The Quest of Julian Day (24 page)

‘It's now twenty-to-six,' he said. ‘So they've had four hours' clear start. There is a direct road to Ismailia but it's a pretty
poor one so it's almost certain that they'd take the first-class road down to Suez and go north along the Canal bank from there. Suez is eighty miles and roughly a three-hour run. Ismailia is another fifty but the road, being in the Canal zone and kept up by the Company, is the best in Egypt so they'd cover that stretch easily in an hour and a half. At that rate they're not due in till about seven so there's just a chance that we might catch them on the open road.'

When his call to Ismailia came through he gave quick instructions for police cars to be sent out on both the Canal road and the desert track with orders to search all cars approaching Ismailia from either direction. The Ismailia police had never heard of the House of the Angels but they promised to make every possible effort to locate it.

‘Is there nothing else we can do?' I asked as he hung up the receiver.

‘I'm afraid there isn't, yet awhile,' he said slowly. ‘A general call will have gone out by now from Headquarters, so every policeman in Egypt will be on the look out for her; but we must wait until we get some reports in. Unless they told her some extraordinarily plausible story its hardly likely she would willingly let them drive her out of Cairo. The probability is that they ran the car into some cul-de-sac or courtyard in the city and gave her a shot of dope to keep her quiet. If they had wanted to get away quickly they would have left her lying in the back of the car as though she were asleep; in which case it's almost certain that one of the men at the police barriers will have noticed her and be able to tell us by which road the car left the city. Or, again, since they would normally have to stop somewhere for petrol, a garage-hand may be able to tell us something when the police make their inquiries.

‘On the other hand, after having doped her, they may have thought it worth while to expend a little extra time in dressing her up in the black clothes of a native woman with a veil over her face and hair so as to prevent anyone recognising her. But even if they did that, we have the description of the car she left in and of the man she left with and, as there isn't a great deal of motor-traffic on the roads outside the city, there's still a good chance that the barrier police will be able to give us some information.

‘I only wish there were something else we
could
do, but this is a case where we just have to leave it for the police organisation to function; and although it may seem a poor consolation to you at the moment I can tell you that when the police-net is spread nation-wide like this, the odds are all in its favour.'

‘But we can't just sit here like this doing nothing!' Clarissa cried. ‘At least we can go down to Ismailia.'

‘We've no proof at all that they're taking her there,' I said. ‘It was only my idea.'

‘It's a very logical one, though,' said Harry. ‘God forbid that I should add to the gloom we're all feeling, but having kidnapped her it's a hundred-to-one against these people letting her go again. If they did she would be able to describe them, and the place to which she'd been taken, to the police afterwards. They wouldn't dare risk that, so they'll try to get her out of the way somehow. This white-slaving depot offers an excellent way of disposing of her and means that they'll get a good round sum in hard cash for her as well. They'd never be such fools as to stick a knife in her with such an alternative ready to their hands.'

‘I quite agree with you,' Essex Pasha nodded.

‘Then I'm going to Ismailia,' declared Clarissa.

‘You can't do more than the police can,' I remarked.

‘No, but I can be on hand when the poor child's rescued.' replied Clarissa promptly. ‘And after such a frightful experience she'll need another woman to look after her.'

‘Good for you,' I admitted, and turned to Essex Pasha. ‘You've no objection, sir, I suppose, to our going down to the Canal?'

‘None at all. I think Mrs. Belville's idea a very sound one. You had better go
via
Suez and I'll telephone the police there that you're on your way. If you go straight to Police Headquarters they'll give you any news that may have come in while you are making the trip, and pass you on to the police in Ismailia.'

I thanked him and asked the manager if he could get me a car with a really good driver.

‘Yes, Mr. Day,' he said. ‘You shall have my own man who's a first-class fellow. I'll telephone for him to come round at once.'

‘It would be best if you sent him to Shepheard's,' I said, ‘as
I'm going there right away to collect a toothbrush. Then I'll pick up Mr. and Mrs. Belville from the Semiramis.'

