With the friendly advice of several of the dozen or so onlookers who had gathered when Eddie started screaming, she managed to cut him loose without much more than superficial bleeding.
The news team never aired the tape, saying it was too unpleasant for the early news and not a big enough story for the late. Or maybe it was too violent. But the talk is, you can see that tape for a couple of bottles of good Scotch whisky.
If you see the tape, you can see the thing that really prevented its airing on TV. Eddie’s truck had been decorated for him. Around the low walls of the pickup were hanging carefully framed photos. Each was of a woman or girl who had been terrorized in the area within the last few years. Each was hung with carefully arranged black satin, like the photos of dead heroes. Each showed a victim just after she had been interviewed by police. Nobody ever discovered where the leak was; these were the private police photos, and theoretically, nobody had access to them but the cops and the victims, and none of those was talking.
Nobody has seen Eddie with a girl for a very long while.
Sally Whitfield lives alone, now, in the house she inherited when her parents died. She often dates; and is known as a friendly person who never has a bad word to say about anybody. Lately they call her a little eccentric, especially since she’s taken to walking about in her house without clothing, carrying a gigantic black cat and singing to it in Welsh, with a shotgun under her other arm. But everybody likes her.
And the odd thing is that even though it’s well known that she never wears clothing at home, there aren’t any cases of peeping Toms, either. None that are reported, anyhow.
I like her, too. Sometimes we take in a movie together.
Egyptian Days
by Edward D. Hoch
© 1994 by Edward D. Hoch
Retired from Britain’s secret service, Mr. Hoch’s sleuth Jeffrey Rand is free to find his cases where he may, without the constraint of involvement by Concealed Communications. As a result, his adventures are as fresh as today’s headlines, as in this tale of terror in Egypt...
It was in the Old City section of Cairo that Rand first encountered the Egyptian astrologer Ibn Shubra. He had wandered the crowded streets for an hour before finally locating the narrow alleyway he sought, part of the elaborate labyrinth of fragile old structures of wood and brick. A century ago, rich and poor had lived together in the Old City, but now only the poor remained among the piles of rubbish and leaking sewers.
Rand had been told to look for a weathered wooden sign with a half-moon on it. He found it near the end of the alleyway, where a bearded man wrapped in rags was asleep on the bottom step. He made his way up to the top floor of the building, knocked, and waited until a tall man in black answered.
“I am looking for Ibn Shubra,” Rand said. “I was sent by Max Zeitner, a bartender at the Nile Hilton.”
The faint aroma of jasmine reached his nostrils as the tall man stepped aside and motioned him to enter. “I am Shubra. Have you come for a reading?”
“In a way, but not for myself. Max said you could tell me more than anyone about the Egyptian Days.”
“The Days. Yes, I can. Come in.” He switched on a dim light by a small table. The room was growing dark in the late afternoon, lit only by the sun filtering through the fine latticework of a meshre-beeyeh bay window. “Have a seat please, Mr. Rand.”
“You know my name.”
“Max Zeitner called to say you were coming. I had expected you sooner, but the alleys are like a maze to the uninitiated. Might I offer you some tea or a glass of wine?”
“Tea will be fine. I admit to a thirst after my search for you.”
He disappeared through beaded curtains and returned in a moment with a cup of strong tea, obviously already prepared. “What do you wish to know about the Days?” he asked, seating himself across the table from Rand. Perhaps for some customers he produced a crystal ball as well as a cup of tea.
“What are they? What effect do they have on people?”
He placed his hands together as if in prayer. Rand could see that the apartment, and perhaps the whole house, had once been the domain of a wealthy merchant or perhaps a lawyer. Had this man lived in such luxury, or had he only acquired the place during its present days of decline?
“I am an astrologer,” Ibn Shubra began, speaking in the soft, precise voice of a teacher who begins by stating the obvious. “It was a long time ago that my native predecessors named the unlucky days, days on which no business should be transacted. These became known as the Egyptian Days. Astrologers named two in each month.”
“Max was able to tell me that much,” Rand persisted, “but I understand that three days each year are especially unlucky. Even people who ignore the others view these as especially baneful.”
The tall man nodded. “They are the last Monday in April, the second Monday in August, and the third Monday in December. The worst days of all. The Egyptian Days.”
“Next week is the last Monday in April.”
“I know that,” he replied with a slight smile.
“What can be done to ward off the evil influence?”
“Nothing.” He shrugged. “True believers will remain at home and do no work.”
Rand leaned forward. “Are you a true believer, Mr. Shubra? Will you be casting horoscopes next Monday?”
Shubra’s eyes raised to meet his. “I do what must be done, Mr. Rand, for the good of my people.”
It was almost evening when Rand returned to the Nile Hilton where he was staying with his wife Leila. It was a return visit for them both, more than twenty years after they’d first met there. In those days Leila had been in graduate school, Rand had been in British Intelligence, and the Russians had been in Egypt. His first sight of her had been in his hotel room. She was twenty-five years old, studying archaeology at Cairo University.
Now, as he entered their room and found her resting on the bed, it all came back to him. “Been out shopping?” he asked.
She opened her eyes and nodded. “It’s hot for late April. And I don’t remember the city being this crowded.” Then she sat up on the bed. “I was just resting. Are we going out to dinner?”
“How about eating downstairs? They have a nice dining room. It’s a bit late, and the other good restaurants might be crowded on a Friday night.”
Leila gave her sardonic chuckle. “And besides, you hate Egyptian food. Here at the hotel you can dine just as if we were back in London.”
“I suppose so,” he admitted with a smile. She was still the small, dark-haired woman he remembered from that first night in a different Cairo hotel room, with the pleasing Middle Eastern features that came from her father rather than her English mother.
“What about the astrologer?” she asked after a moment, perhaps only just remembering where he’d been. “Did you locate him?”