The Soul Scarab

by C J Turner

  Blake waited only long enough to hear soft snores coming from Max’s room next door, before tapping quietly on Amunet’s door.

  Meanwhile, the lady in question, in blissful ignorance of what was about to descend on her, had got as far as taking off her dress, and was now sitting in front of the dressing table mirror, humming gently to herself as she brushed her hair. Opening the drawer to pull out her nightdress, she saw the brown envelope pushed in amongst her underwear. She had not dared to wear the scarab necklace in front of Blake, but now, moved by an impulse she could not explain, she put the brush down and clasped the pendant around her neck. The centerpiece was a small turquoise, intricately carved in the shape of a scarab, surmounted by a sun disc wrought of carnelian set in gold and hung from golden wings cunningly inlaid with lapis lazuli and enamel work to create the effect of feathers. The workmanship was superb, and the gold and rich colours glowed against the clear tanned skin of her breast.

  As she dreamily contemplated the scarab’s reflection in the mirror, she thought how much she had genuinely enjoyed the evening; she liked Max very much and Blake had seemed different. Nicer. Warmer. More like he used to be. She heard again in her mind the echo of Blake’s deep laughter. It was a good sound, but this deceit, this living a lie was not good. Was she wrong in not giving him a chance to explain himself?

  Almost, she could have got dressed again and sought Blake out there and then for a showdown. What to do? Still she sat there, her mind trapped in an endless hamster wheel of uncharacteristic indecision.

  For Amunet fully understood that she was playing a dangerous game here. It was one thing to deliberately set out to charm him with a specific aim in view. She knew she had some novelty value for the Professor, but that interest was at best ephemeral. So much the better, he would not then be unduly worried when she left.

  However, at this point her cool detachment faltered. It was for herself that she should be concerned, Amunet was not sure that she would be able to walk away unscathed from a closer relationship with Blake, or have the strength to resist him if he showed that he really wanted her.

  The quiet knock on the door startled her. Jumping up, she snatched the silk dressing gown to her and went to the door.

  ‘Who is it?’ she asked softly.

  ‘It’s me, Blake – open up, I have to see you.’

  The sheer unexpectedness of this visit, so much an extension of her thoughts that night, caught her unaware. She opened the door a crack, gripping the doorknob tightly.

  ‘What is it?’ she started to whisper, ‘Shall I meet you downstairs…?’

  Too late. Blake pushed the door wide and strode into the room making her jump back in alarm, then he turned to lock the door again and she saw him put the key in his pocket.

  ‘What do you think you are doing?’ she whispered and despised herself for the faint tremor she could hear in her voice.

  Blake turned back and rested his back against the door, folding his arms in front of him. There was a hard implacability about him, which she neither liked nor trusted, but he answered her in a carefully level voice.

  ‘I thought we needed a little chat, and we don’t want any more interruptions, do we? For a start, I’d like to know what you did with the charming shawl that you were wearing last night?’

  ‘And I think you must be more drunk than I realised, for you to come crashing in here at this time of night, just to ask me such a ridiculous question!’ she replied coldly.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, I know what happened to the shawl – I just wanted to know why, that’s all. But, obviously you still want to play your little games, so here I am - this is what you wanted, isn’t it my dear? Don’t tell me that I misread you - and all the hard work you put in this evening? Or were you aiming all that outrageous flirting at Max? Bad luck, I forgot that his money would make him the obvious choice.’

  How dare you!

  White and shaking with suppressed fury, she did not utter the words, but they nevertheless screamed in the air between them. Her eyes flashed venom, and her hand meant business as it clenched into a fist and swung up to connect to his jaw.

  This should have given him a clue, but Blake was not thinking now with his head, but with an entirely different part of his anatomy.

  ‘Now, now, temper,’ he murmured provocatively and as she raised her arm again, he caught her wrist effortlessly with one hand, the other clasping the nape of her neck to pull her towards him and, as he did so, she felt the chain around her neck give way.

  With unfeigned passion, he gathered her into a furious embrace.

  All her former warmth of feeling for him had abruptly disappeared. His words acted on her like the verbal equivalent of a bucket of cold water. She made no attempt to push him away, but stood as cold and stiff as a statue, her hands flat and resistant against the hardness of his chest. His mouth encountered a salty wetness, and disconcerted he stopped raining kisses on her face and neck and looked down into her face.

  It was set hard as stone. Tears streamed uncontrollably down her cheeks but she made no sound at all. His hot blood cooled abruptly, and he pushed her away, betrayed by the strength and depth of his feelings for this troublesome chit who had managed to get too deeply under his skin.

  He had not intended to go so far, but there was something about this damned girl that seemed to bring out the worse in him, and around her, he seemed to lose all control and resolve. Disgusted at his own behaviour, he turned away and Amunet saw her opportunity.

  She had automatically looked round for a weapon when he had first burst in, and now she quietly reached out for a slender statuette of Bastet, the Egyptian cat goddess, which the hotel had conveniently placed on a small side table by the door. Even as she weighed the ornament tentatively in her hand, her eyes fixed on the back of Blake’s head, a glitter of gold caught his eye and he stooped down to pick up the fallen amulet and return it to her.

