I took the pages that I had written and hid them in a wide crack in the marble-topped Victorian washstand. I then put on a tie and linen jacket and, cane in hand, my most bemused and guileless expression upon my face, I left the room and walked down the tall dim corridor to the lobby, limping perhaps a little more than was necessary, exaggerating my quiet genuine debility to suggest, if possible, an even greater helplessness. If they had come at last to kill me, I thought it best to go to them while I still held in check the creature terror. As I approached the lobby, I recalled Cicero's death and took courage from his example. He too had been old and tired, too exasperated at the last even to flee.
My assassin (if such he is and I still do not know) looks perfectly harmless: a red-faced American in a white suit crumpled from heat and travel. In atrocious Arabic he was addressing the manager who, though he speaks no English, is competent in French, is accustomed to speaking French to Occidentals. My compatriot, however, was obstinate and smothered with a loud voice the polite European cadences of the manager.
I moved slowly to the desk, tapping emphatically with my cane on the tile floor. Both turned; it was the moment which I have so long dreaded: the eyes of an American were turned upon me once again. Would he know? Does he know? I felt all the blood leave my head. With a great effort, I remained on my feet; steadying my voice which has nowadays a tendency to quaver even when I am at ease, I said to the American, in our own language, the language I had not once spoken in nearly twenty years, "Can I be of assistance, sir?" The words sounded strange on my lips and I was aware that I had given them an ornateness which was quite unlike my usual speech. His look of surprise was, I think, perfectly genuine. I felt a cowardly relief: not yet, not yet.
"Oh!" the American stared at me stupidly for a moment (his face is able to suggest a marvelous range of incomprehension, as I have since discovered).
"My name is Richard Hudson," I said, pronouncing carefully the name by which I am known in Egypt, the name with which I have lived so long that it sometimes seems as if all my life before was only a dream, a fantasy of a time which never was except in reveries, in those curious waking-dreams which I often have these days when I am tired, at sundown usually, when my mind often loses all control over itself and the memory grows confused with imaginings, and I behold worlds and splendors which I have never known yet which are vivid enough to haunt me even in the lucid mornings: I am dying, of course, and my brain is only letting up, releasing its images with a royal abandon, confusing everything like those surrealist works of art which had some vogue in my youth.
"Oh," said the American again and then, having accepted my reality, he pushed a fat red hand toward me. "The name is Butler, Bill Butler. Glad to meet you. Didn't expect to find another white… didn't expect to meet up with an American in these parts." I shook the hand.
"Let me help you," I said, letting go the hand quickly. 'The manager speaks no English."
"I been studying Arabic," said Butler with a certain sullenness. "Just finished a year's course at Ottawa Center for this job. They don't speak it here like we studied it."
"It takes time," I said soothingly. "You'll catch the tone."
"Oh, I'm sure of that. Tell them I got a reservation." Butler mopped his full glistening cheeks with a handkerchief.
"You have a reservation for William Butler?" I asked the manager in French.
He shook his head, looking at the register in front of him.
"Is he an American?" He looked surprised when I said that he was. "But it didn't sound like English."
"He was trying to speak Arabic."
The manager sighed. "Would you ask him to show me his passport and authorizations?"
I communicated this to Butler who pulled a bulky envelope from his pocket and handed it to the manager. As well as I could, without appearing inquisitive, I looked at the papers. I could tell nothing. The passport was evidently in order. The numerous authorizations from the Egyptian Government in the Pan-Arabic League, however, seemed to interest the manager intensely.
"Perhaps…" I began, but he was already telephoning the police. Though I speak Arabic with difficulty, I can understand it easily. The manager was inquiring at length about Mr Butler and about his status in Egypt. The police chief evidently knew all about him and the conversation was short.
"Would you ask him to sign the register?" The manager's expression was puzzled. I wondered what on earth it was all about.
"Don't know why," said Butler, carving his name into the register with the ancient pen, "there's all this confusion. I wired for a room last week from Cairo."
"Communications have not been perfected in the Arab countries," I said (fortunately for me, I thought to myself).
When he had done registering, a boy came and took his bags and the key to his room.
"Much obliged to you, Mr Hudson."
"Not at all."
"Like to see something of you, if you don't mind. Wonder if you could give me an idea of the lay of the land."
I said I should be delighted and we made a date to meet for tea in the cool of the late afternoon, on the terrace.
When he had gone, I asked the manager about him but he, old friend that he was (he has been manager for twelve years and looks up to me as an elder statesman, in the hotel at least, since I have lived there longer), merely shrugged and said, "It's too much for me, sir." And I could get no more out of him.
2
The terrace was nearly cool when we met at six o'clock, at the hour when the Egyptian sun has just lost its unbearable gold, falling, a scarlet disc, into the white stone hills across the dull river which, at this season, winds narrowly among the mud-flats, a third of its usual size, diminished by heat.
"Don't suppose we could order a drink… not that I'm much of a drinking man, you know. Get quite a thirst, though, on a day like this."
I told him that since foreigners had ceased to come here, the bar had been closed down: Moslems for religious reasons did not use alcohol.
"I know, I know," he said. "Studied all about them, even read the Koran. Frightful stuff, too."
"No worse than most documents revealed by heaven," I said gently, not wanting to get on to that subject. "But tell me what brings you to these parts?"
"I was going to ask you the same thing," said Butler genially, taking the cup of mint tea which the servant had brought him. On the river a boat with a red sail tacked slowly in the hot breeze. "The manager tells me you've been up here for twenty years."
"You must have found a language in common."
Butler chuckled. "These devils understand you well enough if they want to. But you…"
"I was an archaeologist at one time," I said and I told him the familiar story which I have repeated so many times now that I have almost come to believe it. "I was from Boston originally. Do you know Boston? I often think of those cold winters with a certain longing. Too much light can be as trying as too little. Some twenty years ago, I decided to retire, to write a book of memoirs." This was a new, plausible touch, "Egypt was always my single passion and so I came to Luxor, to this hotel where I've been quite content, though hardly industrious."
"How come they let you in? I mean there was all that trouble along around when the Pan-Arabic League shut itself off from civilization."
"I was very lucky, I suppose. I had many friends in the academic world of Cairo and they were able to grant me a special dispensation."
"Old hand, then, with the natives?"