It was an eternity later when the door was flung open, the four giant Negroes marched in, this time directed by Abdullah, and backed up by twice the usual detail of armed militia, and the Saint and Mr Usherdown were once again boxed in a square of Herculean muscle and marched headlong around the corridors and courtyards and corners that led back with increasing familiarity to the main forecourt. Since Abdullah spoke no English, it was useless to ask questions, although Mr Usherdown ineffectually tried to; and so they hurtled eventually through the grand portals into the ugly stifling heat and glare of the afternoon without any warning of what was to greet their eyes.
Simon was prepared for the tall skeletal pyramid of the oil derrick that now towered starkly amidst the withered remnants of Qabat’s only garden. The voices that he had heard from far off had also prepared him for the excited swarm of laborers, palace servitors, guards, and notables from the nearest mansions, who were milling vociferously around it. Nor was it surprising to see the Emir himself as a secondary focal point of the group, or Tâlib hovering behind him — or even Violet Usherdown standing near the Sheik, recognizable in spite of an orthodox veil by the copper curls which hung below a gold lamé turban which she had adopted.
What the Saint was incredulously unprepared for was the thick shining silvery column of fluid that shot up between the girders of the derrick and dissolved into a white plume of spray at the top.
For the first few dizzy seconds he felt only a foggy bewilderment at the color of it. Then as the observation forced itself more solidly into his consciousness he wondered deliriously whether he could have topped everything with the all-time miracle of bringing in a well that gave only pure refined high-octane gasoline. But in another moment his nose gave crushing refutation to that alluring whimsy. There was no smell of gas. And as his escorts wedged him through the encircling congregation and delivered him beside the Emir, at the very base of the scaffolding, a shower of drops fell on him, and he caught some on his hand and brought the hand right under his nostrils and then touched it with his tongue and knew exactly what it was.
It was water.
5
As if it had been only six minutes ago, instead of six days, Simon re-lived the capricious insubordinations of his mind, when he had been trying to concentrate on oil, and had been wafted through refineries to the ocean and through salads to irrigation, and it became clear to him that his latest discovered talent would need a lot more disciplining before it would be strictly commercial.
It also dawned on him that he was not his own only critic.
“Sheik know now, you one big goddam thief,” Tâlib bawled at him.
The Saint drew himself up.
In the superb unhesitating confidence of his recovery, he turned that flabbergasting moment into one of his finest hours.
“Tell Joe,” he said coldly, “that he is one big goddam fool.”
Mr Usherdown gasped, and even Tâlib blanched as he blurted out an indubitably expurgated rendition of that retort.
“I didn’t promise to find oil,” Simon went on, without waiting for the Emir’s reaction. “I can’t find it if it isn’t here, which you’ve already been told. I said I would make him rich. And I’ve done that. In Kuwait, isn’t water worth more than oil?”
As that was repeated, a hush began to fall, and even the Emir’s furious eyes settled into sharp and penetrating attention.
“Lots of places around here have oil,” said the Saint disparagingly. “But I’ve given Qabat something that none of the others have. I was told that Kuwait is spending forty-five million dollars to build a pipeline to get water. Won’t they be glad to save nearly two hundred miles of it and just bring the pipeline here, and give you the money instead? Is there any place around this Gulf that wouldn’t trade you ten barrels of oil for one barrel of water? Let Kuwait and Dharhan sweat out their oil, while in Qabat you take their money and buy beautiful cars and jewels and walk about in grass up to your knees.” He swept his arm grandly towards the jet of pure and glistening H2O that was roaring merrily into the parched and burning sky. “This is what I’ve done for you, Joe.”
Tâlib was still stumbling over the last few words when Yûsuf demonstrated his lightning grasp of practical economics by enfolding the Saint in a grateful and embarrassingly affectionate embrace.
He then turned ebulliently towards Mr Usherdown, but concluded the gesture much more perfunctorily, as if a different and disturbing thought had obtruded itself midway in the movement.
Suddenly Mrs Usherdown’s voice cut stridently through the rising babble around.
“I don’t know what you’re taking a bow for, Mortimer Usherdown,” it said scathingly. “After all, you didn’t do anything.”
The interruption was on such a rasping note that Yûsuf turned inquiringly.
Tâlib, whose expression had been getting progressively sourer as the atmosphere of congratulation and camaraderie seemed to be gaining the ascendant, brightened visibly as he translated.
The carnivorous gleam came back into Yûsuf’s stare as he stepped back and contemplated Mr Usherdown with a new and terrifying exultation.
But instead of quailing under that baleful regard, the little man was not even aware of it. Instead of trembling with fear, he was quivering with the stress of what Simon realized was a far more cataclysmal emotion. He straightened up to the last millimeter of his height, inflating all that there was of his chest until the veins stood out on his neck, and sparks flashed from his small watery eyes.
“Why, you nasty creature,” he squeaked indignantly. “I know what you’re trying to do. But you needn’t bother.” He stuck out a straight skinny arm ending in a wrathfully pointing finger. “I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you. There!”
“Well,” said Mrs Usherdown tartly, “you’re very welcome, I’m sure.”
She turned, with a toss of her head, and strutted away towards the palace, bouncing her ample hips.
Tâlib construed the passage in the tone of voice that he might have used to bring tidings of a major disaster, and this time the hug that the Emir gave Mr Usherdown was unmarred by any reservations.
“Sheik say,” Tâlib droned gloomily, “you ask anything you want, you get it, if not too much.”
“We’ll settle for the price of one small oil well,” said the Saint. “And our tickets on the next plane to Basra,” he added casually, wishing that he knew more about geology, and vowing not to uncross his fingers until whatever freakish artesian source they had tapped had proved that it was capable of keeping the gusher flowing at least until he had taken off.
“Okey-dokey,” Tâlib said. “But tonight, Sheik order big feast and whoopee.”
Mr Usherdown winked at the Saint, slapped the Emir on the back, and poked the outraged Tâlib in the ribs, while a broad beam of ineffable rapture overspread his lumpy little face.
“That’s what I’m waiting for,” he crowed. “Bring on the dancing girls!”
Malaya: The pluperfect lady
1
Simon Templar stayed at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore for sentimental reasons. Although more modern and more luxurious caravanserais had been built in the many years since he had last been there, the Raffles was one of the places that was simply synonymous with Singapore to him, as it always will be to the real Far East hands from away back. And as to why that one particular place had won out over two others almost equally traditional, Major Vernon Ascony had a theory.