Motionless, he lay where he had dropped. But there was no sound. From his loin-cloth he pulled out a small flash-lamp;
lighted it for a moment. His acute hearing had told him there was no one in the room. He was looking for the door. He found it.
In a matter of seconds he was out on a tiled corridor. Again he stood still, listening. He moved to the left, attracted by a sound of snoring; peered into an ante-room richly furnished, for it had a large window and the starlight was enough to enable this strangely endowed visitor to see all he wanted to see.
A fat man lay asleep on a cushioned divan—the man who had first come to the gate when Brian called to demand an interview with the Sherif Mohammed.
It was the ante-room of the women’s quarter, the harem.
The keen eyes of the little dark man detected a doorway on the right of this ante-room. He crossed to it, went through, and found a descending stair. It led to another corridor.
Here, for the first time, he was at fault. But after cautiously opening several doors again, he found what he was looking for: another stair. He went down at extraordinary speed for one running in the dark—and found himself in the paved entrance hall of the house.
Now that his eyes were accustomed to the dim light he could evidently see as clearly as a cat. And he seemed to know just what he was looking for.
With complete assurance, and making no sound, he moved around the walls of the large and lofty apartment, and presently, near the entrance door which opened on the courtyard, he found what he sought. At the back of a small room intended for a porter’s lodge there was a strong teak door, iron-studded, the woodwork bleached with age. A bunch of old-fashioned Arab keys hung on a hook beside it.
And the largest of these fitted the ancient lock.
A stone stair led the midnight intruder to the cellars. Here he used his flash-lamp without hesitation. He found stores of various kinds, including casks of wine which no True Believer would expect to find in the cellars of a descendant of the Prophet.
Pressing on farther he came to a smaller cellar, long and narrow. There was nothing in it. But on one side were two more of the heavy teak iron-studded doors. They differed from that at the top of the stair in one respect. Each had an iron grille in it. He had thrust the bunch of keys in his accommodating loin-cloth; was about to pull them out, then stopped dead, as if stricken motionless—a trick of many wild animals when surprised.
Quite still he stood, and listened.
The sound was very faint, but this man’s senses were super-normal.
Someone was sleeping behind one of the doors!
He remained still for nearly a minute, debating what he should do. Then he crossed to the grille from behind which the sound came, peered in, could see nothing, and so shone a momentary ray from his lamp into the blackness.
“Who’s there?” came an instant challenge.
The little man switched the light off and glided from the cellar, silent as a phantom. He fled up to the porter’s lodge, relocked the door as he had found it, making more noise than he cared about, and came out into the entrance hall.
Here he stood still again to listen.
No sound.
In niches of the mosaic-covered wall were many rare porcelain pots and other beautiful objects. On some of those the little man shone brief flashes from his lamp . . .
He began to examine several windows facing on to the courtyard, selected one of them, opened it slightly, and slipped through like a lizard. Once outside, he succeeded in partly closing it again.
He was over the gate and across the street to the doorway where he had left his cloak with a silent agility more like that of some nocturnal animal than of any human being. . . .
* * *
Mr. Lyman Bostock, United States representative in Cairo, twirled a cigar between his finger and thumb and stared reflectively across at Sir Nigel Richardson, his British confrere, who lay in a split-cane lounge chair with an iced drink beside him in the hollow of the chair-arm provided for that purpose. Mr. Bostock’s study opened on to a balcony and the balcony over-hung a pleasant garden, shadowy on this moonless night.
“I’m only just finding it out,” Mr. Bostock remarked, with his soothing drawl; “but you’re a queer bunch, you Englishmen.”
“I happen to be Scotch.”
“Maybe that’s worse. But what I’m coming to is this: I hand it to you that there’s not much about this country you don’t seem to know—including all the crooks in Cairo!”
“That’s base ingratitude, Bostock! I’ll let you into a secret, Murdoch, whom you’ve met with me (he has confidential employment in our Embassy), is an ex-officer of Egyptian Police. That was in the days when we ran the show. And what Murdoch doesn’t know about the Cairo underworld could be put in a thimble. You asked me to find the right man. I found him.”
Mr. Bostock glanced at his watch, took a drink, and put his cigar back in his mouth.
“Agreed. I accept the responsibility.”
“You don’t have to. We’re in this thing together. If your F.B.I, has unearthed a mare’s nest—and that’s my private opinion—there was no alternative so far as I can see. Course of action was left to you. What could you do? Neither you nor I could get a search warrant on a mere suspicion, particularly in the case of so highly respected a citizen as the Sherif Mohammed Ibn-el-Ashraf.”
“True enough. I could see no alternative to your suggestion—short of declining to act in the matter. But, with apologies to your British gift of understatement, it’s slightly unconstitutional!”
“Unconstitutional be damned! What do we stand to lose? Let’s examine the facts. Who knows you were asked to make this investigation?”
“Except yourself——”
“And Murdoch. I had to let him in.”
“Nobody but myself and Arkwright, who decoded the message.”
“Good. Let’s look at possible consequences. Suppose Alt gets pinched. It’s unlikely, but he might. He has a record, not only as a cat-burglar but also for jail-breaking. He’s escaped twice, and they’re still looking for him. To lock up Ali Yahya is about as useful as to try to hold an eel by the tail. He can climb up or down almost anything, slip in and out of incredibly narrow openings. He’s a living legend with the natives, who claim he can make himself invisible. They call him Ali al-Sehliya—Ali the Lizard.”
“I trust he lives up to it,” Bostock drawled. “But, all the same, suppose he gets . . . ‘pinched,’ I think you said?”
“Pinched was the word. You don’t seriously suggest he would tell the police that he was acting under instructions from the United States Embassy?”
Mr. Bostock stood up and refreshed their two glasses. Sir Nigel watched him, grinning mischievously, until he sat down again.
“No,” Bostock admitted. “He would probably choose to escape a third time and collect the price of his crime which you and I promised to pay!”
“That’s the answer!” Sir Nigel took a long drink. “Nobody knows we have seen him——”
“Except Murdoch!”
“Except Murdoch. And Murdoch provided him with a complete plan (which Ali memorized), of the house of the Sherif Mohammed.”
“Useful man, Murdoch,” Mr. Bostock murmured, looking again at his watch. “Also Scotch, no doubt?”
“Also Scotch.” Then Sir Nigel, too, consulted his wrist-watch. “Ali is about due back.”
“Pinched!” Mr. Bostock muttered. “He’s ouerdue.”
Sir Nigel shook his head, smiling. “Our reputations are in safe hands, Bostock! Think of how far he has to travel.”
“Isn’t Murdoch giving him a lift?”