Bitter, bitter—too bitter to contemplate for long. And not like the brave, stubborn man she had known all her life.
And I—I am just as stubborn as both of them put together. He left the family to me, as she left her pets, and I swear I will protect them both.
And with that determined thought, she set her chin, disentangled herself from mongooses and monkey, and went on her nightly rounds to bolster those protections that, she hoped, would keep them all safe.
THE Thames flowed sluggishly between the tides, making scarcely a sound against the jetties. Errant reflections from lanterns on the prows of scavenger boats out searching for treasure among the floating garbage showed that one quasilegal form of trade was active on the river tonight, and the curses of mud larks along the bank as they slipped and slid in noisome detritus left by the tide at least gave some sign of life near at hand. Peter Scott shivered and pulled his collar closer around his neck, then bound his muffler just a bit more snugly. Oily water lapped at the piers beneath the Thames-side dock beneath his boots, and a hint of damp in the air promised fog before morning. Peter Scott felt it in his knee, and looked forward to getting home to his cozy flat, his sea-coal fire, and the hot supper his landlady and housekeeper would have waiting for him.
Before he could do that, however, he still had to check the inventory of goods just arrived at the warehouse against the bill of lading. He could have left it to a clerk, but he hadn't gotten this far in his infant importation business by leaving critical things to a clerk, who had no personal stake in making certain everything was right and tight.
It was Egypt that was all the rage for decorations now, where it had been India when he'd first made his transition from ship's captain to tradesman. Egyptian gewgaws, thanks to old Petrie and Harold Carter; that was where the trade was, though Peter didn't import the real thing—real grave goods, or statues, or carvings, much less mummies.
No magician would, not if he wanted to stay sane. God help me, I can't even imagine what one of those blasted mummy-unwrapping parties must be like. Hate and resentment thick as a pea souper, and only the ancient gods know what curses are lurking in those wrappings along with the dust and the amulets. It's a wonder every guest at one of those cursed affairs doesn't get run over by a lorry, after.
But there were artists over there in Cairo and farther up the Nile that made a handsome living faking artifacts. Peter didn't sell what he bought as the genuine article; he sold it as better than genuine. His shop held some gorgeous work, he'd give those old fakers that much, and it sold and it sold, even if it didn't quite command the price of the real thing. Striking stuff. He was happy enough with it to have a few of the finer pieces displayed in the odd corners of his own flat.
His advertisements in the Times every Sunday brought in the scores of middle- class ladies anxious to ape their betters by having a bit of old Egypt in the parlor. 'The masterpieces of artists who count the Pharaohs in their ancestry'—'Perfect in every detail, just as the mighty Ramses would have cherished'— 'Each piece requiring months of painstaking labor, made of the finest materials, perfect in every detail'— it was the business of the salesman to sell the sizzle, not the steak, and Peter thought himself a dab hand at making the sizzle as good as the cut it came from.
Besides, these fellows probably do have the blood of the Pharaohs somewhere in their past, the pieces are exactly what the grave goods looked like when they were new, and if it didn't take my men months to produce 'em, at least they put their hearts into it. He had a grudging liking for the counterfeiters, and a genuine respect for the perfection of their copies.
Peter had gotten the help of a couple of good Egyptologists to help him track down some of the best of the counterfeiters, and hired the ones whose hearts were breaking because they had to deface or discolor their handiwork to make it look genuine. They were happy, he was happy, and what was more, the people who were buying his stuff were happier, on the whole, than those who bought what they thought was genuine.
Because the poor idiots buying what they think is the real thing can't ever be sure it is genuine, not when they're paying cheap prices for it. For that matter, they can't be sure when they've paid a small fortune for it. He had even, once or twice, had an ermine-wrapped social lion come slipping in on the sly, having gotten the chills from some of the real stuff, and not wanting it about the house. Borderline sensitive, they were, and he was all sympathy with 'em, poor things. They had to have something to stay current with fashion, but couldn't bear the presence of anything tomb- touched.
And I have the solution right there in my display room. They would choose one piece or several, and he would give them what they needed to make it look genuine. He'd make a couple of inconsequential chips in places, write up as nice a forged article of 'genuine provenance' as ever you saw, charge the client the same price as for one of his fakes, and promise not to breathe a word to anyone about it. What harm was there in that? The lady's status-climbing spouse would be happy he had something to show to the lads in the curio cabinet, and she wouldn't be getting so many nightmares she'd be taking to the laudanum every night.
He was toying with the notion of having his men try their hands at making articles of modern use in the
