He Shall Thunder in the Sky taps-12 Page 24

  “Know?” Nefret repeated. I could barely make out her features, it was so dark. “Know what?”

  “That trouble is brewing,” Emerson said calmly. A sudden outburst of noise, including a pistol shot, made him add, “Boiled over, rather. Follow me.”

  A lesser man might have ordered the rest of us to stay where we were. Emerson knew none of us would obey such an order anyhow, and until we had ascertained precisely what the situation was, it was safer to keep together. He switched on his electric torch and led the way along the lane.

  The only open door was that of Aslimi’s shop. As we hastened toward it, one of the men outside turned with an expletive and a raised weapon. Emerson struck it out of his hand.

  “Don’t be a fool. What is going on?”

  “Is it you, O Father of Curses?” the fellow exclaimed. “We have him cornered—Wardani—or one of his men—there is a fifty-pound reward!”

  I heard a gasp from Nefret, and then Ramses said, “Where is he?”

  “He went into the back room. The door is barred but we will soon have it down!”

  It certainly appeared that they would, and that they would smash every object in the shop during the process. Small loss, I thought, as an enthusiastic ax-wielder swept a row of fake pots off a shelf. But…

  “Hell and damnation!” said Emerson, retreating in such haste that I had to run to keep up with him.

  There are no alleyways or conventional back doors in the Khan el Khalili. Most of the shops are mere cubicles, open only at the front. We may have been among the few Europeans who knew that Aslimi’s establishment did have another entrance—or, in this case, exit. It opened onto a space between two adjoining structures that was so narrow a casual observer would not have taken it for a passageway, and even knowing its approximate location we would have missed it in the darkness without the aid of Emerson’s torch.

  “Turn off your torch,” Ramses said urgently.

  Emerson’s only answer was to thrust out his arm in a sweeping arc that flattened Ramses and Nefret against the adjoining wall. Standing square in the opening, he allowed the light to play for a moment on his face before he directed the beam into the passageway. Peering under his arm, I had a fleeting glimpse of a figure that halted for a moment before it disappeared.

  “He saw me, I think,” Emerson said in a satisfied voice. “After me, Peabody. Bring up the rear, Ramses, if you please.”

  “Shouldn’t we tell the police?” I asked.

  “No use now, they’d never track him in this maze.”

  “But we can!” Nefret exclaimed. She was panting with excitement.

  “We may not have to,” Emerson said.

  Emerson thought he was being enigmatic and mysterious, but of course I knew what he meant. I always know what Emerson means. He had deliberately made a target of himself so the fugitive would see him and, as Emerson hoped, be willing to deal with him. Honesty and integrity, as I have always said, have practical advantages. Every man in Cairo knew that when the Father of Curses gave his word he would keep it.

  As it turned out, Emerson’s hope was justified. After we had squeezed through the passageway, where Emerson and Ramses had to go sideways, we emerged into a wider way and saw a shadow slip into the darker shadows of what appeared to be a doorway but was, in fact, another narrow street.

  The Hoshasheyn district is a survival of medieval Cairo , and indeed most medieval cities must have been like it—dark, odorous, mazelike. Our quarry led us a merry dance, keeping close enough to be seen but not to be apprehended. Our progress was slightly impeded by Seshat, who in her eagerness to follow the fugitive (or possibly a rat) kept winding her lead round our limbs, until Ramses picked her up and returned her to his shoulder, gripping her collar with one hand. Emerson used his torch only when it was absolutely necessary. At last we came out into a small square. A fountain tinkled, like raindrops in the night.

  “There,” I cried, pointing to a door that stood ajar. Light showed through the opening.

  “Hmmm,” said Emerson, stroking his chin. “It has the look of a trap.”

  “It is,” Ramses said. “He’s there. By the door. He has a gun.”

  Farouk stepped into view. He did indeed have a gun. “So it is true, as they say of the Brother of Demons, that he can see in the dark. I was waiting for you.”

  “Why?” inquired Emerson.

  “I am willing to come to terms.”

