by M. M. Kaye
So they had all gone. Lash, Dany and Gussie Bingham in Seyyid Omar’s great white car, and Nigel, Amalfi and Larry Dowling in one of the Kivulimi cars driven by Eduardo.
They stopped by the roadside in a forest of palms to drink coconut milk from the ripe nuts; explored a copra factory and saw a clove plantation; and leaving the cars in a small dusty side road, followed a narrow, winding track across a no-man’s land of scrub and rocks and dried grasses, and came suddenly upon a hole in the ground where a flight of worn stone steps led down into darkness.
‘I don’t think I like the look of it all,’ said Gussie, shuddering and clutching nervously at Dany’s arm. ‘Suppose we fall into the water and drown in the dark? Hasn’t anyone got a torch?’
No one had. But there were matches and cigarette lighters, and Seyyid Omar assured them that there was not the least danger of anyone drowning, and that women from the little village where they had left the cars came here daily to draw water.
The steps led down into a huge underground cave where the light barely penetrated and smooth water-worn rocks sloped sharply downwards towards, not wells, but a spring of water or an underground stream that came up out of the darkness and disappeared again into a black rock tunnel.
Holding cautiously to each other so as not to slip and fall on the rocks, they ventured down to the edge of the spring, their voices echoing strangely through the shadowy vault, and Seyyid Omar told them that the water was supposed to be the continuation of a stream that fed one of the great lakes in Africa, and flowing on far under the sea bed, bubbled up briefly here in Zanzibar; to vanish again into the rock and the Indian Ocean.
‘I’m sure it’s wildly interesting,’ said Amalfi, ‘but let’s go, shall we? I think it’s dark and spooky and altogether rather gruesome, and personally, the sooner I get out of the place the better. What happens if the roof falls in?’
There was an unexpected note of shrillness in her voice, and instantly everyone looked up at the dark curve of rock overhead, and moved closer to each other, their feet slipping on the steep rock-face.
Eduardo said soothingly: ‘The roof will not fall in, cara. It is only a big cave. There are thousands of such places all over the world. But if it does not please you, we will go at once.’
‘Yes, do let’s,’ said Gussie, shuddering. ‘It’s giving me claustrophobia.’
Within a few minutes they were out in the open air again. But it was not until two hours later, as the cars drew up before the gateway of the House of Shade, that Dany discovered that the white suede bag that she had carried had been neatly slit open with a sharp knife or a razor blade, and everything in it had gone.
17
‘I will see that it is reported at once to the police,’ said Seyyid Omar.
He had invited Dany, Lash and Gussie to dine with him at a restaurant in the town, but Gussie having refused on the plea of tiredness they had dropped her at the House of Shade, and driven back to Zanzibar city under a green and lavender sky that was already freckled with pale stars.
‘No, for goodness sake, don’t!’ said Dany hastily. ‘The police have had enough of us. Besides, it isn’t worth making a fuss about. There was nothing of any value in it. Only a handkerchief and a pair of sunglasses, and a powder compact and a lipstick. That sort of thing. And possibly about eightpence in English pennies!’
‘It must have been lifted by one of those picturesque characters in the village near the wells,’ said Lash. ‘Darned disappointing for him. Though I guess his lady friends will get a load of fun out of smearing themselves with lipstick. It’s a shame about the bag, though. I’ll get you another one tomorrow. Souvenir of Zanzibar.’
The city by night was very different from what it had been in the heat of the day, for the cooler air had brought all Zanzibar out of doors, and there were gay crowds strolling under the trees in the public gardens and along the sea front, while every rooftop and baraza appeared to have its family party.
Music and laughter, the tuneful cry of the coconut seller, and a continual rub-a-dub-dub of drums made a gay, enchanting medley of sound, mingled with the more normal noises of any Eastern city.
‘Is it some special day?’ asked Dany. ‘A feast day, or something?’
‘No. What makes you think that?’
‘Everyone seems so gay. Listen — can’t you hear them? They all sound very happy.’
