Fiona locked out!

“They say it’s cursed,” said one of the workers, brushing dust off the lid of the stone sarcophagus that sat in one of the hotel’s many storerooms, among Ming vases and lost Rembrandts and other such paraphernalia. “Looted from the tomb of Sukhontiti, a pharaoh so wicked and cruel that his black deeds were stricken from the historical record.”

“Cursed? How?”

“Anyone who fails to treat the pharaoh’s property with the respect it deserves will suffer his undying wrath from beyond the grave.”

“Does that include us?”

“Probably not,” said the first worker, scrubbing away three thousand years of accumulated dirt. “They say the curse only affects women, funnily enough. Apparently old Sukhontiti was a bit of a perv. Belonged to some deviant sect who believed that the world was created when the first man stole the clothes from the first woman while she bathed in the waters of life.”

“All sounds a bit silly if you ask me. Anyway, let’s go outside and have a smoke.”

The two workers put their dust cloths down and went outside, into the alleyway behind the hotel. A few seconds later, a different door opened, and Fiona came tip-toeing through it. She was still naked, and breathing hard from the exertions of scampering all around the hotel without being seen.

She’d banged on her room’s locked door for a while, but the prankster inside had declined to let her in. And then a Swedish diplomat in the room next to hers had opened up his door to see what all the noise was about, though the only thing he’d spotted was a glimpse of a pink bottom rapidly disappearing down the nearest set of stairs.

Then there had been a lot of ducking around corners, crouching behind pot plants, creeping through kitchens, circumnavigating pillars so as always to remain on the other side of excitable Belgian journalists, climbing out windows so as to avoid the sudden intrusion into hitherto empty rooms of Bengali maharajas with their entire entourages, and so on.

Very embarrassing for poor Fiona, who utterly despised the thought of being caught and having to explain what she was doing running around such a respectable establishment without any clothes on. The corridor outside the door she’d just come in through was now full of lady archaeologists, all babbling about some exciting event they’d be going to later, so she now had no avenue of retreat from the storeroom.

“Well,” said one of the workers, loud enough to be heard from inside the storeroom, a few minutes later. “Suppose we’d better get back inside.”

He opened the door, and frowned. The storeroom was empty of people, just as he’d left it, but he could have sworn that the lid of the sarcophagus had moved ever so slightly. Probably his imagination. He nudged it back into place, and wrapped a few stout lengths of rope around it to ensure it couldn’t possibly be opened until the proper moment. Then, he heaved it up onto a trolley.

“Where’re we going?” said the second worker.

“Ballroom.”

“Why?”

“Dunno. Hey, have you heard about this Filou Rouge guy?”