In an instant, almost faster than sight, the thug flicked the sword blade and a sharp screech, like fingernails on a chalkboard was instantly followed by the sound of breaking glass as a window shattered to one side from the impact of the deflected bullet. The thug stood and stared at Indy with an even larger grin.
"Jesus, Marcus!" Indy exclaimed. "Did you see that?"
The thug had deflected Indy's bullet with almost lightning reflexes but his sword blade was now two feet shorter. Indy looked at the remains of the sword. It was still more than capable of killing him.
The thug passed the sword to his other hand and took a tentative step forward.
"Second time lucky?" Indy said grimly as he fired again.
Again, with lightning reflexes, the thug threw up his empty hand and drew it sharply back towards his chest, his hand clenched as a fist.
Indy stared, dumbfounded as the thug held out his hand and opened it, palm up. There in his open hand was Indy's bullet.
Marion fainted.
Indy's jaw dropped open.
Marcus leaned on Rene for support.
The thug moved in toward Indy.
Suddenly, a young, higher pitched voice from the shadows said, "Er, Excuse me."
The thug looked to his right, caught unawares. Instantly, Indy pistol-whipped him across the side of his head and the man dropped to the floor like a stone.
"Catch that, you son of a bitch." Said Indy, through gritted teeth. Then he looked up as the owner of the strange but familiar voice moved from the shadows into view.
"Robert!" Indy, Marcus and Rene all exclaimed at once.
Rene bent over and retrieved the notebooks, cramming them inside his shirt as Indy strode over to the sheepish looking Robert.
"You're supposed to be in London." Indy exclaimed, embracing the young man gratefully. He had just possibly saved his life. Then he added, "But I sure am glad you're here." He looked down at the unconscious Japanese thug. He grasped Robert's hand and shook it vigorously.
"Anyway, what the hell are you doing here. You're supposed to be watching Smith."
Robert shrugged and said simply, "He's gone. Disappeared."
Indy frowned and looked at Rene.
"I don't like the sound of that. Any ideas where he could have gone?"
Both Marcus and Rene walked over to Indy and Robert.
"Isn't anyone gonna help me up?" A thin voice wailed from behind them. They all turned to see Marion struggling to her feet. She was shaken but obviously unhurt from her flight off the bar top and her fainting spell.
Indy looked at her and turned back to Belloq.
"Well? Any clues?" He repeated, giving Rene a sly wink. Belloq grinned at him and deliberately ignored Marion.
"There were various people involved from the German side as well as the Japanese." He said.
"That's what I call gentlemanly!" Marion exclaimed.
"The Jap's working with the Nazi's? That's unheard of." Indy murmured.
"Well, that's fine. Just ignore me!" Marion called, struggling to her feet.
"They seemed to have some kind of agreement from higher up. I think Hitler wants the cats badly. He's willing to make almost any kind of a deal with anyone to get them." Rene said thoughtfully.
Indy scratched at his chin, also thinking.
"Men!" Marion moaned.
Indy, Marcus and Rene all turned at once and in unison called, "Shut up, will you?"
Marion's eyes grew wide in surprise,....But she shut up.
Well, the Nazi's think the cats have some kind of hypnotic, deadly power over anyone who touches them. I'm not surprised they will do anything to get them." Marcus said, joining in the discussion.
"You don't suppose they know the real story of the cats, do you?" Robert said. "I mean, if they thought they could actually give some kind of immortality or something..." He left the statement hanging.
Indy looked questioningly at Belloq. "Well? What do you think?" He said.
"I suppose they could." Rene said after a moments though. "I mean, anything we could discover, they could find out as well. Abner wasn't the only one who saw those original hieroglyphs. Someone else could have copied them down. They could have gotten information somewhere else."
"Great!" Indy exclaimed. "So they could know what we do, or even more."
Marcus looked confused. "But why murder those Lords and politicians if there wasn't really any purpose? What about the threat to the American summit meeting?"
Indy smacked his forehead.
"What an idiot! A blind!" He cursed vehemently.
"A what?" Robert said.
"A blind. a red herring. They knew it would come to my attention and it would get me interested."
He turned and grinned at Belloq.
"They've been playing you for a fool, Rene. You thought it was your idea to get me involved. The Nazi's and the Jap's planned this all along."
