“That’s rather curious. A man whom you’ve never seen before attacks you verbally and physically. He bears you some grudge, obviously.” Don Julio shrugged. “A fancied slight? Mistaken identity? In your position, I would have demanded an explanation. But you were satisfied to leave the mystery unsolved. Weren’t you interested?”
“He was drunk both times I saw him. He didn’t like Americans. I assumed...” Beecher hesitated again, considering not only his answer, but Don Julio’s interest in it. “Well, I just assumed I rubbed him the wrong way.”
Don Julio smiled pleasantly. “If you had said rubbed him out the wrong way, I might have made one of those brilliant deductions which story-book detectives are always provided with.”
“But I didn’t,” Beecher said. He found Don Julio’s light touch irritating. “Maybe I should have been more curious about the Frenchman. But I wasn’t. That’s all there is to it.”
“Is it?” Don Julio’s smile was mildly sarcastic. “I’m relieved, in that case. Now we will take up the young woman from Canada, Laura Meadows, who, in the old-fashioned phrase, threw herself at your head. She was the factor which impelled you to decide to go to Rabat. You weren’t skeptical of her almost instant infatuation with you?” Don Julio raised an eyebrow. “No warning bell tolled through the dark seas of romance?”
“I’ve told you the complete, literal truth,” Beecher said, putting his cigarette out with an angry twist of his hand. “It may make me sound stupid and vain and insensitive, but that’s the way it happened. Look. Have you heard anything about her?”
“You mean Laura Meadows? The blonde young woman who disappeared so mysteriously with the desert nomads?” Don Julio’s manner was polite and serious, but Beecher flushed at his elaborately sarcastic choice of words.
“Goddammit, if you think I’m lying, say so,” he said.
Don Julio said quietly, “There has been no report of her from Interpol, or from the bureaus of the Moroccan or Algerian police.”
“Does that mean I’m lying?”
Don Julio shrugged. “No, of course not. But it means there is no official corroboration for your story. Let’s go on. We are making progress. Certain things are beginning to seem clearer to me.”
Beecher sighed and put another cigarette in his mouth. Laura hadn’t got to Goulamine; she hadn’t got to Goulamine; she hadn’t got anywhere. She was still somewhere in the bitter, endless desert, paying off her extravagant debt to the two wandering Arabs. Eventually they would sell her into the harem of some primitive pasha. Eventually... she’d do fine in a harem, he thought. Kidding the pasha along at night, and driving his other wives wild with intrigues. But he couldn’t see this as the end to her. She was as tough and resilient as a hard rubber ball. And the men she played with were all thumbs. They wouldn’t be able to catch and hold her; she’d bounce free somehow...
“Mike, please! I asked you a question.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Why did you agree to fly Don Willie’s plane? Why didn’t you say no?”
“Because they had a gun at my head.”
“Was that the only reason?”
“No, I wanted to pay them back for what they’d done to me. I thought I’d get a chance if I went along.”
“Well, you haven’t done badly,” Don Julio said, smiling faintly. “You’re alive, and the rest of them are dead. But it’s this fact which makes your story difficult to prove. The Frenchman is dead, and the Iberian pilots are dead, and Lynch, the Englishman is dead, everyone is dead. The list is long, isn’t it?”
“You’re forgetting Ilse.”
“No, I haven’t. I wanted to hear your story first. Jorge, you will go to the Quita Pena and bring the young woman here. You know her?”
“Yes, Don Julio.” Jorge came quickly to his feet, with an alertness that suggested a formal salute. When he had gone, Don Julio strolled to the windows and stood there with his back to Beecher. He pushed the blind aside and looked out into the street. A light misting rain was falling now. Beecher heard the soft drizzle against the windowpanes.
“Very unseasonal,” he said. “Turismo will deny it. They’ll say it was spray from a boat blown ashore by a freak wind.”
“They are very zealous. But they lie in a good cause. Would you like another cup of coffee?”
“No thanks.”
Don Julio turned away from the windows and sat on the corner of his desk, one booted foot swinging slowly and rhythmically. He regarded Beecher with a curious smile. “Something about you interests me,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“You seem somewhat different from my old companion who enjoyed idle talk and good sherry. I don’t know what it is. Let me put it this way: if I knew that you were my enemy I wouldn’t consider it a light matter. And another thing, if you’ll forgive me, you don’t look quite so American as you did a week or so ago. Perhaps it’s because you’re tired. This is strange in an American. Most of them look as inexhaustible as children. But I’m on a tangent. Now the plane. You could find it? Direct a pilot there? You remember the location?”
Beecher closed his eyes and nodded slowly. “I remember,” he said. He could see the clearing in his mind, the stunted date palms twisting under hot sullen winds, and the desert stretching out to infinite horizons. And he saw the silver flash of Laura’s head in the moonlight, and the pain in Lynch’s eyes, and the rank sweat of death on his forehead. “I remember,” he said quietly.
“And this crate of documents you spoke of? It is on the plane? That is definite?”
“Yes. It would have been too much trouble to bring it along.”
“Still, I wish you had. I play at speculation for amusement, but as a policeman I must work with things I can touch and feel and weigh in my hands. It would be reassuring now, for instance, if this crate of yellowing documents were resting on my desk. I would enjoy looking through the papers, rubbing the dust with my fingertips, examining dates and so forth.” He smiled. “Are you disappointed at this literal streak?”
“You’ll have the chance to rub the dust with your fingers. Don’t worry about that. The box is on the plane.”
“I’m not worrying. That isn’t my function. Let me ask you a question: supposing our roles were reversed in some miraculous fashion, what do you imagine you would think of this story you’ve been telling me? What is one of the first things which might occur to you?”
“I don’t know.” Beecher shrugged. “I’d probably decide it was pretty damned fantastic.”
“And then?”
“I don’t know. I honestly don’t.”
“Think a minute. If you had freely joined forces with Don Willie, if you were a partner in his scheme, can you imagine a more effective story than the one you have just told me?”
“You mean it would make a nice alibi?”
“Something of the sort.”
Beecher smiled. “Wait until you talk to Ilse.”
“But — Don Julio leaned forward and touched Beecher gently on the shoulder with the tip of his finger. “But Ilse doesn’t know whether or not your were a willing or unwilling partner in Don Willie’s fantastic plans.”
“She knows I wasn’t involved at all.”
Don Julio crossed his arms. “How does she know that?”
“Because I told her—” Beecher stopped abruptly, as if Don Julio’s question was a wall he had stumbled against; he shook his head slowly, conscious of an almost physical sense of shock.
“You told her,” Don Julio said amiably. “Of course you did. Which leaves us, finally, with only your word supporting the story you’ve told me.”
Beecher felt unpleasantly trapped; everywhere he turned stood the bars of the policeman’s logic. “There’s the plane, the box of documents,” he said. “And Lynch’s body.”