Uniformed kavasses from all the big hotels were on the platform but that gave me no guide as O’Kieff waved them all aside and was escorted by a private dragoman to a handsome Rolls. Running round to the place where Amin was waiting I jumped into the car he had engaged and told the driver to follow O’Kieff.
As soon as we were clear of the station yard the Rolls turned right instead of towards central Cairo. After a few minutes we passed the Museum and crossed the Nile by the famous Kasr el Nil bridge. On reaching the west bank we turned left and were soon out on the fine open road to Gizeh.
In the old days Cairo’s European quarter was concentrated on the island of Gezira which lies in the middle of the Nile, and the race-course, golf-course and polo-grounds of the Gezira Club, which is the centre of British social activities, still occupies many acres of it much to the chagrin of the Egyptians. But numbers of the more wealthy European residents have now built houses in fine gardens out along the Gizeh road and I imagined that it was for one of these that O’Kieff was making. However, we could see his car ahead of us on the long straight road and it showed no signs of slowing down.
We followed him for mile after mile until Cairo’s suburbs had been left far behind and I knew there was only one place for which he could be heading—the Mena House Hotel which nestles at the foot of the Great Pyramid. Sure enough his car turned in to the semicircular drive before the wide verandah. I pulled our man up before we reached the gates and Amin and I got out.
Telling our fellow to wait, we walked on as far as the hotel drive and I was just about to turn up it when I remembered that, in my poverty-stricken get-up as a Greek workman, I was in no fit state to enter a de luxe hotel where crowds of visitors were sipping their before-dinner cocktails after a welcome bath and a long day’s sightseeing. I would have given anything for a bath and a drink myself, but I knew that I must do without either. Amin, too, was barred from entering the hotel by the regulation current throughout Egypt by which all dragomen report to the hall-porter when they wish to see their employers and await their pleasure on the steps of the terrace.
However, Amin was well-known among the other guides and the house-boys of all the principal hotels in Egypt. So I said to him: ‘Look here, I want you to have a chat with one of the porters and find out the number of the room that O’Kieff’s been given. Also where abouts it is, if possible. D’you think you can do that?’
‘Why yes, sir.’ he replied at once. ‘I will speak with my friend Hussein, the boss boy of the terrace waiters. He will be able to tell me what you wish to know.’
I waited outside the gate for the best part of a quarter of an hour before Amin rejoined me.
‘The gentleman had reserved a suite,’ he said. ‘It is on the first floor at the back. Come with me, sir, and I will show you.’
We turned into the fine gardens on the right-hand side of the hotel and walked down an avenue of palm trees.
‘There, that is it.’ Amin suddenly stopped and pointed. ‘All five windows where the lights are, on the first floor. Four windows from the corner of the building. The gentlemens is up there now, I expect.’
‘Good,’ I said. ‘That’s all I want to know. The next thing is for you to drive back in the car to Cairo, go to the Semiramis and ask for Mr. Belville. Tell him we’ve traced O’Kieff out to Mena House and that I am remaining here for the moment; but that I hope to see him some time before he goes to bed tonight. They would never let me into the Semiramis dressed like this but he is taking care of my luggage for me so I want you to ask him to put one of my lounge-suits with a shirt and collar into a small suitcase and bring it back with you. I could easily change behind the bushes. You’ll find me waiting for you either where the car is now or somewhere about here in the garden.’
When Amin had gone I sat down on a bench to keep observation on O’Kieff’s lighted windows. As usual, he was doing himself well. Those first-floor rooms overlooking the tennis-courts and garden were about the best that were to be had in the hotel. The other side faces a sandy slope which is hardly compensated for by the fact that some of the windows give an uphill view of the Pyramids.
Occasionally I could see shadows moving behind the blind and I guessed that Grünther was unpacking for his master. O’Kieff was doubtless enjoying a bath and he seemed to be taking his time about it. I waited patiently, knowing that sooner or later they would both go down to feed, but I could not altogether suppress a rising sense of excitement at the contemplation of the scheme I had in mind.
