Night Train to Memphis vbm-5

by Elizabeth Peters

  He pulled the robe over his head. Feisal sucked in his breath. ‘You need a doctor. Or a hospital.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ John said. ‘I can see myself explaining how I absentmindedly walked into a sausage slicer. What I need is a clean shirt.’

  Dried blood had glued the fabric to his skin in a number of places. For once he resisted the temptation to overact, peeling the garment off with only a few manfully repressed groans. The full effect, which I now saw for the first time, was grisly enough to require no additional theatrics. Feisal winced and averted his eyes. Sympathetic he may have been, but I had a feeling that he was picturing himself in the same condition. I also suspected that John was well aware of the effect on his reluctant ally. A visual demonstration is worth a thousand words.

  I didn’t volunteer to administer first aid. I was outvoted. It wasn’t the first time I had patched John up after a work-related accident. Some of the others had required more extensive first aid, but this was worse – deliberate sadism instead of random violence. The less said about that process, the better. John was obliging enough to make a lot of noise, which made it a little easier for me. A little.

  ‘Now what?’ I inquired, tossing the roll of tape and the scissors onto the bed. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got any wigs, fake moustaches, and miscellaneous disguises around, Feisal?’ John was still muttering profanely, but he couldn’t resist the chance to instruct the ignorant. He began, ‘The art of disguise – ’

  ‘I don’t want to hear you lecture on the subject of disguise.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ said Feisal. ‘But she has a point. I could go out and get – ’

  ‘No time,’ John said. ‘As I was saying, the art of disguise depends on posture and mannerisms rather than crude physical alterations. Let’s see what you’ve got on hand.’

  Fitting John out wasn’t a problem; he and Feisal were about the same size. Feisal objected violently when John selected his best Cairo-tailored suit, but he was overruled. ‘I’ve got to look like a respectable businessman when I go in after Schmidt. Or are you volunteering for that little job?’

  ‘No,’ Feisal said unhesitatingly.

  ‘A wise decision. They’ll be checking the hotels by now if they haven’t already done so. I intend to be as unobtrusive as possible, but – ’

  ‘You’ll have to dye your hair, then,’ Feisal said. After John’s demonstration of what might happen to him if we were caught he was cooperating wholeheartedly, if not happily. ‘And your eyebrows.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you have any boot polish?’

  ‘I don’t polish my own shoes,’ Feisal said haughtily.

  ‘Do forgive me,’ John said. ‘I didn’t mean to imply you did anything so vulgar. You’ll have to wind me a nice neat turban, then. Dark glasses will look a little out of place at this time of night. The honoured sitt your grandmother must have some kohl or other eye paint?’

  I must say it was an education to watch him work. He didn’t use much of the black stuff, whatever it was – just enough to darken his eyebrows and touch up those long lashes. He tanned easily; I had seen other Egyptians with skin as fair as his. Once the turban was in place, the difference in his appearance was astounding. It was partly a matter of expression – tight lips, out-thrust chin, lowering brows.

  ‘What about your beautiful, beautiful blue eyes?’ I asked.

  His response was automatic – ‘“I’ll never love brown eyes again – ”’ and then he laughed shortly. ‘A truer word was never spoken. As for my beautiful blue eyes, I don’t intend to stand still long enough for anyone to gaze deeply into them. Now what are we going to do about you?’

  ‘Maybe Granny could lend me a robe and a veil.’

  John shook his head. ‘You’re too tall to pass as an Egyptian female. It’s male attire for you, I’m afraid. Your bonnie blue eyes are beyond my modest skill – ’

  ‘“You told me more lies than the stars in the . . .” Sorry. Don’t take it personally. Country music does have a thing about blue eyes, doesn’t it?’

  Feisal was staring at us as if we had lost our minds. He was probably right. John had that effect on me.

  ‘So far the score is tied,’ said John. ‘As I was saying, we’ve got to do something about your hair.’

  ‘Cut it off,’ I said, reaching for the scissors. ‘Then Feisal can wind me a turban too.’

  John took the scissors from me. ‘Sit down. I’ll do it.’

  ‘I should have known you numbered barbering among your varied skills.’

