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Loo Chan wore a bland
expression of satisfaction, and there was a gleam of cunning in his
small, obsidian eyes, which faded when he realized that I was present
without escort.

"Good evening,"
I said in a matter-of-fact manner! "If you will send your bully
boy here into the alley, he can drag his unconscious brother within."

As I sat down opposite
the lawyer, I was delighted to note his startled reaction.

"Your attempt at
strong-arm tactics was ridiculous, of course, since I'm here to have
a word with you."

"You are—what?"
Chan was completely unnerved, and rattled to the Manchurian in
Chinese. The wrestler left the room.

"Surely you don't
think your clumsily baited trap would fool anyone but a child,"
I stated contemptuously. "Even the sometimes obtuse Inspector
Lestrade would have laughed at it."

Alarm had flooded Loo
Chan's eyes, and I pressed on.

"Dear me, I can see
clearly that you have overdramatized again. The open window, the
sound of a voice, and the curiosity of the Anglo-Saxon will entrap
him. Do you think me a dunderhead? Had you not been aware of my
presence, would you have spoken in English? Surely not, but in your
native tongue."

I leaned back in the
straight-back, regarding Loo Chan with disdain. In the alleyway this
thought had not occurred to me, but the Chinese didn't know that, a
knowledge gap that I hoped to preserve.

"Why . . . why then
would you come here, on my footsteps, if you suspected a trap?"
As he spoke, Loo Chan was mentally stumbling round, trying to regain
firm footing.

"Because—in
the patois of the American dime novel—the jig is up! Lawyers
are reputed to be a cautious lot, and you had better get out now."

Consternation and
confusion fought a battle on his face. Since the best defense against
a counterattack is to never let it get started, I continued to knife
him verbally, all the while trying to preserve an icy façade.

"I can afford to be
generous with advice. Surely, here, I am completely safe." I
indicated my dingy surroundings airily, as though I were seated in
the commissioner's office at New Scotland Yard.

Loo Chan almost
sputtered. In fact, he did. "You, the intimate and associate of
that devil Holmes, think you are safe with us?"

"Completely."
I leaned over the table, spearing him with an outstretched finger. A
very effective gesture that, and one that I had seen Sherlock Holmes
use to enforce a point.

"If Chu San Fu
arrives tomorrow in Cairo, you cannot have him meet me. What might I
tell him about the destruction of his London organization?"

Loo Chan's round face
froze. He did not grasp what I was touching on, but the sound was
ominous. His worried eyes were fastened on me with an unspoken
question. I summoned an answer.

"You recall that
the Limehouse Squad just happened to have a veritable blueprint of
every part of Chu San Fu's operations in London. Where do you think
it came from? Your files. Rather careless to have such information in
your safe, don't you think? I'll wager Chu San Fu will."

"My safe was not
opened."

"Wasn't it?"

"Furthermore,"
he continued desperately, as though trying to forestall the fatal
moment, "none of my records were missing."

I actually laughed. It
wasn't easy, but I believe I pulled it off rather well.

"They were
photographed."

"But that's
illegal."

"So it is. You
should have a good case. Let's see, who will you sue? The master
cracksman who got into your office? The photographer?" I did not
choose to reveal that Slim Gilligan had performed both jobs.
"Possibly, the man who planned the whole thing?"

"Holmes!" he
exclaimed, and the taste of the word was gall and wormwood. Emotion
twisted the Chinaman's face as he imagined disaster. Then the spark
of cunning reentered his eyes.

"If you could not
tell Chu San Fu—"

I used an upright palm
to stem his words before he gained confidence by uttering them.

"You can't present
him with a dead body. Do you think he would believe that you and
those two gargantuans could not take me with ease? Impossible!"

The flicker of hope was
erased from Loo Chan's face, and then the passivity of resignation
settled over it.

"What is your
thought?"

I had of late listened
to so much of the history of Egypt from Holmes, Sir Randolph Rapp,
and most recently Colonel Gray that I decided to make use of it.

"The ancients of
this land made a habit of obliterating from history certain
distasteful matters, which is why the reign of some of their pharaohs
is hardly known at all. I suggest that tonight never happened. I was
never here. If you can control the Manchurians, I see no problem."

I could sense the lawyer
trying this thought for size and searching it for a flaw. Evidently
he did not find one, for he rose to his feet, indicating the window.

"So be it. Best you
leave this way. I will take care of the Manchurians."

While clambering out of
a half-opened window in a dark alley in Cairo is not my idea of a
dignified exit, all in all I felt that the matter had been well
handled. True, I had consorted with the lawless, but surely this was
better than filling a shallow grave in the shifting sands of Egypt.
Or being the prisoner of Chu San Fu, whose feelings towards me were
hardly benevolent.

As I scurried out of the
alleyway and hastened back to Shepheard's, it jostled my conscience
to accept the fact that I had played the role of the blackmailer.
However, I was alive and free, so surely this transgression had been
in a good cause.

If I could muster an
alibi for my solo flight into dark doings in far-off places, I
cannot, in conscience, deny a certain pride that provided me with
great joy when I regained the lobby of the hotel only to run into an
irate and anxious Colonel Gray.

"Good God, Doctor,
where have you been? My men are searching the city for you!"

The high color of his
face was more pronounced and the banality of his personality was a
thing of the past, a mere cover, as I had already begun to suspect.

