The little Greek clerk seemed rather overcome by his encounter and huddled deeper into his chair. Mr. Colthorpe Hartley glanced up, glanced away again and sipped his tea. A moment later he looked again. This time he frowned. Again the confidential whisper: “I say, old chap, it’s time you went. Imshi!” The Greek shot out of his chair, then stopped and looked to Mahmoud for instructions. Mahmoud came up the steps.
So far, so-moderately-good. It was what came next that was tricky, for now Mahmoud had nothing definite to guide him and was dealing only in possibilities. He had worked out three alternative scenarios. In the first one Monsieur Moulin was to rise from his table and simply walk back indoors. The second envisaged him walking down the terrace steps; and the third saw him being forcibly taken down the steps.
The first one was soon played and was indeed a bit of an anticlimax. The Greek stand-in got up suddenly and walked off and that was that. The spectators clearly wanted more. Mahmoud asked the residents on the terrace whether they had seen anything like this and they said no. He tried the waiters. They were divided. Some claimed to have seen him and described what they had seen in great and implausible detail. Others, equally definite, had seen nothing. The hotel reception was just inside the doors and if Monsieur Moulin had re-entered the hotel he would have passed in front of their counter. They were fairly sure they hadn’t seen him. On the day in question McPhee had checked with them virtually as soon as Moulin had been reported missing and they had said the same thing. One of the receptionists was Nikos’s informant and Nikos had said he could be trusted.
The second option had envisaged Moulin walking down the steps. Everyone acknowledged that this was a possibility but no one had actually seen him do it. But if Moulin had done that, what had he done when he reached the bottom? The arabeah-drivers and the donkey-boys were adamant that he had not approached them; they were even more confident that no one else would have picked him up-they guarded their rights too jealously for that. Of course, he could simply have walked off into the crowd. But walking was anything but simple for Monsieur Moulin and although it could have been easy for him to disappear into the crowd, he would have found it hard going to make his way through the crush and reach some harbor on the far side. No witness had seen him doing that. Mahmoud tried the tumblers and vendors, some of whom were sharp, observant men, but they had no recollection of an elderly man trying to push his way past them. The snake charmer was so bemused that he could hardly be brought to say a word.
By now Mahmoud’s arrangements were coming under severe strain. The crowd had grown still more and now stretched right across the street, blocking it in both directions. A few stranded arabeahs stood out above the sea of curious faces. Some way up the street a wedding procession had come to a complete halt. It was evidently a rich man’s wedding for there were musicians mounted on camels as well as the palanquin for the bride. There were probably jesters and mirror-bearers but they were lost in the crowd; although, as Owen watched, he caught the occasional flash of glass sparkling in the sun. This bride, thought Owen, was one who was definitely going to be late for her wedding.
The defensive ring of constables had already given way once or twice under the pressure of the crowd but each time, under the instructions of McPhee, had managed to reassert itself. It had lost ground each time, however, and one more cave-in would see the space at the foot of the steps disappear altogether.
Mahmoud evidently thought the same thing, for he hurried on with the third scenario. This envisaged Monsieur Moulin somehow being compelled down the steps. This sounded unlikely and proved so in practice. The pretending Monsieur Moulin had been allowed a little resistance and in fact he struggled so vigorously that his would-be kidnappers couldn’t get hold of him at all until one of them, a constable carried away by his role, tapped him on the head with his truncheon. The little clerk collapsed into immobility. Even so, the kidnapping party found it hard to carry him off down the steps without causing so much commotion that even those people at the far end of the terrace who were not in on the plot looked up to see what was going on. Mahmoud had initially tried two kidnappers only but as the difficulties multiplied had been obliged to add a third. Eventually they got the “body” down the steps; but what then?
Mahmoud had had several possibilities in mind. First, he tried to get an arabeah to the foot of the steps. This proved quite impossible, given the crowd. Indeed, for some time no arabeah had been able to leave its rank at all and the arabeah-drivers were complaining loudly. Then he had envisaged the kidnapped Moulin being smuggled away through the crowd somehow bundled up in a cloak. The little clerk recovered at this point and struck out feebly with his arms, which made wrapping him up difficult. The constable produced his truncheon again but was restrained by McPhee, to the detriment, however, of the realism of the scenario. Eventually the protesting form was concealed but then another problem presented itself. So tightly packed was the crowd that the kidnappers were wedged in, quite unable to move. After a few abortive efforts they stood there looking blankly at Mahmoud.
Mahmoud came down the steps and tried to force open a path for them. As fast as two people were prised apart, however, someone else stepped into the breach. The kidnappers left Monsieur Moulin standing and joined their efforts to Mahmoud’s. Unsupported and unable to see, Monsieur Moulin slowly toppled over. One of the kidnappers made a despairing effort to save him and was pulled over on top of him as he fell.
“Don’t remember this bit at all,” said the donkey-boys, straightfaced.
One of the constables abandoned his part in the defensive ring and came to help. Immediately, the ring caved in. The people who had been leaning against it fell into the space too on top of the kidnappers. One of the more public-spirited of them, finding himself up against one of the kidnappers and believing the whole incident to be real, not simulated, grappled with him in an attempt to prevent his escaping. Fighting broke out.
In the middle of all this the outrunners of the wedding, who had been patiently forcing their way through the crowd, arrived at the foot of the steps.
“Make way for the wedding!” the donkey-boys called ironically to the mass of people struggling on the ground in front of the steps. The leading camel of the palanquin broke through the crowd and sniffed, astonished, at the recumbent forms. The little Greek clerk, who had all this time been struggling to free himself from the wrappings which enveloped him, at last succeeded. As his head emerged he found himself gazing straight into the eyes of the camel. He gave a scream and burrowed back beneath the wrappings. The camel, startled, retreated with a loud jingle of bells. “By God!” said the snake charmer. “That’s it!”
The palanquin threatened to capsize and the bride joined her screams to the general uproar.
Owen suddenly became aware that Lucy’s captive subaltern, Gerald Naylor, was standing beside him. He was watching with fascinated disgust.
“What a shambles!” he said. “What a shambles!”