Whitesell turned, put his hands to his mouth, and bellowed, “UDAIL! FETCH THE BLOCK AND TACKLE CRANE, PLEASE!”
A rapt Leighton gazed down at Holmes in pride and something like adoration. Holmes, busy determining the best way to free the amphora and hoist it intact once the crane had arrived, did not notice.
Phillips did, and glared down at the sleuth in hatred.
* * *
In short order, the heavy amphora was hoisted to ground level, and the group escorted it back to the artefact tent, where Professor Whitesell himself entered it into the records. The digger who had first uncovered part of it, one Ghali by name, tagged along behind. The amphora was carefully positioned upright in a wooden box, and the others stood back to gaze at it in a certain level of awe.
Udail turned to go back to the dig, and nearly fell over Ghali.
“Ghali! What are you doing here?!” he exclaimed. “Lazy dullard! You should be at work!”
“Master Holmes promised we should find out what was in it, once we got it out,” Ghali protested.
“So I did,” Holmes agreed. “Professor, with your permission?”
“By all means,” Whitesell agreed. “Let us find out.”
Holmes extracted his jack-knife from his waistcoat pocket, unfolded it, and delicately slid the blade down into the ancient, hardened beeswax, pressing the blade against the inside neck of the amphora, and began a kind of sawing motion, working his way around the seal. When he had completed the circuit, he withdrew the blade, wiping it on his handkerchief before folding it and dropping it back in his pocket. Then he took hold of the knob on top of the amphora lid, and looked at the others.
“It is many thousands of years old,” he warned, “and unlikely to be anything but rancid at best. It will not smell good,” he directed that last to Leighton, who nodded, backed up a step, and held her own lace-edged handkerchief to her nose. He lifted the cap.
A thick, gelatine-like sludge, a dark olive green, dripped sluggishly from the bottom of the stopper. Swiftly, Beaumont grabbed a nearby teacup, left there the day before by Phillips. He snatched the saucer from beneath and held it under the stopper, catching the torpid, viscous drop as it fell, leaving a string connecting it to the stopper for a brief moment.
Holmes dipped two fingers into the material, studying it briefly before holding it to his nose.
“Olive oil?” Whitesell queried.
“I believe so,” Holmes decided, then held his greasy fingers out for the Professor to sniff.
“Yes,” Whitesell confirmed, smelling the substance on Holmes’ fingers. “A full amphora of olive oil from pre-dynastic Egypt.”
“Which in turn proves that they had commerce with early Greece,” Beaumont pointed out. “A nice little find. Congratulations, Holmes, Ghali. Very nice indeed.”
Ghali looked delighted; Leighton beamed.
“Well, let’s get back to it,” a sullen Phillips declared.
* * *
Mid-afternoon that same day, as Holmes watched from a perch on a large sandstone outcrop, a turbaned head popped up from a dig pit, and a cry went out for Udail. Udail scurried to the location and climbed down the ladder into the pit. Loud, rapid jabbering in Arabic ensued, then Udail climbed halfway up the ladder and looked around.
“Dr. Beaumont!” he called, waving to the nearest member of the expedition’s scientific team. “Over here!”
Beaumont hurried over and climbed down, disappearing from sight. Moments later, his excited cry rang out over the dig site.
“C’est beau, ça!”34
Seconds later, his head reappeared above ground. He cupped his hands and shouted.
“WHITESELL! HOLMES! OVER HERE! COME AT ONCE! WE HAVE FOUND SOMETHING! C’EST MAGNIFIQUE!”35
The others, including Phillips and Nichols-Woodall, neither of whom had been summoned, broke into a run.
* * *
As Holmes reached the side of the pit with the others, he gazed down into it, to find an unknown digger, Udail, and Beaumont bending over a large stone block. It was some two feet wide by one and a half feet high and deep, heavily carved both with illustrations and with hieroglyphs; rather fewer of the latter than the former, and the images still had colouring upon them, various paints and stains bringing them to life.
