by Talbot Mundy
It was blank paper, undated, no address.
“Did she go?” I demanded.
“Sahib, I—”
“Did she go alone?”
“Nay, I prevented that. She took the other mem-sahib. There came this black brute of a servant, looking more sly than a fox around the hen-yard, and I met him at the door. He gave me this letter for the mem-sahib, so I delivered it; and she, having read it in a moment, said that she would go, whereat I made ready to go with her. But she said no, there must be no man with her, and I, remembering your words, sahib, declared with much determination that she shall not go unaccompanied. Whereat she laughed and said the other mem-sahib shall go with her, for two women, said she, are the equal of one man at all times. And I still expostulating, she gave me a positive order, which I could not help but obey. She bade me bring this letter to you, sahib, saying that the letter itself explains all, and that you will surely understand. What little else there was to do I did. I demanded of the driver whence he came and whither he was going. He mumbled words that I could not hear, until both memsahibs were inside the carriage, and then spat at me and drove on. The carriage had no name or number on it. So the two mem-sahibs are gone, and we are men without honour.”
“Could you recognize the driver, or the servant who gave you the letter, if you saw them again?” I asked.
“Try me, sahib! I have a score to settle with both of them!”
The telephone wasn’t working. It almost never does when a mob cuts loose. There was no way of getting in touch with Grim, and there wasn’t much sense in wasting twenty minutes going to the Norwoods’ house. All I could think of was Will Tryon back there in California, faithful and straight as one of those great pine-trees, counting implicitly me to send his young employer safely home again. I seemed to see Will Tryon’s face between me and the wall whichever way I looked. It wasn’t any use cursing old King Khufu and his treasure; that would cut no ice with Will Tryon. If I ever wanted to look that fellow in the face again, I had got to do the right thing now, and do it quick.
I thought of the police. They were on riot duty. Whoever was left at headquarters would laugh. If he were asked to find a missing woman out of hand, especially as the carriage in which she drove away had no number on it. I thought of government headquarters and the military, but exactly the same argument applied. They would find her, certainly — dead, possibly — within the week, probably. I needed to find her now, within the hour.
I thought of hurrying to the residence of Zegloush Pasha and kicking in the door, for you get wild notions in such moments; but the certainty that he would have me arrested for taking part in the riot cut short the drift of that idea. The one paramount question was how to discover exactly where Joan Angela was gone; after that would be the time to take chances. But the streets were full of men about as reasonable as mad dogs. The police and military were only gradually getting the upper hand and driving folk within doors. There was the certainty of being turned over to the military — who lock you up first and ask questions tomorrow — if I should fall foul of Zegloush before knowing Joan Angela’s whereabouts for certain. And Narayan Singh stood looking at me, miserably humble, self-condemned for having let her out of sight; there was not a chance of getting an idea from him.
I don’t believe Joan Angela would have been alive today if it had not been for Chu Chi Ying. I would most likely have dashed out into the street with the Sikh at my heels, and Lord knows what form failure would have taken. Only I should have failed; that is outside the pale of argument. But as the Sikh and I stood there, reading baffled irresolution in each other’s eyes, old Chu Chi Ying came downstairs smiling blandly, to ask what the noise in the street was all about.
He was the last man in the world you would naturally ask advice from in a crisis; but he could recognize a crisis as quickly as anyone, and he stood still for about a minute in the doorway, blinking at the two of us.
“No can do?” he asked, as if we had been “fat-fool first mates” in a quandary over some theoretical navigation question he had set for us.
I had to say something, ask something, confer with somebody, or bust. I dare say you know the feeling. It makes It makes us take the most unlikely people into confidence.
“Did you tell your story to anyone else, than Zegloush Pasha?” I asked the old Chinaman.
He blinked, and seemed to swallow his Adam’s apple.
“Heap plenty men,” he answered.
“Where? In his house?”
He shook his head.
“This miserable Chinaman, he receive much hospitality at first. Many people paying compliments. Much how-de-do.”
“But was all this in Zegloush Pasha’s house? That’s what I’m driving at.”
He shook his head again.
“Taking this miserable Chinaman there afterwards. Much plomise before going. After get there, no can do!”
“All right. Where was the house where you did the talking?”
“In Clairo,” he answered, wrinkling his forehead.
“Could you find it again?”
“Mebbe.”
“What sort of house was it?”
“Plivate house.”
“Full? Empty? Big? Little? Where was it?”
“Yes,” he answered, blinking and looking preternaturally wise.
“Infidel!” snarled Narayan Singh, taking a stride toward him. “I am a man of blood, as you have called me many times. I am bellicose. Answer the sahib’s question!”
“Big house, little street, little doorway, full that time, empty by and by,” said Chu Chi Ying quickly, as if he were reeling off an exorcism.
“Was there anyone there whom you could recognize besides Zegloush?” I asked him.
“Zegloush heap plenty fliends.”
“Would you know any of them again?”
He wrinkled his forehead in a sort of criss-cross question mark.
“Can find house. Can happen,” he said doubtfully.
“Let’s go!” said I. “Wrap him up and carry him, Narayan Singh!”
