The Last Camel Died at Noon (16 page)

'Nonsense,' I exclaimed. 'The purpose is obvious. It is to prevent us from setting out to rescue Willoughby Forth and his poor wife.'

'Curse it, Amelia, there you go again,' Emerson cried. 'That purpose would have been more readily achieved by leaving us strictly alone. They, whoever they are, cannot suppose we will sit calmly by while they lure our son into their clutches.'

'You have a point there, Emerson,' I admitted. 'Then may we conclude that they want us to set out to rescue the Forths?'

'Cursed if I know,' said Emerson candidly.

A brief silence followed this noble admission of fallibility; pondering, we sipped our cooling tea. Finally Reggie asked timidly, 'What are you going to do, Professor?'

Emerson set his cup in the saucer with a decisive thump. 'Something must be done.'

'Quite,' I said, with equal decisiveness.

'But what?' Reggie demanded.

'Hmmm.' Emerson fingered the cleft in his chin. 'Well, I am certainly not going to set out on some harebrained expedition into the desert.'

'We might try to hypnotise Ramses again,' I suggested. 'He may know more than he is aware of.'

Ramses uncurled himself from his squatting position and rose to his feet. 'With all respect, Mama, I would rather not be hypnotised again. From my reading on the subject I feel it is a dangerous activity when practised by one who is untrained in its techniques.'

'If you are referring to me, Ramses,' I began.

'Weren't you referring to yourself?' Emerson inquired, his eyes twinkling. He put a friendly hand on Ramses's shoulder. 'Sit down, my son; I won't let Mama hypnotise you.'

'Thank you, Papa.' Ramses sank down, keeping a rather wary eye on me. 'I have given the matter considerable thought, and I can say with some certainty that the voice I thought I heard, and that I assumed to be that of Mama, was no more than my own interpretation of a wordless but urgent demand. I heard it as a single word: "Come."'

'Come... where?' Emerson asked softly.

Ramses's narrow shoulders lifted in the ineffable Arabic shrug, but his normally imperturbable countenance showed more than a trace of perturbation. 'There.' His outflung arm indicated the western desert, barren under the steaming sun.

A shudder ran through my limbs. 'Ramses,' I exclaimed. 'I insist that you - '

'No, no,' Emerson said. 'No hypnotism, Amelia. I agree with Ramses that it might do more harm than good. It appears that something must be done, however. We can't have Ramses trotting around the desert, or guard him every second.' His eyes were fixed on the far horizon, where sand faded into sky, and the longing in his mind was as clear to me as if he had shouted it aloud. The lure of the unknown and of discovery -it called to that sensitive and brilliant spirit as strongly as the unknown force called his son. Had he been alone, with no fears for my safety or that of Ramses, he would have set out on the greatest adventure of his life. I remained respectfully silent in the presence of that noble forbearance (and because I was trying to think how best to express my own opinions on the subject).

'An expedition must be mounted,' Emerson said at last. 'But not by me, and not without careful preparation. Unpleasant as the prospect may be, I will consult with Slatin Pasha and the military authorities at the camp.'

'They won't believe you, Emerson," I cried. 'The evidence is too complex for their limited minds to comprehend. Oh, my dear, they will mock you - think how Budge will laugh - '

Emerson's lips writhed with fury. 'It must be done, Peabody. There is no other course. If it were only a question of searching for our hypothetical lost culture, we could wait a year - plan a proper expedition, gather supplies and sufficient manpower -but Forth and his wife may be in deadly danger. Delay could prove fatal.'

'But - but - ' Reggie gasped. 'Professor, this is a complete volteface! In England you laughed at me, you refused my grandfather's request... What has changed your mind?'

'This.' Emerson picked up the broken arrow. 'To you it may seem a fragile reed on which to risk men's lives. It is useless to explain. You would not understand.'

His eyes met mine. It was one of those thrilling moments of absolute communication that so often occurs with my dear Emerson and myself. 'But you,' that silent message said, 'you understand me, Peabody.' And of course I did.

'I see,' Reggie said - though it was evident he did not. 'Well, then. You are right, Professor. An expedition must be mounted, and certainly not by you - not while you bear the responsibility for these precious lives. And not by the military authorities, who will never be convinced to act in time, if they act at all'. Rising to his feet, he stood straight and tall, his hair blazing in the sunlight. 'You will assist me with advice, I hope -help me acquire the necessary camels, servants, supplies?'

