Murder Most Egyptological (A Mrs. Xavier Stayton Mystery Book 3) Read Free Page B

silver dish before me with Mr. Farber’s calling card, I gave him a wink to indicate he had done well to not interrupt the verbal tirade one floor above.
       “Please show Mr. Farber in here. I will see him alone.”
       “Very well, Mrs. Xavier,” replied the uniquely efficient member of our staff.
       Mr. Farber shuffled into the study appearing quite disheveled. Lanky and nervous, he seemed less a thirty-five-year-old man than a gawky teenager. His little spectacles were bent, his tweedy jacket was worn, and while cut like every other man’s hair, Mr. Farber’s appeared somewhat crazed and unkempt.
       Bowing his head, the man stuttered, “Oh, Mrs. Xavier, this is really all a muddle. I don’t know where to begin.”
       “I find starting at the beginning helps,” I replied as I gestured for him to sit on the wingback chair across from me.
       “Right, sound advice,” he remarked, forcing a smile. “After you ladies left yesterday, I sent a telegram to Percy Huston; he was the photographer we hired to take the photographs of the tomb and the findings.”
       “What has happened to him?” I asked.
       Mr. Farber’s brow lowered. “How do you know that something happened to him?”
       “You just told me; you said he was the photographer, implying he no longer is.”
       The man nodded his head. “Ah, yes. Well, you see, he has gone missing.”
       “When?” I asked.
       “That’s just it, he went missing the evening before the mummy case was sent by train to Alexandria to be shipped by sea.”
      I knew this had occurred just less than three weeks earlier. “How did you find this out?”
      “Arthur Fox has been receiving cables and mail for him,” replied Mr. Farber.
      This Mr. Fox was the journalist who had been hired after Professor Kinkaid had discovered the tomb. Mother Stayton and I had commissioned him to write a book detailing the findings. We had not met him in person, but I had read his work. A particular article of his on the subject of a powerful Egyptian queen had caught my interest and my imagination.
       “What else have you learned?” I inquired.
      “Little else. Percy just up and vanished, during a—” He broke off, oddly.
       “Yes, Mr. Farber?”
       “Well, they had a sort of going away party for King Kamose. Back at the hotel, the expedition team gathered and celebrated. Worse for wear, it wasn’t until later the following day that Fox went to check in on Percy. Couldn’t find him.”
       “And?” I asked.
       The man shrugged. “Fox wrote that the day after the party, Percy’s belongings were still in his room, but sometime that evening, everything vanished.”
       I nodded my chin and replied, “Yes, that is quite a muddle. Tell me, Mr. Farber, how well do you know Mr. Huston?”
      “Know him?” asked the man, a bit unsteadily.
      “You refer to him not by his surname, but his Christian name; are you friends?” Yes, I felt very much the sleuth.
       “I guess you could say that I knew him, mutual friends and all that.” The man pushed his spectacles back to the top of his nose. “We had hired him to photograph a number of pieces of art. At the museum that is.”
      “That’s why you recommended him for the expedition?” I inquired, suspecting that he was holding something back.
      Mr. Farber’s head nodded. “Yes, he was someone I could trust.”
       The man’s choice of words left me with an unasked question: Was there a member of the team whom he did not trust? Instead, I put another question to him, “So his disappearance is out of character?”
       “Very much so.” Mr. Farber shook his head and sighed before continuing, “As to the mummy, I sent another message to Professor Kinkaid. In his reply he stated that he is dumbfounded. He’s contacting the railway and the shipping line now…”
      “Pointless,” I told him. “King Kamose went missing at the same time this Percy Huston did.