Ancient Spirits (Daisy Gumm Majesty Books) (26 page)

Sam frowned at me some more. Then he said, “Damned if I know.”

I sighed. “I can’t imagine what an antiquities thief would want with me
, either. I guess I can see a political spy sneaking something into my handbag or something, but I swear to heaven, nobody’s put so much as a pottery shard in my luggage. I think smuggling antiquities is really a stretch.”

“I guess. Although that’s what the London folks are here for. Egypt was a British protectorate for years, you know, and it’s only recently that the Egyptian government has taken an interest in keeping their antiquities in their own country. Hell, Europeans have looted the place—with the complicity of the natives, mind you—since before Napoleon’s time.”

I blinked. “That is a very long time, isn’t it?”

“Very,” said Sam dryly. “But now everyone’s up in arms about the problem, so folks are trying to stop it. I don’t know about drugs or spies, though. That’s . . .” Again his voice sort of sagged to a stop.

“You’d think Turkey would be the place for drugs,” Harold said, rather unexpectedly in my estimation. “Isn’t Turkey where the opium poppies grow?”

“Oh, my,” said I, not having thought about opium poppies in connection with Turkey, even though the notion of smuggling opium sounded a bit more possible than smuggling antiquities.

Sam threw up his hands. Fortunately for all of us, he kept a hold on his notebook and pencil. “Hell, who knows what’s going on? You’d better let me go through your bags, though, since I’m trained to search, and you’re not.”

“Darn you, Sam Rotondo. I searched everything there was to search.” Besides, I didn’t want him going through my more delicate, private belongings.

“Better me than a customs agent,” he snapped.

“All right. All right. But does it have to be now?” With some astonishment, I placed a hand on my stomach and announced, “I’m hungry!”

This time it was Harold who threw his hands up in the air. “Hallelujah! It’s about time! Let’s go down to the dining room and have dinner. My treat. Please join us, Detective Rotondo.”

Sam looked for a moment as if he were
indignantly going to refuse Harold’s offer, but he glanced at me, I made a face at him, and he finally said, “Thank you. Don’t mind if I do.”

I glanced down at my plain skirt and shirtwaist. “I suppose I’d better change into something more presentable for a first-class hotel restaurant.”

“Hell, does that mean I have to change, too?” asked Sam, sounding aggrieved.

“You look fine, Detective Rotondo,” said Harold hurriedly. “Daisy, why don’t you put on that blue dress you wore before? That’s not formal, but it’s a bit nicer for dinnertime than what you’re wearing now. I’ll go to my room and change, too.”

“What will I do while you guys are changing?” asked Sam, looking for the first time since I’d met him as if he felt a little left out of the party.

“Just hang out in the hall with Ali, why don’t you? He speaks very good English, and maybe you can detectivate some information out of him about your gang of villains and thugs.” I smiled at Sam when he shot me a thunderous scowl. “You just don’t want to talk to him because he’s so good-looking and exotic.”

“Don’t be silly,” snarled Sam, grabbing his coat and hat and heading for the door.

“You’re a little hard on the man, Daisy. He’s only trying to help us,” Harold said after Sam left my room.

“He’s always been a thorn in my side.” I sighed heavily. “But you’re right. He’s trying to help us. I shouldn’t rag him.”

“See that you don’t in the future.” And Harold wagged a playful finger at me before he, too, left my room.

It didn’t take me long to change. I’d bathed earlier in the day and washed my hair for good measure so as to cleanse away the lingering remains of my recent ordeal. Then I hesitated, wondering if I should wait for Harold or Sam to come and fetch me. After all, if Sam was right, and I was some kind of target for a person or persons unknown—although I was pretty sure they were known to me even if I didn’t know why they wanted me—I didn’t want to be snatched away by a criminal from the hallway of my hotel. Then I recalled Ali, relaxed, and opened my door.

To my utter astonishment, I discovered Ali and Sam yukking it up as if they were long lost friends reunited after an absence of decades. I must have stared at them, because Ali shut up and straightened into his official posture. Sam turned his head and frowned at me. How typical.

“Ready at last, are you?” said he.

I decided to ignore his sarcasm. It hadn’t taken me more than ten minutes to dress for dinner, after all. “I see you two managed to get to know each other. Mister Bektas, this is Mister Rotondo, from my home town of Pasadena, California, in the United States.”

