The Quest of Julian Day (9 page)

‘I should be more than grateful,' I told him, upon which the boat was turned inshore and landed us at some steps further east along the waterfront, near the Arsenal Basin and adjacent to Alexandria's bazaar.

It was getting on for eight o'clock but the bazaar was still a hive of activity; noisy, smelly and vaguely mysterious, but wholly fascinating as such swarming native quarters must always be to the visiting European. The shops we passed were little more than cupboards let into the wall, each piled high
with the particular merchandise of its owner so that he barely had room to sit inside it on a low stool; cobblers, carpenters, metalworkers and bakers were all working away in the open at their trades, clad in voluminous, dirty white
galabiehs
and ragged turbans, while here and there a tarbooshed merchant in European clothes stood beside his bales of brightly-coloured cottons, piles of pots or pseudo-antiques. Scruffy-haired children, naked but for a single garment which looked as though it had been cut from the broad, striped stuff used for the cheaper kind of pyjamas, gambolled in the gutters. Hugely fat women swathed in masses of black material right up to the eyes, above which a wood-and-brass affair was perched uncomfortably on their noses to keep their veils on place, haggled and chattered. Sturdy men from the south, pockmarked slum-dwellers, and scores of cripples whining for alms jostled together as they moved leisurely about their business.

The ways were so narrow that there was barely room for the donkey-carts laden with melons, tomatoes and bananas to pass; while above, the upper storeys of the houses overhung the streets so that they almost touched. Occasionally the tinny music of a cheap wireless set impinged upon the ear and a fair proportion of the trashy goods displayed would, I knew, on closer inspection prove to have come from European factories; but, ostensibly, so little has Western influence permeated this outpost of the East, the scene would still have made a perfect setting for a chapter out of The Arabian Nights.

After twisting and turning through this swarming human rabbit-warren for some ten minutes we reached a cupboard-like shop in which an old man was sitting beside a heap of large, brass cylinders that looked rather like inverted pails. It is on these moulds that the heated red felt is stretched to form a tarboosh according to the requirements of the customer in size and height.

Amin introduced the old man to me as his uncle, Abu Khattab, and said in Arabic that he had urgent business we wished to discuss, upon which the old fez-maker promptly closed his shop by shutting the two doors which flanked its sides, and led us through a narrow passage upstairs to the living-room.

It was stuffy there and had that strange Eastern smell, half sour, half-spicy, which defies analysis; but while we stood in the doorway the old man lit the lamp and threw a pinch of some powder on it which gave off an aromatic smoke that sweetened the heavy atmosphere.

Although I was no longer actually dripping, my clothes were still sopping wet, so Amin checked his uncle's desire to offer ritual hospitality until I had stripped off my things and been wrapped in a clean, white robe. Old Abu then padded away in his soft slippers to another room and, after a few moments, returned with coffee and a plate of little sweet cakes.

I sat on the divan and the other two squatted on mats on the floor. When we had partaken of the refeshments Amin proceeded to tell his uncle that for my own purposes I must be concealed or disguised until my further pleasure.

‘
Fadl, effendi, fadl
.' The old fellow waved his hand with a courteous gesture placing his house at my disposal; but I did not think it fair to take advantage of his offer beyond this brief visit, so I said that as I had certain business that would necessitate my going about the city I would prefer it if they would provide me with some sort of disguise.

‘Such a matter should make no difficulty,' said Amin. ‘Providing, sir, that you are willing for us to cut up your most becoming beard.'

I had positively loathed that beard of mine to begin with but once I'd got used to it I had grown quite fond of it, as not only was it a most personable affair, but it had also provided me with adequate protection in numerous cases when I'd run into people who would have recognised me without it; so I was loath to sacrifice it now. But his suggestion was so sensible that I agreed at once.

‘I could provide you with Arab dress,' he said. ‘I have only to fetch them from a small hotel where I lodge. Also I will procure stuff for staining your face and hands quite dark. Then if you wear a tarboosh you will be taken for an Egyptian.'

