The Case of the Golden Greeks

by Sean McLachlan

  “That’s it, yes.”

  “Have you any idea of the nature of this warning, or who might have been its intended recipients?”

  “None whatsoever.”

  “Hmm, sounds interesting, but why call me in?”

  Sir Thomas laughed. “Do you think you’re such a man of mystery? I can read you like the morning newspaper. Witnesses tell me that as soon as the poor professor fell over with that dart in his neck, you and your assistant were bounding on stage to run after the murderer. You’re as much in this case as I am now, regardless of whether I bring you aboard or not. I might as well have you sharing information rather than going your own way and causing all sorts of trouble. You know, for a moment many in the audience thought you were the killers. A good thing no one else present was armed like you were.”

  “Indeed,” Augustus said, somewhat nettled by the police chief’s easy manner.

  Sir Thomas studied him. “Do you always go armed?”

  “Always.”

  “Cairo isn’t as dangerous as all that.”

  “It is for me.”

  Sir Thomas laughed, then checked his watch. “Oh, you had best be going. I’ll get the bill. If you tarry much longer, you’ll be roped into conversation for another hour at least.”

  Augustus thought he knew what the officer was hinting at and sprang from his seat.

  “Very well. I’ll get to work on …”

  His words trailed off as he saw his greatest fear had been realized.

  Sir Thomas’s sister Cordelia and their aunt Pearl approached the table. Cordelia was a pretty girl with blue eyes and cornflower hair, well into her twenties and still unattached. She had come with what local Englishmen called “the fishing fleet,” unmarried women staying for the season to find a suitable match among the colonial officers or in the ranks of management among the various commercial enterprises. Cordelia had stayed through three seasons, with only a break to France during the worst of the summer heat, and still had not landed the right fish.

  That was because she was fishing for Augustus, and he wasn’t biting.

  Her eyes lit up when she saw him.

  “Oh, Augustus, such a pleasant surprise!”

  “How very nice to see you,” Augustus said, eyeing the door. “And you too, Aunt Pearl.”

  Everyone except the servants referred to Aunt Pearl as if she was some spinster relative. She had a familiar manner—aided no doubt by a regular and abundant supply of alcohol—that put everyone at ease. Aunt Pearl wanted nothing if not to see her last unmarried niece find a good match, and she and Augustus were in silent agreement that he was not a suitable candidate.

  Augustus pulled out chairs for both of them and they sat. After a moment’s hesitation, Augustus sat too. He cursed himself for not having fully vanquished the social niceties.

  “Well then,” Aunt Pearl said once she had settled her plump body into the wicker chair and smoothed out a brightly colored dress more appropriate for a woman of Cordelia’s age. “I think it’s time for my morning constitutional.”

  Augustus checked his watch. 12:45. Nearly an hour late. The poor dear must be beside herself. Indeed, he could detect a slight trembling in Aunt Pearl’s hands.

  An Egyptian waiter appeared, dressed in an immaculate red fez with matching vest and slippers, plus billowing white pantaloons. The tourists all oohed and aahed over the supposedly authentic native costumes at the hotel, although in reality the chap couldn’t have been any more inauthentic if he had been wearing a deerstalker cap and a pair of plus fours.

  “I’ll have a double gin and tonic and the girl will have a mango juice,” Aunt Pearl declared.

  “Right away, madam,” the waiter said with a bow. “And the good sirs?”

  Sir Thomas lit a cigarette. “Another coffee for me. I’m on duty and it looks to be a long day.”

  “Nothing for me, thank you,” Augustus added. “I must be leaving shortly.”

  Cordelia’s face fell. “But we just got here.”

  “Ah, yes, well as much as it pains me, I do have quite a bit to do today.”

  “At your shop?” Cordelia asked.

  “Oh, I’ll be out and about town most of the day,” Augustus said. Actually he did have work to do at his shop, but Cordelia knew where that was and might make an unannounced, and unwelcome, appearance.

