At a quarter-to-nine we pulled up at the police barrier outside Suez. A sergeant jumped on our running-board and directed our driver to the Miza Hotel where we were met by an English officer of the Egyptian police. He introduced himself to us as Major Longdon and told us that Essex Pasha had telephoned him to expect us and that he had taken rooms for us at the hotel. We asked at once for news of Sylvia but he said that he was sorry he had none to give us. All the cars that had come in to Suez from Cairo that afternoon or direct to Ismailia by a second-class desert road had now been checked up. There were, all told, only fifteen of them and the police had satisfied themselves that every one of these was owned by a reputable person and that none of them had been used to bring the kidnapped girl from Cairo.
This looked, on the face of it, as though my idea that she might have been taken to the House of Angels was entirely wrong and that we would have done better to have remained in Cairo; particularly as the Ismailia police had so far failed in their efforts to locate any house which might be the secret white-slaving depot.
Major Longdon was a tall, thin, bony, rather tired-looking man with a bronzed complexion and a network of little wrinkles round his eyes but his smile was pleasant and we very soon realised that behind his lazy manner he concealed a quick brain and an attractive sense of humour.
He led us in to the Miza, which was a very modern building, and gave us a welcome drink while our things were carried upstairs. The hotel was quite a small one and practically deserted. Longdon said, while we were quenching our thirst, that he did not think there was any point in our going on to Ismailia unless we had further news and that the accommodation at Suez was somewhat better.
I had not been in Suez before and as it is one of the half-dozen towns in Africa that even a schoolboy might be expected to name I had imagined it to be quite a big place; but its sole claim to fame lies in its connection with the Canal and it is, in fact, little more than an overgrown village.
As Longdon told us, few passengers either join or leave the ships that pass through it; ninety-eight per cent of the people who are changing ships at all do so at Port Said so even the hotel accommodation is limited and provincial. Until a few years before, the old Belle Aire Hotel on the opposite side of the street had been practically the only place for European visitors to pass a night. Longdon had fixed us up at the Miza because he thought the new beds there would be better but he proposed that we should dine with him across the way, at the Belle Aire, because it was run by a Frenchwoman whose cuisine was considered to be the best in Suez.
After our drinks we went up to wash, and, to my amazement I found that I had two double-beds and one single at my disposal. The two double-beds—and they were big ones at that—occupied a good portion of the bedroom. There was a modern, private bathroom leading out of it and then a verandah room which overlooked the street but was enclosed with wire gauze against mosquitoes and could be used as a sort of sitting-room as, besides the single bed, it contained a sofa, a couple of armchairs and a table.
When I got downstairs again I asked Longdon the reason for this munificence in the case of a single man, upon which he laughed and said:
‘Lots of Egyptians come down here for their holidays and it’s the custom in Egypt that if a man takes a room in a hotel he considers himself entitled to accommodate the whole of his family in it. In consequence, as the average Egyptian family numbers about eighteen, two double-beds and a single one can’t really be considered any too lavish.’
The Belle Aire provided us with an excellent meal of the type one might get at an hotel in any small French provincial town; but it was a gloomy session in spite of Longdon’s efforts to entertain us.
The thoughts of all of us were naturally on poor Sylvia and what she might be going through while we were sitting there. Our by no means amicable discussion after our first meeting out at Mena two nights before and an hour over cocktails the previous evening were the total extent of my acquaintance with Sylvia so I did not know her sufficiently well to count her as a friend. Yet the very idea of any decent girls being subjected to the treatment she was likely to receive in the House of the Angels was enough to make me frantic to prevent it. I had no personal interest in her whatever but I chafed horribly at being unable to raise a finger on her behalf.
Although there seemed good reason to suppose that I was wrong in my idea that she had been taken to Ismailia, somehow I still had a feeling that I was right in my surmise. O’Kieff and Co., as I had every reason to know, were very clever people and, to my mind, the fact that the police had accounted for all the cars which had come through from Cairo that afternoon did not really amount to much in this particular case. With such important personalities as Zakri Bey and the beautiful Oonas in the organisation there might well be lesser fry—well-to-do merchants and so on—whom the police regarded as quite above suspicion. The thing that worried me most was their failure to locate the House of the Angels. If Sylvia was there, immediate action was the only thing which could save her.
I didn’t know very much about the white-slaving game but I did know that the first act is to break the spirit of any unwilling victim. The usual procedure is a beating of sufficient violence to make the girl incapable of any endeavour to escape through the sheer misery of her physical condition; after which she is forcibly raped by the heftiest thug in the house, which ordeal naturally has the effect of throwing her into such hopeless dejection that she no longer has the vitality even to attempt planning a get-away for many hours. The victim is then normally half-starved, beaten and raped again systematically for a number of days until her will is so broken that she consents to receive a client upon the promise that if she does so her daily beatings shall cease, her hunger be appeased and that she can count henceforth on more comfortable conditions.
