‘I know that voice! I thought I recognised you, monsieur. What a wonderful coincidence! We all believed you back in Hollywood, sir!’ He changed from English to French. ‘Your Highness -’ a formal gesture - ‘may I introduce to you the man I have spoken of many times. Mr Max “Ace” Peters, the cinema star. Mr Peters, you are in the presence of His Highness, the Pasha of Marrakech, El Hadj T’hami el Glaoui.’
An impasse. There was nothing I could do but bow.
‘You are very welcome here, monsieur,’ said the Pasha. At that time I took his odd grin for reluctant hospitality. His frown became expectant. For a second I had forgotten my companion. I turned to introduce her. ‘Mademoiselle von Bek . . .’
Oblivious of the others, she stared at me in horror. ‘Peters?’ Her eyes spoke of betrayal, but her voice was a knife. ‘Peters? You’re not a Bedouin sheikh?’
‘Only by choice,’ I murmured. ‘Please keep this confidence. I am Peters of the English Secret Service. I had no option but to deceive you. I also have something of a career in the cinema. What luck to run into friends! Let me do the talking!’
In an instant my terrors had flown away. I thought surely she must share my delight in this happy turn of events, but instead she interrupted me in a strangled voice and, letting the veil fall away from her frozen face, made her own introduction. ‘Rose von Bek, of the Royal Italian Geographical Expedition.’ She spoke in her formal Arabic. ‘I am so sorry to disturb your peace, Your Highness, and I appreciate your tolerance in permitting me to land in your beautiful realm. Both your courtesy and hospitality are famous throughout the world. I have long wished for the privilege of an audience. I trust you will not consider this unorthodox means of finding you too audacious. I have, of course, letters of introduction from various sponsors including our great Duce, Signor Mussolini, my master.’
El Glaoui seemed to frown at the name of Mussolini but graciously recovered himself. ‘I am flattered and enchanted,’ murmured the Berber prince in husky, thrilling accents. ‘Mr Beters I feel is an old friend, but you, mademoiselle ... are a legendary jewel. Such beauty!’
I was admiring of Rose’s quick wit and would have praised her had it not been clear that she was for some reason disgusted by me at that moment. And then, looking into her eyes, I understood. She had believed that she revealed her deepest desires to an inscrutable Oriental but instead she had shared her longings with a knowing European!
Lieutenant Fromental was delighted. His great broad face was beaming as he strode up to me and flung a comradely arm about me, all but crushing me. ‘My dear friend, this is a most marvellous piece of good fortune.’
‘Do you ride, Mr Peters?’ The red-coated Englishman with the old-fashioned grey walrus moustache and flinty eyes, the most evidently military of all the company, was clearly testing me.
‘Ride!’ Lieutenant Fromental laughed aloud. ‘Why, Mr Peters is an expert horseman!’ He winked at me, sharing a droll secret. ‘Since we last met, sir, I have had the pleasure of viewing The Lost Buckaroo. Even finer than The Buckaroo’s Code, if I may say so. Once your films are seen in France your genius will be given its due credit. The French still honour great artists.’ He became a little embarrassed. ‘Well, sir, that was what I first recognised when I saw you. Those eyes! They are unmistakable! And the voice, when I heard it, from Casablanca! I am honoured, sir!’ He opened his tunic and took out a piece of carefully folded newsprint - a publicity photograph of me raising my masked face to be kissed by Daphne LaCosse as she leans from the rails of a loco’s moving caboose. I, of course, am kneeling on my saddle! It was from The Fighting Buckaroo, one of the last films of any substance I made for Lesser. ‘I’m ashamed to say I’ve also been carrying about with me for weeks a letter I wrote to you. This is the most absurd coincidence! I thought of wiring you at Shepheard’s. Then I decided you would have returned to the United States by now. I was racking my brains to remember the name of your film company when, by magic, you materialised before me!’
