'Perhaps you should call on her!' Hancock said, glaring at Samir. 'You were her father's friend.'
'Very well, sir,' Samir answered in a low voice. 'I shall certainly do that.'
* * *
Early evening: the Hotel Victoria. Ramses had been dining since four o'clock, when the sun was still slanting through the leaded glass, onto the white-draped tables. Now it was dark; candles blazed everywhere; the ceiling fans turned very slowly, barely stirring the fronds of the tall, elegant dark-green palms in their brass pots.
Liveried waiters brought plate after plate of food without comment, eyebrows arched as they opened the fourth bottle of Italian red wine.
Julie had finished her scant meal hours ago. They were deep in conversation now, the English flowing as easily as the wine flowed.
She had taught Ramses how to use the heavy silver, but he ignored it. In his time only a barbarian would have shoveled food into the mouth.
In fact, he had remarked after a little consideration, no one had shoveled food into the mouth. There was time for Julie to explain how silverware had come about. For now, she must agree that he was most, most . . . fastidious, she volunteered. Elegant, civilized, deft at the breaking of bread and meat into small portions, and the placing of them on the tongue without the ringers touching the lips.
She was now deep into her discussion of revolution. 'The first machines were simple-for weaving, tilling the fields. It was the idea of the machine that caught the mind.'
'Yes.'
'If you make a machine to do one thing, then you can perfect a machine to do another. ...'
'I understand you.'
'And then came the steam engine, the motor car, the telephone, the airplane.'
'I want to do it, fly in the sky.'
'Of course, and we shall do it. But do you understand the concept, the revolution in thinking?'
'Of course. I don't come to you, as you say, from the nineteenth dynasty of Egypt's history, I come to you from the first days of the Roman Empire. My mind is, how do you say it, flexible, adaptable. I am constantly in, how do you say it, revolution?'
Something startled him; at first she didn't realize what it was. The orchestra had begun, very softly, so that she scarcely heard it over the hum of conversation. He rose, dropping his napkin. He pointed across the crowded room.
The soft strains of the 'Merry Widow Waltz' rose strongly over the hum of conversation. Julie turned to see the little string orchestra assembled on the other side of the small polished dance floor.
Ramses rose and went towards them. 'Ramses, wait,' Julie said. But he didn't listen to her. She hurried after him. Surely everyone was looking at the tall man who marched across the dance floor and came to a quick stop right in front of the musicians as if he were the conductor himself.
He positively glared at the violins, at the cello; and then as he studied the huge golden harp, the smile came back, so clearly ecstatic that the female violinist smiled at him and the old grey-haired male cellist seemed vaguely amused.
They must have thought him a deaf mute as he stepped up and laid his fingers right on the cello, drawing back at the power of the vibration, then touching it again. 'Oooh, Julie,' he whispered aloud. Everyone was looking. Even the waiters were glancing at them in obvious alarm. But nobody dared question the handsome gentleman in Lawrence's best suit and silk waistcoat, even when he shuddered all over and clamped his hands to the sides of his head.
She tugged on him. He wouldn't budge. 'Julie, such sounds!' he whispered.
'Then dance with me, Ramses,' she said.
No one else was dancing, but what did that matter? There was the dance floor, and she felt like dancing. She felt like dancing more than anything in the world.
Baffled, he looked at her, then allowed himself to be turned, and his hand to be taken properly as she slipped her arm about his waist.
'Now, this is the way the man leads the woman,' she said, beginning the waltz step and moving him easily. 'My hand should really be on your shoulder. I shall move, and you . . . that's it. But allow me to lead.'
They turned faster and faster, Ramses following her lead beautifully, only glancing down now and then at his feet. Another couple had joined them; then came another. But Julie didn't see them; she saw only Ramses' rapt face, and the way his eyes moved over the commonplace treasures of the room. It was a haze suddenly, the candles, the gilded fan blades turning above, the drowsing flowers on the tables, and the shimmer of silver everywhere, and the music surrounding them, the music carrying them along ever faster.
He laughed out loud suddenly. 'Julie, like music poured from a goblet. Like music that has become wine.'
She turned him rapidly in small circles.
'Revolution!' he cried out.
She threw back her head and laughed.
Quite suddenly it was over. There must have been a finale. All she knew was that it was finished, and that he was about to kiss her, and she didn't want him to stop. But he hesitated. He noted the other couples leaving. He took her hand.
'Yes, time to go,' she said.
The night outside was cold and foggy. She gave the doorman a few coins. She wanted a hansom.
Ramses paced back and forth, staring at the crowds of commercial travellers coming and going from motor cars and carriages, at the newsboy dashing up to him with the latest edition.
'Mummy's Curse in Mayfair!' the boy cried shrilly. 'Mummy Rises from the Grave!'
Before she could reach him, Ramses had snatched the paper from the boy. Flustered, she gave the child a coin.
There it was all right, the whole silly scandal. An ink sketch of Henry running away from her front stairs.
'Your cousin,' Ramses said gloomily. ' 'Mummy's Curse Strikes Again . . .' 'he read slowly.
'No one believes it! It's a joke.'
He continued to read: 'Gentlemen of the British Museum say that the Ramses collection is entirely safe and will be returned to the museum soon.' He paused. 'Museum,' he said. 'Explain this word museum. What is the museum, a tomb?'
The poor girl was miserable, Samir could see it. He ought to go. But he had to see Julie. And so he waited in the drawing room, sitting stiffly on the edge of the sofa, refusing Rita's third offer of coffee, tea, or wine.
Now and then he glanced down the length of the house to see the gleaming Egyptian coffin. If only Rita did not stand there, but clearly she was not going to leave him alone.
* * *
The museum had been closed for hours. But she wanted him to see it. She let the cab go and followed him to the iron fence. He gripped the pickets as he looked up at the door and the high windows. The street was dark, deserted. And a light rain had begun to fall.
'There are many mummies inside,' she said. 'Your mummy, it would have gone here eventually. Father worked for the British Museum, though he paid his own costs.'
'Mummies of Kings and Queens of Egypt?'
'There are more in Egypt, actually. A mummy of Ramses the Second has been there for years in a glass case.''
He gave a short bitter laugh as he looked at her. 'Have you seen this?' He looked back at the museum. 'Poor fool. He never knew that he was buried in Ramses' tomb.'
'But who was he?' Her heart quickened. Too many questions on the tip of her tongue.
'I never knew,' he said quietly, eyes still moving slowly over the building as though he were memorizing. 'I sent my soldiers to find a dying man, someone unloved and uncared for. They brought him back to the palace by night. And so I ... how do you say? Made my own death. And then my son, Meneptah, had what he wanted, to be King.'' He considered for a moment. His voice changed slightly. It deepened. 'And now you tell me this body is in a museum with other Kings and Queens?'
