He pondered the situation over his morning coffee and smoked a number ofAchmed es-Salah’s cigarettes. Then he called Mr. Ahmad’s number, but failed, as usual, to get a reply. He began to feel like a man lost in a maze.
Two things he made up his mind to do. First, he would call at the address which appeared on top of Ahmad’s letter. Second, he would return to the house hidden away in the native town, ring the bell (if there was one) and ask for Sir Denis Nayland Smith.
This prospect of even a little action cheered him while he took his bath; and going down to the dining-room he made a good, if late, breakfast.
He took a cab to the address in Sharia Abdin, which he saw to be a modern office building only a few minutes’ walk from the hotel. This made him feel a fool, and he asked the man to wait; went in. He found a list of tenants just inside the door and read all the names carefully.
But Mr. Ahmad’s was not one of them.
More mystery! Until it occurred to him that Ahmad might be a member of a firm which didn’t bear his name at all. As there seemed to be no hall porter, he stepped into the nearest office (“The Loofah Product Coy”) and found a smart young Jewess seated before a typewriter.
She greeted him with a brilliant smile. Many women greeted Brian in that way.
“Excuse me,” Brian began, “but I’m looking for someone called Mr. Ahmad——”
The smile was wiped out. Dark eyes challenged him.
“I’m sorry. There’s no one of that name here.” It was final;
a plain rebuff.
“I’m sorry, too, for troubling you. But, you see, I have a letter from him here”—he produced Ahmad’s letter—”and it has this address on it.”
The dark eyes melted a little. “There are many offices in the building. Perhaps someone else could help you.”
“I’ll try.” He turned to go; when the girl said, more softly:
“Try the Aziza Cigarette Corporation, third floor. They have been here longer than we have. They may know. But don’t say I sent you.”
Brian swung around, and met the brilliant smile again.
“Thanks a million!” He gave her a happy grin.
He was really getting somewhere. The cigarettes he had bought from old Achmed es-Salah were called “Aziza”! This was becoming exciting. But it revived all his half-discarded doubts. If, as he had at some time suspected, it was Zoe he had seen in Achmed’s shop and Zoe who had followed him when he left, than Achmed was back in the picture. And if Mr. Ahmad belonged to the Aziza Cigarette Coproration, then the chain was complete. And he had good reason to believe that he did.
The reason was this: The girl in the Loofah office (who evidently disliked Mr. Ahmad) had warned him: “Don’t say I sent you... .”
Chapter
5
The office of the Aziza Cigarette Corporation was, if anything, even smaller than the one he had just left. An Egyptian youth, incredibly cross-eyed, looked out through a little window. What Brian could see of the room behind this window seemed to indicate that it was totally unfurnished.
“Can I see Mr. Ahmad?” he inquired.
The young Egyptian looked blank. “Nobody here.”
“Are you expecting Mr Ahmad?”
“Don’t know him, sir. Don’t know any of the gentlemen.”
Brian frowned irritably. “What do you mean? You must know who employs you.”
“Why, for sure, sir. Mr. Quintero pays me to come here every morning and collect the letters. This business it has moved to Alex. This office is for renting.”
He looked proud of having given so much information. His mouth expanded in a huge grin which seemed to split his face in half and also to increase his squint.
“Who’s Mr. Quintero?”
“The landlord, sir.”
“Is he in the building?”
“No, sir. He lives in Gezira. I go there now.”
Brian turned abruptly and walked out. This game of blind man’s buff was beginning to get on his nerves. He couldn’t very well call at every office in the building and inquire for Mr. Ahmad; and the unbroken silence of that gentleman’s phone made it difficult to get in touch.
When he came out on to the street he nearly fell over the dirty person of an old beggar seated on the ground right beside the doorway. This ragged object stood up. “Bakshish,” he whined, his hand stretched out.
Brian walked across to the waiting arabtyeh.
“Do you know the house of the Sherif Mohammed Ibn el-Ashraf?” he asked the driver.
The man looked startled. “Yes, sir. But this house not open to visitors.”
“Never mind. I want to go there.”
Brian turned to open the door. But the old mendicant had it open already. “Bakshish, my gentleman.”
Again the eager hand was extended, and Brian threw him a coin as the cab was driven away, and thought no more of the incident.
And so before long he found himself once more in the odorous, noisy, narrow streets of the Oriental city. Here were the hawkers of fruit, vegetables, lemon water and what not, intoning their timeworn cries, descendants of those who had hawked the same wares and cried the same calls when Harun al Raschid ruled Egypt from Baghdad.
Before the iron gate his driver pulled up. “This is house of Seyyid Mohammed.”
Brian got out and tried the gate. It was locked. He could see nothing resembling a bell-push and was wondering what to do next when he realized that a man had come out of the house and was ponderously approaching.
This was a fat fellow with a large, shiny face expressionless as a side of bacon. He wore native dress and a large white turban. Standing close to the locked gate, he said something in a fluty voice which Brian didn’t understand.
“I want to see the Sherif Mohammed,” Brian told him.
The fat man shook his head, turned and slowly walked back again.
Brian rattled the bars angrily. “Did you hear me?” he shouted.
The fat man went in, but came out almost at once with another man, and pointed to the gate. The second man, dressed in black and wearing a red tarbush, was slight and intelligent-looking. He hurried forward.
“You wish to see the Seyyid Mohammed, sir?” He spoke in English.
“Urgently. My name is Merrick, Brian Merrick. I am a friend of Sir Denis Nayland Smith.”
The man unlocked the gate and stood aside for Brian to go in. Then he locked it again. And Brian experienced a pang of apprehension, almost a physical chill, when he recognized the fact that he was fastened into this mystery house. He turned and called to the driver: “Wait for me!”
“Will you come this way, please.”
Brian followed on into the house, which was evidently very old. From a tiled apartment in which a small fountain tinkled he was led upstairs to a lofty room lighted partly by an opening in the painted ceiling and partly by sunshine filtering through the lattices of two recessed windows. The floor was tiled, but several rugs were strewn about on it. His guide pointed to a divan.
“Please wait a few moments, Mr. Merrick. I will inform the Seyyid that you are here.”
He walked out, closing the door behind him.
Brian began to examine the room more carefully. Glancing behind him, he saw a window fitted with bars. He crossed to it; looked out. Then he knew.
He was in the room in which he had seen Nayland Smith!
It was easy, now, to recognize the two mushrabiyeh windows. But something else he saw puzzled him. High up in a wall was an opening like a small window covered with a grille of ornamental wrought iron. He couldn’t imagine what purpose it served, but it had an ominous look. There seemed to be only one door to the room, and this door, for he tried it, had been quietly locked by the man in the red tarbush when he went out!