‘It is a happy island,’ said Seyyid Omar, smiling. ‘And when we feel gay we laugh — or sing; or play the kinanda — the mandolin. Or beat a drum. And, as you hear, we feel gay very often. It is a thing worth keeping, I think. Yes — very well worth keeping. But there are times when I become afraid.’
Lash turned his head and regarded him attentively. ‘Afraid of what?’
Seyyid Omar slowed the car to a stop under the scented canopy of an Indian cork tree that leaned above a high, white-washed wall, and sat back, resting his slim brown hands upon the wheel: his face faintly illuminated by the dash-board lights.
He said slowly: ‘I will be frank with you, Mr Holden. I think that you know something about a sum of money: a very large sum of money that many people have searched for for a great many years, though few have really believed in its existence. That vast legendary treasure that Seyyid Saïd, the first Sultan, was rumoured to have buried at Bet-el-Ras.’
Neither Lash nor Dany made any answer, and Seyyid Omar presumably translated that silence as admission, for after a momentary pause he said: ‘I myself did not believe that it had ever existed or was more than a tale or legend. But not so long ago there arose a rumour; a whisper that it was fact and not fiction.’
He shifted a little; a small uneasy movement, and his hands tightened on the wheel. ‘There are certain people in this island who need money, a large sum of money, to buy power at the next election. We have an old proverb that says “I will change my religion and the colour of my coat, but thou must pay,” and there are, alas, always votes — too many votes! — that can be bought for cash where they cannot be acquired from conviction. For money will always speak with a louder voice than any politician. One of those who wished to buy power travelled out with you from London, and is now dead. Jembe. But there are others, and they still need money.’
He was silent for a moment or two, and then he gave a quick shrug of his shoulders and drew a cigarette-case from his pocket.
‘You do not smoke, I think, Miss Kitchell? You will not mind if we do?’
He offered the case to Lash with a pleasant smile and as the car filled with the fragrant smell of Turkish tobacco, leant back against the seat as though the conversation had been concluded and he had no more to say.
Lash said lightly: ‘Then I guess a lot of guys are all set for a sad let-down. Why are you telling us this?’
Seyyid Omar laughed. ‘You are not really stupid, Mr Holden, are you.’
It was an assertion, and not a query, and Lash said: ‘Not that stupid, anyway! But I don’t see what this has got to do with me, or with Miss Kitchell.’
‘Don’t you? Well, perhaps you are right. All the same, it is just as well to be warned.’
‘Warned?’ Lash’s voice had a sudden sharp edge to it, and Dany felt his lounging body stiffen. ‘That’s quite often a fighting word where I come from. What exactly are you warning us about? Or have I got it wrong and is this a threat?’
‘Ah, no!’ Seyyid Omar held up a deprecatory hand. ‘You misunderstand me. Why should I threaten? I am merely offering advice.’
‘O.K., let’s have it.’
‘If there is any truth in this legend of the hidden treasure, and should — anyone, have any knowledge of where it may be found, it would, I think, be wise for that person to take such knowledge to His Highness the Sultan, whom God preserve. Or to the police.’
‘Why? Because to possess that knowledge is dangerous?’
‘That, of course. To be the possessor of such knowledge might prove very dangerous indeed. But there is a much more important, though less personal re
ason for speaking of it. To prevent it falling into the wrong hands. Such a sum of money can be a dangerous thing when used for evil. And it would be used for evil. Of that you can be sure. There is a curse on it.’
Lash said impatiently: ‘You don’t mean to tell me that you believe that old wives’ tale?’
Seyyid Omar looked at him and laughed. ‘So you have heard of it? Yes, I believe it, though you will not. But then you are a young man, Mr Holden, and from a very young country. You still have a great many things to learn — particularly about the East. One of them can be summed up best in words that have been worn threadbare from use, but which cannot be improved upon: “There are more things in heaven and earth,” Mr Holden, “than are dreamed of in your philosophy”!’
He turned to Dany with an apologetic smile and said: ‘I am sorry, Miss Kitchell. This cannot interest you. We will go on to my Club, where we will talk and drink and you will meet my friends. They will be far more entertaining than I.’
