Beni gestured with open arms. “We should not compete, Rick—we’re friends, comrades . . .”
“Go to hell, you little weasel.”
Beni’s eyes glittered in the moonlight. “I’ve been to hell, Rick—and so have you. Treasure takes me back there; what’s your excuse? After all, greed isn’t what makes you tick.”
Below them, someone, a female someone, yelped.
O’Connell looked over the railing and saw Evelyn, who had been walking alongside where the barge was being towed, specifically near the paddock of camels and horses, moving away from a camel who was apparently craning his long neck onto the deck to have a nip at her. She yelped as the camel tried again, and scurried toward her cabin.
O’Connell returned his attention to Beni, who was grinning at him with narrow-eyed knowingness.
“Rick, Rick, Rick . . . the ladies, Rick. They’ll be the death of you.”
“Yeah. But what a way to go.”
Beni didn’t disagree with that. “So—we part friends? No hard feelings?”
“Naw. Good-bye, Beni.”
“Good-bye? You mean, ‘good night,’ don’t you?”
“No, I mean good-bye,” O’Connell said, and he grabbed the little man by his pajamalike garments and chucked him over the side, where Beni went sailing and flailing and howling into the Nile, making quite a splash.
O’Connell picked up his gunnysack, and walked down the stairs to the lower deck, heading to his own cabin. Out on the Nile, Beni was treading desperately, his face distorted with rage.
His voice echoed across the water: “You will pay, Rick! Oh, how you will pay!”
O’Connell regarded Beni and his threats with mild surprise: He hadn’t been aware the little bastard could swim.
That was when he noticed the four sets of footprints—very wet footprints—as if someone, four someones actually, had climbed up and over the railing from the river. The footprints trailed down the deck, and—O’Connell ascertained, with a glance over the side—a narrow skiff, tied up to the boat, awaited the return of the group that had secretly boarded the Ibis.
And O’Connell—seeing where these wet footsteps headed—dug into his gunnysack.
7
Midnight Swim
In the glow of a kerosene lamp on her nightstand, Evelyn Carnahan, who found the accommodations of her small cabin quite acceptable, was studying her reflection in the mirror of the dressing table, where she was seated, preparing for bed. The white nightgown only hinted at the shapeliness underneath, her arms and shoulders bare, the swell of her breasts providing the most telling evidence of her pulchritude, with its scoop neckline.
Evelyn did not think of herself as particularly attractive, or unattractive, for that matter: She had little interest in men. She had wanted to walk in her father’s footsteps and, so, had chosen a career; she was a feminist—a New Woman.
But something was stirring within her, and it was the doing of that American cad O’Connell. He was impertinent and boorish and had simply the most divine blue eyes, and the way that lock of his hair hung over his forehead was just . . .
She smirked at herself, for such schoolgirlish feelings. But the warmth of that kiss, the soft sensual mouth of that ruffian, lingered in her sense memory. What was it he’d said at the prison? Maybe if she let her hair down she wouldn’t be a total loss?
Unpinning her long brown hair, she gave her head a good shake, unleashing a torrent of tresses, which fell loose to her bare shoulders. She sat and brushed it and thought about O’Connell, and then scolded herself for doing so, then thought about him some more.
Distracted, she knocked several hairpins onto the floor and bent to pick them up. When she returned to her sitting position at the mirror, the reflection in it had changed.
Standing right behind her was a grotesque male intruder with a wicked-looking hook where a hand once had been, and flesh that wore the puzzlelike tattoos of an ancient sect thought lost to the sands of time and the desert. The hieroglyph markings could be seen everywhere skin was exposed: the narrow, angular face framed by a black sphinx-like headdress; his bare chest crisscrossed with leather straps; and even the muscular legs under the black kilt, whose waistband bore both dagger and, in a modern non sequitur, revolver.
Her surprise at having her cabin invaded was heightened by her instant awareness that her uninvited guest was a Med-jai; but all of this registered in such an eyeblink that the intruder had slipped a moist palm over her mouth before she could scream, and in the mirror she could see her own widened eyes as the hook was raised, poised to strike.
