"Your meaning, madame?" he asked, and sued the glance of the amber eyes, but was foiled by lashes imperiously drooped.
"My meaning?" she returned. "It is so simple! What is this casket which you say you placed in my boat? And why do you refer so strangely to a cheque paid to me for a card debt?"
Van Kuyper came to his feet as if shot out of a trap. Every vestige of colour had fled from his flabby cheeks. A small table, with the coffee cups upon it, crashed over upon the carpet. He sought to speak, but she forestalled him.
"Your incorruptible Abdul is probably on his way to Persia," she said scornfully. "Why do you try to weave romances for me? You seem to suggest that I am here as your ally in some scheme to smuggle relics out of Egypt. I have a most damaging letter from you touching this plot!"
"By God!" Van Kuyper burst out hoarsely. "The police shall search this boat from stem to stern!"
"They will find your correspondence, my friend!" said Mme. de Medicis, and rose, queenly, sweeping the speaker with a glance of high disdain.
In the long, low cabin of the dahabeah Nitocris, Mme. de Medicis reclined upon a divan, its mattress gay with many silken cushions. Her flawless figure was draped wondrously in a robe conceived in Deccan gauzes. A cloud of delicate green caressed the pure modelling of her form, which shimmered alluringly as through the phantom haze of a Fayum sunset quickened to greater tenderness by an ultimate veil like the blush in the heart of a tulip. Keats's Lamia was not more magically lovely. The long, amber eyes were soft as enchanted lagoons; the shadows of the curved lashes rested upon flower-fresh cheeks.
Silver incense burners filled the air with the sensuous perfume of ambergris.
Brian Desmond entered, peering eagerly into the shadows cast by dim mosque lanterns swung from the ceiling. A casket of ebony and ivory, wrought with ancient Egyptian astronomical subjects, stood in the centre of the apartment. Beside it, heaped upon the carpet, lay ornaments richly chased and inlaid with strange gems.
"The ritual jewels 1" he whispered. "The treasure of Princess Taia!"
" 'Such things belong neither to the Egyptian government nor to any purse-proud collector,'" she whispered. The words were his own. "They belong to you!"
From the deck above to that perfumed cabin below stole the sound of a softly beaten darabukkeh and the mournful sweetness of a reed pipe. The tender-voiced singer of ghazals began, so softly that the music seemed indeed a ravishing sigh, to render the love plaint of Hafiz.
"If a cup of wine is spilled, and I have spilled it, what of that?"
Crime Takes a Cruise
There was no one in sight in the narrow street. Nothing stirred its shadows; black shadows in contrast with blazing sunlight which touched the gallery of a tumbledown minaret rising above the squalor.
"Blessing and peace… O, Apostle of God."
A mueddin had just come out onto the gallery, chanting the selam as his kind have done on every Friday of the week for generations. It was half an hour before noon.
Blessing and peace! Shaun Bantry smiled a wry smile. To call for blessing and peace in a world which ignored blessings and had forgotten what peace meant rang the wrong bell. He paused at the door of the mosque, a modem, shabby, neglected, little place, and looked in. A very old beggar, blind in one eye, was entering. Otherwise, inhabitants of this quarter of Port Said remained undisturbed by the call of the Prophet.
What had become of the man wearing that unusual white coat with the faint pink stripe? Definitely, his car, an antique French sedan, had come this way. He pushed on, trying to ignore the mingled smells from the gutters.
Perhaps the description of Theo Leidler's attire which he had received from the porter at the Eastern Exchange Hotel that morning had been wrong. In chasing the man in a pink-striped coat he might be chasing a myth. In that one glimpse of him in the car Shaun hadn't had a chance to see his features.
He was wasting precious time. Ten minutes had elapsed since he lost sight of his quarry. A turning just beyond the mosque showed him an even narrower and, if possible, dirtier street. A little way along he saw two or three tables outside a native cafe. And in fr.ont of the tables, so as to fill up the rest of the thoroughfare, a grey sedan waited!
Shaun became aware that he was excited.
He might not fall down on this fantastic assignment after all! Luck was with him.
He had come to within ten paces of the cafe when a man wearing a white pink-striped coat came out, jumped into the sedan, and was driven away in the opposite direction.
Pursuit was out of the question. Shaun couldn't hope to pick up a taxi in the native quarter of Port Said. But this time he had seen the man's face — and it was the face of Theo Leidler, memorised from many photographs and detailed descriptions. This obscure cafe might give him the very link he was looking for. He went in.
The place was so dark that at first he could see less than nothing. The air had been poisoned with fumes of coffee, tobacco smoke, garlic and hot oil. As Shaun's eyes became used to the darkness, he saw that dilapidated couches lined two walls, small tables set before them. There were only five or six customers — obviously shopkeepers. He dropped down near one of them who sat alone.
A Nubian boy materialised out of deeper shadows. Shaun ordered coffee, in his fluent Arabic, and as the boy went away, lighted a cigarette and took a look round.
What business had Theo Leidler here? He glanced at the man beside him, a man subtly different from the others, although he, too, probably had a shop somewhere. Grey-bearded, wearing a green turban cloth wrapped around his fez, he had the features of a bird of prey. Beard clutched in his hands, elbows propped on the low table, he sat staring straight before him.
Shaun looked down at his own table. The boy hadn't troubled to move a tray on which were a brass coffee pot and a china cup in a brass holder. Some sticky native coffee remained in the cup, and on the tray he saw the stub of an out-sized cigarette with a rose-petal tip. The brand was new to him.
The boy brought Shaun a similar tray and removed the dirty one. Shaun filled the tiny cup and turned to his neighbour.
"Good morning, had]." He gave the Arab greeting, raising his cup. There was no reply, no faintest stirring. The vulture face remained immobile as a face carved in stone.
A surly old brute, apparently. Shaun, with his cast of features, deep tan, and ability to speak first-class Arabic, was used, when it suited him to pass for a true believer. What had he done wrong? His greeting had been correct, and he had kept his hat on.
Perhaps the had] was deaf.
Shaun looked down at a glass which stood before the descendant of the Prophet. It was half filled with a colourless liquid which he suspected to be raki, a drink hard enough to knock out a strong man in one round. No fanatical Moslem, this! The fact encouraged him. Taking a fresh cigarette, he pretended to have trouble with his lighter, then turned to his silent neighbour.
"May I ask you for a light, 0 hadjiT He still spoke in Arabic.
There was no reply, no movement.
Shaun replaced the cigarette in his case and glanced swiftly around. No one (or no one visible) was paying any attention to him. Bending forward and sideways, as if in earnest conversation, he peered into the set face. Lightly, he touched the fingers clutching the grey beard, and then Shaun caught his breath.
In moments of climax Shaun's brain became icily cold — probably the reason why he was still alive. What he had to do now was to get out fast. He drank the coffee and clapped his hands.
When the Nubian boy materialized again out of the shadows, Shaun paid and stood up. As he turned away he bowed to his hawk-faced neighbour and, as if responding to a parting word, "Good day, had];' he said. "Peace be with you." Then Shaun raised his hand to his forehead and went out.