The Mummy (10 page)

O’Connell lifted an eyebrow. “A wild goose chase?”

“That would seem to cover it, yes. I would understand entirely if a man facing the gallows were to stoop to deception to find his freedom. If that is the case, you have my permission, even my blessing, to—”

“Straight in the eye, is that how you want it?” O’Connell marched right up to the patronizing young woman and practically touched his nose to hers. Her eyes became huge and her lashes fluttered like startled butterflies. “Lady, two hundred men, my whole battalion, followed our colonel across Libya and into Egypt to find your precious City of the Dead. They found it, and they joined it—all but me. Now, I’m willing to go back there because those bloody sands defeated me. And I intend to win this time. I’m going with or without you . . . and, frankly, I would advise you stay here in Cairo and let your brother and me take the risks.”

She did not back away, holding her ground, despite how obnoxiously, presumptuously close he was standing to her. “No, thank you. I’m going along. To look after my interests.”

He took a step back, shrugging, intoxicated by the fragrance of her lilac-scented perfume. “Suit yourself . . . let me get those.”

And O’Connell, slinging the gunnysack on its strap around his shoulders, bent down and picked up her bags, and headed up the gangplank.

He did not hear Jonathan whisper to Evelyn, “Oh yes, you’re right, dear sister—he is an utter cad. Nothing to admire there, in the least.”

But O’Connell did hear a familiar voice—a voice he had hoped never to hear again—saying to the Carnahans, “A cheery good afternoon to you.”

O’Connell, halfway up the gangplank, whirled, and Evelyn asked his question for him, minus an obscenity or two.

“What are
you
doing here?”

And to the young woman, the warden of Cairo prison tipped his battered porkpie hat, a new addition to the rumpled ensemble of his vari-stained cream-colored suit.

“I have come to protect my investment,” Gad Hassan said. “As my people know all too well, the English have a way of speaking politely as they steal the ground out from under you.”

Then the warden bowed and, lugging a single carpetbag, moved up the plank onto the deck, smiling benignly at O’Connell, who just glared at the greasy little bastard.

“No hard feelings,” the warden said.

O’Connell, bags at his feet, touched his throat, saying ominously, “If you ever want to a borrow a necktie, just ask.”

The warden didn’t seem to like the sound of that offer, and disappeared off toward the bow.

O’Connell carted Evelyn Carnahan’s bags to her cabin door and asked to take his leave, saying he was going to have a look around the steamer.

“Do what you like, Mr. O’Connell,” she said crisply. “I’m not your employer.”

“Don’t forget that,” he said, and with a huff, Evelyn disappeared within the cabin.

“Evy’s always been a headstrong girl,” Jonathan said, hauling his own bags. “Pay her no heed—it only means she’s fond of you.”

“Funny way of showing it.”

“That’s true of most women, isn’t it? The ones worth knowing, anyway. See you at dinner?”

“See you at dinner.”

The stern-wheeler was a shabby wooden house of a boat, about twenty feet wide, one hundred and fifty feet long, a glorified passenger barge with two decks—the lower one with thirty cabins and a dining room and bar, the upper piled with luggage and crates, with an open area arranged with chairs under an awning so passengers could watch the green-and-tan scenery glide by. The pilot, a short-bearded Nubian in turban and gown, set a corkscrewing course that wound from one side of the river to the other, as the steamer plowed its six-mile-an-hour way downstream, against the current.

A low barge, with a flat deck of rough boards, was towed alongside; this was for horses and camels—and second-class and third-class passengers, who carried their own bedding and would sleep on the deck.

The dining room served table d’hôte, at eight o’clock; everyone was in evening wear except O’Connell. The waiters were Nubians in white gowns with red sashes, and the service was elegant. Feeling out of place but not really caring, O’Connell sat with the Carnahans, never letting his gunnysack out of his sight. They did not speak of their mission, keeping Hamanaptra to themselves, as they shared a table with strangers, a party consisting of a pair of missionaries, Warden Hassan, several commercial travelers, and a group of big-game hunters.

The food was excellent—a clear spicy soup, boiled fish fresh from the Nile, salmi of pigeons, roast lamb with mint sauce, rice, string beans, tomato salad, pudding, fruit . . .

O’Connell wolfed it down greedily, and at one point Jonathan said, “Good God, man—you’re eating everything but the tablecloth.”

“I suggest you do the same. We won’t be dining like this in the desert.”

Jonathan thought about that, and dug in.