My brain was working at last. It balks like a mule at the wrong time always; but just once so often I get the right idea, and then my thews and sinews take charge and something happens. Narayan Singh, whose greatest quality is swift obedience, snatched one of Grim’s Bedouin cloaks from a hook behind the door, caught the protesting Chinaman in its folds like a fish in a net, and picked him up as if he were a baby.
“Come on!”
We shot downstairs and into the street as if the house were on fire, poor old Chu Chi Ying suffering uncomplainingly as his legs hit the corners, and at the foot of the stairs we cannoned into Grim.
“Come on!” I answered.
So we took the sidewalk at a run together, and before we had gone half a block an officer called from a passing armoured lorry to know what we had there, and where we were bound.
“Wounded man!” I shouted.
“All right,” he answered. “Get indoors as quick as possible, and stay there.”
The principle was to get all Europeans off the streets. We were stopped six times in half a mile by officers, some of whom insisted on seeing our ‘wounded man’. But by that time Chu Chi Ying had the rules of the game down fine, and when an officer uncovered him he rolled his eyes, stuck out his tongue, and made such grimaces that he almost convinced me. Between times he directed us from street to street, and I told Grim briefly what had happened.
“It was my fault!” growled Narayan Singh, crushing Chu Chi Ying so savagely that the Chinaman yelled. “I will never forgive myself.”
“If you talk rot I’ll give you no chance to redeem yourself!” Grim retorted. “Have you never seen me make mistakes?”
That was the last word, so far as I know, that was ever exchanged between them on that subject, but it had a bearing on what followed, for a Sikh, like most other men, reacts gratefully to that kind of treatment.
The street fighting was by no means over, although most of the whites w
ere safe indoors and the men in uniform were in such strong detachments that they were having matters their own way. But, when the lorries passed, the fighting resumed down the side streets behind them, for there’s no time like a riot for paying off old scores, and in Egypt — Cairo especially — everybody has a grudge against almost everybody else. The ambulances were scooting like hawks along a hedgerow, and every once in a while a shot would ring out to remind the crowds that the machine-guns were ready for business.
Narayan Singh would not let either of us carry e Chinaman. He liked the effort. He was doing penance. Chu Chi Ying weighed less than a hundred pounds, but did you ever try to carry that much in your arms at a good, sharp trot? The Sikh never set his burden down once, nor paused to shift it; and he seemed to be going as strong as ever when, under Chu Chi Ying’s direction, we turned down a narrow alley between high walls. There were trees peering over the top of the walls in places, but that was only in between high buildings, whose windows were small, high up, and barred with iron.
All down that street there was only one doorway, and that hardly more than a slit in the high wall. The wall was built of limestone looted from ancient monuments — as likely as not from the casing of the Great Pyramid — and the door was of iron, set deep in mortice, so that neither locks nor hinges were visible from outside.
“There! That door!” said Chu Chi Ying, and the Sikh set him on his feet at last.
Without a word Grim took to his heels and ran straight on down the alley at full pelt. I was just in time to see an Egyptian in tarboosh and patent leather shoes disappear round the corner into another alley that crossed ours nearly at right angles, but as Grim can run about two yards to my one I did not join in the pursuit. Instead, I began examining the iron door, wondering how we could get inside it.
It was Narayan Singh, Sikh-fashion observing everything with hardly a motion of his head, who, saw and pounced on incontestable evidence that we had come to the right place. He picked up a piece of extremely fine linen about an inch, and a half square that lay between the cobble-stones to one side of the door, and passed it to me.
“Does the sahib recognize that?”
It had been torn from Joan Angela Leich’s handkerchief. There was no doubt of it. It bore the initials J. A. L. done in a peculiar style of needle work. The linen might have come from almost any expensive store, but that peculiar embroidery was done by a Piute Indian at only one place in the world. Nor had the scrap of linen been wrenched off in a scuffle. It was torn off square, deliberately.
CHAPTER XV. “Speak, o man of swift decisions!”
Grim came back, dragging the Egyptian with him — a sulky, well-dressed, pimply-faced, obvious debauchee, who swore by Allah he would have Grim punished. He denied ever having been through that iron door; denied even knowing whose house it belonged to. But Chu Chi Ying identified him as one of the men who had been in the house when he first told his story of Khufu’s real tomb to a committee of Zegloush Pasha’s friends.
“I never saw that Japanese in my whole life!” the Egyptian protested.
“Kill um dead!” suggested our Chinese friend.
Narayan Singh went in search of a crowbar, but might as well have looked for diamonds.
Grim offered to let the Egyptian go if he would tell where Joan Angela Leich and Mrs. Watts were at that minute.
“Hasn’t there been a riot?” he retorted. “What stupidity to ask me! Rioters have certainly seized them and carried them off! Quelle betise! Je m’en fiche de vos dames americaines. Women who accept invitations to ride in strange carriages deserve whatever happens to them!”
That was not convincing. Narayan Singh, returning from a fruitless hunt, tried other tactics.
“Do you want to die, Egyptian?” he demanded.
“Dog of an Indian!”
