The Mummy Snatcher of Memphis

by Natasha Narayan

  “Take your positions. READY … AIM … FIRE!”

  The bullets exploded, startling a flock of crows, which rose in a storm of black feathers. The sharp tang of cordite filled my nostrils and I was vaguely aware of a bullet streaking through the air, fast and deadly, making straight for one of the men. It sliced clear through him. He fell, clutching at his head. A bullet to the brain.

  “Waldo!” I screamed, as I ran toward him, Rachel at my side.

  His golden curls were wet, lying dark over his fine face. How instantly life can be shut off. I found myself hugging him, clutching at his shirt. Remorse crashed over me. Why had I allowed this? I should have done something to stop it. I was to blame, I—

  “Gerroff me.” He squirmed, struggling away.

  Waldo alive and well?

  “So you do care, Kit?” His blue eyes shone with amusement.

  Drawing back, I saw that Waldo’s hat had now fallen on the grass. His new top hat. Straight through the center was a hole the size of a carrot.

  Champlon put his gun back in his holster, work done. He regarded us with a fishy stare: “You zee now?”

  “See what?” Aunt Hilda said, defiantly.

  “You zee I mean business.”

  My father coughed apologetically. “We certainly do, Monsieur Champlon.”

  There was no sign of the shot from Waldo’s gun. He must have missed by a mile.

  “Zees was a warning only. I do not shoot children. But madame, if I hear any more lies about me in your newspapers, next time it will be—” Champlon paused. “Next time it will be ze death!”

  The French explorer turned his back on us. Accompanied by his taciturn second he stomped off down the hill, toward the lake which lay before Hampstead village. We watched him go in silence. Even my aunt seemed uncharacteristically subdued.

  Or so I hoped. In fact I was giving her more credit for human sympathy than was her due. When Champlon had vanished into the fog, she turned to us. Unbelievably she wore a triumphant air.

  “We’ve really got that French blighter rattled. Next time, my dear boy, you’ll show him we mean business!”

  Chapter Twenty

  “Put your little toys away, Waldo,” I shouted above the deafening rat-a-tat of gunfire. “You lost. That’s all there is to it.”

  Waldo’s face was shiny with sweat, his blond curls tousled, as he lowered the dueling pistols and glared at me. The figure of Gaston Champlon nailed to the oak tree in my aunt’s garden was quite dead; riddled with so many holes, it could have served as a sieve. However, easier to shoot a wooden target than a real live man. Especially if, as Aunt Hilda had belatedly revealed, that man was one of the finest shots in the world.

  “Champlon is a champion marksman,” I said more gently. “There’s no need to feel humiliated.”

  “Humiliation has nothing to do with it. This is about revenge,” Waldo muttered, before he turned his back on me and carried on his target practice. “Anyway you’re just a girl. I don’t expect you to understand.”

  “A better shot than you, I bet,” I murmured under my breath, but I turned away and trudged inside. When would that infuriating American realize that girls were every bit as good as boys? I admit that, at times, I almost liked Waldo. Then he would turn round and treat me with lordly condescension. I was “just a girl.” I didn’t “understand.” As if I was a pea-brain, someone who couldn’t join up my letters or eat my soup without a bib. Yet I was every bit as smart as him. In fact, frankly, I was smarter.

  Anyway, I had no time for his foul moods. I needed a bit of quiet to concentrate on our quest for the scarab. I went up to the solitude of Aunt Hilda’s library. It was wonderfully peaceful: no Frenchmen here, or Americans who fancied themselves cowboys. I would rest a while in one of the squashy armchairs by the bay window.

  It was not to be. Ahmed was curled up in one of the armchairs absorbed in a thick, leather-bound book.

  “What are you doing here?” I blurted.

  He looked up, startled. Then he blushed to his collarbone.

  “Ahmed?”

  Our Egyptian guest hadn’t wanted to come with us to Hampstead Heath, claiming he feared guns. Now he gaped at me like a child caught stealing sweets. I took the book from his hands and looked at the title. It was a tome of ancient Egyptian history.

  “What have you been reading, Ahmed?”

  Something wasn’t right. Ahmed was just learning to speak English. As far as we were aware, he didn’t even recognize our alphabet. No way could he read a complicated, learned book.

