by Sax Rohmer
Van Kuyper came to his feet as if shot out of a trap. Every vestige of colour had fled from his flabby cheeks. A small table, with the coffee cups upon it, crashed over upon the carpet. He sought to speak, but she forestalled him.
“Your incorruptible Abdul is probably on his way to Persia,” she said scornfully. “Why do you try to weave romances for me? You seem to suggest that I am here as your ally in some scheme to smuggle relics out of Egypt. I have a most damaging letter from you touching this plot!”
“By God!” Van Kuyper burst out hoarsely. “The police shall search this boat from stem to stem!”
“They will find your correspondence, my friend!” said Mme. de Medicis, and rose, queenly, sweeping the speaker with a glance of high disdain.
* * *
In the long, low cabin of the dahabeah Nitocris, Mme. de Medicis reclined upon a divan, its mattress gay with many silken cushions. Her flawless figure was draped wondrously in a robe conceived in Deccan gauzes. A cloud of delicate green caressed the pure modelling of her form, which shimmered alluringly as through the phantom haze of a Fayum sunset quickened to greater tenderness by an ultimate veil like the blush in the heart of a tulip. Keats’s Lamia was not more magically lovely. The long, amber eyes were soft as enchanted lagoons; the shadows of the curved lashes rested upon flower-fresh cheeks.
Silver incense burners filled the air with the sensuous perfume of ambergris.
Brian Desmond entered, peering eagerly into the shadows cast by dim mosque lanterns swung from the ceiling. A casket of ebony and ivory, wrought with ancient Egyptian astronomical subjects, stood in the centre of the apartment. Beside it, heaped upon the carpet, lay ornaments richly chased and inlaid with strange gems.
“The ritual jewels!” he whispered. “The treasure of Princess Taia!”
“‘Such things belong neither to the Egyptian government nor to any purse-proud collector,”’ she whispered. The words were his own. “They belong to you!”
From the deck above to that perfumed cabin below stole the sound of a softly beaten darabukkeh and the mournful sweetness of a reed pipe. The tender-voiced singer of ghazals began, so softly that the music seemed indeed a ravishing sigh, to render the love plaint of Hafiz.
* * *
“If a cup of wine is spilled, and I have spilled it, what of that?”
CRIME TAKES A CRUISE
There was no one in sight in the narrow street. Nothing stirred its shadows; black shadows in contrast with blazing sunlight which touched the gallery of a tumbledown minaret rising above the squalor.
“Blessing and peace… O, Apostle of God.”
A mueddin had just come out onto the gallery, chanting the selam as his kind have done on every Friday of the week for generations. It was half an hour before noon.
Blessing and peace! Shaun Bantry smiled a wry smile. To call for blessing and peace in a world which ignored blessings and had forgotten what peace meant rang the wrong bell. He paused at the door of the mosque, a modern, shabby, neglected, little place, and looked in. A very old beggar, blind in one eye, was entering. Otherwise, inhabitants of this quarter of Port Said remained undisturbed by the call of the Prophet.
What had become of the man wearing that unusual white coat with the faint pink stripe? Definitely, his car, an antique French sedan, had come this way. He pushed on, trying to ignore the mingled smells from the gutters.
Perhaps the description of Theo Leidler’s attire which he had received from the porter at the Eastern Exchange Hotel that morning had been wrong. In chasing the man in a pink-striped coat he might be chasing a myth. In that one glimpse of him in the car Shaun hadn’t had a chance to see his features.
He was wasting precious time. Ten minutes had elapsed since he lost sight of his quarry. A turning just beyond the mosque showed him an even narrower and, if possible, dirtier street. A little way along he saw two or three tables outside a native café. And in front of the tables, so as to fill up the rest of the thoroughfare, a grey sedan waited!
Shaun became aware that he was excited.
He might not fall down on this fantastic assignment after all! Luck was with him.
He had come to within ten paces of the café when a man wearing a white pink-striped coat came out, jumped into the sedan, and was driven away in the opposite direction.
