Lion in the Valley (5 page)

We
were the only guests not in full evening dress, and several people stared
rudely as we were escorted to our table by Mr. Locke himself. "Good Gad,
how people gape," Emerson remarked. "I don't know what has happened
to good old-fashioned manners. One would
think there was something peculiar about
our appearance."

"You
and Mrs. Emerson are well known," Mr. Locke said tactfully. "People
always stare at celebrities."

"Ha,"
said Emerson. "No doubt you are right, Locke. But it is still bad
manners."

I
had hoped we might encounter some of our archaeological friends, but I saw no
one we knew. Not until I was studying the menu in order to select a sweet for
Ramses did I hear a diffident voice murmur my name. I looked up to see a
familiar face smiling down at me. It was young Howard Carter; he was happy to
accept my invitation to join us for coffee. After greeting Ramses and paying
his respectful homage to Emerson, he explained that he had come to Cairo on
business and had taken the opportunity to run out to Giza in order to enjoy the
moonlight over the pyramids.

"Don't
tell Professor Naville," he added, with his amiable grin. "I am
supposed to be working."

"Are
you still at Thebes with Naville?" I asked. "I thought the
excavations at Hatasu's temple were finished."

"The
excavations, yes. But we have a good deal of recording and restoring yet to
do."

"I
can well believe that," said Emerson. "By the time Naville finishes
an excavation, it would require a psychic to make sense of the mess."

"You
sound like my old mentor Petrie," said Carter with a smile.

From
the chagrin on Emerson's face I could see he had forgotten the feud between
Naville and Petrie. Emerson had been in a quandary as to which side to take (it
would have been against his nature to remain neutral). He
shared
Petrie's poor opinion of Naville's qualifications, but he hated to agree with
his chief rival. He subsided, scowling, as the young Englishman rattled on
cheerfully, "Petrie is a splendid teacher, and I will always be grateful
to him, but he is too hard on M. Naville. The latter's methods are sometimes a
trifle hasty—"

Emerson
could contain himself no longer. "Hasty!" he cried. "Is it true
that he has used the old quarry as his dump site? Well, he is a
bloo—er—blooming idiot, then, for there are undoubtedly tombs in the quarry
which he has buried under tons of dirt."

Mr.
Carter thought it advisable to change the subject, a decision with which I
heartily concurred. "Congratulations on obtaining the firman for
Dahshoor," he said. "It was the talk of the archaeological community
when de Morgan gave it up to you. Petrie has speculated endlessly as to how you
accomplished it; he tried several times to get Dahshoor, but was not
successful."

I
carefully avoided looking at Ramses. Emerson stroked his chin and smiled
complacently. "All that was required was the application of a little tact,
my boy. Petrie is an admirable fellow in some ways, but he lacks tact. He is at
Sakkara this year?"

"His
assistant, Quibell, is there, copying tomb inscriptions," Carter said. He
smiled at me. "There are several young ladies on his staff this year. You
will have to share your laurels with others of your delightful sex, Mrs.
Emerson. The ladies are coming into their own at last."

"Bravo,"
I cried heartily. "Or, to be more precise, brava!"

"Quite
so," said Carter. "Petrie himself has gone on to Karnak, where the
others will join him later. I saw him before I left; and I am sure he would
have sent his
regards had he known I would have the
pleasure of encountering you."

This
polite statement was so patently false, it failed to convince even the speaker.
He hurried on, "And Mr. Cyrus Vandergelt—he is another of our neighbors.
He often speaks of you, Professor, and of Mrs. Emerson."

"I
am sure he does." Emerson shot me a suspicious glance. Mr. Vandergelt's
roughhewn but sincere American gallantry toward members of the opposite sex
(opposite to his, I mean) had always annoyed Emerson. He suspects every man who
pays me a compliment of having romantic designs upon me. I cannot disabuse him
of this notion, which has, I admit, its engaging qualities.

