“She is French, after all. And she has a peculiar familiarity with Kiya, that woman you identified on the stolen fragment.”
“Does she? Well it was Rousseau who discovered her tomb, I suppose, and that of her husband. It is not uncommon for those who find themselves the first person to stand in somebody’s funerary chamber in three thousand years to feel a certain affinity or protectiveness over the persons interred. I have not discovered any mummies myself, alas, but there it stands.”
“Anyway, she wants Kiya’s mummy shipped to Paris before it falls into Maspero’s hands and winds up in his cluttered basement.”
“Hmm. And you are willing to aid in this illegal act? She had no concession to dig there, you know.”
“I see no reason not to help her. You yourself said that the cataloguing system at the Bulaq Museum leaves a lot to be desired. And Eleanor has connections in Paris. She could ensure that Kiya’s remains would receive the very best treatment and not be kept boxed up in some damp basement.”
“I agree with all that you are saying, Lazarus, but I wonder at what you are not saying. We met this Rousseau woman little over a week ago and you are leaping to aid her. I have to wonder why.”
Lazarus was momentarily lost for words. “Well, she’s a fellow Egyptologist trying to do the best in a less than ideal situation. Why not help her?”
“And the fact that she is incredibly beautiful has nothing to do with it?”
“Honestly, Flinders, what do you take me for?”
“And that she is Henry Thackeray’s fiancé is also irrelevant?”
“Why on earth would it be relevant? You know that Henry and I have not been on the best of terms in recent years. Why would I rush to help his fiancé?”
“Why indeed? I hope that you are not romantically involved with her.”
Lazarus set his glass down a little too heavily. “You go too far, Flinders.”
“Then I apologies. It’s just that she is so very beautiful and you do seem to have met her privately on more than one occasion. After dark...”
“For God’s sake, Flinders! I need to convince her to come back to England with me. that’s my mission! I... oh, confound the whole ruddy matter! I can’t lie to you, Flinders. I am romantically involved with her. Worse, in love with her.”
“Bloody hell!” said Petrie, putting down his glass. “I thought there was something fishy about the whole thing! Does she return your affections?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“Well, you’re a cad of course, but I expect you know that. I just hope your reasons for loving each other are true and not borne of something uglier.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, she needs your help and you need hers. And you despise her fiancé. Do you not think that might play a factor?”
“Come off it! I’m not playing with her to spite Henry!”
“I’m not saying that you are, I’m just making you aware of the possibility. I... what was that?”
His head had jerked around to look at the window. Lazarus had not seen anything. “What was what?”
“A shadow just moved past the window.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t the curtains moving in the breeze?”
“Quite sure. Something flitted past, like a bloody quick cloud.”
They went to the window and opened it wider. Nobody in the bustle of Opera Square below appeared to have noticed anything unusual up on the face of the Grand Hotel. They cast their eyes along the rows of windows, some lit up by the occupants of their rooms and others left dark. From the sill of one of these unlit ones, a figure emerged, a long black cloak concealing its form, flapping wraith-like in the hot night air.
“There!” said Petrie, flinging out a finger.
They watched the figure move up the side of the hotel with astonishing agility, apparently finding hand and foot holds in the bare stone.
“It’s heading around the corner!” said Petrie.
“Katarina!” Lazarus exclaimed and ducked back inside, drawing his revolver.
“I’ll get mine,” said Petrie, heading over to his wardrobe.
They hurried out of the room and down the Brussels-carpeted corridors towards the stairwell. An alarmed couple let out a cry at the sight of their drawn revolvers.
Taking the steps three at a time, they ascended to the upper floor where Katarina’s room was. Lazarus knew the number, although he had never called on her in her room, and led the way around another corner. He hammered on the door with a bunched fist. Katarina took her time in opening it, Lazarus cursing her slowness all the way. At last her face appeared and it did not look impressed by the late intrusion.
Lazarus said nothing, but elbowed both the door and Katarina aside, storming into the room and leveling his pistol at the open window.
