The Curious Case of the Werewolf That Wasn't, the Mummy That Was, and the Cat in the Jar (The Parasol Protectorate Book 6) Read online

  "Fancy a little stroll, Phinkerlington?" suggested Mr. Tarabotti, pushing his plate away petulantly.

  The baronet, whose corpulence suggested he never fancied a stroll, little or otherwise, looked to his sister for salvation. She proved herself of no use whatsoever, a state evidently familiar to all around her, by saying, "Oh yes, Percy dear, do go. You know I shouldn't mind. Some of the other ladies were planning on a game of bridge in the drawing room. I shall be perfectly entertained there until your return."

  Baronet Phinkerlington's only possible excuse thus occupied with cards, the poor chap could do nothing but join Mr. Tarabotti on his perambulation.

  The hotel was situated near the northern edge of Luxor, the better to take in the view, such as it was: sand and dust on one side and the Nile River on the other. They turned away from the verdant embankment, with its cultivated palm-groves, and headed towards the desert in all its burnt glory. A harvest moon hung low over two sets of limestone mountain ranges, one near and one far. Mr. Tarabotti pulled out his antikythera and confirmed his suspicions – full.

  "Crikie, that darn moon's bigger than a bison's bottom."

  "Very poetical turn of phrase, Baronet." Mr. Tarabotti put the antikythera away and searched the quiet streets. It was prayer time, so they were mostly deserted; yet he could not spot the missing military man.

  They paused at the very edge of town. The baronet took out a large cigar, nipped the tip, and lit it with one of those new-fangled aetherospark distributors. "Tell you the truth, old man, we're here for Leticia's health."

  "Can't she withstand the damp?"

  "No, not that. Hers is a health that's not quite right about the head, if you comprehend my meaning. Ever since Eustace went over. Chit sees night crawlers everywhere and wakes up screaming. Thought we'd bring her here." He puffed on his cigar.

  "Because there are no supernatural creatures in Egypt?" Mr. Tarabotti moved out of the smoke, coughing delicately. Cheap cigar.

  "So they say, so they say. Like no snakes in Ireland. It's one of those things."

  "True enough. There hasn't been a werewolf south of Alexandria in living memory." Alessandro thought of the papal letter of marque tucked securely in his waistcoat.

  "Make a study of the supernatural, do you, Sandy?"

  Mr. Tarabotti said nothing.

  "Course you do. You Italians are all the same. Religious fanatics, the lot of you. Church says jump, you bounce about waving silver and wood, hoping it'll rid the world of all that goes chomp in the night."

  "And yet I see acceptance of the supernatural has clearly done you and your family proud."

  "Touché, touché. Fair enough. I'm not claiming to be a progressive, simply saying as how one extreme don't balance out the other. Far as I'm concerned, vampires and werewolves can do theirs, so long as I'm let alone to do mine. If you take my meaning." He removed the half finished cigar from his mouth and looked at the glowing tip thoughtfully.

  "Would you be so magnanimous, Baronet, had you not inherited a title because your brother chose the supernatural over family obligation?"

  "Now see here, that's hardly the thing to say!"

  Mr. Tarabotti held up a hand sharply, cutting off any possible tirade. He cocked his dark head to one side, listening.

  Far away, somewhere in the depths of a desert wadi, something howled.

  "Damn this country with all its foreign critters. I'm telling you, it's all very well for Leticia's peace of mind – not a vampire in sight – but all these snakes and camels and jackals are playing hell with my finer feelings." Baronet Phinkerlington turned away, snorting.

  Alessandro frowned. The howl came again. "Werewolf."

  The baronet tossed the butt-end of his cigar petulantly to the sandy ground. "That moon may be full, but don't be ridiculous, you just said, remember? There are no supernatural creatures in Egypt."

  Floote was waiting for Mr. Tarabotti in their rooms.

  "Message, sir." He held out a little wooden tray with two crisp pieces of papyrus on top. Scribbled on the top one was a message in Italian, the tiny, messy script bleeding in places along the lines of the fibrous paper. Alessandro deciphered it while Floote divested him of his coat and hat.

