The Quest of Julian Day (7 page)

Evidently the Captain had reported all he knew of the murder to the police and they meant to check up on our stories separately. But O'Kieff was still inside and once he emerged I did not intend to let him out of my sight whatever happened.

The Belvilles had hardly left me when the Second Purser and two stewards came up to O'Kieff's lair. I was not near enough to hear what passed between them and him but he stepped outside followed by Grünther, who was carrying his despatch case and wraps, and a moment later the stewards began to pass out his baggage while the Purser led him aft along the deck.

I waited for the stewards, my eyes glued to the precious cabin trunk as it seemed to me this was just the point at which it was likely to be spirited away to some carefully selected hiding-place below decks. Rather to my surprise, they humped it off with the other luggage; so I followed wondering anxiously what this special attention to O'Kieff portended. The little party thrust their way through the crush of passengers near the gangway and crossed to the far side of the ship which was facing away from the wharf.

The deck there was considerable less crowded, but a number of the less impatient passengers lined the rail, looking out over the harbour dotted with its innumerable small craft or haggling with the Arabs below who, packed in their flimsy boats, were endeavouring to sell them fly-whisks, fruit and a variety of junk. O'Kieff and his baggage were escorted along the deck behind the row of passengers until they came to a halt where there was a break in the rail and a shipside ladder had been lowered. With a swift glance over, I saw that a large motor-launch was waiting alongside its lowest step.

Up to that moment everything had seemed so simple. All I had to do was to keep fairly near O'Kieff when his baggage was inspected, so that if the customs people looked like letting him through without examining that package there would still be time for me to tip them off, and then, if it was the tablet he would be promptly arrested.

Now, apparently, all my calculations were to be upset. O'Kieff had no accomplice on board among the crew neither
did he intend to smuggle his loot through the customs like a common little crook. As usual, he was doing things on the grand scale and had managed, somehow, to wangle special permission to leave the ship without having his luggage searched. If he really had the tablet, once he got it ashore all chance of tracing it would be gone, and, after that, all possibility of getting him for murder. In an agony of frustration I saw that he would get clean away with it unless I risked everything by intervening. But that meant facing him at once and exposing myself to recognition, which was the very last thing I wanted to do.

Just as I was striving to reach a decision it looked as if the luck had taken a sudden turn in my favour. A police sergeant came hurrying up.

‘No one is to leave the ship,' he barked at the Purser.

‘Good gracious, man, why?' inquired O'Kieff with bland surprise.

‘It is an order,' said the sergeant.

I was just chuckling to myself at his having been caught out when he leant over the rail and spoke to someone in the launch below. Next moment a short, stout figure wearing a red tarboosh came swiftly up the ladder and stepped on to the deck. In the glow of the electric light I recognised him instantly as Ismail Zakri Bey and my heart sank like a stone.

Zakri was the Egyptian among the Big Seven whom I had met in Brussels and I saw their whole plan in a flash. Before O'Kieff left Marseilles he had arranged that Zakri Bey, who could give him diplomatic immunity from all landing formalities in Egypt, should come off to meet the ship and take him ashore. I was near enough to hear the two of them greet each other, while the police sergeant drew himself up and saluted smartly.

‘Sorry to have to bring you up on deck, Bey,' O'Kieff was murmuring, ‘but there seems to be an order that no passenger should leave the ship as yet.'

‘That does not apply to this gentleman,' Zakri Bey said quickly to the sergeant. ‘He is a friend of mine.'

‘Pardon, Excellency,' replied the man, ‘but it is an order of the
Miralai
that all baggage must be searched before any passenger leaves the ship.'

O'Kieff laughed, and I gave him full marks for his magnificent
self-assurance, as he said, ‘Well, you can search mine if you like. I haven't the least objection.'

‘No, no.' Zakri shook his head. ‘We have no time.'

He turned to the sergeant again. ‘Mr. O'Kieff is my personal guest and I take full responsibility. Tell your officer that we had to go ashore at once to keep an important engagement. Come now,' he added to the stewards, ‘put all these things in the boat.'

