Doug Allyn - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 131, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 799 & 800, March/April 2008

The color seemed to drain from Tranle’s face. “I should never have suggested that place. Go back to your hotel and let me handle it.”

“I—”

“Go quickly. I will contact you.”

Stanton could see that his news had devastated the man. “Is there anything I can do?”

“Just wait for my call.”

A taxi returned him to the hotel and Stanton made a point of going to the front desk and requesting the parcel he’d left in the safe. There were only a few people in the lobby, but he felt sure one of them was watching his every move. He took the canvas bag from the desk clerk and went up to his room with it.

The place seemed bare without Ives and he had difficulty remembering the last time they’d been apart. Opening the tube, he verified that the ancient Ottoman calligraphy was still intact. That was when the phone rang. They weren’t wasting any time. He picked it up.

“Hello?”

“You did very well, Mr. Stanton,” a husky male voice told him.

“Let me speak with Ives.”

“That is impossible at the moment. She is being held elsewhere.”

“You don’t get the calligraphy until I know she’s all right.”

Silence. Then, “I will phone you back in thirty minutes’ time. Be ready to make delivery.”

After several minutes of slow and tedious work, Ives had managed to get her left hand free of the knotted cord that held it. Quickly she released her right hand and pulled the tape from her mouth. Then she freed her ankles and got unsteadily to her feet. The redness of the room seemed to engulf her and she made for the door as quickly as possible. Surprisingly, it was unlocked. She held her breath, expecting the Turkish man to come through at any instant, perhaps with gun in hand. When nothing happened she turned the knob slowly, then gradually inched the door open, revealing another red room, a parlor of sorts.

A man was sprawled on the floor. She knelt and turned him over, but it was no one she knew. There was blood on the back of his shirt, and a bloody dagger lay on the red carpet a few feet away, near a canvas bag somewhat similar to the one containing the calligraphy. Ives thought the dagger appeared to be a war souvenir, with a Nazi eagle on the hilt and a German inscription along the blade. She had no doubt the man was dead.

This room had a visible window and she went to it at once. It was dark out and she could see very little. She appeared to be on the third floor of a building, and there was no fire escape visible. She turned to look again at the body. Dead people didn’t frighten her anymore, and she went quickly through his pockets. Wallet, handkerchief, keys, and a wrapped cube of Turkish Delight. Next she opened the canvas bag, revealing a large flat box and a tube of gold dust. She couldn’t imagine what it was for.

The box, larger than a cigar box, intrigued her and she picked it up. For some reason the killer hadn’t taken it, so apparently robbery wasn’t the motive. She started to open it, then noticed a line of holes little larger than pinholes.

Could they be air holes?

She unlatched the lid of the box, opened it, and sprang back. The box was filled with spiders, perhaps two dozen of them, larger than the usual garden variety. They seemed a bit drowsy, but as one of them attempted to exit the box she quickly closed and latched the lid.

Had they brought in the spiders to torture or kill her? She needed to get out of here right away, before the Turk came back and found the body. The apartment door opened onto a corridor with a stairway at one end. She closed the door behind her and moved toward the staircase, drawn by the distant sound of Turkish music. Suddenly a figure all in red appeared at the top of the stairs and in that instant she realized where she was. It was Turkish Delight in her belly-dancing costume.

“What are you doing out here?” the dancer asked.

“I think I’ve just escaped from your apartment,” Ives told her. “I like those red walls. They match your costume.”

The belly dancer grunted and leapt at Ives with outstretched fingers, as if to scratch out her eyes. Ives ducked aside but Delight’s hip caught her off balance and knocked her to the floor.

Thirty minutes passed and Stanton had heard nothing. He’d left the room briefly but now he was back by the phone, tense with fear, his gaze frequently returning to the slender canvas tube at his feet. Then, some fifteen minutes late, the telephone rang. His throat was dry when he picked it up and said, “Yes?”

“Bring the painting to the courtyard in front of the Blue Mosque,” the same familiar voice demanded. “Your friend will be released then.”

“Not unless I have proof that she’s alive. Put her on the phone.”

There was a moment’s pause and then a whispered female voice said, “Walt? It’s Juliet. I’m in big trouble. You gotta bring the painting or they’ll kill me.”

“I’ll be there,” he promised and hung up. Of course the whispered voice wasn’t Ives. They never called each other by their first names. His only question now was whether she was still alive.

It was well after midnight when he took a cab to the courtyard of the Blue Mosque, clutching the canvas bag under one arm. The streets in this part of the city were all but deserted now, and only a few lonely beggars loitered on the corners. Stanton paid off the driver and walked toward the mosque with its six distinctive minarets outlined against the night sky. The courtyard was surrounded by a wall, but there were large gateways on each of its three sides. He chose the nearest one and walked through it, hoping he’d arrived before the others.

He hadn’t.

Two men with handguns had been waiting near the sadirvan, a handsome octagonal building at the center of the courtyard. Stanton knew it contained an ablution fountain, one of many in the city, but right now he was more interested in the thugs with guns. “Give us the tube,” the closest one demanded.

“Not until I see Juliet Ives.”

From across the courtyard came a woman’s voice, cut off in mid-scream. Stanton could see her, a long veil obscuring her face and body. A tall man held her tightly by the arm. “Take it from him,” he ordered the gunmen.

“Hold on,” Stanton told them, unzipping the canvas tube and reaching inside. “I’ll give it to you.”

The blast from his sawed-off shotgun caught both men, knocking them over like tenpins. Then he was running across the courtyard toward the veiled woman and her captor.

“Stop!” the man shouted, trying to use the woman as a shield.

“I’ve got another barrel here. You’ll get the same as your goons.”

“You wouldn’t shoot Miss Juliet.”

“That’s not her.” As if to verify his statement, he reached out and grabbed a corner of the veil, ripping it away.

He was right. It wasn’t Ives. It was Turkish Delight.

When she went down on the carpet of the upstairs hallway, Ives managed to kick out at Delight’s ankle, bringing her down too. She wasn’t up to wrestling the woman, but she was nearly twenty years younger and was on her feet before Delight recovered herself. “Don’t try anything,” Ives warned, showing her fist, “or you’ll be dancing your next set with a very bloody nose.”

“What do you want?” Delight asked, not looking for a fight.

“What do I want? I was in the ladies’ room, minding my own business, and I wake up tied to a sofa in your apartment, with a dead man in the next room!”

“Dead man? Who is dead?” The words brought fear to Delight’s face.

“You tell me,” Ives replied. “Go look, but be careful of the spiders.”

That seemed to trigger something in Delight. “Prattos! What did that fool do?” She hurried to unlock the apartment door, then gasped when she saw the body and the bloody dagger.