  "I'm to go there tonight. He apologizes for the skittish messenger this morning. Apparently, the boy was supposed to deliver this, but was spooked by our cat. Imagine being raised amongst mummies and fearing modern scientific preservation techniques." He switched to the second sheet of papyrus. "And a map. How very thoughtful. I wonder if that's what those bully-boys were after this afternoon? This map."

  Lowering his hand, he raised an eyebrow at his manservant. "Speaking of the cat."

  Floote pointed to a wobbly reed dresser upon which lay a smallish cat mummy.

  "Is that...?"

  "Not your Aunt's feline, sir. The reports were perfectly correct; no one remembers how to mummify anymore. I found a willing apothecary, but the results were, regrettably..." a delicate pause, "...squishy. I managed to acquire that artifact, there, at a reasonable price and in excellent condition as a substitute."

  Mr. Tarabotti peered at the specimen through his monocle. "It'll have to do. We'll tell Aunt Archangelica they made it look emaciated and ancient for the sake of fashion."

  Floote went to hang up his master's outerwear.

  "Don't bother, Floote. I'll need it again directly."

  "Sir?"

  "Tonight, remember?" He wiggled the papyrus with the map on it at his valet.

  "Of course, sir, but surely not the gold coat? Most inappropriate for one of your evening engagements."

  "Silly me. You packed the burgundy?"

  Floote gave him a look that suggested he was gravely insulted that Mr. Tarabotti should ever doubt such a thing.

  The burgundy jacket was a comparatively stylish affair, but cut looser than the gold to better hide multiple pockets, and with a full skirt to mask any additional accoutrement secreted about a gentleman's waist. Alessandro slipped it on while Floote bustled about putting various items onto a large silver platter, which he then proffered politely to his master.

  Mr. Tarabotti selected from the offerings, as a man will from a particularly delectable cheese plate: a nice bit of garrote there, two vials of quality poison here, a tin of Germany's best phosphorus matches for extra zest, and a flask of turpentine to wash it all down. He chose one of the two pistols, the smallest and his personal favorite, checked that it was loaded, and stashed it inside a pocket over his left hip. After a pause to think, he took three cigars, the tidy little cheroots he preferred, and stashed them in the tin with the matches.

  "Will you be requiring my company this evening, sir?"

  "I shouldn't think so. After all, he is only an archaeologist."

  Floote refrained from comment upon that statement. He had spent over ten years as valet to Mr. Tarabotti and, as yet, no one had turned out to be only anything. He smoothed down the sleeves of the burgundy coat and checked its armament carefully before buttoning it closed. He handed Mr. Tarabotti a matching top hat.

  "Will there be anything else, sir?"

  Alessandro tightened his lips over his teeth in thought. "Perhaps the other gun as well, if you would be so kind?"

  Floote passed it to him. "Try not to kill anyone important, sir."

  Stashing the gun up his sleeve in a special quick-release wrist holster, Alessandro grinned. It was an expression that did not sit comfortably on his patrician face.

  "Any final orders, sir?"

  "The usual, Floote. If I don't come back . . ."

  "No record, no witnesses. I am aware of your standing instructions."

  "Proceed then, Floote."

  "Very good, sir."

  There were more people in the streets when Mr. Tarabotti exited the hotel a second time. Alessandro wondered if nightlife had evolved in Egypt due to the lack of supernatural, much in the manner of peculiar animals evolving on islands without natural predators, if one were given to believe Mr. Darwin
's outlandish theories. Then, again, perhaps it was simply the coolness of the air that encouraged wide-scale evening socialization.

  No one bothered him. No beggars whined for baksheesh. No tradesmen forced their goods in his direction. Alessandro Tarabotti had a way of walking that, even as a conspicuous foreigner in a foreign land, marked him as undesirable. Thus, he could move quickly through the narrow alleys that purported to be Luxor's main streets, passing whitewashed huts and undernourished obelisks, coming finally to a steep slope and sandy shore. Nearby, the three balloons were tied down, only one still inflated.

