INTRODUCTION & DISCLAIMER – Enjoy a trip back in time to Egypt in 1926, where dashing young archaeologist Doctor James Banks and his team struggle to find any Pharaoh's tomb, much less one as grand and opulent as that of Tutankhamen located four years earlier. James's financial backer, ruthless American capitalist Humphrey Herbert is anything but pleased about the lack of progress, and is not shy about making his feelings known. Will Mr. Herbert's daughter, the beautiful heiress Charlotte, be any nicer to James than her father?
Only characters aged 18 and over engage in sexual activities. All characters and events are fictional, with any similarity to real persons living or dead coincidental and unintentional.
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The afternoon sun beat down relentlessly across Egypt, and there seemed no escape from the heat anywhere in Cairo, where the residents of the over-crowded city sought ways to keep cool, both inside and outside.
Among those trying to keep cool were three men who sat at a restaurant table at a hotel, wiping sweat from their brows as they discussed the progress, or rather the lack of progress, on the archaeology expedition in the Valley of the Kings.
The expedition leader was Doctor James Banks, a tall and dashing 32-year-old American archaeologist with dark hair and handsome, rugged looks specializing in Egyptology. The young man had published numerous papers on the subject and lectured extensively both in America and in England, but his expert knowledge of ancient Egypt was proving of precious little value now.
To the left of James sat the deputy expedition leader Doctor Martin Ward, a slim, red-haired American who like his boss was a world renowned expert on ancient Egypt, and also like his superior was finding out that publishing papers about Egyptian artefacts and lecturing on the subject was much easier that finding them oneself in the hot and sandy environs of the Valley of the Kings.
The third man at the table was an Egyptian named Ahmed, the foreman of the laborers who were working at the excavation site. Or rather, the team should have been working at the site. For week after long week, the only items dug up from the sand were rocks. However, when the team finally came upon an actual artifact – a small stone statue of a cat dating back some 3000 years – the majority of the superstitious laborers saw it as a bad omen and abandoned the site, fleeing into the night. This caused much consternation to the American expedition team, and to the level-headed Ahmed.
Superstition seemed to have overshadowed the expedition from the start. Gossip and talk of curses abounded not only among the locals, but among members of the American expedition. The discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen by Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon four years previously had been one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of all time. But the premature death of Carnarvon and many others who were either in or connected with the expedition, not to mention the difficulties at this site even after the discovery gave rise to talk of a 'Curse of the Pharaohs'. And when the cat statue was unearthed from the sand, it sent the majority of the laborers into a panic, the men feeling certain it was a bad omen.
James dismissed any notion of curses or jinxes, but could only ponder the bad luck of his expedition. The workers taking flight at a harmless cat statue was just the start of the problems. The administrators at the museum in Cairo had sent a telegram demanding a meeting to discuss the progress of the expedition, hence the one of the reasons for the trip to the Egyptian capital. Then there was the small matter of funding. The man financing the expedition was a wealthy New York tycoon named Humphrey Herbert. A ruthless capitalist who made other Wall Street multi-millionaires look like communists, Mr. Herbert demanded quick and fast returns on his investments. The man was less than impressed several months earlier when James sent him a telegram for a second round of funding, but the thought of another lost Pharaoh's tomb filled with riches unseen for thousands of years being uncovered caused dollar signs to flash before Mr. Herbert's eyes, and the funding was supplied with a stern warning that results were expected.
Now, this funding was almost exhausted and James would have to send a begging telegram to Mr. Herbert to arrange more. James doubted that Herbert would be very impressed by receiving such correspondence, but then it took a lot to impress the man anyway.
At the table, Ahmed picked up the statue of the cat and shook his head in frustration. "It is so silly, those who talk of curses. I will do my best to arrange you a new team, and you know me and my family will continue to work for you, but you know how gossip spreads so arranging more men may be hard."
James nodded. "Yes, I understand. Thank you again Ahmed."
Ahmed placed the cat statue down and got up from the table. "So, I will see you tomorrow at three?"
"That's right," James affirmed.
Ahmed went on his way, and James and Martin remained discussing their expedition's many failings to date. "Maybe there is a curse?" Martin joked.
James smiled and shook his head. "For there to have been a curse we would have to have found something. Apart from the cat statue, we have found nothing."
"Do you think Ahmed might be able to arrange more laborers?" asked Martin.
"Ahmed is very reliable and level-headed," observed James. "But I think he might find it hard, given the stories and old superstitions that linger. It was hard enough to get the last team organized."
The two men got up from their table, paid their bill and walked towards the lobby. "Are you sending a telegram to Emma?" James asked his colleague. He was aware that Martin missed his wife and children when working overseas, and James was glad at times that he himself had not met the right lady as yet. Working away from a wife and family for months at a time would be difficult.
Martin nodded. "That's right, I haven't had much of a chance lately."
"I'll swap with you," said James. "I'll send a telegram to your wife, and you can send the telegram to Old Humphrey requesting more money."
Martin laughed in response. "No, I'm good thank you. Old Humphrey will probably jump into the Atlantic, swim here and kill me."
"He'll do the same to me," said James. "One thing is for sure, I will need to make the telegram really convincing to persuade Old Humphrey not to kill me, much less part with any more of his money."
"Or you could ask 'Old Humphrey' to invest more money face to face," came a strict-sounding, male American voice from behind them.
Startled, James and Martin whirled around and were astounded to see the tall, portly frame of their financial backer Humphrey Herbert standing behind them in the lobby. Despite the heat, Mr. Herbert was clad in a full black suit, complete with a tie, jacket and hat as though he was going to a meeting in New York, not in Cairo. The tycoon stared back at them with a stern, indignant expression, the man's caterpillar-like moustache his most dominant facial feature.
Behind Mr. Herbert stood a second person just as familiar to the two archaeologists, in the slim and pretty form of Herbert's 22-year-old daughter Charlotte. Unlike her father, Charlotte's clothing of a short pink dress, the hem well above the young woman's knees helped her cope with the Egyptian heat, while her matching pink headband kept her stylish bobbed blonde hair in place and absorbed any perspiration on her brow.
Charlotte often accompanied her father on business meetings and trips, and obviously this one was no exception. Mr. Herbert's wife was a nervous woman, who disliked leaving the security of their expensive home, much less traveling overseas with her husband. When Mr. and Mrs. Herbert welcomed their daughter and son into the world in 1904 & 1905, Mr. Herbert had their futures mapped out for them.
The daughter Charlotte would attend the finest girls' school in New York, and after completing finishing school would marry a wealthy young man from an old-money, East Coast blue-blood family. The younger child, the son Humphrey Junior, would receive the finest education money could buy at exclusive boys' schools and progress to an Ivy-league university. At all stages of his education Humphrey Junior would achieve the highest academic standards and a star on the sports' field, and as a young adult he would work with his father to learn how to run the business empire with a fist of iron.
To the great disappointment of Humphrey Senior however, Humphrey Junior turned out to be a weak and sickly child, confined to a wheelchair, having learning difficulties and severe respiratory problems that kept him out of sight behind the walls of the family estate. When Mrs. Herbert failed to fall pregnant again after the birth of his son, Mr. Herbert coped with the disappointment of a son not living up to his visions by substituting his daughter into the things he had one day hoped his son would do, such as accompanying him on business trips. It was something the thoroughly-modern young heiress seemed to like, and Charlotte could most often be found at her father's side.
"Mr. Herbert, Miss Charlotte, what an unexpected surprise," stammered James, as he tried to cover up his disbelief at their arrival, and his frustration at making a major faux pas with the man who with the stroke of a pen could end the expedition.
