by Talbot Mundy
“Again — double or quits!” he insisted, and this time it was Poulakis who spun a coin; but Jeremy cried “Tails,” and it was Jeremy who caught it in mid-air, and displayed it in his palm head-upward. He passed over two more pounds.
“I’ve only one pound left,” he said then. “Want to toss for that?”
Poulakis won. Jeremy paid with a laugh. Grim took the flashlight and led the way out into the Grand Gallery, Jeremy falling behind to whisper to Strange and me.
“Let that sort of snipe think you’re a gambler and he’s easy forever after. Play high and lose to ’em. Nothing makes ’em trust you sooner. Let’s all bet like the Devil whenever we think we’re being watched. Show the cash. We can straighten up afterward.”
If Jeremy could have his way, the world would be run like a Gilbert and Sullivan opera, with Jeremy flitting from pillar to post uncovering laughs as swiftly as the audience could stand it. We agreed to become gamblers.
At the foot of the first ascending passage the blood had almost vanished, soaked up in the limestone dust. There was no sign of a dead man, although there was blood on the floor of Al-Mamoun’s tunnel, where the rifle-volley had just missed us and caught our opponents. Our assailants had sneaked in and carried away their fallen. Moreover they had gone, for the pyramid entrance was blocked by the Arab guides, who clamored for their money, demanding ten times what they had bargained for because of what had taken place. Poulakis himself drove a bargain with two of them to carry him as far as the Mena House Hotel “because the sand might get into his shoes.”
So they bore him off, we continuing to sit there yawning, watching the dawn rise mauve and golden, watched in turn by the remainder of the guides. We didn’t propose to pay them as long as they would sit there and protect us by their presence from another surprise attack, any more than they proposed to let us out of arm’s reach until they had our money.
And you know, the dawn makes an awful lot of difference to the aspect of a plan. Be as enthusiastic as you choose within four walls in the dark, you’ll need to be a man of iron resolution to feel the same way outdoors in the early morning. The earth begins to look more real, and the ideas visionary. Difficulties, that in the dark were part of the dark and as intangible and vague, grow raw and real in daylight. If anyone had come to us then with an ounce of common-sense persuasiveness I believe he could have talked even Grim into abandoning the plan within five minutes.
But no one came who had any interest in changing our course, and none of us cared to hoist the white feather, so we sat there in as deep silence as the Arab guides permitted — which is to say in the midst of a crows’ chorus — until the two who had carried Poulakis came back to tell us that a car was waiting for us near the Mena House Hotel. Even so, we didn’t pay them until they had accompanied us all the way to the Mena House, and seen us into the car. They formed a fine unconscious body-guard, and we were sorry to leave them.
The car was a truly magnificent affair, with leopard-skin robes and a driver who outshone any darky ever seen in the States. All traffic rules — if there were any — went by the board, and we drove to meet destiny at fifty miles an hour, bellowing through a horn like Gabriel’s trumpet to the early farmer-folk to clear the ways. They cleared it, too, right into the ditch quite frequently, being used to the ways of the Egyptian pasha.
I really don’t know what we expected — what we supposed our destination was. I had a vague notion that we were on the way to Madame Poulakis’s palace where conspiracy would be already working full blast. But that was leaving Egypt out of the reckoning. Few criminals are habitually early risers.
We were taken straight to Shepheard’s Hotel, where the only suggestion of intrigue was two scented envelopes handed to Grim by a sleepy Sudanese porter, who professed not to know who had brought them. The first was from Madame Poulakis, addressed to us all:
You dears, how happy I am! I have sat up waiting for the news and fearing the worst! How I congratulate you! And myself! And all of us! Mon dieu, how you must be tired and sleepy, for I can hardly keep my own eyes open, yet you must have spent ten nights in one. So rest yourselves. This evening must find you well recovered. It is with delight that I accept your kind invitation to dine with you. As I shall take such advantage of your kindness as to bring three friends, please perfect your generosity by inviting Meldrum Strange to your dinner to meet me! After the dinner, if agreeable, we will all attend a little rendezvous chez moi.
