“Forty-five, Russell.”
“Very well.” As we all stood to go, I added pointedly, “I trust that one of you will let me know when I can stop pounding.”
“Insh’allah,” said Holmes demurely. If God wills it.
Damnation,” I said aloud, startling two black-shrouded women balancing jugs on their heads. The gate to the grotto that Holmes and I had locked behind us now stood wide open, and I could see movement within the entrance. I touched the handle of the gun Holmes had given to me, and went forward.
It was not exactly relief I felt when I saw the archaeological Jacob occupying the cave mouth, but at least I would not have to shoot anyone to be allowed inside. Although I soon began to wonder if it would not have been simpler for all concerned if I had just drawn my weapon and ordered them out of my way. It might well have been kinder.
“Hello, Jacob,” I said, when I had reached the entrance. “Terribly sorry, but I was never introduced to you properly, and I don’t know your surname.”
That good gentleman just gaped at me, blinking furiously with the effort of reconciling an educated English voice with the visage before him, and wondering where on earth he had seen it before.
“Mary Russell,” I suggested. “We met the other evening over the dinner table. Dressed rather differently.” I tugged off my turban to allow him the clue of my blonde hair, and he stepped back violently. I could only pray that he did not suffer from a heart condition, and I laughed as if it was all a great joke. “I know, I know—it’s going to take some explaining, but there is an explanation, I promise you. Only not just now. It’s urgent that I go into the grotto and make some noise, to show some friends above the location of the access door. Do you know the door I mean? No? Then perhaps you’d like to see? And—might I borrow that ladder?”
The accent, the femininity, and the appeal to his curiosity disarmed him, to the extent that he trailed along after me, mouthing frail objections. He even offered to carry the stout cudgel I had brought along for the purpose of noisy pounding. His men, three highly entertained Christian Arabs, followed in a procession, carrying the ladder across the uneven floor of the grotto.
I looked at my pocket-watch, and up at the concealed door with the ladder propped beside it, and wished, not for the first time, that I smoked. Cigarettes do give one something to do while one waits, instead of reviewing grammar or making conversation. I decided that Jacob deserved some slightly more detailed explanation of events, if for nothing else than to reward him for not flinging me to the police, so in the seven minutes left before I could begin my rat-flushing racket, I told him a much-abridged and quite misleading tale with the essential goal intact: to bash away at that door up there until someone came to stop me. I stretched out the embroidery until it was time to begin, so as to avoid his no doubt pressing questions, and then stood up, seized the cudgel, and rammed it up over my head into the sturdy wooden door.
The boom was satisfying; the spray of dust and flakes of rusted iron that settled over me less so. I coughed, sneezed furiously, and squeezed my eyelids together, continuing to hammer away blindly. It was a strain, and about one blow in three missed the wood and bashed into solid rock, sending a jolt along my spine that rattled my teeth. After about a minute of this lunacy I felt something patting my boot, and Jacob’s voice raised above the echoing din. He was offering to take my place.
In the end we all took turns, perched on the creaking ladder, walloping away at the iron-hard door. Jacob the gentleman obviously thought me insane and was waiting for me to tire so he might lead me away and put a cool cloth on my fevered brow, but the three Arabs were having a fine time.
I was taking a turn on the ladder, and beginning to think Jacob might be right about my mental state, when between one blow and the next the door suddenly went hollow. I nearly dropped the cudgel onto the heads below, fumbling to exchange it for the gun in my belt. The door scraped open, my audience gasped, and I was looking over the sights of the revolver at: Ali. A grinning, blood-streaked Ali who had patently succeeded in conquering the house above.
“So, you wish to shoot me this time?” he asked politely, and I reflected that each time I nearly killed him, he became increasingly friendly towards me. His broad hand reached down. I let the battering ram fall onto an unoccupied patch of floor, stuck the revolver back into my belt, and reached up to take his hand and be hauled bodily through the hole. He kicked at the door, and I could only call a hasty “Thank you!” through the gap before it was down and bolted again. I agreed: this was no place for introducing Irregulars.
Ali caught up his lamp from the floor and made for a stairway.
“How many did you get?” I asked him.
“Four,” he answered cheerfully. “All alive, none talking yet. By God, that Holmes of yours is a good fighter.”
That Holmes of mine was nursing a set of swollen knuckles and a reddened eye, and looked immensely pleased with himself. He and Mahmoud were dragging the fourth trussed and gagged body back into the building, where they tossed him down with his companions, looking like so many rolled-up carpets. Holmes shut the door authoritatively on the curious crowd outside, and we stood looking at our haul.
Then, slowly and dramatically, Ali drew forth his wicked blade, and four sets of eyes went wide, four foreheads went instantly damp with sweat. No: five. I too had no desire for that blade to be applied to digging out secrets. I put out a hand to touch Ali’s arm, studying the men at my feet. Four dark-skinned men in Arab dress, not the clothing of the poorest inhabitants, but none of them was wealthy. One was young, scarcely my age, and he looked near to passing out with terror. I squeezed Ali’s rock-like forearm once again for good measure, and went over to kneel beside the young man.
“I will not hurt you,” I said to him. His eyes flickered to my face, then glued themselves back on Ali. I shifted, to remove Ali’s knife from the prisoner’s vision, and then leant forward to untie his gag. He watched me settle back on my heels, waiting warily for my trick.
“We must know where your leader has gone,” I told him. “Not Karim Bey. Bey is dead.” All four went still against their bonds, and the young man’s eyes rose to Ali’s figure standing behind me. I did not disabuse them of their belief that Ali had killed Bey, merely said, “We must have the other. These men will kill you in order to find him. Slowly, and with great pain. Tell me now where the other man is, and you will not be hurt.” I waited while the young man thought about it, then added, “He is not one of you. He paid you for the use of this house and for your silence; you have no cause to give your lives for him. He would not give his for you.”
The prisoner’s gaze wavered, and slid sideways to the oldest of the other prisoners, whose face resembled his. Father? Uncle? In either case the two were blood relations. I went over to the older prisoner and pulled away his gag, too.
“Please,” I said quietly. “Don’t let my friends hurt the boy. It is a bad way to die, and why: for a firengi? Let the firengi deal with the firengi,” I suggested, nodding my chin at Holmes in his foreign uniform and hoping fervently that the man we sought, Ellison or no, was indeed British.
It was impossible to tell what the man on the floor was thinking. He just lay there looking at me, his face completely closed. He might have been stone deaf for all the impression my words made. Ali shifted restlessly behind me, and I felt a rush of despair at my failure to prevent atrocity.
Then the man’s face changed, faintly but surely. I put out my hand to signal Ali.
“He has a house over a shop in the Muristan,” the prisoner said. “The olive-wood seller’s with the lamp in front on the Street of the Christians. The entrance is through the shop. The back way is down from the roof into the New Bazaar, between the seller of brass pots and the leather worker from Kabul. He has two men with him. All have guns.”