Manuscript H:
The bellow of alarm came at 6:30 in the morning, echoing through house, perhaps even jostling the pictures upon the wall. Ramses heard it as he made his way up the walk, to join his parents for breakfast. "What the devil!" and far worse rattled the very panes of the windows of the house.
Ramses crashed into the formidable form of his mother in their mad dash down the hall. Lawrence was not with Ramses, he had last guard shift of the room. It was with much horror that the entire household and then some stared on in horror at the content of the storage room. Or rather, the lack thereof, for the room stood completely, entirely, down to the very last bead, swiped clean.
Ramses was the first to notice that in fact not every member of the household stood pushing for a better view at the doorway. One crucial member stood missing, and with a horrible sense of dread gripping his heart, he went to wrench open her door. As he feared he would and hoped he wouldn't, Ramses found Nefret's room completely vacant. He stared on at the room with such concentration, willing Nefret to pop out from behind a curtain and shout, "Surprise!" that he barely heard his mother's decisive call to action,.
"Council of war, now!"
~//~
And so Ramses sat and pondered with bowed head, while Emerson paced and growled, and mother directed that breakfast be conducted as usual. No reason to deny the body of crucial nourishment in a time of emergency such as this, she proclaimed. It was at the breakfast table that Ramses confessed his long harbored suspicions, and cursed himself for not acting upon them sooner.
"Why didn't you say anything, my boy?" demanded his father.
"I had no proof, sir, and I couldn't well accuse the man of being associated with a master criminal without something of hard evidence."
"You truly think he is in league with Sethos?" The question from his mother came serious, yet not without that certain strange gleam in her eye she always gets at mention of the man.
"Doesn't this smack of him? Seamless and without a trace, right out from under our very noses?"
"Certainly, yet, both Emerson and I slept like the dead last night. I think Lawrence much have drugged our evening whiskey and soda."
"It's certainly possible."
"And what of Nefret? Surely she didn't…" Mother let the implication hang in the air, and Ramses groaned with the thought.
"Aided and absconded with the bastard? Not our Nefret, she would never do such a fool thing!" growled Emerson.
"Indeed, I agree," seconded Ramses. All of her things are there. I think she must have been drugged with the rest of you. Even I--I'm usually aware, when Lawrence comes and goes from the boat. I slept through it too."
"What the devil do you think he wants with Nefret? Surely not a ransom?"
Both Amelia and Ramses looked at Emerson as though he were a blind man, but it was Amelia who said, "We all knew he was fond of the girl. Perhaps this sort of…courtship runs in Sethos' organization?"
At the mention of that episode Emerson growled, "When I get my hands on that boy, I will rip his spine out through his throat!"
Though he did not voice such sentiments aloud, Ramses felt exactly the same way. And he hoped he would be able to track down the rapscallion soon--Nefret in his hands for a day was a day too many.