  His hands moved slowly from the crown of my head to the base of my sknll, smoothing the tangled masses of hair and gathering them together. There was a long pause before he said, ‘I’ve a better idea. A spot of cosmic cleansing wouldn’t do you any harm.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ I tried to turn, but he closed his fingers around the impromptu ponytail and gave it a hard tug.

  ‘Communing with the universe, awakening the collective consciousness of the world,’ John chanted. ‘You’re not quite grubby enough for a New Ager, but that’s easy to fix.’

  When he finished fixing it, I was a dirty blonde with a long lank ponytail and a distinct four o’clock shadow. The dirt and the beard came from the garden, the single gold earring from Granny, and the collarless long-sleeved shirt from Feisal. Entering into the spirit of the thing, I demanded a crystal and a pair of cutoffs.

  ‘We’ll pick up some mystic insignia at one of the bazaars,’ John said. ‘These types go in for scarabs and ankh signs and such. The shorts are out. Your knees aren’t knobby enough.’

  ‘You might have expressed it in more flattering terms,’ I said.

  ‘Your legs, my darling, are masterpieces of sculptural elegance,’ John said agreeably. ‘Those appendages would grace an Aphrodite or a young Diana. Never could such marvels of slender rounded beauty be taken for those of a man. Your form, in short, is rare and divine.’

  ‘“Philadelphia Lawyer,”’ I said.

  John raised one finger and made an invisible mark on the air. ‘One point for you.’

  Feisal’s friend was a shy, retiring chap. As soon as we left the house in response to his signal on the horn, he slid out of the driver’s seat of the car and walked away without looking back. If he wanted to make certain neither John or I could identify him, he succeeded.

  As for the car, I had seen its likes before – in junkyards or abandoned in vacant lots. If it had been in good condition it would have ranked as a vintage vehicle; those tailfins had to be thirty years out of date.

  ‘Good God,’ John said, staring. ‘Is this the best he could do? We won’t get twenty miles in this wreck.’

  ‘I hope you won’t think me rude,’ said Feisal, ‘if I remind you that you are in no position to be fastidious, and that you sound like a typical supercilious twit of a tourist. We underprivileged Third World types can’t afford a new car every year, so we learn how to keep them on the road.’

  ‘Touché,’ John admitted. ‘After you, Vicky.’

  He handed me the basket Granny had pressed upon us. It was our only luggage except for Feisal’s suitcase.

  Feisal got in behind the wheel. ‘Where to?’ he asked.

  ‘The ETAP.’

  ‘Oh, wonderful. The big tourist hotels are the first places they’ll look.’

  ‘Just drive,’ John said shortly.

  Schmidt had given me one of his keys, ‘just in case.’ I hadn’t asked, ‘Just in case of what?’ I had had other things on my mind. As I crossed the lobby, trying to look as if I were focusing on auras instead of potential kidnappers, I wished I had asked. There was no need for him to leave the room except to cash his traveller’s cheques, which wouldn’t take long, and every reason for him to stay put. Even if they located him they couldn’t get at him unless he opened the door, and surely Schmidt wouldn’t be foolish enough to admit anyone except . . . Except the room service? Someone imitating my voice?

  John had gone ahead. He was waiting by the elevator
when I got out of it. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

  I didn’t ask how he could tell. He could always tell. ‘I’m having premonitions,’ I admitted.

  ‘It’s always best to assume the worst.’ He took the key from me. ‘Stand out of the way.’

  He gave the door a sharp kick and dropped to a crouching position. ‘That’s what they do in the films,’ he remarked, straightening. ‘Futile, really, when you consider that most criminals use automatic weapons these days, but I suppose they believe it looks – ’

  ‘He’s not here. Damn the crazy old idiot, where the hell has he got to now?’

  The doors to the bathroom and closet stood open. The import of that didn’t dawn on me until after we had investigated all possible hiding places; my morbid imagination was convinced we’d find Schmidt’s crumpled body in the bathtub or under the bed.

  ‘He must have left under his own steam; there’s no sign of a struggle,’ I said. ‘If he’s gone back to Larry’s, looking for me, I’ll kill him.’

