Abdul Hafiz, beside him, winced ever so slightly at his taking the name in vain.
“It is a bad thing to do,” he said, “and bad men must have done it.”
“I know the English ladies,” one of the dragomans volunteered. “They were in my party. I like them. Especially the young one. She talks to me as if I were a person.”
“What is your name?”
“Ismail.”
“And were they in your party this morning, Ismail?”
“As always. I am their dragoman.”
“They came back with you, then?”
“Yes. The young one ran on up the steps to speak with her father. She respects her father, even though he is strange.”
“I like to see that,” said Osman, who, Owen realized, now that he had seen his hair, was older than he looked.
“It is a good thing in children,” asserted Abdul Hafiz. “Who does not respect his father respects no one.”
“This English lady respects her father,” said Ismail, “and so I am sad to see him taken.”
“The English lady ran on ahead?”
“Yes. She usually does.”
“How far ahead?”
“Not far. I saw her going into the hotel as I came to the foot of the steps.”
“You followed her in with the rest of the party?”
“Yes. And then she came running down the stairs and spoke to her mother and her mother went pale and I thought: This is a bad business, surely. I thought perhaps the father had been taken ill and when the mother did not at once fly up the stairs to their room to tend him, I wondered. But then one said to me what the matter was and I understood.”
“So what did you do then?”
“I thought the mother was going to be overcome so I helped her to a chair. I stood by for a little-I had not been paid-and then I thought: In distress one wants those near to one and not a stranger. So I left the ladies and came to the yard and told the others.”
“Were you all here?” Owen asked the dragomans.
“I wasn’t,” said one of them. “We were late today. They wanted to spend more time in the House of Tsakatellis.”
“You came after?” said Owen, noting the man.
“Yes. When I came Zaki Effendi was standing on the steps looking stern. I said to myself, there is trouble. But I thought perhaps they had found the body.”
“The body?”
“Of the Frenchman. The one who was taken previously.”
“The Frenchman is dead, then?” said Osman, aghast.
“I expect so.
“But you have not heard so?”
“Not yet.”
“The rest of you,” said Owen, trying to recover the thread, “were all here, then?”
“That is right.”
“How long had you been here? Who was the last of you to arrive?”
“I was,” said Ismail.
“No, not you. Before you.”
“I was, I think,” said Abdul Hafiz, doubtfully.
“No, I was,” another dragoman corrected him. “Your party was still in the hall when I arrived, so I kept mine back.”
“They came very nearly together.”
“And when was this? How long before Ismail?”
The dragomans consulted.
“It was before Mohammed arrived, because we were all given bread.”
“Except me,” said Ismail.
“Well, yes,” said Abdul Hafiz. “I was keeping your bread for you.”
“We were early this morning,” said Osman. “We usually have to keep the bread for two or three.”
“We were early,” the others agreed.
Owen would check the time of Mohammed’s arrival independently. He would have been bringing them bread from the kitchens. The dragomans received no wages from the hotel, relying on what they made from their clients for income. The hotel, however, extended hospitality to them in the form of bread (and usually quite a lot of other things) in recognition of their being, as it were, part of its family and not part of another.
“And did none of you leave?”
They knew what he meant.
“None of us left,” said Osman soberly. The others confirmed that with nods. If there had been doubt it would have been indicated.
“None of us had a hand in this,” said Osman.
McPhee’s meticulous searching failed to uncover any more sign of Colthorpe Hartley than it had of Moulin. Nor did Garvin’s and Mahmoud’s questioning produce anything.
“I find it incredible,” said Garvin, “that a man could be kidnapped from the terrace of Shepheard’s in full view of about a hundred people not twenty yards away without someone seeing something.”
But no one apparently had. Colthorpe Hartley had disappeared from the face of the earth as completely as Moulin had.
More completely, for whereas on the first occasion Colthorpe Hartley himself had been able to report something, the presence of the unaccounted-for dragoman, on the occasion of his own disappearance no one had seen anything.
“And maybe there’s a connection,” said Garvin, frowning. “Maybe Colthorpe Hartley was taken just because he saw something. You said he was on the point of telling you, didn’t you?”
“I wouldn’t put it as strongly as that,” said Owen. “He might have been on the point of remembering something. Something about the dragoman.”
“How can you be on the point of remembering?” asked Garvin crossly. “You either remember or you don’t.”
“Not in Colthorpe Hartley’s case. He’s had an illness or something. It’s left him a bit impaired. It’s as if there are things at the back of his mind which don’t quite reach the front.”
“Jesus!”
“I can understand that,” said McPhee seriously. “I’m like it sometimes. There’s something at the back of my mind, I can’t just put my finger on it, it’s almost on the tip of my tongue but it just won’t come. And then next day, perhaps, out it pops.”
“You’re bloody impaired too,” said Garvin disgustedly.
“That’s how it was with Colthorpe Hartley. He thought there was a chance of it popping out the next day.”
“Did anyone else apart from you hear him say that?”
Owen thought.
“It was out on the terrace,” he said.
“That’s where you conduct your inquiries, is it? Out on the terrace where every bugger can hear?”
“He asked me to join him. I didn’t know what he was going to say.”
“But others could hear?”
“Yes,” said Owen, remembering. “We were close to the railings. The vendors could have heard.”
“Could have seen, too. Should have seen. Probably did see. We’re back to them again.”
“And to the dragoman, too, if that’s what he was taken for.” But here Owen’s inquiries, too, had shown a blank. He had checked Mohammed’s delivery of the bread and had been able to establish the time precisely since the maitre d’hotel had intercepted him on his way. Mohammed had confirmed that all the dragomans, bar Ismail, had been in the yard. There was multiple independent confirmation of this, too.
“One of them could have slipped out,” said Garvin.
Owen had done his best to check this too. Those in the yard were adamant that this hadn’t happened. They had been having a particularly lively conversation and others besides the dragomans had been involved. If it was so lively, was the possibility not even greater that someone could have slipped out unnoticed? No, because they were all sitting up in a ring of about a dozen people and if anyone had got up the others would have seen. Besides, no one did get up because they were all too engrossed in what was being said. Owen could believe this at any rate since several of the participants, dragomans and non-dragomans alike, had repeated large parts of the conversation word for word for his benefit.
In the end one couldn’t be absolutely sure that no one had slid away unobserved, but Owen felt inclined to believe them. The dragomans, behind the parade they put on for the benefit of tourists, were serious, intelligent men. They understood exactly what effect this second kidnapping might have on the hotel’s trade and indirectly on them. Besides, several of them were plainly shocked. They were involved with their clients and were upset that such a thing should happen to them. Their cooperation, he felt, was considered and genuine.