'Sit down, you young idiot,' Emerson growled. 'What melodrama! You are incapable of leading such an expedition, and in any case you could not set forth this instant.'

I added my entreaties to Emerson's. 'My husband is right, Reggie. We have a great deal to discuss before any action is taken. As Emerson has said, this broken arrow is of paramount importance. Was it snapped off during the struggle between you and your assailant last night? Could you have mistaken some other man of the same height and build for Kemit? I cannot believe it was he, and yet his disappearance does cast doubt upon his -'

A high-pitched cry from Reggie stopped me. He leapt to his feet, eyes popping, and fumbled for the revolver at his belt.

Without stirring from his chair, Emerson stretched out a long arm and clamped his fingers over Reggie's wrist. Reggie let out an oath. I turned. Behind me stood our missing servant.

Kemit folded his arms. 'Why does the white man scream like a woman?'

I could not blame Reggie for being startled by Kemit's sudden reappearance, and my reply was a trifle acerbic. 'The day you hear me utter a sound like that, Kemit, you will be justified in making such an insulting comparison. Mr Forthright was surprised, and so are we all. We believed you had left us.'

'You see it is not so, Lady.'

'Where are your friends?'

'It is the day of rest,' said Kemit. The corners of his thin lips compressed, as they did when he had said all he intended to say, so I did not ask where and how his friends spent their free time. Besides, as Emerson would have pointed out, it was none of my business.

'Very well,' I said. 'I apologise for my unjust suspicion, Kemit. Go and enjoy your day of rest.'

Kemit bowed and walked away. Ramses rose to his feet and was following when I called him back. 'From now on, young man,' I said sternly, 'you are not to be out of my sight or that of your papa. We have no reason to think that Kemit is involved in our difficulties but until we know who is, you must not go off alone with anyone.'

Quite right, Peabody,' said Emerson. 'And that prohibition includes you, Mr Forthright. Devil take it, you are far too quick to attack people. If I let loose of your arm will you sit down and behave yourself?'

'Certainly, Professor,' Reggie said. He passed his free hand across his perspiring brow. 'I apologise. The way he appeared, like a genie from a bottle... You think me rash, but I swear to you, that man knows more than he is saying. I cannot imagine why you trust him as you do.'

'I don't trust anyone,' said Emerson with a snap of his teeth. 'Now let us stop wasting time and get back to business. I hope you were not serious when you announced your intention of going off to look for your uncle.'

He released Reggie's arm. The young man rubbed it, wincing. 'Quite serious, Professor. I am only ashamed that it took me so long to decide. I intend to leave immediately for the military camp, to ask the advice of Slatin Pasha and begin gathering the necessary supplies.'

Emerson took out his pipe and tobacco pouch. 'It might be wise to ascertain first where you intend to go. You don't even have the purported map your grandfather received; he left it with me, and I never returned it.'

A smile spread across the young man's face. 'My grandfather took a copy of it, Professor - and I in turn took a copy of his. I have it with me. And I rather suspect you have the original here. Am I right?'

Emerson concentrated on filling his pipe. Not until he had completed the exercise and lit the thing did he speak. 'Touche, Mr Forthright. Let's have a look at yours, then.'

Reggie took a folded paper from his pocketbook and spread it out on the packing case that served as a table. The paper was thin but tough onionskin, upon which the newly drawn lines stood out with far greater clarity than they had upon the original. (I append a copy of the map, in order to facilitate the Reader's understanding of the ensuing description; but I feel it necessary to warn said Reader that certain details have been deliberately altered or omitted. The reasons for this will become apparent as my narrative proceeds.)

Along the right-hand edge of the paper a sweeping loop indicated the great bend of the Nile. Two points along the river were labelled with initials only 'G.B.' and 'M.' A dotted line that ghly paralleled the straight northern section of the river had been marked 'Darb el A.,' and another line running south-west from the southernmost part of the loop bore the identification 'Wadi el M.' Near the left-hand margin of the page a roughly shaped arrow accompanied to the word 'Darfur.'