But he did not strike.
He whispered, in a rough-edged voice made melodious by his accent: “The map! I will have the map . . .”
Reflexively, her eyes went to the map, which lay spread out upon a table in the flickering glow of a candle nearby.
“Good, good . . . And the key? I will have the key.”
Did he mean the puzzle box?
She would not give this up so easily, hidden under the bed as it was, the gold glint of it visible in the mirror at this moment—if one knew where to look for it. Evelyn met his eyes, in the mirror, shaking her head “no,” shrugging her shoulders, feigning no knowledge.
“Tell me where the key is, or you will die.”
She shook her head: no, no, no!
And hard dark eyebrows in a tattooed face lifted in a little shrug, and the hand with the hook drew back for its death blow.
The cabin door behind them exploded under a splintering kick, and there, in the mirror’s reflection, was O’Connell!
O’Connell, a gun in either hand, his eyes tight, jaw firm, a bloody hero! If she hadn’t loved him before, she certainly loved him now . . .
“Hope I’m not interrupting you lovebirds,” he said.
The impertinent cad!
The hooked Med-jai grabbed her by the shoulders, spinning her around, making a human shield of her, the point of his hook dimpling her throat.
For several endless moments, the standoff turned the two men and the woman into a frozen tableau promising violence. Then a candle flickered on the table, where the map lay spread out, and O’Connell whirled on a now open window, which had let in the candle-flickering breeze and allowed another of the warriors to lean in, with a revolver in hand, blasting away, O’Connell ducking as wood chips flew off the wall in a splintery shower.
Held captive by the hooked Med-jai, Evelyn watched in horrified amazement as O’Connell calmly aimed at the warrior in the window and shot twice. The warrior caught both bullets in the chest and fell awkwardly over the sill, firing as he died, one of his wild shots shattering the kerosene lantern on the wall, which was almost instantly engulfed in flames.
Her captor had been watching this with as much surprise and amazement as Evelyn had, and the point of his hook drew away from her throat just enough that she could risk reaching out to pluck the burning candle from the table beside her, which she did, and, in an action so quick and savage she could barely believe she’d done it, Evelyn jammed that candle, flame and all, back over her shoulder, into the Med-jai’s face, cramming it into his right eye, and he screeched in pain, pain that so overwhelmed him, he released his grip upon her, and she bolted away, into O’Connell’s grasp, the room around them a crackling inferno of blue and orange and yellow flames.
Then Evelyn felt herself being yanked into the hallway, and O’Connell, gun in one hand, the other one stuck in his belt, pulled the splintered door shut, and began dragging her along, but she stopped and said, “Wait!”
He frowned at her. “What?”
She pulled free of him, and pointed back where fingers of smoke were finding their way around the closed door of her cabin. “The map! We need the map!”
“Relax, baby,” he grinned at her, and tapped his forehead with a finger. “This is the map.”
“How very reassuring.”
“You’re welcome for saving your hide.”
And he grabbed her hand again
, and pulled her along; but she pulled free again and said, “Wait!”
“Jesus! What?”
“The puzzle box is still in there! It’s under the bed!”
“Why, you want to go back in after it?”
“The Med-jai was after the map and the box!”
“The what?”
“Mr. O’Connell . . .”
“No time for this, baby,” he said, and grabbed her hand again, and pulled her along.
“I’m not your ‘baby’!”
He ignored that. “We better find your brother . . . There’s at least two more of those bastards aboard.”
“And if I’m a target,” she breathed, “so is Jonathan!”
They headed out on deck, and did not see behind them, coming down the hallway from the other direction, the man they were looking for: Jonathan Carnahan.
Jonathan was saying, “Good lord, smoke!”, which he had smelled, then saw, leeching out from around the door to his sister’s cabin, a ruptured door that seemed to be somewhat the worse for wear.
What the hell was happening?