“What on earth are you playing at now, Longman?” Katarina demanded. She was wearing her silk negligee.
“Get her out of here, Flinders,” said Lazarus, not taking his eyes off the window.
“What do you mean, ‘get me out of here’?” Katarina demanded.
“No time to argue. That creature has tracked you down to the hotel and is currently scaling the wall in an attempt to get in.”
Katarina showed a slight loss of color in her cheeks. But before she could recover herself, Petrie was tugging at her elbow and hauling her out of the room. “We had better go, my dear,” he said. “Let Lazarus tackle this thing.”
The shape appeared at the window like a thing from a nightmare, its iron claws clutching the wooden sill and digging deep scars into it. Its monstrous face, all rotten bandages and shriveled flesh with gaping, eyeless sockets, leered in as if sniffing for want of sight.
Lazarus waited until it had hauled its torso up onto the sill so he could get a proper shot at its heart. The green gas-filled orb was obscured by its cloak and so he guessed, squeezing the trigger and sending a bullet ripping through cloth, bandage and flesh.
“Damn!” he cursed. “Missed by an inch!”
Reeling backwards, the mummy regained its clutch on the sill and squirmed forward with even more rapidity, slithering into the room like an eel. Lazarus fired again and again, trying to keep cool and focus as the monster came towards him, its joints letting out jets of steam. He backed out into the hallway and slammed the door shut.
“That’ll never hold it in!” said Katarina.
“Of course not. Now help me move this couch.”
They dragged the piece of hallway furniture up to the door just as it began to open under the pressure of the creature on the other side. They jammed the walnut rim of the couch under the door handle, but a further hurl of the creature forced it back.
“Christ, but he’s strong!” said Petrie.
The feet of the couch were caught in the thick carpet and kept the door wedged shut. They found other items to pile up—a potted plant, a grandfather clock and a rolled up rug from the other hallway—and shoved them into position, barricading the creature in the room. Evidently possessing some degree of intelligence, the creature decided that it was useless to persist hurling itself against the obstacle. The great thuds and splintering cracks of the wood subsided.
“He’ll no doubt vacate the room and look for another way in,” said Lazarus.
“But that could be any room in the hotel!” said Katarina.
“Then we’ll just have to outwit him,” said Lazarus. “And that shouldn’t be too hard. Our prime concern is getting you to a safe spot.”
“I’d be better able to look after myself if only you had let me fetch my pistol,” Katarina snapped.
“There wasn’t time,” said Lazarus. “Come on, I know where I can take you.”
There were cries of alarm at the gunshots, and the few brave heads that peered out of their rooms vanished quickly at the sight of two armed men escorting a scantily-clad female down the corridor. They arrived at a door and Katarina groaned with dismay.
“Please tell me we’re not doing this.”
Lazarus hammered on the door, which was promptly answered by the mustachioed face of Baron von Eichendorf. His bushy eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Good lord, were you involved in that shooting just now, Longman? I heard the shots and was just looking for my service revolver when...” he caught sight of Katarina in her silk negligee. “I say! Perhaps you’d better come in. All of you I mean! We can’t leave this young lady standing around in the corridor in such a state. I have a gown that is yours, madam.”
“Thank you,” Katarina mumbled as they entered the room. The Baron draped a thick, quilted gown of brown silk over her shoulders.
“Now what the devil is it all about, hmm?” said von Eichendorf as he poured all three of them some brandy.
“Miss Mikolavna’s friend has returned, I fear,” said Lazarus, accepting the brandy gratefully and gulping it down. “He broke into her room through the window. We were able to get her out in time and barricade him in, but I believe he has found a way out and is stalking the corridors of the hotel looking for her.”
“That bounder doesn’t take no for an answer, does he?” exclaimed the Baron. He fitted his monocle into place and knocked off the rest of his drink. “There’s not a moment to lose, then. Miss Mikolavna shall remain here while we scour the hotel for this character and put a stop to him once and for all. The police will be on their way no doubt, but they are much too tardy for us all to wait around while this maniac is on the loose.” He slotted several eleven millimeter cartridges into his Prussian Reichsrevolver and cocked it.