The previous night I had obtained a package under false pretences; now I intended to add burglary to my crimes. It would be quite an easy climb up to one of those first-floor windows and once O’Kieff’s suite had been vacated I meant to pay a clandestine visit to it. I had seen from his luggage on the station that he still had the flat, steel-lined despatch case with him, and it was that which I was after. If I could only secure it and break it open we might find enough incriminating documents inside to hang a regiment.
The night was warm, the air soft, the atmosphere fragrant from the perfume of the night-flowering shrubs in the carefully-tended garden. Most of the hotel guests were occupied over dinner. The dragomen and outdoor servants were all on the far side of the building, and during my time of waiting only two couples passed me, in both cases much more interested in each other than myself.
I must have sat there for well over an hour when the lights in O’Kieff’s suite were switched out one after another. I gave its occupants five minutes to get downstairs and then crossed the gravel path. Entering the shrubs in the bed beneath the windows I clutched a convenient drain-pipe and hauled myself up by it until I could get my hand on the window-ledge of what I believed to be the sitting-room. My movements were screened by the avenue of palm trees which ran parallel to the side of the hotel and in spite of my light-coloured suit no one could have seen me unless they had been walking along the path immediately below.
With my knees still clutching the drain-pipe and clinging to the window-ledge with one hand I was able to use the other to ease up the catch of the already open window and pull it out as far as it would go. I wriggled a little further up the pipe, hung out sideways from it; then, thrusting myself off, I sprang for the sill, landing with my chest against it and my head inside the window.
For a moment I hung there kicking, but with another violent heave, I jerked myself up until I was half in and half out of the room.
It must have been the slight noise I made myself and the efforts of the last few moments which prevented me from hearing the approach of footsteps; but I was still kicking wildly in my endeavour to wriggle over the sill when a voice exclaimed:
‘Here he is! Here he is! Quick, Mustapha, grab hold of his ankles while I get the police!’
9
Shock Tactics
I made one last violent effort to wriggle through the window even as my mind registered the fact that the voice which had spoken was a woman’s. Her words suggested that she had been definitely looking for me, but I had no time to wonder who she was or how she could have got mixed up in the police hunt as, at that second, her companion sprang.
I felt his large, muscular hands close firmly about my ankles and a violent jerk as his whole weight suddenly straightened my legs and wrenched me clean out of the window. I came sailing backwards in a flying curve and landed with a sickening thud in the flower-border. The shock drove all the breath from my lungs and I lay there gasping like a landed fish while the native who had pulled me from my precarious hold, but had fallen with me, released his grip on my ankles, twisted like a snake and flung himself on my prostrate body.
‘Well done, Mustapha! Well done!’ came the woman’s excited voice. ‘Can you hang on to him while I get help? If the police haven’t arrived yet I’ll get some of the hotel porters.’
‘Yes, sitt, yes,’ panted the brawny Arab who was now straddling my chest, ‘but I would rather that they find him dead when they arrive. It might easily happen in a fight and he dese
rves death, this murderer of my master.’
‘Hi! Wait a minute,’ I managed to gasp with swift apprehension.
‘No, Mustapha, no,’ the woman said at the same moment. ‘I know how you feel, but I forbid you to harm him. The law will deal with him as he deserves.’
As she turned swiftly to go for help I caught a glimpse of her over the Arab’s shoulder. She was a tall, slim, long-limbed girl with ash-blonde hair, and I recognised her instantly from the photograph Sir Walter had shown me on the ‘Hampshire’ as his daughter Sylvia.
‘Miss Shane!’ I called. ‘For God’s sake wait a minute. This is all a horrible mistake.’
She halted abruptly and turned to look down into my face, asking with quick curiosity, ‘How did you know my name?’
‘I’ll tell you that and plenty of other things that’ll interest you—if only you’ll order your man to get off my chest.’