Still, he managed to shove it open, and did not realize that in so doing, he had slammed the door into the upturned buttocks of the hooked Med-jai, who—risking his life in the burning room, but pledged to fulfill his purpose—had been on his hands and knees, searching for the golden puzzle box.
“Evy!” Jonathan cried, looking in, seeing nothing but flames, relieved that his sister was nowhere in sight; then he noticed the golden glint of the puzzle box, just under the bed . . .
Braving the smoke and flames, he had just bent down to pick up the artifact, when tattooed fingers snatched it from his grasp.
“I say,” Jonathan began crossly, “that’s mine . . .”
And Jonathan looked around to see a hideous Arab warrior with a hook for a hand and melted-wax covering his face, whose back was on fire, like a peacock trailing its feathers.
Summoning courage he didn’t know he had, Jonathan snatched the puzzle box back, and the hooked warrior howled in rage, weaving in pain. The warrior, somewhat blindly, began clutching at the pistol in his waistband, and Jonathan, who often had to be told when to leave a party, needed no prompting on this occasion.
He scrambled out of the burning cabin, bullets chewing up the hallway woodwork where he’d just been, and ran out onto the deck, portside, looking for his sister.
But Evelyn and O’Connell were on the starboard side of the Ibis, where the walkway along the rail was clogged with screaming, hysterical passengers—the fire hadn’t spread yet, but panic certainly had.
And it had spread as well to the animals on the paddock of the barge lashed alongside the steamer. The camels and horses were restless, to say the least; the former braying and stirring, the latter whinnying, rearing, kicking, bumping against the locked gate between the Ibis deck and the barge. The second-class and third-class passengers were already abandoning ship, leaping into the water, swimming for shore.
“We have to find Jonathan!” Evelyn said, as O’Connell embraced her, keeping her away from the shoving, pushing crowd.
“Head for the bow,” O’Connell said, nodding in that direction. “He was in the bar, last I saw him!”
A gunshot cracked the air, notching the wall just over Eveyln’s head, showering them with wood chips; she gasped, and O’Connell pulled her down, then pivoted and returned fire, toward the stern of the ship, where another of those tattooed devils was firing a revolver at them, more wood fragments exploding over and around them.
Then one of the Med-jai’s bullets caught a kerosene lantern, hanging on the wall just above and to their left, and the wall was soon dancing with orange and blue flame.
And the Med-jai was advancing down the deck toward them, training his revolver on them.
“We’re sitting ducks!” O’Connell said, glancing frantically around as he reloaded a revolver. Behind them, toward the bow, the walkway was jammed with panicking passengers, shouting, and coughing with the spreading smoke.
There was nowhere to go, not even into the water, with those flared-nostril, kicking, penned-up animals between them and the shore.
Suddenly O’Connell grinned tightly, and fired his revolver—not toward their assailant, but at the barge beside them!
Evelyn thought him mad till he fired again and she realized what he was doing: shooting the lock off the paddock gate!
The horses, driven even wilder by the gunfire, kicked the gate open and began charging forward, onto the deck, O’Connell grabbing onto that gate and guiding the stampede toward the warrior, who screamed in terror and then in pain as the hooves pounded over him, crushing him, pulping him.
The flames were stampeding, too, racing up and down and across the walls, the upper deck consumed by flames, the awning blazing like a banner in the night.
More passengers were starting to leap into the Nile, swimming for the nearest shore; the way to the bow was no longer clogged by the panicking mob. O’Connell slung his gunnysack over his shoulder and guided Evelyn in that direction.
They were not aware that Jonathan was stranded, port-side, caught by three Americans who blocked the way, standing there like three idiots at a target range, blasting everything in sight, their Egyptologist professor cowering behind them like a frightened schoolboy. Their target—another of those villains, down at the bow—was returning fire, no more successfully than the Americans.
“Bloody wild West show,” Jonathan muttered, pondering whether to go over the side and swim for shore. He didn’t witness the Americans finally succeeding, blowing their quarry over the railing, as Jonathan—still hoping to find his sister—had turned to see if he might go back in the other direction . . .