Rene looked slightly confused. "But why?" He said.
Marcus gave the answer that Indy thought to himself but wouldn't voice.
"Because with the two greatest archaeologists in the world working for them they are sure to find all the cats and solve the greatest riddle of all."
"And what might that be?" Marion asked, coming to stand next to Rene. She looked up at him and grinned, seemingly embarrassed. He smiled at her and she kicked him hard in the shin, causing him to cry out in pain. Her fist drew back to land a punch on his jaw but Indy caught her wrist.
"Forget it, Marion." He said, sternly.
"That bastard tried to kill us!" She shouted.
"It's a long story, Marion but like I said, for now, forget it."
She shook her wrist free from Indy's grip and stood, fuming with anger. "Later!" She hissed. Then she turned to Marcus.
"Like I said, What mystery."
Marcus looked at her then at Indy.
"The mystery of life after death."
There was silence for a moment, then Marion burst out laughing.
"Jones, you sure do come up with some real crap."
Then, seeing no one else was laughing, her grin faltered.
"You don't really mean it? I mean, life after death, as in, immortality? Come on, you must be...." She looked at the three men in turn. "I'm interested." She said.
Indy groaned inside. Suddenly, Marion was all business.
"Okay you guys." She called out to her regular customers that were still remaining. Most had fled as soon as the fighting had started. "Closing time. Shows over." She clapped her hands and ushered the remaining men to the door like a schoolmarm dismissing her class. As the last of them left, Marion closed the door and locked it. Indy chuckled at this last action, considering there was no window to one side of the door. She pulled several chairs around one of the larger tables as Rene and Indy went off in separate directions to find some rope to tie up their captive before he came round again.
Classes clinked and a couple of bottles of bourbon were put on the table. The Japanese thug was locked, still comatose, in a store room then they all sat down.
"Now, Jones, what's going on?" Marion said as she poured five generous glasses of liquor.
Indy sighed and interspersed with comments from the others, he filled Marion in on as much, or as little, as he thought she needed to know.
"So that's why you want Abner's notebooks. To work out the rest of the translation properly." She said after Indy finally stopped talking.
"And we are hoping the books will give us a clue as to the whereabouts of the missing cats." Marcus added.
"Possibly even tell us where Cleopatra's resting place actually is." Rene put in. Marion scowled at him. She still had a score to settle with this man who had feigned so much affection, only to allow her to be thrown to the snakes in the Well of Souls.
Rene shrugged at her, almost reading her mind.
Marion looked at Indy and said, "I thought Cleopatra was cremated on the Nile, on a big ship, or something."
It was Marcus who answered. "There has always been disputes about that. The Egyptians didn't go in for cremation as a rule. They thought that if you burned the body, the person couldn't go on to the next life. Also, Cleopatra was incredibly superstitious. She wouldn't have done anything to jeopardise her chances of immortality. No one is really certain what actually happened to her body. If we were to find her, well...."
"We'd be rich as hell." Marion finished.
"That's not the idea, Marion." Indy said sternly.
"You have your ideas, Jones, I'll have mine. You need dads notes. You need me. Anyway, where are the notebooks?"
Rene pulled the books from his jacket and passed them to Indy, deliberately evading her sudden grasp at them.
Indy laid the books on the table and pulled out the notes they had so far amassed. Heads were bent over the writings and a full two hours of study and discussion passed. The two bottles of Bourbon were drunk.
"There must be more to it than this!" Exclaimed Indy, frustrated at their seeming lack of progress. "Hours. And were no further ahead. The books don't tell us anything we don't already know."
Marcus frowned. "Abners notes do hint at something more than just eternal life though. I mean, the part about life being a circle or a wheel that goes round.." He flicked through a few pages of one of the books. "Here. " He coughed and read out from the page.
"Time is a circle. Like a wheel and we are on the rim." He looked up at the others. "What do you suppose that means?"
Indy shrugged. "Beats me." He said, stretching his aching arms.
"Well, what about this piece?" Marcus said, reading again from the page. "From a single light shall light dawn. Strength in one, weakness in many." He shook his head, uncomprehending. Marion yawned and stood.
"I'll get another bottle." She said, going off into another room.
Rene turned the notebook to face himself and leafed through the pages randomly. "What about these strange markings?" He said, pointing to the odd squiggles and lines on the top corner of each page.