  “I was just looking at the pictures.”

  “Oh, I see,” I said and handed the book back to him. There wasn’t a single picture on the pages he’d been looking at. I needed help with this. Help from someone who wasn’t scared of a confrontation. I ran off to fetch Waldo—if nothing else this would serve to distract him from his pistols.

  “You’ve been lying to us, Ahmed,” I said, once we had returned.

  The young Egyptian looked at me, his gaze firm and clear. I thought he would deny it, but he nodded.

  “You’ve betrayed our trust,” Waldo said.

  “Why? Why have you tricked us?” I couldn’t keep my voice steady.

  Still Ahmed held his tongue, looking straight at us with that steady, unashamed gaze. It was all coming together in my mind. The unbelievable speed at which he’d learned English. His sophistication. I was convinced now. Ahmed was not who he claimed to be. Maybe he was actually a treasure hunter. But instead of shrinking and cringing when we confronted him with his treachery, the opposite was happening. He was stretching out, seeming to become taller and more composed.

  “Yes,” he said at last. “I admit it, I lied.”

  His accent had dropped away. Except for a tinge of something foreign about the vowels he could have been educated at an English boarding school.

  “You could always speak English,” I blurted.

  “Yes, I have a gift for languages. I am also tolerably capable in French and am a student of Farsi—no easy tongue to master, by the way.”

  I studied Ahmed’s face. The high cheekbones, the doe eyes, the silky curtain that fell over his brow. How could we have ever believed he was a son of the soil—accustomed to scratching the earth for his living? Those soft hands had been nowhere near a plow.

  “You’re no more of a peasant than I am.”

  “Certainly no one could accuse you of being a peasant. Your manners, as Miss Minchin will agree, are far too refined.”

  “How dare you laugh at me!” Suddenly I was furious, my hurt feelings boiling over into rage. “You—you traitor!”

  “What’s your game anyway?” Waldo cut in roughly. “You after treasure?”

  Ahmed tensed, becoming very still.

  “So, now we find you are not a farmer. You weren’t even a stowaway on the Maharani, were you? How could we ever have thought that was possible? I mean how would you have survived for weeks in the hold without food or water? Not to mention the toilet. What were we thinking?”

  “I am amazed it took you so long, Kit.”

  “Miss Salter to you.”

  “I apologize. Miss Salter.”

  “Let’s see, what other lies have you told us? I suppose the story of the scarab’s curse was bunkum too.”

  “I may have used a little dramatic license, but in essence—”

  “And your sick father,” I cut Ahmed off. “I suppose that was a lie too, something you made up to pull at our heartstrings?”

  “No! Believe me. My father had a heart attack when he heard of the theft of the mummy of Ptah Hotep. He has not spoken nor moved since that day. At this moment he is in a coma, more in the world of the dead than in the living.”

  “You’re lying,” I muttered.

  “Poor Father,” he said looking down at the floor. “He had already lost my brother—my older brother—Khalil. He died in a hunting accident when I was just ten years old. Khalil was always Father’s golden boy, brave, generous, reckle
ss. His death broke half father’s heart. What was left was destroyed by the theft of the scarab.”

  “I’m not interested in your excuses,” I snapped.

  But Ahmed continued, as if he was talking to himself: “You see, Father blamed himself. He thought the theft of the scarab was all his fault. He is a proud man and—”

  “Enough!” I cut him off. He sounded so sincere. But how could I really tell? Ahmed could be the finest actor I’d ever met. “Why did you do this to us?” I asked. The anger was draining away leaving me wretched. “We took you in, fed you, clothed you. Waldo fought a duel over this whole business. I thought you were our friend.”

  Ahmed hung his head.

  “Why treat us like this?”

  “I am sorry. Really, believe me, I am sorry. You’ve been kind. I too, feel true friendship for you.”

  “If this is how you treat your friends, thank goodness I’m not your enemy.”

  “I will tell you the truth now. The whole truth.”

  “We’re listening,” I said.

  “My father is a doctor, a learned man, who also happens to be the headman of our tribe. We live in a village near the ruins of the Pharaoh’s old capital, Memphis. But we are no village idiots. Memphis is not far from Cairo, we travel, I go to school.”

