In London, the parade would be enlivened by airships carrying burghers of the City’s guilds, floating along in the first traffic tier above the street, their slender gondolas brightly disguised as scarlet sleighs, gilded carriages, and gift-wrapped boxes. Here a string of dusty military scout-ships took their place, sand-blasted hulls and rigging strung with Union Jack bunting. The airships were followed by the Cairo Police precision heli-cycle team, whose flying was far from precise. Never would a formation flying team back home allow their group banner to sag between cycles, much less droop low enough to brush a camel’s head, as the Cairene police team managed to do almost at the steps of Shepheard’s.
In fairness, there were not often camels on London streets. This camel bit its neighbour, precipitating a skirmish. Handlers, their dusty robes flapping, yelled commands and curses. A donkey caught a kick and scattered its load of brass vessels across the road. Clashing and crashing sent the English officers’ horses dancing. Ah, Egypt. Maddie tilted her head to let TD capture images that would surely gladden even the ink-black heart of CJ Kettle.
There was one elaborate airship, at the far end of the parade. By the time it reached the hotel, the dust from the street had risen to the second floor. Maddie spared a thought for the bedchambers there—were the high windows securely closed? Then the airship was abreast, its name spelled out in bright scrollwork along the gondola’s fore-quarters:
Jules Verne.
The
Jules Verne
was long and lean, its outer gondola sheathed in what looked like dark walnut wood, newly polished. Brass fittings and metallic envelope dazzled in the mid-day sun. Streamers outlined its panoramic windows. A Union Jack flew under the keel. Through wide-open cockpit windows, a man in a morning coat tipped his gleaming white pith helmet toward the hotel roof.
A matron in the first row waved a handkerchief and called out, “Hello, Baron,” and a scholarly gentleman nearby cried out, “Well done, sir.”
As the airship passed, a cable became visible, attached at the stern and rising high into the sky. Maddie followed it upward, one hand shielding her eyes. Far above, unmoving against the stark, blue dome, was a military scouting balloon. As she watched, something fell from it, black and scarlet tumbling through the sky, taking on the unmistakable shape of a man’s body.
Others saw it too, gasping and pointing as it hurtled ever earthward. A girl shrieked. Another slid from her chair in a dead faint.
Just when it seemed the man must crash to earth and be crushed by his own momentum, the scarlet billowed outward, becoming a vast canopy that caught the air and arrested the plunge.
Jerked suddenly upright, the aeronaut tugged at a cord, turning the canopy toward the hotel, and waved to the pointing throng. They scattered as he came on. Servants and gentlemen dragged chairs from the center of the flat roof, and there he landed, neatly on his feet. The scarlet canopy settled behind him, looking, thought Maddie, like a pool of wet blood across the dusty tiles. The daring aeronaut brushed off his black flying suit and bowed to his gaping audience.
“Who is that man?” Maddie asked a girl at her side.
“Colonel Muster,” said the girl, wide-eyed and flushed in her long-sleeved, cream-lace and primrose frock. “He is a war hero, newly come from England to visit the man who owns that lovely airship. Baron Bodmin. Have you met him yet?”
“Not yet. I too am newly from England. Mad—” she caught herself. “Maddie Hatter. Fashion correspondent for the Kettle Conglomerate.”
From that second Sunday in Advent, the English residents’ evenings were enlivened by merry parlour games and frequent lusty singing of carols. Archaeological staff returned from their excavations. The celebrated Egyptologist, Mr. Petrie, arrived to general acclaim and a reserved suite in a first-class corridor. A close relation of Her Majesty took up residence in the Royal Suite that opened onto the balcony over the famous terrace; he promptly complained of the noise from below and was moved to an almost equally opulent suite overlooking the hotel’s courtyard garden. Sometime amongst all the other arrivals, the beautiful, young, self-proclaimed widow took up residence next door to Maddie. She effortlessly attracted the attention of all the males in her vicinity, much to the chagrin of the nieces in pink and blue, who had, until that point, been enjoying rather a lot of mild flirtation.
