“Come quickly! He is getting out on to the balcony.” Evidently it was below the dignity of his holy office to enter into this fracas, so he had taken on the job of keeping watch from the bathroom window, and had seen my head sticking out.
Instantly I drew in my head, slammed the window to and latched it. As I did so I noticed with a sigh of thankfulness that they were Crittall windows—steel frames enclosing small panes of not more than eighteen inches in width and a foot in depth. Had they been larger, the killers could easily have smashed one of them and got into the room, but even a child would have had difficulty in squeezing his way through one of these many small steel rectangles, a number of which made up each window.
I saw at once, though, that by smashing a central pane one of my enemies would be able to thrust his hand through, and on pulling back the lever catch fling open a window. If I remained on the inner side of the curtains they would be able to do that without even my seeing which window they were attempting to open and so make any effort to prevent them. There was only one thing to do. Black-out regulations must go to the blazes. Only by drawing the curtains could I see the whole row of windows at once.
If I had had even a second to think about it I should have realised that drawing back the curtains was the best move that I could possibly have made. The sudden appearance of a whole row of bright lights shining right across the bay would attract the immediate attention of every policeman who was patrolling the long curve of the waterfront. The arrival of the police was the one thing that my enemies wished to avoid, and now that I was cornered in the bedroom the one hope of my getting out of that flat alive. But the part that showing lights might play never even occurred to me. In my first glance round the room I had seen a telephone beside the bed, and all I had so far lacked was breathing-space to use it.
I was still in the act of pulling back the last pair of curtains when I heard footsteps pounding along the concrete balcony; then Mondragora’s satanic countenance was thrust against one of the panes. Ignoring him for a minute, I grabbed the telephone and rang the exchange.
A sleepy voice answered, and I yelled into the transmitter in Arabic: “Police! Quick! Flat 42, Ambassador Court! An urgent message for Headquarters …”
I had only got so far when there was a sharp splintering of glass. Mondragora had seen me snatch up the telephone and was firing at me through the window. Three bullets whiszed past my right ear and thudded into a large satin wood wardrobe.
The instant I heard the first shot I flung myself flat on the floor, dragging the telephone with me. Mondragora must have thought that he had hit me, as for the moment he stopped firing.
Immediately he did so I yelled into the telephone again: “Police Headquarters! This is an urgent message for Major Cozelli! I am speaking from Flat 42, Ambassador Court. The Grand Mufti of Jersusalem is here, and if you surround the block at once you should be able to get him.”
I shouted not only through excitement but because I wanted Mondragora to know that I had succeeded in getting through to the police. It was the one thing which might induce him to take to immediate flight instead of firing shot after shot through the window until he succeeded in wounding and finally killing me.
I had already wriggled half under the bed when a bullet thumped into the carpet within an inch of my elbow. A slight cough had preceded the thud, and I knew now why I had not heard any reports when Mondragora had first fired at me. He was using a silencer on the end of his automatic. The sleepy operator had become very much alive and put me through to Police Headquarters, Pulling my head and shoulders under the valance, I repeated my message again in both Arabic and English, then jammed down the receiver and squirmed my way out at the far side of the bed.
Cautiously raising my head I peered over the bed at the window, outside which Mondragora was standing. His hand was just reaching through the smashed pane to undo the catch. Snatching up a bedside lamp made out of a porcelain vase, I jerked the flex from its socket and hurled the lamp at the window. The shot was an oblique one from where I crouched, so with the best aim in the world I could not have sent the vase straight through the broken pane at the Portuguese, but it shattered on the steel frame and he swiftly withdrew his hand.
Suddenly the telephone began to ring, and I felt certain that it must be the police calling me back for further particulars. I could not answer it unless I abandoned keeping an eye on Mondragora and crawled back under the bed; but he had heard my call for help and evidently he thought, as I did, that the ringing of the telephone was the police trying to get on to the flat. His long hand, with its noticeably crooked first finger, had come in again to fumble for the catch, but he withdrew it and began to call urgently to someone further along the balcony.
Between the short intervals of the insistently ringing telephone I could now hear the shrilling of whistles. Evidently the police on the waterfront were becoming agitated about the long row of brightly-lighted windows which at this height could probably be seen a dozen miles out at sea.
For some moments there was no further sign of Mondragora, but I remained crouching where I was, fearing some trap, and that he might be prepared to risk having to make a last moment escape from the police in order to kill me, and thus make certain of my silence first.
The telephone rang and rang; the whistles shrilled. Then I caught a fresh noise. Someone was beating loudly upon a door across the hall. I knew the odds were now on its being the police, but having avoided death in the last half-hour only by a hair’s-breadth, I was still taking no chances. I waited where I was while the sounds of splintering wood told me that they were breaking in the front door. Only when they began to bang on the bedroom door, and we had exchanged shouted remarks by which I had ascertained that they really were the police, did I drag aside the ornate dressing-table and open to them.
