“Possibly,” he said.

“What about that bizarre Frenchman who follows her about? Could he be Sethos?”

Ramses shook his head. “Too obvious. Have you ever seen anyone who looked more like a villain? He’d be more likely to take on the identity of a well-known person—Clayton, or Woolley, or… Not Lawrence , he’s not tall enough.”

They skirted the edge of the Red Blind district. A pair of men in uniform reeled toward them, arms entwined, voices raised in song. It was long past tattoo, and the lads were in for it when they returned to the barracks, but some of them were willing to endure punishment for the pleasures of the brothels and grog shops. Ramses and David stepped out of the way and as the men staggered past they heard a maudlin, off-key reference to someone’s dear old mother. David switched to Arabic.

“Why don’t you ask the Professor whom he suspects?”

“I could do that,” Ramses admitted.

“It is time you began treating your parents like responsible adults,” David said severely.

Ramses smiled. “As always, you speak words of wisdom. We must part here, my brother. The bridge is ahead.”

“You will let me know—”

“Aywa. Of course. Take care. Maas salameh.”

When we reached the house we learned from Fatima, who had waited up for us, that Nefret had returned an hour before. She had refused the food Fatima wanted to serve, saying she was too tired to eat, and had gone straight to her room. My heart went out to the child, for I knew she must be concerned about one of her patients. I stopped outside her door but saw no light through the keyhole and heard no sound, so I went on.

I myself was suffering from a slight alimentary indisposition. I put it down to nerves, and too much rich food, and having rid myself of the latter along the roadside, I accepted a refreshing cup of tea from Fatima before retiring. Needless to say, I did not sleep until I heard a soft tap on the door—the signal Ramses had grudgingly agreed to give on his return. I had promised I would not detain him, so I suppressed my natural impulses and turned onto my side, where I encountered a pair of large, warm hands. Emerson had been wakeful too. In silence he drew me into his embrace and held me until I fell asleep.

Somewhat to my surprise, for she was not usually an early riser, I found Nefret already at the breakfast table when I went down. One look at her face told me my surmise had been correct. Her cheeks lacked their usual pretty color and there were dark shadows under her eyes. I knew better than to offer commiseration or comfort; when I commented on her promptness she informed me somewhat curtly that she was going back to the hospital. One of her patients was in dire straits and she wanted to be there.

Only one thing could have taken my mind off what was to transpire that night, and we did not find it. The burial chamber at the bottom of the deep shaft had been looted in antiquity. All that remained were a few bones and broken scraps of the funerary equipment.

We left Ramses to catalog and collect these disappointing fragments, and climbed the rough ladders back to the surface. I remarked to Emerson, below me, “There is another burial shaft. Perhaps it will lead to something more interesting.”

Emerson grunted.

“Are you going to start on it today?”

“No.”

I stopped and looked down at him. “I understand, my dear,” I said sympathetically. “It is difficult to concentrate on excavation when so much hangs on our midnight rendezvous.”

Emerson described the said rendezvous with a series of carefully selected adjectives, adding that only I would stop for a chat while halfway up a rickety ladder. He gave me a friendly little push.

Once on the surface, Emerson resumed the conversation. “I strongly object to one of the words you used, Peabody .”

“ ‘ Midnight ’ was not entirely accurate,” I admitted.

“But it sounds more romantic than eleven P.M. , eh?” Emerson’s smile metamorphosed into a grimace that showed even more teeth and was not at all friendly. “That was not the word. You said ‘our.’ I thought I had made it clear to you that the first person plural does not apply. Must I say it again?”

“Here and now, with Selim waiting for instructions?” I indicated our youthful reis, who was squatting on the ground smoking and pretending he was not trying to overhear.

“Oh, curse it,” Emerson said.

Daoud got the men started and Selim descended the ladder in order to take Ramses’s place in the tomb chamber, assuming, that is, that Ramses would consent to be replaced. After assuring me that David was still safe and unsuspected, and that the delivery of weapons had gone off without incident, and that nobody had tried to murder him, he had rather avoided me. I knew why, of course. Injured and weakened as he had been, he had been forced to rely on me and on his father for help. Now he regretted that weakness of body and will, and wished he had not involved us. In other words, he was thinking like a man. Emerson was just as bad; I always had trouble convincing him that he needed me to protect him. Dealing with not one but two male egos was really going to be a nuisance.

I took Emerson to the rest place, where he immediately began lecturing. I sipped my tea and let him run on until he ran out of breath and patience. “So what have you to say?” he demanded.

“Oh, I am to be allowed to speak? Well, then, I grant you that if he is alone, you and Ramses can probably manage him by yourselves, always assuming he doesn’t assassinate one or both of you from ambush as you approach. However—”

“Probably?” Emerson repeated, in a voice like thunder.

“However,” I continued, “it is likely that he will be accompanied by a band of ruffians like himself, bent on robbery and murder. They could not let you live, for they would know you would—”

“Stop that!” Emerson shouted. “Such idle speculation—”

“Clears away the deadwood in the thickets of deduction,” said Ramses, appearing out of thin air like the afrit to which he had often been compared. Emerson stared at him in stupefaction, and Ramses went on, “Father, why don’t you tell her precisely what we are planning to do? It may relieve her mind.”

“What?” said Emerson.

“I said—”

“I heard you. I also heard you utter an aphorism even more preposterous than your mother’s efforts along those lines. Don’t you start, Ramses. I cannot put up with two of you.”

“It was one of Mother’s, as a matter of fact,” Ramses said, taking a seat on a packing case. “Well, Father?”

“Tell her, then,” Emerson said. He added gloomily, “It won’t stop her for long, though.”

“It will be all right, Mother,” Ramses said. He smiled at me; the softening of his features and the familiar reassurance disarmed me—as he had no doubt counted on its doing. “Farouk is not collaborating with the Germans for ideological reasons. He’s doing it for the money. We are offering him more than he could hope to get from the other side, so he will come to the rendezvous. He won’t want to share it, so he will come alone. He won’t shoot Father from behind a wall because he won’t know for certain that Father has the money on his person. We will frighten him off if we go in force, so we can’t risk it.”

I started to speak. Ramses raised his voice and went on. “I will precede Father by two hours and keep watch. If I see anything at all that contradicts my assumptions, or that makes me uneasy, I will head Father off. Is that acceptable to you?”

“It still seems to me—”

“One more thing.” Ramses fixed intent black eyes on me. His face was very grave. “We are counting on you to keep Nefret out of this. She will want to go with us, and she mustn’t. If she were present, Father would be worrying about her instead of thinking of his own safety.”