. . . and a flaming man was advancing upon him!
A flaming man with wild eyes and a hook for a hand raised to do him no bloody good at all . . .
“Duck!” someone cried.
Jonathan ducked and a volley of bullets flew over his head, as the gunfire of the Americans hit the hooked flaming warrior like a firing squad’s barrage, sending him toppling over the railing, into the Nile, where the fire finally went out.
“Wild West indeed!” Jonathan exulted. “Jolly good show!”
But the Americans were looking at him with wide eyes, terrified suddenly, as if Jonathan were one of those dreadful scoundrels, and then the blighters were running off toward the bow like scared puppies, only their footsteps sounded like a bloody stampede of horses.
And then Jonathan realized those were indeed hoofbeats, accompanied by frenzied whinnying, and turned to see the wild beasts pounding toward him, toward the bow, and he ran.
The Americans had turned the corner and leaped from the starboard bow, but Jonathan dove in, from portside, wondering what had become of his poor sister and that American chap.
• • •
On the starboard side, where O’Connell had come upon more passengers diving into the drink, he and Evelyn bumped into their unwanted business partner, the warden of Cairo prison, waiting his turn. O’Connell turned his back to the man.
“Swim to the far bank,” he told Evelyn.
Everyone else was swimming to the near bank.
“Why?” she asked.
“You can swim, can’t you?”
“Certainly, if the occasion calls for it.”
Around them were billowing smoke, leaping flames, screams, shouts, pounding hoofbeats, braying, whinnying.
“I’m going to go out on limb here,” he said, “and say the occasion calls for it.”
He picked her up in his arms, as if he were the groom and she the bride and the railing of the ship their threshold.
“Put me down!” she demanded.
He did—pitching her over the side, into the Nile. Then he dove in after her.
The water was freezing; it shocked Evelyn, chilling her body to the bone even as her mind wondered how a desert river could be so blasted cold. She dogpaddled for a moment, gasping for breath, looking about her
, seeing all those people, and animals, too, swimming for the near shore.
But O’Connell was stroking toward the far shore.
She followed him, and soon was clambering up onto the riverbank, pleased to see her brother standing there with O’Connell, both of them dripping wet, shivering with cold—but alive.
Her nightgown clung to her, and it did not occur to her that her every physical attribute was on display, at least not until she saw O’Connell standing there, with his mouth open, river water running down his face like drool, as he drank in the sight of her.
Wringing out her nightgown, she said, “Get your mind out of the gutter! We’ve lost everything, you fool! All of our equipment, our tools . . .”
“Not everything,” O’Connell said, and nodded toward his gunnysack at his feet.
Then Warden Hassan came crawling out of the water, like a big fish beaching itself.
“I took your advice about swimming to this bank,” the warden said, grinning greenly.
“I’m so glad you didn’t drown,” O’Connell said.
The flaming Ibis was drifting up the Nile with the current, going back the way they’d come, already starting to sink. Across the way, the passengers had made it to shore, and a skinny man in a red fez and black shirt and pants was working with the Americans to round up the horses and camels; the animals were tired and wet and easily tamed.
“We lost the map,” Evelyn told Jonathan, glumly.
“Ah, but we still have this,” her brother said, and withdrew from his shirt the gold puzzle box. “Did I panic? I should say not.”
“Nice going,” O’Connell said to him, and Jonathan beamed at the praise.
“Hey, Rick!” a voice called, echoing across the river.
It was the skinny man in the red fez.
“Who is that dreadful person?” Evelyn asked O’Connell.
“Oh, he’s my pal,” O’Connell said dryly, as dryly as a soaking wet man could manage, anyway. “We go way back—clear to Hamanaptra.”
“Oh, dear. He must be working with the Americans!”
“Yeah. Another legionnaire deserter. Maybe we can talk the warden into hanging him for us.”
The Mummy Page 8