“Oh, my word,” Whitesell whispered. “C’est magnifique, indeed…”
“There is a nice piece, and no mistake, Will,” Nichols-Woodall murmured to the Professor. “A capstone, maybe, or a foundational stone?”
“I will have to see it in its entirety to tell,” Whitesell answered. Leighton, having heard the shouting from her tent in camp, wandered up at that moment.
“Da? Uncle Parker? Is everything all right? I thought I heard shouting.”
“You certainly did. Young lady, have a look at this,” Nichols-Woodall said, placing a light hand around her shoulders and escorting her closer to the edge of the excavation, as he swept his other hand through the air in presentation. “What do you think of that?”
“Oh my!” Leighton exclaimed, eyes lighting up. “Look at the paintings! How pretty! It fairly brings the old Egyptians to life!”
“Oui, oui! Holmes, look, it has writing!” Beaumont exclaimed, Gallic blood coming to the fore in his excitement. “There are hieroglyphs upon it, though they appear to be somewhat fragmentary. Perhaps you can get information from it!”
Udail clambered back up the ladder until he could shout, “Ikhdar rafaah!”36 The order was echoed along the lines, and soon the crane, composed of heavy wooden beams, ropes, and a block and tackle, was wheeled over.
* * *
It took over an hour, but eventually the heavy stone block was manoeuvred into position to be hoisted from the pit, and the slow, cautious trundle to the artefact tent began. The scientific team went on ahead and prepared a corner of the tent; it was far too weighty for any of the tables.
When it finally arrived, the three archaeologists, or rather, two plus a student—namely Whitesell, Beaumont, and Phillips—began the delicate task of cleaning the stone without marring the painted illustrations or engravings. Fortunately only three sides of the rectangular stone appeared to be inscribed; there were signs that the other side, as well as the top and bottom, had been originally placed against other stones as part of a structure. Nichols-Woodall used these unmarked faces to ascertain that the stone was indeed of the local rocks, likely taken from the principal mountain at the rear of the box cañon. Holmes, though possessed of sufficient skill to assist in the cleaning, chose to stay back and let the others perform the task, content in the knowledge that his translation job was equally important.
As the dirt was carefully brushed away, Holmes studied the adornments on the stone. His thoughts were interrupted as Whitesell remarked on the same thing.
“Interesting pictographs, wouldn’t you say, Phillips?”
“Yes sir,” the younger man said. “What do you make of them, Professor?”
“I should say it is part of a victory depiction, wouldn’t you, Beaumont?”
“Yes. Or possibly a simple tribute representation,” Beaumont replied, considering. “We would need to see the entire mural to tell for certain, I think. But I see no weapons, so I should interpret it as tribute.”
“Yes, that is a possibility as well,” Whitesell said, running his fingertips through the air scant fractions of an inch above the drawings, as if he itched to touch them, but was afraid of damaging them. “Look. Here are Egyptians in the lead, Ethiopians, Greeks, Phoenicians…”
“It breaks to another block,” Phillips said.
“It does. Like Beaumont says, it appears to be part of a mural. Holmes, can you make anything of the hieroglyph inscription? It is likely to be as incomplete as the paintings, but perhaps we can glean something out of it.”
Holmes crouched before the stone and studied the glyphs.
“May I touch them, Professor?” he asked. “I should like to ensure that I am not missing any markings which may no long
er be visible.”
“Yes, I think that will be fine. I see no pigments which might be damaged, in the inscription areas,” the chief archaeologist gave permission.
Holmes ran light fingertips over the carvings, searching them out, ensuring that his eyes and his fingers were in agreement regarding what was there. After having slowly traced the entirety of the writing, he returned his right hand to the top of the stone, running his index finger down the text as he translated.
“It says, ‘Here lies Sekhen, never again to…’ then there is a break where the text would be on the lower stone. Then it picks up here with, ‘…the great Sekhen, who terrified the world.’” Holmes glanced up at Whitesell. “There is no doubt. It refers to Ka-Sekhen, and these glyphs are of the appropriate age. I would say this likely came from the lintel of the tomb itself, Professor.”
“So it would seem,” a delighted Whitesell agreed. “And so it is likely to have fallen from that same lintel, wouldn’t you say?”