In Sylvia’s case there was not even the hope that she would be kept at Ismailia for several days. They would naturally be anxious to get her out of Egypt as quickly as possible. I visualised with a horror that made my palms of my hands wet, that poor girl being subjected by the native servants of the house in the night that was now approaching, to every brutality which might rob her of the initiative to endeavour to get a message through to us. The following day, or night at latest, she would almost certainly be drugged, smuggled aboard a native craft and shipped down the Canal to a port on the east coast of the Red Sea where she would be sold by secret negotiations into the harem of some wealthy Arab sheik, and all trace of her lost for years or perhaps for ever.
It was a hideous thought and one which I strove to put from me but, try as I would, I could not evade the fact that although the smug, self-righteous ruling caste of Europe elects to ignore it, a similar fate does still overtake tens of thousands of young women annually, and that if that was the way Zakri had planned to get rid of Sylvia, she would fare no better than any of the others.
While we were trying our poor best to do justice to a créme caramel Longdon was called away to the telephone. He returned to say that he had been talking to Essex Pasha. There was no news which could definitely be associated with Sylvia; police spies of every kind were hunting feverishly for traces of her through all the black spots of Cairo, so far without result, and the police-posts on other roads out of the city had been no more successful in their search for a car that might be suspect than those on the roads running east to Suez and Ismailia; but the air port police had reported a private ’plane with two men and three women on board as having left at a quarter-past three ostensibly for Alexandria. The three women had been dressed in native garments and were wearing veils; one of them had been supported by the other two and the party had declared that they were taking her home after a serious operation. As the ’plane was not leaving the country there were no passport formalities so no one had questioned her or examined her closely, but it was thought, in view of the circumstances, that this might possibly have been Sylvia in a semi-conscious state after having been doped so that she should not talk or call for assistance.
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This news was far from cheering as, if the woman was Sylvia, it now looked as though they might have flown her right out of country direct to one of the Red Sea ports, in which case our chance of rescuing her was almost nil and, although I did not express my opinion, I felt that the poor girl would be better dead.
Better news came through twenty minutes later, while we were still sitting over our coffee; or, if not better, at least news which gave us something to occupy our minds and take them temporarily off our more dismal speculations. The police at Ismailia telephoned to say they thought they had located the House of the Angels. The officer in charge at Ismailia said he was waiting for definite confirmation that the house was the right one before issuing orders for a raid; so we decided to leave at once in the hope that we might arrive in time for it if it was made.
I went with Longdon in his car and the others followed in the one which had brought us from Cairo. For the first few miles out of Suez the road twists through native villages, palm groves and well-cultivated fields, but soon we were on the magnificent highway running parallel with the Canal which is kept by the Company.
The distance from Suez to Ismailia is about fifty miles and after about twenty the road leaves the Canal to follow the shores, first of the Little Bitter Lake, and then the Great Bitter Lake, through both of which the Canal passes. On these long, straight stretches we went all out but it was half-past eleven before we reached Ismailia. On entering the town Longdon drove straight to the French Club where, he said, the Ismailia Chief of Police had promised to have a man with the latest news for us.
When we stepped out of the cars Longdon was greeted by the Chief of Police himself, a sandy-haired, moustached man named Major Hanbury, to whom he introduced us.
Major Hanbury said that he had suggested our coming to the French Club as it would be more comfortable for us to wait there than in his office. The house had proved to be the right one but the raid had not yet been made as time was needed for the police to take up their positions, but it was provisionally fixed for eleven-forty. He led us into the Club and offered us drinks in a big, cheery-looking bar with many little tables and gaily-painted, semi-comic maps upon its walls. There was only a sprinkling of people about and none of them took any notice of us, so directly the drinks had been ordered Major Hanbury gave us details about the result of his enquiries.
None of his men had ever heard of the House of Angels before that afternoon but once they had got on to the place it had proved to be the residence of a wealthy merchant named Suliman Taufik which stood in its own grounds on the northern outskirts of the town. Taufik was an influential and ostensibly respectable man and for that reason Hanbury had hesitated to order a raid on his house without some confirmation of the belief that it was being used for illegal purposes but, since his telephone call to Suez, he had managed to trace two of the native servants who were taking an evening off in the town. On questioning them he had elicited the information, under considerable pressure, that young women of many nationalities were brought to the place, generally at night, and remained there as guests for a day or two before being spirited away again.
Having considered that good enough to justify the issue of a search-warrant, his juniors had been busy for the last hour collecting all their available forces for the purpose of surrounding the house before the raid was made. When he had finished his drink he stood up and said that he must now be upon his way.
‘If I may, I would very much like to come with you,’ I said. ‘If there’s a scrap there can’t be too many of us and in any case you’ll need somebody to identify Miss Shane—if she’s there.’
‘I’d like to be in this thing too,’ Harry added promptly.
‘You can come if you like’, the Major agreed. ‘But what about Mrs. Belville? I’m afraid we can’t have ladies mixed up in this business.’
Clarissa sighed resignedly. ‘You men have all the fun; although it can’t be any joke for poor Sylvia. But never mind, I’ll be all right here. Only for goodness sake take care of yourselves. Don’t go getting shot or anything.’
