Lovelace knew he was up against it. If he once confessed that he was unable to produce the passport he would never get as far as the secretary's room again, let alone penetrate to Paxito Zarrif’s sanctum.
He screwed his mouth into a rueful grin ; `I'd go back with pleasure but for the fact that I'm a pretty sick man. Dysentery, you know. That's what Abyssinia does for you. I'm as weak as a rat, and the jolting of the taxi on these rotten roads gave me positive hell coming out here. A return trip to the city and back would about lay me out, I think. Isn't there any other way you can satisfy yourself about my identity?'
The secretary considered for a moment. 'Tell me how you left Ras Desoum and his children,' he said.
`He has none,' Lovelace answered at once. He was gambling on the Ras not having married in the last few years, and his memory of him as a tall effeminate man with many vices but no love of women.
After that the secretary fired questions at him with the rapidity of a machine gun. It was a gruelling experience, and Lovelace had to think like lightning while expecting to be caught out every moment in some hopeless blunder. He would never have come through it but for the knowledge acquired during his Abyssinian visit, and if Christopher had been in his shoes, as was originally planned, the young American would not have survived the ordeal for two minutes.
At last the man behind the desk appeared satisfied. He smiled again, `Forgive, please, the little traps I set for you, Mr. Green, but there are certain people most dangerous who seek to gain entry here. We have to be very careful of our visitors.'
`So I have observed,' replied Lovelace dryly.
The man on the landing was then called in to keep him silent company while the secretary disappeared into the inner room. About three minutes later he reappeared with the announcement: 'Mr. Zirrif will see you now.'
The curtains of the bigger room were drawn, and it was only lit by a single desk lamp, the shade of which had recently been adjusted so that the light shone full upon the visitor. Paxito Zirrif sat still and silent behind it, a presence rather than a man, almost invisible in the heavy shadows.
At first Lovelace could see nothing but his eyes, green, searching, vital; then the presence spoke in a thin, sharp voice, and the substance of the man became clearer. He was smallish in stature with narrow shoulders; a thin bridged, beaky nose, and a much fairer skin than Lovelace would have expected in an Armenian. His forehead was broad and lofty; his hair grey, and a little goatee beard decorated his angular chin.
He glanced at the letter Lovelace handed him and plunged at once into a series of rapid questions on the state of affairs in Addis Ababa. The secretary's cross examination had been difficult enough to deal with, but Mr. Paxito Zarrif’s was ‘infinitely more so.
His brain moved from subject to subject with the speed of a prairie fire, yet devoured every scrap of information on each before passing to the next.
Lovelace felt his forehead grow damp as the interview progressed, from the double strain of faking up plausible particulars about the progress of the war, of which he knew nothing except what he had learnt from the papers, and at the same time inventing an excuse which would enable him to secure a second interview. Suddenly the thought of his pretended illness have him a line. He gasped, leaned forward, and gripped his sides with both hands.
Zirrif ceased questioning him for a moment. The perspiration on his forehead now served a useful purpose it was obvious that he was ill. He groaned again and muttered something about having gone down with dysentery in Africa.
`You should have told me of this before.' Zirrif spoke now in a softer tone; he seemed all at once to have become quite human. `Give me your arm. This way. I have suffered myself. It is an agony.' He led Lovelace towards the further door beyond which lay the bath and valets' rooms.
When Lovelace returned the older man was busy with some papers. `You had best go back to your hotel now,' he said kindly, `but there is much which I still wish to ask you. Do you think you will be well enough to come out here again this evening?'
Lovelace leaned heavily on the table. `Yes. I haven't had a bout like this for some days now. It must have been something I ate for lunch, I think, that started it up again, but I'll be all right in an hour or two. What time d'you wish to see me?'
`Nine o'clock. If you are too ill, telephone, and we will appoint a time tomorrow morning. It must not be later, as I leave here in the afternoon.' Zirrif touched a bell upon his desk and the secretary appeared.
Promising to be back at nine, Lovelace gave the impression of making an effort to pull himself together. Heartily glad to escape further questioning, he allowed himself to be led downstairs and escorted off the premises.
Outside the gates he found a tall thin man talking to the porter. The man glanced at Lovelace, who noticed that he had deep, sad eyes set in a delicate, aristocratic face, which was marked by a heavy scar running from the corner of his mouth down to the left side of his chin.
Slumping into his taxi with a groan, Lovelace let himself be driven away, but after he had gone half a mile he stopped the cab, got out, and walked back to make a more careful survey of Zarrif’s property. Both the porter and the tall man had disappeared.
The road curved round the garden and ran up a hill at the back of the house. Two hundred yards from it he had no difficulty in seeing over the wall and picking out the first floor windows of the rooms he had visited. The wall was not a high one and a man could scale it easily by standing on another's shoulders, but a wire, which glinted faintly in the late afternoon sunlight, ran along it about six inches from the top; an electric alarm evidently. If it were cut, depressed, or pulled in scrambling over, bells would rouse the guards into instant activity.
Having found out all he could about Zarrif’s defences, Lovelace walked back to his waiting taxi and was driven into the city.
On his way back he thought over the situation. If Zirrif was leaving Athens the following day, the coming night was virtually the only opportunity Christopher would have in which to get him. They must act at once, and Lovelace thought he could see a way in which the business could be done.
He visited a wireless store and then an oil shop, at both of which he made certain purchases, and packing most of these into a kit bag he had bought for the purpose, he took it to a garage near his hotel, where he arranged with the proprietor for the hire of a car. By six o'clock his preparations were completed and he rejoined his friends.
`I saw the old boy and I'm going out there again tonight,' he told them. D'you really mean to go through with this, Christopher?'
`I do.' The young American's dark eyes lit up with almost savage determination.
'All right. I think I can give you your chance. How does that ether pistol of yours work?'
'It contains little cylinders of highly poisonous gas. They are smashed and the puff of gas ejected with tremendous force by compressed air. One breath of it is enough to kill almost instantly.'
`Good. I'm glad it's to be a painless business. It must be done silently too, if you're to stand any chance at all of getting out alive yourself, because the whole place is lousy with gunmen.'
`There's no chance of getting him away from the house, then?'
`Not an earthly. I had the devil of a job even to get in. You'll have to do it in the house, or not at all that's certain.' Both of them listened intently as Lovelace told of his experiences that afternoon.
'It seems almost impossible for me to get at him at all then,' Christopher said gloomily. `How d'you propose that I should set about it?'