“I don’t know, I never asked him,” Mrs Usherdown answered with dignity. “I think a man’s religion is his own business.”
“But Yûsuf hasn’t bothered you?” persisted her anxious consort.
“Of course not. He’s very correct, according to his religion. You should know that. Did you remember to get me that candy?”
“Yes, dear. It’s in my bags, as soon as they bring them up. I just hope it hasn’t all melted… But I suppose you’ve seen Yûsuf?”
“Naturally. He’s had me in for coffee, and shown me his electric trains, and I’ve seen all his old Western movies three times. But he took me out for a picnic in the desert in the full moon, and we had silk tents with carpets, and camels, and everything, and that was very romantic. He’s going to buy a yacht, too, and I’m going to help him decorate it, and then we’ll take it to Monte Carlo and the Riviera and everywhere.”
Mr Usherdown swallowed his tonsils.
“Violet, my love, I mean — he hasn’t given up this crazy idea about you, has he?”
“I do not think it is so gentlemanly of you to call it crazy,” said his helpmeet, with a modicum of umbrage. “And I don’t think that is quite the way to speak of a genuine prince who has paid you more fees than you ever got before, and all he wants is not to be made a sucker out of. I am starting to wonder if you aren’t only jealous because he is taller than you and looks so dashing, and after all he only wants his own way, which is what they call the Royal Purgative.”
The Saint cleared his throat.
“I’m here to try and find you a way out,” he said. “I don’t want to make any rash promises, but I come up with a good idea sometimes.”
“You know who Mr Templar is, dear?” Mr Usherdown put in.
“He’d better stay out of this if he isn’t a better diviner than you,” said his wife, with a toss of her coppery curls. “Or he might end up the way you will, if you don’t divorce me. Yûsuf says he has thought of something that’ll let him make me a widow quite legally, and I’m beginning to wonder if it isn’t just selfishness if you want me to suffer like that.”
3
Except for his costume, the Sheik Yûsuf Loutfallah ibn Hishâm, Emir of Qabat, would not have been instantly recognized as the prototype of the desert eagle and untamed lover immortalized in fiction by an English maiden lady earlier in this century, and brought to life on the silent screen, to the palpitating ecstasy of a bygone generation by an Italian named D’Antongualla, better known to his worshippers as Rudolph Valentino. Although his nose was basically aquiline, it was also a trifle bulbous. His teeth were prominent, yellow, and uneven, and his untidy beard failed to completely disguise the contour of a receding chin. As a symbol of his rank, his head veil was bound with twin cords of gold running through four black pompons squarely spaced around his cranium, instead of the common coils of dark rope, and as an index of his wealth and sophistication he wore no less than three watches on his left wrist — a gold Omega Seamaster, a lady’s jewelled Gruen, and a Mickey Mouse.
He ate rice and chunks of skewered and roasted mutton with his fingers, getting hearty smears of grease on his face. Seated on another cushion at the same low table, Simon Templar tried to be neater, but acknowledged that it was difficult. On the opposite side of the Emir, Mr Usherdown juggled crumbs to his mouth even more uncomfortably and with less appetite, seeming irreparably cowed by the sinister presence of Tâlib on his other side. The Saint was similarly boxed in by Abdullah, who kept firm hold of a pointed knife, with which he picked his teeth intermittently while staring pensively at the area under Simon’s chin. In a corner of the room, four musicians made weird skirlings, twangings, and hootings on an assortment of outlandish instruments, to the accompaniment of which three beige-skinned young women moved in front of the long table, rotating their pelvic regions and undulating their abdomens with phenomenal sinuosity. It was still quite unreally like a sequence from a movie, except that no censors would ever have passed the costumes of the dancers.
When Mr Usherdown looked at them, he did it furtively, as if he was afraid that at any moment his wife might loom up behind him and seize him by the ear. But Mrs Usherdown was not present, having been expressly excluded from the command invitation to dinner which Tâlib had brought.
“Not custom here to have wifes at men’s dinner,” Tâlib had explained cheerfully, but Simon, remembering the moonlight picnic which Mrs Usherdown had mentioned, figured that the local customs could always be adapted to the Emir’s convenience.
The Saint had hoped to achieve a more personal acquaintance with that lovelorn sheik, and he was disappointed to learn that his host spoke nothing but Arabic, which was not included in Simon’s useful repertoire of languages. He had to be content with an impression of personality, which added nothing very favorable to the character estimate which he had formed in advance. He no longer wondered whether the Emir’s infatuation with Violet Usherdown’s voluptuous physique might not have blinded him to her shortcomings as an Intellect; obviously Yûsuf could never even have been thinking of spending long evenings in enthralling converse with a cerebral affinity, and Simon doubted whether the Emir would have had much to contribute to such a session even in Arabic. But in a ruthlessly practical way he was probably a shrewd man, and certainly a wilful and uninhibited one. For perhaps the first time Simon realized to the full that his displeasure might be very violent and unfunny indeed.
It was characteristic of the Saint that the crystallizing of that awareness made him, if possible, only a little more recklessly irreverent. As the dancing girls stepped up their performance to coax even more fabulous rotations from their navels, and Mr Usherdown’s attention seemed to become even more guiltily surreptitious, Simon leaned forward to call encouragement down the table to the little man.
“Joe may think he’s the Gift of God to women, Mortimer, but you can’t say he’s selfish with his samples.”
“Sheik Joseph got three wifes,” Tâlib put in proudly. “Also one hundred eighty concubines. Very big shoot.”
The Sheik suddenly threw down the bone on which he had been gnawing, wiped his mouth and whiskers on the back of his hand, wiped that on the lace tablecloth, and uttered a peremptory command. The musicians let their tortured instruments straggle off into silence. The belly dancers slackened off their gyrations and stood waiting docilely.
The Emir burped, regally and resonantly.
Tâlib and Abdullah eructated with sycophantic enthusiasm in response, vying with each other in the rich reverberation of their efforts. The Emir looked inquiringly at Simon, who finally remembered something he had once heard about the polite observances of that part of the world, and managed to express his appreciation of the meal with a fairly courteous rumble. Everyone then turned to Mr Usherdown, who somehow contrived a small strangled kind of beep which evoked only a certain pitying contempt.
Yûsuf gave an order to Tâlib, and the big Arab fumbled in his robes and brought out a thick bundle of American currency tied with a piece of string. He slapped it on the table in front of Mr Usherdown.
“This pay for your work,” he said, “all time since you come here to find oil. Okey-dokey?”
“Why, thank you,” said the little man nervously.
“Sheik, say, you take it.”
Mr Usherdown picked up the bundle uncertainly and stuffed it into his pocket.
Yûsuf made a short speech to Mr Usherdown, accompanied by a number of gestures towards the three supple wenches standing in front of the table, while the little man strained to appear respectfully attentive.