‘We saw you descending, sir,’ the redcoat told me. ‘We thought the Italians were invading! The Pasha loathes the Eye-ties. You’re lucky those chaps didn’t shoot on sight!’
Fromental had stumped through the sand to where a restless stallion was offered by one of the Pasha’s guards for my use. The man would ride double, no doubt, with a comrade. Another pony was similarly prepared for Rose but in this case the Pasha took a personal interest in its suitability.
‘Anyway, here you are!’ Fromental went on cheerfully. ‘Large as life. And you’ll be delighted by my news, Mr Peters. We have discovered your missing nigger.’
‘In Morocco?’ Having had rather a swift succession of surprises and reversals I was a little uncomprehending.
‘No, no! Here! In the Tafi’lalet. Today. With us.’ He gestured boisterously towards his companions. At last as the dust settled slowly around us, I gave my attention to the fifth hooded rider whose teeth glittered through the haze like the beam of an approaching loco. ‘Good evening, colonel.’
It was none other than my faithful Mix!
I had turned up, he said, just as he thought his last run of luck was about to go dry. He dismounted and, his face filling with honest pleasure, shook me warmly by the hand. ‘I can’t tell you how glad I am you dropped by, colonel! Don’t let us split up again. At least until we’re back home!’
I must admit I was touched almost to tears by this demonstration of my dusky Sancho Panza’s devoted loyalty.
TWENTY-FOUR
THE ILLUSION ONE CREATES in the cinema is not always easy to live up to in reality. Fame brings responsibility as well as power. The Pasha and his guests were returning from an antelope hunt. On our ride to the Glaoui kasbah at Tin’rheras, while an honoured visitor from the Hollywood heavens, I regretted that discretion demand I say nothing of stuntmen to the worshipping Lieutenant Fromental. Instead, I explained an uneasy seat as residual symptoms of my old friend, malaria.
The lieutenant showed brotherly concern at this news. He thought a Czech physician was soon to be a guest of the Pasha (who made the most of his Western acquaintances during his frequent visits to Paris). Perhaps the eminent Doctor N. could be persuaded to do something for me?
Grateful as I was, I said, for this suggestion, I merely had to ride out the disease. I was sure that in a few days (when I secretly planned to be entrained for Casablanca or Tangier) I would be as right as rain. Clapping me on the back the young Frenchman assured me we would be at the kasbah by the following evening. Meanwhile, if my health improved, I was welcome to join him for a gallop over the tundra while it was still possible. ‘After Tafi’lalet, once we get into the Atlas,’ Fromental indicated the ochre foothills of a substantial mountain range now filling the northern horizon, ‘we’ll have to pick our way along those damned tracks, and rock shelves which pass for tracks, above a succession of abysses. We’ll be lucky to ride at all.’
Not for the first time since I had left California the prospect of an abyss or two was far preferable to my present predicament. It remains my belief (call it a betrayal of my Cossack blood) that the horse was merely a rough-and-ready stopgap we used while we were inventing the internal combustion engine. By some strange quirk, my native blood called not for the stallion’s forceful gallop, but the camel’s rolling plod.
The true power-holder in Morocco, thanks to his own consummate sense of strategy, El Glaoui was an animated little man in whom Arab, Negro and Berber, the three major races of this region, had married to produce a thoroughly nondescript pudgy little face which, save for his rather scrubby beard, might have been found on any bank clerk from Bangkok to Threadneedle Street. The vivacity which lit his eyes engaged one’s immediate attention, however, and sometimes his whole face seemed to shine like the sun - not always with joy, but with shame or contempt or fury, perhaps, at some cosmic injustice. His self-esteem endowed him with a kind of beauty. He understood that he was what most men aspire to and what most women desire. He had proven his judgement in politics and in battle. He had conquered the South and accomplished the great pilgrimage to Mecca, thus definitively demonstrating his courage and his piety. Now he displayed his cultural sophistication, his scholarly curiosity in all that the world had to offer.