There was a coffee-coloured sergeant and four tarbooshed policemen, ranging in colour from burnt sienna to coal black. They knew nothing of my call to the station for help, but on seeing such a flagrant breach of the black-out regulations they had decided that the occupant of the flat was deliberately guiding enemy aircraft in for an attack on the city, and that bombs might start to fall at any moment, so on getting no reply at the front door they had felt quite justified in breaking in.
While the men quickly drew the curtains again the sergeant answered the telephone. It was Police Headquarters, and they confirmed my story that I had rung them up to report the presence of the Grand Mufti. However, the flat was now empty except for ourselves, and two of the policemen had seen some men run out of the block and drive away in a car just as they had come up, so evidently Mondragora and his friends had escaped.
Five minutes later an inspector arrived from the station with two plain-clothes men and a negro constable. The patrolmen were sent back to their duties and the newcomers from Headquarters took charge. The inspector was a nice-looking, youngish Levantine with a small black moustache. At first I think he regarded me as either a mental case or a deliberate nuisance-maker, and he obviously did not believe my story that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem had been there less than half an hour before; but when he began to question me and ask about all sorts of things which had no bearing on the matter, I told him that I was a friend of Essex Pasha and that I would not answer any more questions, except to one of the British commissioned officers of the Egyptian police.
He replied sourly that I would probably soon have that opportunity, as in my original call for help I had mentioned Major Cozelli’s name. In consequence the report that the Grand Mufti was in Alexandria had been telephoned to the Major, who was expected to put in an appearance shortly, but having been roused in the middle of the night on my account he would be in no mood to be trifled with.
The Major turned up about quarter of an hour later. At first he did not recognise me, which was hardly surprising as I had only seen him on the one occasion, eight months before. Then he said:
“Why, hallo, Day! So it was you who made this extraord
inary statement about the Grand Mufti having been in this flat tonight. Are you quite certain that you weren’t mistaken?”
“I’d swear to it, sir,” I replied. “I not only saw him with my own eyes, but the other men who were here addressed him as ‘Your Eminence’.”
“And who were they?”
“One of them was the late chief of the Egyptian General Staff—General Aziz Masry Pasha.”
The Major grunted: “So that would-be Quisling was here, too, eh? All right. Let’s sit down while you tell me the whole story.”
Up to that moment I had hardly given a thought as to what account I should give the police of my night’s adventures. The reaction to my extraordinarily narrow escape from death had set in on their arrival and, the frightful strain which I had been suffering having abruptly ceased, I had done little since but breathe prayers of thanksgiving for my release. Now, for the first time, it really came home to me that, having called in the police, I must tell them not only a coherent story but one which they could not easily disprove, otherwise I might get myself into serious trouble. However, I felt that, as I was so obviously on their side, it was unlikely that they would run me in on a charge of housebreaking, and I decided to stick as near the truth as I reasonably could.
I told the Major that Mondragora and I had a long-standing quarrel, the particulars of which I had no intention of disclosing at the moment; but if he thought it necessary he could get them at any time from Essex Pasha, who knew the whole story. That night I had seen Mondragora, after an interval of several years, in the lounge of the Hotel Cecil, and I had followed him home, as I was anxious to have a showdown with him. I admitted to having evaded the porter at Ambassador Court and having made an illicit entry through the bathroom window of the flat for the purpose of taking Mondragora by surprise. Of course, I did not confess that I had gone in with the intention of murdering him, but inferred that I had meant to give him a darn’ good hiding.
I then related how I had found that he was not alone, seen the Grand Mufti through the keyhole, listened for some minutes to scraps of conversation, been discovered and been within inches of meeting with a sticky death from being thrown head first over the balcony.
I gave the whole of the latter part of my story exactly as it had occurred, and Cozelli’s eyes gleamed in his cadaverous face, as I recounted all that I had overheard relating to an invasion by air-borne troops and the great sum in English, French and Indian currency which was to be used for bribery. He made me repeat the phrases used several times, cross-questioned me on them, and had one of the plain-clothes men, who was a detective-sergeant, take down a verbatim report of that part of my story.
The inspector and sergeant were given the job of finding the secret wireless transmitter which von Hentzen had mentioned as being concealed in the roof. The other plain-clothes man set about taking fingerprints from glasses and door-knobs, while the uniformed policeman was posted in the hall to detain anyone who might enter the flat. Major Cozelli then declared his intention of searching it, and told me that I had better give him a hand.
No crime had been committed there, and how far Cozelli’s powers extended I had no idea; but apparently he considered my word good enough that the place was being used by enemy agents. Some counter-espionage officers are naturally hesitant in doing anything which might result in their receiving a rap over the knuckles from some fusty old gentleman who has not yet awakened to the fact that Hitler is the greatest gangster of all time and out to plunder the world, irrespective of all so-called rights, decencies or customs; but Cozelli was evidently of a very different school, and prepared to risk trouble with his superiors, if there was any hope of getting results against the enemy by immediate action.
