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Sharp pain again as he missed Julie--his beloved daughter, who should have been here with him, and would have been if her young fiance hadn't persuaded her to stay at home.
Henry had come to Egypt for money. Henry had company papers for Lawrence to sign. And Henry's father, Randolph, had sent him on this grim mission, desperate as always to cover his son's debts.
A fine pair they are, Lawrence thought grimly--the ne'er-do-well and the chairman of the board of Stratford Shipping who clumsily funneled the company's profits into his son's bottomless purse.
But in a very real way Lawrence could forgive his brother, Randolph, anything. Lawrence hadn't merely given the family business to Randolph. He had dumped it on Randolph, along with all its immense pressures and responsibilities, so that he, Lawrence, could spend his remaining years digging among the Egyptian ruins he so loved.
And to be perfectly fair, Randolph had done a tolerable job of running Stratford Shipping. That is, until his son had turned him into an embezzler and a thief. Even now, Randolph would admit everything if confronted. But Lawrence was too purely selfish for that confrontation. He never wanted to leave Egypt again for the stuffy London offices of Stratford Shipping. Not even Julie could persuade him to come home.
And now Henry stood there waiting for his moment. And Lawrence denied him that moment, entering the tent and eagerly pulling his chair up to the desk. He took out a leather-bound diary which he had been saving, perhaps for this discovery. Hastily he wrote what he remembered of the door's inscription and the questions it posed.
"Ramses the Damned." He sat back, looking at the name. And for the first time he felt just a little of the foreboding which had shaken Samir.
What on earth could all this mean?
Half-past midnight. Was he dreaming? The marble door of the tomb had been carefully removed, photographed, and placed on trestles in his tent. And now they were ready to blast their way in. The tomb! His at last.
He nodded to Samir. He felt the ripple of excitement move through the crowd. Flashes went off as he raised his hands to his ears, and then the blast caught them all off guard. He felt it in the pit of his stomach.
No time for that. He had the torch in hand and was going in, though Samir tried once again to stop him.
"Lawrence, there could be booby traps, there could be--"
"Get out of my way."
The dust was making him cough. His eyes were watering.
He thrust the torch through the gaping hole. Walls decorated with hieroglyphs--again, the magnificent nineteenth-dynasty style without question.
At once he stepped inside. How extraordinarily cool it felt; and the smell, what was it, a curious perfume after all these long centuries!
His heart beat too fast. The blood rushed to his face, and he had to cough again, as the press of reporters raised the dust in the passage.
"Keep back!" he shouted crossly. The flashes were going off all around him again. He could barely see the painted ceiling overhead with its tiny stars.
And there, a long table laden with alabaster jars and boxes. Heaps of rolled papyri. Dear God, all this alone confirmed a momentous discovery.
"But this is no tomb!" he whispered.
There was a writing table, covered with a thin film of dust, looking for all the world as if the scholar had only just left it. An open papyrus lay there, with sharpened pens, an ink bottle. And a goblet.
But the bust, the marble bust--it was unmistakably Graeco-Roman. A woman with her tight wavy hair drawn back beneath a metal band, her drowsy half-lidded eyes seemingly blind, and the name cut into the base:
CLEOPATRA
"Not possible," he heard Samir say. "But look, Lawrence, the mummy case!"
Lawrence had already seen it. He was staring speechless at the thing which lay serenely in the very middle of this puzzling room, this study, this library, with its stacks of scrolls and its dust-covered writing table.
Once again, Samir ordered the photographers back. The smoking flashes were maddening Lawrence.
"Get out, all of you, get out!" Lawrence said. Grumbling, they retreated out of sight of the door, leaving the two men standing there in stunned silence.
It was Samir who spoke first:
"This is Roman furniture. This is Cleopatra. Look at the coins, Lawrence, on the desk. With her image, and newly minted. Those alone are worth--"
"I know. But there lies an ancient Pharaoh, my friend. Every detail of the case--it's as fine as any ever found in the Valley of the Kings."
