The Buried Pyramid (27 page)

“So you were not attacked?” Neville asked.

“No, sir.” Stephen looked thoughtful. “Perhaps my light deceived any watchers into believing I was more alert than I was.”

“Quite likely,” Neville agreed.

He looked straight at Jenny with an odd uncertainty to his usually direct gaze.

“Jenny, you said you saw your attacker fairly clearly. You mentioned he was huge. Did you notice anything else?”

Jenny swallowed hard.

“I did. He . . .” She looked pleadingly at him. “Don’t think me crazy, Uncle, but he looked just like one of the pictures from Stephen’s books, a man dressed like an ancient Egyptian—wearing one of those short tunics or kilts. He had a broad collar around his neck and over his upper chest.”

Uncle Neville continued to fix his gaze on her.

“Is that all?”

She felt suddenly defiant.

“No, that isn’t. Above that collar, the man had a jackal’s head, just like the god Anubis does in the pictures. I’m not crazy, and the light was poor, but there was enough coming from behind him that I’m sure of what I saw.”

She was ready for objections, but none came.

“That matches what I saw,” Uncle Neville said, “though I didn’t get as clear a look—just a glimpse before my man went out the window—and most of what I saw was the head. He was probably dressed like your assailant, though. I remember being surprised that his legs were bare.”

Jenny felt a wash of relief. Stephen seemed about to say something, but Uncle Neville cut him off.

“Did you hit your man?”

“Yes. There was blood on the floor, though not much. I may have only nicked him. I didn’t take much time to aim.”

“Still,” Uncle Neville said, “we may be able to track him by the blood drops. Where’s Papa Antonio? Has anyone checked around outside?”

Bert came over in response.

“Mr. Donati has gone outside with several of his staff to check the surrounding area. He left when Miss Benet was performing her surgery, but said he would be available if you needed him.”

“Find him for me, would you, Bert?” Neville said. “Emily? Is anyone about in the kitchen?”

“Just about everyone is awake, sir,” the maid replied. Unlike Bert, who was acting as if attacks by masked assassins fell into a footman’s daily routine, she was clearly terrified.

Jenny reached out and patted her shoulder comfortingly. “Come with me, Emily. We’ll go over to the kitchen and see if one of the staff can help us make tea. I’d like Uncle Neville to have some broth as well. It will strengthen him against the blood he’s lost.”

When they returned with their supplies, Papa Antonio had come in from making his inspection.

“I thought,” he was saying, “that it was too much bad luck that both sets of window bars were weak enough for a man to break through. I went out with lanterns and some of my good Copts, and do you know what we find?”

“What?” Jenny asked, setting down her tray and offering her uncle a bowl of beef consommé.

Sir Neville looked vaguely disgruntled at this nursemaiding, but Jenny cocked an eyebrow at him after the manner of a very disagreeable teacher at her boarding school, and he subsided.

Papa Antonio grinned, accepted a cup of tea from Emily, and with a fine sense of theater said, “We find that it is no chance the window bars break so easy, for where they are set into the wall it has been cut away at, even softened with a bit of water beneath where the stucco is. You understand?”

Everyone did understand. Stephen tried to make light of it.

“People who live in mud houses shouldn’t hire window washers, I see.”

“I not hire these window washers,” Papa Antonio replied, “as I think you know. No, what I think happened is this. Someone come along when the street is quiet—as it is on that side of the house, which is why I put my treasured guests there. The guests are away, perhaps at the bazaar. This person chips away the stucco to loosen the bars, then squeezes in some water, just to help.”

Jenny shuddered. Suddenly the thickness of the mud brick walls seemed very insubstantial. She controlled her trembling lest she dribble soup onto Uncle Neville.

“I think,” that gentleman said, holding up a forestalling hand, “you found more than that, Papa Antonio.”

Papa Antonio nodded. “We did. I decide we should check all the other windows. Of all the windows in the house, only one more set of bars is loose—those on Stefano’s room.”

Stephen’s tea cup rattled as he set it in the saucer with a jerk.

“My room! Then I
did
hear someone moving around.”

“You did,” Papa Antonio said. “I think that someone comes to your room just as to Leonardo and Jenny. He opens the door the littlest bit, but there is light within. He draws back, unwilling to have you give alarm. To permit this would be to stop his comrades who are doing such good work. Perhaps he plans to have them help him after their work is done, perhaps you are to be let live and he will slip away.”

The young linguist’s mouth was opening and shutting, but no sound came forth. Jenny took mercy on Stephen, inserting a question of her own to give him a chance to recover his equilibrium.

“How did the men get in here?” she asked. “Over the roof?”

“I think not,” Papa Antonio said. “The door to the storage room used by my guest the textiles merchant is unlocked. He found it so when in the commotion he awoke. Once he heard there had been intruders, of course he thinks for his wares. There is evidence that several men hid within among the boxes and bales.”

“Did he know his porters?” Jenny asked, already knowing how unlikely this would be.

“No. He hired a gang boss on the docks when his boat came in. The boss brought his own men. Probably these three simply picked up bales of fabric, carried them inside, then hid themselves. The lock is not difficult to open. It is meant more to keep someone from wandering in than to prevent the door from being opened.”

“They were lucky,” Stephen said, “but I see they didn’t trust in luck alone to get away.”

