by Alice Duncan
Evidently Harold was taken aback by Stackville’s alarm, too. “Why, yes. It’s just too damned hot here for us. Sorry we won’t be around to chat anymore, but you see how it is. My sister’s health is a trifle fragile. Has been ever since . . . well, since the tragedy.”
So he was blaming our early departure on me, was he? Well, I couldn’t say as how I blamed him. One almost has to make up little white lies occasionally in order to abide by the rules of social convention.
Mr. Stackville bent over and peered at me through the window. “Where will you be going?”
And why, exactly, was our destination of interest to Mr. Stackville? I thought he was being quite pushy. As usual. Therefore, before Harold could reply with our complete itinerary, I said, “Oh, we haven’t decided yet. We’ll take the train to Constantinople and decide where to go from there.”
Harold blinked at me but didn’t contradict me.
“Are you sure you want to leave Egypt so soon? Before you’ve seen everything? I’m sure the weather will break before long.” Stackville was beginning to sound downright worried, and I recalled the letter from Sam I’d read the night before and which had annoyed me so much.
Hmm. Perhaps Sam wasn’t merely being an obnoxious butter-inner after all. Could Stackville be . . .? But no. The notion was absurd. White slavery was utter nonsense, and to think that Mr. Stackville was an honest-to-God white slaver was merely silly.
Maybe.
Before Harold could say anything more to Stackville, I spoke rather sharply to him. “Come along, Harold. We’ll miss the train. Good-bye, Mister Stackville.” You may notice I refrained from saying it had been a pleasure meeting him.
“But . . .”
But nothing. Harold climbed into the automobile next to me, tapped the driver on the shoulder, and we took off, leaving a huge plume of dust to follow along behind us. I hoped Mr. Stackville and his pretty white suit got smothered in the stuff.
As soon as he was settled and the car was moving, Harold turned to me. “I know you don’t like Stackville, but why were you in such an all-fired hurry to get away from the hotel? We have plenty of time to catch our train. We could at least have had a last drink with him or something so as not to appear totally rude.”
I contemplated a lot of things before answering Harold’s question. Should I bring up Sam’s letter and his reference to slavery gangs preying on tourists? If I did, Harold might well scoff. I’d scoffed at first when I’d read the letter. But Stackville’s behavior when he saw us loading our trunks into the car that would take us to the train station added a certain amount of weight to Sam’s words. Still and all, just because I disliked Stackville didn’t mean he was a criminal. And I didn’t like to be laughed at any more than anyone else does.
Therefore, I said merely, “I just wanted to get away from him before you invited him to come with us.”
“I wouldn’t do that!” Harold was plainly incensed.
“Sorry, Harold, but you have to admit you’ve invited him to join us a whole lot since he intruded into our lives.”
Harold frowned, but only said, “That’s only because I want you to meet new people and have new experiences.”
“I am meeting new people and am having new experiences. I just don’t happen to like that particular new person, and would just as soon end our acquaintance now rather than later.”
“Well, we’re on our way now, and Stackville isn’t with us, so I guess there’s no point in arguing about it.”
“My sentiments precisely.”
As Harold anticipated, we arrived at the train station early. We waited on a couple of dirty benches under a dusty awning in the relentless heat—but at least we were in the shade. It wasn’t much fun, but at last the train arrived, and we boarded, Harold making sure our luggage was stored safely in the compartment designed for that purpose. Fortunately, Harold got us first-class accommodations, so we didn’t have to sit with a bunch of people carrying chickens and goats and stuff like that. I’m not kidding. I’m also not a snob. However, I found a nice, clean first-class compartment ever so much more to my liking than the third-class accommodations provided for the poor folks to ride in. Mind you, we have poor folks in Pasadena, too—at least I’m pretty sure we do—but they don’t take their livestock on the red cars or bus lines with them.
The trip to Constantinople—Istanbul—oh, bother. I’m going to call it Istanbul from now on—was uneventful, although I again enjoyed the variety of scenery as the train chugged us through it. Boy, it didn’t look like anything I’d seen in the U.S.A., probably because all the people we saw were clad in their native costumes, which were nothing like ours. If we have a native costume. Hmm. Interesting thought. I’d have to chat with Harold about it one of these days.