  When would this woman understand that he wasn’t interested? Never, most likely. She saw him as a charity case. She had worked as a nurse all through the war and taking care of broken men had gotten into her blood. Now that the battles had stopped, she wanted to take care of one of the enduring casualties.

  Augustus had moved to Cairo looking for anonymity and peace. The last thing he needed was some starry-eyed woman following him around.

  It was his fault, really. He had saved her life from a French criminal gang. Now she looked at him as some sort of tragic hero. He’d never get rid of her at this rate.

  Perhaps he should pop off his mask and give her a glance of the ruin hidden beneath. That would be sure to shatter any girlish illusions. Sadly, he was too much of a gentleman to do such a horrid thing to a lady, even one as annoying as her.

  He stood, bowed, and said his goodbyes.

  “That was a bit rude, old chap,” Augustus said to himself as he stepped onto the street and pushed through the gauntlet of souvenir sellers. “But sad to say, courtesy hasn’t gotten the message through.”

  Within half a block, Augustus had forgotten about her and was on his way to his second appointment for the day.

  Dr. James Wood of the Royal Institute of Tropical Medicine received Augustus in his sunny office on the top floor of the institute. Lined with bookshelves of medical texts, it was immaculately clean and well ordered, as was Dr. Wood himself, a trim man in his middle years. When they shook hands, Augustus caught a faint whiff of antiseptic.

  Dr. Wood offered him a drink and they both settled down to a short portion of Scotch.

  “My assistant tells me the chief of police has sent you to get the blood results on Professor Harrell,” the physician said, an unspoken question in his tone.

  “I sometimes work as a private investigator, and I was present at the murder. Plus, I am a bit of an expert on exotic weapons. The blow gun used a poison dart of the curare variety, I take it?”

  Dr. Wood nodded. “Indeed. To be precise, the poison was from the Amazonian vine known to science as Chondrodendron tomentosum. The natives there extract the toxin from the leaves and create a sort of paste they put on darts and arrows. The dart hit the jugular vein, sending the poison straight through the heart, causing it to palpitate and inducing a heart attack. The venom would have paralyzed his entire voluntary nervous system and killed him within a few minutes through asphyxiation, but the professor’s apparently weak heart made death all but instantaneous.”

  Augustus took a sip of his Scotch and thought about this.

  “Is death always certain with this type of poison?”

  “In medical science nothing is certain. But the poison was highly concentrated and virtually pure. Plus, there was a direct hit on a major vein. Whoever did this knows their business.”

  “Do you happen to have a picture of this vine?”

  The doctor fetched a volume from his library, flipped through it, and handed it to Augustus open to a page showing a long, leafy vine.

  “There it is, although I don’t know how they managed to get the poison. No such vine could grow naturally in this climate. From what I’ve read, the toxins must be extracted from freshly picked plants. If the plant dries out, the toxins lose their efficacy. They must be growing the vine locally somehow.”

  Augustus finished his Scotch and stood. “Thank you very much for your help, doctor.”

  Dr. Wood studied him for a moment. “I notice your skin is irritated around your mask.”

  “Life here keeps me in an almost perpetual state of irritation.”

  The doctor chuckled. “Try teaching the natives about basic sa
nitation and the germ theory of disease.”

  “A Sisyphean task, no doubt.”

  “Shall I examine you?”

  Augustus tensed. He did not like anyone, even members of the medical fraternity, to look at his wound.

  Sensing his hesitation, Dr. Wood said, “I served on the Western Front, my good man. There is nothing I haven’t seen.”

  Reluctantly Augustus removed the tin mask. It had been made for him, as for many others in his state of mutilation, by a group of French artists based on old photographs of when the soldiers had been whole.

  Dr. Wood paled a little and tightened his lips.

  Seen it all, eh? Augustus thought. That may be so, but no one gets used to seeing this.

  “There is a light redness and inflammation to the skin all around where the mask rests,” Dr. Wood said, having regained his composure. “It would be best not to wear it at all times.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Augustus couldn’t think of any other reply to this ridiculous statement.

  “You live alone?” It came out more as a statement than a question. Augustus resented the assumption.