He picked up a large suit-case, emptied the contents, which were mainly clothes, out on to the bed, and told me to carry it round after him while he set about a systematic inspection. Pulling open every drawer, he ran swiftly through its contents and threw anything he thought might prove of interest into the suitcase, which I held open behind him. Such drawers as were locked he opened with the help of a bunch of skeleton keys, at the manipulation of which he appeared to be an expert.
We did the bedroom first, and in it there were not many items which he selected to take away, apart from a small collection of maps and guide-books to Egypt, and an out-of-date passport. But in the sitting-room he made a much bigger haul.
At one end of the long, low room there was a handsome bureau. The papers in the upper part did not appear of any special interest. They were mostly old bills, unused notepaper, foolscap, a few letters from local tradesmen and a big pack of newspaper clippings. The lower drawers had in them a nice stock of cigars, cigarettes and crystallised fruit. Having flung the letters and the newspaper clippings into the bag, the Major took all the drawers right out of the bureau and kneeling down began to fiddle about inside it.
“I thought as much,” he muttered. “The drawers aren’t so deep as the bureau, you see, so there’s a secret compartment in the back of it.”
After a few moments’ fiddling he found the spring that released the panel, and as it opened I saw that there were a number of pigeon-holes behind it, nearly all of which were stuffed full of papers.
One by one he passed the bundles out to me. There were several wads of banknotes, in English and Egyptian currency, which one could see at a glance amounted to considerable sums, about half a dozen blueprints, and at least two hundred documents.
The cache was very nearly empty when he turned to hand me a pack of about eight letters held together by a rubber band. As I took them a sudden terrifying apprehension made my heart miss a beat, and I almost dropped the packet. I knew that heavy angular writing, so unlike a young girl’s, far too well to be mistaken. They were from Daphnis.
Chapter XVI
Grim Moments
My first impulse was to slip Daphnis’ letters into my pocket instead of putting them in the suit-case, but before I had time to do so the Major had turned to hand me the last two bundles of papers from the back of the bureau. We were both kneeling on the floor face to face with the open suit-case between us. I had absolutely no option but to drop the letters into the case with the rest, and he promptly slammed the lid to.
“I’ll just have a look round the other rooms,” he said, “but I don’t think there’ll be anything worth taking. It’s pretty certain that the cream of the stuff was kept behind this secret panel.”
I had a wild hope that he might leave me there so that while he was gone I would be able to open the case again and retrieve that bundle of letters upon which I felt my whole future happiness might hang. But as he rose to his feet he picked up the case, and carried it with him through the door out into the hall.
I followed, still hoping desperately that he might put it down again and there would be a chance for me to get at it while he was not looking. He did put it down in the richly-furnished dining-room, while he took a quick look through the drawers of the sideboard and a cupboard which only contained table glass and drinks; but nothing engaged his attention long enough for me to dare to touch the case.
There was, of course, just a possibility that Daphnis’ letters might be completely innocent, but everything pointed to their being highly incriminating. Count Emilo de Mondragora was definitely acting as an agent for the Axis Powers, and Daphnis had strong Italian sympathies. That she had been in the habit of meeting him in secret was clear from the conversation I had overheard between them in which she had regretted the fact that he could not come openly to the house, and he had replied that it was quite impossible because her stepfather hated him so much.
At last I saw a possible explanation for that passage in their talk over which I had so often puzzled in vain. Old Nicholas Diamopholus had evidently known Mondragora at some time or other and discovered, as I had, that he was an international crook of the highest order. But in any case the fact of the letters having been hidden in one of the secret pigeon-holes was an almost certain indica
tion that they were highly confidential and contained incriminating passages.
For the moment Daphnis was still safe, because Major Cozelli had as yet had no time to examine his haul. But once he sat down to go through it, item by item, God alone knew what he might learn about her anti-British activities. Very probably enough to have her tried and imprisoned, perhaps even enough to have her shot. At the thought my brain reeled.
I tried to reassure myself with the accepted belief that the British never shoot women spies, but I was by no means dead certain of that, and we were not now in England but in Egypt. Egyptian law was probably quite different, and the code of penalties in states the bulk of whose population is coloured is usually much harsher than in Anglo-Saxon countries.
While I was still turning these nightmare thoughts over and over in my mind, the negro policeman came in from the hall to say that the inspector had found the secret wireless sending apparatus. It was concealed between the ceiling of the boxroom and the roof.
“Now’s my chance,” I thought. “Cozelli is certain to go and ook at it, and he’ll leave the suit-case here.”
But once again my hopes were doomed to disappointment. The Major picked up the suit-case and handed it to the man as he said: “Right, Ahmed, I’ll go through and have a look. Hang on to this and carry it down to the car for me when we leave.”
Left alone with the policeman, I wondered what the hell to do. He was now gripping the suit-case by its handle with a hand the size of a ham and his shiny face was by no means the countenance of a fool. He did not look at all the sort of man whom I could trick into handing the case over to me by any ruse thought up on the spur of the moment.
The desperate impulse to attack him, snatch the suit-case and make off with it came to me. If only I could get clear of Ambassador Court with it and retain it in my possession for five minutes afterwards, that would be enough. Later I could give myself up and plead a brainstorm.
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