  “It is true that my father’s brother lives in Cairo and that he has a wastrel son. This son Ali was employed by your aunt Hilda. Well, to cut a long story short he is a bad fellow, a real idle layabout. He looted the secret rock tomb of Ptah Hotep, after my father was indiscreet enough to reveal its hidden location. His gang of robbers got away with the sage’s mummy and other wonderful relics. But these riches are as nothing compared with the treasures still hidden.”

  “Finally,” breathed Waldo. “We’re getting to the point.”

  Ahmed ignored the interruption “You know about the scarab?”

  “Of course.”

  “This beetle is the charm that Ptah Hotep wore next to his heart, buried deep under layers of linen wrappings. It has lain undisturbed for thousands of years—time immemorial.”

  “I thought we asked you to get to the point!”

  “I am, Kit—Miss Salter, I am. My family contains many learned scholars. You see, we are Berbers. We are descended from the great Pharaohs. Their ancient blood lives on in our veins. It was my great-grandfather who entrusted my father with the scarab’s secret. It contains the clue to buried treasure.”

  “So this scarab isn’t just your villagers’ lucky charm?” I asked.

  “Far from it,” he replied. “It is a kind of map. If you can read it, it will take you to treasure. This secret is known only to a few Egyptian scholars—somehow the Baker Brothers must have learned about it!”

  “What treasure?” I asked.

  “I do not know, except that it is meant to be fabulous.”

  “You want it, don’t you?” I said. “You’re as bad as the Bakers yourself.”

  “NO!”

  In his agitation Ahmed jumped right out of his chair and began to pace the room. “You’ve got it all wrong. You must have seen what your fellow ‘explorers’ and ‘Egyptologists’ have done to our ancient heritage. They have pillaged priceless mastabas, wrecked pyramids. You have heard of ‘The Great Belzoni’? The circus strongman?”

  I nodded.

  “When he found a beautiful wall covered in hieroglyphics in Cairo’s Valley of the Kings he smashed his way through it with a battering ram.”

  “But he was an Italian. An English gentleman would not—”

  “Please do not be so naive. The greatest robber in the whole game is Colonel Henry Vyse,” Ahmed interrupted. “A few years ago he bored a hole in the Great Sphinx and when his boring rods got stuck, blew them free with dynamite. The Great Sphinx at Giza, the greatest statue in the world! Your explorers are no more than burglars! Vandals!”

  “Egyptians have raided the pyramids too,” I protested, remembering my father’s words on the subject. “Hundreds of years ago the Arab rulers of Egypt, so my father told me, ransacked the pyramids for limestone to build Cairo.”

  “What is England’s oldest monument?” Ahmed changed the subject.

  “Stonehenge?”

  “How would you feel if a party of Egyptian explorers descended on Stonehenge and carted all the stones off to display in a museum in Cairo? How would you feel if they told you it was to keep them safe?”

  I was silent.

  “We Berbers are all that is left of the ancient Egyptians,” Ahmed raced on. “My family feels it is our duty to protect our heritage. The treasures must remain buried. My father had his heart attack because he felt he had let his people down. He was shamed, Kit, shamed to his very soul. That is why he now lies in a coma, lost to his family and his people. I have to save the scarab and keep Ptah Hotep’s treasure safe. It is the only way to help my father.”

  “How do you expect us to believe you?” I asked softly. “I mean you’ve lied about who you are. Now you’re lying about this.”

  “Kit, Waldo, I had to lie. How can I explain this to you? Egyptians are a proud people, we have a noble history stretching back to the times of the Pharaohs. Times—with no disrespect—when you in England were scarcely more than savages. But now we are weak and your empire with its boats and guns controls us. How would you have reacted if a proud Egyptian stranger stood before you and told you the tale you’ve learned today. You’d have mistrusted me. So I played on your pity. You took me in as a waif and stray and for that I am grateful!”

  “How did you come to be in the box of the mummy anyway?” Waldo asked.