In Istanbul we had to stay the night in a hotel, but it was another beautiful one, called the Sultanahmet, a rebuilt palace of some ancient sultan or other, and which was on a par with Shepheards. Somehow, however, between Egypt and Istanbul, I’d managed to come down with a dreadful illness. I suspect my indisposition was the result of drinking the local water, because it took the form of . . . never mind. You don’t want to know. At any rate, I was really sick.
“Are you sure there’s nothing I can do for you, Daisy?” Harold appeared quite worried about me.
I appreciated his concern, but I wanted him to go away and leave me alone to be ill in private. “I’m sure there isn’t,” I told him. “If you can find some kind of bottled drink, like ginger ale or something like that, it might help settle my stomach.”
“Will do. I’m sure this hotel will have what you need.”
I loved Harold with all my heart—as a brother, of course—but I was so happy to see him scurrying away down the hotel hallway that I darned near cried. Then I resumed my stay in the bathroom. There’s a lot to be said for first-class accommodations, and among the most wonderful of them is having a bathroom all to oneself when one was under the weather. Whatever that means. I mean, is anyone ever over the weather?
Oh, never mind.
Chapter Sixteen
Harold managed to get hold of a gigantic supply of ginger ale, bless his heart.
“Thank you very much.” I was so happy to see the bottled stuff, I nearly cried, but I always get weepy when I have the stomach flu.
“You’ll never guess who I saw in the bar while I was fetching your ginger ale,” he said as he set the crate holding a couple of dozen ginger-ale bottles in the corner of the room.
Although I’d been flopped, aching and feverish, on my bed, wishing I could just die right then and there and join Billy in the hereafter, Harold’s words made me sit up. Well, I sort of leaned on my arm, but it amounted to the same thing. “Stackville?”
He shot a glance at me and frowned slightly. “No, not Stackville. Good Lord, Daisy, you make him sound like the veriest villain.”
Sinking back onto my pillows, I whispered, “That’s because I think he is one.”
“Tut,” said Harold, opening a bottle and bringing it to the bed. Before he gave it to me, he felt my forehead. “Lord, Daisy, you’re burning up. Would you like the hotel doctor to see you?”
“No. Yes. Oh, I don’t know. Yes, I guess. But whom did you see in the hotel bar?”
“Mister Pierre Futrelle.”
“Hmm. One of Mister Stackville’s accomplices.”
“Accomplices? Are you serious?” Harold set the bottle on the night stand then thoughtfully went to the bathroom and fetched a washcloth, soaked it in cool water and placed it on my forehead.
“Thank you, Harold.”
“You’re welcome. Why do you call Stackville and Futrelle accomplices?”
“I don’t know. But I think they’re crooks and are accomplices in something shady.” I thought about telling Harold about Sam’s fear of white slavers, but even in my weakened condition that sounded too ludicrous, and I didn’t care to be laughed at, so I didn’t.
Harold didn’t speak for the longest time. When he did
, he merely said, “I’m going to go get the hotel doctor now.”
“Thank you.” I think I whimpered the two words.
Very well, maybe I was relying too much on the last of Sam Rotondo’s letters to me, but the more I thought about what he’d written in it, the more Stackville’s constant presence in Harold’s and my vicinity every time we so much as stepped foot out of our rooms seemed suspicious. And, since I couldn’t imagine any other kind of crookery (is that a word?) he might be up to, Sam’s notion of white slavery, while absurd on the face of it, maybe wasn’t. Absurd, I mean. Or— Maybe they were drug smugglers! That sounded more probable to me, although I couldn’t imagine what a drug smuggler would want Harold and me for. Heck, maybe they just wanted to rob us blind.
On the other hand, I was really sick, so maybe I was merely hallucinating. I must have dozed off for a moment, because I was startled by a soft knock on the door.
Every single muscle in my body ached, including the one between my ears, and I groaned before calling out in a feeble voice, “Harold?”
