The Case of the Golden Greeks

by Sean McLachlan

  Abd-el-Salam bowed and smiled. “If I were a tailor, generous sir, I would say it looks good on you.”

  “How much for this?”

  The shopkeeper named an inflated price. Moustafa didn’t haggle too much. He wanted the shopkeeper happy, and Mr. Wall had already promised to repay any “reasonable expenses.” Moustafa wasn’t sure a sword that might have once drank British blood counted as a reasonable expense, but he didn’t care.

  Once a deal had been made on the sword and the shopkeeper had wrapped it up in an old carpet so Moustafa could take it home without being arrested, the shopkeeper sent a boy to fetch some tea from the nearest cafe.

  They settled down to their tea and after a few minutes of chatting about nothing important, Moustafa got to the point.

  He pulled the blowgun from a bag he had with him.

  “Have you ever seen a weapon like this?”

  “Ah, this is very interesting,” the shopkeeper said, taking it and turning it over in his hands.

  “Do you know what it is?”

  “There is no word for it in Arabic, I believe. It is a tube in which you put a dart and blow it out. The darts are covered in poison. They are used in the great Amazon jungle, as well as the jungles of India and further east.”

  “You sound like you know quite a lot.”

  Abd-el-Salam bowed. “I am but a poor shopkeeper, but as they say, ‘education is the greatest treasure.’”

  “And how much treasure is your education going to cost me?”

  “Oh, we are good friends, my Soudanese swordsman. I would not dream of overcharging you for just a bit of information. But tell me, what exactly do you want to know?”

  “Who in Cairo uses one of these? The man was Egyptian, not a foreigner.”

  That caught Abd-el-Salam by surprise. “An Egyptian?”

  Moustafa handed over a fifty piastre note, which Abd-el-Salam looked at with ill-disguised contempt. Moustafa handed over another fifty.

  “I know of only one man who uses such a device, and he was a foreigner. A strange man, quite short and broad. Not a European. He had the skin of an Egyptian but his black hair was straight, his eyes brown. He spoke very little Arabic, and he spoke it with a strange accent.”

  “Did he say where he was from?”

  Abd-el-Salam shook his head. “He named a place but I had never heard of it and it passed from my mind. He was here with his master and another man, making purchases.”

  “Making purchases?”

  Abd-el-Salam looked at him. Moustafa gave him a hundred piastre note.

  “With his master, a European. The other man was Egyptian. I cannot tell you any more about my customers. I am only telling you this because I heard about the murder with the tube that blows darts. Everyone is talking about it. I believe a man has the right to protect his house and family, and should be able to go armed, but to kill a man giving a speech?” Abd-el-Salam tut-tutted.

  “Tell me more about this Egyptian.”

  “He talked with both the European and the other foreigner. The European spoke the other foreigner’s language and translated for him. The Egyptian had the air of a student learning from two respected teachers.”

  “What did they talk about?”

  Abd-el-Salam looked away. “They spoke in low tones so that I could not hear.”

  “What did the Egyptian look like?”

  “I am sorry, but that is all I can say.”

  Moustafa held up another hundred piastre note. Abd-el-Salam shook his head.

  “That is all I can tell you.”

  Moustafa thanked him, rolled the sword up securely in the carpet, and headed back to the house on Ibn al-Nafis Street.

  As he arrived, Mr. Wall was just wrapping up a small ebony statue of Anubis for a customer. Once the man had left, his boss turned to him.

  “Any luck?”

  Moustafa relayed what he had learned.

  “Excellent! I’ll ring Sir Thomas with the information. It shouldn’t be too hard to track down someone growing Amazonian plants in Cairo.”

  When he came back he pulled out his wallet.

  “I suppose you had to pay a few bribes and buy whatever is in that musty old carpet?”

  Moustafa named what he had paid in bribes and then, smiling with pride, unwrapped the Mahdist sword.