  “Excellent,” I exclaimed. “Come with us, then, and we—”

  “No, no, Sitt Hakim, I am not such a fool as that.” He switched to English, as if he were demonstrating his intellectual abilities. “Come in. Close the door and bar it.”

  “What do you think?” Emerson inquired, looking at Ramses.

  “In my opinion,” I began.

  “I did not ask your opinion, Peabody .”

  Farouk was showing signs of strain. “Stop talking and do as I say! Do you want the information I can give you or not?”

  “Yes,” Nefret said. Before any of us could stop her she had entered the room. Farouk backed up a few steps. He kept the pistol leveled at her breast.

  The rest of us followed, naturally. The room was small and low ceilinged and very dirty. A single lamp cast a smoky light. Emerson closed the door and dropped the bar into place. “Make your proposal,” he said softly. “I lose patience very quickly when someone threatens my daughter.”

  “Do you suppose I don’t know that?” The light was dim, but I saw that Farouk’s face was shining with perspiration. “I would not be fool enough to harm her, or any of you, unless you force me to, nor am I fool enough to go on with a game that is becoming dangerous to me. Now listen. In exchange for what I can tell you I want two things: immunity and money. You will bring the money with you when we next meet. A thousand English pounds in gold.”

  “A large sum,” Emerson mused.

  “You will think it low when you hear what I have to say. She has it. Will you pay it, Nur Misur?”

  “Yes,” she said quickly.

  “Just a minute, Nefret,” Emerson said. “Before you agree to a bargain you had better make certain what it is you are paying for. The whereabouts of Kamil el-Wardani are not worth a thousand pounds to us or even to the police.”

  “I have a bigger fish than that to put on your hook. Wardani is a pike, but I will give you a shark.”

  “Well-read chap, isn’t he?” Emerson inquired of me.

  “Do you agree or not?” Farouk demanded. “If you are trying to keep me here until the police come—”

  “Furthest thing from my mind,” said Emerson.

  “We agree,” Nefret exclaimed. “Where and when shall we deliver the money?”

  “Tomorrow night… No. The night after. At an hour before midnight . There is a certain house in Maadi…”

  Seshat let out a strangled mew and turned her head to stare accusingly at Ramses. He put her on the floor and straightened to face Farouk. The young villain’s lips had parted in a pleased smile. “You know the place,” he said.

  “I know it,” Emerson said.

  Farouk’s smile broadened. “You will come alone, Father of Curses.”

  “I think not,” Ramses said. “Why should we trust you?”

  “What good would it do me to kill him, even if I could? I will have the money, and his promise that he will not tell the police for three days. I will trust his word for that. He is known to be a man of honor.”

  “Flattering,” said Emerson. “Very well, I will be there.”

  “Good.”

  Nefret was closer to him than the rest of us. He had only to put out his arm. It wrapped round her and pulled her hard against his body.

  I tightened my grip on Emerson, but for once it was Ramses whose temper got the better of his common sense. Quickly as he moved, the other man was ready for him. The barrel of the gun caught him across the side of the head and sent him sprawling.

  “Stop it!” Nefret cried. “I’ll go with him. Please, Professor!
Ramses, are you all right?”

  Ramses sat up. A dark trail of blood trickled down his cheek. “No. But I deserved it. Damned fool thing to do. If she comes to harm—”

  “If she is injured it will be your fault,” Farouk snarled. “I only want her as a hostage, in case I am cornered by the police. You had better pray that I am not.”

  “If it proves necessary we will head them off,” Emerson said. The arm I held felt like stone, but his voice was unnaturally calm. “If she is not back within an hour—”

  “I have never known people who talked so much,” Farouk cried hysterically. “Stop talking! Go to the west gate of the Khan el Khalili and wait. She will come. In an hour! In the name of God, do not talk any more!”

  He backed through the hanging at the other side of the room, pulling her with him.

  “Don’t even think of following,” I said, as Ramses got to his feet.

  “No,” said Emerson. “He’s on the edge of hysteria already. Ramses, that was a damned fool thing to do. Not that I blame you. I might have done the same if your mother had not had me in a firm grip.”