The sergeant did not dare to protest further, but saluted again and, to show his efficiency before such an important personage, began to shout curses at the Arab riff-raff below for the noise they were making as they endeavoured to coax piastres out of the watching passengers.

Zakri Bey's arrival on the scene caused me finally to abandon any thought of trying to prevent O'Kieff from leaving the ship. Zakri was a power in the land and he obviously did not intend to allow that cabin trunk to be opened whatever happened. If I attempted to force an issue he would simply overrule everybody, have the trunk thrown into the boat and make his peace with the authorities afterwards. Besides, if one of them failed to recognise me under the thin disguise of my brown beard it was quite certain that the other would. I could only stand there half-choking with fury at the way O'Kieff had slipped through my fingers, as he followed Zakri down the ladder.

The sergeant had passed along the deck, still shouting at the Arabs, while I leant over the rail gloomily watching the luggage being loaded into the launch. It was just pushing off when I heard a voice call up to me from the semi-darkness below, a little further aft.

‘Mr. Day, sir!
Saida
, Julian
effendi
! Please to regard me! What pleasure to welcome you to Egypt again!'

I turned, and there, standing up in a small motor-boat ten yards away, was a tall figure in a long, wide-sleeved silk jibba and tarboosh, with a crooked stick hanging over one arm and two rows of enormous gleaming white teeth shining up at me out of a dark, smiling face. It was Amin Khattab, the admirable Arab who had been my dragoman during my three months' stay in Egypt the previous winter.

‘Welcome, Mr. Day, sir! Welcome!' he was crying cheerfully.
‘I come by train to-day from Cairo to be here to meet you.'

How he could possibly have known that I was on my way out to Egypt again passes my comprehension. I have often heard stories of Indian bearers turning up in the same way to meet ships in which their old masters were returning but such a thing had never previously happened to myself. It is just one of the mysteries of the East that native servants do often travel many miles to be on the dock for the purpose of securing their old jobs; although how they receive the news that their former employer is on a particular ship is a thing that no European has ever fathomed.

The second I saw Amin I realised that there was still a chance for me to keep in touch with O'Kieff. I had no doubt at all now that he had the tablet. Zakri Bey having come off to meet him and ensure his baggage immunity from inspection proved that, at all events to my satisfaction. Once he had the tablet ashore he could easily fake up some story to show that it had come into his possession after he had landed, So there was little hope of pinning the murder on him through it; but the tablet itself was of immense importance. The Belvilles would certainly have gone to the Captain that morning and insisted on O'Kieff's cabin being searched if I hadn't persuaded them not to. They would be as sick as mud when they learned that I had allowed him to get away with it. I knew that I stood no chance at all of getting it back forcibly from Zakri and his crew but now fate had given me an opportunity to follow them and see where they took it, that seemed the very least I could do.

The Second Purser was still standing at the gap in the ship's rail so I tapped him on the shoulder and said quickly: ‘That's my old dragoman in the boat below there. I shan't be a moment, but I want to fix things up with him.'

Without waiting for his reply I pushed past him and, waving a greeting to Amin, ran down the ladder. As Amin's boat came alongside I lowered my voice and muttered to him in Arabic, ‘You saw that launch go off just now? There may be trouble, as I am not supposed to leave the ship yet, but I want to follow it. Are you game to take me?'

He glanced up at the Purser and nodded. ‘I am a Cairo guide, so the ship people do not know me. It shall be as you
wish, my lord. Step in the boat, please.'

Without further ado I jumped down beside him. He gave an order to his boatman and the motor purred.

‘Hi! Come back, there!' shouted the Purser. But I took no notice.

‘Hi!' he called again. ‘Come back at once! You're not allowed to land without a permit! Come back there, or you'll be in trouble with the police!'

I turned and then cupping my hands, yelled back: ‘Don't worry! I'll attend to any formalities later. Ask Mr. Belville to see my baggage through the customs.'

By that time we were fifty yards from the black bulk of the ‘Hampshire'. The Purser's reply was drowned among the excited-murmur of the passengers near him and the shrill cries of the Arab hawkers in the crowd of boats alongside.

