Lion in the Valley (11 page)

"Drinking
again, I see, Peabody," said Emerson, inspecting the remains of my
whiskey. "How often have I warned you about the evils of the demon
rum?"

"You
will have your little joke, Emerson. It was an experiment, in fact, and one
that succeeded brilliantly. Mr. Nemo is a cashiered army officer! He was once
in the service of Her Majesty—"

"Calmly,
Peabody, if you please. What did you do, get him drunk and induce a
confession?"

I
explained. Emerson was in an excellent humor; for once he listened without
interrupting. Then he said, "You deduced Mr. Nemo's entire military
history solely from his response to your toast?"

"No,
no, that was merely the final proof. Everything
points to it,
Emerson—the young man's carriage, his manner, his speech."

"Well,
you may be right, Peabody. I had begun to wonder about that myself."

"Ha,"
I exclaimed.

Emerson
grinned. "I know, I know; I always claim to have anticipated your
deductions—and you do the same to me, Peabody, admit it. But this time I was
not trying to do you in the eye. It was the most obvious conclusion. Such cases
are, unhappily, not infrequent. And no wonder! Take a young man with no
experience of the world, thrust him into an alien land filled with exotic
temptations, fill him full of a lot of bilge about his superiority over lesser
breeds of men—and all women!—segregate him from everyone except members of his
own sex and social class ..."

He
went on for some time. I let him get it out of his system—for the time being.
It was one of Emerson's chief aggravations and the subject would certainly
arise again, as it had done often before. He had refused to allow Ramses to
attend school, and in this case I had to agree with him. Any educational system
that separates the sexes and denies women equal intellectual opportunities is
obviously a poor system.

Finally
Emerson wound down. He gave himself a shake and mopped his perspiring brow.
"At any rate, Peabody, I am glad to see you have given up your nonsensical
notions about master—er—about Mr. Nemo's criminal associations."

I
smiled to myself but did not reply. Emerson enjoys our little arguments as much
as I do; they are, if I may invent a striking metaphor, the pepper in the soup
of marriage. However, I felt he had had enough excitement for one evening and I
was anxious to finish and get to bed.

His
thoughts had turned to the same subject. After a moment he said, "I found
a very pleasant little pit in the rock, Peabody. With a bit of canvas for a
roof and a trifle of the sweeping and scrubbing you women seem to consider
necessary, it would make a most agreeable sleeping chamber."

"For
whom, Emerson?"

I
had my back turned, but I heard the creak of his chair and the elephantine
tread of Emerson trying to tiptoe. His arms stole around my waist. "Whom
do you think, Peabody?"

I
felt a warm moist touch on my neck, just under my ear. Much as I would have liked
Emerson to pursue this interesting course, I forced myself to be firm.
"All in due time, Emerson. I have two more boxes to unpack."

"Leave
them till morning."

"They
may contain articles we will need first thing in the morning. I have not yet
found the teakettle... Do stop it, Emerson. I cannot concentrate when you ...
Oh, Emerson! Now, Emerson ..."

Nothing
was said for some time. Eventually a persistent sound, like that of a file
rasping on wood, penetrated my absorption. Emerson heard it too; his grasp on
my person loosened, and I attempted, not entirely successfully, to straighten
my disheveled attire before I turned toward the door. No one was there. I felt
certain, however, that Ramses had been watching. The purring of his feline
companion had given him away and had forced him to beat a hasty retreat.

It
seemed pointless to pursue the matter, or Ramses. Silently I turned back to the
labors Emerson's affectionate demonstration had interrupted. As is occasionally
his habit, Emerson turned his annoyance at the disturbance, not on the
perpetrator, but on the nearest object—me.

"It
has taken you a devil of a time to unpack," he grumbled.

"If
you had condescended to stay and help, I would be done."

"Then
why didn't you say so? That is just like a woman. They always expect a fellow
to read their minds—"

"The
most rudimentary intelligence would have made it evident—"

"And
then they whine and complain when—"

"Whine,
indeed! When have you ever heard me—"

"I
admit the word is inappropriate. Shout would be more—"

"How
can you—"

"How
can
you
—"

We
were both out of breath by then and had to pause to take in oxygen. Then
Emerson said cheerfully, "You were quite right, Peabody; this parcel is
one I remember and it does indeed contain a new teakettle, which I purchased in
the suk. I seemed to recall that the kettle of last season had become sadly
dented after I used it to kill a cobra."

"It
was clever of you to think of it, Emerson. I confess that the incident of the
cobra had quite slipped my mind. What is in this last parcel?"

"I
have no idea. Perhaps it contains some of the things we left Abdullah to pack
and bring here from Mazghunah."

He
had taken out his pocket knife and was cutting the cords binding the parcel
that contained the kettle. The merchants in the bazaar knew only two styles of
packing—one used no string at all, so that the parcel fell apart in transit;
the other employed vast quantities of heavy rope even when the parcel was only
to be carried a few yards. The package I was inspecting was
of
the second variety, and I had to borrow Emerson's knife to undo it.

He
unpacked the kettle and some pots and pans, and turned to put them on the
table.

"Emerson,"
I said. "Look here."

In
a flash Emerson was at my side. He knows every tone of my voice, and on this
occasion the few simple words quivered with the intensity of the inexpressible
sensations that filled me.

"What
is it, Peabody?" He looked into the box. I had pushed aside the top layer
of straw. The curved sides of the vessel within gleamed in the lamplight with a
soft luster.

Emerson
reached for it. With a shriek I caught his arm and clung to it. "No,
Emerson! Watch out!"

"What
the devil, Peabody, it is only an old pot. A pot made of..." His breath
caught. "Silver?"

"It
is not the vessel itself I fear, but what may be concealed in the straw. A
scorpion, a snake, a poisonous spider ... Where are your gloves—the heavy work
gloves?"

