“Don’t worry, my dear,” I said cheerfully. “Your father and I have it worked out. He has a dear old friend in Khan Yunus -”

“Of course,” Ramses said resignedly. “Mahmud ibn Rafid. Is there any place in the Middle East where Father doesn’t have a ‘dear old friend’?”

“Not many,” said Emerson, smoking. “Khan Yunus is only ten miles south of Gaza, and Mahmud owns a villa there.” He chuckled. “When he told me ‘My house is your house,’ he may not have meant it literally, but he cannot object if I take him up on the offer. He’s scampered off to Damascus, so that will be all right. It is quite a comfortable house. Even your mother will be pleased with it.”

I doubted that very much, but at such a time I would have settled into a cave or a tent in order to be nearby when Ramses carried out his hazardous mission. “Quite,” I murmured. “Emerson, I presume you have made the other arrangements we discussed? I cannot think of anything I dislike more than a long journey by camel, but there seems to be no alternative.”

“Ah, but there is,” Emerson said. Self-satisfaction is too weak a word for the emotion that illumined his countenance and swelled his broad chest. “I will give you three guesses, Peabody.”

A hideous sense of foreboding came over me. “Oh, no, Emerson. Please. Don’t tell me -”

“Yes, my dear. I have acquired a new motorcar.” Avoiding my stricken expression, he turned to Ramses and explained. “It’s a splendid vehicle, my boy, one of the T Model Ford Light cars the military has been using. It has -”

“How did you – uh – acquire it?” Ramses asked.

“Ah, well, you know my methods,” said Emerson with a grin.

“You stole it!”

“No. Well. Not exactly. It has -”

“You can’t drive it yourself, you know,” I interrupted. This obvious fact had occurred to me once I got over my initial consternation, and it cheered me quite a lot. “Think how absurd you would look at the wheel, in turban and caftan.”

“I have considered that,” said Emerson, with great dignity. “You said you would leave the problem of transport to me.”

“Hmmmm. Frankly, I do not see how we can drive all that distance without getting bogged down in sand dunes and blowing up tires; but if all goes well -”

“It won’t,” Ramses muttered.

“If it does, we should arrive within a few days of one another. Mind this, Ramses; you are to report yourself to us before you go to Gaza. You know where we will be. For our own peace of mind and for safety’s sake, we want to be made cognizant of your plans. Have I your word?”

“Yes.” He hesitated for a moment, and then shrugged. “You’ll have to follow the road, so I suppose the worst that can happen is that you’ll break down and be forced to accept help from the military. Speaking of peace of mind, I would like to be made cognizant of your plans. Is Father to be a wealthy aristocrat – a wealthy, bearded aristocrat – and Mother his favorite wife?”

“No, that is Nefret,” I explained. “I am the older wife.”

Ramses exchanged bemused glances with Nefret. Her open-mouthed astonishment convinced him, had he doubted it, that she had known nothing of my scheme. He laughed a little, and shook his head.

“Mother, you never cease to amaze me. I hope you enjoy yourself. As the older wife you will be in a position to bully Nefret – and Father.”

“Ha,” said Emerson meaningfully.

Ramses was gone next morning. When Nefret joined us for breakfast she was a trifle hollow-eyed and pale, but that might have been a normal reaction to such a hard parting. I did not feel I had the right to ask what they had said to one another – my sympathetic imagination supplied a good deal of the dialogue – but I did venture to inquire whether Ramses had been angry about our following him.

“Resigned, rather,” Nefret said, toying with her toast.

“Eat something,” I ordered. “We are leaving in an hour and it will be a long, hard day. The first of many, I fear.”

“Not at all,” said Emerson. “The T Model Ford Light car -”

“I don’t want to hear about it, Emerson. Eat your breakfast.”

“I have,” said Emerson indignantly. “You are the one who is delaying us.”

To have left the hotel in disguise or in the vehicle Emerson had acquired would have aroused speculation. We went by cab to Atiyeh, the village where the northern branch of Abdullah’s family lived, and there we found no other than Selim awaiting our arrival. He was disappointed when I failed to register surprise at seeing him.

“It was logical,” I explained. “Once I learned of the motorcar. I am pleased, Emerson, that you didn’t insist on driving it yourself.”

“I had a number of reasons for bringing Selim along, all of them excellent, and all of them, you will claim, obvious to you. Let us not waste time discussing the subject. Is the car ready, Selim?”

“Yes, Father of Curses. It is,” Selim said enthusiastically, “a wonderful motorcar. It has -”

“What about supplies?” I asked.

“Everything is in order, Sitt Hakim,” Selim said. He looked doubtfully at the piles of personal luggage I had brought. “I think there will be room.”

There was, but just barely. Nefret and I would have to sit on some of the parcels and put our feet on others. There was not even space on top of the vehicle, where Selim had fastened several long planks.

The whole village gathered to wave good-bye and shout blessings. It would have been impossible to conceal our expedition, whose ostensible purpose was to examine certain ruins in the Sinai. Selim had asked them not to speak of it, and since they all knew about Emerson’s frequent disputes with the Antiquities Department, they assumed we were planning to excavate without official permission. Sooner or later someone would tell the story, as a good joke on the authorities, but as Emerson philosophically remarked, it didn’t matter much; by the time the gossip reached General Murray, it would be too late to stop us.

As an additional precaution we waited until we were well away from the village before we assumed our disguises. Emerson’s consisted of shirt and trousers, an elegant long vest and flowing robe, and, of course, a beard. Instead of a tarboosh or turban, he covered his head with a khafiyeh – the flattering headdress worn by the desert people that frames the face in folds of cloth and is held in place by a twisted cord. It shadowed those distinctive features more effectively than a turban and protected the back of his neck from the sun.

Nefret and I bundled ourselves up in the inconvenient and uncomfortable ensembles worn by Moslem ladies when they travel abroad. Ramses always said that if a disguise is to be successful, it must be accurate in every detail, so Nefret and I were dressed from the skin out in appropriate garments: a shirt and a pair of very full trousers, with a long vest, called a yelek, over them; and over the yelek a gibbeh; and over the gibbeh the additional layers of the traveling costume – a large loose gown called a tob, a face veil that reaches nearly to the feet – and on top of it all a voluminous habarah of black silk which conceals the head and the hands as well as everything else.

Emerson and Selim both stared when Nefret removed the scarf that had covered her head; I had dyed her hair before we left the hotel, and it made quite a difference in her appearance.

“What did you do that for?” Emerson demanded. “Her hair will be covered.”

“Not from other women in the household,” I replied, applying brown coloring to Nefret’s smooth cheeks. “And one must always be prepared for accidents. That red-gold hair is too distinctive.”

Selim nodded and grinned. He was in a state of boyish exuberance, flattered by Emerson’s confidence and looking forward to the adventure. He had not been told of Ramses’s mission, nor of our real purpose. That did not matter. He had complete faith in Emerson – and, I believe I may say, in me – and rather fancied himself as a conspirator.