He refused to say anything further on the subject or to answer any questions, and took them to the Arab Club, where they sat out under the stars and spent a pleasant hour. And afterwards they dined on strange foods in a little restaurant in a quiet back street, and then drove to the sea front outside the Sultan’s palace, to listen, in company with a light-hearted collection of His Highness’s subjects, to the Sultan’s band playing — of all things — excerpts from Gilbert and Sullivan and The Belle of New York.
The lights were still on and the house-party still up when they arrived back at the House of Shade, for it was barely half past ten. But Seyyid Omar would not come in with them, and watching the tail-lights of his car dwindle and fade Lash had said thoughtfully: ‘That guy knows a heck of a lot more than he’s telling. A heck of a lot! The question is, who is he really pitching for? Is he on the side of the angels, as he makes out, or is that just a bluff? He wouldn’t be the first well-heeled aristo to go back on his class and join the fellow-travellers!’
Dany said in a low voice: ‘He was talking to that man Jembe at the airport in Nairobi. I saw them.’
‘When? Where? You didn’t tell me.’
‘I didn’t think of it. There have been so many other things. Worse things.’
She told him then, and Lash said meditatively: ‘Hmm … It sounds a screwy set-up all round. Maybe he did the job himself. Slipped this Jembe a slug of cyanide because he’s after the number one spot in the Dictator Stakes himself. He may fancy himself as the local Hitler. The Führer of Zanzibar.’
‘“King of the Earth and of Time”,’ quoted Dany under her breath.
‘What’s that?’
Dany flushed and apologized. ‘I’m sorry. I was thinking of something. A Persian inscription that he translated for me yesterday. I can imagine him dreaming of being that sort of king — and of restoring that sort of kingdom.’
‘And wanting the cash to start it off with. Maybe.’
‘But it can’t be him. At least, he can’t be the one who stole that letter or map or whatever it was off me, because then he’d know where the stuff was, and he doesn’t. But he may think I’ve still got it. Perhaps he even thought I might carry it about with me. I never thought of that!’
‘Thought of what? What are you talking about?’
‘My bag. You said it must have been slit open by one of the Arabs in the village, but it wasn’t. I’ve been thinking about it, and none of them came within yards of me.’
Lash gave a short laugh and said: ‘Listen, honey. If you’re thinking that anyone can drive a car with one hand, and at the speed that guy drove, while slitting a passenger’s purse and abstracting its contents with the other, you’re nuts! And anyway, you weren’t even sitting next to him this afternoon. Gussie was.’
‘I didn’t mean it was done in the car,’ said Dany impatiently. ‘I told you, I’ve been thinking. It was all right just before we got to the cave, because I put my sunglasses into it, and I remember stuffing them down on one side of the handkerchief.’
‘So what?’
‘So there was only one place where anyone could have cut that bag open without my knowing it. In the cave. It was dark in there, and we were all huddled together and grabbing at each other to keep from falling. But there wasn’t anyone else down there except — except us.’
Lash stopped abruptly in a patch of pale moonlight and said: ‘Are you sure? That it couldn’t have happened anywhere else?’
‘Yes. Quite sure. That’s why I didn’t say anything more about it. I was sorry that I’d said anything at all, but I was so surprised when I saw it that the words jumped out. But when I’d thought a bit I realized that it could only have been done while we were in the cave, and that no one who was there would do it just to steal a compact and a lipstick and perhaps a little money. So it must have been someone who wanted something special, and thought that I might carry it with me. It must have been!’
‘Yes,’ said Lash slowly. ‘The same bunch again. Six of us who were on the London to Nairobi run, and two who were on the last lap to Zanzibar. Gussie and Elf and Larry Dowling; Nigel and Eduardo and our smooth Arab pal. None of them in the least likely to go in for lifting lipsticks and petty cash. I guess you’re right. Someone thinks you’ve still got it.’
It was a verdict that was to receive swift confirmation.