After dinner, O’Connell stood at the rail on the lower deck and watched the moon stare back at itself from the surface of the iridescent Nile, the desert on either bank turned a soothing ivory. Moments like these reminded him why he’d left Chicago behind and gone looking for adventure. Then a bug bit him and he went inside the bar, at the bow.

At a central table, a poker game was in progress, four Americans and Jonathan. O’Connell stood and watched, gunnysack at his feet. No introductions were made—poker precluded social niceties—but before long O’Connell had gathered that the Americans were heading out on a dig. A small professorial fellow of perhaps fifty-five with clear blue eyes and a white wispy mustache—Dr. Chamberlin—was the expedition’s Egyptologist.

The others were rough-hewn, thrill-seeking adventurers of O’Connell’s own stripe, men in their late twenties and early thirties: Henderson, towheaded, loud, cheerfully arrogant; Daniels, dark, quiet, even brooding; and Burns, easygoing, in a good mood, but then he was winning, coins and dollar bills littering his side of the table.

Right now Burns was polishing his wire-rim glasses with a hanky. Maybe twenty seconds ago, Henderson had slammed the deck of cards down in front of him.

“For Chrissakes, Bernie, you see good enough!” Henderson roared, a stubby cigar in a corner of his mouth. “Cut the cards, already!”

Burns put his glasses on and said, “Gotta see ’em to cut ’em,” and did.

“Join us, Mr. O’Connell,” Jonathan said, waving toward an empty chair. “Sit down! We can use another player.”

“No thanks. Not much of a gambler.”

“Not what I hear,” Henderson said, grinning as he fanned his five cards out for his personal perusal. “Only a gambler goes looking for the City of the Dead.”

“. . . What
am I looking for?”

“You heard me, O’Connell. Sure you never bet?”

“Not with money.”

“Pity. ’Cause I got five hundred smackeroos says our little bunch gets to Hamanaptra before you.”

O’Connell twitched a smile. “Oh, so you’re lookin’ for the City of the Dead?”

“Hope to shout.”

“And I’m supposed to be looking for this place, too, huh?”

Henderson grunted a laugh. “Damn straight.”

“Says who?”

“Little Lord Fauntleroy here.” Henderson jerked a thumb toward Jonathan, who smiled awkwardly, then—under O’Connell’s glare—returned to the study of his latest hand of cards, whistling innocently.

Henderson flashed a yellow grin. “Well, what do you say, O’Connell? We got a bet?”

O’Connell didn’t much care for the look on Henderson’s sweaty, stubbly face; but the kind of man who runs off to join the French Foreign Legion is not likely to ignore the throwing down of most any gauntlet.

“You’re on,” O’Connell said.

The Egyptologist, Dr. Chamberlin, had already folded his hand; he was studying O’Connell like a hieroglyph he was trying to decipher.

“What makes you so confident, young man?” Chamberlin asked O’Connell.

“What makes
him
so confident?” O’Connell asked, nodding toward Henderson.

Henderson blew a smoke ring, grinned, eyes narrowing. “Maybe we got a man on our team who’s been there.”

“Where?”

“Where do you think? City of the Dead itself. Hamanaptra.”

“I say,” Jonathan said, “that is a coincidence. Why, we also have—”

But that was all Jonathan had to say at the moment, because O’Connell—swinging his gunnysack up from the floor, back around his shoulder, accidentally bumped Carnahan in the ribs with it.

Jonathan said, “Ow!” Then he quickly recovered, asking brightly, “Now, uh, where were we? Whose wager is it, gentlemen?”

O’Connell was heading out on deck.

Henderson called out: “We got us a bet, remember!”

“I’ll remember, gents. G’night.”

As he left, O’Connell heard Burns exclaiming, “Full house!”

“What a damn lucky streak,” Henderson said.

“Can’t last forever,” Daniels said, finally speaking.

The desert breeze wasn’t just cool, but cold, which made this a typical night on the Nile, and O’Connell discovered that Evelyn Carnahan had the whole upper deck to herself. The moonlight was so bright, Evelyn was reading by it; hatless, wearing her glasses, sitting beside a wicker table where her cup of tea rested, she was lost in E. M. Forster’s
A Passage to India.
O’Connell set his gunnysack onto the deck nearby and she jumped, startled.

“Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to disturb you.”

Chin up, she said, “The only thing that disturbs me, Mr. O’Connell, is your frightfully poor sense of decorum.”

He shrugged. “I didn’t bring any evening dress with me.”

