Lord of the Silent: A Novel of Suspense Read Online Free PDF

the hearth rug. Horus did not resemble an amiable domestic puss even when he was asleep. Like all our cats, he was the descendant of a pair of Egyptian felines; his brindled coat and large ears were reminiscent of the large hunting cats shown in Egyptian wall paintings. He opened one eye, identified me as (relatively) harmless, and closed it again. There was another thing, I thought; if Sennia came with us, Horus would have to come too. He behaved like a fiend with everyone in the family except the child and Nefret, who had been his former- one could hardly say owner, not with Horus-associate until he abruptly transferred his loyalties to Sennia. Sennia was building with her blocks. The towering structure was obviously intended to represent a pyramid, and I was not left long in doubt as to the identities of the small doll shapes she moved up and down the slopes. "Uncle David and the Professor and Aunt Amelia and Aunt Nefret and Aunt Lia and baby Abdullah-no, baby, you cannot climb the pyramid, you must lie here on the sand and wait for us, it is very boring, but babies are very boring-and Ramses and"-her voice rose to a triumphant squeal-"and me!" They were on the summit, of course. This did not bode well. She called almost everyone by the courtesy titles of Aunt or Uncle, since her precise relationship to us would have been hard to define. It was not hard to explain, but a number of people still believed, despite our denials, that she was Ramses's illegitimate daughter. The resemblance between them was primarily one of coloring-brown skin and curling black hair. Her resemblance to me was stronger; she had the steely-gray eyes and determined chin I had inherited from my father. Sennia had got them, not from Ramses but from my brother's son. My nephew was one of the few truly evil men I had ever encountered. He had abandoned his child to a life of poverty and eventual prostitution, and for years he had been Ramses's bitter enemy. I could only thank heaven that Sennia had forgotten him, and that he was now out of our lives forever. The unfortunate baby doll, pushed off to one side, gave me a new insight into Sennia's real feelings about Lia and David's son. She behaved impeccably with him, but it was not surprising that she would be jealous of him and the attention he got from the rest of us. (It is quite a normal response, so psychology tells us, and I am a firm believer in psychology when it agrees with my own opinions.) Sennia was the only one who called him by his full name, which was that of his great-grandfather, one of the finest men I had ever known. One day he would be worthy of it, but it was far too formal an appellation for such a fat, jolly little creature. The rest of us employed various pet names, some of which were so silly I hesitate to repeat them. Emerson was one of the worst offenders; he relapsed into babbling idiocy with infants. The infants seemed to like it, though; little Dolly (my name for him) broke into a broad toothless grin whenever Emerson came near him. I announced my presence with a slight cough, and Sennia came running to me. She threw both arms around my waist and squeezed as hard as she could. "Goodness gracious," I exclaimed. "I believe you are even stronger than you were yesterday." "And taller. See?" I patted the curly black head pressed against my midriff, but felt obliged to point out that she was standing on tiptoe. Sennia grinned. She had very pretty, even, little white teeth. At the moment two of them were missing, which gave her smile a childish charm. "You always catch me, Aunt Amelia. Ramses never does." "He wouldn't. All right, my dear, we must get to work. Where is your reading book?" She had it and her other books ready, neatly arranged on the desk. She enjoyed her lessons, in part because they gave her the opportunity of being with the people she loved. Eventually she would have to have tutors for music and languages and other advanced subjects, but she was still very young and