by Talbot Mundy
I didn’t hear what Grim said in answer to Zelmira Poulakis. Sure now that the Sikh was neither totally drunk nor drugged out of his senses — Sikhs can stand an enormous amount of both — I began edging toward the golden screen. But before I got close enough to see through its interstices, old Narendra Nath came thoroughly to life and jabbered in broken Arabic:
“Stop! Stop! Not there! Turn back! That is not for your eyes! Turn your head away!”
It was dark beyond the screen. I didn’t get a chance to see through it. But the disturbance served my real purpose, for our hostess joined her protests to Narendra Nath’s, and that gave me full excuse for facing about immediately in front of Narayan Singh with my heels on the mat that he squatted on.
“None of us ever interfere here,” Madame Poulakis then explained. “It is understood that Narendra Nath has perfect privacy. We never spy on him in any way. Even my husband when he was living never looked behind that screen.”
Her statement didn’t seem quite to tally with her manner of entering the room without the formality of knocking. However, I wasn’t disposed to quarrel with it. I stood with my thick legs together like a Prussian on parade and made apologies, while Narayan Singh tucked something carefully into my patent-leather shoe.
“Haven’t we seen enough?” our hostess asked. “I know how terribly such an intrusion must have broken up Narendra Nath’s meditation. No such thing has happened since he came to live here, but it couldn’t be helped for this once — could it? You forgive me, Narendra Nath?”
I guess old velvet-eyes knew English well enough. He bowed with the air of a philosopher too wise to bear resentment, but with just the added touch of authority required to suggest that he wasn’t pleased, and Zelmira Poulakis marshaled us out of the room. The comparative silence in the plastered hall outside was like heaven after the grating, ghastly temple music, which again sounded more like organ notes now that the thick door shut it off.
Our hostess seemed in a hurry to get us away from that scene, but I paused long enough to stick a finger in my shoe. I found a folded piece of paper, and opened and read it as we followed downstairs and through room after room in Indian file.
In the middle of the first room I slipped it into Jeremy’s hand from behind. He read it, laughed back over his shoulder at me, and passed it on to Grim, who read it in turn and crumpled it into his pocket. It was written on the same sort of note-paper as the message we received at the hotel, in the same unsteady hand, and with the same spread nib.
Jaldee jaldee Secret Society Shaitan-log Eldums Range Kabadar.
It wasn’t hard to interpret superficially. Jaldee in Hindustanee means quick, or quickly. Shaitan-log means devil-folk. Eldums Range suggested Meldrum Strange, although there was room for doubt on that point, for so far as we were aware Narayan Singh had no knowledge of our millionaire friend. Kabadar means take care, or beware. Narayan Singh had evidently been interrupted before he could finish, for there was the beginning of another word — quite illegible — and the whole thing had been badly blotted by folding while the ink was wet. I took the message to mean:
“I must write in a hurry. There is a secret society whose members are bad people. Look out for Meldrum Strange.”
True, it might have meant “beware of Meldrum Strange,” but that was improbable. Joining secret societies wouldn’t be in Strange’s line, and his motives were indubitably honest.
When we reached that great reception room, and looked out on the Nile flowing lazily in moonlight with the secrets of fifty centuries safe-kept under its abundant mud, I didn’t feel enamored of Meldrum Strange’s business proposal. Felt more like leaving him to paddle his own canoe.
Let’s get Narayan Singh out of this, thought I, and beat it for a white man’s country.
But we were in her net already, and the lines were tightening.
We sat again on the divan with Zelmira Poulakis before us on the ivory throne affair.
“Can’t you do anything for him?” she asked.
“I’m no longer in any way connected with the Army, and consequently I have no authority or influence,” Grim answered.
She began humming to herself, drumming on the ivory with her finger-tips, and knitting her brows in deep thought. The frown made a dark shadow that suggested evil.
“Leave it to me,” she said suddenly. “Please don’t tell where he is. I must have time to consider. It was very kind of you to come. Now I’ll ask your forgiveness again and order my carriage for you.”
“I’ll forgive you only on condition that you dine with us three tomorrow night!” Jeremy answered.
