The Ape Who Guards the Balance by Elizabeth Peters

senseless. This annoyed him a great deal, for, as he remarked, when he knocked people down he expected them to stay down.
    When we stopped in front of Chalfont House we were set upon by our agitated friends, including Nefret and Lia, who had returned from the hospital too late to join the rescue expedition. They pulled me out of the vehicle and passed me from one pair of loving arms to the next—including those of Gargery, who was inclined to forget his station when overcome by emotion. The other servants contented themselves with shouting “Hurrah!” and embracing one another. We then retired in triumph to the library.
    It was our favorite apartment in that large, pretentious mansion. Rows of books in mellow leather bindings lined the walls, and Evelyn had replaced the ornate Empire furniture with comfortable chairs and sofas. A cozy fire burned on the hearth and the lamps had been lit. Gargery drew the heavy velvet curtains and then sidled off to a corner of the room where, with our tactful cooperation, he pretended to be invisible. I would have invited him to sit down and listen in comfort had I not known he would be shocked at the idea.
    I had a few questions of my own. Conversation had been impossible during the return drive; Emerson kept shouting directions and suggestions at Ramses, who ignored them as coolly as he ignored my complaints that he was driving too fast.
    Now Ramses said, “I also found it difficult to believe that Mrs. Pankhurst would proffer such an invitation, and at such short notice. However, we might not have acted on such doubtful grounds had not Aunt Evelyn showed me the letter. A single glance informed me that it had been typewritten on the same machine as the one Sethos had used.”
    The only thing I dislike more than being lectured on Egyptology by Ramses is being lectured on detection by Ramses. However, a rational individual does not allow childish pique to interfere with the acquisition of knowledge.
    “How?” I asked.
    “Individual letters may become worn or scratched or cracked,” Ramses explained. “These flaws, however minute, are reproduced on the paper when the key strikes it.”
    “Yes, I see.” I promised myself I would have a close look at one of the confounded machines. One must keep up with modern advances. “So you could identify the machine that wrote that letter?”
    “If I could find it. That is of course the difficulty.”
    “A difficulty indeed, since you have not the slightest idea where to begin looking for it.”
    “What difference does it make?” Evelyn demanded. “You have brought her back safe. Thank heaven you were in time!”
    “There was ample time,” said Emerson, who is disinclined to give heaven any credit whatever. “We went straight to Mrs. Pankhurst’s rooms in Clement’s Inn and learned, as we had expected, that she had sent no message. David wanted to go haring off to look for you, my dear, but I persuaded him of the folly of that.”
    “Yes, I know how impetuous David can be,” I said, smiling at the young man. It had been Emerson, of course, who had wanted to drive furiously around London in a futile search for me.
    “We had no choice but to wait for you near the designated rendezvous,” Ramses said. “We had been waiting for a quarter of an hour at least before you came, Mother, and were, I assure you, on the qui vive, but we failed to recognize the significance of the entangled vehicles. It is a common-enough occurrence. I do not doubt that on this occasion it was deliberately engineered, and that the drivers of the coster’s cart and the cab were Sethos’s confederates, as were the individuals in the railway van. The operation was very neatly planned and executed. They might have got you away if Father had not leaped instantly from the motorcar and forced a path through the crowd.”
    Nefret, who was curled up in a corner of the divan, laughed. “I would like to have seen that. How many bicyclists did you trample underfoot,