Yours most cordially, Z.
The second was from Narayan Singh, written in a much more sober hand than his former communications.
To Major J.S. Grim, the respectful salaam of Sepoy Narayan Singh.
Jimgrim, sahib,
Fortune that forever favors your honor’s interest sent me to this house suitably drunk, in which condition brain is too torpid to expel what enters ears, and eyes are too slumberous to avoid seeing things not meant to see. Subject your approval, shall continue to debauch, disposing of drink and drugs unofficially but accumulating official intoxication. Key to situation is Memsahib, who might prove indiscreet if subjected to sympathy. Details of little affair in Gizeh already known to many people. There are several spies in the hotel, but small danger until this evening, when the memsahib will attend dinner with other memsahibs appointed to prevent indiscretion. Much murder, including memsahib and all of us, will definitely take place after midnight unless plans regarding Strange sahib work without hitch.
In haste, Your honor’s obedient servant, Narayan Singh.
“Damn it! Is that Sikh for us, or against us?” Strange demanded, passing the letter back to Grim.
Grim answered. “He has the eastern view-points,” Grim answered. “He’ll not respect western squeamishness. But he’s one of us, first, last, and all the time!”
CHAPTER IX. “I understand you have changed sides!”
It wasn’t any use sitting there wondering what Narayan Singh might mean by “indiscreet if subjected to sympathy.” We disgusted the hotel folk by ordering light breakfast, and went to bed as soon as we had swallowed it, doubling up for extra safety. Then we disgusted the hotel folk a second time by insisting on lunch at three o’clock. So far we might have been prepaid tourists, seeing sights in the sweat of our brows.
But three-thirty brought an ambassador on the wings of impudence, if that’s the right name for an imported, sporty-model car painted maroon and yellow, with a brace of pug-nosed Egyptian pages in the rumble up behind. And Lord, how that ambassador did like himself!
We were sitting on the veranda in cane armchairs when he approached, doffing his imported straw hat daintily and pulling off his yellow, imported gloves. He wiped his forehead with an imported silk handkerchief that smelt of imported opopanax, lifted the knees of his London trousers to display his Paris socks, and sat down uninvited in the chair in front of us. Them he smiled to show his nice white imported American teeth, and waited for us to say something. We said nothing, all four of us simultaneously and with one mind.
He consulted his gold wrist-watch; but if he meant that for a hint we didn’t take it. As he polished his finger-nails with the inside of a glove he kept looking at Strange as if expecting him to speak first.
I never saw a man I liked less. I think he had rouge on his cheeks, although I won’t swear to that; it may have been a high complexion resulting from a little admixture of Hamitic blood. There was a dark, suggestive iris on the finger-nails he polished so thoughtfully that entitled him to the benefit of the doubt regarding rouge.
What made the effeminacy worse was an evident strength of physique. He had a swordsman’s wrist and was wiry from head to heel, packing none of that fat under the ribs that makes most Cairenes over thirty years of age incapable of serious exercise.
His face was sly and arrogant — the face of a rascal who understands human weakness and habitually trades on it — almost classical at the first glance, totally repellent the second. You could see he was confident of possessing influence, contemptuous of
all who might lack it, but really brave or courageous never.
No man possessing his combination of inquisitive nose, cruel mouth, and yellowish eyes that strip naked whatever they see, could sell me a quarter for twenty-five cents, let alone get information from me. But he was used to being treated with great respect, and our silence rattled him.
“A little different to our last meeting in New York, isn’t it, Mr. Strange?” he said at last, with a hint of a sneer in his unexpectedly musical voice. I guess he sang love-songs to a guitar in his less inhuman moments. “You remember me, of course?”
“I remember kicking you out of my office,” Strange answered.
“No need to tell you, then, that I am Andrieff Alexis. I propose that we take the rough-handling to which you were subjected last night as tit for tat, and call the personal score even, Mr. Strange. Is that agreeable to you?”
