East of Algiers

by Francis Durbridge

  Steve led me towards the bare section of wall under the window.

  I said: ‘Pity we haven’t a couple of glasses. We could at least celebrate our reunion.’

  ‘There is a glass somewhere. I saw it during daylight. I think I can find it.’

  Steve began to grope about on a shelf which I could hardly see. I cursed myself for not remembering to put my pencil torch in my pocket. Still, the thugs would probably have taken it. I had felt their expert hands running over my pockets soon after I’d been hauled into the car. My gold cigarette-case, my lighter and my wallet had all gone. Perquisites of the profession, presumably.

  ‘Here we are,’ Steve said. ‘It’s quite a big one.’

  ‘Good. We can share it. Now did you notice whether there was any champagne?’

  ‘No. I’m afraid it never occurred to me to make wassail. There must be champagne somewhere. It’s all neatly labelled and marked with prices.’

  ‘By Timothy, Steve! Why didn’t I think of it before? We must be underneath the Trou du Diable, Schultz’s restaurant in Sidi bou Saïd. It’s about the right distance and that matches up with you hearing the sea.’

  I had begun to make an exploration of the bottles in the wine racks, trying to recognize, by feel, the different types.

  ‘I think you’re right. Some very tantalizing smells of cooking have drifted through to me, and all I had was bread and cheese.’

  I said with false cheerfulness.

  ‘Here we are; struck lucky first time.’

  Under my fingers I could feel the distinctively wired, bulbous cork of a champagne bottle. I loosened the wire and began to prize the cork out. It would do neither of us any harm to have our spirits lifted. We would probably need a good deal of Dutch courage before long. I wished I had remembered to mention Le Trou du Diable to Forbes. The chances of his finding us here were very remote.

  The cork came out with a pop that sounded curiously like a shot from a silenced automatic. I held the bottle at an angle and poured some of the bubbling liquid into the glass. We drank each other’s health, sitting close together on the narrow bench. I held my watch in the bar of light from the door. It was just two o’clock, about fifty minutes from the time I had received the telephone call. I was sure now that the call had been made from somewhere in Tunis, nowhere near our present whereabouts, and that even at this moment Sir Graham might be making an abortive raid on some empty hide-out.

  Silence was bad medicine under these conditions.

  ‘I’ve found out a good deal since we last met,’ I said. ‘In fact this has been an extremely eventful day.’

  I told Steve about the long chain of events which had kept me busy since that morning. She cheered up considerably when she heard that Sir Graham Forbes had appeared on the scene, and listened eagerly when I recounted the story of the Melrose jewels.

  ‘I remember reading about that. Did Sir Graham explain what the significance of the spectacles was?’

  ‘I’m afraid that was one gap in the otherwise very full picture he painted for me. Luckily I was able to fill it in for him.’

  ‘Paul! You mean you’ve known the answer all along? How unfair of you not to tell me!’

  ‘I haven’t known it all along, but I began to have an inkling when we were discussing things last night. I was able to confirm it this morning soon after I so unwisely left you.’

  I stopped to pour a little champagne into the glass. It was a pretty good vintage; probably 1952, I thought, and possibly a Delbeck. I was looking forward to seeing the bottle in the light and confirming my diagnosis.

  ‘Well, go on!’ Steve nudged me impatiently.

  ‘When the gang decided to split up it was Leather who had the responsibility of hiding the loot. He took it to some place out in the desert and buried it. He then made an exact trigonometrical calculation of the spot and converted it into a prescription for a pair of spectacles. When the prescription was made up he was able to destroy all the other evidence of the whereabouts of the jewels.’

  ‘What an absolutely marvellous idea!’ Steve breathed. ‘It seems impossible that anyone could hit on such an inspiration. How on earth did you guess it?’

  ‘It was a bit of luck, really. I’d been on the fringes of a solution, and then simply because an old optician was a little on the deaf side, I suddenly saw the light.’

  ‘I think he almost deserved to get away with that – this man Leather, I mean.’

  ‘Leather was a remarkable man. He was the welding force in that gang – or syndicate, to give them a more flattering name. After his death they were all at each other’s throats, each man out for himself.’