  “Good Lord! I wouldn’t want to face you if you were wielding that!”

  Moustafa gave it a few experimental swings.

  “Careful you don’t decapitate any statues,” Mr. Wall said.

  “I might just be able to with a fine sword like this! My uncle fought at Omdurman and several of the other battles. He taught me how to fight with one of these when I was barely out of boyhood.”

  “A fine piece. I daresay it might come in handy before this whole thing is through. I seem to recall I wanted to buy you one of those. Well, now I have. How much was it?”

  Moustafa paused and looked at it. The sword had been expensive, but he did not want Mr. Wall to repay him. No, this sword should not be bought with English money.

  “That’s all right, boss. I bought it for myself.”

  “Are you quite certain?”

  “Yes, boss.”

  “Very well then. Put it away for the time being and help me with this stock I’m taking. We won’t be able to do much more with the case until I hear back from Sir Thomas.” The phone rang from the back room. “Ah! I suspect that’s him now.”

  Mr. Wall went to the back room and talked for a few minutes while Moustafa busied himself around the shop.

  As last Mr. Wall returned, and said the thing Moustafa least wanted to hear.

  “We’ll have to wait until evening when Faisal arrives. We’ll need him for this job.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Shortly after sunset, Faisal knocked on the Englishman’s door, aware that the eyes of all the men in the Sultan El Moyyad Café across the street were on him. Like everyone else on the street, they assumed he was just a useless street boy. They probably thought he was knocking on the Englishman’s door to ask for alms. They didn’t have any idea he worked for the Englishman. No one did. Even the other street urchins thought he was lying.

  “He didn’t give you that piastre,” they would say. “You just picked his pocket.”

  Pick the Englishman’s pocket? Never! The Englishman was good to him. He would never rob him. Oh, sure, he took some food from the pantry sometimes. Just a little. Just enough so he could eat. He couldn’t help the Englishman if he was hungry all the time, could he? So he just took enough to eat. And a little extra. Just a little. Just enough to give to some of the other boys. Then they would do things for him, like be lookouts.

  Moustafa answered the door. Just his luck.

  “Well?” the Nubian asked.

  “Well what?”

  “Spit it out. Did you find out anything?”

  “About what?”

  “About the murder, you blockhead!”

  “What do I know about it?”

  “Bah! You’re useless. Go away.”

  He heard the Englishman’s voice from inside.

  The Englishman must have said to let him in, because Moustafa turned to face inside, scowled, then turned to Faisal.

  “Wipe your feet.”

  Faisal had been begging so he had left his sandals in his shed. You didn’t want to look like you had any money if you were out begging. He wiped his feet on the rush mat in front of the door, and that got one of his toes itching. He stood on one leg and ground that toe into the mat, then rubbed hard back and forth, but that didn’t get it. He tried flicking his toes together. That made his toe itch more, and got the toe next to it started too. He tried rubbing his foot against the mat again. It didn’t help.

  So there was only one thing left to do. He sat down on the threshold, picked up the edge of the mat and started rubbing it in the space between his toes.

  “What are you doing!” Moustafa bellowed.

  “Ah, what a relief! I had—”r />
  Faisal yelped as he got picked up, plopped on his feet, smacked upside the head, and told to go inside.

  Faisal walked into the front room of the Englishman’s home. It was his least favorite room because this was where the Englishman kept most of his ancient things. Standing here and there were statues of men and women and strange creatures with animal heads and human bodies. He knew for a fact that some of these were actually djinn turned to stone thanks to a charm he had bought from the old widow Khadija umm Mohammed. Her charms always worked. The house was safe from djinn, but the stone djinn still made him nervous. Then there were all the strange objects on the shelves, and the crocodile wrapped in linen hanging from the ceiling, and the big stone box where he had found a human head, and …

  “Stop gawking and go to the courtyard!”

  Faisal stuck out his tongue at Moustafa, scurried around a statue to avoid getting smacked, and ran into the courtyard.