‘Is it likely, now I’ve had the luck to catch you? Anything you want to say you can say to the police.’
I saw that she was about to turn away again and in a last, frantic effort to stop her, I called, ‘if you hand me over to the police bang goes your last chance of catching your father’s murderer.’
‘You murdered him yourself!’ she cried harshly. ‘You brute! I—I could …’ Suddenly she burst into a torrent of tears.
‘Please,’ I begged. ‘For goodness sake! I didn’t kill your father. I swear I didn’t—but I’m doing my damnedest to get the devil who did.’
For a moment her shoulders shook as the sobs racked her; but with surprising will-power she checked the outburst which ceased as suddenly as it had begun. She rubbed the back of one hand across her eyes and asked in a voice which showed that her resolution had weakened a trifle:
‘Who did kill him, then?’
‘If only you’ll let me get up, I’ll tell you everything,’ I said.
‘All right,’ she agreed grudgingly, ‘but you, Mustapha, hold him tightly in case he tries to escape.’
The Arab got off my chest and allowed me to stand, but he took up a position behind me with a firm grip on my coat collar.
I must have looked a pretty unpleasant sight, facing her like that; unshaven, dishevelled, and with mud from the flower-bed plastered all over my tawdry clothes. It was an ignominous position, too, being held out for her inspection by the brawny Mustapha like something the cat had dragged from the dustbin. As a matter of fact I could have taught him something, had I wished. His firm clutch held nothing but the collar of my coat so by slipping my arms out of it I could have left it in his grip and made a dash for liberty. I didn’t care to chance that, as they would certainly have shouted for help and brought half the hotel staff out in a hue and cry after me, but the knowledge that I could make a bolt for it, if I wished, gave me back my confidence and, realising that to employ shock tactics was the only line which might save me from immediate arrest, I promptly reversed our rôles in the conversation.
‘Now,’ I said with some sharpness, ‘you’ll first tell me how it is you came to be looking for me here.’
‘You are Julian Day, aren’t you?’ she asked quite mildly.
‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘I’m Julian Day and I was a friend of your father’s. I’m also a friend of the Belvilles. They know I had no hand in the murder. I spent all last night with them.’
‘Oh,’ she exclaimed, rather weakly. ‘I haven’t seen them yet.’
‘So I imagined. But they came in on the evening train and the sooner you do see them, the better. Now, how did you know that I had arrived in Cairo, and how is it you were able to recognise me by the seat of my pants when I was hanging out of that window?’
‘It was Mustapha here, my dragoman. He’s a bosom friend of your man Amin and he knew Amin was going down to meet a Mr. Julian Day at Alexandria on the “Hampshire” yesterday. Your name was front-page news in every paper this morning. Directly we saw you were wanted for the murder we thought Amin might be able to give us some information about you. So we met the train from Alexandria this afternoon and, although your disguise seems a pretty good one, we felt certain that the man with Amin must be you.’
‘Good work. I congratulate you. What did you do then?’
‘We followed your car. But we were unlucky and had a tyre burst, just by the Zoological gardens, and we feared we had lost you. On the off chance that you’d come out to Mena we came on here and questioned the porters. Amin had gone back to Cairo, they said, but we described the man who was with him and one of the loungers by the gates said he thought that he’d seen you stroll into the garden about an hour ago.’
‘You’ve missed your vocation,’ I grinned, my admiration tempered with just a touch of sarcasm. ‘Then you came along to hunt me out, I suppose?’
‘Yes, having ‘phoned the Cairo police, I was too impatient to wait for them. We feared you might …’
‘Good God! You ‘phoned the police? They’re on their way here, then?’
‘Yes. Of course.’
‘Then for goodness sake let’s get out of this while there’s still a chance. If you let the police arrest me, you won’t stand an earthly chance of getting the man who really did the murder.’
‘But how do I know …’ she began uncertainly.
‘Come on,’ I said impatiently. ‘You’ve got to trust me.’