The hotel’s little orchestra played Christmas music at every possible occasion, until Maddie began to prowl the streets around the hotel, ever surrounded by loudly begging children, just to escape from the relentless tunes. The British baron and his war-hero guest were present at every festivity. The former was fond of talking about his quest for a fabulous treasure. Maddie tried in vain to interest CJ in a serial story of his proposed adventure. Surely expeditions in search of legendary treasures would interest readers more than the exact style of ascot the royal relation had worn this week?
The dashing colonel wore dark spectacles indoors and out, lending him an air of mystery, and not a little danger. He claimed his eyes were weakened by too many years staring into the sun at high altitude. Young men grumbled that the specs gave him an advantage at the card table, since he could read their expressions easily while his was half concealed. Lady HH told the ladies over tea one day that young Viscount S— had lost so extensively to the colonel that his father had to come in person to Cairo, to pay his bills and take him ignominiously away. Flush with winnings or not, Colonel Muster continued his gaming unabated, except when he was closeted with the baron over decanters, airship schematics, and vague charts of the desert.
On Christmas Eve, Baron Bodmin threw a lavish dinner party. He had caused real fir trees to be flown in from somewhere, and they blazed with real candles beside every pillar in the vast dining room, dripping wax into their sand-filled tubs and onto the floor tiles. The tables were dressed with holly and ivy and fat, red candles. A sumptuous feast of roast turkey, pan gravy, and all the traditional side dishes was brought in by the steam-driven serving carts, each one attended by a human server to pile high the pre-warmed plates. This was followed by flaming puddings with the appropriate sauces. A heavy meal indeed in the summery climate.
When the first guests had pushed back their chairs, preparing to slip away, Baron Bodmin rose and held up his hands for attention.
“Friends,” he said. “You’ve all met my good friend, Colonel Muster, who is a crucial supporter of my work in so many ways. Today I proudly introduce to you my other great supporter, an erudite Professor of Ancient Civilizations from Cambridge, Professor Polonius Plumb, whose research into the Nubian tribes is at the heart of my quest.” The man seated beside him stood up, resplendent in an oriental silk smoking gown quite unsuitable for a mixed dinner party. Unlike the baron and the colonel, his physique was not that of a man of action, but rather academically round-shouldered, and with a slight rounding of the mid-section as well. He began to speak, but the baron cut him off with a reminder of the ball about to start.
Later, as the ballroom in turn heated up under the influence of its dazzling chandeliers and a horde of energetic young men dancing non-stop with the first young ladies they’d seen in three long desert months, Maddie slipped out to the courtyard to cool her flushed cheeks under the vast midnight sky. She was seated in a wicker chair, deep in shadow by the library windows, gazing up at the stars, when she heard the baron’s voice again. It came from inside the library.
“No, I will not advance you more money. I paid your way out here, didn’t I?”
An unfamiliar voice replied. “If it were not for me, you wouldn’t have the money to pay your own way. I got you everything you needed to convince that woman to back you. And how much are you giving that leech, Muster? He’ll bleed your estate dry while you’re gone.”
“It won’t matter. I’ll have the Eye and you’ll have the story of a lifetime.”
“As long as Jones doesn’t find out. If he makes a fuss, I’ll lose everything.” The professor—for so Maddie had later identified the peevish voice—had gone on talking until someone else entered the room. Had he spoken the wealthy investor’s name?
More than three months later, stifling in the April afternoon’s considerable warmth, Maddie sat up on her bed. The investor’s name might be in her notebook from that night. That would be a coup for CJ. She could spin out an article, too, about the colonel and the professor advising on the expedition, leaving it to reporters back home to get quotes from them. She swept aside the mosquito netting that surrounded her mattress and set about digging back through her stack of notebooks for the sunny yellow one, labeled
Cornwall Cog and Goggles
. It had seemed a fitting choice when the gray skies of Europe gave way to brilliantly sunny African skies on the Mediterranean crossing.
She had been so enthusiastic about her completely independent job at first that the whole notebook filled up by Christmas. And there it was on the last page, the professor’s angry tirade as best she could remember it. He had not mentioned the investor by name, merely cautioned that Baron Bodmin had better bring back that mask or she would be very angry with him. “She.” The wealthy investor was a woman, but what was her name?