  “I do.”

  “Then it would be best to leave it off while you are indoors. I will also prescribe you a salve to help reduce the irritation. The skin can get quite sensitive around wounds of this nature.”

  And what would you know firsthand of “wounds of this nature?”

  The doctor wrote out a scrip.

  “Apply a small amount of this to the affected area every evening before bed. If there’s anything else I can do, do not hesitate to ask.”

  “Can you build me a new face?” Augustus heard himself snap. He had not intended on saying it out loud.

  Dr. Wood looked embarrassed. “Surely this has been explained to you.”

  Augustus cleared his throat. “I apologize for my outburst.”

  “Think nothing of it. Did you notice there is a small crack on the edge of your mask?” The doctor offered it to him. Augustus put it back on.

  “A street urchin thought it would be funny to knock it off.”

  “I hoped you gave him a good thrashing.”

  “No, but my assistant has on numerous occasions.”

  “Oh, I forgot to mention that this particular plant compound is rather unstable. Once made, it will not keep its poisonous qualities past a few weeks.”

  “Meaning it was made locally.”

  “With plants found only in South America, yes.”

  Augustus scratched his chin. “Hmmm. That’s interesting. Yes, very interesting indeed.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Working for a European had many advantages, but serving their caprices was not one of them.

  Moustafa had opened the antiquities shop on Ibn al-Nafis Street that morning as usual, but as soon as Mr. Wall came downstairs he told him that he had a different task for him today.

  He handed Moustafa the blowgun.

  “Could you find out who sells these?”

  “In Cairo, boss? I’ve never even heard of this weapon before.”

  “There must be someone who knows something about it. I’ll watch the shop. You go see what you can find out.”

  So now he was exploring the weapons shops in Khan el-Khalili, Cairo’s largest and oldest market. Or rather, he was exploring the shops that displayed legal items, but also sold weapons.

  Except for ceremonial weapons like the swords and muskets used in weddings, weapons were strictly illegal. The ceremonial weapons were all made to be useless, the blades dull and brittle, the musket barrels too weak to fire. Shopping for real weapons would land you several years of hard labor, especially after the Colonial Police had clamped down on the independence protests.

  And now Moustafa had to do it.

  Or course Mr. Wall was right in assigning him the job of going from shop to shop dropping broad hints. Mr. Wall, as a foreigner, would have gotten nowhere. But in five hours of constant searching, he had been offered hashish, women, a punch in the nose for trying to buy illegal goods, threats to call the police, a mountain of evasive answers, and finally one good lead.

  It came after giving a bit of money to a cutlery store owner who looked like he had something to say.

  “Go to Abd-el-Salam’s on Antique Street. Don’t tell anyone you heard it from me.”

  Abd-el-Salam’s looked like every other shop on the street—a narrow storefront set on the ground floor of an old stone building. Three stories rose above it, the blank stone walls punctuated by dark wooden meshrabiyya. Moustafa wondered if any women were watching him enter the shop from behind those ornate screens, and what they might say to their husbands.

  The interior was all but filled with rusting bric-a-brac. Metal chairs, railings ripped from old houses, brass lamps, boxes full of bent nails, busts of dead European leaders … if it was old, battered, useless, and made of metal, Abd-el-Salam had it.

  He also had a couple of interesting items in his dusty display window. On the left as he came in the door was a metal platter painted with a scene of red-coated British soldiers in pith helmets fighting Egyptian troops wearing white uniforms and red fezzes. In faded letters above the scene it said, “Battle of Tel-el-Kebir, 13 September 1882, 3rd Battalion Kings Royal Rifle Corps.” To the right of the entrance was a genuine Mamluk scabbard made of brass with verses of the Koran etched on it. No sword, just the scabbard. While these two items didn’t actually say “Weapons sold here,” they gave Moustafa confidence in the cutlery seller’s word.

  A hunched man in a heavy brown djellaba shuffled out of the gloom. He had the easy smile of a shopkeeper who is about to start a sales pitch.

  “How are you, honorable sir? Welcome to my humble shop. We have many things to interest you.”