  ‘How many of them were there? Rostand, Schultz, Leyland?’

  ‘No. Leyland did not belong to the original syndicate. That consisted of Leather, Rostand, Schultz, Zoltan Gupte – he was the fence who could dispose of the jewels – and a fifth person.’

  ‘Someone we haven’t met yet?’

  ‘As a matter of fact we have, but I think I’d rather you didn’t know who it is just at this moment.’

  ‘Do I know his name?’

  ‘You know the name very well. It’s David Foster.’

  ‘I see. So David Foster really does exist, after all.’

  ‘In a way, yes.’

  Steve took the glass from my hand, and after taking a drink was silent for some moments. I thought it could not be long now till the little old man in the study upstairs gave his verdict. It would then be obvious to Rostand and Schultz that the prescription for Forbes’s spectacles did not make geographical sense.

  ‘How did Judy Wincott get mixed up in all this?’

  I automatically felt for a cigarette, and then remembered that I had lost my case.

  ‘You know the old saying: cherchez la femme. In this case it should be amended to cherchez les femmes, because the women provide a key to the whole business.’

  I broke off. A shadow had fallen across the bottom of the door and there was a sound of feet descending the stairs.

  ‘Keep your chin up, Steve,’ I said. ‘This is it.’

  The key clattered in the lock and the door was flung open. Looming hugely in the doorway were the two thugs who had brought me there. Beyond them at the top of the flight of steps was Schultz.

  ‘Bring them up!’ he shouted harshly. ‘Be quick about it.’

  ‘Come on, salaud,’ the larger of the thugs grunted at me. ‘Any funny tricks and the woman gets it in the stomach.’

  With an automatic levelled at my back I went ahead up the stairs. Schultz had returned to the study. He and Rostand were standing there when we were hustled in, and I knew by their faces that the truth was out. Forbes’s glasses lay on the white blotter of the desk. The frightened little old mouse man had disappeared. Rostand had that unnerving, excited look on his face which I had seen before in the Villa Negra. Schultz, on the other hand, had gone a livid grey. He was in the grip of an overwhelming rage.

  Rostand rushed towards me the moment we were pushed through the doorway.

  ‘Hold his arms!’ he hissed to the guards. My arms were pinioned to my sides while Rostand drove his clenched fist repeatedly into my cheeks, my eyes and my mouth. I rocked my head back at each blow, but I could feel the blood trickling into my eye and taste it on my tongue. He stopped abruptly when he found that his own knuckles had begun to bleed.

  ‘All right, Pierre,’ I heard Schultz say. ‘We haven’t any more time for games.’

  He had seized hold of Steve when she tried to rush forward and throw herself on Rostand. He had her arm twisted behind her, and was able to hold her with one hand. She did not cry out, but she had turned quite white.

  ‘Mr. Temple,’ Schultz said with dangerous politeness. ‘You have wasted a lot of time. I beg of you not to delay any longer in telling the truth. We are going to find out where those spectacles are, you know.’

  Still holding Steve easily with one hand, he brought her towards the table just in front of me. She was gasping with
pain when he pinned her other hand palm upwards on the table.

  ‘Pierre,’ he suggested, ‘you have your automatic?’

  Pierre groped in his pockets and produced a Beretta. He was watching Schultz for his cue.

  ‘You know that a shot through the hand is one of the most painful wounds? I am going to count five and then Pierre will pull the trigger. One…two…’

  Schultz, as I knew well, was not lying when he said that a hand wound is one of the most painful. I could feel the sweat breaking out all over my body. The hands that held me had tightened their grip.

  ‘…three…four…’

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell you. They’re in the vaults of Lloyds Bank in Tunis.’

  ‘How do we know you’re telling the truth?’

  ‘The receipt is in my wallet. One of your gorillas pinched it from me.’

  The automatic was still aimed at Steve’s hand. Schultz showed no surprise at my wallet having been stolen. He merely glanced up enquiringly and one of the guards, with a very sheepish look, produced it. Schultz released Steve’s hand to flick it open. The money had vanished, but the small receipt from Lloyds Bank was still there.

