It would not have been difficult for interested parties to learn the date of our arrival and the name of the hotel where we had booked rooms. Some of those interested parties were in London, and I did not doubt that their particular interest was in my son. At the behest of his superiors, Smith had tried once before to recruit Ramses for a dangerous mission. Would he try again? Or – the idea had just occurred to me – did his presence have something to do with the reappearance of Emerson’s brother? Sethos had been connected in some way with the group Smith directed, whatever it may have been. Secretiveness is second nature to such persons; they may and do claim it is necessary, but in my opinion they revel in being mysterious.
I did not mention this conjecture to Emerson, for that would have inflamed his temper even more.
“The devil with Smith,” he declared. “What I want to know is – confound it, young man, what are you doing?”
“Serving the next course,” I said, as the youth fumbled with the plates. “That is his job, Emerson. Stop terrorizing him.”
“Oh. Well. Sorry, my boy,” he added, addressing the waiter, who went pale with horror.
I groaned. “And don’t apologize to him!”
It has proved impossible to train Emerson in the proper ways of dealing with servants. He treats prince and peasant, basket carrier and archaeologist the same – that is, he shouts at them when he is out of temper and begs their pardon when he has been unjust. The waiter ought to have been trained in the proper way of dealing with Emerson, whose peculiarities are well known to the staff at Shepheard’s, but he was very young and apparently he had not taken the warnings to heart.
With the assistance of the headwaiter he managed to get the soup plates off the table and the fish course served, and Emerson, who was unaware of having done anything unusual, resumed where he had left off. “What’s Sethos doing in Cairo? What was the point of that impertinent encounter? Was it a challenge or a warning or -”
“Why should it have been either?” Nefret asked. “We haven’t heard from him for months, and he knows we have good reason to be concerned about him. Perhaps it was only his way of telling us he is alive and well.”
“Bah,” said Emerson.
Nefret laughed, and I said, “Now, Emerson, you mustn’t hold a grudge, my dear.”
“Grudge! It is petty-minded, no doubt, to resent a man because he tried to kill me and seduce my wife and steal my antiquities.”
“That was all in the past. The services he has rendered us and his country in the past few years attest to the sincerity of his reformation, and his recent – er – arrangement with another lady should be sufficient assurance of his abandonment of an attachment that was, I do not doubt, occasioned as much by his resentment of you as by his interest in me.”
I paused to draw a deep breath, and Emerson, who had been stabbing at his fish, placed his fork on the table. “ Peabody,” he said mildly, “that was even more pompous and pedantic than your usual declarations. Do not suppose that the complexity of your syntax can conceal the inaccuracy of your conclusions. He has not reformed. He as good as said so last year. As for his arrangement with Miss Minton, for all you know that came to an end almost as soon as it began. Your attempts to communicate with the lady this past summer were unsuccessful, weren’t they? Don’t deny that you tried, for I know you did.”
At this point he had to pause in order to breathe. “Ha!” I exclaimed. “You did the same. And you learned, as did I, that after being incommunicado for several months she had been accredited as a war correspondent and was in France. You also tried to get information about him from the War Office – without success, as you ought to have anticipated. Why won’t you admit that you care about the man? After all, he is -”
“Mother, please!” Nefret said. “You are becoming heated. And so are you, Father. Perhaps you might allow someone else to offer an opinion.”
“Well?” Emerson demanded of his daughter. “What have you to say?”
“Nothing, really.”
“Ah,” said Emerson. “Ramses?”
He had remained silent, only smiling faintly as he looked from one speaker (Emerson) to the other (me). Now he shrugged. “Speculation about the motives of my uncle are surely a waste of time. One never knows what he will do until he does it.” Reddening, Emerson started to speak. Ramses raised his voice a trifle. “Thus far, all he has done is greet you. An encounter of that sort would appeal to his peculiar sense of humor, and he couldn’t risk a face-to-face meeting, not if he is still working undercover.”
“I don’t give a curse about that,” Emerson declared forcibly, if not entirely accurately. “What I want to know is whether he is still in the antiquities game. Ramses, supposing you and I make the rounds of the cafés tonight and interrogate the dealers. If ‘the Master’ is back in business -”
“They won’t tell you,” I said.
“No,” Nefret agreed. After the waiter had removed the plates without incident (Emerson’s attention being otherwise engaged), she planted her elbows on the table and leaned forward, her blue eyes sparkling. “Your methods are too direct, Father. Do you remember Ali the Rat and his – er – young friend?”
Emerson choked on a sip of wine, and I said uneasily, “Ramses can’t be Ali the Rat again, Nefret. His masquerade was discovered.”
“But the people who knew of it are dead,” Nefret argued. “And I made a very pretty boy, didn’t I, Ramses?”
She turned to look him squarely in the eyes. He did not respond at once. Then he said equably, “Very pretty. I’d prefer not to risk Ali, in case some of the old crowd are still hanging about, but we might try a variation of the same thing.”
I had been afraid of this, though I had not expected matters would come to a head quite so soon. Nefret was as courageous and capable as any man, and utterly devoted to her husband. He was equally devoted to her, and I could only imagine what a struggle it must have been for him to admit she had the right to share his adventures and his danger. Naturally I was in full agreement with her demand for equality; had I not demanded and (more or less) received the same from Emerson? That did not mean I liked Nefret’s doing it. Principles do not hold up well when they are challenged by personal affection.
To my relief, Ramses went on, “Not tonight, though. It will take me a while to collect the appropriate disguises.”
“Certainly not tonight,” I said. “It has been a long day. We should retire early.”
“An excellent suggestion,” said Emerson, cheering up.
“Yes, Mother,” said Ramses.
We had a little private conversation, Emerson and I, sitting cozily side by side before the dying fire in the sitting room and sipping a last whiskey and soda. I summed it up by saying, “So it is agreed that we leave Cairo as soon as possible?”
Emerson nodded emphatic agreement. “It is worrisome enough having Ramses prowling the suks and the coffeeshops looking for criminals, without her going with him.”
“Not so worrisome as having him take on another filthy job from the War Office. Smith’s presence this evening was highly suspicious, Emerson.”
“Nonsense,” said Emerson. “However… Good Gad, what with the intelligence services and my devious brother, Cairo is no place for a family of harmless archaeologists. But you are worrying unnecessarily, my love. There is no way on earth Ramses could be persuaded to take on another assignment.”
Emerson’s tender affection did not miss the slight shiver that ran through my limbs. “Damnation, Peabody,” he snarled, “if you are having one of your famous forebodings, I don’t want to hear about it! Come to bed at once.”