Yet it has always seemed fantastic to me that even now he was jealous of everyone except the true author of Justine’s present concern — myself. Despite the overwhelming mass of evidence he hardly dared to allow himself to suspect me. It was not love that is blind, but jealousy. It was a long time before he could bring himself to trust the mass of documentation his agents had piled up around us, around our meetings, our behaviour. But by now the facts had obtruded themselves so clearly that there was no possibility of error. The problem was how to dispose of me — I do not mean in the flesh so much. For I’d become merely an image standing in his light. He saw me perhaps dying, perhaps going away. He did not know. The very uncertainty was exciting to the pitch of drunkenness. Of course I am only supposing this.
But side by side with these preoccupations were others — the posthumous problems which Arnauti had been unable to solve and which Nessim had been following up with true Oriental curiosity over a period of years. He was now near to the man with the black patch over one eye — nearer than any of us had ever been. Here was another piece of knowledge which as yet he could not decide how best to use. If Justine was really ridding herself of him, however, what good would there be in revenging himself upon the true person of the mysterious being? On the other hand if I was about to step into the place vacated by the image? …
I asked Selim point-blank whether he had ever visited my flat to warn one-eyed Hamid. He did not reply but lowered his head and said under his breath, ‘My master is not himself these days.’ Meanwhile my own fortunes had taken an absurd and unexpected turn. One night there came a banging on the door and I opened it to admit the dapper figure of an Egyptian Army officer clad in resplendent boots and tarbush, carrying under his arm a giant fly-whisk with an ebony handle. Yussouf Bey spoke nearly perfect English, allowing it to fall negligently from his lips, word by well—chosen word, out of an earnest coal-black face fitted with a dazzle of small perfect teeth like seed-pearls. He had some of the endearing solemnity of a talking water-melon just down from Cambridge. Hamid brought him habitual coffee and a sticky liqueur, and over it he told me that a great friend of mine in a high position very much wished to see me. My thoughts at once turned to Nessim; but this friend, the water-melon asserted, was an Englishman, an official. More he could not say. His mission was confidential. Would I go with him and visit my friend?
I was full of misgivings. Alexandria, outwardly so peaceful, was not really a safe place for Christians. Only last week Pombal had come home with a story of the Swedish vice-consul whose car had broken down on the Matrugh road. He had left his wife alone in it while he walked to the nearest telephone-point in order to ring up the consulate and ask them to send out another car. He had arrived back to find her body sitting normally on the back seat — without a head. Police were summoned and the whole district was combed. Some Bedouin encamped nearby were among those interrogated. While they were busy denying any knowledge of the accident, out of the apron of one of the women rolled the missing head. They had been trying to extract the gold teeth which had been such an unpleasant feature of her party-smile.
This sort of incident was not sufficiently uncommon to give one courage in visiting strange quarters of the town after dark, so it was with no feeling of jauntiness that I followed the soldier into the back of a staff-car behind a uniformed driver and saw myself being whirled towards the seedier quarters of the town. Yussouf Bey stroked his neat little brush—stroke moustache with the anticipatory air of a musician tuning an instrument. It was useless to question him further: I did not wish to betray any of the anxiety I felt. So I made a sort of inner surrender to the situation, lit a cigarette, and watched the long dissolving strip of the Corniche flow past us.
Presently the car dropped us and the soldier led me on foot through a straggle of small streets and alleys near the Rue Des Soeurs. If the object here was to make me lose myself it succeeded almost immediately. He walked with a fight self-confident step, humming under his breath. Finally we debouched into a suburban street full of merchants’ stores and stopped before a great carved door which he pushed open after having first rung a bell. A courtyard with a stunted palm-tree; the path which crossed it was punctuated by a couple of feeble lanterns standing on the gravel.
We crossed it and ascended some stairs to where a frosted electric light bulb gleamed harshly above a tall white door. He knocked, entered and saluted in one movement. I followed him into a large, rather elegant and warmly-lighted room with neat polished floors enhanced by fine Arab carpets. In one corner seated at a high inlaid desk with the air of a man riding a penny-farthing sat Scobie, with a scowl of self-importance overlapping the smile of welcome with which he greeted me. ‘My God’ I said. The old pirate gave a Drury Lane chuckle and said: ‘At last, old man, at last.’ He did not rise however but sat on in his uncomfortable high-backed chair, tarbush on head, whisk on knee, with a vaguely impressive air. I noticed an extra pip on his shoulder, betokening heaven knows what increase of rank and power. ‘Sit down, old man’ he said with an awkward sawing movement of the hand which bore a faint resemblance to a Second Empire gesture. The soldier was dismissed and departed grinning. It seemed to me that Scobie did not look very much at ease in these opulent surroundings. He had a slightly defensive air. ‘I asked them to get hold of you’ he said, sinking his voice to a theatrical whisper ‘for a very special reason.’ There were a number of green files on his desk and a curiously disembodied-looking tea-cosy. I sat down.
He now rose quickly and opened the door. There was nobody outside. He opened the window. There was no one standing on the sill. He placed the tea-cosy over the desk telephone and reseated himself. Then, leaning forward and speaking carefully, he rolled his glass eye at me as with a conspiratorial solemnity he said:
‘Not a word to anyone, old man. Swear you won’t say a word’. I swore. ‘They’ve made me head of the Secret Service.’ The words fairly whistled in his dentures. I nodded in amazement. He drew a deep sucking breath as if he had been delivered of a weight and went on. ‘Old boy, there’s going to be a war. Inside information.’ He pointed a long finger at his own temple. ‘There’s going to be a war. The enemy is working night and day, old boy, right here among us.’ I could not dispute this. I could only marvel at the new Scobie who confronted me like a bad magazine illustration. ‘You can help us scupper them, old man’ he went on with a devastating air of authority. ‘We want to take you on our strength.’ This sounded most agreeable. I waited for details. ‘The most dangerous gang of all is right here, in Alexandria’ the old man creaked and boomed, ‘and you are in the centre of it. All friends of yours.’ I saw through the knotted eyebrows and the rolling excited eye the sudden picture of Nessim, a brief flash, as of intuition, sitting at his huge desk in the cold steel-tube offices watching a telephone ring while the beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. He was expecting a message about Justine — one more twist of the knife.
Scobie shook his head. ‘Not him so much’ he said. ‘He’s in it, of course. The leader is a man called Balthazar. Look what the censorship have been picking up.’ He extracted a card from a file and passed it to me. Balthazar writes an exquisite hand and the writing was obviously his; but I could not help smiling when I saw that the reverse of the postcard contained only the little chessboard diagram of the boustrophedon.