Zakri Bey's launch had a good quarter of a mile's start of us and was heading for the harbour mouth, but we could see his lights quite clearly and, as our boat was a good one, I felt we had a decent prospect of keeping him in sight.

‘How the deuce did you know that I was on my way back to Egypt?' I asked Amin, as we settled down to the chase.

He grinned at me in the darkness and shrugged his powerful shoulders. ‘It was told to me that you were on this ship by old Mahmoud who reads the sands, and old Mahmoud never lies.'

Knowing that every Arab is an inveterate believer in fortune-telling and has the sands read for him at least once a week, I did not press the question further.

We turned south-west outside the mole and ran along the curve of the coal wharf, following Zakri Bey's launch until it turned in towards the shore again. We lost it then for a bit, and had some difficulty in picking it up among the Armada of small craft that lay at anchor off a straggling line of short jetties. But Amin spotted it nosing its way along to a rickety landing-stage beyond which there were some dark sheds and a rabbit-warren of dilapidated hutments.

We followed, shutting off our engine when we got to within thirty yards of the jetty. Peering forward I saw that O'Kieff, Zakri and Grünther had already landed and were just disappearing into the dark shadows cast by the wooden buildings, while Zakri's men were still busy unloading the baggage. Pulling
Amin down beside me, we crouched in the stern of the boat until the men with the baggage had followed the others up the jetty. Next moment we were alongside. ‘Wait here for ten minutes and if I don't return, meet me at Hotel Cecil,' I said to Amin, and I climbed out on to the pier.

As I padded softly up the wooden causeway I was praying that if there was a car waiting in the street beyond the hutments for O'Kieff and Zakri, I should have the good luck to pick up a taxi in which to follow them and learn where they took the all-important trunk.

The jetty and its immediate neighbourhood were utterly deserted. The clanging of tram bells and the hoot of motor-horns came faintly from the street a few hundred yards away, but there was not a moving thing in sight as I entered a narrow passage at the top of the causeway where a mass of spars, anchors and other waterfront débris were littered about between two sheds.

Without a hint of warning a tall figure suddenly stepped out from the shadows and a sharp voice said, ‘What the hell are you up to—following us?'

It was O'Kieff, and he was holding an automatic which pointed at my middle.

Instead of having passed through the huddle of shacks to the street, as I had supposed, O'Kieff must have waited there at the top of the causeway to see the porters bring up his precious luggage and spotted me following them; all unsuspectingly I had walked right into his arms.

‘What the hell d'you mean by poking your nose into my affairs?' he snapped, and his eyes glinted angrily behind his pince-nez.

‘Your affairs?' I echoed in a tone that I hoped conveyed complete surprise. ‘I wasn't following you. I don't even know who you are.'

‘That's a lie! You've just come off the “Hampshire”. I saw your boat leave the ship a couple of minutes after ours.'

‘Well, what about it?' I bluffed. ‘Why should you consider yourself the only person who has a reason for wanting to get ashore at once?'

‘Who is he?' came a falsetto voice, and Zakri Bey emerged from the shadows. Evidently he had sent Grünther on with the baggage and returned to join O'Kieff.

‘I don't know,' O'Kieff grunted, and signalling me with a jerk of his automatic to step out into the open space where the lights from the vessels in the basin would enable him to see me better, he added, ‘Come on, let's have a look at you.'

I had no alternative but to obey and, as I did so, I wondered with acute anxiety what would happen when they recognised me. There was not a soul about except the boatmen, who were now hidden from us by the angle of the sheds; the street was several hundred yards away and a feeling of absolute panic welled up in me as I saw that O'Kieff had a silencer on the end of his gun. The ‘plop' of the silenced automatic would not be heard in the street or even down at the bottom of the jetty.

When I failed to reappear Amin would not come up to investigate because I'd told him that if I did not return in ten minutes he was to meet me at the Hotel Cecil. Besides, they could easily drag my body into one of the tumble-down shacks and cover it with abandoned gear so that it might not be discovered for days and, even when it was, Zakri Bey had quite enough power with the Egyptian authorities to stymie any investigations which might lead towards O'Kieff or himself.