  ‘Let him go,’ Schultz said, ‘but keep him covered.’ He addressed himself to me. ‘Go to the desk and write on it: “Please hand the package specified on this receipt to the bearer” – then sign it.’

  I went to the desk and wrote as he had directed. There was little doubt in my mind that I was signing both our death warrants, but I could never have steeled myself to watch Steve being shot through the hands. I handed the document back to Schultz. He and Rostand studied it.

  ‘Will that do the trick?’ Schultz asked the other man.

  ‘Yes,’ Rostand confirmed. ‘They know me at Lloyds. There won’t be any difficulty. It means waiting till to-morrow, that is all.’

  ‘We can go to the yacht in the meantime. I think we’ve been here long enough, you know. The sooner we move the better.’

  They were talking to each other as if Steve and I no longer existed.

  Rostand said: ‘Better make sure you haven’t left anything important here.’

  ‘I’ve checked all that,’ Schultz said, casting a quick glance round the place.

  Since he had relinquished his hold of Steve we were each of us watched by one of the guards, their automatics aimed suggestively at our stomachs.

  ‘Let’s go, then,’ said Rostand. ‘There’s nothing more we can do here.’

  Schultz turned to me as he stood at the door.

  ‘I have enjoyed meeting you, Mr. Temple. Did I tell you that I have read one of your stories? I am so sorry I cannot provide you with a happy ending to this one.’

  His voice changed as he addressed the two guards in French.

  ‘I am leaving you to dispose of them. You know what to do.’

  The thugs nodded and the door closed on Schultz and Rostand.

  ‘I suppose he means dump them in the sea,’ the larger of the two guards said. ‘Well, they may as well walk there on their own two feet as have us carry them. Come on, my friend. If you give us your co-operation we can make this nice and quick for you.’

  I knew that Steve was looking towards me, but I dared not meet her eyes. I was feeling too ashamed of myself for not having the guts to suck it out or at least to make a fight for it before the odds against us became too heavy. Dimly in the background I heard the door of the house shutting. I imagined Schultz and Rostand climbing into the car.

  Then abruptly a new sound came – the sharp unmistakable crack of a revolver followed by a brief and vicious burst from a sub-machine-gun. The two guards turned their noses towards the door like pointers.

  I dived across the front of my own guard at the man who was covering Steve. I heard a shot go off as we both crashed to the ground. I think that desperation and fury must have given me a strength I’d never had before. I pulled the gunman’s head back by the hair and banged it hard on the ground. His body went limp. I turned round to find out how Steve was faring. She was holding grimly on to the gun-arm of the other thug, her teeth gritted with effort. Her adversary had sunk on to one knee and was making only half-hearted efforts to resist her. Between us we soon had the automatic out of his grip. He immediately collapsed on the floor and grabbed for his right foot. The shoe was shattered and blood was spurting from it.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘He shot himself in the foot when you dived across him.’

  Outside the corridor a fusillade of shots sounded, followed by the sound of running feet. I could hear Schultz shouting as he came: ‘Armand! Pierre! Open the windows. We will have to go down by the cliff.’

  Two more shots were fired outside the door, and I heard a man scream with pain. Schultz wrenched the door open and came in dragging a wounded Rostand behind him. He locked it, and then turned to find himself looking up the spout of the two automatics which I held in either hand.

  ‘Drop your gun,’ I said, and fired one into the wood behind his ear just to show him that my aim was good. He dropped the gun.

  ‘Now unlock the door.’

  Schultz slowly did as he was told. Meanwhile out of the corner of my eye I saw Steve stoop and pick up his automatic.

  ‘Now come and stand under that nice picture of Venice.’

  With Teutonic dignity and the air of a man who knows how to face the firing squad, Schultz ranged himself against the wall under his aquatint of the Bridge of Sighs. Rostand had crumpled unconscious on the floor, his shoulder shattered by a bullet. The upward rolling eyes and drooling mouth showed that he was not shamming.

  That was how the Commissaire Renouk and Sir Graham Forbes saw us when they kicked open the door.