"Perhaps
you ought to consider working for Mr. Vandergelt, Howard," I suggested.
"He is a generous patron."

"He
did approach me," Carter admitted. "But I don't know that I would
like to work for a wealthy dilettante, however keen his interest in Egyptology.
These fellows only want to find treasure and lost tombs."

Carter
refused our invitation to join us in climbing the pyramid, claiming he had work
to do before retiring. So we bade him good night, and, leaving the pleasant
gardens of Mena House behind, we started up the slope toward the pyramids.

Words
fail me when I attempt to describe the grandeur of the scene. The swollen orb
of the full moon hung in the sky, resembling the disks of beaten gold that had
crowned the queens of this antique land. Her radiance flooded the landscape,
silvering the mighty pyramids and casting eerie shadows over the enigmatic features
of the Sphinx, so that he seemed to smile cynically at the insignificant human
creatures crawling
around his base. The sand lay white as
fallen snow, broken only by ebon shadows that betokened the presence of a
vandalized tomb or sunken shrine.

Unfortunately
this magnificent spectacle was marred by the presence of the vociferous insect
Man. Flaring torches and crawling human bodies spotted the pale sides of the
Great Pyramid, and the night echoed with the shouts of travelers who ought to
have remained reverently silent in the presence of such wonders. The voice of
one visitor blessed with a mighty set of vocal cords rang out above the rest:
"Hey, Mabel, looka me!"

Mabel's
response, if any, was lost in the night, but there came a peal of scornful
laughter from near at hand. A carriage had drawn up—the same open carriage I
had seen leave Shepheard's earlier. Miss Debenham had changed to an evening
frock of white satin. Her bare arms and breast glowed like ivory in the
moonlight, and as she turned to address her companion, diamonds flashed in the
ebony darkness of her hair. Kalenischeff was a study in black and white. The
ribbon of some (probably apocryphal) order, cutting across the front of his
shirt, had been robbed of its color by the moonlight, and looked like a bar
sinister.

Impulsively
I started toward them, but before I had taken more than a few steps
Kalenischeff whipped up the horses and the carriage continued along the dusty
road toward the top of the plateau.

"Imbeciles,"
said Emerson. "I am sorry we came, Peabody. I might have known every
ignorant tourist in Cairo would be here tonight. Shall we make the attempt, or
return to the hotel?"

"We
may as well go on now we are here," I replied. "Ramses, you are to
stay with us. Don't stir so much as a step from my side."

The
self-styled guides, antiquities peddlers and miscellaneous beggars were out in
full force. They came pelting toward us with offers of assistance, and of
dubious scarabs. The usual ratio of assistants is three to each tourist—two
pull from above and one pushes from below. It is an awkward and quite
unnecessary procedure, since few of the steplike blocks are as high as three and
a half feet.

The
assault halted as soon as the sheikh in nominal charge of the horde recognized
Emerson, whom he greeted with the
"Essaldmu 'aleikum"
generally
reserved by Moslems for others of their faith, Emerson replied in kind, but
refused Sheikh Abu's offer of men to drag him up the pyramid. He was quite
capable of giving me a hand whenever necessary, but we did hire two men to
hoist Ramses from step to step, his short legs making such an expedient
advisable.

After
a lazy summer doing little except riding, gardening, hiking and bicycling, I
was a trifle out of condition, and was glad of Emerson's strong hand from time
to time. Although it had appeared from below that the slope was crowded with
people, it was not really a populous thoroughfare. We passed one or two other
groups, several of whom had paused to rest along the way. From time to time I
heard the voice of Ramses, carrying on an interminable, if breathless,
conversation with his guides.

The
pyramidion and the upper courses of the monument have been removed, leaving on
the summit a flat table some thirty feet square. Upon the blocks scattered here
and there, a number of the successful climbers sprawled in various positions of
collapse. Instinctively avoiding them, we moved to one side.