The manager accompanied us out on to the terrace and I found Amin and Mustapha there. Although it was barely half-an-hour since we had discovered Sylvia's disappearance, news travels fast among the native servants and they had both arrived to offer their services. Poor Mustapha was in a frightful state. He adored his young mistress and was almost incoherent as he pleaded volubly to be allowed to get his hands on the rogues who had entrapped her. On learning that the car we were to have was a large Buick which would hold five beside the driver, we decided to let the two dragomen accompany us.

We split up then—a very gloomy and unhappy party—our only consolation being that Essex Pasha himself had the matter in hand and we knew that he would do everything that was humanly possible to trace Sylvia. He drove off back to Police Headquarters while the Belvilles took a taxi to the Semiramis and the two dragomen accompanied me to Shepheard's.

Inside ten minutes I had thrust a few things into a small suitcase and was leaving Shepheard's again. The Belvilles were already waiting for me at the Semiramis so we got off without delay and it was barely six when we passed the railway-station on our way out of Cairo.

The road to Suez runs through Heliopolis, a less fashionable suburb of Cairo than Gezira or the district along the Mena road which is on the exactly opposite side of the city. A few moments after leaving the huge block of the Heliopolis Palace Hotel on our right we pulled up at the police barrier for the number of our car to be taken, as is the custom with every vehicle proceeding into the desert. The number is then telephoned through to the police at the next town so that if the car does not arrive within a certain time it is known to have broken down and assistance can be sent out to it. Having passed the barrier we roared away along the straight flat road in to the open plain.

The country was as different from the fertile fields of the Delta as one could possibly imagine. Not a tree, not a house, not an animal nor even a blade of grass was to be seen in any direction; only the ribbon of road clearly marked on either side by large, cylindrical kerosene containers, looking rather
like dust bins, which had been filled with sand and whitewashed so that by night a car's headlights could pick them up clearly and there was no danger of its running off the road.

On either side of us stretched the empty, yellow plain, broken here and there by a distant line of hills or an occasional undulation. This Eastern desert is not a waste of sand such as the uninitiated traveller expects to see, but a waste of stone varying in colour from gold to dark brown. It was at one time a sea-bed and the darker patches are caused by great quantities of loose flints scattered over the windward side of every rise while such loose sand as there is gets blown from among them to form long streaks of golden-yellow on the lee of the hills or in the shallow valleys.

It was Harry's and Clarissa's first experience of the desert and both agreed that in spite of its bareness it had a strange fascination of its own, filling one with a desire to leave the road and penetrate the waste to see what was on the far side of each low line of hills, although one knew perfectly well that the new prospect beyond them would be exactly the same and that one might continue mounting ridge after ridge for hundreds of miles without finding the slightest difference in the alternating patches of darkish flints and yellow, shaly sandstone.

We were all too anxious about Sylvia to talk very much or display interest in any other topic, and after a while the desert scene grew monotonous. The road is well kept and we made good going but even so we were all fidgety with impatience to reach our destination.

In the whole eighty miles, with the exception of police-posts, we passed only one human habitation. It was just half-way between Cairo and Suez to the left of the road and some distance from it. By that time the light was fading but out on a low range of hills we could see a great, rambling building like a fortified palace surrounded by high walls. Amin said that he thought it was an old Coptic monastery.

Soon after, the sun set behind us, casting strange shadows over the broken plain; then darkness fell and we roared on into it eating up the miles, our headlights flashing upon the whitened kerosene tins but for which we should have had to proceed at a snail's pace for fear of running off our course.

At a quarter-to-nine we pulled up at the police barrier outside
Suez. A sergeant jumped on our running-board and directed our driver to the Miza Hotel where we were met by an English officer of the Egyptian police. He introduced himself to us as Major Longdon and told us that Essex Pasha had telephoned him to expect us and that he had taken rooms for us at the hotel. We asked at once for news of Sylvia but he said that he was sorry he had none to give us. All the cars that had come in to Suez from Cairo that afternoon or direct to Ismailia by a second-class desert road had now been checked up. There were, all told, only fifteen of them and the police had satisfied themselves that every one of these was owned by a reputable person and that none of them had been used to bring the kidnapped girl from Cairo.

