Amelia Peabody Omnibus 1-4 by Elizabeth Peters Read Free Book Online Page A

pulled her companion out of the room. Another couple followed, leaving a single spectator, an Arab in flowing robes, headcloth, and bright-green goggles, who continued to watch the antics of the incomprehensible foreigners with amused contempt.
    Rapid footsteps in the hall heralded the arrival of M. Maspero, who had apparently been alarmed by the uproar. When he saw us his pace slowed, and a smile spread over his face.
    ‘Ah, c’est le bon Emerson.
I should have known. You have met one another? You are acquainted?’
    ‘We are not acquainted,’ said the person called Emerson, in a slightly modified shout. ‘And if you make any attempt to introduce us, Maspero, I shall fell you to the ground!’
    M. Maspero chuckled. ‘Then I will not risk it. Come, ladies, and let me show you some of our finer objects. These are unimportant – a miscellany only.’
    ‘But they are most interesting,’ Evelyn said in her gentle voice. ‘I admire the soft colours of the jewellery.’
    ‘Ah, but these trinkets are not valuable – no gold, only beads and amulets, made of faience, common as sand. We find such bracelets and necklaces by the hundreds.’
    ‘Faience?’ Evelyn repeated. ‘Then the lovely coral, the delicate blue-green which resembles turquoise, are not the real stones?’
    The black-bearded male person had turned his back on us and was pretending to sneer at a collection of ushebtis; I knew he was eavesdropping, however. His brother was not so rude. The young fellow stood looking shyly at Evelyn, and when she asked about the jewellery he started to answer. The ebullient Maspero anticipated him.
    ‘Mais non, mademoiselle,
they are imitations of coral, turquoise, lapis lazuli, made from a coloured paste common in ancient Egypt.’
    ‘They are lovely, all the same,’ I said. ‘And the very age of them staggers the imagination. To think that these beads adorned the slim brown wrist of an Egyptian maiden four thousand years before our Saviour was born!’
    Blackbeard whirled around. ‘Three thousand years,’ he corrected. ‘Maspero’s chronology, like all his work, is inexcusably inaccurate!’
    Maspero smiled, but I think his next act was prompted to some extent by the annoyance he was too courteous to express directly. Lifting a necklace of tiny blue and coral beads, he handed it to Evelyn with a courtly bow.
    ‘Keep it as a memento of your visit, if you treasure such things. No, no’ – he waved away Evelyn’s protests – ‘it is of no consequence; I only regret I have nothing finer for such a charming lady. For you, too, Mademoiselle Peabody’ – and another string of beads was pressed into my hand.
    ‘Oh, but – ’ I began, with an uneasy glance at the black-bearded person, who was shaking like an engine about to burst.
    ‘Do me the honour,’ Maspero insisted. ‘Unless you fear the foolish tales of curses and avenging Egyptian ghosts – ’
    ‘Certainly not,’ I said firmly.
    ‘But what of the curses of M. Emerson?’ Maspero asked, his eyes twinkling.
‘Regardez
– he is about to say unkind things to me again.’
    ‘Never fear,’ Emerson snarled. ‘I am leaving. I can only stand so many minutes in this horror house of yours. In God’s name, man, why don’t you classify your pots?’
    He rushed off, pulling his slighter companion with him. The young fellow turned his head; his gaze went straight to Evelyn and remained fixed on her face until he had been removed from the room.
    ‘He has almost the Gallic temperament,’ said Maspero admiringly. ‘One observes the magnificence of his rages with respect.’
    ‘I cannot agree with you,’ I said. ‘Who is the fellow?’
    ‘One of your fellow countrymen, dear lady, who has interested himself in the antiquities of this country. He has done admirable work excavating, but I fear he does not admire the rest of us. You heard his abuse of my poor museum. He abuses my excavation methods with the same ardour. But, indeed, there is no archaeologist