“You!”
“I,” replied Holmes.
Silence fell, silence aside from the strained breathing of several people, which ended when Karim Bey seemed to make up his mind about something and gave an almost imperceptible nod. We all braced ourselves and Ali’s gun went up again, but the man moved only his eyes, first to look at Mahmoud, then Ali and me, and finally at Holmes. He held his gaze there for a long moment, studying his escaped victim, then lifted his eyes to a point over all our heads, raised his right fist, and swung it in towards his chest. I thought for a startled instant that Bey was giving some archaic form of salute until Holmes shouted “No!” and started to scramble to his feet, but he was too late. When Bey’s fist made contact with the front of his robe there was a muffled thump—not a big noise, but Bey flew backwards as if he’d been kicked by a horse. His lamp crashed to the floor and burst into flames, sending a great billow of burning paraffin down the tunnel towards us, but even as we flung ourselves around the corner, we could see the man in the monk’s robes, crumpled against the wall of the tunnel, thrown there by the force of the spare detonator he had carried in his breast.
TWENTY-EIGHT
ى
Scholars are, of all people, those least acquainted with the methods of politics.
—
THE
Muqaddimah
OF IBN KHALDÛN
We climbed out of the depths like four wraiths leaving a tomb, every bit as dirty and nearly as lifeless. Once we had lifted ourselves up into the derelict house in the Souk el-Qattanin, we collapsed to the floor with our backs against the walls, staring unseeing at the hole at our feet. Ali cursed monotonously, in Arabic and at least two other languages, and for once I was in full agreement. It was a victory, but not a clean one, and far from complete. Holmes, I knew, might look as if he was about to fall asleep, but his brain would already be worrying away at the sizeable question of how, with Bey dead, we were going to lay hands on his informant, and weighing the possibilities of it being the Government House clerk Bertram Ellison.
I dropped my head into my hands and waited for the ringing in my ears to subside, the flash spot in my vision to fade; all I could see was Bey’s curious gesture, over and over again, that quasi-military salute with which he had gone to his death. That we-who-are-about-to-die-salute-you sort of gesture.
And I could not reconcile the salute with the man’s scorn for his victims, neither the intimacy with which he had run his eyes over Mahmoud’s scar nor the surprise on his face when he recognised Holmes. And surely a slap would have been a more effective way to set off the detonator, not the smaller surface of the fist. And—
I shook my head. This was sheer phantasy, akin to augury or the reading of a crystal ball. What difference did it make if he slapped or he pounded? How could I know if the gesture meant anything to him beyond proud defiance?
But he had looked up, beyond us all. And his back had straightened. And his elbow had been raised to bring the fist straight on. Drawing himself up to meet death? Or… or a last, half-humorous salute to an unseen captain?
God, I thought, I’m losing my mind. Mahmoud is going to look down his nose at me and Ali will laugh in harsh scorn, but I have to say this.
“Holmes?”
“Yes, Russell.”
“Are we certain that Bey was the leader here?”
Ali jeered and Mahmoud looked, and Holmes leant back and closed his eyes. I persisted.
“He recognised you just now, but he did not know who you really are. And he certainly did not know me for anything other than an Arab boy. He had no clue that he was facing Sherlock Holmes and Mary Russell.”
“Because his information was incomplete.” He sounded so tired.
“But why? Was it because his informant didn’t know? Or could it have been because his commander didn’t care to tell him?”
“Russell…”
“It doesn’t fit, Holmes,” I continued desperately. “Everything we know about Bey makes it unlikely that he would suddenly decide to become political. He was more than satisfied with his position in the Old Serai, torturing prisoners and… well.” I thought perhaps I ought to abandon that line of argument. “He seems to be in two places at once, killing Mikhail one night and the mullah halfway across the country the next; he is both a planner and spontaneous, cautious and heedless. You said yourself that he seems to be of two minds. I merely suggest that he is that in fact.”
“What Amir says makes a good deal of sense,” said Mahmoud. I turned and stared at him in disbelief.
“So you suggest that instead of merely cleaning up the rest of the gang,” Holmes said, “we should be looking out for the other head. Perhaps the—if I may use the word—mastermind.”
“It is a valid hypothesis, Holmes,” I said. To my relief, he smiled.
“Very well. In which case, I think we ought to move quickly. In my experience, master criminals, political or otherwise, tend not to wait about for one to catch them up.”
The one glaring unexplored strand in this tangle was the house in the Moslem Quarter that had been used by Bey and his men to bring in the larger pieces of equipment, the tools and explosives that they had not dared carry through the Souk el-Qattanin. That heavy, iron-studded door in the roof of the Cotton Grotto opened into a house, and the occupants of that house had to have some part in the plot.
Unfortunately, there was no way of matching our knowledge of the grotto with the map of the streets overhead, not with any precision. Holmes took out the thin, damp, much-abused map and spread it out delicately on the floor. With purpose, a degree of energy returned to our little band.
After some thought, we decided that the house must be on the south side of Haret es-Saadiyeh, possibly in the vicinity of a cul-de-sac alley that cut into the block of buildings. We could, of course, turn the entire search over to Allenby, leaving his soldiers and police to seal off the area and do a house-by-house search, but none of us seriously considered that option; in that we were agreed.
We did need an authority figure, however, to keep us from being arrested for loitering or house invasion by an over-zealous soldier. All three of us looked at Holmes.
“Do you still have that uniform, Holmes?” I asked.
He sighed. “I regret to say I do.”
“Then you can be responsible for keeping the police off our backs.”
“While you… ?”
It was my turn to sigh. “While I get into the grotto and knock on that door. Loudly.”
“Very, very loudly,” said Mahmoud. He and Ali (particularly Ali) looked pleased at this division of labour, and I reflected that I, too, would much prefer to be assigned the task of standing on a street corner or roof top, waiting to catch the fleeing rats that my subterranean pounding would, with any luck, dislodge.
“Why do men always get the fun jobs?” I complained, and took out my pocket-watch. “What time should I begin?” I looked at the timepiece, then held it unbelieving up to my ear. It had not stopped; it was barely 2:30. Allenby would still be at the Haram, talking.
“Forty minutes if I run,” Holmes answered.
Even considering the diminutive nature of the Old City, I thought that forty minutes would have him shedding kuffiyahs and doing up uniform buttons as he trotted down the steps of the David Street bazaar.
“Shall we say fifty?”