The Mummy Snatcher of Memphis (20 page)

I nodded.

“When he found a beautiful wall covered in hieroglyphics in Cairo's Valley of the Kings he smashed his way through it with a battering ram.”

“But he was an Italian. An English gentleman would not—”

“Please do not be so naive. The greatest robber in the whole game is Colonel Henry Vyse,” Ahmed interrupted. “A few years ago he bored a hole in the Great Sphinx and when his boring rods got stuck, blew them free with dynamite. The Great Sphinx at Giza, the greatest statue in the world! Your explorers are no more than
burglars! Vandals!”

“Egyptians have raided the pyramids too,” I protested, remembering my father's words on the subject. “Hundreds of years ago the Arab rulers of Egypt, so my father told me, ransacked the pyramids for limestone to build Cairo.”

“What is England's oldest monument?” Ahmed changed the subject.

“Stonehenge?”

“How would you feel if a party of Egyptian explorers descended on Stonehenge and carted all the stones off to display in a museum in Cairo? How would you feel if they told you it was to keep them safe?”

I was silent.

“We Berbers are all that is left of the ancient Egyptians,” Ahmed raced on. “My family feels it is our duty to protect our heritage. The treasures must remain buried. My father had his heart attack because he felt he had let his people down. He was shamed, Kit, shamed to his very soul. That is why he now lies in a coma, lost to his family and his people. I have to save the scarab and keep Ptah Hotep's treasure safe. It is the only way to help my father.”

“How do you expect us to believe you?” I asked softly. “I mean you've lied about who you are. Now you're lying about this.”

“Kit, Waldo, I had to lie. How can I explain this to you? Egyptians are a proud people, we have a noble history stretching back to the times of the Pharaohs. Times—with no disrespect—when you in England were scarcely more than savages. But now we are weak and your empire with its boats and guns controls us. How would you have reacted if a proud Egyptian stranger stood before you and told you the tale you've learned today. You'd have mistrusted me. So I played on your pity. You took me in as a waif and stray and for that I am grateful!”

“How did you come to be in the box of the mummy anyway?” Waldo asked.

“Bad luck.” Ahmed shrugged. “Truth to tell I ran away from home, after my father's heart attack, determined to find the scarab and restore his health. As you know, he was in a coma and in no position to stop me. I took a passage on the
Maharani
, following your aunt, Kit, and the mummy. At the stroke of midnight, on the last night of the voyage, I sneaked down to the hold in my nightshirt. I let myself in and was searching among the boxes for the one containing Ptah Hotep's mummy. Suddenly two sailors appeared. I was trapped. I climbed quietly into a large packing case; by an awful stroke of fate it was the very case containing Ptah Hotep's closed sarcophagus. I was caught like a rat, helpless, in a case
which contained the very scarab I sought. A little later the sailors moved the packing case into another hold. I remember the sound as they turned the key. It was so final, so brutal. I was locked in, half out of my wits with fright.”

“There was nothing witless about the way you played us,” I said. I remembered Ahmed as we'd first met him, hungry, dirty, tangle-haired. In fact Ahmed's chrysalis to butterfly transformation had all happened so effortlessly we'd scarcely noticed. I still thought of him as the waif, unable to speak English, when he was anything but.

Which just goes to show how unobservant I am! You, I am sure, would do better. You would put your prejudices to one side and see more things more clearly. However, I must confess myself sadly blind. Still, lamenting my shortcomings was pointless. It would not help us solve the problem of what to do about Ahmed.

I stood up, looking clear into Ahmed's eyes: “How can we ever trust you again?”

Ahmed slumped back in his chair. Silence hung over the room. I tried to think how we should act, but I felt hopelessly confused. Should we give Ahmed up to my aunt? Tell her about the scarab and the Baker Brothers' theft?

“There
may
be a way to put Ahmed to the test,” said Waldo.

Chapter Twenty-one

“This?” I whispered to Waldo, rolling my eyes in mock horror as I looked at the collection of eccentrics and lunatics around the table. “
This
is your big idea?”

“Shush, Kit,” he hissed. “Don't be so prejudiced.”

I couldn't believe I had agreed to visit a séance at Waldo's mother's medium, in the hope that “spirits” would put Ahmed to the test. Waldo was planning to ask Mrs. Guppy to contact the other world. “Spirit messengers” would let us know if Ahmed was telling the truth. Frankly, I was skeptical. I had never believed in mediums and all that mumbo jumbo. Yet any hope was better than none and Waldo had argued fiercely that we should give it a try. The scarab was slipping out of our reach. We desperately needed a breakthrough.

“Are you brave of heart?” Mrs. Guppy voice's was a mere caressing murmur. “Only the strongest souls should join me on my quest to contact the spirits. We shall travel beyond life. We shall meet spirits of loved
ones and the ghosts of those unhappy souls who have not found peace. We shall commune with angels and fend off demons …”

The medium droned on, her voice hypnotic, soothing as the murmur of waves. It was too hot in her stuffy parlor. My eyes drooped, my body felt strangely light. Wake Up! I told myself fiercely. I could not afford to doze off, not now when I needed to be especially alert.

I glanced over at Ahmed, who was sitting next to Rachel. Was it my imagination that made him look particularly nervous? All my friends were here, except Isaac who recently had been slipping off by himself. On secret business of his own. Apart from us, there were five others round Mrs. Guppy's ebony table; all of them tense and excited. Mrs. Guppy, whose chair was higher than ours, towered over us with the air of a queen holding court. With her puffy face she looked like a dumpling in a curly wig. Only her eyes were unusual: periwinkle-blue and oddly transparent. I felt as if I was peering through a stained glass window to another world.

