Straining, he pressed upward with his palms and shifted the stone lid to one side while Hattie held the lantern aloft. A dark cavity within the sarcophagus was revealed, and Hattie felt a moment’s qualm at thus desecrating a grave site. I beg your pardon, she offered; but it will only be for a moment and the stakes are quite high.
With the lid balanced off-kilter, Berry took the lantern from Hattie and lowered it into the sarcophagus, Hattie, on tiptoe, leaning in to see. It was completely empty.
Berry cursed softly and fluently in his own strange language.
“I don’t understand,” said Hattie in bewilderment. “Who would take her? Who else would know of the disk?” Nonplussed, she looked across at him, and saw that he was frowning, thinking.
“I know not.”
Hattie was doing some thinking, herself. “Even if the disk were the object, there seems little point in taking the entire mummy.”
When he did not respond, she tried to find some encouragement to offer. “I suppose we could make a hit-and-miss attempt, to guess which way is intended to be north on the senet board—there are only four possibilities.”
But he was not to be consoled and bent his head between his arms in frustration. “You are assuming it is that simple—the reference may not be to points on a compass.”
Gauging the level of his frustration, she inquired softly, “Is there so little time, then?”
“There is little time,” he agreed, his jaw line rigid.
Ominous to think the Corsican Monster would soon make another attempt at world domination, but she did not doubt Berry’s mysterious sources and stood in sympathetic support while he contemplated this latest catastrophe. “Surely no one else knows of the senet board,” she consoled him, “—even if some unknown rival has secured the disk.”
He looked at her but she could see his mind was elsewhere. “It makes little sense.”
After waiting for a few moments in respectful silence she ventured, “We’d best put it to rights. I imagine Robbie will appear in short order.”
The topic, however, seemed only to exacerbate his foul mood as he shoved the lid back into place with an angry gesture. “You must not allow him to touch you.”
Hattie was surprised. “Does he touch me?”
“Yes.” The syllable was bitten off. “He does.” He aligned the lid so that it was straight and wouldn’t look at her.
“I love you,” she said simply, the words echoing in the stone chamber. “You have no reason to be jealous—he is like a brother to me and nothing more.”
He was not happy with his own loss of composure, she could see, but he seemed unable to stop himself. “It is you who were jealous of Madame Auguste,” he reminded her.
This, of course, was undisputable, and seemed as though it had happened a hundred years ago. Calmly, she replied, “That was before I met you—when I just wanted to marry someone and start my life. I love you. I will never love another.”
They faced each other in the flickering light across the empty sarcophagus for a long moment. “Good,” he said.
Chapter 30
Voices could be heard echoing in the entryway; Bing and Hafez speaking to Robbie with Bing’s level of volume raised so as to give them warning. Berry moved quickly to stand by the door while Hattie went to the opposite corner with her sketchbook. She made a half-hearted attempt to sketch the bull, but an observer could be forgiven for thinking her rendering nothing like the original. The bull’s name was Apis, Bing had said, so she dutifully wrote the name down so as to give more credence to her questionable endeavors. It was undoubtedly some god who turned into other things—as did the Greek gods, who were constantly causing problems for humankind by such maneuvers. A ridiculous religion, truly, that tried to convince one that one’s king was, in fact, a god. Wellington had famously said that no man is a hero to his valet and it could be presumed that the pharaoh’s servants were very much aware their master was not, in fact, a god—it was only a farce to enforce a hidden agenda. Her hand stilled. A farce, she thought, gazing up at nothing in particular. Why, I believe that is the solution to this puzzle.
Distracted, she didn’t even notice that Robbie had come into the chamber until he was next to her. “Hattie,” he apologized with some ruefulness. “I’m afraid I overslept.”
Aware that he had placed a hand beneath her elbow, she carefully withdrew it—no point in inciting fisticuffs—not with Berry in his current mood. “Small matter, Robbie—we are only just getting our bearings, and Bing and Mr. Hafez are looking for hidden trapdoors.”