For
a wonder they were where they were supposed to be, in the pocket of his coat.
When I started to draw on the gloves, he took them from me, and performed the
task himself. I was in a perfect quiver of apprehension until he had removed
the last of the objects from the container. He then overturned it, spilling the
packing material onto the floor.

"No
spiders, no snakes," he remarked, shoving the straw about with his booted
toe. "Obviously you are in possession of information I lack, Peabody.
Would you care to explain why you expected a shipment of venomous animals, and
how you came into possession of what appear to be antique vessels of... antique
vessels ... No. No! I don't believe it. Don't tell me—"

"Obviously
I needn't tell you," I replied. Normally I am tolerant of Emerson's little
fits of temper, for they relieve an excess of spleen; but this situation was too
serious for theatrics. A sense, not of fear but of awe, as in the presence of
something larger and more powerful than myself, stole over me. "These are
indeed the communion vessels stolen from the church of Sitt Miriam at Dronkeh.
Stolen by that villain, that wretch, that consummate master of evil, that
genius of crime ..."

I
waited for him to voice an objection to the words he knew I was about to use,
but he was incapable of speech. Flushed of countenance, bulging as to his
eyeballs, he continued to stare at me in silence, and I concluded, "None
other than—the Master Criminal!"

Four

E
merson
had never seen the famous communion vessels, since he has a constitutional
aversion to organized religion and refuses to enter a church, mosque, or
synagogue. He had to take my word for it, but even if he had presumed to doubt
my identification, the conclusion would have been forced upon him. The vessels
taken from the church at Dronkeh had been valuable antiques, centuries old.
There could not be many such sets of objects hanging about, as Emerson glumly
and vulgarly expressed it.

"But
why return them?" he demanded. Then his expression lightened.
"Wait—wait, Peabody, I have it. The thief was not your cursed Master
Criminal, but an amateur who yielded to a sudden temptation, hoping the theft
would be blamed on the Master Criminal. He has repented, and has returned
them."

"To
us? Were that the case, Emerson, the repentant
thief would have
returned the objects to the church. It is a challenge from our old adversary,
Emerson; it can be nothing else."

"Peabody,
I thoroughly dislike your trick of selecting one theory out of a plethora of
them and loudly proclaiming it to be the only possible solution. My explanation
makes as much sense as yours."

Upon
further discussion, Emerson was forced to agree that the parcel must have been
among those brought with us from Cairo. Its neat style of wrapping would have
stood out like a sore thumb in the things Abdullah had caused to be transported
from Mazghunah, for Abdullah's notion of packing was to throw everything into a
sack and toss it over the back of a donkey.

We
further agreed that it would be the simplest thing in the world for someone to
slip the parcel in among the others Emerson had ordered from the bazaar. One of
the hotel safragi's duties was to take deliveries and place them in our room,
and there was no reason why he would have taken special notice of any
particular parcel.

"Quite
true," I said thoughtfully. "And yet, Emerson, I have a strange
feeling about that parcel. I cannot tell you how I know, but I am convinced
that the Master Criminal delivered it himself. That we were under observation
all that day; that our departure from the hotel was noted; that had we been
present, we would have seen a man stroll calmly along the corridor, parcel in
hand, eluding the safragi—who is, as you know, sound asleep most of the
time—entering our room, placing his parcel among the others—pausing to gloat
over our discomfiture and our bewilderment..."

"Your
intuition tells you so, I presume," said Emerson, with a halfhearted
sneer.

"Something
other than intuition. What it is I cannot say... Ah, I have it!" I
snatched up the discarded wrappings and turned them over in my hand. Yes, there
it was; I had not imagined it—a spot of what appeared to be grease or fat, as
large as the palm of my hand. I raised it to my nostrils and sniffed. "I
knew it!" I cried in triumph. "Here, Emerson, smell for
yourself."

Emerson
shied back as I held the paper to his face. "Good Gad, Amelia—"

"Smell
it. Just there, the spot of grease. Well?"

"Well,
it is animal fat of some kind," Emerson grumbled. "Mutton or chicken.
What is so significant about that? These people are not given to the use of
knives and forks, they eat with their fingers and..." Then his face changed,
and I knew that his intelligence, equal to my own, had arrived at the same
conclusion. I also knew he was too stubborn to admit it.

"Chicken
fat," I said. "No wonder the cat Bastet refused the meat Ramses
brought from Mena House. She had been stuffed with chicken. Emerson, that
villain—that remarkable, clever wretch—has seduced our cat!"

Emerson
did not dispute my deduction. He ridiculed it, he derided it, he scoffed at it.
He kept this up even after we had retired. Our mattresses had been placed side
by side atop the roof. The cool breeze, the soft moonlight, the exquisite but
indescribable scent of the desert—even the smell of donkey droppings, wafting
from the courtyard below—should have induced a state of mind conducive to
connubial affection of the strongest kind; and yet, for almost the first time
in our marriage, Emerson's demonstrations were inadequate to the purpose. He
was ridiculously upset about it.

"I
keep expecting to see Ramses' head pop up over the edge of the screen," he
groaned. "I cannot concentrate, Amelia. Tomorrow night we will move to the
pit. Ramses will be perfectly safe here with Nemo in the next room and our men
guarding the compound."

"Much
as I would enjoy sleeping in the spot you describe, Emerson, I don't think it
would be wise. Not after the reminder we have just received of the awesome
malice and powers of the Master Criminal. We have scarcely been in Egypt three
days, and already he has challenged us twice. We are in deep waters, Emerson,
very deep indeed. Was the attempt on Ramses meant to succeed, or was it only a
demonstration of what the man can do if he chooses? One result of that
adventure, if you recall, was the advent of Mr. Nemo in our midst."