  ‘He’s not gone there,’ John said.

  ‘What?’ I spun around. He was bending over the desk. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘He’s left you a note.’

  The paper had been crumpled and then smoothed out. It was so badly stained by something brown and sticky that the words were barely legible.

  ‘My dear Vicky,’ it began. (I translate; he had written in German.) ‘I have the proof we need. I will drop this off at your hotel and then proceed to the rendezvous we . . .’

  ‘What is this?’ I demanded. ‘What proof? He never mentioned it to me. What hotel? What rendezvous?’

  ‘Calm down.’ John seated himself at the desk ‘Let’s see if we can figure out what he’s up to.’

  ‘Maybe we’d better get out of here.’

  ‘No need for haste. They’ve already been.’

  ‘How . . .’ I stopped myself. He was dying to show off; his half-smile and cool stare invited me to make a babbling fool of myself so he could patiently explain things to me. ‘Where was the note?’ I asked.

  John nodded graciously, like a teacher to a dull student who is finally getting the hang of it. ‘On the desk. Someone had smoothed it out.’

  ‘But Schmidt must have thrown it away. In the waste-basket or onto the floor, after he spilled food all over it . . .’

  ‘Deliberately spilled food all over it,’ John said encouragingly.

  ‘The implication being that he’d discarded the note because it was sticky and wet and illegible, and written another one.’ I began pacing the floor. ‘He expected they’d locate him sooner or later. I’ve been gone . . .’ I looked at my watch. ‘Over five hours, and they had been looking for us since early afternoon. Time enough to inquire at every hotel in Luxor. He registered under his own name . . .’

  ‘If he had the intelligence for which I am belatedly beginning to give him credit, he left this room shortly after you did,’ John said. ‘In disguise, if I know my Schmidt. Let’s see. What would I do next? Stake myself out in the lobby. Hope you’d make it back before they located him. Be ready to move on in case they got here first. He’d already have cashed his traveller’s checks and retrieved his passport.’

  ‘They did get here first.’

  ‘And found the discarded letter.’ John’s eyes were bright with amusement and, as he proceeded to make clear, admiration. ‘You see what the little elf’s done, don’t you? This letter is not only a red herring, it is an attempt to protect you, in the event that you had been recaptured. If he’s got the evidence that can convict them there’s no reason for them to harm you. In fact, there is every reason for them to keep you whole and healthy so they can try to strike a deal: silence, or at least delay, in exchange for you.’ He paused, and then delivered the highest accolade in his repertoire. ‘I couldn’t have done better myself.’

  ‘So you don’t think he’s gone back to the house?’

  ‘Not our Schmidt. Whether you are a fugitive or a prisoner, he can serve you best by remaining free.’ John returned to his study of the note. ‘I can’t see anything else here. But I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he had . . . Wait a Sec. What’s this?’

  ‘The sticky stuff must have spattered,’ I said, as he held up a blank page spotted with stains.

  ‘The spots make a suspiciously regular pattern,’ John muttered.

  ‘Try joining the dots,’ I suggested sarcastically.

  John emitted a crow of triumph. ‘That’s it! Look here.’

  Picking up a pen, he began to draw – not lines connecting the spots, but a series of parallel lines. Five parallel lines. They made the nature of those odd splotches plain. They were musical notes.

  ‘No key signature,’ John muttered. ‘Let’s assume it’s the key of C and that there are no accidentals. Hard to indicate them, really . . .’ He began to whistle. ‘Strike a chord?’

  ‘Try to avoid puns if possible,’ I said critically. ‘No, it isn’t familiar.’

  ‘How about this?’ There was a slight difference. I assumed he’d thrown in a few miscellaneous sharps and/or flats.

  ‘This is a waste of time,’ I grumbled. ‘Schmidt probably was trying to be cute, but if that’s one of his beloved country music tunes you’ll never figure out which song because there are only three or four melodies in the whole damned repertoire.’

  John dropped heavily into a chair. ‘My God. I should have known.’

  ‘What? What?’

  He tried to give me the definitive version, but he was laughing so hard he couldn’t keep his lips puckered. ‘If the Egyptians don’t strike a medal for him I’ll do it myself. And kiss him on both cheeks. He’s taken the night train to Memphis.’