“I wasn’t talking about that.”

“What, then . . . ? Oh, you aren’t miffed ’cause of that peck I gave you, back at the prison?”

“Peck, Mr. O’Connell?”

“You know—kiss.”

“Is that what you call it?”

She returned her attention to E. M. Forster, and O’Connell shrugged, kneeling at the gunnysack, from which he began to withdraw various items, mostly weapons: a pair of revolvers, several hunting knifes, an elephant gun, and half a dozen carefully wrapped sticks of dynamite.

Arching an eyebrow, peering over her book, Evelyn said, “Did I miss something? Are we going to war?”

“You and I’ve had a few skirmishes already, I’d say . . . Look, the last time I dropped by your precious City of the Dead, everybody with me got themselves butchered.”

O’Connell sat in the chair on the other side of her reading table, with the weapons spread out at his feet. From the gunnysack he withdrew a box of oversize shells and began loading up the elephant gun.

“I suppose certain precautions are necessary,” she granted him.

He looked up at her from his work. “You notice that group of Americans?”

“Those roughnecks with the little professor?”

“Yeah. Them.”

She nodded curtly. “I noticed them, all right. I recognize one of them, an Egyptologist, Dr. Chamberlin—formerly attached to the Metropolitan Museum in New York, left under a cloud of scandal. Treasure-hunting riffraff, I’d say.”

O’Connell smirked at her. “Guess what treasure they’re hunting.”

“Oh, dear—not Hamanaptra! What a terrible coincidence.”

“I don’t believe in Santa Claus and I don’t in coincidences . . . On the other hand . . .”

She frowned thoughtfully. “On the other hand, what, Mr. O’Connell?”

“Something
is
out there, you know.”

“Pardon?”

“Under the sand.”

“Well, of course there is. Unimaginable riches, which is what attracts my brother.” She sighed, and shook her head. “I’m afraid Jonathan is little better than those dreadful American treasure hunters.”

“What attracts you?”

She tapped the cover of
A Passage to India.
“A certain book.”

“A book.”

“Yes, not that you’d understand. A rare antiquity . . . What do you think is out there?”

O’Connell gazed out at the peaceful shimmer of the Nile, the steamer slowly chasing the moon. “Something very old, Miss Carnahan, something older than civilization itself . . .
evil.”

“Evil.”

“Yes—evil. Tuaregs and Bedouin think that place has a curse on it. Your Hamanaptra, in their language, is the ‘Doorway to hell.’ ”

She arched an eyebrow.
“Ahmar isos Ossirion,
actually: ‘Passageway to the underworld.’ ”

He began cleaning and oiling the revolvers, which he’d bought secondhand. “You can’t learn about evil from books.”

“Mr. O’Connell, I don’t believe in Santa Claus, either, and I don’t believe in curses. But I do believe that one of the most famous books in the history of mankind lies buried in those sands, somewhere:
The Book of Amun Ra.
I’ve been fascinated with
The Book of Amun Ra
since I was a child, when my father first told me of it.”

“Why, because he told you that that book is made out of solid gold?”

That threw her. “Well, uh, yes . . .”

“And
you’re
not a treasure hunter.”

She stiffened. “Mr. O’Connell, my objectives are purely those of the scholar.”

“Ah.”

Her expression softened; he’d impressed her. “But I must say . . . for you to know that
The Book of Amun Ra
is purportedly fashioned from gold, you have a better grasp of history than one might suspect.”

He grinned at her. “Maybe I have a better grasp of treasure than one might suspect.”

The moon had found a cloud to slide behind. No longer able to read, and obviously disconcerted by their conversation, Evelyn stood. “If you’ll excuse me, Mr. O’Connell.”

“Sure. G’night.”

But she wasn’t leaving; she was just standing there, hesitating nervously, apparently trying to get the nerve up to say something.

“What is it, Miss Carnahan?”

“I was just wondering . . . why
did
you kiss me, back there at the prison?”

He shrugged elaborately. “Hell, every condemned man gets a last meal, doesn’t he?”

She drew in a sharp breath, her eyes widening, said, “Well!” and stormed off.

“What did I say?” O’Connell asked himself, and resumed the inventory and maintenance of his arsenal.

The gunnysack was nearly repacked, and he was just examining one last weapon, a gunlike mini-crossbow, when he heard a movement, and sensed a presence. He rose slowly, stepped over his scattered weapons, then spun around and grabbed the eavesdropper out from behind a large crate.