“I would say so,” Nichols-Woodall allowed.
“So would I,” Holmes admitted.
“I suppose it makes sense,” Beaumont conceded after chewing his lip for a moment, in thought. “But it might still be wise to widen the search a bit, Whitesell. After all, we are in an area which sometimes experiences earthquakes, and periodic flash floods. It may not have ended up so very close to where it started out.”
“True, true,” Whitesell said. “Parker, you’re the geologist. I want you to have a look at the drainage of the valley, and try to get a feel for where this chunk of bowlder37 might have come from.”
“Of course, Will,” Nichols-Woodall averred. “I think I’ll climb up to that ledge I showed you a few days ago. Would you care to join me? I’ll bring the maps, and we can compare the view to them, try to figure this all out.”
“Capital plan. Would you object if I brought my daughter along? I think she might like the scenery, and the notion of a puzzle is sure to fascinate her.” Leighton, who had stayed carefully in the background, out of the way, beamed at the query.
“And it will get her out of her tent into the fresh air again, right?” the geologist replied, smiling at his informally-adopted niece.
“Precisely.” Whitesell laughed. “Thomas, would you supervise the digs? Just in case something else turns up? Have Udail sound the ship’s horn if you find anything, and Parker and I will come down straightaway.”
“Of course.”
“Leighton, Phillips, come with me. Holmes, feel free to add this little ‘clew’ to your list, and see what you can deduce.”
“By all means, Professor.”
And they split up.
* * *
Holmes fetched his sketch-book and added the location where the jamb stone was discovered to it. Then he sat for a long time, pondering the entries, trying to see some pattern in them, something that would point the way to Pharaoh Ka-Sekhen’s tomb.
Finally he rose and moved to the doorway, to look out over the digging grid at the work going on, lost in thought as he tried to make sense of it all.
He stayed there until the dinner gong sounded the warning.
* * *
“Come on, Sherry,” Leighton chirped, tugging on Holmes’ arm, as they all left the meal tent after dinner. “I want to show you the dig from above.”
“Leighton, where are you dragging Holmes off to now?” Whitesell wondered. “It will be full dark soon. It’s middling twilight already. Do behave, young lady.”
“Da! I’m just going to take him up to the ledge you and Uncle Parker showed me to-day. I want him to see the whole dig at once, like you showed me. I think he’ll like the… what did you call it? ‘Bird’s-eye view’?”
“Oh,” Phillips attempted a protest, “you don’t want to be climbing a mountain path in the dark, Leigh. It’s too dangerous. And Mr. Holmes doesn’t know his way around that well as yet. I’ll take you, if you insist.”
“Silly,” she told him. “The moon is rising, and it is nearly full. We shall have plenty of light. Look!” She pointed east, where the great yellow circle of the moon loomed over the dark green oasis that marked the Nile on the near horizon. “Besides, we can always take carbide lamps. And I only want to get caught up with Sherry! It’s been so long! We’ve so much to talk about!”
“Surely you’ve already had plenty of ‘catching up,’ Leigh,” Phillips protested. “God only knows, you’re together all the time, it seems.”
“No, Landers! You don’t understand!” Leighton exclaimed, frustrated. “Sherry and I… he was my best friend, Landers. Mama had only just died, Da was hurting, I could see that, but I was so lonely, and… and Sherry was always there…”
“But you were only a child, Leigh.”
“But I’m not now, Landers. I want to get to know Sherry as an adult, as one adult to another.”
“True,” Whitesell agreed, considering. “And Holmes will keep you safe, like he always has. Very well. Off with you both.”
A frustrated Holmes, who had been unable to get a word in edgewise to protest, cast a weary, jaded glance at Watson, just before he was pulled into the darkness outside the tents.
* * *
The path up to the shelf on the mountainside proved surprisingly easy, which was as well, as an enthusiastic Leighton fairly dragged the sleuth up it. Holmes brought along a dark lantern, and Leighton had affixed spare carbide lamps to their pith helmets with leather straps. Soon enough they were on the broad ledge overlooking the archaeological site. The moon, now a paler cast of amber than before, rose high in the east, shedding a soft light over everything before them.
