suspicions about the — ahem — places of dubious repute. This is one of your jokes, I daresay. Ha ha.”
“She said her brother was not in a brothel or opium den and I was on no account to go to such places looking for him,” Rupert said. “I obeyed, as I was obliged to do. You did tell me I wasn’t to upset her, did you not?”
There followed the kind of furious silence with which Rupert was more than familiar.
It was not the first time he’d rendered a listener speechless, and it would not be the last. They walked on without talking while Rupert wondered how much time he had before Salt sent him out to the desert.
THOUGH THE LADY was more than amply protected, Rupert continued with the escort all the way to her house. He remained to watch the assigned guards position themselves at strategic spots about the place, then parted company with Beechey and set out on his own.
It was night, and Rupert was aware that sensible persons did not traverse the Cairo streets after dark. The safe way, however, had never been his favorite direction.
He followed the route he and Mrs. Pembroke had taken two days ago. Though it was night, he found Lord Noxley’s house with no difficulty — apart from repeated halts en route to pacify suspicious policemen, military guardsmen, and porters.
The street was gated and the gate locked, but by now he’d memorized the secret password. The watchman said something foreign, to which Rupert answered, “La ilaha ila-llah.”
He might have to see about language lessons after all, he thought, like it or not. Looking on the bright side, learning Arabic from Mrs. Pembroke had to be pleasanter than learning Greek and Latin from droning schoolmasters.
Eventually, after he’d carefully enunciated the phrases “Message from Mr. Salt” and “British consul” several times, he was admitted to his lordship’s house. This was against the rules, Rupert later discovered. He was in luck, however: his visit coincided with a jealous young woman’s temper tantrum.
The dusky beauty he’d noticed during his previous visit was named Juman. She’d been storming about the portico when she heard him hail the porter. She had Rupert admitted and was soon confiding in him in prettily broken English enlivened with intricate hand motions.
Lord Noxley had bought her in the slave market. Eager to please the handsome foreigner who’d saved her from life with a much older and less attractive owner, she had painstakingly learnt English. Since she was exceedingly handsome as well, his lordship let her please him in other ways, too. As a result, she’d developed expectations — as women so often did, fanciful creatures that they were — of a permanent arrangement, preferably including nuptial rites.
Her hopes were shattered yesterday, when his lordship departed Cairo in search of the English lady’s brother.
The abandoned Juman was still sulking. This was why she’d told the porter that the man from the consulate must be let into the house. This was why she told Rupert all her master’s private business. And this was why she offered to demonstrate the other talents she possessed besides eavesdropping. She was exceedingly talented: it took all of Rupert’s limited store of tact to disentangle himself.
Not until a long time after he’d left Lord Noxley’s abode and was composing himself to sleep in his own lodgings did Rupert wonder why he’d been so unaccommodating. After all, dusky beauties did not fall into one’s lap — literally — every day. When heaven bestowed such gifts, only a churl would decline them. While Rupert was by no means lacking in faults, churlishness was not among them.
It must be a touch of plague, he told himself. Then he turned over and fell asleep. He dreamt of angry green-eyed goddesses in turbans.
WHILE RUPERT WAS dreaming, Ghazi and his men were setting out into the Eastern Desert.
They had found two of the men who’d robbed Vanni Anaz, relieved them of the papyri and other artifacts they’d stolen, and beat them until they revealed what little they knew.
They were mere common thieves hired, Ghazi soon understood, to divert suspicion from Duval by making the previous papyrus theft appear to be one among several, an ordinary crime. Since the thieves knew almost nothing, Ghazi might have let them live. But they’d made a fatal error: they’d panicked and killed Vanni Anaz, a useful and valuable man. Ghazi garroted them.
Based on that interview, he soon found other informants. Within a few hours, Ghazi had all the information he needed.
The kidnappers had set out with their captive in a nondescript boat. The papyrus traveled separately by land. The rendezvous point was a village south of Minya, more than a hundred fifty miles upriver.
Ghazi divided his men accordingly: one group to pursue the kidnappers and another to follow the papyrus. He led the papyrus team. The kidnappers, clearly, were not the most intelligent or efficient of Duval’s underlings. On the other hand, Faruq, who carried the papyrus, was as clear-eyed, cold-blooded, and sharp-witted as Ghazi himself.
Ghazi looked forward to their encounter.
Chapter 7
Friday 6 April
“GONE?” MRS. PEMBROKE SHOT UP FROM THE divan in a flurry of black silk, knocking aside the silver tray containing their breakfast.
The coffee sloshed in the cups, and the fateerah started sliding from its plate, but Rupert caught the tray in time, saving its precious cargo.
While she strode to the shelf of wooden figures, Rupert helped himself to a piece of the buttery pastry, doused it liberally with honey, and sank his teeth in with a quiet sigh of pleasure. Fateerah was so far his favorite Egyptian food. But that was only one part of the present moment’s deliciousness.
Mrs. Pembroke was taking a fit. And every abrupt movement gave him a glimpse of her slim, stockinged feet and perfect ankles.
“Of all the presumptuous —” she began. “I can scarcely credit —” She broke off, and he lifted his gaze from her feet to her face, to watch her try to contain the tempest within…and fail, praise be.
Few sights stirred his senses as did that of Mrs. Pembroke flying into a passion. She glared green fire at the little Egyptians. Her fine bosom — whose perfect contours the dull mourning could not completely camouflage — rose and fell like a stormy sea.
“I daresay Noxious hadn’t time for tender farewells,” Rupert said. “He had a villain to lure out of hiding.”
“He knew who it was,” s
he said tightly.
“I said only that his servant mentioned a Frenchman named Duval,” Rupert said. He’d told her of the late-night visit to Noxious’s house, but not in unnecessary detail. The word “servant” discreetly covered a multitude of scantily clad dusky beauties.
“I spoke to Salt and Beechey about him this morning,” he went on. “Their description fits our portrait of the villain. Duval is one of the French consul’s dearest friends. He despises the English. Salt says the man’s still nursing a grudge about the Rosetta Stone. Believes it properly belongs to France, it seems.”
“Duval,” she said. She paced for a short time, the black silk whispering against her legs. “I met him once. A dinner at the Swedish consulate. Medium height, dark, elegant — or perhaps sleek is the apter word. Polished manners.”
“Salt and Beechey say Duval’s generally reckoned a canny fellow,” Rupert said. “But lately he’d suffered a series of reverses in the antiquities line.”
“Setbacks seem to sour and deform some men,” she said. She turned toward him, her countenance clouded. “They become angry, anxious, suspicious. They brood. They lose their sense of proportion. They grow resentful of others’ accomplishments and happiness.”
Rupert nodded. Her troubled countenance, as much as the words and grim tone, told him she spoke from experience.