“Flinders, I want you to remain here with Katarina,” said Lazarus.
“But, old friend...” said Petrie in a valiant show of courage.
“The Baron and I are military men,” said Lazarus, “and somebody needs to be here should the monster slip past us or get in at her through the window again.”
“Monster is right,” said von Eichendorf. “Fellow needs to be put out of his misery if you ask me.”
“You have no idea,” said Lazarus. “Take my word for it and aim for the heart. He is remarkably robust and you may not get a second chance.”
They stepped out into the corridor and Petrie shot the bolt on the door behind them. The corridors were deserted. As they advanced down them, they could almost smell the fear from the occupied rooms.
“What if this fellow has gone downstairs?” von Eichendorf asked. “There’s plenty of innocent people down in the ballroom and restaurant.”
“He’ll be up here somewhere,” Lazarus assured him.
There came a scream of terror from somewhere nearby.
“Told you.”
They broke into a run and rounded the corner to find a lady in an evening dress lying in a swoon in her husband’s arms.
“Which way?” Lazarus asked.
The man stuck out a trembling finger towards the top floor bar.
“Plenty of innocent people in there, too,” said Lazarus as they headed up the steps to the lounge bar.
The people within were sitting quietly, evidently shocked by the sounds they had been hearing throughout the hotel, and were doing their best to wash away their fear with strong spirits. Lazarus scanned the room. They were mostly Europeans, sitting in small groups, dressed in their evening attire. They went up to the bar where an Egyptian in a tarboosh was serving drinks.
“There is trouble afoot, as you are no doubt aware,” Lazarus said to the barman in a quiet tone. “And it’s most likely coming this way. Do you have any firearms to hand?”
The barman’s eyes grew wide at this.
“Come now, man, my friend is serious,” said von Eichendorf.
The Egyptian nodded and fumbled with a key in his pocket, then disappeared into a back room.
Lazarus overheard some bore at a table near the door; “Why in God’s name have they started letting bloody gippie women in here? The staff are quite tolerable but do we have to put up with their wives sauntering around here in their morbid garb, or has she just wandered in off the street to beg? I’ll give her bloody baksheesh if she comes back!”
Lazarus’s eyes swiveled. The cloaked form exited the bar and swung the double doors shut behind it. “Quick!” he yelled, whacking his knuckles against von Eichendorf’s barrel chest.
They slammed against the doors which didn’t give an inch. There was the sound of wrenching iron in the corridor beyond. Lazarus hauled on the handles but found the doors jammed fast. People were rising from their seats behind them.
“Crafty bugger,” said von Eichendorf.
”Yes,” Lazarus agreed. “First we locked him in and now he has returned the favor.”
“Gentlemen, if you please!” said the bartender, approaching with a twelve gram William Powell and Son double-barreled shotgun in his hand. Lazarus and von Eichendorf dived for cover as he aimed it where the two doors joined, and fired off both rounds. The wood flew away in splinters. Sparks briefly showed from where the pellets tore through whatever iron implement the creature had fastened the doors with.
Coughing through the smoke, Lazarus booted the doors open and stepped out into the corridor, sweeping left and right with his revolver. The mangled remains of a cast iron coat rack lay in two halves on either side of the door. That the long implement had been twisted by some incredibly powerful force around the door handles elicited a great deal of discussion from the men and women who were filing out into the corridor.
“Bloody superhuman!” he head one of them say.
They heard gunshots from the other side of the floor and broke into a run. “Damn!” Lazarus said. “He tricked us into the bar and now he’s headed back to get at Katarina.”
They headed towards von Eichendorf’s room, and found the door smashed open and the room empty.
“This way!” said the Baron, heading for the stairwell where the sounds of a struggle could be heard.