If Maddie recalled aright, the professor and Colonel Muster had both left for England directly after the New Year. Someone in England would have to follow up.
The safragi came along the corridor then, tapping on doors to warn that teatime approached. While pinning up her hair afresh, Maddie considered what might have gone wrong with the expeditionary airship. Had the baron skimped on setting up his actual expedition, and some oversight led to his eventual downfall?
“What a pity,” she told TD, who was looking on from the top of the armoire, “what a pity we don’t know anyone in Cornwall, who could send us a detailed description of that airship’s present condition. But perhaps someone in Cairo was aboard before it left here. How would I find such a person?”
The widow, or whatever she really was. She had been nosing around the aerodrome, asking questions about the baron’s airship before she moved to the hotel. She may have known if it was not desert-worthy. She might be remembered at the aerodrome even now, for workmen the world over took good note of a beautiful woman. In any event, the workers there were Maddie’s best, and possibly final, chance of getting quotes from anyone knowledgeable about the airship. Did it have the right supplies and equipment to keep a man alive for three months in the desert? Tomorrow’s target: the aerodrome.
The next thought struck her with such force that she dropped her hairbrush. “What if he’s not dead? What if he intended all along to vanish if he found the mask? What a coup that would be, if we were to find out he’s alive after all.”
STANDING BEFORE THE
Concierge Desk, Maddie mentally counted her coins while the attendant awaited her decision. She had not arrived by air and not realized the distance or cost involved in reaching the aerodrome. For the baron’s departure, the hotel had laid on steam-driven omnibuses. Surrounded by a chattering crowd of well-wishers and taking copious notes about the adventure—which CJ ignored—she had not found the drive long. Now she discovered a full hour’s travel each way by self-propelling carriage would cost as much as a day’s lodging. The alternative was a donkey cart, which took twice as long for a third of the price. If she did not wish to be caught out in the baking pinnacle of afternoon, which might be dangerous to one wearing a navy blue wool suit with the shady, but weighty, TD-carrying hat, the greater cost must be borne. She signed the charge slip and left the attendant to make arrangements.
She set off soon after breakfast, with the carriage’s sunshade retracted that she might better enjoy the sights of the city. The driver, his white robe and turban spotless, sat up on his bench swinging his steering bar wildly, yelling at other drivers, and telling her in rapid, idiomatic English about the Ismailia Square (which was round) and other noteworthy features they passed. Arches, minarets, and upper-story balconies screened by elegant latticework gave way gradually to smaller, squarer, flat-roofed buildings with low parapets. Some of these modest quarters were enlivened by tiled arches, through which she glimpsed courtyards paved with ancient, intricate mosaic. Other walls were old stone, patched with flaking plaster or shored up by rough timbers. There were stretches of desert too, among the settled areas, and soon the houses barely lined the one road, with only sand and date palms beyond. Had her driver taken her a roundabout way?
The aerodrome’s direction was confirmed when a massive shadow floated between her and the sun. She tipped her head far back, dislodging TD. Overhead, an international liner was passing, hundreds of feet long, with the crest of the White Sky Line in brass on its underbelly. The line, she knew, was American, but its luxurious airships flew many routes over Europe as well as across the ocean. It sailed low over the rooftops, with passengers crowding the open deck to point and exclaim over the exotic sights below. Other, smaller ships filled the sky around it, arriving and departing in many directions. Soon moored ships were visible too, bobbing close to the sand while bales and crates were carried on and off by natives in ragged robes. Almost there!
She began to seriously consider who to approach, and how. After tipping her driver she paused, watching the White Sky craft’s final descent, ground crews hauling on the dangling lines until they could be hitched to steam winches fore and aft. The great ship settled alongside the upper floor of the solidly British stone terminal building. Possibly Sir Ambrose was on that ship, if he had found the money for the fare. But was an interview with him worth more than learning the condition of the baron’s airship at departure? She hurried instead to the nearest huge hangar. Blinking in the dim, she gazed up at a half-dozen military dirigibles that floated at anchor, their envelopes filling the vast space, and then snared the first workman she saw.