She laughed. No woman refuses Jeremy lightly.
“I couldn’t come alone of course.”
“Bring a friend. Bring two friends.”
“Shepheard’s? Do you know a Mr. Meldrum Strange who is staying there?”
“No,” Grim answered before Jeremy could get a word in, and for about a second after that the frown on her forehead disappeared. She was palpably relieved to know that we didn’t know Meldrum Strange.
“May I leave the answer to your invitation until the morning?” she asked. “I will send you a note.”
Then she rang the bell and we talked pleasantries until the carriage came.
CHAPTER V. “The policy of the man in armor.”
There was no sign of Meldrum Strange when we drove out of the great gate. Unable to see through the carriage windows, Jeremy and I opened both doors and leaned out to look for him until we reached the Nile bridge and there seemed no further use. All we learned by the maneuver was that nobody was riding on the rear platform, and I mentioned the fact to Grim, who had built a sort of fence of silence around himself. The men who make a practice of that can be counted on to spring surprises. He came out of his reverie the moment I spoke.
“Let’s get out and walk home! Quick!” he said. “Don’t stop the carriage.”
Dress a man in blue box-cloth with silver buttons, put him up in full view of passers-by, and he’ll look straight in front of him, either from pride or shame, whichever way he’s constituted. Let him be used to getting down and opening the carriage door at a journey’s end, and he’ll behave as if it couldn’t come open without his permission. Nobody heard. Nobody saw.
Jeremy, who jumped out last, closed the door after him, and we went and leaned over the bridge parapet, staring at the Nile, in full view of a policeman on point duty, who noticed nothing remarkable about the arrival from nowhere of three men in evening dress.
Excepting the Gyppy policeman we had the bridge all to ourselves.
There being three of us, we naturally had three opinions; and as Jeremy wasn’t under the weather or anything like that, he naturally voiced his first, vaulting onto the parapet and sitting with his back to the moon.
“Black is black,” he said emphatically. “That’s why we insist on a white Australia. You can turn a white man yellow, but you can’t make yellow white. Narayan Singh came mighty near to being white, but, you see, he’s ‘verted, That message is just drunken stuff. He’s full of hashish. He’s had a handsome offer of employment. He’s fallen back at the same time under the influence of Hindu superstition. And he’s just sufficiently sober to remember the Army and us, and to feel ashamed. So he sent for us and then invented that bunk about a secret society in order to excuse himself. The best thing we can do is to send an ambulance for him, and engage a smart lawyer to defend him at court martial on the ground of temporary insanity.”
“Why wasn’t Meldrum Strange waiting for us outside? He agreed to wait until midnight,” was Grim’s only comment at the moment.
“Let’s go back and get Narayan Singh,” I said. “He has chanced his arm along with us and never failed us. The drunker he is, and the more crazy in the head he is, the less excuse we’ve got for leaving him.”
“Narayan Singh is neither drunk nor crazy,” Grim said at last with an air of absolute finality. “One bottle of whisky makes him crazy, but the effect wears off in a
n hour or two. Did you notice his eyes? That’s an old trick; lots of Indians can do it. He was sober enough to write two messages; sensible enough to slip the second into your shoe, and sane enough to have asked to be rescued if there were need of that. As for ‘verting, he was never anything but a darned good Sikh and he never pretended, hoped, or wanted to be anything else. He has stumbled on the trail of something, and it’s our job to follow up.”
Jeremy laughed. Young countries like Australia produce men who are young eternally. Unless accident overtakes him, Jeremy will probably be laughing at the world long after Grim and I have died of taking what we know too seriously.
“You’re making ‘roo-tail soup too early,” he said. “Old man ‘roo’s not shot yet. All you’ve got is salt and water. See here; if that’s a secret society how do they come to send for us, and why did she let us see all that temple stuff and learn where the Sikh is and all that? That isn’t the way to keep secrets. Posh! The little widow, bless her, wants Narayan Singh. Probably some other rich woman in Cairo has a Sikh to wait on her, and our little friend is jealous. You can see through her make-up with half an eye. She’s probably monkeying with five or six religions — takes up every new craze that comes along — believes in reading palms, astrology, Raja Yoga, Ouija, Spirit-raising, Black Magic, and flirting. You watch: Narayan Singh will be carrying love-letters before the week’s out.”
