I was permitted to say no more. Arms like steel s.n.a.t.c.hed me up out of my chair, stifled, breathless, enveloped in folds of billowing cloth, I was carried rapidly away. I heard a shriek from Lady Norton, and exclamations of surprise and amus.e.m.e.nt from the other guests- for my abductor's path led him straight across the ballroom toward the door.

I was not amused. Emerson was not the man to play such a silly trick, and I had known, the moment the person touched me, that the grasp was not that of my spouse. He felt me stiffen, heard the sharp intake of my breath without slackening his pace he shifted his hold in such a fashion that my face was crushed against his breast and my cry was m.u.f.fled by folds of fabric.

Astonishment and incredulity weakened my limbs, I could not believe what was happening. Could a person be abducted out of Shepheard's Hotel, under the very noses of hundreds of watchers?

The attempt might have succeeded by its very audacity. What else could the audience a.s.sume but that my notoriously eccentric spouse had entered into the spirit of the masque and was playing the role his costume had inspired? I heard one idiotic woman shriek, "How romantic!" My struggles were taken for part of the charade, and they weakened as I grew faint from lack of oxygen.

Then a voice rang out- a voice famous throughout the length of Egypt for its resonance and audibility.

It rea.s.sured, it inspired me, my strength returned, my struggles were renewed. The grip that held me loosened. I felt myself flying through the air, reached out, groping and blinded, braced myself for the impact I knew must follow . . . And struck a solid but yielding surface with a force that drove the last of the straining breath from my lungs. I clutched at it, it recoiled from me with a grunt of effort and then, recovering, caught and held me.

I opened my eyes. I had not needed to see him to know whose arms enclosed me, but the sight of the beloved face- crimson with choler, eyes blazing like sapphires- left me too weak to speak. Emerson drew a deep, shuddering breath. "d.a.m.nation!" he roared. "Can't I leave you alone for five minutes, Peabody?"

CHAPTER 4.

"No woman really wants a man to carry her off, she only wants him to want to do it."

"Why didn't you pursue the fellow?" I demanded.

Emerson kicked the bedroom door shut and dropped me unceremoniously onto the bed. He had carried me straight upstairs and he was breathing rather heavily. Our rooms were on the third floor, but I fancied it was exasperation rather than exertion that had quickened his breath. The tone in which he replied further strengthened this theory.

"Don't ask stupid questions, Peabody! He threw you straight at me, like a bundle of laundry. Would you rather I had let you fall to the floor? Even if I had been so cold-blooded, I reacted instinctively, and by the time I had recovered myself he was long gone."

I sat up and began to straighten my disheveled hair. Somewhere along the way I had lost my pith helmet. I reminded myself to search for it next day, it was a new one and very expensive.

"The implied reproach was unfair, Emerson. I apologize. It would take him only a minute to achieve anonymity by divesting himself of his robes. They were not an exact copy of yours but they were close enough."

"Confounded fancy dress!" Emerson had divested himself of bis robe, he tossed it into a corner and plucked the headdress from his head. I let out a cry.

"Is that blood on your face? Come here and let me see."

After some masculine grumbling he consented to let me have a look. (He likes being fussed over but refuses to admit it.) There was only a small trace of blood on his temple but it marked a tender spot that would no doubt blossom into a purple bruise before morning. "What the devil have you been up to?"

I asked.

Emerson stretched out on the bed. "I had a little adventure of my own You don't suppose it was Divine Guidance that brought me to your rescue in the traditional nick of time, do you?"

"I could believe in Divine Guidance, my dear. Are you not always at my side when danger threatens?"

Leaning over him, I pressed my lips to the wound "Ouch," said Emerson.

"What happened?"

"I had gone out for a smoke and some intelligent conversation,"

Emerson explained.

"Out of the hotel?"

"No one in the hotel-saving your presence, my dear-is capable of intelligent conversation. I thought Abdul or Ali might be hanging about. As I strolled innocently through the gardens, three men jumped me.

"Three? Was that all?"