The Sikh grinned. He dared kill anyone that minute. But Grim shook his head, and then turned suddenly. Back at the corner of the alley behind us an armoured lorry had come to a standstill while its youthful officer made up his mind which street to patrol next. Grim passed the Egyptian to me to hold, and again went off at a run. In a minute he was talking to the officer. In another minute the officer and ten privates had climbed down from the lorry, leaving, only two men in charge, and were following Grim in our direction.
“Miss Leich and Mrs. Watts are in here through that door?” asked the officer, nodding to me; and I recognized him for one of the gallants who had been so disappointed when I carried Joan Angela off from under his guns, so to speak, in Alexandria. He was a clean young fellow, with a campaign scar across his cheek.
“I don’t dare break that door down. By God, you know, they’d break me for it.”
“If the door were open would you follow through?” Grim asked him.
“I’ll set a guard over it, if you like, while we pass the buck to somebody and get permission to break in.”
But I decided on a swifter method. I took that Egyptian by the throat and hurled him against the iron door backward so hard that some of his false teeth fell out.
“You open that,” I said, “or I’ll kick you through it!”
I meant it. He knew I meant it. If he hadn’t the means of opening that door, so much the worse for him. He hesitated, so I gave him another dose of the same medicine, and he made up what was left of his mind that of two evils his Egyptian friends were probably less dangerous.
“That is enough!” he stammered. “I open presently! Just wait!”
I conceded him one minute. He took a clasp-knife from his pocket and rapped out a signal on the iron. It was repeated after a moment from within. He rapped out another signal. We heard a heavy bar being shifted, and the door swung open about six inches, which was plenty in the circumstances. The lot of us went through like a winning football team, into a garden full of grapes and gorgeous flowers, with date-palms spaced at intervals. A Nubian servant slammed the door behind us, and we took him along, so as to leave no enemy at our rear.
A big, old-fashioned house opened into the garden, and there was no trouble about breaking into that, for the front door stood ajar, and the Nubian who came running from within to ask our business arrived too late. We locked him, the gate-keeper, and the Egyptian who had given the signal that admitted us, into an empty closet at the end of the hall, and charged upstairs with Chu Chi Ying in our midst; he told us that the room where he had told his story was on the first floor.
We made noise enough, of course, to wake the dead, for Tommy Atkins in ammunition boots and armed with a rifle trips on no light fantastic toe; so it was hardly surprising that we found the door that Chu Chi Ying indicated locked on the inside. However, having broken all the laws of Egypt already we did not hesitate to repeat on one of them, and the door went down under the thrust of butts and shoulders.
A strange scene confronted us then. A big, old fashioned sort of drawing-room with red plush furniture, and a plain deal table in the midst. Gilt mirrors everywhere. Eleven Egyptians, most of them with “political” stomachs, rose out of easy chairs and stood looking terrified. Three men at the deal table, one of whom was Zegloush, remained seated, too frightened to move, I think.
“I thought you’d be here presently!” said Joan Angela’s voice. “Did you find my bit of handkerchief?”
She and Mrs. Watts were on two small chairs at one end of the room. Their ankles were bound fast to the chair-legs and their hands lashed behind the bent-wood backs. In front of them, on a tray on the floor, was an ordinary woman’s curling-iron being heated in an alcohol lamp: why nobody had put that out of sight when they heard us coming is beyond imagination to explain, unless fright paralysed them.
“Oh, hello, Captain Naylor! How nice, meeting you again!”
Her voice was as usual, without a tremor in it. She looked calm, but Mrs. Watts was deadly pale and very nearly fainting. Narayan Singh was first across the room, untying their hands and feet; the rest of us took precautions to prevent a stampede through the door.
“H
ave they used that hot iron? Have you suffered harm, mem-sahib?” he asked.
She laughed and shook her head.
“I owe you an apology, Narayan Singh,” I heard her say.
I couldn’t hear what he answered; he growled into his beard, and I was holding by the throat a pasha or a bey or somebody who imagined he could win the door by struggling. Captain Naylor was going the rounds disarming everybody. Three had repeating-pistols, and every single pasha of them had a knuckle-duster; one of them tried his on the British soldier who was holding him, and screamed loudly.
Grim fixed up the door more or less, and stood with his back against it.
“What next, Naylor?” he asked.
“Lord knows!” laughed Naylor, who had got round to where the women were and was resuming the flirtation left off on the steamer. He was a merry-minded little man. “It’s up to you, old top.”
He walked over to the table.
“What’s this?” he asked, picking up a typewritten document.
“That’s the title deed they wanted me to sign,” said Joan Angela. “I was to be tortured until I signed it, and killed afterward. Did you catch that man who went out? He was on his way to order a cart. The idea was to dump the remains of Mrs. Watts and me in an empty lot some time tonight and blame it on the rioters!”
“Yes, we caught him,” answered Grim, beginning to write down the names of prisoners.
They were not asked their names, but identified with indignity from the contents of their pockets, Grim and I witnessing. It was Narayan Singh who thought of what to do next, plucking Grim’s sleeve.
“Speak, O man of swift decisions!”