The Egyptologist Read Online Free PDF

service be limited entirely to Egypt for as long as AIF has presence there, due to special knowledge and circumstances (which?). Entered as private (if he had special knowledge, why only private?). Dispatched to infantry at Tel el Kebir, Egypt. Promoted twice and cited for distinctive service twice with commendatory letter included in file from Brit. Capt.
    H. S. Marlowe. (Why a British captain bothering with an Aussie digger?) Missing while on leave, 12 November 1918. Natives far south at Deir el Bahari (500 miles away from his camp), subsequently discover Cald• well's rifle, identity disks of Caldwell and aforementioned Marlowe. (A pommy officer and a digger on leave together?) Rank at end of service: corporal. Missing status changed to Dead in final records closing, June 29,1919.
     
    Because he was a British officer, Captain Marlowe's file was conveniently lo• cated in London, so we have to be satisfied with this for now, my good Watson. Now, the questions I jotted down in my notes that day are only a few of what should occur to a clear-eyed investigator presented with this synopsis. I'll leave it to you to try to count up the puzzles hidden in those hundred and eight words, because they breed fast, the little rabbits. Here's a gift, though, in case your his•
    tory's not too strong: the War ended on the 11th of November, 1918, the day before
    Paul vanished.
    One more item from the boy's file: "Next of kin: Mrs. Emma Hoyt, in care of Flipping Hoyt Brothers Entertainment, Ltd., Sydney." So much for Eulalie Cald• well and brother Tommy; no wonder they'd had to hear the news from a third party: they weren't mentioned when Paul enlisted. Kin seems to have been a com• plicated question for our boy. I'd have to ask the lawyers: might his Davies inher• itance belong to this new next of kin, if Paul Caldwell was dead and somehow retroactively rechristened Paul Davies?
     
     
    Good morning, Mr. Macy! Shall we continue? Good.
    Of course I remembered the Flipping Hoyt Brothers Circus—but first, I hear impatient Mr. Macy whingeing, "What's this ripping yarn got to do with my poor mistreated auntie and vanished great-uncle?" Everything, Mr. Macy, everything. Patience. Have some faith in your storyteller, eh?
    Now then, of course I remembered the Flipping Hoyt Brothers Circus, but I was surprised to find it still in existence when I went enquiring after Emma Hoyt at the circus's ticket booth, the 8th of July, 1922.
    "She's about to go on," says the bald, shirtless, moustached man at the booth. "She's available for admirers after the performance, but here's a tip, mate: she'll be more likely to talk to you if she knows you saw her show."
    "It's on now?" I asked, looking around the field surrounding us and the sag• ging yellow tent, three or four people milling about some caravans.
    "Starts in five minutes. You're a lucky man." I paid for a front-row seat, and the bald man emerged to tear the ticket he'd just sold me, then showed me to my place, pulling the canvas shut behind us. I counted the audience: I was one of eight, though there were empty benches and risers and a row of large divans with tables, seats for 300 or some. My usher sat me, then continued down the empty aisle, stepped over the flaking red wooden wall in front of me, opened a gate in the high metal fence circling the sandy pit, locked the gate behind him, and picked up a megaphone. His red velvet trousers were white at the seat. "Ladies and gentlemen," he yelled, walking in circles, looking high over my head at long- ago crowds.
    His opening remarks finished, he unwound his whip and lifted a hatch at the back of the cage. Three monstrous tigers slunk in. Our bald man lazily attended to making them leap over each other, roll on their backs, spring through a metal ring, all of which they performed sluggishly but with sudden bursts of snarling rebellion, which the whip didn't shut up too quickly. For his finale, he had the tigers lie down, not without