Hanbury smiled. ‘You needn’t worry, Mrs. Belville. I’ve raided plenty of places before and we’ve more than sufficient men to deal with any rogues we may find in Taufik’s house. It would be miserable here for you waiting on your own but I think I can solve that problem. There are some friends of mine at that table over there—Geoffrey Chatterton and his sister. If I may, I’ll introduce you and they’ll look after you while we’re away.’
The introduction was duly effected. Chatterton, I gathered, was in the Irrigation Department—a tall, bronzed young man with a ready smile; his sister was a plain but pleasant woman of about thirty.
Hanbury just told them that we had some rather tricky business to transact which might take the best part of an hour, and asked them to entertain Clarissa in our absence, to which they readily consented. We left her with them and piled into the two cars outside, taking Amin and Mustapha with us.
Ismailia is quite a small town so the drive was a short one and we left the cars on its northern outskirts a few hundred yards from a long wall, some little distance from the roadside, which Hanbury pointed out to us as the place we were going to raid.
His junior officers reported to him that the place had been surrounded and instructions were given that, while sufficient men were to be left outside to catch anyone attempting to escape over the walls, the rest were all to come in over them on hearing one long blast from his whistle. He gave them ten minutes to get back to their posts and then, supported by a sergeant-major and six native policemen, our group walked quietly towards the main gateway.
When we were still some distance from it Hanbury detached the sergeant-major and one of the policemen, telling them to get over the wall fifty yards to the right of the gate and tackle anyone in the porter’s lodge should the porter refuse us admission. As soon as they were out of sight on the far side of the wall we advanced to the main gate and hammered on it.
For a moment or two there was no response, then the covering of the grille in the great old-fashioned structure was lifted and a pair of dark eyes peered out at us.
‘What do you want?’ asked a voice in Arabic.
‘To see Suliman Taufik Bey,’ replied Hanbury.
‘He is from home,’ replied the boab.
‘When is he expected back?’
‘I cannot say. He spends much of his time in Cairo and has been gone from here some days now.’
‘Then I wish to see whoever is in charge in his absence.’
‘Everyone is in bed at this hour,’ said the man surlily.
‘All the same, you’ll let me in,’ snapped Hanbury, and drawing his revolver he suddenly thrust it into the grille so that the barrel was within an inch of the boab’s nose adding, ‘Don’t move. I’m a police officer, and you will be charged with obstructing me in the execution of my duty it you make any resistance.’
The man’s eyes goggled with fright but he did not attempt to shut the covering of the grille and remained staring down the threatening barrel of the revolver.
‘Hussein!’ Hanbury called, raising his voice. ‘Are you there?’
‘Hadra, effendi!’ came the gruff voice of the sergeant-major.
Hanbury spoke again. ‘Secure this man and get the gate open.’
There was a slight scuffle as the porter was pulled away from the grille, followed by the noise of heavy wooden bolts being thrust back, and one half of the massive gate swung open.
With cautious footsteps, our pistols in our hands, we made our way up a long, straight drive bordered by palm trees to the front entrance of the house. It was quite silent but lights were burning in some of the upper windows. The building was a fairly modern one, probably erected somewhere in the eighteen-nineties. In a whisper Hanbury directed us to take up positions on either side of the front door where we should be concealed in the shadows. He then went up the two steps alone and rang the bell.
It clanged hollowly somewher
e at the back of the house and we waited there holding our breath until someone should come to answer it. After what seemed an interminable time footsteps shuffled on the far side of the door. It was opened a crack and I could just see a native servant peering suspiciously round it.
There was a short, muttered conversation in Arabic and I caught the words ‘… your master …’ and ‘… warrant to search these premises …’
At that the servant endeavoured to force the door to again but Hanbury had his foot in it and next second the blast of his whistle screamed loud through the still night as he flung his weight against the door.
At the sound we all leapt from our cover to his assistance. The door gave suddenly and Hanbury fell headlong inside it with Longdon and one of the policemen on top of him. Over their prostrate bodies I saw the servant grab a lever which was fixed to an iron box on the wall. As he wrenched it over an alarm-bell somewhere in the centre of the house suddenly shrilled with a frightful clamour.
Hanbury was on his feet again but the servant was racing down the passage shouting at the top of his voice and deaf to our commands to halt.
We poured into the narrow hall-way and as we did so I could hear the thudding feet of the police reinforcements who had come in over the walls and were now pelting across the garden to our aid.
Hanbury led the way after the flying servant towards the back of the house, two of his men following him. Longdon and the sergeant-major dashed into a room on the right where a dim light was burning. I headed straight for the stairs, taking them three at a time, my gun in my hand and Harry after me.
As I reached the bend I saw a group of men on the landing above who were dashing down to meet us. One of them raised his pistol and fired. The bullet whistled past my cheek and buried itself in the wall.
I fired in reply and at that moment the lights went out.
The Quest of Julian Day Page 19