Pursuit was out of the question. Shaun couldn’t hope to pick up a taxi in the native quarter of Port Said. But this time he had seen the man’s face—and it was the face of Theo Leidler, memorised from many photographs and detailed descriptions. This obscure café might give him the very link he was looking for. He went in.
The place was so dark that at first he could see less than nothing. The air had been poisoned with fumes of coffee, tobacco smoke, garlic and hot oil. As Shaun’s eyes became used to the darkness, he saw that dilapidated couches lined two walls, small tables set before them. There were only five or six customers—obviously shopkeepers. He dropped down near one of them who sat alone.
A Nubian boy materialised out of deeper shadows. Shaun ordered coffee, in his fluent Arabic, and as the boy went away, lighted a cigarette and took a look round.
What business had Theo Leidler here?
He glanced at the man beside him, a man subtly different from the others, although he, too, probably had a shop somewhere. Grey-bearded, wearing a green turban cloth wrapped around his fez, he had the features of a bird of prey. Beard clutched in his hands, elbows propped on the low table, he sat staring straight before him.
Shaun looked down at his own table. The boy hadn’t troubled to move a tray on which were a brass coffee pot and a china cup in a brass holder. Some sticky native coffee remained in the cup, and on the tray he saw the stub of an out-sized cigarette with a rose-petal tip. The brand was new to him.
The boy brought Shaun a similar tray and removed the dirty one. Shaun filled the tiny cup and turned to his neighbour.
“Good morning, hadj.” He gave the Arab greeting, raising his cup. There was no reply, no faintest stirring. The vulture face remained immobile as a face carved in stone.
A surly old brute, apparently. Shaun, with his cast of features, deep tan, and ability to speak first-class Arabic, was used, when it suited him to pass for a true believer. What had he done wrong? His greeting had been correct, and he had kept his hat on.
Perhaps the hadj was deaf.
Shaun looked down at a glass which stood before the descendant of the Prophet. It was half filled with a colourless liquid which he suspected to be râki, a drink hard enough to knock out a strong man in one round. No fanatical Moslem, this! The fact encouraged him. Taking a fresh cigarette, he pretended to have trouble with his lighter, then turned to his silent neighbour.
“May I ask you for a light, O hadji?” He still spoke in Arabic.
There was no reply, no movement.
Shaun replaced the cigarette in his case and glanced swiftly around. No one (or no one visible) was paying any attention to him. Bending forward and sideways, as if in earnest conversation, he peered into the set face. Lightly, he touched the fingers clutching the grey beard, and then Shaun caught his breath.
In moments of climax Shaun’s brain became icily cold—probably the reason why he was still alive. What he had to do now was to get out fast. He drank the coffee and clapped his hands.
When the Nubian boy materialized again out of the shadows, Shaun paid and stood up. As he turned away he bowed to his hawk-faced neighbour and, as if responding to a parting word, “Good day, hadj,” he said. “Peace be with you.” Then Shaun raised his hand to his forehead and went out.
He walked swiftly until he came to the street of the tumble-down mosque, and only then allowed his pace to slacken.
He was doing some hard thinking. Now that he had got clear of the café and clear of clumsy native police inquiries he could act. The hadj must be identified. The link with Theo Leidler must be looked for.
And Leidler himself? Had Shaun stumbled by chance on the climax of his i
ntrigue?
Evidence to break up a gang that had defied the European police and the US Secret Service for three years now seemed to lie within his grasp It was definitely known that Nazi loot of incalculable value had been passed from Paris to Istanbul and on into Egypt. In Egypt Theo Leidler had been waiting to take it over.
Why had Leidler gone to this café? Whom had he gone to meet? Shaun knew instinctively that it must have been the hadj.
Because the bearded hadj who had sat beside Shaun, chin in hands, elbows propped on the table… was dead!
* * *
Maureen Lonergan waved her hand at the group on the deck and walked down the gang plank. It wasn’t that she disliked Mrs Simmonds and Shelley Downing but that she was rather sick of always being expected to go where the other Antonia passengers went.
“We’re having early lunch at some casino on the beach,” Shelley called after her. “It was up on the board this morning. See you there. Don’t forget we sail at two.”