  This was a better place, with a nice fountain and shady trees. There were a few stone creatures here, but Faisal was pretty sure they were only statues. A couple of lamps lit the scene.

  The Englishman sat at a small table with a teapot and two cups and a plate piled high with pastries. Faisal’s stomach growled loud enough to echo off the walls.

  “Hello to you too,” the Englishman said. He poured himself some tea and took a bite out of a pastry.

  “Hello, Englishman,” Faisal replied, not taking his eyes off the pastries.

  “How would you like to make some money tonight?”

  “Do I have to see any heads without their bodies?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Good. I didn’t like that.”

  “Living on the street I assumed you would have long since become accustomed to any brutal sights.”

  “Not heads without bodies.”

  Faisal turned, expecting Moustafa to say something like, “Stand up straight and stop scratching your armpit or I’ll make your body have no head!” but the Nubian had left.

  He turned back to the pastries.

  “It might be a little dangerous,” the Englishman warned.

  “It always is when you ask for me. Why don’t you ask for me during the safe times?”

  The Englishman laughed. “Because I don’t need someone with your specific talents when all I’m doing is running the shop and trying to avoid Cordelia.”

  Faisal smiled. Cordelia was the Englishwoman who wanted to marry the Englishman. She never would, though. Khadija umm Mohammed had put a spell on her to make sure of that. Faisal’s little house on the roof would never be disturbed by some woman hanging laundry.

  “I will give you ten piastres and make sure you eat well today. Fair enough?”

  Faisal’s stomach grumbled again.

  “What do I have to do?”

  “Just break into a house.”

  “Oh, that’s easy!”

  “Then perhaps I should pay you less.”

  Faisal plopped down in the other chair and grabbed a pastry. “Too late, Englishman! You already named your price.” His next words were muffled by the pastry he had stuffed into his mouth. “These are good. What are they called?”

  “Scones. We generally have them at tea time, which is long past, but I need some refreshment for tonight’s activities. You’ll taste them better if you don’t spit crumbs all over the table. Would you like some tea?”

  That night, Faisal found himself with Moustafa and the Englishman outside a house in a good neighborhood not far from that big hotel the Englishman liked to eat at with Sir Thomas Russell Pasha. Faisal had watched them sometimes, sitting up there like sultans as they were served food and drink, and wondered what they talked about.

  The house looked like most in this neighborhood—three stories high with shuttered windows. The walls had been recently plastered and were annoyingly smooth. Why did house owners do that? Didn’t they know he could fall?

  Luckily there remained a way up. A tall palm tree, growing out of an open space in the cobblestone road right next to the house, reached almost as high as the house itself.

  “Can you get up it?” the Englishman asked as they strolled by, pretending to go somewhere else. Faisal walked beside them, hand outstretched as if he was begging. There were a few people in the distance so it was best to make everything look natural.

  “I can go right up that tree and jump to the windowsill of the second story window.”

  “Good. Now the owner is out at the moment. He is at a meeting at the building where you saw the killer. He’s going to be arrested there, but I want to take a look in his house.”

  “There will be servants.”

  “Sneak past them and unlock the front door. We’ll handle the rest.”

  “Give me a piastre,” Faisal said, his hand still extended.

  “I thought you wanted ten piastres.”

  “No, I mean right now. You see, I’m pretending to beg, so you have to give me a coin to make me go away. Otherwise I’d just keep following you. Going away without getting something first wouldn’t look real.”

  Moustafa muttered something. The Englishman fished into his pocket.

  “Here’s a piastre. Now go do your job.”

  Faisal leapt into the air and spun around.

  “No problem, Englishman. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

  Faisal sauntered off, his eyes darting to and fro as he tracked all the people within view. Most were walking away or focused on various tasks, like the syrup seller who had taken the brass tank off his back and was cleaning the taps. A husband and wife walked his way, and he paused to beg from them, pestering them and following them until they were far enough away from the palm tree that he didn’t need to worry about them.