  It took very little in the way of local currency or time to hire a stunted raft, piloted by a lackluster youngster, to ferry him across the river. It took slightly more to convince the urchin to wait. At two gold coins and twenty minutes, Alessandro considered it quite economical. The boat-boy even pointed out the path he needed to take towards the tombs. Mr. Tarabotti had paid more for less in the past, and probably would again.

  The map, it turned out, was not scaled as he might have hoped, and it was a long walk of some four miles before he noted any of the landmarks indicated there. He left behind the lushness of the floodplain for a long limestone canyon where little grew and less thrived. He was grateful for the moon, that he need not carry one of the ridiculous teapot-shaped oil lamps in order to see his way.

  It should have been a pleasant walk, but Mr. Tarabotti, whom no one would ever insult by calling anxious, could not shake the feeling that he was being followed. Every time he jerked about and looked behind him, he saw nothing there. Nothing at all. This was compounded by another sensation, one of being repelled, as though he were a magnet too close to another of the same charge. He'd felt it ever since Cairo but here it was worse of all, almost unbearable.

  He happened upon the archaeological encampment eventually; a copse of canvas tents nestled at the base of a cliff. It appeared quite deserted, so he clambered up to the mouth of a rock-cut tomb, marked by an uninspired "x" on his little map. As he climbed, a new scent overlaid the clay musk of the cooling sands – tobacco and vanilla.

  "I thought you hadn't gotten the message," said a voice in Italian when he reached the top. A figure resolved itself from gloom into a man by stepping forward out of the shadow of the rocks around the entranceway. Fragments of limestone crunched under sensible boots. "Trouble finding the place?"

  "You sent a map. It had an "x" on it."

  The man gripped Alessandro's shoulders, kissing him on each cheek in the manner of old friends. "Giuseppe Caviglia."

  "Alessandro Tarabotti." Mr. Tarabotti saw no harm in giving the archaeologist his name, though he objected to the intimacy of the rest of the greeting. "Show me what you found."

  Mr. Caviglia tilted his head to one side and took a draw on his pipe. "You know I can't simply do that."

  Mr. Tarabotti smiled tightly. "A rule player." He reached into his waistcoat pocket and pulled out the letter of marque, passing it over.

  Giuseppe Caviglia unfolded and read it carefully by moonlight. "The government's full confidence? That must be nice."

  "It has its benefits."

  "You're authorized to take any action you deem necessary in conjunction with my findings here. What, exactly, does that mean?"

  Alessandro ignored the question by asking one of his own. "You indicated in your original missive that this was a supernatural matter."

  Mr. Caviglia nodded once, sharply.

  "Well, you caught the antiquities ministry's interest. They brought your letter to government oversight, and oversight brought it to the Templars, and the Templars brought it to me."

  The archaeologist sucked in on his pipe sharply at that revelation. Mr. Tarabotti waited with ill-disguised impatience while Mr. Caviglia coughed out puffs of vanilla-scented smoke.

  Eyes watering, the man looked more closely at Alessandro's face. "You're one of them, aren't you? I thought they were all dead. Too susceptible to the poisonous humors."

  Mr. Tarabotti, who was a bit of a poisonous humor, said sharply, "Interesting that you even know of my kind."

  "My cousin is a Templar," Mr. Caviglia explained hastily.

  Alessandro grimaced. That could make things difficult.

  Mr. Caviglia recovered his equanimity. He handed back the letter of marque, openly evaluating his visitor's appearance. Alessandro knew what he saw: a man of lean build and patrician nose, tall, wearing a cleverly cut coat and trousers a little too tight. In short – a dandy. He would not see that the coat was cut to hide musculature, rather than exaggerate it, and that the tightness of the pants was to distract from the smooth movements of the legs that wore them.

  "You're not what I would have expected."

  Alessandro cocked his head. "Well, at least one of us is surprised. You're exactly what I expected."

  And the archeologist was – unshaven, undersized, wearing round spectacles and a jacket no decent human would wish upon his worst enemy. He could be handsome under the grime, in a peevish scholarly way, but there were certain unforgivable flaws. Atop his head rested a battered object that might have started life as some species of hat many years ago and at the bottom of the ocean.

  Mr. Tarabotti shuddered. "Shall we go in now?"

