“Hmph, yes,” Emerson said guiltily. “The damned young fool! You’ve seen no sign of him?”

“No. I looked and I called him, over and over.” She stood up and straightened her skirt. “We must find him. He may have fallen. Hurry!”

“Hold on a minute,” said Emerson abstractedly. “No sense in rushing off in all directions. What do you think, Ramses?”

He didn’t have to tell them what he thought, they were as familiar with the terrain as he was. There were hundreds of square meters of broken country, around and above and below, split by crevices of all sizes and shapes. Locating one man in that wilderness would be hellishly difficult, especially if he had fallen and injured himself.

“I don’t think he’d have gone over the gebel as Jumana did,” Ramses answered. “He’d have come the way we came the other day; it’s the only route he knows. He didn’t enter this arm of the wadi or we’d have seen him. Unless he arrived long before we did… Father, why don’t you sing out?”

Emerson obliged. Not even a bird answered. Jumana was dancing up and down with impatience, but Emerson’s monumental calm kept her quiet. After calling twice more, without result, he said, “He’d have heard that if he were within earshot. All right, we can go on.”

“The Cemetery of the Monkeys,” Ramses muttered. “Yes, that’s where he’d go. I could kick myself for making those clever remarks about missing queens. Which way? I can climb up and go across, while you -”

“No,” Emerson said without hesitating. “You were right, he’d have gone the way we did before.” He hoisted the pack onto his shoulders and started down the rough steps. “You next, Jumana. Watch your footing.”

Once down, they crossed the wide mouth of the wadi and started up the path that led into the next narrow finger. Jumana would have bounded ahead if Emerson had not kept hold of her. Every few minutes he stopped and shouted Bertie’s name. They had gone some distance, with the walls rising higher on either side, before there was a reply, faint and muffled, but unmistakably the sound of a human voice.

“Thank God,” Ramses said sincerely. He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “Bertie, is that you? Keep calling out!”

Bertie obeyed, but it took them a while to locate him. Sound echoed distractingly between the cliffs, and there wasn’t a sign of him, though they scanned the rock surface with binoculars as well as the naked eye.

“He’s up there somewhere,” Emerson said, indicating a crevice that ran slantwise across the cliff face. “Yes – this is where he climbed.” The marks where booted feet had slipped and scraped were fresh, white against the weathered stone. He shouted again. The response was close now, and the words were distinct.

“Foot’s caught. I can’t…”

“All right, I’m coming,” Ramses called. He slipped off the knapsack, removed his coat, and picked up one of the coils of rope. “No, Jumana, you stay here. Hang on to her, Father.”

“If she tries to follow you, I’ll tie her up with the rest of the rope,” Emerson said coolly. “Be careful.”

Ramses nodded. It was an easy ascent, with lots of hand- and footholds, and a slight inward slope. The crevice narrowed and appeared to end about fifteen feet above him; he went on up, at an angle, till he reached a point where the opening was wide enough for him to swing himself into it. The floor of the cleft was almost horizontal here, and several feet deep, like a small natural platform.

“Down here,” Bertie said.

Ramses switched on his pocket torch and shone it down. All he could see was Bertie’s face. His body was jammed into the narrowest part of the crevice, like a cork in a bottle. “My God,” he said. “How did you do that?”

Bertie’s face was smeared with dust and sweat and streaked with blood, but he summoned up a rueful grin. “I slipped. It wasn’t at all difficult; I could do it again anytime.”

Ramses laughed. It wasn’t going to be easy getting Bertie out, but it was a relief to find him alive and relatively undamaged, and cool as ice. “If I lower a rope, can you grab hold of it?”

“I’ve got one arm free,” Bertie said, raising it in a flippant wave. “The other one’s stuck. And one of my boots is caught.”

“Let’s try this.” Ramses tied a loop in the end of the rope and let it down. Bertie slid his arm through the noose and Ramses pulled on the rope till the slipknot tightened. “Ready?”

“Slacken the rope a bit so I can get hold of it. Here, wait a minute. Are you hanging on to something? If I come popping out of here you may lose your balance.”

There was nothing he could hang on to, no protuberance round which to tie the rope. He looped a section round his waist and knotted it. “I’m fine. Here we go.”

He’d had to put the torch back in his pocket to use both hands for the rope. He couldn’t see Bertie now, but he could hear his hard, difficult breathing. There was resistance at first, and a gasp of pain from the man below, but Ramses didn’t dare stop, he could feel upward movement. He transferred his grip farther along the rope and heaved.

“That’s done it,” Bertie gasped. “Both hands out…”

“Good,” Ramses said, recovering his balance. He’d almost fallen over, the release of resistance had been so sudden. Bertie’s hands came into view. He was trying to pull himself up. His knuckles and the back of one hand were scraped raw.

Ramses helped him up onto the relatively level section and then leaned out. His father’s requests for information and reassurance were reaching an ear-splitting pitch. They harmonized with Jumana’s piercing soprano.

“It’s all right. We’re coming down,” Ramses called.

“Thanks,” Bertie said.

“What for?”

Bertie had unfastened the slipknot. He dug in his pocket for a handkerchief and passed it over his filthy face. “Well, for pulling me out. And for not saying something like ‘I’m about to lower the poor idiot down.’ ”

“You aren’t that. But I am going to lower you, unless you have violent objections.”

“No. I’ve played the bloody fool once today, I won’t do it again. How did you know I was here?”

He wanted a little more time. Holding the end of the rope, Ramses decided he had better break it to him at once. “Jumana. She noticed you were missing and figured you’d come this way. Father and I heard her calling you, and we joined forces.”

“Oh.” He added bitterly, “Kind of her to rush to my rescue.”

“This could have happened to anyone,” Ramses said. “All right, let’s get it over.”

“Wait a minute. I don’t want you to think I’m a complete fool. I wouldn’t have risked climbing alone – I know I’m not much good at it – if I hadn’t seen him. Just about here, leaning out and looking down at me. He didn’t push me,” Bertie added quickly, reading Ramses’s expression. “I wouldn’t want her to think that.”

“The hell with what she thinks,” Ramses said angrily. “Damn it, Bertie, you don’t climb a rock face when there’s someone up above who doesn’t like you. I wouldn’t have risked it.”

“Yes, you would – if you’d seen what I saw. He was laughing, Ramses, and waving some object. I couldn’t see it clearly, but it glittered. Like gold.”