  Chapter Ten

  ‘I STILL don’t know how you tumbled to the fact that we were at the Trou du Diable, Sir Graham. You must have done some very rapid thinking.’

  The three of us – Steve, Sir Graham and I – were sitting in room number three seven two, nursing hot cups of chocolate in our hands. The hotel had proved its reputation for round the clock service by sending up staff to change the mattress and bedding which had been stained by Leyland’s blood. Our tentative request for hot chocolate had been seen to with smiling alacrity. Even a Hotel Matron had appeared to sponge my bruised face and put sticking plaster and lint over the cuts on my cheeks.

  It was past four o’clock before we got back to the Hotel François Premier. We had seen Schultz hustled away by the none too gentle police, and watched while Rostand was loaded on to a stretcher and carried out to the ambulance. He died before reaching hospital. Both of the hired gunmen were in need of hospital treatment, one for a shattered foot and the other for severe concussion. They travelled in the same ambulance as the dying Rostand.

  ‘I don’t take much credit for finding you, Temple. The fact is that I was completely stumped. I tried to trace that telephone call. It had been made from one of the telephone booths on the ground floor of the hotel. So I was back to square one.’

  Steve and I listened to Sir Graham with the cosy interest of children who know that the story is going to end up all right.

  ‘So what did you do?’ Steve enquired brightly.

  ‘Well, I hadn’t much to go on, and I was determined to recover my spectacles, you know.’ Forbes broke off to give his low, rumbling laugh. ‘So I raced round to the Commissariat and found Renouk. That took me about a quarter of an hour. I persuaded him that the only thing to do was raid every house marked on that map of yours. We were just going to give out the orders when this anonymous call came through.’

  ‘Anonymous call?’

  Steve and I laughed. We had both said the words in unison.

  ‘Yes. This chap just phoned through to Renouk’s office and stated baldly that if we were interested in the whereabouts of Mr. and Mrs. Temple we would do well to raid the premises known as Le Trou du Diable at Sidi bou Saïd. Then he rang off, and the rest you know.’

  ‘Did he speak in English?’
<
br />   Forbes nodded.

  ‘Renouk took the call, but I heard him vainly trying to elicit the chap’s name.’

  ‘I think I can supply you with his name, Sir Graham.’

  ‘Can you, Temple? Let’s have it.’

  ‘David Foster. He was as anxious as you were for his spectacles not to fall into the wrong hands.’

  ‘Paul, I think you’re being maddeningly secretive about all this,’ Steve objected. ‘Surely this case is all over now. Can’t you tell me who David Foster is?’

  ‘It’s not over, you know. Only two members of the gang are in the bag. Three of them are still at large. They’re just as desperate as Schultz and Rostand to get possession of those spectacles. And don’t forget the unsolved murder of a friend of ours is still on our conscience.’

  ‘You mean Judy Wincott? Paul, how does she come into all this?’

  I swallowed the second half of my chocolate and felt it snaking down into my stomach and forming a comfortable, warm knot there. Sir Graham was leaning back in his armchair, breathing gently through his pipe and contemplating us both with the kindly affection of the Prodigal Son’s father. Steve’s colour had returned; she was very stimulated by the excitement and the sudden safety after danger. Her eyes sparkled and she found it hard to sit still.

  I said: ‘I think I’d just been telling you that the motto of this case should be cherchez les femmes, and that the women involved were the key to the whole business. You can correct me if I’m wrong, Sir Graham.’

  Forbes nodded sleepily, content to let me do the talking.

  ‘Even before he died, Leather’s wife had deserted him for Rostand – which did not save her when she had outlived her usefulness. Leather’s new girl-friend was one of a pair of dubious young ladies, who lived very well on their lawless boyfriends and were occasionally useful to them in their plans. Her name was Diana Simmonds, and her friend was called Judy Wincott. Now, when Leather was dying and semi-delirious, he confided his secret to Diana Simmonds, and bequeathed the spectacles to her. At first she could not quite believe in their immense value, but various disquieting incidents took place which warned her that there were people who would stop at nothing to gain possession of them. She became scared and confided in her friend.’