‘That would be fine, and the sooner the better,' I replied.

Amin hurried off and I was left in the company of the old man. Our conversation had been in Arabic and I was delighted to find that I had no difficulty at all in taking part in it. Consequently, for the next twenty minutes I continued to practise
on Uncle Abu while he brought me scissors and shaving things with which I first trimmed and then shaved my beard.

When Amin got back they stained my face and hands a pleasant nut-brown; after which they arrayed me in Arab undergarments and a rich-looking, striped silk
jibba
. Amin, as I knew from the previous winter, was a vain fellow; he had a whole collection of these and never seemed to appear in the same one twice. He was bigger than myself but that was no disadvantage since the long garment slipped over the silken undervest and other clothes without the necessity of fitting anywhere. When I was fully clad, old Abu showed his broken teeth in a grin and clapped his hands as delighted as a child at the result, while Amin nodded his approval.

‘No one,' he declared, ‘would ever take you for a European. And now, sir, what is it that next we do?'

‘My friend, Mr. Harry Belville, is staying at the Hotel Cecil.' I said. ‘It's important that I should see him. But I don't think you had better bring him down here, in case he's followed. It would be best if I go and sit at one of the cafés on the water front and you send him along to meet me. It won't look quite so suspicious if he's seen talking to an Egyptian at a café as if he comes down to a house in the native quarter within an hour of arriving in Alexandria. The other thing that I wanted you to do for me is to find out Zakri Bey's address in Alexandria.'

‘It shall be done, sir, just as you are pleased to direct. We will go now, if you please, to a quiet café most suitable for this.'

I thanked Uncle Abu and, not liking to offer him money, I said that I should like to send tarbooshes to a number of my friends in England and would arrange the matter with Amin; upon which we each bowed our gratitude and he saw us out into the street.

The café to which Amin took me was certainly most suitable. It was small and unpretentious but clean, and well outside the native quarter. Alexandria's population has always consisted largely of Greeks, Italians and Jews, numbers of whom have intermarried with the native Egyptians through the centuries and produced a race which varies in every shade of skin from coal-black to lily-white, so although most of the patrons in the place were polyglots, no one would have thought it at all
strange to see a pure European, like Harry, sitting there.

When Amin had left me I employed myself for the first few minutes in making a list of a dozen people or so for Abu to send tarbooshes to in England; and I chuckled a bit when I thought of their surprise at receiving such a gift from a complete stranger, as I naturally did not wish to arouse old memories by sending them in my proper name.

As soon as I had done this my thoughts reverted to O'Kieff and his associates. I wondered how many of the others, besides Zakri Bey, were concerned in this attempt to locate Cambyses' treasure, and went over the unholy crew once more in my mind.

In addition to the two beauties with whom I had had a scrap that night there was the Polish Jew, Azrael Mozinsky—a huge fleshly lump of a man with the cruellest eyes I have ever seen. His only redeeming quality was his passion for music and it was said that many a poor but talented artist owed his rise to fame to Azrael's patronage and the support afforded by a small fractions of his ill-gotten millions. Baron Feldmar von Hentzen, the German, was a very different type—a great powerful brute with the typical shaven head of the Prussian bully. He hadn't the imagination of the Jew but as an organiser he was unrivalled and he possessed all the ruthless qualities necessary for carrying through a deal whatever the cost. Inosuke Hayashi, the Japanese who, it was said, controlled the Eastern drug market, was an enigma to me. Behind his thick-lensed spectacles he looked a quite harmless little man but it was utterly impossible even to guess at the thoughts which were passing behind the mask of his puckered, yellow, poker face.

Another of them was that strange little figure Lord Gavin Fortescue. He was not exactly a dwarf but his body was frail and childlike, while his fine massive head with it shock of silver hair gave him the saintly look of an archbishop. It was said that his physical abnormality, together with the fact that he was born the younger twin of an English Duke and so failed to inherit the dukedom, had embittered him to such an extent that it had turned his brain; but somehow he did not scare me quite as much as Count Emilo Mondragora, the Portuguese, who was tall and stooping with a thin hatchet face and eyes that bored through one like gimlets. It was he, I think, who must
have hypnotised poor Carruthers, although perhaps O'Kieff might have been a better hand at that.