There they found Petrie engaged with the creature, his face slowly turning purple as the iron claws dug into his neck. It was trying to force him backwards over the banister where fifty feet of open space yawned behind him.
Lazarus and von Eichendorf hurled themselves at the creature and tried to prize its arms away, but it was too strong. It knocked them both in opposite directions; von Eichendorf against the wall of the stairwell and Lazarus over the banister. He grabbed at the brass railing and found himself dangling over the drop, his fingers clutching at the slippery metal.
The creature had released Petrie and the Egyptologist lay on the floor, barely conscious enough to register the monster’s advances. Lazarus struggled to pull himself up over the railing before the creature could harm his friend more but a gunshot was fired from somewhere and the creature’s glass orb exploded, releasing a spatter of the green liquid. It stumbled in its death throes and fell against the banister mere feet from where Lazarus dangled precariously.
A further two bullets struck the creature, making it topple backwards and fall, sliding over the railing and flapping past Lazarus as it plummeted to the marble floor below.
A hand extended itself to Lazarus and he grasped it, pulling himself up. He found himself looking into the face of Katarina, a smoking gun held in her other hand.
“Another one you owe me, Longman,” she said as he scrambled over the railing, eager to find solid ground to stand on.
“And it won’t be the last, I fear,” he replied. “My thanks. But where the devil did you get to?”
They helped Petrie to his feet. “The monster got past you two, as I expected and came in on us as if the door were firewood,” Katarina explained. “Petrie was unable to get a bullet through its heart but not for lack of trying, so I entangled it in a curtain and we made our escape. I went back to my room to fetch my revolver while Petrie led it on a wild goose chase around the floor.”
“A chase I lost, I fear,” said Petrie, loosening his collar as his face reverted to its normal color.
They looked down at the smashed remains of the mechanical mummy in the broken crater it had made in the
marble floor below. One metal limb had come loose and lay a few feet away. Its furnace was dimming and its split boiler swept the floor with steaming liquid. Von Eichendorf groaned and joined them at the railing, rubbing the back of his head where it had struck the wall. He grasped the railing and blinked down at what he was seeing.
“What exactly is the line of work you and Miss Mikolavna are involved in, Mr. Longman?” he asked.
Chapter Thirteen
In which plans are made to thwart Dr. Lindholm
The police arrived, as predicted, far too late to offer any resolution to the situation other than to ask the same questions of everybody more than once. It was Captain Hassanein who headed the investigation, and he was about as happy to see Lazarus and his companions as they were to see him. His success in cracking the ring of antique dealers had given him an even greater sense of self importance, and his attitude was insufferable. Émile Brugsch may have had his name splashed all over the newspapers as the Egyptologist who had discovered the Deir el-Bahari cache, but Hassanein’s assistance, although unaccredited by the press, had no doubt earned him more than his share of recognition in his own circles.
The reaction of the police to the mangled remains of the creature paralleled that of those who had seen it when it had been moving about; horrified, appalled shock. Hassanein demanded to know what the creature was, where it had come from and what its connection was to the three foreigners he was coming to realize spelled bad news whatever they were doing.
Lazarus had briefed Katarina and Petrie before the captain had arrived, and they had their cover story sealed tight. They each answered Hassanein’s tedious questions as honestly as possible, but mentioned nothing of their visit to the City of the Silver Aten, and kept utterly silent about Eleanor Rousseau. The creature, they insisted, seemed to be of an American make, confirmed by the mechanite furnace.
After spending the night walking around in circles in the verbal sense of the term, Hassanein reluctantly admitted that he had got all that could be had from the hotel’s residents. The creature, whatever it was, was a highly offensive fusion of Egypt’s ancient heritage and the industrial oppressiveness of the western world. It was not worth bothering to ask where the mummy had been obtained—mummies were all too easily available to foreigners—and Lazarus smiled to think of how oblivious Hassanein was that this particular mummy came from that very same cache, the discovery of which he was currently milking.
Silver Tomb (The Lazarus Longman Chronicles Book 2) Page 12