Michael Pearce - The Donkey-Vous

“That’s not what I was going to say,” said Nikos. “What I was going to say was that this is the first time they’ve taken a tourist. If you let them get away with it, it might become a habit. And then a lot of people might get interested.”

Nikos always took a detached view of cases which were merely individual. On the other hand, he had a keen eye for political essentials.

Six o’clock that evening found Owen himself on the terrace at Shepheard’s waiting for Lucy Colthorpe Hartley. Quite how he came to be there he was not certain. He had not had time to say no when Lucy had made the appointment; and would he have said no if he had? On the grounds that he was poor and they were tiresome, he made it a general practice to steer clear of the fishing fleet, as the young ladies were called who arrived in scores for the Cairo season in search, it was alleged, of husbands from among the ranks of wealthy young army officers. Besides, he considered himself more or less bound to Zeinab. On the other hand, meeting Lucy Colthorpe Hartley for a drink was hardly work, although he had said that it was when Zeinab had suggested he pick her up at six after her visit to the hairdresser’s. He decided to salve his conscience by asking Lucy some work questions when she arrived.

If she arrived at all. It was already five minutes after six, which by Owen’s standards was being late for an appointment. Perhaps she wouldn’t come, in which case he would feel a complete fool. He hoped no one would see him.

At that moment his friend, the Consul-General’s aide-de-camp, went past with a visiting foreign worthy. He gave Owen a wave behind the worthy’s back. Owen returned the wave half-heartedly.

Garvin went past talking to an Adviser from one of the Ministries. He interrupted his talking to give Owen a smile of recognition. Some hope, thought Owen bitterly, that no one would see him. Out here on the terrace he was as conspicuous as-

Well, as Moulin must have been. And how the hell had he disappeared from the terrace without anyone seeing anything?

Owen looked down the steps. There was the snake charmer as on the day of Moulin’s kidnapping, squatting so near to the steps as to be virtually sitting on them; there were the donkey-boys playing one of their interminable games within two yards of the foot of the steps. If Moulin had gone down the steps they must have seen him.

And if he hadn’t gone down the steps? The only place he could have gone was back into the hotel. To do so he would have had to pass the Reception clerk and the people on the desk swore that he hadn’t. There were two of them, they were some of the brightest people on the hotel’s staff, the desk was public and busy, they had to be and were alert-hell, one of them was even on Owen’s own payroll!

All the same, they could have missed him. It was a busy area and they might have been busy. Also, they could only see what passed them. Reception was actually inside the hotel, in the foyer, and the people on the desk couldn’t see out on to the terrace itself. Suppose something had happened between the table where Moulin was sitting and the entrance to the hotel: Reception would not have seen it, the snake charmer couldn’t have seen it, and donkey-boys, well, they might or might not have seen it.

But, surely, if anything had happened on the terrace someone would have seen it? Someone at a neighboring table? The tables were, after all, only a few feet apart. If there had been a struggle or anything of that sort-well, there couldn’t have been. The Colthorpe Hartleys, who had been at the very next table, would certainly have seen it.

But suppose the incident, whatever it was, had been smaller in scale, apparently trivial? Suppose it had occurred at a time when their attention had been distracted, perhaps deliberately? That was a possibility. He would have to ask Lucy Colthorpe Hartley if anything like that had occurred.

Owen was sitting at a table a little further into the terrace than either the one Moulin habitually occupied or the one the Colthorpe Hartleys had been sitting at that day. The table was right at the front of the terrace, so close to the railing that the street-vendors touched his foot as they poked their wares through the bars. Hippopotamus-hide whips, splendid red tarbooshes, and filmy ladies’ underwear jostled for his attention. A long brown arm with a snake coiled around it was suddenly thrust in his direction; and in an instant a whole pack of postcards of scantily dressed ladies fanned itself open in the air before his astonished eyes.

“Gracious, Captain Owen!” said Lucy Colthorpe Hartley. “I did not know you were such a connoisseur.”

“Friends of yours?” he asked, recovering quickly.

“Intimate,” she replied, sinking into a chair. “Abdul here greets me with a different nosegay every day.”

A beaming vendor, rather darker than the others, laid a bunch of sweetly smelling flowers on the terrace beside her.

“They don’t last long,” she said, “but for a while they brighten up the room.”

She fumbled in her purse for some token piastres.

“Allow me,” said Owen.

Lucy put a restraining hand on his arm.

“Certainly not!” she said. “You are interfering with long-established custom. What you can do, though,” she added, peering into her purse, “is help me count up the necessary milliemes as I seem to have run out of piastres.”

“That’s enough. A little money goes a long way here.”

“You’d better have a talk with my father. He doesn’t seem to think so.”

“I’m sure he won’t mind the flowers.”

“No. But he did mind the turquoises. I took them in to Andalaft’s as you suggested, Captain Owen, and he is going to find someone to make them up for me.”

“Do you have other regulars among the vendors, Miss Colthorpe Hartley?”

“I have a faithful following,” said Lucy, “which I attribute more to misplaced hope than to my personal charms.”

“They follow you wherever you sit?”

“We usually sit in the same place.”

“Which is at this end of the terrace, of course.”

“It is exactly there,” said Lucy, pointing. “How disillusioning! There I was hoping that what had brought you here was the attraction of my big blue eyes when all the time you are merely getting on with your work.”

“I am combining work with pleasure. A little work and a lot of pleasure.”

“At least you have the proportions right,” said Lucy. “You were, if you remember, going to tell me exactly what was your work, Mamur Zapt.”

“Well…” said Owen.

“How fascinating!” said Lucy Colthorpe Hartley, resting her elbows on the table and her chin on her hands and gazing straight into his eyes.

“It didn’t look like work to me,” said Zeinab.

Zeinab, unfortunately, had passed by in an arabeah on her way home from her hairdresser’s.

“I was asking her about the street-vendors.”

“Oh yes,” said Zeinab sceptically.

“Yes I was. I wanted to know if they were always the same. You see, if they were, they might have been there when Moulin was kidnapped and seen something.”

“You were trying to see something,” said Zeinab. “You were looking down the front of her dress.”

“For heaven’s sake! She was across the table. How could I?”

“She was leaning forward. Deliberately.”

“Anyway she didn’t have on that sort of dress.”

“You see! You did try!”

“For God’s sake!” said Owen, aware that he had lost yet another argument with Zeinab.

“Well,” demanded Nikos, “are you going to do something about it or not?”

“I’m not going to stop it, if that’s what you mean.”

“That’s not what I mean. The question is: do you want it watched? We don’t have to interfere at all. We could let it all go ahead as they’ve arranged, let the money change hands, wait till Moulin is freed-and only take action afterward. That way we would get both Moulin and Zawia.”