I regarded him with a
cool manner, tinged with surprise.

"I was conducting
an investigation of my own, Colonel. Please explain your concern."
It was but a little thing, and yet I shall always cherish it in my
memory.

"You were what!"
Gray verged on apoplexy. "You realize that they would have
handed me my head in London had something happened to you unless
Holmes beat them to it right here!" He seemed ready to embark on
more of the same when a new thought segued into his mind.
Possibly
there is more here than meets the eye,
he was thinking.
This
Doctor may be an unknown quantity, and I'd best
walk softly.
Discipline forced his severe mouth into a semblance of a
mirthless smile.

"Forgive my
concern, sir, but you are a visitor to these shores." These were
but words to cover an awkward situation. Gray knew it and
suspected that I did as well. He was grateful to have an escape
hatch.

"A Mr. Orloff from
the Foreign Office has arrived, Doctor, and has been asking for
you. I took the liberty of allowing him entry to your suite."

"Excellent,
Colonel. I am in your debt." Gray almost clicked his heels as I
made my way towards the lift with, I hope, a preoccupied expression.

Now there was no doubt
in my mind regarding the Colonel's activities in Egypt. A squad of
men were searching the city for me, and he could maneuver the
hotel staff at will. Gray was Military Intelligence. The dark shadow
of Orloff had shown up in Cairo. We had been transported by a naval
vessel. Obviously, Holmes was not the only one concerned by the
doings of Chu San Fu in the land of the Nile.

Outside our suite, I
took the precaution of knocking on the door before fitting my key in
the lock. Bursting unannounced into a room containing Orloff was
no way to insure a safe existence. The rotund security agent was
comfortably seated in a chair, the steel-rimmed hat that he so
often employed, such an awesome weapon in his hands, close by. I may
have detected a smidgen of concern vanishing from his green
eyes. There was about him a quality always helpful to my ego. Orloff
habitually treated me as an equal, an abrupt departure from his usual
good sense, but I always felt the better for his faulty judgment.

"I trust," he
said with his lazy smile, "that Colonel Gray knows of your
return. The gentleman tends to be excitable."

"Chu San Fu's
people are here in Cairo," I blurted out.

"You spotted them?"

"The lawyer, Loo
Chan, and those two Manchurian bodyguards, one of whom you laid out
like a mackerel as I recall."

"Ah yes, the
altercation on Baker Street. It would seem that you have been busy."

"Happy chance. I
just happened to spot Loo Chan."

"Or he let you do
so," replied Orloff.

"That thought did
occur to me," I said, and was thankful that the security
agent didn't pursue the matter.

"That Chu would
have some of his apparatus here awaiting his arrival is reasonable. I
wonder if they know what he has in mind?"

"I doubt it,"
I said, expressing a thought that had crossed my mind when closeted
with Loo Chan in the native quarter. "In fact, I'm not
certain his people are too enthusiastic."

"Dissension in the
ranks?"

"They may feel they
are following a falling star."

Orloff's eyes could not
suppress a slight glow.

"There are times,
Watson, when you do surprise me."

And myself as well, I
thought. Then I wondered how I was going to explain all this to
Holmes. The sleuth would insist on the details that Orloff chose to
ignore.

The moment of truth was
close by, for there was the sound of a key in the lock and Holmes's
thin form entered the room.

"Ah ha!" he
exclaimed, tossing his deerstalker on a chair. "The eagles
gather."

"To do battle with
the forces of darkness," was Orloff's contribution, and a
surprising one since humor was not prominent in his makeup.

"What news?"
inquired Holmes. "You do look much better, Watson," he
added as his eyes swiveled to Orloff.

"What you
expected," said the security agent. "Voices have been
bought and tongues have been wagging. Like the snowball downhill, a
rumor has gathered strength. I judge it to be an expensive but
effective bit of propaganda."

"You mean the
Moslem unrest?" I asked, and noted that both Holmes and Orloff
looked at me in surprise.

"There was mention
of it in the local paper," I added.

"Do tell,"
said Orloff.

"An indication of
how far this groundswell has progressed." Happily, Holmes
elaborated. "In a land, nay continent, where the printed word is
in the hands of a few, a tale told on a caravan trail or a whisper in
the bazaar carries more weight than the front page of the
Times.
In Egypt, we are not far removed from the town crier. And when a
story goes from mouth to ear, it never loses in the telling."

Holmes and Orloff were
looking at each other, and a silence fell. I began to get that
feeling again. The same that I experienced when my friend consorted
with his brother, Mycroft, and one sensed that there was unspoken
communication as two minds evaluated facts, each knowing the
line of thought that the other was following. However, this was not
as unusual as it seemed at first glance, for Wakefield Orloff was an
extension of Mycroft Holmes. "The Walking Arsenal," as
Holmes described him, was the steel forged to strike terror in the
hearts of the enemies of the nation. That this unusual man chose to
display an antagonism towards the enemies of Sherlock Holmes was
another matter. Finally the detective broke the vacuum of silence.

"You have been in
touch with London?"

Orloff nodded. "Finally,
Whitehall and Downing Street seem aware that there is a pending
crisis out here. A cabinet meeting was called and a lengthy,
sometimes heated, debate followed. In the end, it was agreed that
since a British subject who had been of service to the Empire
was on the spot, he should approach the matter. It is hoped that it
can be resolved without embarrassment to the Crown."