“Well?”
“In the first place, there is this man Kuvetli. He’s a fool, as I’ve said, but he’ll have to be put off the scent somehow.”
“You need have no fears.” Graham thought he detected a note of contempt in the smooth heavy voice. “Kuvetli will cause no trouble. It will be easy to give him the slip in Genoa. The next thing he will hear of you is that you are suffering from typhus. He will be unable to prove anything to the contrary.”
Graham was relieved. Obviously, Moeller thought him a fool. He said doubtfully: “Yes, I see. That’s all right, but what about this typhus? If I’m going to be taken ill I’ve got to be taken ill properly. If I were really taken ill I should probably be on the train when it happened.”
Moeller sighed. “I see that you’ve been thinking very seriously, Mr. Graham. Let me explain. If you were really infected with typhus you would already be feeling unwell. There is an incubation period of a week or ten days. You would not, of course, know what was the matter with you. By to-morrow you would be feeling worse. It would be logical for you to shrink from spending the night in a train. You would probably go to an hotel for the night. Then, in the morning, when your temperature began to rise and the characteristics of the disease became apparent, you would be removed to a clinic.”
“Then we shall go to an hotel to-morrow?”
“Exactly. There will be a car waiting for us. But I advise you to leave the arrangements to me, Mr. Graham. Remember, I am just as interested as you are in seeing that nobody’s suspicions are aroused.”
Graham affected to ponder this. “All right then,” he said at last. “I’ll leave it to you. I don’t want to be fussy, but you can understand that I don’t want to have any trouble when I get home.”
There was a silence and for a moment he thought that he had overacted. Then Moeller said slowly: “You have no reason to worry. We shall be waiting for you outside the Customs shed. As long as you do not attempt to do anything foolish-you might, for example, decide to change your mind about your holiday-everything will go smoothly. I can assure you that you will have no trouble when you get home.”
“As long as that’s understood.”
“Is there anything else you want to say?”
“No. Good night.”
“Good night, Mr. Graham. Until to-morrow.”
Graham waited until Moeller had reached the deck below. Then he drew a deep breath. It was over. He was safe. All he had to do now was to go to his cabin, get a good night’s sleep and wait for Mr. Kuvetli in cabin number four. He felt suddenly very tired. His body was aching as if he had been working too hard. He made his way down to his cabin. It was as he passed the landing door of the saloon that he saw Josette.
She was sitting on one of the banquettes watching José and Banat playing cards. Her hands were on the edge of the seat and she was leaning forward, her lips parted slightly, her hair falling across her cheeks. There was something about the pose that reminded him of the moment, years ago it seemed, when he had followed Kopeikin into her dressing-room at Le Jockey Cabaret. He half expected her to raise her head and turn towards him, smiling.
He realized suddenly that he was seeing her for the last time, that before another day had passed he would be for her merely a disagreeable memory, someone who had treated her badly. The realization was sharp and strangely painful. He told himself that he was being absurd, that it had always been impossible for him to stay with her in Paris and that he had known it all along. Why should the leave-taking trouble him now? And yet it did trouble him. A phrase came into his head: “to part is to die a little.” He knew suddenly that it was not Josette of whom he was taking his leave, but of something of himself. In the back streets of his mind a door was slowly closing for the last time. She had complained that for him she was just a part of the journey from Istanbul to London. There was more to it than that. She was part of the world beyond the door: the world into which he had stepped when Banat had fired those three shots at him in the Adler-Palace: the world in which you recognised the ape beneath the velvet. Now he was on his way back to his own world; to his house and his car and the friendly, agreeable woman he called his wife. It would be exactly the same as when he had left it. Nothing would be changed in that world; nothing, except himself.
He went on down to his cabin.
He slept fitfully. Once he awoke with a start, believing that someone was opening the door of his cabin. Then he remembered that the door was bolted and concluded that he had been dreaming. When next he awoke, the engines had stopped and the ship was no longer rolling. He switched on the light and saw that the time was a quarter past four. They had arrived at the entrance to Genoa harbour. After a while he heard the chugging of a small boat and a fainter clatter from the deck above. There were voices too. He tried to distinguish Mr. Kuvetli’s among them, but they were too muffled. He dozed.
He had told the steward to bring coffee at seven. Towards six, however, he decided that it was useless to try to sleep any more. He was already dressed when the steward arrived.
He drank his coffee, put the remainder of his things in his case and sat down to wait. Mr. Kuvetli had told him to go into the empty cabin at eight o’clock. He had promised himself that he would obey Mr. Kuvetli’s instructions to the letter. He listened to the Mathis arguing over their packing.
At about a quarter to eight the ship began to move in. Another five minutes and he rang for the steward. By five to eight the steward had been, received with barely concealed surprise fifty lire, and gone, taking the suitcase with him. Graham waited another minute and then opened the door.
The alleyway was empty. He walked along slowly to number four, stopped as if he had forgotten something, and half turned. The coast was still clear. He opened the door, stepped quickly into the cabin, shut the door, and turned round.
The next moment he almost fainted.
Lying across the floor with his legs under the lower berth and his head covered with blood, was Mr. Kuvetli.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Most of the bleeding seemed to have been caused by a scalp wound on the back of the head; but there was another wound, which had bled comparatively little and which looked as if it had been made with a knife, low on the left side of the neck. The movements of the ship had sent the slowly congealing blood trickling to and fro in a madman’s scrawl across the linoleum. The face was the colour of dirty clay. Mr. Kuvetli was clearly dead.
Graham clenched his teeth to prevent himself retching and held on to the washing cabinet for support. His first thought was that he must not be sick, that he must pull himself together before he called for help. He did not realise immediately the implications of what had happened. So that he should not look down again he had kept his eyes fixed on the porthole and it was the sight of the funnel of a ship lying beyond a long concrete jetty that reminded him that they were going into harbour. In less than an hour the gangways would be down. And Mr.
Kuvetli had not reached the Turkish Consulate. The shock of the realisation brought him to his senses. He looked down.
It was Banat’s work without a doubt. The little Turk had probably been stunned in his own cabin or in the alleyway outside it, dragged out of sight into this, the nearest empty cabin, and butchered while he was still insensible. Moeller had decided to dispose of a possible threat to the smooth working of his arrangements for dealing with the principal victim. Graham remembered the noise which had awakened him in the night. It might have come from the next cabin. “Do not leave your cabin under any circumstances until eight o’clock the following morning. It might be dangerous.” Mr. Kuvetli had failed to take his own advice and it had been dangerous. He had declared himself ready to die for his country and he had so died. There he was, his chubby fists clenched pitifully, his fringe of grey hair matted with his blood and the mouth which had smiled so much half open and inanimate.