"I saw those." Indy commented. "They don't look like any glyphs I've ever seen before." The corner of each page in the notebook had different markings on. Some were small horizontal lines, some were vertical, others were curved but all were different. Indy shook his head and grinned. "Abner always did like cryptic clues and codes." He said. Marion backed through a swinging door carrying a tray laden with bread, cheeses and fruit, as well as more bottles.
"Hungry?" She said. The notes and books were gratefully left and they all tucked in to the simple but satisfying meal. After a while, Marion said, "So what now?"
Indy put down an apple and pointed to the page that was open in front of him. "Marcus was commenting on the bit about life being a wheel but we still have no idea what it means, or where to look for the library or tomb."
Marcus swallowed a large piece of cheese and added, "And we can't work out how to decipher the code." Marion looked puzzled. "What code?" She asked.
Marcus tapped the markings on the page.
Marion chuckled and lifting the note book, she turned it to face them and slowly fanned the pages from start to finish of the notebook.
Indy's jaw dropped as before his eyes, the flickering image of a columned building, with the picture of a book above the door appeared on the pages.
"How the hell did you do that?" He gasped.
"Haven't you ever seen Mickey Mouse?" Marion asked. Indy shook his head dumbly, his eyes wide with amazement.
"It's animation!" Marcus exclaimed. "I've seen it. That's how animated films are made."
Marcus took the book from Marion and repeatedly flicked the pages to stare at the image.
"It's brilliant!" He exclaimed.
Suddenly, Indy pulled through the other papers to find their two halves of their map. He placed the halves together and tracing the image with his finger, he found an identical copy of the building near the drawing of the river. The only difference was the building on the map had no book drawn above the door.
"A building with four columns at the front." He said. They all looked at the map, then , as Marcus fanned the pages once more, they exclaimed in unison, "The library. We've found it! It's at the side of the river!"
Marion laughed out loud but Indy silenced her by saying, "Why the hell didn't you show us that two hours ago?!"
Marion stared back, startled by Indy's manner. "Look, buster, if you told ME half the truth, maybe I'd know what your really looking for! Any way, I never even thought about it. Dad used to show me lots of funny little flick books like that."
The import of what she had just said hit her like a thunderbolt.
"LOTS OF THEM?" Indy cried. "Where are they?!"
Marion was already heading up the stairs behind the bar as he said it. Moments later, she returned carrying three more small notebooks. "There's nothing else in them, except his little moving pictures. I never thought they meant anything." She passed the books to Indy and he took one as Marcus and Rene lifted the others.
The books, when fanned in the same way, showed a circle containing twelve different sized lines in a ring and a large letter 'C' at the centre, A large rectangle divided vertically in the centre with what looked like the letter 'S' mirrored on each side of the centre line, And a picture of pieces of a cat, which moved to form a whole cat as the pages were flicked. The cat finally had a circle appear around it.
"I wonder what they all mean?" Marcus said, voicing everyone's thoughts.
"Maybe we'll find out in Alexandria." Rene said quietly.
"I can't understand the lack of information on the hieroglyphs." Said Marcus. "I felt sure we would find out more about the translation of the markings on the actual cats and maybe even where the others are."
"Maybe Abner kept that in his head." Rene said quietly.
"Abner? Never." Indy said. "He wrote down everything. We must be missing a book."
He turned to Marion. "Is there anything else? Any more books, or notes? Anything?"
She shook her head. "No. Everything he left in that scruffy little case of his was in that pile. These are the only books."
Indy sighed. "Well, Alexandria first. We can work on the Hieroglyphs when we find the other cats."
"If we find them." Robert added quietly. He hadn't said much so far but was intensely interested in the whole puzzle.
"Things are certainly more interesting around you people than at the museum." He added.
Suddenly, there was a sound of breaking glass and Indy jumped to his feet.
"The Jap!" He exclaimed, running to the store cupboard. Marion unlocked the door and they burst in to find the thug gone. On the floor lay the ropes, still knotted and in coils as if the man had simply vanished from within them. A side window was broken and moments later the sound of a car starting, then racing away came in to them.
"Shit." Indy cried, punching his own open hand.
"Do you think he heard anything?" Marcus asked, already knowing the answer.
"C'mon. Alexandria!" Indy said through gritted teeth.