This looked, on the face of it, as though my idea that she might have been taken to the House of Angels was entirely wrong and that we would have done better to have remained in Cairo; particularly as the Ismailia police had so far failed in their efforts to locate any house which might be the secret white-slaving depot.

Major Longdon was a tall, thin, bony, rather tired-looking man with a bronzed complexion and a network of little wrinkles round his eyes but his smile was pleasant and we very soon realised that behind his lazy manner he concealed a quick brain and an attractive sense of humour.

He led us in to the Miza, which was a very modern building, and gave us a welcome drink while our things were carried upstairs. The hotel was quite a small one and practically deserted. Longdon said, while we were quenching our thirst, that he did not think there was any point in our going on to Ismailia unless we had further news and that the accommodation at Suez was somewhat better.

I had not been in Suez before and as it is one of the half-dozen towns in Africa that even a schoolboy might be expected to name I had imagined it to be quite a big place; but its sole claim to fame lies in its connection with the Canal and it is, in fact, little more than an overgrown village.

As Longdon told us, few passengers either join or leave the ships that pass through it; ninety-eight per cent of the people who are changing ships at all do so at Port Said so even the hotel accommodation is limited and provincial. Until a few
years before, the old Belle Aire Hotel on the opposite side of the street had been practically the only place for European visitors to pass a night. Longdon had fixed us up at the Miza because he thought the new beds there would be better but he proposed that we should dine with him across the way, at the Belle Aire, because it was run by a Frenchwoman whose cuisine was considered to be the best in Suez.

After our drinks we went up to wash, and, to my amazement I found that I had two double-beds and one single at my disposal. The two double-beds—and they were big ones at that—occupied a good portion of the bedroom. There was a modern, private bathroom leading out of it and then a verandah room which overlooked the street but was enclosed with wire gauze against mosquitoes and could be used as a sort of sitting-room as, besides the single bed, it contained a sofa, a couple of armchairs and a table.

When I got downstairs again I asked Longdon the reason for this munificence in the case of a single man, upon which he laughed and said:

‘Lots of Egyptians come down here for their holidays and it's the custom in Egypt that if a man takes a room in a hotel he considers himself entitled to accommodate the whole of his family in it. In consequence, as the average Egyptian family numbers about eighteen, two double-beds and a single one can't really be considered any too lavish.'

The Belle Aire provided us with an excellent meal of the type one might get at an hotel in any small French provincial town; but it was a gloomy session in spite of Longdon's efforts to entertain us.

The thoughts of all of us were naturally on poor Sylvia and what she might be going through while we were sitting there. Our by no means amicable discussion after our first meeting out at Mena two nights before and an hour over cocktails the previous evening were the total extent of my acquaintance with Sylvia so I did not know her sufficiently well to count her as a friend. Yet the very idea of any decent girls being subjected to the treatment she was likely to receive in the House of the Angels was enough to make me frantic to prevent it. I had no personal interest in her whatever but I chafed horribly at being unable to raise a finger on her behalf.

Although there seemed good reason to suppose that I was wrong in my idea that she had been taken to Ismailia, somehow I still had a feeling that I was right in my surmise. O'Kieff and Co., as I had every reason to know, were very clever people and, to my mind, the fact that the police had accounted for all the cars which had come through from Cairo that afternoon did not really amount to much in this particular case. With such important personalities as Zakri Bey and the beautiful Oonas in the organisation there might well be lesser fry—well-to-do merchants and so on—whom the police regarded as quite above suspicion. The thing that worried me most was their failure to locate the House of the Angels. If Sylvia was there, immediate action was the only thing which could save her.