If they were all concerned in this thing the odds were hopelessly against me. But their organisation was such a vast one that I had good reason to hope the other five were scattered up and down the world occupied with their own nefarious business, and that in the present issue I was only pitted against paunchy, feline, effeminate Zakri Bey and O'Kieff himself.

These two, in all conscience, were quite enough to take on unaided as Zakri Bey had practically a free hand to do what he liked in Egypt now the British had cleared out, and O'Kieff was the master of them all when it came to brains and ruthlessness. I was still smiling a little at the thought of that fine punch I had landed full in his ugly face when I saw Amin and Harry approaching. Harry's plump face expressed such surprise and dismay when he first saw me that I had to laugh.

‘Good God! You do look a guy!' he exclaimed as he sat down at my table.

Amin was standing beside us and he bent down to whisper. ‘While I was waiting for the gentleman I made inquiries of a fellow-guide who lives in Alexandria and knows it well. Zakri Bey has no house here and he is not at any of the big hotels.'

‘Are you sure?' I asked.

‘Most sure. He is a big man, very important. If he were my friend would be certain to have such information. But he stays, perhaps, in a friends's house. I go now, my lord, to make further inquiry.'

As he turned away I smiled at Harry. ‘It must be a bit of a shock for you seeing me rigged up like this.'

‘It is,' he said. ‘I certainly wouldn't have known you if I'd had to pick you out from this crowd myself. You're really a jolly good-looking fellow, too, without that silly beard. But I say, old chap, you've got yourself in the hell of a mess.'

‘I suppose I have rather,' I admitted. ‘I imagine the police are looking for me everywhere to question me about Sir Walter's death.'

Harry's blue eyes switched anxiously from side to side, and he leaned across the table. ‘It's a darned sight worse than that. Since you bolted from the ship they're quite convinced you did it. They've got a warrant out and they're after you for murder.'

‘After me for murder!' I exclaimed. ‘You can't mean that?'

Harry's fresh-complexioned face was unusually grave. ‘My dear fellow, what could you expect? You were the last person to see the old chap alive, the first to find him dead, and then without a word of explanation you skedaddle from the ship. Naturally the police think you did it.'

The last three hours had been so packed with excitements that I'd had little chance to do anything except tackle each fresh situation as it arose and none at all to speculate on what other people might be thinking of my activities. Now, I saw in a flash the fine muddle in which I had landed myself. In my anxiety to follow O'Kieff I had simply ignored the grave view the authorities might take of my unauthorised departure from the ship, but obviously it gave them grounds for jumping to the conclusion that I knew more about the murder than I had said, or even that I was the actual murderer and had lost my nerve at the thought of facing a police enquiry.

‘Why
did
you clear out like that?' Harry asked quietly.

I told him about O'Kieff and Zakri Bey, upon which he said: ‘Clarissa and I guessed as much when we found O'Kieff had been exempted from passing through the Customs with the rest of us. Did you have any luck in tracing him?'

‘No,' I replied, and gave a brief account of my adventures since I had left the ‘Hampshire'.

‘It looks as if the game's up, old son,' Harry said when I had finished. ‘It was a stout effort on your part, but as you lost them the longer you endeavour to evade the police the more trouble you'll have with them when they get you. I think the best plan is for you to go along with me to the police right away. After all, you
didn't
do it, so you've got nothing to be
afraid of; and you can count on Clarissa and me to stand by you.'

‘That's nice of you, but it's no longer as simple as all that. I'm afraid. Zakri will have been on to the authorities by this time, spun some yarn about my being an undesirable and reported how they attempted to secure me. They'll hear then that I left the ship without permission and, in consequence, am now regarded as the murderer. It's a sure bet they'll play that for all their worth because it's such a heaven-sent opportunity to divert suspicion from themselves.'