Valley of the Kings Read Online Free Page B

think you are the only man in Egypt who knows antiquities?”
    I had to stop; he was standing right in front of me. He cried, “Look! See the metal!” With his thumb he rubbed at the heavy black tarnish on one of the links, and a smutty gleam came through. “See how the links are joined! Twenty shilling!”
    I grinned at him. The price was falling faster than the old lady’s drawers. I said, “Clean another part of it, sheikh, ha? Or let me.”
    He yanked the necklace back out of range of my reaching hand again. His black eyes snapped with bad temper and bargaining zeal. For a moment we faced each other, he glaring at me, and I smiling at him.
    At last, he said, “Fifteen shilling.”
    â€œGet out of my way, sheikh.”
    He retreated, grumbling. I glanced behind me; the Countess and her maid, with Evelyn in among them, were watching me from the side of the lane. When they saw I was through with the old man, they started off down the lane again.
    As she passed me, the Countess murmured, “Was it a fake?”
    â€œDecidedly, my lady.”
    â€œOh—too bad.”
    Evelyn smiled at me triumphantly from the shelter of her mother’s grip. We went on down through the bazaar.
    Near Saïs was a well called the King’s Water, at the edge of a stretch of marsh called the King’s House. On the strength of this puzzling name, a number of diggers had explored in the area, and each dig yielded enough material reward to keep them coming—but no one yet had cleared anything major there.
    A large percentage of the artifacts uncovered at the site were from the Eighteenth Dynasty—Tutankhamun’s dynasty. Therefore, as long as I could not dig in the Valley of the Kings at Thebes, I dug in the King’s House.
    In the evening after I had gone with the ladies to the bazaar, while I was washing out some items of clothing in my tent, the old man who had tried to sell the necklace to me put his head in through the door.
    â€œCarter.”
    â€œYes, sheikh.” I wrung murky water out of my socks. The camp stool and the frame of my cot were draped in soggy undershorts and vests and the tent smelled dreary. “One moment,” I said to the old man, and took my smoking old lantern off the table and went out of doors to talk to him.
    He was not alone. Three or four other men loitered in the shadows beyond my tent, keeping well away from the light. On the other side of my tent were the tents of Carnarvon and his people and servants and the diggers. As I emerged from my own doorway, Carnarvon’s voice said something sharply in the nearby tent, and there was a burst of answering laughter.
    The old man and his friends drew me off into the dark a little way. We stood at the edge of the marsh. The moon was up, gleaming on the still water pooled among the rushes. I trod carefully on the uneven ground, where I had more than once put down my left foot on solid earth and my right down into the black muck.
    â€œCarter,” the old man said, “is this a fake?”
    His teeth showed in a broad grin. He held out a figure no larger than my hand, and when I took it, made no effort to keep it back. Lifting the lantern, I bathed the object in the indifferent light.
    It was a statue of a lion, made of soft, pale stone. I turned it over, impressed with the workmanship. On the bottom was a mark. I looked closer, and my hackles rose. It was the pharaonic cartouche of Tutankhamun.
    â€œWhere did you find this?”
    The old man retrieved the lion. “We will show you. Yes? You and the Bey.”
    I swung the lantern back and forth, mulling this over. Something was out of joint in the whole business. “How much?” I said.
    The men glanced at one another. The four Egyptians who had come with the old fellow stood close together, and whenever my light threatened to expose them, they withdrew from it. The old man turned back to me.
    â€œOne hundred shilling