“Yes. He told me. He say your—what do you say?—Your . . .”

“Husband,” Sam supplied helpfully.

“Ah. Yes. Your husband recently went to God, and your brother takes you on a big trip.”

“Yes, that’s true,” I told Ali, trying to remember if we’d told Sam that Harold and I were masquerading as brother and sister. “And then I got sick and somebody tried to rob me.” I shook my head. “Some trip so far.”

“Most unusual,” said Ali, his demeanor formal. “Not the sick, but the rob. Most unusual. This the Sultanahmet, and the Sultanahmet is the best hotel in Istanbul.”

“I understand that such a thing is very unusual. But I don’t want to think about that now. I’m really glad you’ll be our guide when we visit the beautiful spots in Istanbul, Ali. I’m looking forward to it.”

His teeth gleamed in a smile so magnificent, I darned near got weak in the knees. “Yes. I take you to beautiful places we have.”

I thought of a question I’d had before, so I asked Ali, “Will I be allowed into the Blue Mosque. I mean, I’m a woman and all.” I felt my cheeks heat as both Ali and Sam grinned at me. Curse all men.

“You cover your head and remove your shoes and dress respectable, and you be allowed to see the great room.”

Dress respectable? I wondered if Ali considered my usual mode of dress to be disrespectful. Boy, I never realized how complicated travel to foreign parts could be for us blasé Americans who never thought about cultures other than our own. In fact, I’d bet anything, if I did anything so foolish as to gamble, that if you asked your average American (whatever that is) if we even had a culture, and you’d get blank stares back.

My musing upon this interesting subject was interrupted by Harold, who joined us at that point. “Ah, good,” said he, rubbing his hands. “Let’s go to the hotel dining room and take some nourishment.” Before he took his nourishment, he took my arm. “I’m so very glad you’re at last feeling hungry again, Daisy.” He nodded politely at Ali, who bowed politely back, and Harold, Sam and I headed for the lift, which took us to the lobby, from whence we went to the hotel restaurant, a five-star affair if ever there was one.

The waiter, who was infinitely more dignified than I and reminded me of Mrs. Pinkerton’s butler Featherstone, led us to a table beside a window where we could have a view of the outdoors. Of course, by that time night had fallen, so we couldn’t see much. I have to admit I was looking forward to our trip to see the sights the day after tomorrow.

“Your hotel is called the Bosphorus, Sam. Is it on the banks of the Bosphorus or something?”

He shrugged as he reared back to allow the waiter to put his napkin in his lap. Sam was no more accustomed to being waited on than was I. “I don’t know. Didn’t look. First thing I did after I checked in was come here to find you two.”

“Oh. That was nice.”

“Yes. Thank you,” said Harold.

Then Harold and I glanced at each other. I do believe neither of us could figure out exactly why Sam was so dedicated to my welfare when we didn’t even know why I was being pursued. If I was being pursued—although it did appear as if someone wanted something I had. But he’d been worried about me even before he knew about the room searches and break-in and so forth. Very strange. Unless he was carrying his loyalty to Billy’s last request to an extreme degree.

“Don’t look at each other like that,” Sam growled. Trust him to notice anything a body didn’t want him to notice. “We’ve been getting reports of strange goings-on in these parts, and it looks like you’ve managed to get yourself mixed up in some of them. I’m here to fix that.”

“Right,” I said, and I regret to say my voice was quite sardonic. “Too bad we don’t know what exactly the strange thing is that we’re mixed up in.”

“Not we,” said Harold, the rat. “You. You’re the only one who’s been bothered.”

I heaved a sigh. “Thanks for reminding me. I just wish I knew what it was the crooks wanted of me. I’d hand it over in a minute.”

“Maybe it’s you they want,” grumbled Sam. “Want to hand yourself over to a gang of white slavers?”

I frowned at him. “Oh, come on, Sam. Those tales of white slavery are nonsense. The stuff of fiction and the flickers. Aren’t they?”

“No,” he said emphatically. “They are not.”

