The Egyptologist

The Egyptologist Read Free Page B

Book: The Egyptologist Read Free
Author: Arthur Phillips
Tags: Fiction, Literary
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And here we go: Mr. Davies tells the solicitors that some or many or maybe all of these women might very likely have had children by Mr. Davies.
    Find the birds, he says, and find out for certain if they have had his brats. If they have, don't say another word, just thank the mothers and go find the chil• dren. Talk to the children and present them with this offer: Davies will leave them each some money—good money, when you consider all they had to do for it was get themselves born out of matrimony, which isn't that hard a trick—if they agree to two things: (a) don't pester the Davies family back in England for
    one more penny, seeing as legal family is still a cut above, even to this maniac, and
    (b) agree to take the name Davies as their own. That's right, Mr. Macy, change their names. The oldest will be forty years old, right? But if a bastard wants his cash, he'll change his name. How much cash? The amount's negotiable, Davies tells the lawyers as he presents them with a chart he's made: ideally the children take the bottom figure, but the lawyers can go up to the higher sums, depending on nationality, and whether the children have accomplished something notewor• thy, or seem like they might. There's equations on his chart, I was told. A Frenchie in a profession is worth 3.5x as much as an Argentine sailor, for example.
    Not surprisingly, the solicitors put up a bit of a fuss. They point out that if no• body's come for old Davies so far, and he is—no use dancing around it—about to meet St. Pete anyway, there's no need to go scraping around for old problems to dig up. Besides, says one sane solicitor, it puts Davies at a disadvantage to have these illegitimates suddenly taking his good name. "Not at all," says Davies, "you're quite missing the point, chappies. These children are mine, and every• thing they accomplish in this world is mine, too, and should bear my name, be• cause I'm proud of them. I want the Davies name to live on in them and in what they do. We're all Davieses," says the old fellow, getting himself into quite a sweat about it, "my dynasty." "Well, we're just solicitors," say the solicitors, "and track• ing down your abandoned brats in the four corners of the earth isn't our affair," although they don't put it quite so hard to their wealthy client as that, I shouldn't think. But he won't listen: "Get detectives to do it, I don't care how you do it, just do it, make it legal, put it in a document, and I'll sign the thing, but do it fast, 'cause time's at stake here, isn't it just? If I have to, I'll sign blank ones and you can fill in the children's names later" is more or less how Mr. Davies puts it.
    And I hear you ask: "Just how many possible mothers were there?" Well, Davies's first list turned out to be rather preliminary. The final tally kept swelling over the next few days, as the fat brewer calls back the solicitors to add names when he recollects them, or when he finds another lady's signature at the bottom of some old love note he's burning before signing off for his lunch date with the
    almighty. When HQ contacted me in Sydney Branch, the 21st of June, 1922, the tally of potential Davies spawn was at thirty-eight and still climbing.
    Now "Sydney Branch" and "London HQ" I should clarify those. I'd run my own proprietorship, Ferrell Detection, until March 1922, just a few months be•
    fore this case, The Case of the Promiscuous Brewer and the Murders in the Desert,
    eh? Catches you? It wasn't a particularly lucrative venture, Ferrell Detection, but I'd a knack for disguise and getting people to tell the truth or at least show it when they were lying. I was a brave little bastard and that's a fact. I knew my Sydney, top and bottom, and I had no time for criminals who thought they were geniuses, because not a one of them ever is, Mr. Macy. There ain't more than three types of people in this world, I can tell you after my years of dealing with them, and maybe not even three.
    Then,

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