The Amulet Read Online Free PDF Page A

wasn't a cry for help-she'd tried that earlier and I hadn't answered. For the past fifteen minutes she'd been dying.
    By the time the police arrived I was nearly sober, but after they found her note and showed it to me, I got drunk again quickly. She had been three months pregnant.
    Doug took me in that night. It was he who cleared out the flat and got me somewhere new to live, and it was he I leaned on through the funeral as I tried to avoid the tear-stained eyes of Liz's family. But he couldn't persuade me to stay on in my studies.
    The road from there to here was long, and well traveled. I stood by the window and let self-pity take over, pity for lost opportunities and lost loves. I was still there when the sun started to come up.
    * * *

It was too early to start hitting the streets. I made some coffee and went back to Dunlop's book. Old Joe had opened up the paper shop downstairs, and it was only a matter of time before the strains of 'Just one Cornetto' wafted my way again. But the coffee revived my spirits, and the book stole my thoughts away again, this time to the Mediterranean and a stifling hot day eighty years before.
    * * *

It was nearly a fortnight before I saw the old Arab again, and then it was in a place where I never expected him.
    Things had been hectic since Johnson's find. Young Campbell and I had worked non-stop; cataloguing sarcophagi, desiccated bodies, and more golden statuary than even Carter had managed. Johnson had somehow magicked up a coterie of journalists, and even the London Times had managed to get a representative on site.
    Johnson was desperate to get his 'trophies' back to Glasgow, and some items were being boxed and shipped even as we catalogued them. As I said, we were very busy, so it was some time before I noticed that the amulet I had seen was nowhere on the manifests. It wasn't until we were on the boat and leaving the docks at Alexandria that I managed to catch up with Johnson.
    He laughed when I asked for the piece.
    "Oh no. Not that one. That's my reward for my patronage, and my promise for the future."
    "I'll expose you when we get home," I said, but even as I said it I knew that it was an empty threat. Johnson was not going to worry about the opinions of some old archaeologist. Not when he was going to be front-page news.
    Young Campbell was enraged when I told him. I found him pouring over the large collection of gold serpents we had found.
    "Professor," he said to me, "I think we have something here. I think there was a serpent cult. Not just that, I think their main god was serpentine."
    I had to agree with him. Too much of what we had found pointed in that direction. There was one particularly squamous sculpture with a multitude of snake-like heads that made my skin crawl just to think about it. That thought also brought to mind the shadows that had seemed to follow the old Arab. I told Campbell about my conversation with our sponsor.
    "It cannot be allowed," he said, his face flushed. The bruising around his head was only now beginning to fade, but it still lent a yellow cast to his skin. "It clearly says in the contract for the dig that all finds will be the property of the museum."
    "Aye," I said. "But what can I do?"
    A sly look came over the young man's face.
    "Don't worry, Professor," he said. "I think I know what needs to be done."
    Would that I had stopped him there, I might have saved him. But if truth be told, I didn't think he would cause any mischief.
    I had miscalculated the desire for revenge brought on by the blow to the head.
    We spent the next hours going over the manifest and checking that all the boxes were secure before Campbell professed himself tired. He took his leave, and I wandered up to the foredeck to watch the sunset and smoke a last cigar of the day.
    There was a slight coolness in the air, a hint of the welcome awaiting us back in Glasgow. I was actually looking forward to a slate-gray sky and endless drizzle. I could think of nothing finer than