Strange growled something or other half under his breath and went on chewing one of his cigars, sitting back with his stomach out and both hands gripping the arms of the chair. It was surprising that with all that stomach for handicap he had been able to throw out such a man as this who called himself Alexis. Maybe it gave a true line on the latter’s courage.
“Good. Let us call that balanced, then. I understand you have changed sides.”
Strange made no answer. I began to suspect that Alexis was putting a bold front to a weak position, and the glint in Grim’s quiet eyes confirmed my guess.
“You see,” he went on, “we don’t allow personal quarrels among members. Before a new member can be admitted there is inquiry into such questions as whether any member has a grudge against him. Unless I were to give my personal assurance on that score you couldn’t be approved. People who apply for admission but fail to be approved are put out of the way. I made up my mind to do the handsome thing and call on them to bury the hatchet.”
At that Strange showed his caliber. He seized the upper hand.
“I guess you mean your mind was made up for you,” he retorted. “You’re not the kind of person who gets kicked and forgives it. Your organization made war on me because they want my help. They won’t let such a little matter as your personal feelings stand in the way of my joining them. That’s what brings you here, now isn’t it?”
“I assure you—”
“No use your assuring me of anything! I challenge your authority to represent anyone except yourself!”
“Oh, very well,” Alexis answered. “If you prefer to keep on quarreling—”
“Quarreling?” said Strange. “Ten men like you couldn’t quarrel with me! If you want to make your peace with me, you can do it by taking care not to offend me in future.”
Alexis showed his false teeth in a smile that was meant to suggest resources in reserve, but it hardly hid exasperation.
“Well,” he said after half a minute, “we’ve no use, of course, for sentiment. Nobody expects you to kiss me on both cheeks. I accept your statement that you have no personal quarrel with me. I have none with you. My dealings with you have been official. Your assault on me in New York was therefore as impersonal as that of one soldier on another on a battlefield. I am glad you appreciate that. But let me tell you something, by way of warning; a rule of our society is that members must submit their personal differences to a committee of three, whose decision is absolute. A new member who picked a quarrel with one of long standing would be sentenced to death. A case of that sort happened recently to my knowledge.”
“Is my understanding correct that I am to be passed on for membership tonight?” demanded Strange.
“I believe perfectly correct.”
“Will you be present?”
“Er — no. No, I imagine not.”
“Umph! You have to report to someone, though, that you’ve made your peace with me?”
“I shall do that presently.”
“Very well. Will you carry a message from me?”
“I am willing to repeat it.”
“Tell ’em this, then. If there’s to be peace it’s between your organization and mine. These men you see with me are members of my organization. They come in with me or I stay out. There’s nothing to argue about.”
“But you’re in no position to dictate on what terms you will come in,” Alexis answered rather hotly. “We’re self-perpetuating; we select our membership.”
“That’s my message,” Strange retorted, “They come in with me, or I stay out.”
“I will convey your message.”
“I assure you—”
Alexis sat fanning himself with an ivory-handled, horse-tail fly-switch. I think he expected us to offer him a drink. At the end of three or four minutes’ silence he got up, doffed his wonderful straw hat very gracefully, and drove away in the maroon-and-yellow car with the exhaust wide open to call attention to his finery.
Grim nodded. “Excellent! He’ll report every word of that!”
“We’re being watched,” said Jeremy. “Gamble. Quick!”
We began to play “Two tip,” Australian style, betting in pounds and fives and tens on every toss of the coin. Lord knows how many hundred pounds of Strange’s money changed hands in twenty minutes, for it’s amazing how the luck runs when you mean to return your winnings afterward. We were hard at it, when another individual crossed from the far end of the veranda and took the chair vacated by Alexis. Grim glanced once at him and kicked my shin. I nudged Strange and Jeremy. We stopped the game and ordered whisky-and-soda, which gave the new arrival an opportunity to show his hand. He looked like an Englishman who had been drilled — perhaps a retired Army officer.
“I wish you men would invite me to drink with you,” he said suddenly. “I’ve just come here from Kantara on purpose to talk with you and I don’t want to attract attention.”