  The only other person looking his direction was a shoeshine boy a little younger than he was, sitting at the corner and watching his every move.

  Was he a lookout for the people of the house? Faisal didn’t think so. The boy was being too obvious. He was probably just a street boy like him who could tell Faisal was casing the house.

  Well, let him watch. Maybe he would learn something.

  With a grin and a wink to the boy at the end of the street, Faisal grasped the narrow but strong trunk of the palm, planted his feet on the rough bark, and within moments had scampered up to the height of the second story window.

  Now came the tricky part. The shutter was closed. That would be easy enough to pick. He had a thin piece of metal he had scrounged that would slip right between the shutters and lift the catch. The real challenge was leaping the few feet from the tree to the windowsill, which was barely wide enough to hold him, without bashing into the shutters and alerting anyone in the house.

  And there was someone in the house. He could see a faint light filtering through the shutters. Someone had a lamp burning in another room not far from the room he would enter.

  He had to be quiet and he had to be careful.

  Positioning himself, Faisal took a deep breath and jumped. His foot landed perfectly, but his hands didn’t get a good grip and slipped. He scrabbled at the stone, feeling himself tipping over, and then a firm grip against a crack in the stone stopped him.

  Faisal breathed again.

  Maybe I should ask for twenty piastres next time.

  He pulled the bit of metal from his pocket and eased open the catch.

  The window opened onto a sitting room. Divans and cushions were arranged around a low table. The room was dark, but he could see a light burning beyond an open doorway. He heard a laugh, muffled by a door and some distance.

  Faisal eased himself inside, peeked out the window to see the shoeshine boy grinning at him, gave him a wave, and closed the shutters.

  Tiptoeing across the sitting room, he peeked into the hallway. At the far end, a light shone through a partially open door. He heard at least two voices talking and the clatter of dice rolling. One voice made a triumphant cry. It sounded like the servants were playing backgammon instead of doing wha
tever they were supposed to be doing while their master was away.

  At the other end of the hallway a staircase led downward. No lights were on below, but there was enough light in the hallway for him to see his way to the stairs.

  Faisal didn’t like this hallway. There were a lot of strange things hanging from the walls, like spears and clubs and masks fringed with feathers that stared at him with their blank eyes as he snuck past. This was almost as bad as the Englishman’s house. Why did Europeans put all this stuff in their homes?

  He got to the head of the stairs and paused. The steps descended into complete darkness. What else might be down there?

  He glanced over his shoulder. The light from the servants’ room seemed faint and distant now, like the fishermen’s lamps when they fished at night far out on the Nile.

  He pulled a stub of candle and a match from his pocket. Besides all the old things, the Englishman had lots of useful things in his house too, so many that he never missed them if Faisal took a few. It didn’t really count as stealing if the Englishman didn’t miss them, and he was working for the Englishman anyway so they were almost practically his things too.

  Faisal summoned the courage to descend the stairs far enough that he would be out of sight of the hallway, then struck the match against the stone step.

  The light flared, and Faisal almost shrieked with terror. A huge face with bugged-out eyes and jagged teeth stared right at him from so close it just needed to lean forward a little to eat him.

  Faisal pressed his back against the wall, a scream choked in his throat.

  A second later, Faisal saw it was a mask.

  Only a mask, he told himself. Masks can’t hurt you.

  Unless they had djinn hiding in them.

  Faisal hurried down the stairs.

  He came to a front hall with more masks and spears on the walls. In the center of the room stood a stone base with a strange wooden statue on it. It had a fat belly and stubby legs and long, thin arms. Its face was as flat and pointed as a digging stick, with big oval eyes.

  That was a djinni for sure. It seemed to be asleep, though. Perhaps it had gone to haunt another house.

  That was lucky. He was really going to need to get a charm against djinn if the Englishman wanted him to break into more European houses.