  Moustafa bided his time. He made a slow passage through the shop, and any time he found something of a military nature—some old shell casings etched with scenes of drinking Englishmen, a faded uniform of the Egyptian army from the time of Mohammad Ali, a German Pickelhaube—he would handle them and nod appreciatively. Abd-el-Salam was beside himself. Here was a customer actually showing interest! He was sure to buy something.

  Moustafa gave the man a searching look, then walked over to the Mamluk scabbard.

  “This is beautiful,” he said, genuinely admiring the craftsmanship. “Pity it’s missing its most important part.”

  Then he moved over to the regimental tray. “Ah, the Battle of Tel-el-Kebir. When the great Ahmed Ourabi stood up against the British. The Egyptians were sadly outgunned. They only had American-made Remingtons while the British had the Martini-Henry. A fine gun, the Martini-Henry, although one has to take care to aim a bit low since the kick is so strong. Unless one is firing at a target of more than 400 yards. The bullet is relatively slow, you see, and begins to drop sooner than the average rifle.”

  More of Mr. Wall’s knowledge. Working for him, Moustafa was learning as much about weapons as he was about Egyptology.

  He gave Abd-el-Salam another significant look and put a fifty piastre note on the tray.

  Moustafa and the shop owner stared at each other for a minute. Moustafa could tell what was going on in his mind. Abd-el-Salam was weighing the odds. In front of him stood a Nubian asking to see whatever illegal goods he sold here. Many of the Colonial Police were Nubians. But this man did not act like a policeman. He did not bully or threaten. Instead he bribed. Bribes always went to the police, not away from them.

  At last the shopkeeper pocketed the money and nodded toward the back of the room.

  “Come this way,” he said softly. “I think I might have more items to interest you.”

  Abd-el-Salam led Moustafa to the back of the shop and down a staircase so narrow that Moustafa had to turn to the side to fit. It led to a small domed cellar.

  Moustafa gaped. All around him was an impressive array of weaponry. Spears, swords, clubs, and axes from a dozen different armies and tribes were arrayed in tidy racks. A shelf held a collection of knives. He moved
over to it and picked up a dagger in a silver scabbard so tarnished as to be almost black.

  “Ah! You have a good eye, artistic sir. This is a rare item, more than seven hundred years old, from the time of the Ayyubids.”

  Moustafa drew the knife and held it to the light.

  “The Ayyubids did not have forged steel of such quality. This is a fake.”

  “Oh no! Not at all! You see, it was made by my great-grandfather more than a hundred years ago to sell to tourists. He made hundreds of them. This is the last. It is not a fake antique, knowledgeable sir, but an antique fake.”

  Moustafa snorted and put the dagger down. He scanned the room and noticed there were no guns. Perhaps there was another room he hadn’t seen, and would not see if he didn’t buy anything here.

  It didn’t matter. He wasn’t looking for guns. His boss had too many of them already. He would probably have to buy something if he wanted to get anything from this man about the blowgun, though.

  Then he saw it.

  He hung in a scabbard of crocodile skin next to a row of spears.

  A sword from the army of the Mahdi.

  He pulled it off the rack. The leather binding around the hilt was still in good condition. With a feeling of reverence, he drew it.

  The blade was straight and more than three feet long, keen on both edges and coming to a fine point.

  Moustafa’s eyes lit up. These were the swords wielded by the followers of the Mahdi in his great revolt that had pushed the British out of the Soudan in his father’s time. Epic battles had been fought and won with swords like these as the Mahdist Empire, thrilled at following the promised final prophet, conquered the southern tribes and the Somalis and the Abyssinians. They had even pushed into southern Egypt itself.

  The Mahdi had been a false prophet, and his rule had been a disastrous one. He had been the scourge of the land, burning any village that resisted. When famine came, he declared it God’s will and let his own people starve. And then the terrible vengeance of the British came.

  But for a few glorious years, the Soudanese had held their heads high.

  Moustafa turned the blade this way and that, admiring the shine from the oil lamp on the steel.