  They never could agree on quite what happened next. Blake said it had felt like an almighty electric shock that hurtled him against the opposite wall with such force that he lay there totally winded. He was vaguely aware that the girl was bending over him. Strange, he had not noticed before that her eyes were elaborately made up, and outlined with kohl. It made her look different, somehow, there was an unfathomable expression on her chillingly beautiful face and the eyes, long and green, seemed to mock him as they caught the light from the madly rocking ceiling light.

  Only for a second did the impression last and then the light swung back and she was herself again. Her eyes, wide with consternation but their own clear grey, filled his vision before he lost consciousness.

  All Amunet had seen was Blake’s body flung across the room, crashing into the opposite wall with such force that he was knocked unconscious. Already shocked by his opinion of her and now badly shaken, all she could think of was getting away before he recovered consciousness.

  Dressed in a matter of seconds, she paused only long enough to check his pulse and take the key from his pocket. Downstairs, she told the night desk that there had been an accident, and that they were to send somebody to her room immediately. Then she left the hotel by way of the rear gates, and disappeared into the night.

  It was only some time later that she remembered that the scarab necklace had been left behind.

  Blake was only out for a few minutes, but long enough for the bird to have flown. Gingerly, he rubbed the back of his head. He could not clearly remember what had happened, had she hit him again or had he suffered some sort of electric shock? He looked vaguely at the light switch and the telephone on the bedside table with its shaded lamp, but had no recollection of touching either of them.

  Wearily, he pulled himself up and his foot nudged something tangled in the carpet. He bent down and cautiously picked up the necklace. Nothing happened this time, but to his experienced fingers, the scarab amulet spoke immediately to him of age, great age and his professional interest took over. This was only the second time that he had see
n it, yet it still reminded him of something he could not put his finger on.

  He held it up closer to his eyes, squinting at the faint markings on the back of the carapace, until he remembered that one of the few pieces of equipment he had brought with him, was a portable camp microscope. At last, he had something tangible to work on, something that might lead him out of this fog of conjecture and give him the key he so desperately needed.

  A discreet knocking at the door heralded the arrival of the hotel doctor, but Blake refused to let himself be examined and apologised for the unnecessary call, it had been a passing dizziness, he explained, and his companion had over reacted, nothing a good night’s sleep would not cure. Shutting the door firmly on the doctor’s indignation, Blake wondered ruefully, given his previous behavior, why she had bothered sending someone to look out for him. Thrusting the thought away, he turned again to the scarab.

  This might provide him with his best, if not his only, opportunity of finding the girl again, because he did not think that she would give it up so easily. With mounting anticipation, he hurried back to his own room, every other consideration pushed firmly to the back of his mind.

  Twenty minutes later and he was calling down to the night receptionist and arranging for the hotel’s conference facilities to be put at his disposal. Despite the lateness or more accurately, the unduly early hour, he was soon ushered into a well-equipped office, complete with computers, fax and colour photocopier. Elated, he settled down to work.

  Despite the loss of her necklace, Amunet had decided not to return to the hotel, but had continued into the city, her one aim to find Ben Ferouk’s shop and gain shelter for the night. She desperately needed to talk to her Aunt, yet dreaded what she would have to tell her, and only the painful stitch developing in her side made her pause at a dark cross-roads, hesitating at which direction to take. It must be round here somewhere she was sure, but the familiar shops and stalls, now darkly shuttered and silent, looked different at night and she peered back down the gloomy alleyway trying to get her bearings.

  There was no warning, when hands whipped across her mouth and dragged her back into the shadows.

  On closer examination of the scarab under the microscope, Blake thought he could detect faint marks that were not part of the original design. He took several photographs and scanned the images into the computer. He had not hoped for much so was delighted to find at the end of the process, when enhanced many times larger than life size, the images showed clearly where marks had been added to the original design on the back of the carapace. Pulling his notes and some reference books towards him, he began to decipher them.

  ‘What do you mean, she’s gone?’ Max repeated incredulously at the breakfast table the next morning.

  ‘Which part of that sentence was not clear? Blake replied brusquely. He looked tired and had omitted to shave, Max noticed disapprovingly. He was also in the devil’s own temper. ‘She left the hotel last night, vamoosed, disappeared – she obviously decided to cut her losses and clear out.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ snapped an incensed Max, not without reason. ‘You can’t just leave it there, anything could have happened to her, we must call the police immediately!’

  ‘Oh sure, that is a good idea – have you forgotten that she entered this country illegally? Add to that the fact that the police are already looking for her in England and would be very interested to learn that we helped an escaping felon to get away!’

  ‘What in the name of blazes are you talking about Blake – I cannot understand a word you are saying!’ Max was now as angry as Blake had ever seen him, and he judged it time to ease back.

  ‘No, I guess not – I am afraid that I have been holding out on you, Max,’ the Professor grimly admitted. ‘Just a little,’ he added hastily as Max’s expression grew even more thunderous. ‘And only because I wasn’t sure myself of what was going on – I’m still not, for that matter. Just calm down and I’ll fill you in.’