  Mr. Caviglia nodded, tapping out his pipe on the side of the entranceway. "A remarkable discovery, really quite remarkable." He led the way inside the tomb.

  Its ceiling was higher than Alessandro had anticipated. A smoking torch in the far corner cast a dim flicking light. It was as clean as could be expected from a place recently filled with rubble for thousands of years. There were few artifacts left – a broken column, several pottery bowls before an inset shrine, and a pile of digging tools nested at the base of the torch – but the walls were littered with carved and painted images. On one, a jackal-headed man sat at a vast banquet – bread, meat, and fruit laid out before him, a curly-tailed monkey crouched underneath his throne. On the other, the same man was shown undergoing various death rituals of a decidedly heathen nature.

  "We found the tomb partly looted, of course. Most of them are. Oddly, the looters stopped half way through and not a single person has touched the tomb since. Until we came along." The archaeologist crossed the room, grabbed up the torch, and led the way through a carved opening into a short passageway.

  Mr. Tarabotti followed.

  The passage turned to the left, and before them stood a huge basalt statue of a mummy, threatening and protective.

  The archaeologist ignored this, turning again and leading the way down a steep set of stairs, talking all the while.

  "Once we saw the mummy we realized why. The natives are terribly superstitious about these kinds of things. Well, you would be too, if you grew up in a land entirely devoid of supernatural. I mean, our government has been trying for elimination ever since the Inquisition, but the hives and packs will keep springing up. Not here, though."

  Mr. Tarabotti placed a hand against the tunnel wall to steady himself as he climbed down the dark stairs. "They're too strong and too well connected."

  "Yet the Templars back home keep trying."

  "They're believers." Mr. Tarabotti grimaced as his hand came away from the wall filthy with dark brown dust and a fine yellow powder.

  "And you?"

  Alessandro shrugged. He believed in very little beyond his job and the wealth it generated.

  "Well, regardless, this excavation has been fascinating. The sarcophagus has unique hieroglyphics on it. And the mummy – excellent preservation, stunning condition, from flesh to fiber. There."

  They emerged into a room slightly smaller than the first, and far less tidy. It was cluttered, with antiquities spread across the floor and nestled into niches in the painted walls. Everything was covered in a thick layer of dust and, while some artifacts had been knocked over and broken, most were intact. The preservation was amazing. Wooden furniture stood in the corners, draped in crumbling textiles with large stone statues of animal-headed gods resting on top. P
ots in every shape and size lined the walls, nestled amongst crowds of tiny human statues, piles of copper weapons, and a myriad of other mundanities. In the middle of the jumble, next to the massive hole it had obviously been hauled out of, stood a large sarcophagus of red granite, its lid off and tilted against its side.

  The archaeologist tugged Mr. Tarabotti over to it. Inside, a mummy lay partially unwrapped, the looters having started with its head, lusting after the precious amulets of gold and lapis nested inside the linen bandages.

  They'd stopped.

  There was no doubt as to why.

  "Remarkable," said Mr. Tarabotti in English.

  The creature inside was human, almost, but the bones of its face were not. Teeth, jaw, shape of forehead all leaned more toward canine than man. There was even a light patterning of hair in the shrunken wrinkles of the dried brown skin.

  "A werewolf."

  "Undoubtedly."

  "Mummified in half homo sapien, half homo lupis form." Alessandro pulled a small analog aetheromechanical transducer from his jacket pocket and prodded delicately at the mummy, testing for remnant vital aetheromagnetism. Nothing. "They say alpha werewolves can maintain just such a state as this, half in, half out of human form. They use it in metamorphosis rituals. Can you imagine?" His fine upper lip curled. "Disgusting."

  He investigated further. "Well, I commend you, Mr. Caviglia. If this is a hoax, it is a very good one."

  The archaeologist puffed up in outrage. "I assure you, sir – !"

  Mr. Tarabotti held up the transducer autocratically to stop any denunciation and continued examining the body. "Don't you think that head shape is a little odd?"

  "Aside from it being attached to a human body?"

  "We call it Anubis form," said a new voice in old-fashioned Italian flattened out by a British accent.