  “No, you wouldn’t have,” Ramses said. He wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. I offered him my handkerchief, which he took without acknowledging or even appearing to notice it. “You have better sense.”

  “Where is Seshat?” I asked, looking round the room.

  “Gone after them, do you think?” Emerson asked.

  “I don’t know,” Ramses said. “And at the moment I don’t much care. Let’s go.”

  It took us some time to make our way to the western gate of the Khan, which was now closed. The lanes were uncommonly deserted, even for that time of night. Evidently the police had gone in another direction, or had abandoned the hunt. There was a coffee shop under the tiled arch across from the entrance; we sat down on the wooden bench outside, the occupants having politely or prudently departed when they saw us. Emerson asked what I would like.

  “Whiskey,” I said grimly. “But I will settle for tea.”

  “She’ll be all right,” Ramses said. The trail of dried blood looked like a scar. I pried my handkerchief from his fingers and dipped it in the glass of water the waiter had brought.

  “He did not strike me as a killer,” I said.

  “Oh, he’s a killer, all right,” Ramses said. “But he won’t injure someone who has promised to give him a thousand pounds.”

  Emerson took out his watch. It was the third time he had done so since we sat down, and I informed him I would smash the confounded thing if he did it again. Ramses sat like a block of stone while I cleaned his face. Then he said, “While we are waiting we may as well get our story straight. Do you think she suspects our presence at Aslimi’s was no accident?”

  “Probably,” said Emerson, reaching for his pocket, catching my eye, and extracting his pipe instead of his watch. “She’s very quick. But so far as she knows, the police were after Wardani and nothing more. When Farouk offered us a bigger fish… Good Gad! You don’t suppose that was an indirect attempt at blackmail, do you? It would certainly be worth a thousand pounds to keep him quiet if he knows you are—”

  “Don’t say it!” I exclaimed.

  “I wasn’t going to,” Emerson said, giving me an injured look.

  “I don’t see how he could know,” Ramses said. The only light came from a lamp that hung beside the grilled arch behind us. I could not make out his features, but I could see his hands. He had taken the handkerchief from me and was methodically tearing it into strips.

  “Let us assume the worst,” I said. “That he suspects—er—the truth about you and—er—the other one. It cannot be more than a suspicion, and he cannot have passed it on to his—er—employer, or he would not—”

  “Curse it, Peabody , don’t stutter!” Emerson snarled. “And don’t assume the worst! How can you sit there and—and assume things, in that cold-blooded fashion, when she is… When she may be… What time is it?”

  “Father, please don’t look at your watch again,” Ramses said, in a voice so tightly controlled I expected it to crack. “It’s been less than half an hour. I don’t believe we need assume anything other than the obvious. The proposition was as direct as he dared make, and Nefret obviously understood his meaning too. She was with you when Russell told you he believed Wardani was collaborating with the enemy. The question of my identity is another matter altogether. There is no reason to believe Farouk knows about that, and Nefret certainly does not.”

  “I wish we could tell her,” I murmured.

  “You know why we cannot.” His eyes remained fixed on the gateway across the street. “Mother, she walked straight into that filthy den, with a gun pointing at her. She didn’t hesitate, she didn’t stop to think before she acted. She has always been guided by her heart instead of her head; she always will be. If she lost that fiery temper of hers she might say the wrong thing to the wrong person, and—”

  His voice did crack then. I put my hand over his. “There is something more,” I said. “Isn’t there? Some particular reason why you don’t trust her to hold her tongue. You never told us how Percy learned it was you who got him out of the bandit camp. Was it Nefret who gave you away?”

  The hand under mine clenched into a fist. “Mother, for God’s sake! Not now!”

  “Better now than later, or not at all. You said only three people knew—David, Lia, and Nefret. It could not have been David or Lia, they did not arrive in Egypt until after Percy had concocted his dastardly scheme to have you accused of fathering his child. Percy had been pursuing Nefret—”

  “She didn’t mean to.” He spoke in a ragged whisper, his eyes still on the dark entrance to the Khan. “She couldn’t have known what he would do.”