Maureen had saved up hard so that she could take this Mediterranean cruise and she meant to enjoy every minute of it in her own way. The set excursions to “sights” and to night spots bored her. The Old World fascinated Maureen. She wanted to enter for awhile the real ways of its people, to see at close quarters the things she had read about.
The purser, who knew all about Maureen’s passion for solitary exploring (she had been lost for three hours in the Muski while the passengers were “doing” Cairo), had advised her to complete her shopping in Port Said at Simon Arzt’s. There, he assured her, she could buy anything from a pair of elephant’s tusks to a packet of hairpins.
“Port Said isn’t what it was under British rule,” he warned her. “It’s had a relapse.”
Maureen had heard from a friend about a wonderful shop called Suleyman’s. He had described it and where it was situated. “But don’t go there alone,” he had warned. “It’s right in the old Arab quarter.”
All the same, Maureen had made up her mind to go. It was silly to be afraid in broad daylight. But either the directions had been foggy or she had forgotten them, and apparently Suleyman was a common name in Port Said. When having wandered about for the best part of half an hour, she found herself lost on a chessboard of narrow native streets with no white face in sight, she had a sudden attack of nerves. Perhaps she had been crazy, after all, to wander into the Arab quarter by herself. And she hadn’t the faintest idea of the way back!
Taxis there were none, but starved-looking mongrel dogs ferreted in the gutters and there were millions of flies. Although the sky was a dazzling blue, these streets were filled with mysterious shadows.
Oily-faced traders seated in cavernous shops leered at her openly. One, a fat, sinister jeweller, tried to force her inside. His touch made Maureen shudder.
She almost ran toward the open door of a little mosque and was turning in when a good-looking Arab boy appeared mysteriously beside her.
“Lady not to be afraid. My name Ali Mahmoud. Lady want to buy scarab ring? Very old, very cheap.”
Maureen hesitated, looking anxiously into the Arab boy’s face, then back at the fat jeweller who stood in the street watching them. She was desperately tempted to ask the boy to lead her to the ship, but stubbornly determined not be frightened.
“I want to go to a shop called Suleyman’s. It has a brass lamp in front of it. If you can take me there I’ll give you a dollar.”
“Hadji Suleyman? I go. American dollar?”
“Yes, an American dollar.”
“My lady will please to come this way.”
Maureen was still doubtful but almost mechanically, she followed Ali Mahmoud. Five minutes later, to her intense relief, she found herself in front of Suleyman’s shop. She sighed gratefully, handed the boy his promised dollar, and “If you can find me a taxi,” she said, “I’ll give you another.”
“Taxicab, my lady? I go. Give me dollar now—or taximan won’t come. You wait in shop.”
Maureen gave him another dollar.
“Don’t be long,” she said.
She went into the shop, composure quite restored. And Suleyman’s proved to be even more fascinating than described. The place was a mere hole in the wall, but the interior concealed an Ali Baba’s cave, except that its treasures were tinsel. Maureen saw statuettes of Nile gods, scarab rings and necklaces. Bedawi slippers cunningly embroidered, and boxes filled with most unusual dress jewellery.
A wrinkled old woman who wore what looked like a brass anchor chain around her neck sat in an armchair. Her heavy-lidded eyes scarcely moved as Maureen came in. There was a smell of sandalwood.
Maureen took out a piece of green dress material and a pair of earrings she had bought at Simon Arzt’s. The match was not a good one but it was the best she had been able to manage.
“Have you some beads anything like this?”
The old woman waved a hand covered in rings.
“All beads in that box.”
Maureen began to inspect a most astonishing collection of bead and glass necklaces which lay in a cardboard box. They ranged from Egyptian enamel to gaudy paste diamonds. The light was poor, but she found one at last which, although altogether too gaudy, seemed more nearly to match the earrings than anything so far discovered.
“How much is this one, please?”
“Can sell nothing. Must wait till my husband come back.”
“Oh! But I haven’t time! The ship sails at two!”
Drooping lids were half raised. Maureen was inspected from head to foot by a pair of lancet-keen eyes.