“Look, Sherry,” Leighton piped. “Oh, I knew it would look even prettier by moonlight! See? Isn’t it lovely?”
“It is,” Holmes admitted, studying the terrain below them. “It is also a fascinating perspective of the site. One which may well help me see everything with fresh eyes.”
“And the company is divine, too. I do so love being with you, Sherry.”
Holmes took that in, and remained silent, feeling her hand still gripping his. After a few minutes, she slid her hand up, into the crook of his elbow, and hugged it possessively. He closed his eyes briefly, drawing a deep, considering breath, and debated how to do what he knew now that he must do. I have let the matter run on for too long as it is, he decided. I wished neither to hurt her, nor to insult her father, but there is no longer any help for it. Watson was right; her natural affections are getting out of hand. I have used every subtle means at my disposal to indicate my predilections, but either she is not so subtle, or she is ignoring them. He drew another deep breath, and planned his wording carefully.
“Leighton,” Holmes began quietly after several more moments, as they surveyed the moonlit dig from the top of the cliff, “this will not do.”
“What? What are you talking about, Sherry? What won’t do?” Leighton threw him a coquettish smile, leaning into him. “It’s a lovely evening, with delightful companionship. Don’t you think?”
“I am no fool, Leigh. And while I am flattered, I will not be… seduced.” He stood stiffly, refusing to allow her to get comfortable against his side. Leighton’s smile faded.
“You… but, but I thought… so you don’t really find me… you don’t think I’m…”
“It has nothing to do with that,” Holmes said, still quiet, but firm. “I did not come here for a… an exotic affair, nor would I permit such a thing.”
Leighton cast him a pained glance, then dropped her gaze to the excavation far below, withdrawing her arm from his.
“Then… are you and… and the docto—”
“NO,” Holmes said firmly. “We are friends, he and I—and that is not an appellation I ever use lightly. But Watson is quite firmly… attracted… to the ladies, and such matters are illegal in England—and Egypt—in any event, which makes it a thing wholly inappropriate to a consulting detective whose clients include Scotland Yard, even were I inclined to such doings. And that is not what I me
ant, and I think you know it. My work does not permit of such distractions, Leigh. I will not allow it. Not even for you.”
“But… but… we were so close…”
“And you were a child, and I was of age.”
“Just barely.”
“Still. It is not the same, Leighton.”
“Are… are we at least… friends?”
“We are, and ever shall be.” Holmes allowed his voice to gentle. “Just as are your father and I. If ever either of you should find yourselves in need, you have but to call, and I will come to your aid, to the best of my abilities. As I said, that is not an appellation I use lightly. But Leigh… nothing more.” He shook his head slowly, decisively; then drew a deep breath and pressed his lips together in thought. “If it is a… a holiday romance you are after,” he began, still considering, “or more, I believe I know someone who might be willing to oblige. And I can personally vouch for his upstanding character as a gentleman.”
“Who? Oh, your friend the doctor?”
“Yes. I have noticed him… watching you, discreetly. And he has admired your beauty to me, several times. Always very delicately, wishing neither to dishonour you, nor to offend me, should it prove that you and I were… involved. If you would like me to… ahem, arrange…”
Leighton sighed.
“He’s not you, Sherry.”
“No. But I am not the ‘Sherry’ you remember, either.”
“I suppose not. Let… let me think about it.”
“Very well.”
Leighton turned to him. Concern was writ large in the green eyes.
“Sherry?”
“Mm?”
“Is… is that all of it? The… your profession. I mean,” she stumbled over her words, “I remember once, you coming by our home—I hadn’t known you long—and you were very sad. So terribly sad; the look in your eyes made me want to cry. I tried to get you to play with me, and you did attempt to, but your heart wasn’t in it—even I could tell that, young as I was. After you left, I asked Da what was wrong. I thought I’d done something to make you angry… a-and he said a woman had hurt you, but it wasn’t me, it was a grown-up. I…”
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