“No,” Papa Antonio said. “Why cross the courtyard twice? That is where they would most likely be discovered. Why chance the locked front door? My porter keeps half an ear awake in case someone needs him. The window is so much easier.”

“It seems to me that they may have intended to come in through one or more of the windows,” Neville said thoughtfully. “The arrival of your guest with his purchases simplified matters, and they did not hesitate to adapt their plans. Three men could have removed the grille from any of our windows fairly quietly if it had already been loosened, then they would slip in and . . .”

His gaze fell to where Jenny’s neat bandaging wrapped his chest.

“What did they want?” Stephen asked plaintively. “I mean, is this the same gang that went after Sir Neville years ago? Are those men connected to the bandits in the desert who foiled Alphonse Liebermann’s first venture, or was that mere coincidence? They were dressed like Anubis, and Anubis is the protector of the dead.”

“I wish I knew,” Neville said.

He was about to say more when Emily, who had been listening in mingled horror and fascination from one side of the room, gave a sudden sharp cry.

“Is everything all right, Emily?” Jenny asked, turning sharply, her hand dipping to where her six-shooter waited, heavy and reassuring in the pocket of her dressing gown.

“I’m fine, Miss Benet,” Emily said, looking nervously at her. “I just remembered something the porter gave me when I went back to the kitchen. I’d forgotten until now.”

She held out a flat, white rectangle addressed to “Sir Neville Hawthorne and Companions” at Papa Antonio’s address.

Emily continued. “The porter said he found it dropped near the doorway. Maybe one of those men was carrying it.”

Jenny accepted the envelope and held it to the light, feeling dully certain what she would see.

“I know the handwriting,” she said, tilting the envelope so that Stephen and Uncle Neville could see. “It is our correspondent again.”

The two men nodded. Everyone else looked mildly confused. The servants, however, would not pry. Papa Antonio seemed to sense that Jenny must have her reasons for being oblique.

“We’ll leave that letter ’til morning,” Sir Neville said, taking it and placing it in his bedside table, wincing as he pulled his wound. “Even if it spelled out the situation in chapter and verse, we would be no better off. It is late, and I think we should all endeavor to get some sleep.”

“I couldn’t sleep in my room,” Jenny interrupted hurriedly. “I don’t want to seem a coward, but I really couldn’t, not with the bars broken out and everything.”

Papa Antonio agreed. “For tonight we will change rooms. I have already spoken to several stout young men, older brothers of Castor and Pollux, and they are very eager to sleep in these rooms and forestall unwelcome visitors.”

“And we’ll take their rooms,” Stephen said. “Play ring around the roomies.”

He grinned, and Jenny liked him for this evidence of courage. Stephen had been truly frightened when he’d heard that he had been marked for assault along with the others, but he was bearing up well now.

They shifted their accommodations, Sir Neville taking the mysterious letter with him into the room he was sharing with Stephen. Jenny went to sleep with Emily and Bert, those two declaring they would feel much better if they knew that she wasn’t alone.

They would even have given her their bed, but Jenny insisted that a pallet on the floor was sufficient, and proving her determination by lying down and closing her eyes. She lay still, pretending to be drowsing off, and listening to the married couple whispering as they settled down.

Somewhere, as the earliest-rising members of the household were stirring the fires to life in the kitchen, pretense became reality and Jenny slept.

The next morning, soon after Jenny had risen, dressed, and inspected Uncle Neville’s wound, a young man arrived from Eddie Bryce.

“I don’t know if we’re going to visit the pyramids this morning after all,” Sir Neville began apologetically, when the young man introduced himself as Ahmed, one of Eddie’s nephews.

“Ibrahim, my uncle, said nothing to me about the pyramids,” Ahmed replied in English heavily flavored with Arabic. He was clearly confused. “My uncle said to me, ‘Go to the house of Antonio the Italian. You will find three English who are staying there. Give the oldest among them this letter. It will speak for me.’ ”

At this, Ahmed held out a folded sheet of paper roughly sealed with wax, but without an envelope. Asking the boy to wait, Neville opened the letter. It was quite short, and he finished quickly, then held it out to the others, his expression impassive.

Neville,

There was a bit of a dust-up here last night. I was assaulted outside my house by a man wearing a jackal-headed mask. Good thing he was wearing that ridiculous head-gear, otherwise he would have had me. As it was, I managed to win out. There are a few problems about the body, but when I have them sorted out, I will be by. I suggest you stay near to home where you will be safe.

Eddie.

“Your uncle Ibrahim is well?” Neville asked.

“Well enough, though he has some business this morning that must be attended.”

Ahmed looked positively shifty, and Jenny felt certain that the body of the mysterious assailant was not being dealt with through the usual channels. Was Eddie unwilling to present the police with an assassin who wore a jackal-headed mask?

“Tell him we will wait here as he wishes,” Sir Neville told Ahmed. “Tell him, we, too, had visitors last night, but none of them remained to speak with us.”

Ahmed nodded, his coffee-brown eyes widening in appalled understanding.

“Uncle Neville,” Jenny said, remembering her manners well enough not to embarrass the Arab boy by addressing him directly, “should we let our guest go home through the streets alone?”

Ahmed smiled brightly, appreciating her concern. “I am not alone, Miss. My older brother and two of my cousins are with me. I come inside because I speak English.”

“And you do so very well,” she replied.