Someone in the corridor outside the door said, “Oh. So sorry. Wrong room.” What’s more, the person said those words in a heavy French accent. If I hadn’t felt so puny, I’d have leapt out of bed and rushed to the door to see if the knocker was Futrelle. Unfortunately, the moment I swung my legs over the side of the bed, I knew I’d have to make another trip to the bathroom before I did anything so extravagant as check the hallway. Lordy, I felt awful.
When I emerged from the bathroom, sweaty and miserable and with a headache so ghastly I was surprised I wasn’t seeing double, Harold had returned to the room with the doctor. I grunted a hello to the two men and collapsed once more on the bed.
“Daisy, this is Doctor Weatherfield. He’s an American, believe it or not.”
“Why shouldn’t I believe it?” I asked, my eyes closed. I managed to pry them open far enough to greet the doctor. “Thank you for seeing me, Doctor Weatherfield. I don’t think I’ve ever been this sick in my life.”
A handsome specimen, the doctor was probably about fifty years old, with white hair and a white moustache. He’d been burned to a crisp by the weather, but on him a dark complexion worked very well with his white hair and azure-blue eyes. I know you can’t really tell these things from looking, but he appeared competent. I prayed he was. He seemed nice enough.
“It looks to me, young lady, as if you’ve managed to get yourself a good case of what we sometimes call Pharaoh’s Revenge here in these parts.”
“I thought we were in Turkey,” I muttered, unamused.
His smile showed gleaming white teeth. “We are in Turkey, but the term fits here as well. I understand that in Mexico, they refer to it as Montezuma’s Revenge.”
“You’d think they’d call it Atatürk’s Revenge here in Turkey,” I muttered, still feeling puny and not much like joking around.
“Better not say that to a Turk. Atatürk is a most revered figure here.”
“Sorry.” People were so sensitive about their heroes. I guess that’s true everywhere, but I didn’t feel like having a philosophical discussion at the moment, as ill as I was. “What about this stuff I have?”
“It really doesn’t matter what you call it,” said Dr. Weatherfield. “What it boils down to is a bad case of dysentery, but I think we can get it under control without too much trouble.”
“I hope you’re right,” I whispered. “Because I feel like death warmed up.”
Dr. Weatherfield proceeded to take my temperature—I had a fever of 102 degrees, which accounted for the warm part—asked about my symptoms, and nodded thoughtfully throughout my narrative, which was extremely short since I didn’t feel like talking. “Yes, indeedy, that’s it, all right. I’m afraid you’re going to have remain in bed for at least a couple of days.” He turned to Harold. “Is that going to play havoc with your travel plans?”
With a shrug, Harold said, “We don’t really have any plans that can’t be changed. We decided Egypt in August was too hot for us.”
“My goodness, yes,” agreed the doctor. “I’m glad you don’t have to go anywhere instantly, since your sister has an acute case of the miserable stuff and truly does have to rest for a few days. But with a few doses of these powders”—he held up a bottle—“aspirin tablets and apples, we’ll have her right as rain again in no time at all.”
I squinted up at him. “Apples?”
“Apples.” He gave me another sparkling smile. “When Eve ate that apple from the tree of life, God might have been displeased, but she did mankind a good service. Why, apples are used to cure everything from constipation to diarrhea to almost everything in between.”
“Is that why they say an apple a day keeps the doctor away?”
“Probably.” The doctor chuckled. “But your illness, while I expect you to recover from it shortly, can be an honest to goodness killer. Did you know that more soldiers during the Civil War died of dysentery than they did of gunshot or bayonet wounds?”
“Actually, yes. My husband read that to me out of an article in the National Geographic.” And then, because I was so darned weak and feeling so darned miserable, and because, as I’ve already said, the intestinal flu always makes me cry, I cried. After the doctor handed me a clean handkerchief from his black bag and I’d wiped my eyes and blown my nose, I apologized. “I’m sorry. I guess I just feel so weak.”
“That’s perfectly all right, Missus Majesty. Your brother told me of your recent bereavement. I’m so very sorry. What with you knowing about Atatürk and the dysentery deaths of Civil War soldiers, your husband sounds as though he was a well-read young man.”