His answer sent a jolt of panic through me, but before I could ask any questions, a waiter appeared. He was another dignified bloke wearing a grand Turkish costume rather like Ali’s only without the dagger thrust through his sash. I liked the way Turks dressed a lot more than the way Egyptians dressed, and I began to get ideas for spiritualist costumes. Perhaps this trip wasn’t going to be a total waste after all. I forgot the white slavery question as I considered what to sew for myself when I got home. It only occurred to me later that this moment in time might have been the turning point in my recovery, both physical and emotional.

“Want a drink, Detective Rotondo? You can drink booze here, you know. Not like at home.”

“I thought Moslems didn’t drink alcohol,” said Sam, something I’d been curious about, too.

“Perhaps they don’t, but tourists do,” said Harold pragmatically. “And the natives want our money, so they serve the forbidden stuff. So do you want a drink?”

“No, thanks,” said Sam, who appeared uncomfortable with the very idea of consuming something that was blatantly illegal in his own country. “I’ll just have coffee.”

“Turkish coffee?” asked Harold, a glint in his eye—and I knew why. Turkish coffee is nothing at all like its pale and pallid cousin we Americans drink. I smiled, hoping Sam might choke on his choice of drink, or at least gasp once or twice.

“Sure. Sounds okay to me.”

“I’ll have a dry martini,” Harold told the waiter. “Daisy, you want tea, don’t you?”

He knew me so well. “Yes, please.”

“Tea for the lady, and Turkish coffee for the other gentleman.”

The waiter bowed and went away to fetch our drinks. Harold and I exchanged another speaking look.

Sam said, “What?” in a most suspicious voice.

“Nothing,” Harold and I chorused.

“Huh,” said Sam, as ever.

When the waiter returned with our beverages, Sam stared at the teeny cup of coffee the man set before him. “What’s that?” he asked. I was glad he’d been polite enough to save his question until the waiter had left.

“That’s your Turkish coffee, Sam,” I said sweetly. “Take a big gulp.”

“A gulp is all there is of it,” he muttered.

“Daisy’s teasing you, Detective. Take a small sip. That stuff is potent.”

“Potent?” Sam stared at Harold. “Do you mean to tell me Moslems put booze in their coffee? I thought only the Irish did that.”

“Do the Irish put alcohol in their coffee?” I asked, genuinely curious.

“There’s no booze in the coffee,” Harold assured Sam. “Trust me.”

Sam didn’t appear to trust Harold any more than he trusted me. Nevertheless, he spooned a lump of sugar into his coffee cup and lifted it to his lips. His huge paw dwarfed the itty-bitty cup. Then he took a sip of the coffee. And then his eyes opened wider than I’d ever seen them, he carefully replaced the cup on its little saucer before him, and he seemed to struggle for breath. After a second or two of silence, during which I prayed Sam wouldn’t blow up and explode all over the restaurant, he turned to me.

“Take a big gulp, eh?”

I shrugged. “Just a suggestion.” I tried to appear impish but probably didn’t, given that according to all reports, I looked more like the wraith of a human being than the genuine article at the time.

“Don’t mind Daisy, Detective Rotondo. She’s been sick.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Said Sam grumpily. “She hates me. And call me Sam, will you? Can the ‘Detective Rotondo’ thing. We don’t want anyone who might be watching to know I’m with the cops.”

“Thanks,” said Harold. “And please call me Harold.”

Stung and feeling oddly ashamed of myself, I said, “I don’t either hate you, Sam Rotondo.”

Sam looked hard at me. “You could have fooled me.”

And, darn it all to heck and back, I felt like crying again. Lord, I was a mess!

Chapter Twenty

In spite of the coffee incident, I managed to eat a fairly substantial meal, considering I hadn’t consumed anything but pared apples, soda crackers and ginger ale for days and days. I put away a whole bowl of chicken soup with some big beans in it—the Turks favor lentils as do the Egyptians, but since I don’t, I’d passed on that choice—and some delicious flat bread that we dipped in some kind of yogurt sauce. I’d never heard of yogurt before, but I guess it’s quite common in those parts and is used in all sorts of different dishes, from breakfast to supper. This particular yogurt dish was kind of like thick sour milk, but it was seasoned with garlic and tiny cucumber bits and I don’t know what else. It was good. That’s all I knew, and I hoped I’d be able to discover a Turkish cookbook, only in English, to take home to Vi when we went on our tour of the city.