Free Sherlock Holmes and the Mummy's Curse by Stephanie Osborn Page B

arriving. I had in mind to return to the artefact tent and continue studying, well, everything that is available to study. Given my background as a consulting detective, the determination of a tomb site is a perfectly reasonable task.”
    “But…”
    “Perhaps, after dinner, you, your father, and I, can repair to his tent and have a nice talk, get properly caught up on one another,” Holmes suggested offhandedly. “It would hardly be proper for me to take you on an unchaperoned walk, in any event.”
    “Well, that’s true…” Leighton admitted, considering. “At least until Da says it’s all right.”
    “Exactly.” Holmes quickly set his mind onto how to communicate delicately to Professor Whitesell that it was not “all right.”
    “Then perhaps some tea in the dining tent, at the end of the siesta break?”
    “Ah,” Holmes said, caught off guard, “perhaps.”
    “All right,” Leighton lilted, happy. “I’ll come fetch you for tea, then.” She fairly danced off.
    And I, Holmes thought, as he headed for the artefact tent, will make sure to come back and fetch Watson first…
    * * *
    Holmes spent the rest of the early afternoon poring over the various items in the artefact tent, especially the maps. He located the entry log for the different relics, and tried to compare the locales where they were found to the maps, with some difficulty. There were no grease pencils that he could find—it was his experience that they tended to migrate into the dig fields and become lost, anyway—and he was loath to mark on the precious maps with anything else.
    “I believe what I need to do,” he mused to himself, “is to create my own map, which will position the various found items on it, as well as pertinent geologic and topographic features, and their relative relations to same. Then I may ruminate on it at my leisure, including in our tent in the evenings, over a pipe. I should fetch my sketch-pad from my trunk.” He pulled his watch from his waistcoat pocket and checked it. “Mm. And it is high time I also fetched Watson, as well.”
    * * *
    “But Holmes, would she not be ideal for you?” Watson protested, as Holmes dug through his trunk in search of his sketching pad. “Surely you cannot really mean to remain single forever. She is intelligent, beautiful, her father fairly dotes on you…”
    “You know my principles, Watson,” floated up from the trunk’s depths. “That is, in fact, precisely what I do intend. And I doubt the Professor is looking to marry her off as yet, in any case. It is still some few years to her majority. Young woman she is, to be sure… but the emphasis is still upon young .”
    “Holmes… had you stopped to think about the seating arrangement at meals, and what it possibly implies, in this regard…?”
    Holmes’ dark head, hidden deep inside the trunk, suddenly popped up, almost cracking against the trunk lid, and he turned to gaze at Watson, grey eyes wide.
    “Damnation,” he said.
    * * *
    “This will not do, Watson,” a concerned Holmes told his friend, sitting on his cot opposite his companion. “I did not come all this way to be married off, like some witless, titled dandy.”
    “Careful, Holmes,” Watson advised, sotto voce . “If Trenthume were to overhear, he might take offense.”
    “None was intended in that direction,” Holmes replied. “But we both know the type of which I speak. Historically, there have even been a few in the extended royal family.”
    “True.”
    “And we both know I am not that type of man.”
    “Also true.”
    “This will take some thought,” Holmes considered. “I do not wish to hurt Leigh, nor do I wish to insult the Professor, but…”
    “I only wish I had your troubles,” Watson grumbled. “I am most like to spend my time extracting splinters and treating bruises, blisters, and scrapes, not fending off the gentle advances of a beautiful woman.”
    “If you come with me to meet her for tea, I may see what I can