“Arthur?” It was Harper’s voice.
“Yes.”
“You know who this is?”
“Yes.”
“Car okay?”
“Yes.”
“Then what have you been stalling for?”
“I haven’t been stalling.”
“Fischer says you refused to deliver the car.”
“You told me to wait for your instructions, so I waited. You didn’t tell me to hand the car over to a perfect stranger without any proof of his authority…”
“All right, all right, skip it! Where is the car?”
“In a garage near here.”
“Do you know where Sariyer is?”
“Yes.”
“Get the car right away and hit the Sariyer road. When you get to Yenikoy look at your mileage reading, then drive on towards Sariyer for exactly four more miles. On your right you’ll come to a small pier with some boats tied up alongside it. On the left of the road opposite the pier you’ll see a driveway entrance belonging to a villa. The name of the villa is Sardunya. Have you got that?”
“Yes.”
“You should be here in about forty minutes. Right?”
“I will leave now.”
Sariyer is a small fishing port at the other end of the Bosphorus where it widens out to the Black Sea, and the road to it from Istanbul runs along the European shore. I wondered if I should try to contact Tufan before I left and report the address I had been given, then decided against it. Almost certainly, he had had Harper followed from the airport, and in any case I would be followed to the villa. There would be no point in reporting.
I went to the garage, paid the bill, and got the car. The early-evening traffic was heavy and it took me twenty minutes to get out of the city. It was a quarter to six when I reached Yenikoy. The same Peugeot which had followed me down from Edirne was following me again. I slowed for a moment to check the mileage and then pushed on.
The villas of the Bosphorus vary from small waterfront holiday places, with window boxes and little boathouses, to things like palaces. Quite of lot of them were palaces once; and before the capital was moved from Istanbul to Ankara the diplomatic corps used to have summer embassy buildings out along the Bosphorus, where there are cool Black Sea breezes even when the city is sweltering. The Kosk Sardunya looked as if it had started out in some such way.
The entrance to the drive was flanked by huge stone pillars with wrought-iron gates. The drive itself was several hundred yards long and wound up the hillside through an avenue of big trees which also served to screen the place from the road below. Finally, it left the trees and swept into the gravel courtyard in front of the villa.
It was one of those white stucco wedding-cake buildings of the kind you see in the older parts of Nice and Monte Carlo. Some French or Italian architect must have been imported around the turn of the century to do the job. It had everything-a terrace with pillars and balustrades, balconies, marble steps up to the front portico, a fountain in the courtyard, statuary, a wonderful view out over the Bosphorus-and it was huge. It was also run down. The stucco was peeling in places and some of the cornice moldings had crumbled or broken away. The fountain basin had no water in it. The courtyard was fringed with weeds.
As I drove in, I saw Fischer get up from a chair on the terrace and go through a french window into the house. So I just pulled up at the foot of the marble steps and waited. After a moment or two, Harper appeared under the portico and I got out of the car. He came down the steps.
“What took you so long?”
“They had to make out a bill at the garage, and then there was the evening traffic.”
“Well…” He broke off as he noticed me looking past him and over his shoulder.
A woman was coming down the steps.
He smiled slightly. “Ah yes. I was forgetting. You haven’t met your employer. Honey, this is Arthur Simpson. Arthur, this is Miss Lipp.”
5
Some men can make a good guess at a woman’s age just by looking at her face and figure. I never can. I think that this may be because, in spite of Mum, I fundamentally respect women. Yes, it must be that. If she is very attractive, but obviously not a young girl, I always think of twenty-eight. If she has let herself go a bit, but is obviously not elderly, I think of forty-five. For some reason I never think of any ages in between those-or outside them, for that matter-except my own, that is.
Miss Lipp made me think of twenty-eight. In fact she was thirty-six; but I only found that out later. She looked twenty-eight to me. She was tall with short brownish-blond hair, and the kind of figure that you have to notice, no matter what dress covers it. She also had the sort of eyes, insolent, sleepy, and amused, and the full good-humored mouth which tell you that she knows you can’t help watching the way her body moves, and that she doesn’t give a damn whether you do so or not; watching is not going to get you anywhere anyway. She wasn’t wearing a dress that first time; just white slacks and sandals, and a loose white shirt. Her complexion was golden brown and the only make-up she was wearing was lipstick. Obviously, she had just bathed and changed.
She nodded to me. “Hullo. No trouble with the car?” She had the same combination of accents as Harper.
“No, madam.”
“That’s good.” She did not seem surprised.
Fischer was coming down the steps behind her. Harper glanced at him.
“Okay, Hans, you’d better run Arthur into Sariyer.” To me he said: “You can take the ferryboat back to town. Are the carnet and Green Card in the glove compartment?”
“Of course not. They are in the hotel safe.”
“I told you to put them in the glove compartment,” said Fischer angrily.
I kept my eyes on Harper. “ You didn’t tell me,” I said; “and you didn’t tell me to take orders from your servant.”
Fischer swore angrily in German, and Miss Lipp burst out laughing.
“But isn’t he a servant?” I asked blandly; “he behaved like one, though not a very good one, perhaps.”
Harper raised a repressive hand. “Okay, Arthur, you can cut that out. Mr. Fischer is a guest here and he only meant to be helpful. I’ll arrange to have the documents picked up from you tomorrow before you leave. You’ll get paid off when you hand them over.”
My stomach heaved. “But I understood, sir, that I was to act as Miss Lipp’s driver while she is in Turkey.”
“That’s okay, Arthur. I’ll hire someone locally.”
“I can drive the car,” said Fischer impatiently.
Harper and Miss Lipp both turned on him. Harper said something sharply in German and she added in English: “Besides, you don’t know the roads.”
“And I do know the roads, madam.” I was trying hard to make my inner panic come out sounding like respectful indignation. “Only today I went to the trouble and expense of obtaining an official guide’s license so that I could do the job without inconvenience to you. I was a guide in Istanbul before.” I turned to Harper and thrust the license under his nose. “Look, sir!”
He frowned at it and me incredulously. “You mean you really want the job?” he demanded. “I thought all you wanted was this.” He took my letter out of his pocket.
“Certainly, I want that, sir.” It was all I could do to stop myself from reaching out for it. “But you are also paying me a hundred dollars for three or four days’ work.” I did my best to produce a grin. “As I told you in Athens, sir, for that money I do not have to be persuaded to work.”
He glanced at her and she answered, with a shrug, in German. I understood the last three words: “… man English speaks.”
His eyes came to me again. “You know, Arthur,” he said thoughtfully, “you’ve changed. You could be off the hook if you wanted, but now you don’t want to be off. Why?”
This was just answerable. I looked at the letter in his hand. “You didn’t send that. I was afraid all the time that you’d sent it anyway, out of spite.”