“It’s obvious she wants Narayan Singh,” Grim answered. “She needs him so badly that when he insisted on sending for us she had to give in to him. The perfectly good excuse about being a deserter is proof that he’s in his right senses. He doesn’t know I’ve resigned my commission, and thinks he can’t be accused of desertion after reporting his whereabouts to me. No. There’s a deep game on. Why did Zelmira Poulakis ask us whether we know Strange, and why wasn’t he waiting outside for us as he promised?”
“Why did you tell her we didn’t know him?” Jeremy retorted.
“For the same reason that you don’t tell people how your tricks are done,” Grim answered, looking at his watch. “It’s time to go now. The carriage has reached the hotel. They’ll look for us and drive away again. Let’s get off the bridge and down a side street before they return this way.”
So off we went arm-in-arm, Jeremy whistling truculently because he believed Grim’s argument to be all nonsense, and Grim with his thinking cap on, indifferent to criticism. He never seems to worry about another man’s opinion.
We had left the bridge and were down a side street when an auto in a hurry overtook us and Meldrum Strange called out to me.
“Jump in, all three of you, quick!” he exclaimed as the car slowed close to the curb, and almost before we had time to jump in the car was off again. It wasn’t the same car that he had started out in that evening. He hardly resembled the same man. His urbanity had vanished and his lower lip protruded beyond the upper one pugnaciously. He sat with one elbow thrown back on the folded hood and his right fist clenched on his thigh. Somebody was going to catch it, head, heels, and bank account; no question about that.
“You men sleepy?” he snapped. “Bed? No? Go on, go on!” he barked at the chauffeur. “Drive faster!”
“Going to show us the red light district?” wondered Jeremy. “I’m surprised at a man of your standing! What would the minister say?”
“Red ruin!” Strange exploded. “Somebody shall pay for this night’s work! Are you open to consider the offer I made you this morning? Don’t answer me! Don’t answer me! Wait till you’ve heard details. I won’t take ‘No’ for answer till you’ve heard the facts!”
“Fire away, old top!” said Jeremy pleasantly. “We’ve been seeing things too — luxury — Oh, Lord! — heaven on one floor with Venus presiding — hell above it and the devil making music through thick smoke! Hell on top of heaven, think of that! Talk to me; the other two are crazy!”
“I’ll not talk for this chauffeur,” Strange snapped. “Wait till we — where’s a good place? Tell the fellow where to go to.”
“Gizeh!” Grim ordered, and we swung off westward in the direction of the Great Pyramid, where one of Egypt’s few good motor roads runs straight as a die between overarching trees.
It was as lonely and silent a road as you could find in the universe. The trees on either hand loomed up like nothing earthly, against a purple sky powdered with stars, and a cool breeze, laden with the stench of Egypt, dried up the sweat on our foreheads. Flat lands, and irrigated fields criss-crossed by motionless shadow spread themselves in a scene that would have made an angel melancholy — until we sighted the Great Pyramid, and were glad we had come.
It looms up on your left above the trees some time before you get to it, and is so enormous that your senses refuse to adjust themselves to its proportions; for you’ve nothing else that you ever saw to compare it to, and the comparisons they give you in the guide books have no meaning. Men built it; that’s the amazing thing — built it three thousand years before the Christian era, using blocks of stone that weigh eight hundred tons apiece. They not only jacked them into place, but fitted them so skillfully that after fifty centuries of constant movement of the earth’s crust, with earthquakes thrown in at intervals, you still can’t shove a knife-blade in between the joints. Go and try, if you don’t believe me.
Its purpose surely is to flatten the conceit of anyone who thinks himself a marvel-maker — architect, artist, engineer, politician, financier, labor-leader, or whatever he may be. It fills the bill, and Lord, it makes modern Egypt look a mean, unmanly place.
