Michael Pearce - The Donkey-Vous

An arch behind Owen led back into the entrance vestibule. Through it he could see one end of the cloakroom counter. Since Berthelot had arrived one player had left and four more had entered. The one who had left had departed soon after Berthelot had appeared and, Owen thought, had gone straight past the cloakroom. It was a hot evening and very few people had brought coats. A number had brought walking sticks which they deposited.

No one, Owen was pretty sure, left the playing room during the evening to visit the cloakroom. The obvious pretext would have been to use the toilets but they were off the main room next to the door through which the waiters came and went. He had watched the waiters particularly carefully. He was sure that none of them had gone out into the entrance vestibule. There might, of course, be a door from the inner room into the entrance vestibule. If there was, it would be at the far end and he had seen no one walk past the arch from that direction. As the evening wore on, the possibilities narrowed down.

Although he took short breaks from time to time, for most of the evening he had to play. He found himself worrying about the money he was losing. It was Departmental money but he would still be held to account for it. The Ministry’s accountants would allow a certain amount of expenditure of this kind in view of the peculiar nature of the Mamur Zapt’s operations but the amount was, in Owen’s view, ridiculously low. It must have been much easier being Mamur Zapt in the days before Cromer, the previous Consul-General, had introduced a stringent financial regime. In those more relaxed days Anton would probably have been on the payroll. The Mamur Zapt himself might even have taken a cut.

At last Berthelot looked at his watch.

“You’re probably right,” said his neighbor, the talkative Greek. “The only person who’s going to do well tonight is Anton.”

He stepped back from the table with Berthelot but only to pour himself some more lemonade. The Frenchman went on out of the room and made for the cloakroom. One of the attendants came forward with his case.

“Can I leave that here?” Berthelot asked. “I’ve got to go on to another place.”

“Of course, Monsieur,” said the attendant. “We are open till four. There will be someone here after that but we shall have gone off duty. Perhaps I should give Monsieur a receipt. Then he has but to hand it in and there will be no complication.”

“That seems a good idea,” said Berthelot.

The attendant produced a receipt, which Berthelot pocketed without looking at it. As he went out of the door Owen moved unhurriedly after him.

“I am just going out for some fresh air,” he told the porter.

Berthelot was just stepping into an arabeah. As the carriage moved off into the night another arabeah drew out of a side street and set off after it.

There was a man standing in the shadows.

“OK?” asked Owen.

“OK,” said the man.

Owen went back inside. The Greek had taken his place at the table but made room for him.

“There’s still time to lose a fortune,” he said cheerfully. After a little while, seeing how circumspectly Owen was playing, he added: “Though if you want to do it tonight you’ll have to hurry up.”

“Why hurry?” asked Owen.

They had been playing for about half an hour when a suffragi came in.

“A letter,” he said, “for Mr. Stefanopoulos.”

The Greek put up his hand, though without taking his eyes off the play. The bearer stuck the letter in it. The Greek waited until the croupier began to rake in the chips before he opened the envelope.

“It’s from my wife,” he said to the croupier. “She says she forgot to tell me before I left this evening that the house is already sold.”

The croupier smiled mechanically.

“That being so,” said the Greek, “I shall have to earn some more money before making a present of it to Monsieur Anton.”

“ A bientot,” said the croupier as the Greek left the table.

“Such domestic fidelity is an example to us all,” said Owen, and got up too.

Owen and the Greek went down the stairs together. Not until they were outside did the Greek speak. Then he stepped aside into the shadows and said familiarly:

“Which way did he use?”

“The side door.”

“As expected. Good. Who’s following him?”

“Abou and Sadiq. Sadiq is here.”

A man came out of the shadows.

“You are Sadiq?”

“Yes, effendi.”

“Where is he?”

“He is at the Mosque of El Hakim. Waiting.”

“Take us there,” said the Greek, whose name was not Stefanopoulos but Georgiades, and who was one of the Mamur Zapt’s most experienced agents, “and we will wait too.

At the end of the street was a large, ruined mosque. It was solid and fortresslike, possessing the grandeur but lacking the grace of the other great Cairo mosques. Everything about it was square and formidable. Even its minarets were not true minarets but mabkharas, structures like the pylons of the ancient Egyptian temples. It grew out of Saladin’s old city walls, sharing with them secret rooms and hidden defensive passages. It was the mosque of El Hakim, the fourth oldest of all the mosques of Cairo, one of the few remaining from the former city of El Kahira.

Although it was ruined it was not deserted. The ordinary poor had come to live in it, and now wherever there was an arch intact or a few bricks to give a patch of shade an assembly of cooking utensils and a fire announced the hearth of a household.

There were even, among the ruins, workshops and small factories. Space was scarce in Cairo and enterprising entrepreneurs took it where they could find it.

The Egyptologists, thought Owen, spoke of Egypt’s traditional preoccupation with death and pointed to the Pyramids. But the Pyramids had been built by workmen from the villages roundabout and from those villages also had come generations of grave robbers who had not been afraid to pillage the tombs. The Egyptologists spoke of the Pyramids and not of the grave robbers; but it was the grave robbers with their need and their greed, with their anarchic rejection of the dead hand of authority and with their obstinate instinct for life, who were in the end characteristic of Egyptian society.

It was typical of Egyptians to take over something dead and make it a place for living. The mosque might have been an empty shell; instead, it hummed with life. Even now at night there were pinpricks of light beneath its arches.

Sadiq led them toward one of these, threading his way through a grove of still intact pillars, some of them still supporting arches. They were going through the liwan, the deep central space or room which served as the sanctuary. In the old days, when El Hakim was still functioning as a mosque, the faithful would have gathered round the pillars in the shade of the arches to hear the Holy Word expounded. At the far end of the pillars there was a light.

Sadiq stopped. A second figure appeared beside him. The two figures merged together for a moment and then the second figure detached itself and came across to Owen.

“He is still there, effendi,” a voice whispered in his ear. “No one has come. He sits with the watchman. He has a case with him.”

He put his hand on Owen’s arm and guided him forward. Ahead of him was a deeper darkness, something screening off the light, a wall perhaps.

Abou brought him up to the wall and then stopped. There was a gap through which Owen could see. In front of him two Arabs were sitting on the ground with an oil lamp between them. One of them was an old man in a torn, dirty galabeah, the night watchman presumably. The other was a suffragi in a spruce gown. Owen thought he recognized one of the attendants from the cloakroom. On the ground beside him was Berthelot’s case.