“You pay American money?”
“Yes, if you like.” Maureen had found out that dollar bills were talismans in Port Said. “How much is it?” she added.
The old woman shrugged so that her brass chain rattled.
“My husband go out. I never serve in here. I don’t know price. Ten dollar?”
“Ten dollars! Good heavens! I couldn’t think of it!”
“Five.”
Maureen judged that the thing was probably worth fifty cents; but it seemed unlikely that she would find another before the ship sailed. Silently, she handed a five-dollar bill to the woman, thenecklace was packed into a parcel, and Maureen went out.
There was no sign of Ali Mahmoud. But a man hurrying into Suleyman’s as Maureen came out almost knocked her over. “Please forgive me,” he murmured in a slightly accented voice.
Maureen met the glance of dark, ardent eyes and forced a smile. The man was not bad looking in a way, but it was a vaguely unpleasant way. And Maureen definitely didn’t like his white coat with a pink stripe.
His glance lingered on her for only a moment. He seemed to be intensely pre-occupied, and with a quick “Forgive me,” he hurried into the shop Maureen had just left.
With a little shrug at his abruptness, Maureen started back along the street in the direction from which she had come with Ali Mahmoud…
* * *
Shaun also was striding along, his thoughts racing. The hadj’s death might be a natural death: some swift lesion of heart. But in his own heart Shaun knew it was murder: some deadly poison added to the râki, and equally swift in its action. He must get to the US Consulate on the waterfront. He must get to a safe phone.
He swung sharply to the right, down a street that was monotonously like all the others—native stores, bric-a-brac dealers. Before one shop hung a brass mosque lamp and the sign “Hadji Suleyman”. He hurried on to the next corner.
A girl stood there, petite, slender, looking right and left in a rather bewildered way. He saw her fumble in a satchel swung from her shoulder, and he saw a small parcel drop as she did so.
Shaun was only two paces behind her. He checked his stride, picked up the parcel and stepped forward.
“You’re losing your property, I’m afraid!”
“Oh, thank you!” Maureen turned swiftly. She met the glance of smiling grey eyes, saw a dark, sun-tanned face with clean-cut features, a man who wore a smart drill suit,
who looked civilised.
Her eyes searched the smiling face.
“Heaven be praised, you’re an American,” Maureen murmured. “You see, I’m lost! I was trying to find the address of some beach place I’m to go for lunch.”
Shaun was looking at a fresh-faced girl with frank blue eyes of the kind which in Ireland they say are put in with smutty fingers. A piquant face. She wore a white frock which left her arms bare, and a big sun-hat with a green veil.
“Are you with the Cunard cruise?”
“That’s right.”
“Then I expect lunch will be at the Casino. If we can find a taxi, the Consulate is right on the way. You can drop me off.”
“But where do we find a taxi?”
“That’s the problem!” Shaun grinned. “Mine as well as yours. Come on.”
He took her arm, and Maureen found herself being hurried headlong forward by this attractive stranger.
“My name’s Shaun Bantry,” he volunteered, as they raced along.
“Maureen Lonergan!” She was breathless.
“Good Irish names.” They came out onto Sharie el-Gâmi. “And our luck’s in. Here’s a taxi!”
Shaun held the door for Maureen, jumped in beside her and gave rapid orders in Arabic to the driver.
She looked aside at him, wondering why all the wrong men came on cruises. Shaun, considering Maureen as the taxi got under way, was wondering why most of the girls with whom his wandering life brought him in touch were so unlike Maureen. She had astonishingly long lashes, and her wavy chestnut hair under the white hat gleamed delightfully. As they talked, and his glance followed those exciting waves, out of the tail of his right eye he saw a grey sedan following the taxi.
Theo Leidler, dark eyes intent, was seated beside an Egyptian driver who wore a fez!
Shaun swore silently. He had slipped up somewhere. Leidler’s suspicions were aroused. Or else—someone had given him away. Otherwise, why should Leidler follow him?
“There’s a change of plan.” Shaun spoke so sharply that Maureen was startled. “I’m going to drop you first, and take the taxi on…”