We left the car by the Mena House gate, with the chauffeur fast asleep in it the moment we turned our backs on him, and walked the rest of the way, none of us saying a word until we came out on top of a new-made government road beside a newly opened tomb, and could see the vast pile dwarfing the two monsters that stand in line with it. Then Jeremy said “imshi” suddenly, and we came to our senses — awake again in modern Egypt with its professional pests.
You wouldn’t think a jackal could approach unseen across that moonlit level ground that hides the pyramid’s foundations. You wouldn’t think, for the silence, that a creature stirred, and least of all that anyone would come and beg in that magnificent loneliness. But a hooded Arab had seen us and crept out of a tomb or somewhere to offer his services as guide, and the hale, well-fed ruffian whined as if God had forgotten him.
Nor would he go away. He spoke English, and insisted on his right to act as guide to any stranger coming there. Jeremy kicked him, at which he showed fight — a distinct relief after the whimpering. Then Meldrum Strange unwisely gave him money, and he went to call his friends, who came in a troop, all tugging at our sleeves and demanding backsheesh for nothing whatever.
Finally I made a bargain with the whole tribe. We would pay the market price for being guided through the pyramid passages, but wouldn’t go in. Instead, we would sit down outside for as long as suited us, and they should keep watch at a decent distance, making sure that we didn’t run off with the pyramid, and protecting us from interruption at the same time.
That being something for practically nothing, they agreed. We sat down on the lowest course of Gizeh’s uncovered base, watched from fifty yards away by a row of hooded ghouls, who quarreled in whispers over how much more tribute they might have made us pay.
“Perhaps I was hardly fair with you fellows this morning,” Strange began. “It’s not my habit to discuss private affairs with anyone. Perhaps I gave the impression of inviting you to join me in a hunt that hadn’t started yet. If so it was a false impression.
“There is nothing new in this affair. The scene has only shifted from Chicago and New York to Cairo. I’ve been following this up since long before the War. During the War our Government engaged my services at a dollar a year, and I was forced to let this slide; but directly after the armistice was signed I took it up again.”
“Thought you didn’t approve of war?” Jeremy interrupted.
“I don’t. But the War was a fact
, and I tried to help win it, Some time prior to the War I became interested in shipping — not in a big way — there were four ships of fourteen thousand tons or so that I had to take over if I didn’t want to lose all my investment. They were British ships, at that time in the harbor of Alexandria, without cargoes, and not particularly marketable. I planned to transfer them to the U.S. flag, without having much notion at the time what all that involved, and I sent a representative to Egypt to see if he couldn’t drum up a cargo for the States that would pay expenses over.
“There was lots of cotton being shipped from Egypt to the States — millions of dollars’ worth. My man made a bid to carry some of it, and ran foul of a contract between the Egyptian Board of Commerce and a British steamship line, that gave the British a monopoly of that traffic. The ships weren’t transferred yet to the U.S. flag, you understand, but there was one British company that had all the business.
“My man stormed around, but got nowhere. I cabled him at last to get any old cargo that would do for ballast, and to bring the ships over. He met a merchant named Poulakis, who agreed to charter the ships. Have you any idea how tricky a thing is a charter party? That man Poulakis either bribed my agent or blackmailed him — I never could discover which; some men corrupt others automatically. My agent signed an agreement that had more flaws in it than you’d think possible to crowd on to one sheet of paper. I couldn’t countermand it; my man had full authority, and our consul in Alexandria registered the contract. Damn it! I can see Poulakis smiling now!”
“Poulakis?” said Grim. “Was he married?”
“You bet he was married. Prettiest woman you ever set eyes on; but let me tell you first what happened to those ships. You never saw such a contract. It was stipulated Poulakis was to have unrestricted use of them at a ridiculously low figure for two voyages from Alexandria to New York or Boston, and for six months in any case. D’you get that? Six months. Money paid down in advance to bind the contract, and our consul’s seal and signature on the document. Everything absolutely legal, and binding me hand and foot. Yet the name of Poulakis didn’t appear. At the last minute he rang in a corporation in which he held shares.