Emerson frowned. "It was rather odd," he said. "The fellows were, I believe, ordinary Cairene thugs. If they had intended to murder me, they might have done some damage, for as you know, they all carry knives. They never used them, only their bare hands."

"Bare hands did not inflict this wound," I said, indicating his temple. "One of them had a club. The confounded headdress was of some use, it deflected the blow. I became a trifle annoyed then, and after I had disposed of two of them, the third fled. I would have questioned them, but it occurred to me that you might be in similar straits and that I had better see what you were up to."

I got up and went to look for my medical kit. "Why should you suppose that? Your enemies are not necessarily mine, and I must say, Emerson, that over the years you have attracted quite a number of ... Where the devil did I put that box of bandages? The safragi has mixed up the luggage, nothing is where I left it."

Emerson sat up. "What makes you think it was the safragi?"

I finally found the medicine box,- it was in the original container, but not in the original place. Emerson, who had been searching his own luggage, straightened. "Nothing appears to have been taken."

I nodded agreement. He was holding an article I had not seen before- a long narrow box of heavy cardboard. "Has something been added? Be careful opening it, Emerson!"

"No, this is my property. Ours, I should say." He removed the lid, and I saw a glitter of gold and a rich azure glow.

"Good heavens," I cried. "It is the regalia Nefret carried away with her from the Holy Mountain- the royal scepters. Why did you bring them?"

One scepter was shaped like a shepherd's crook, symbolizing the care of the king for his people. The materials were gold and lapis lazuli in alternating rings. The other object consisted of a short staff made of gold foil and dark-blue gla.s.s over a bronze core, from which depended three flexible thongs of the same materials, gold beads alternating with blue, and ending in cylindrical rods of solid gold. The flail represented (as I have always believed) the other aspect of rule: power and domination. It certainly would have inflicted a painful blow if it had been made of more durable materials, as the original whip undoubtedly was. No such objects had ever been found in Egypt, though they were known from countless paintings and reliefs.

"We agreed, did we not," said Emerson, "that it would be unconscionable to keep these remarkable objects from scholars They are unique, and they are two thousand years old if they are a day- treasured relics. They belong not to us but to the world."

"Well, yes- we did agree in theory, and I am of the same mind still, but we cannot display them without explaining where we found them."

"Precisely. We will find them. This season."

I caught my breath. "It is an ingenious idea, Emerson. Brilliant, even. No one is better able than you to arrange a convincing if misleading ambience."

Emerson fingered the cleft in his chin and looked a trifle uncomfortable. "Dishonesty goes against the grain, Peabody, I confess it,- but what else are we to do? Thebes seems the most likely place for such a- er- discovery, the Cus.h.i.te conquerors of the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty remained there for some time. We must account in some way for the information about ancient Meroitic culture we acquired last winter.

Sooner or later one of us, or Walter, will let something slip, it is not humanly possible to write about the subject without displaying information we ought not to have."

"I agree. In fact, the article you sent to the Zeitschrift Zeitschrift in June- " in June- "

"Devil take it, Peabody, I said nothing revealing in that article!"

"In any case," I said soothingly, "it will not be published for some time."

"These scholarly journals are always behind schedule," Emerson agreed. "So you are thinking along the same lines, Peabody?"

"What lines?" I began rummaging in my box of medical supplies. "I am surprised at you, Peabody. Usually you are the first to find portents of danger all around, and although I admit there are a number of individuals who have reason to dislike us, recent incidents are beginning to suggest quite a different theory."

He sat down on the edge of the bed. I brushed the hair from his brow and applied antiseptic to his wound. Absorbed in his theory, he ignored attentions he was not ordinarily willing to receive without complaint.

"Our luggage appears to have been searched. Theft was not the object, nothing was taken. Tonight we were both attacked. Murder was not the object, we must a.s.sume, I think, that abduction of one or both of us was. For what purpose?"

"Some of our old enemies may want to carry us off and watch gloatingly while hideous tortures are inflicted upon us," I suggested.