We obliged him and he studied all the other people on the veranda rather dramatically before broaching his subject.
“My name is supposed to be McAlister,” he began then, sipping slowly at his drink. “You, I believe, are Mr. Meldrum Strange and Mr. Ramsden, Americans; Major Grim, also an American but of the British Army; and Mr. Jeremy Ross, Australian. Am I right?”
There was a slight slip, but Grim didn’t correct him; technically, perhaps, he still was of the British Army, and anyhow, it isn’t wise to squander information at the first excuse.
“The Administration is quite familiar with most details of your present predicament,” the man who called himself McAlister went on. “All that took place at the Pyramid last night is known. The Arabs reported it.”
“Oh, I’m glad to hear that,” said Grim. “What did they say took place inside?”
“They reported everything — told all about the fighting, and how you carried a man named Poulakis down to the King’s Chamber. Everything’s known.”
Grim nodded — more to us than to him, and there was a smile behind his eyes. Strange started chewing a new cigar. The Arabs weren’t there when the fighting took place; they couldn’t possibly have seen us carry off Poulakis, and that was all about it.
“It’s understood, of course,” he continued, “that your sole purpose is to expose this gang. I’ve been brought special to Cairo to get in touch with you and act as liaison officer between you and the Administration. So if you’ll take me into confidence, we’ll set a trap for this gang and catch the principals.”
Grim shook his head. “ ‘Fraid not,” he answered. “After what took place last night, we’d be afraid. It seems perfectly clear to us that the Administration police are honeycombed with crookedness, and we’ve decided to let things take their course.”
“Well, at least you’ll give evidence?” asked McAlister with an air of being scandalized.
“I guess not,” Grim answered. “We’d only get murdered. We prefer to live.”
McAlister said no more, but swallowed the remainder of his drink and walked away.
“Page one, chapter one of our initiation,” Grim remarked when he was out of earshot.
“Clumsy stuff!” Strange added.
“The funny part is,” said Grim, “that I know that fellow. I’ve a long memory for names and faces. His real name is Smith. He was cashiered out of the Army for misappropriating money, and I suppose the poor devil picks up a living however he can. He’s no insider. He hasn’t brains enough to be.”
The next man they sent to test us was more dangerous. He was an honest-to- goodness Government official, with the title of pasha and a suitably worried air — a neat, nice-looking little man, wearing a red tarboosh but otherwise dressed in European style; and in order to establish his identity beyond all question, he had one of the hotel under-managers come and introduce him to us.
“Ibraim Noorian Pasha!”
He accepted a cigarette, lighted it nervously, and smoked for a minute or two with his knees close together and his ebony cane laid over them; damned diffident he was.
“Hem! I am a department secretary. Police department. No, nothing to drink. Ahem! That affair last night. At the Pyramid. Disagreeable business. Going altogether too far. We shall get a bad name here in Egypt. Ahem! No sooner self-government in sight than things like this happen. Won’t do! No. It must be stopped. Hellish individuals spoiling the future for everybody else. Spoiling everything.
“What do you propose?” asked Grim.
“Ahem! Delicate matter.” His voice, too, was delicate. He had delicate brown eyes that kept you thinking of a mouse. “Quite frankly, I’m taking my life in my hands to talk to you.”
“Oh, nonsense!” answered Grim.
“No, not nonsense! Unfortunately the police are totally corrupt. Can’t depend on anyone. All the fault of the English. Things completely out of hand. A few of us might straighten matters out, if we had assistance. Ahem! I want you gentlemen to help me — confidentially. Quite confidentially. We have spies. Police department spies. They bring us information. Ahem! The rascals who attacked you last night hope to get you to go to America. Work for them there. Bold people. Agents everywhere. Quite too many for us, unless we get assistance. Police need people like you. Now — ahem! Why don’t you pretend to agree with them? Then expose them to us? I’m quite frank with you. I’m hoping for reformation that would almost be revolution in the police department. A coup such as that would promote me to be head of the department. We would have a practically new police force in no time. I can guarantee your protection meanwhile. Ahem! Will you do it?”