The Last Camel Died at Noon by Elizabeth Peters Read Free Book Online Page B

none; she would have felt none. No, the pity I felt was for Willie Forth. The idea of taking a frozen statue like that into one's arms, into one's... Er, hmmm. You understand me, Peabody.'

    I felt myself blushing. 'Yes, Emerson, I do. Yet one can't help but feel for her. She can have had no idea of what she was about to experience.'

    'I tried to tell her. Forth had collapsed onto the bed and lay snoring, with both hands clenched over the box that contained the armlet. I spoke to her like a brother, Peabody; I told her she was mad to go, that he was madder to let her. I might have been speaking to a chryselephantine statue. At last she intimated that my presence displeased her, so I left, and I am sorry to say I slammed the door behind me. That was the last I saw of either of them.'

    'But the map, Emerson,' I said. 'When did you - '

    'Oh.' Emerson coughed. 'That. Well, curse it, Peabody, I'd had a few friendly drinks myself, and I'd been reading some of the medieval Arabic writers...'

    'The Book of Hidden Pearls?'

    Emerson grinned sheepishly. 'Confound you, Peabody, you're always a step or two ahead of me. It's that rampageous imagination of yours. But there is often a germ of truth in the most fantastic of legends. I am quite willing to believe that there are unknown oases in the western desert, far to the south of the known oases of Egypt. Wilkinson names three, in his book published in 1835; he had heard about them from the Arabs. The people of Dakhla - one of the known oases in southern Egypt - tell tales of strangers, tall black men, who came out of the south. And El Bekri, who wrote in the eleventh century, described a giantess who was captured at Dakhla; she spoke no known language, and when she was released, so that her captors could not track her to her home, she outran them and escaped.'

    'Fascinating,' Evelyn breathed. 'But the Book of Hidden Pearls?'

    'Ah, there we enter into pure legend,' Emerson said, smiling affectionately at her. 'It is a magical work, written in the fifteenth century, containing stories of buried treasure. One such location is in the white city of Zerzura, where the king and queen lie asleep on their thrones. The key to the city is in the beak of a bird carved on the great gate; but you must take care not to wake the king and queen if you want the treasure.'

    'That is simply a fairy tale,' Walter said critically.

    'Of course it is. But Zerzura is mentioned in other sources; the name probably derives from the Arabic zarzar, meaning sparrow, so Zerzura is "the place of the little birds." And there are other stories, other clues...' Emerson's face took on the pensive, dreamy look few of his acquaintances are privileged to see. He likes to be thought of as a strictly rational man, who sneers at idle fancies, but in reality the dear fellow is as sensitive and sentimental as women are purported to be (though in my experience women are far more practical than men).

    'Are you thinking of Harkhuf?' Walter asked. 'It is true that that mystery has never been solved, at least not to my satisfaction. Where did he go on those expeditions of his, to procure the treasures he brought back to Egypt? Gold and ivory, and the dancing dwarf that so delighted the child-king he served... Then there are Queen Hatshepsut's voyages to Punt -'

    'Punt doesn't enter into it,' Emerson said. 'It must be somewhere on the Red Sea coast, east of the Nile. As for Harkhuf, that was over four thousand years ago. He may have followed the Darb el Arba'in... There, you see the fascination of such idle speculation? We speculated, and had those friendly drinks, and drew meaningless lines on a piece of paper. If Forth was fool enough to follow that so-called map, he deserved the unpleasant death that undoubtedly came to him. Enough of this.

    Peabody, why are you sitting there? Why haven't you risen from your chair to indicate that the ladies wish to retire?'

    This question was mean to provoke me; Emerson knew quite well