These features were known to me from modern maps. 'G.B.' stood for Gebel Barkal, the great mountain across the river from our present location. 'M.' could only be the ancient Meroe. The Wadi el Melik or Milk, one of the canyon like depressions cut by watercourses long since vanished, struck off from the river into the southwestern desert. The other scrawled set of initials must indicate a portion of the fabled 'Forty Days' Road' (Darb el Arba'in), the caravan route from Egypt followed by the gallant traders of the ancient Egyptian kingdom. And Darfur, of course, was that western province of Nubia which had been the terminus of the caravan route.

The other lines and markings on the paper could be found on no known map. Some had been traced by Emerson over a decade earlier, and he now proceeded to explain the reasoning that had produced certain of them.

'There must have been an overland route between Napata and Meroe,' he said, indicating the line that connected the dots marked 'M.' and 'G.B.' 'My own excavations at the latter site hasty though they were, indicate that it was already a city of some importance when Napata was the royal seat. To go between the two by water would take considerable time and necessitate traversing the Fifth Cataract. The country was less arid at that time -'

'Agreed, Emerson, agreed,' I exclaimed. 'You need not justify your reasoning. But what is this line, leading southwest from Meroe towards the Wadi el Melik?'

'Pure hypothesis,' said Emerson sombrely. 'I am convinced that caravans travelled from Meroe, and from Napata, to the fertile oases of Darfur. Traces of ancient remains have been found along certain desert routes, and in Darfur itself. The first part of this line' - he pointed with the stem of his pipe - 'is based on some of those finds. I assumed that the routes from Meroe and Napata met at a certain point, possibly near or along the Wadi el Melik, and followed a common path farther westward. If the last survivors of the royal house of Cush fled Meroe when the city fell, they would, one presumes, have followed that road, since only along it could they depend on finding wells and water holes. And yet...'

His voice trailed off as he bent his frowning gaze upon the map. Someone had obviously disagreed with his reasoning, for the line that struck off at an angle, almost due south from Gebel Barkal, had been added to his original sketch in the same thick black ink used to write the message on the scrap of papyrus Lord Blacktower had shown us. It was divided into segments each marked by a Roman numeral, from one (nearest the river) to thirteen, at the point where the line ended in a curious little picture-drawing. At intervals along this route were scrawled numbers, not Roman but the ordinary Arabic numerals in  common usage, and several odd little signs that resembled ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.

I lost no time in proclaiming the obvious conclusions.   "The numbers along the route must indicate travel time, don't you think, Emerson? Thirteen days in all, from Napata to -'

'The Holy Mountain,' said Ramses. 'But that is what Gebel Barkal means. That is where we are now. From the Holy Mountain to the Holy Mountain

'You interrupted me, Ramses,' I said. 'And what is more -' 'I beg your pardon, Mama. Excitement overcame me.' 'But why hieroglyphs?' I demanded. 'Not only for the Holy Mountain, but here - this is ancient Egyptian for water - and here again, the sign for... obelisks, are they? Or towers, perhaps.' 'Or pillars,' said Ramses. 'They are not very expertly drawn. I believe Mr Forth had some knowledge of the hieroglyphs; he may have chosen to employ signs known only to a few, in case his map fell into the wrong hands.'

Emerson brooded over the paper. His pipe had gone out; Reggie took his own from his pocket, filled it, and offered Emerson a match. 'Thank you,' Emerson said abstractedly. 'This is a much clearer copy than the original. You are certain of these Arabic numbers, Forthright? For they appear to be compass readings, and any error in transcribing them could be literally deadly.'

Reggie assured him he had copied the numbers exactly. I will admit to the Reader in confidence that I had not realised the numbers might be compass readings. The excitement that had set my heart pounding earlier was nothing to the thrill I felt at this announcement, for those numbers meant that the map was more than an idle fantasy. Someone had followed that trail; someone had inscribed those numerals. And where one had gone, others could follow.

It took three days to assemble Reggie's expedition. This was a remarkable achievement, and it would have taken much longer had it not been for Emerson's energetic help - and the fact that at the end of that time we had hired every willing man and every healthy camel. The group was small, dangerously small for such a trip, but there were simply no more beasts to be had. Emerson mentioned this depressing fact more than once, but his warnings had no effect on Reggie.