Waldo was very grave about the whole process, but looking around the table at the “seekers after truth,” I was unimpressed. Spiritualists were a very rum lot. There was a gent in a shabby morning coat, whose face was almost hidden by his whiskers. An enormously fat widow in mourning, her face hidden by a black veil. An
unkempt captain of the merchant navy. Finally there was Mr. Guppy, an insignificant-looking little man about whom I can tell you nothing—for he made no impression on me at all.

Something about these “seekers” struck me as odd. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but they were not right; there was something strange, almost sinister about them. All my nerves were jangling, warning me not to relax, not to give in to the soothing atmosphere of the séance. There was menace lurking around this table, I could feel it. What I couldn't tell was what form the danger would take.

“The lamp, dear,” Mrs. Guppy reminded her husband. The lights were extinguished and a dreary half-twilight descended on the room.

“Let us cleanse our hearts of all impure elements,” intoned Mrs. Guppy. “The Lord's Prayer, my dear Mr. Guppy, if you please.”

Mr. Guppy chanted the Lord's Prayer and we all joined in. As our prayers continued a musky scent drifted through the air and a plangent wailing began. This startled me till I realized Mr. Guppy was strumming on a guitar. On the table in front us were arrayed a variety of instruments including a violin, a banjo and a French horn.

“Join hands, let the healing energy flow through you.
Ishtar, Sahara, Gabriel … we implore your presence,” Mrs. Guppy droned.

I linked hands with Ahmed on one side and the fat lady on the other. Her hand lay in my own like a hundredweight of ham. She hadn't observed mourning totally, for her fingernails were painted scarlet.

“I can feel them flowing through my limbs, igniting my nerves with their passions. The spirits are awake. They will visit us this day.”

On my left the widow gave a gasp of excitement. Before my very eyes the banjo, the violin and the horn rose in the air where they proceeded to strum and blast all at the same time. The widow's hand was trembling violently in my own. The banjo was so close to me I could stretch out and touch it. Then it levitated, higher, higher, its strings a-quiver.

I felt a thrill of awe.

Bang. All the instruments clattered to earth at the same time, falling with heavy thuds on the lace tablecloth and Turkey carpet. The din was silenced at a stroke, leaving our nerves jangling.

A ghostly apparition was floating out of the center of the table. A silvery thumb, fingers splayed. A wonderful apparition, a spirit hand. Across the table Rachel was wide-eyed with wonder.

I had a sudden, wild impulse. I let go of my partner's
fingers and reached out for the spirit hand, intending to grab it. In doing so my feet banged against something under the table and the hand fell to the ground. It was all so dark and blurred I couldn't be sure, but I
thought
I saw a stick poking through a hole in the table, which rapidly closed up. A moment later the hand had vanished.

“We have a non-believer in the room.” Mrs. Guppy leapt up, majestic in her rage. “Who dares assault the sanctity of the séance?”

I had failed to catch the spirit hand, but in my clumsiness I had knocked over a jug of water. Liquid sloshed over the polished table, collecting in a little pool in the center.

“Kit!” Waldo hissed, while all the others turned reproachful eyes on me.

“I'm sorry!” I muttered. I felt foolish and ashamed.

“You have no right to interrupt the séance; you'd never dare behave like this in church!” he fumed.

Mrs. Guppy collapsed back into her chair, as if utterly exhausted. Her husband was fluttering around her. Waves of hostility were directed at me. Even Rachel was angry.

“The séance is at an end,” Mr. Guppy announced.

Immediately everyone began to clamor, the whiskered man protesting he had paid dearly for a spirit communication and he wasn't going to have it ruined by
some chit of a girl.

“Take no notice of Kit,” Waldo declared. “She never could control herself.”

“The spirits have been insulted,” Mrs. Guppy replied. “They will not return this day.”

“Fine by me.” I pushed away my chair and stood up, glaring at Waldo. “We're leaving.”

But none of my friends rose to support me.

Turning, I noticed Ahmed. He was taking no notice of the commotion but was instead staring, with an awed expression, at the pool of spilled water on the table. The puddle which had collected after the jug overturned. Puzzled, I followed his gaze. What was so fascinating? The water was just water. Silvery, a faint sheen of dust on its surface. I looked again. Then I saw.

Bubbling in the surface of the liquid was the impression of a man's face. Eyes, lips, nose, a hint of a whitish hair. Faint, but no mirage. Something was in that puddle. Angel or spirit. This was something real, not flesh and blood, but a thing that existed nevertheless.

“Father!” Ahmed croaked.

All around the room heads turned and a profound silence fell on the room. Ahmed reached out as if to touch the surface of the water, to stroke his father's face. The movement of air made the thing ripple, then it was still once more.

A careworn face, more dead than alive. I could see Ahmed in the fine, large eyes, the sculpture of the man's bones. With a difference, though. There was something hollow about this man. The image moved further from us, as if we were traveling away and there it was, a human skeleton lying on a simple wooden bed.

“Father. Forgive me.”

The image flickered and vanished and now something else appeared, a shining youth, bare foot. He looked like Ahmed, except older and somehow golden. He had the honey color of desert sand dunes and there were yellow glints in his eyes. He smiled at us, merry, almost mocking. What was this? Were we all hypnotized? Perhaps we were all sunk in the same strange dream. Ahmed had jumped up and now he blurted a single, strangled word.