  Chapter Twelve

  THE ROOM HAD been stripped of all personal possessions, whether by Schmidt or by John’s hypothetical searchers I could not determine. ‘They’ became less hypothetical as we continued our own search; they had made quite a neat job of it, but I doubted Schmidt would have removed the mattress from the bed and then replaced it and the bedclothes. The searchers must have been men; they hadn’t bothered to tuck in the sheets.

  ‘Is there a night train to Memphis?’ I asked, investigating the drawers of the nightstand.

  ‘There’s one to Cairo. Close enough.’ John returned from the bathroom. ‘Nothing there. What about the chest of drawers?’

  ‘Only the souvenirs he bought today.’ The Nefertiti bag had been on top of the pile. I turned it upside down and shook it. ‘He’s even taken the few odds and ends I left – cosmetics, sunglasses – ’

  ‘Chocolates, apples, and gingerbread?’

  I didn’t want to be reminded of the night in the abandoned church when we had ‘dined’ on the odds and ends I carried in my backpack. Sooner or later I would have to deal with those widening cracks in my defensive walls, but not now, not when we were still four hundred miles from safety and Schmidt was someplace or other doing God knows what, and Mary was looking forward to renewing old acquaintances. I said shortly, ‘He might have left us some money.’

  ‘He wouldn’t leave anything of value. The point of the message was to suggest that neither of you intended to return to this room.’

  ‘Obviously,’ I said.

  ‘That’s it, then. There’s nothing else except a few travel brochures. I’ll go first. Take the next elevator. I’ll meet you at the car.’

  But when I got out of the elevator he was standing nearby, glancing at his watch as if waiting for someone who was late for an appointment. A slight sideways movement of his head drew my attention towards the registration desk.

  I saw Foggington-Smythe first. He was bareheaded, and his face was set in a frown as he talked with the clerk. The clerk kept shaking his head. He was looking, not at Perry but at Perry’s companion. From behind all I could see was white – fur coat, long evening frock, bleached hair.

  I ducked behind a convenient pillar. John sauntered towards me and paused to light a cigarette. ‘Yours?’ he asked.

>   ‘No. I don’t think so. Yours?’

  ‘At this point we must assume everyone who isn’t for us is against us. Walk, do not run, to the nearest exit.’

  It was the only thing to do; I’d be even more conspicuous lurking in doubtful concealment. But I felt as if I were being followed across the lobby by a gigantic searchlight, and when someone barred my path I almost jumped out of Feisal’s oversized sandals.

  ‘Excuse me, young fella.’

  I looked wildly over my shoulder before I realized I was the young fella in question. The speaker was a grey-haired American wearing a bright red fez. He wanted to know where I had bought my shirt. Innocent creature that I am, I didn’t realize that wasn’t all he wanted until he suggested that we have a drink while we talked it over.

  I was about to tell him what he could do with his drink – and his fez – when John, passing on his way to the door, swung his briefcase and caught me a painful blow on the leg. It was, as the poet says a salutary reminder. I growled wordlessly at my admirer and scuttled after John.

  By the time I reached the car I was running, and so was the engine. John shoved me in.

  ‘You daft female,’ he said crossly. ‘What did you stop for? I think Foggington-Smythe may have spotted you.’

  ‘I can’t help it if I’m irresistible to men,’ I said, falling across his lap as Feisal made an abrupt and doubtless illegal U-turn.

  John set me upright. ‘In your present costume I have no difficulty at all resisting you.’

  ‘Crushed again.’

  ‘I am beginning to understand why so many people are so annoyed with you two,’ said a voice from the front seat. ‘Where’s the Herr Direktor? Where are we going? What – ’

  ‘One question at a time,’ said John. ‘First, I suggest you get off the corniche. Take back streets whenever possible – ’

  ‘We have to go past the railroad station first,’ I interrupted.

  ‘No, we don’t.’

  ‘Yes, we do. I want to make sure Schmidt – ’

  ‘No, we don’t.’

  ‘Stop it!’ Feisal shouted hysterically.