The remainder of the house-party were playing vingt-et-un in the dining-room, but Lash excused himself from joining them and went off to the guest-house, and Dany went up to bed — to discover that in her absence someone had searched her bedroom as thoroughly, though far less untidily, as her room at the Airlane.
Every drawer and cupboard had been gone through, and even the sheets and blankets had been taken off her bed and replaced; though not very neatly. A box of face powder had been probed with a pair of nail scissors and a jar of cleansing cream with a nail file: face tissues had been pulled out of their container and roughly stuffed back again, stockings unrolled and a locked suitcase forced.
‘But I haven’t got it!’ said Dany, speaking aloud into the silence as though she were addressing that unknown searcher. The sound of her own voice startled her even more than the evidence of her disarranged possessions, and she turned and ran from the room.
The lights were ablaze in every verandah and in the courtyard, and there were no shadows on the staircases: but she tested every step, her hand pressed to the wall and her heart in her mouth. She could hear voices and laughter from behind the closed door of the dining-room, and she tiptoed past it and out into the quiet garden.
The moonlight and black shadows were not as frightening as the house had been, and she ran lightly along the twisting paths between the flower-beds and the scented bushes of roses, jasmine and Lady-of-the-Night, and skirting the shallow pool with its stone birds, reached the steep flight of narrow steps that led up to the guest-house on the wall.
The lights were on but Lash did not answer her knock, and she opened the door and went in. The little sitting-room appeared to be empty, and supposing Lash to be in the bedroom she was about to call out to him when a sound made her turn sharply.
Lash was standing on the narrow stone window ledge, holding on by the frame, and she could only see his legs and part of his body. The rest of him was outside the window, and he appeared to be attempting to pick a spray of the purple bougainvillaea that hung down over the wall of the house.
He swung himself in again and jumped down on to the floor, brushing dead leaves out of his hair, and said: ‘For the love of Mike! — what are you doing here?’
Dany, who had been about to ask almost the same question, abandoned it in favour of more urgent matters. She said breathlessly: ‘My room’s been searched again. Every bit of it. Like last time, only____’
‘Same here,’ said Lash briefly. ‘Take a look around.’
Dany looked about her and became aware of much the same mild disorder as her own room had contained, and stooping with a cry of dismay she picked up a white fluffy ruin that lay h
alf concealed under the edge of the divan. The late Asbestos; that washable and unburnable cat, his stuffing ruthlessly removed and his green glass eyes stonily reproachful.
‘All flesh is grass,’ said Lash. ‘And all cat’s too, judging from the look of it. Yes, someone’s frisked this joint in a conscientious manner.’
‘Did he get in by the window?’
‘I don’t know. All I know is that he hasn’t missed much. Even my soap has been broken in half to make sure that I hadn’t hidden anything in it. Most of the stuff has been put back in place; but not, as you see, very tidily. Here, stand yourself a slug of your step-father’s Scotch. At least that has been left alone — I hope!’
He poured out some of the whisky from the bottle that Tyson had left there on the morning of their arrival, and having smelt it, tasted it with extreme caution.
‘Seems O.K. No cyanide. At least, not noticeably so. I’d better try it out for effect first. Here’s to the witch doctor, deceased, who put a curse on that cash deposit. He certainly knew his onions!’
He drank, and having put down the glass turned to look out through the open window for a moment or two, and then said: ‘Well, I guess this puts one suspect out of court. Pal Omar couldn’t have pulled this one. He was with us the whole evening, so he’s out. It was one of the others. If only we could find out who knew the trick of that staircase it would help a lot, but there would appear to be at least four copies of that damned book in the house, and you were right about it. It’s all there: tucked away back in a musty maze of architectural drawings. It took some finding, but I ran it to earth. Anyone could have stumbled across it and put it to good use.’
He sat down on the window-seat, his reflective gaze still on the moonlit seascape outside, and said slowly: ‘I’d like to know more about this Larry Dowling. A lot more. And I’m willing to bet that the cops will too, just as soon as Tyson’s letter turns up at Scotland Yard and they move in on us.’
Dany said flatly: ‘It isn’t Larry. It couldn’t possibly be Larry.’