  He proceeded to hold Max’s undivided attention while he told all. Or nearly all. Some, anyway.

  Max grasped everything he was told with commendable acumen, and filled in all the untold gaps silently to himself with an accuracy that would have worried the Professor exceedingly, had he known how near Max’s guesses came to the truth of what had really happened to make Meredith run away like this.

  ‘So you think that Meredith was involved in some way with this gang. They tracked her down, but the note they stole from her was torn, and they mistakenly read your address as 6b instead of 66 and so broke into the wrong house and beat up old Bentley, poor blighter!’

  ‘Yes, I don’t know how she managed to intervene in time, but by then I am pretty certain that she had remembered everything. She went along with our scheme to get her out of the country because it suited her to do so. But one of the thugs must have seen the newspaper article which appeared in the local paper, and they worked out they had made a mistake and returned to search my house.’

  ‘Hold on, I hope that we haven’t inadvertently put Alice in danger!’ Max interposed sharply.

  ‘No, don’t worry, I sent her to stay with some friends in York, the husband is a black-belt karate champion. I am sure she will be safe enough with them! But seriously, I don’t think for a moment that any of the gang are still in England, there would be no point now that they know we are here.’

  ‘But what on earth were they looking for? Or haven’t your infamous powers of deduction worked that out yet?’

  Blake stared at Max for a long moment, he desperately wanted to confide in his old friend and take comfort when Max ridiculed his worse fears. He saw this as a selfish need conflicting with his natural repugnance in bringing his worse forebodings about Amunet’s suspected smuggling activities into the open. He told himself that he had no right to tarnish her reputation in Max’s eyes until he had more to go on, and not without misgivings, decided not to mention the scarab necklace which resided in his pocket, and which could surely alter the purely circumstantial, to concrete evidence against her. Puzzled at the other man’s expression, Max raised his eyebrows in query and Blake sought to distract him.

  ‘No, I have not, nor do I know why the girl who faced up to three vicious thugs without turning a hair, could be so terrified by the name of Menkheperne, that she has nightmares about him. Her fear was not a fabrication, I am absolutely sure of that.

  Max stirred uneasily, ‘Yet she seemed genuinely ignorant of her abilities and totally bewildered when we told her, and I would swear that she was telling the truth then, too.’

  Blake nodded grimly, ‘That is exactly why I am so concerned. Menkheperne’s name was on the walls of that old chamber that Naa’il found, years ago. I knew it sounded familiar, but I did not recognize her pronunciation at first, and it was not until I found some photographs of the excavation that I made the connection. I think that the best thing we can do is go back there …’

  ‘What and leave that poor child alone and defenseless?’ Max broke in, too irate to notice Blake wince slightly as he rubbed his jaw.

  ‘Really, Blake I am astonished that you could be so callous. In any case this is all pure conjecture and I am convinced that even if you are right, she was involved against her will, they may have some sort of hold over her. I see enough petty felons brought in front of me to know a villain and a liar when I see one, and I would swear that girl was honest through and through. I cannot bear the thought of her frightened and unprotected. I wish she had thought she could trust us with the truth, I am sure that we can help her sort all this out.’

  Max was seriously upset as Blake could see, and Job’s comforter sought to distract him.

  ‘Well, we could do with some help ourselves! Our English police would no doubt be very interested in interviewing us about a certain passport fraud if they ever found out, and the Egyptian police will be battering down the doors soon regarding a shawl, purchased in this hotel by yourself, for a young lady who has consequently disappeared. Threa
ds from the aforementioned shawl being found clutched in the hand of a murdered corpse, discovered near our hotel, with its throat cut.’ Blake finished succinctly with a tad more relish, in Max’s opinion, than the situation called for.

  ‘Hmm, when you put it like that, it sounds rather bad, doesn’t it?’ Max pursed his lips, but he sounded amazingly unconcerned and his blue eyes burned bright.

  ‘Especially to one in your exalted position, a magistrate of the law no less, the press would eat you alive!’ Job continued his good work cheerfully, but Max was not rising.

  ‘Never mind about that,’ he responded calmly, ‘You’re not seriously suggesting that Meredith had anything to do with the murder, surely?’

  ‘I’m not suggesting anything – I am saying that she can obviously take care of herself ,and now is the time for us to do the same,’ the Professor replied levelly.

  ‘What, are we to give ourselves up and make a clean breast of it?’

  ‘Not in the least, we are not the ones who have done anything wrong!’ Blake said coolly.

  Ignoring Max’s raised eyebrows at the singular inaccuracy of that statement, he continued firmly, ‘We still have a mystery to clear up and I have a feeling that when we do, your little waif will turn up again! All our supplies are ready and waiting, I propose that we set out to do exactly what everyone is expecting us to do – we go to the Valley like the respectable archaeologists we are, and excavate!’

  The next morning, just before dawn when it was still quite dark, they set off. Nothing more serious had occurred to delay them than one of the camel boys falling sick, but a replacement quickly presented himself and they were on their way. Although they planned to take the jeeps on the first stage of their journey, these would have to be abandoned when they reached the Rest House at the second leg, and from then on they would use the camels and mules that Max had arranged to have waiting for them.