I
had climbed the pyramid before, but never at night. The view, spectacular at
any time, is simply magical under the spell of moonlight. To the east, the Nile
glimmered like a ribbon of dark crystal beyond the still meadows, where the
silhouettes of the palms stood black against the sky. Far beyond sparkled and
flickered the myriad lights of Cairo. But it was southward that our eyes
turned, to see beyond the snowy stretch of silent sand the remains of the
ancient cemeteries of the once mighty capital of Memphis. There lay our
season's destiny—two tiny points of pale stone, marking the pyramids of
Dahshoor.

Such
emotion filled me that I was incapable of speech, a condition assisted by a
distinct shortness of breath—for Emerson's strong arm clasped me tightly. We
stood in silence, ensorcelled by the magic of the night.

I
lost all track of time as we gazed. It might have been ten seconds or ten
minutes before I let out my pent breath in a long sigh, and turned to address
Ramses.

He
was gone.

My
first reaction was to doubt the evidence of my senses. Ramses excels in losing
himself, but it hardly seemed possible that he could have vanished off a small
platform four hundred and fifty feet in the air without some sort of commotion.
Emerson noted his absence at the same time and was unable—or, what is more
likely, disinclined—to repress a bellow of alarm.

"Peabody!
Where is Ramses?"

"He
must be here somewhere," I began.

"I
thought you were watching him. Oh, good Gad!" He threw his head back and
shouted at the top of his lungs. "Ramses! Ramses, where are you?"

When
pronounced in such peremptory tones, Ramses' name never fails to attract
attention, particularly in Egypt, where it inevitably suggests the summoning,
not
of a small disobedient English boy, but of the ghost of the most
famous of ancient Egyptian pharaohs. One of the stouter ladies fell off the
block on which she was sitting, and several others sprang to their feet with
cries of alarm and outrage. Emerson began dashing around the platform, looking
behind blocks of stone and ladies' skirts, to the increasing annoyance of the
persons concerned.

One
gentleman had the courtesy to approach me and offer assistance. He was a
portly, round-cheeked American with a bristling white mustache and hair of the
same shade, as the prompt removal of his hat disclosed.

"I
can't quite make out what it is you're after, ma'am," he said politely.
"But if Caleb T. Clausheimer can be of any assistance—"

"What
I am after, sir, is a small boy."

"A
small boy name of Ramses? Thunder and lightning, ma'am, but that's a curious
name for a youngster! Seems to me I did see a boy here a while back...."

I
thanked him abstractedly and hastened to Emerson, who was peering over the edge
of the platform. "He has fallen off, Peabody. Curse it! Curse it! I will
never forgive myself. I should have tied him to me with a rope as I usually do;
I should have—"

"Emerson,
calm yourself. He can't have fallen off. It is not a straight drop; we would
have heard him bounce from step to step, and surely even Ramses would have
emitted a cry on finding himself falling. No, he has started down by himself,
heaven only knows why. I strictly forbade him to leave us—"

Emerson
rushed to the north side of the platform and looked down that face of the
pyramid. It was deep in shadow, but Emerson's eyes, keen as an eagle's, were
further strengthened by the desperation of paternal affection. He let out a
hoarse shriek. "There, Peabody—there, do you see? Two thirds of the way
down, on the left. Are those not Ramses' guides? And does not one of them
appear strangely hump-backed?"

I
could only make out the glimmer of the white robes the Egyptians wore. They
resembled a patch of moonlight that was gliding down the weathered stones.
There was certainly a group of people there—how many, I could not make out—and
they were the only climbers on that side of the pyramid, since for obvious
reasons the others preferred the lighted sides.

"I
can't tell who they are, Emerson, nor can I determine—"

But
I addressed empty air. Emerson had flung himself over the edge and was bounding
down the giant staircase like a man possessed. I immediately hastened to follow
him, though at a more discreet pace.

By
the time I reached the bottom and found myself ankle-deep in sand, Emerson was
nowhere to be seen. I consoled myself by the fact that his body was nowhere to
be seen either, so I could assume he had reached the bottom unharmed.