Well-read? Hmm. I guess Billy had been well-read. The good Lord knows there wasn’t much of anything else he could do except read. Therefore, I said, “Yes. He was. And I miss him awfully.”
Dr. Weatherfield patted my hand. “I’m sure you must, my dear. But if you follow my instructions, at least you won’t have to contend with illness as well as grief in a very few days.”
“Thank you.” I sniffled some more, feeling stupid.
But the doc turned out to be correct. He sent up a half-dozen apples with strict instructions to wash them with soap and boiled water and to remove the peel before I ate one—not that I was in any condition to eat anything that day. I think the powders he left were nothing more than bicarbonate of soda, although I’m not sure, and as soon as I was able to keep anything down, I took three aspirin tablets with a glass of previously boiled water into which the bicarb was mixed, which eventually helped my headache. I was weak as a kitten, but at least I was no longer throwing up or—well, never mind.
Bless Harold’s heart, he practically hovered over me all that day after the doctor left. “Are you sure you don’t want anything besides ginger ale?” he asked more than once.
“Thank you, Harold, but no. I’ll just sleep, if you don’t mind. You go and do anything you want to do. I’ll recuperate just fine in my bed here. Thanks for bringing the doctor.”
“He told me he’ll be back to check on your progress this evening.”
“I appreciate being taken care of so well,” I said. “Thank you, Harold.” Then I had to wipe away more tears. Good heavens, I was a pathetic mess!
“God, Daisy, you’re turning into a garden hose. I’ve never seen you cry before, and you’re crying every other minute today.”
“I know. It’s because of the flu. I always get this way when I have the stomach flu.”
“I hope you don’t get it often.”
“No, I don’t.” I managed a weak smile for his sake.
“Well, if you’re sure you don’t mind being left alone for a while, I think I’ll go downstairs and see what’s to be had for dinner.”
I groaned at the mere thought of food and my stomach gave a hard cramp in reaction. “Don’t even mention food to me for a day or so, will you?”
“Sorry, sweetie.”
“That’s all right.”
“I’m not sure
when the doctor will be back, but I’ll try not to take too long over my dinner.”
“Don’t worry, Harold. Take your time. If Doctor Weatherfield returns before you do, I’m sure I’ll manage just fine.”
“I don’t know,” said Harold doubtfully. “I’ve never seen you cry so much before. Not even—”
His pudgy cheeks flushed, and I knew he was thinking of the day of Billy’s funeral. “That’s because I wasn’t sick in the body then. Only sick at heart. I’m not kidding about the stomach flu making me cry. It really does.”
“Indeed. Well, I’ll be off then. Do you need me to—”
“Harold!” I spoke as loudly and sternly as I could, which wasn’t very. “Get out of here. I’ll be fine.”
He saluted, clicked his heels, bowed and left. Thank God. I sank back down into my pillows and slept, already feeling a little less feverish, although my insides hurt as though some giant hand had reached inside my body, stirred them with a spoon and every now and then gave them a quick, hard kick for good measure.
I don’t know how long I’d been asleep after Harold left before another soft knock came at the door. I opened a bleary eye or two and managed to croak, “Harold? Doctor Weatherfield?”
No answer rewarded my curt questions. Rather, I heard a sharp word that I couldn’t make out, and then all I heard were footsteps hurrying away down the hall.
Curious. First somebody with a French accent knocked at my door, and now somebody who didn’t speak at all knocked. I recalled Sam’s letter, endured a little sizzle of alarm along with another intense intestinal cramp, and slowly and painfully got out of bed. After assuring myself I wouldn’t fall flat on my face, I dragged myself to the door, which I opened. Peeking at the long, empty hallway, I saw nobody. Of course, whoever the knocker was had had plenty of time to escape my prying eyes, as I was moving at a very slow snail’s pace—perhaps the pace of a grandfather snail who was on his last slime. Still and all, I made sure the door was locked when I shut it, and then I pretty much crawled back to the bed and fell into it.