  “Of course not. My dear boy—”

  “It’s all right.” He had got his breathing under control. “I don’t blame her; how could I? It was one of those damnable, unpredictable, uncontrollable sequences of events that no one could have anticipated. All I’m saying is that there’s no need for her to know more than she does already. What could she do but worry and want to help? Then I’d have to worry about her.”

  “You are being unfair,” I said. “And perhaps just a little overprotective?”

  “If I had been a little more protective or a little quicker, she wouldn’t be out there in the dark alleys of Cairo with a man who is approximately as trustworthy as a scorpion.” He lit another cigarette.

  “You are smoking too much,” I said.

  “No doubt.”

  “Give me one. Please.”

  He raised his eyebrows at me, but complied, and lit it for me. The acrid taste was like a penance. “It was my fault,” I said. “Not yours. You didn’t want her to come tonight. I thought I was being clever.”

  “I can’t stand this any longer,” Emerson muttered. “I am going to look for her.”

  “It’s all right,” Ramses said on a long exhalation of breath. “There she is.”

  She came walking out of the dark, her steps dragging a little, her head turning. Emerson’s chair went over with a crash. When she saw him running toward her she swayed forward into his outstretched arms, and he caught her to his breast.

  “Thank heaven,” I whispered.

  Ramses said, “And there, by God, is the confounded cat! How the hell did she—”

  “Don’t swear,” I said.

  Nefret would not let Emerson carry her and she refused to go home. “Not until after I’ve had something to drink,” she declared, settling into the chair Ramses held for her. “My throat is as dry as dust.”

  “Nervousness,” said her brother, snapping his fingers to summon the waiter.

  “Don’t be so supercilious. Are you going to claim you weren’t nervous about me?”

  “I was nervous about what you might do to him,” Ramses said.

  Nefret glanced pointedly at the litter of cigarette ends on the ground beside him. Her face was smudged with dust and cobwebs, and her
loosened hair had been tied back with a crumpled bit of fabric I recognized as the scarf she had lent Seshat for a lead. The cat sat down next to her chair and began grooming herself.

  Emerson began, “What did he—”

  “Let me tell it,” Nefret said. She drank thirstily from the glass of tea the waiter had brought. We were the only customers left; it was long past the time when such places normally close, but no one would have had the audacity to mention this inconvenience to any of us.

  “He didn’t hurt me,” she said, with a reassuring smile at Emerson. “After I had convinced him I wasn’t going to run away he only held my arm, to guide me. I tried to question him, but every time I spoke he hissed at me. To keep quiet, I mean. I also tried to keep track of where he was taking me, but it was hopeless; you know how the lanes wind and turn. When he finally stopped I knew we must be outside the danger area, because he seemed calmer. So I asked him who the big fish was—”

  “For the love of God, Nefret, you ought not have risked it,” Emerson exclaimed. “Er—did he tell you?”

  “He laughed and said something rude about women. That they were only good for two things, and that he expected me to supply one of them. He meant money, Professor,” she added quickly. Emerson’s face had gone purple. “I said I would get it first thing tomorrow and that we would meet him as we had promised. Then he said I was free to go, unless I wanted… That was when Seshat bit him.”

  Ramses reached down and rubbed the cat’s head. “She was following you the whole time?”

  “She must have been. I heard sounds, but I assumed it was rats. I had intended to ask him where the devil I was, but he left in rather a hurry, and it took me a while to get my bearings. Finally I decided I had better follow Seshat, who kept pushing at me, and she led me here.”

  Emerson was no longer purple, he was an odd shade of grayish lavender. “He asked you… if you wanted…”

  “Asked,” Nefret emphasized. “He was fairly blunt about it, but he didn’t insist. Especially after Seshat bit him. Now, Professor, promise you won’t lose your temper with him when you go to meet him. It is vitally important that we come to an agreement. Oh, curse it, I oughtn’t have told you!”