  “Bad luck.” Ahmed shrugged. “Truth to tell I ran away from home, after my father’s heart attack, determined to find the scarab and restore his health. As you know, he was in a coma and in no position to stop me. I took a passage on the Maharani, following your aunt, Kit, and the mummy. At the stroke of midnight, on the last night of the voyage, I sneaked down to the hold in my nightshirt. I let myself in and was searching among the boxes for the one containing Ptah Hotep’s mummy. Suddenly two sailors appeared. I was trapped. I climbed quietly into a large packing case; by an awful stroke of fate it was the very case containing Ptah Hotep’s closed sarcophagus. I was caught like a rat, helpless, in a case which contained the very scarab I sought. A little later the sailors moved the packing case into another hold. I remember the sound as they turned the key. It was so final, so brutal. I was locked in, half out of my wits with fright.”

  “There was nothing witless about the way you played us,” I said. I remembered Ahmed as we’d first met him, hungry, dirty, tangle-haired. In fact Ahmed’s chrysalis to butterfly transformation had all happened so effortlessly we’d scarcely noticed. I still thought of him as the waif, unable to speak English, when he was anything but.

  Which just goes to show how unobservant I am! You, I am sure, would do better. You would put your prejudices to one side and see more things more clearly. However, I must confess myself sadly blind. Still, lamenting my shortcomings was pointless. It would not help us solve the problem of what to do about Ahmed.

  I stood up, looking clear into Ahmed’s eyes: “How can we ever trust you again?”

  Ahmed slumped back in his chair. Silence hung over the room. I tried to think how we should act, but I felt hopelessly confused. Should we give Ahmed up to my aunt? Tell her about the scarab and the Baker Brothers’ theft?

  “There may be a way to put Ahmed to the test,” said Waldo.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  “This?” I whispered to Waldo, rolling my eyes in mock horror as I looked at the collection of eccentrics and lunatics around the table. “This is your big idea?”

  “Shush, Kit,” he hissed. “Don’t be so prejudiced.”

  I couldn’t believe I had agreed to visit a séance at Waldo’s mother’s medium, in the hope that “spirits” would put Ahmed to the test. Waldo was planning to ask Mrs. Guppy to contact the other world. “Spirit messengers” would let us know if Ahmed was telli
ng the truth. Frankly, I was skeptical. I had never believed in mediums and all that mumbo jumbo. Yet any hope was better than none and Waldo had argued fiercely that we should give it a try. The scarab was slipping out of our reach. We desperately needed a breakthrough.

  “Are you brave of heart?” Mrs. Guppy voice’s was a mere caressing murmur. “Only the strongest souls should join me on my quest to contact the spirits. We shall travel beyond life. We shall meet spirits of loved ones and the ghosts of those unhappy souls who have not found peace. We shall commune with angels and fend off demons …”

  The medium droned on, her voice hypnotic, soothing as the murmur of waves. It was too hot in her stuffy parlor. My eyes drooped, my body felt strangely light. Wake Up! I told myself fiercely. I could not afford to doze off, not now when I needed to be especially alert.

  I glanced over at Ahmed, who was sitting next to Rachel. Was it my imagination that made him look particularly nervous? All my friends were here, except Isaac who recently had been slipping off by himself. On secret business of his own. Apart from us, there were five others round Mrs. Guppy’s ebony table; all of them tense and excited. Mrs. Guppy, whose chair was higher than ours, towered over us with the air of a queen holding court. With her puffy face she looked like a dumpling in a curly wig. Only her eyes were unusual: periwinkle-blue and oddly transparent. I felt as if I was peering through a stained glass window to another world.

  Waldo was very grave about the whole process, but looking around the table at the “seekers after truth,” I was unimpressed. Spiritualists were a very rum lot. There was a gent in a shabby morning coat, whose face was almost hidden by his whiskers. An enormously fat widow in mourning, her face hidden by a black veil. An unkempt captain of the merchant navy. Finally there was Mr. Guppy, an insignificant-looking little man about whom I can tell you nothing—for he made no impression on me at all.

  Something about these “seekers” struck me as odd. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but they were not right; there was something strange, almost sinister about them. All my nerves were jangling, warning me not to relax, not to give in to the soothing atmosphere of the séance. There was menace lurking around this table, I could feel it. What I couldn’t tell was what form the danger would take.