“We cannot wait here for four months,” said the young man with the cleft chin.
“In my time I have waited twenty years to take vengeance,” said Umburak, placid as ever. While he told the well-known details of two ancient murders, Morris managed to catch Hadiq’s eye and make a tiny signal that he wanted to speak. The reminiscent mutterings were still dying away when Hadiq stood up.
“Four days ago I buried my father, whom I loved,” he said. “Still I do not know how he was killed. Have you news, Morris?”
It didn’t sound as though the Council was prepared to devote more than a few seconds to this academic point, but Morris cleared his throat and answered loudly.
“Yes, I have news about that, and also about the oil.”
At the marvellous word the whole tone of the meeting changed. There was a brief outburst of muttering and whispering. Morris clapped his hands, as if for silence, and though he didn’t dare look he thought he heard a faint rattle of metal on stone, somewhere up in the gallery. In the following hush he fished a tangerine out of his basket and gave it to Dinah to keep her quiet; but she must have sensed his nervousness, for she insisted on huddling into his lap to eat it.
“Yes,” he said, “I have spoken with many marshmen, both about the oil and the death of their lord. It was clear to me that they did not know that the oil even existed. It follows from this that bin Zair killed the Sultan.”
He spoke the accusation directly at the old man, peering for some sign of guilt or shock, but saw only a slight jerk of the head and widening of the yellow-oozing eyes. The result was that he didn’t notice the nephew until he saw a revolver being brandished under his nose. He shrank back. Dinah clutched too tightly for him to free an arm. The nephew was prodding at the safety-catch but his spittle was already reaching its target on the wings of his curses. Then suddenly he reeled back. The revolver rattled to the floor and he lay supine with blood streaming from his temple where Gaur’s throwing-stick had struck.
Everybody shouted. Morris pushed Dinah clear and leaped to his feet, shouting too, and pointing to the gallery. A few yelling heads turned, then more. The ensuing silence was ridiculously dramatic.
“Let no man move,” panted Morris. He turned from where the six dark muzzles poked through the frivolous white tracery of the screen and knelt by the fallen man. The pulse seemed reasonably strong, and the gash in the forehead not deep, though very productive of blood.
“Let Salim tend to the wound,” said Umburak in an arid voice. “We would hear your accusation, Morris. We have known bin Zair many years.”
Morris went back to his cushions pulling at his lip. Dinah scuttled out from behind the throne, crept into his lap and pulled her lip also.
“Let us begin with the film bin Zair showed us,” said Morris. “Now, the Frankish woman left my office and passed in front of the cages very shortly before bin Zair and the Sultan also came that way. She says she was still in the gallery when they came, and she turned and waved to them. Yet we watched the film for several minutes before the Sultan and bin Zair appeared, and we did not see the Frankish woman. Nor did Dinah appear in the cage. Moreover you all said that the Sultan staggered like a man shot in the back—would he have staggered so if he had been struck with a sharp dart in the neck?”
There was some disagreement on this point, with evidence adduced from personal experience of shooting men in the back, and (given equal weight) from the elderly westerns nowadays available to any Arab who didn’t mind doing two hundred miles across the desert to the nearest drive-in cinema.
“Furthermore,” said Morris, “I have taken many films with that camera, but none so bad. What does all this mean? It means that the film was taken in the early morning, when the sun shines from the east. This was done for two reasons—first because nobody would come to the zoo at that hour, and second in order that the bad light would help to hide the fact that the larger figure was not the Sultan but one of the slaves bin Zair had found for the zoo, a man called Maj.”
“I am an old man and unused to machines,” said bin Zair. “What do I know of films?”
“You told me that you had made a film of a male prostitute who dances among the Hadahm,” said Morris.
“True, I have seen it,” said somebody.
At this piece of corroborative evidence, however peripheral to the real case, a new note entered the coughs and whispers of the men. One of them, and not this dubious Frank, had now cast his tiny stone at old bin Zair.
“There are other matters,” said Morris, “which bin Zair both understands and is ignorant of. At the flood-going feast he questioned me about my tape-recorder, and yet I am told he uses such things in his work. And you yourselves will remember that at some moments he cannot understand the marshmen’s language, and at others he understands it clearly enough. However, let us return to the film. The big man in the picture may have been Maj, but the little man was undoubtedly bin Zair. Therefore the film must have been made with his help.”
“The points are not very strong,” said Umburak. “The ape might have been hiding, the light might have been bad, who knows how a man will act when a bullet or dart strikes? And a woman’s evidence—a woman who then ran from the palace—it is all frayed rope.”
“There is more,” said Morris. “Let me continue about these slaves. At the flood-going feast I asked bin Zair for better help in the zoo, and within two days he found me these two men. Now one of these men was a good mechanic and the other was large and stout, like the Sultan. They were Sulubba, and they told me that they were hereditary slaves . . .”
A few grunts of disbelief filled the pause which Morris deliberately left.
“On the morning of the murders,” he went on, “they were cleaning the cages and had brought a pile of fresh reeds to make bedding for the animals. They had brought more than was necessary, so when they had finished they left a pile of reeds in the passage near the chimpanzee cage . . .”
“Enough to hide a man?” asked Umburak.
“No,” said Morris. “But enough to hide a gun, and some other small object.”
He fished more fruit out of the basket for Dinah, and in doing so pressed the “Play” button of the recorder.
“Now before bin Zair came to my room,” he said, “I heard a lot of noise from the chimpanzees, noise enough to drown the sound of a quick scuffle and perhaps a shout of anger. When bin Zair came to my room he said he had been struck by the Sultan, and asked whether I had heard anything. I said I had not. We talked for a short time, and then . . .”
He didn’t time it quite right. There was a longish pause, during which mutters of doubt and impatience began to gather strength. But suddenly they were drowned by the rushing whoosh of an airgun, a hoarse cry and another whoosh. Morris lifted the recorder out of the basket, ran the tape back to the monkey noises, and played some of them.
The reaction was that of children watching a conjurer, small cries of amazement and even delight, deliquescing into seriousness as each man explained to his neighbour the significance of the sounds. Head after head turned towards bin Zair, who sat stroking his beard but showing no more emotion than a look of scholarly interest. Morris gave him time to answer, but he was too wary for that.
“Whence came the tape?” said a providential straight man.
“I will tell you. It concerns the two slaves of whom I was speaking. When I went at your bidding into the marshes I had travelled less than a mile when I came upon the body of a man floating in the water. He had been killed with a spear-thrust, stripped naked and mutilated. He was Maj.”
The news brought only a few cries of rage, and many reminders that the man had not been a true bedu, but a Sulubba.