‘I don’t see how …’ she began again, and Mustapha cut in quickly, ‘No, sitt, no! He is an evil mans. You must not trust him.’
‘You keep out of this,’ I snapped, jerking my head round. ‘You’re going to do exactly what I tell you. Miss Shane and I are going up towards the pyramids where no one is likely to look for us, so that we can have a little talk. Meanwhile you’re to stay here until Amin comes back. You’ll keep out of the way of the police and directly he arrives you’ll bring him along to us. We shall be by the IVth Dynasty tombs on the far side of the Sphinx.’
Before he had time to express surprise or dissent, Sylvia gasped indignantly, ‘Is it likely that I’d leave him behind and go off into the blue with you alone? You must be mad, I think, even to suggest it.’
‘All the same, that’s what you’re going to do,’ I told her; and with one swift jerk I had my automatic out of my pocket.
‘Don’t be frightened,’ I said as her eyes opened wide in sudden consternation, and reversing the gun so that I held it by the barrel I extended it towards her as I asked, ‘Have you ever handled one of these before?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I always carry one if I’m motoring alone outside Cairo.’
‘Right,’ I smiled. Then you’ll know how to shoot me with it if I start any funny business when we’re up by the pyramids?’
‘I’ve told you that I wouldn’t dream of going up there alone with you. It’s too great a risk.’
‘Nonsense!’ I said angrily. ‘Can’t you see that my handing over my pistol to you is a perfect guarantee of my good faith? Is it likely I’d do that if I were really responsible for your father’s death? Of course not! I could have shot Mustapha with it a couple of minutes ago and you as well—immediately you told me that you’d already summoned the police.’
‘That’s true, I suppose,’ she admitted.
‘It is: and when you hear what I’ve got to tell you I’m certain you’ll realise how wise you were to trust me.’
‘All right, then. I’ll chance it. Let him go, Mustapha.’
‘You understand what you’re to do?’ I said swiftly to the Arab as he released me. ‘Wait here for Amin, who’s bringing me out a change of clothes. The two of you are to join us as quickly as you can outside the tombs of the IVth Dynasty Kings. Come on,’ I added to her, ‘you had better follow me, then you can keep me covered with that gun, if you want to. But for mercy’s sake leave the safety-catch down or you may let it off by mistake.’
Next minute I was trotting round the back of the hotel with her after me. We reached a steep bank on its far side beyond the kitchens and made our way up on to the flattish plateau of hard
sandstone beyond. Fortunately there was no moon but the stars gave quite sufficient light to see by as we stumbled over the uneven ground parallel with the road which curves up towards the Great Pyramid of Kheops and the slightly smaller one of Khephren which actually looks larger from that angle because it stands on somewhat higher ground.
She continued to keep behind me so I knew that her suspicions were by no means fully allayed, but I felt I could congratulate myself on having wriggled out of an appalling mess, at least for the moment.
Keeping well away from the road I hurried on, glancing behind now and then to assure myself that I was not making the pace too hot for her; but she showed no sign of fatigue and with her long legs it looked as though, for a mile or two, she was capable of covering the ground as quickly as I could.
Within ten minutes we had reached the base of the Great Pyramid. It was silhouetted against the night sky and, not having seen it for the best part of a year, I could not help being impressed again by its magnificence in spite of my anxious state of mind. They say that it covers fourteen acres of land, and is close on five hundred feet in height, which is well over four times the height of Grosvenor House, Park Lane. But it does not look that height, which is probably on account of its shape. It is said that it took a hundred thousand men thirty years to build, but the idea that it was erected by slave labour is a misconception. They only worked on it for about six weeks each year after the principal harvest was over. Apparently the peasants used to come in from all parts of the country for a sort of annual fiesta and the people of the different townships used to have competitions as to which contingent should drag the huge blocks of stone up the ramps into position quickest. The work was done with songs and laughter as a willing tribute to a great ruler who fed the people from his abundance and entertained them with every sort of merrymaking after their labours each night.
The Quest of Julian Day Page 12