Michael Pearce: The Donkey-Vous

Owen arrived at the hotel shortly afterward.

McPhee came down the steps of the terrace to meet him.

“Thank goodness you’re here!” he said.

A cobra stretched lazily in the dirt at the foot of the steps stirred slightly. McPhee paused in his descent for a second and in that second its charmer thrust out a bowl at him. McPhee, flustered, dropped in a few milliemes.

“For heaven’s sake!” protested Owen. “You’ll have them all on to us!”

The crowd surged over them. Hands reached out at McPhee from all sides. Owen found his own hand taken in soft, confiding fingers and looked down to see who his new friend was. It was a large, dog-faced baboon with gray chinchilla-like fur.

“Imshi! Imshi! Get off!” shouted McPhee, recovering. One of his constables came down from the terrace and beat back the crowd with his baton. In the yard or two of space so gained a street acrobat in red tights suddenly turned a cartwheel. He cannoned heavily, however, into the snake-charmer and ricocheted off into a row of donkeys tethered to the railings, where he was chased off by indignant donkey-boys. Taking advantage of the confusion, Owen joined McPhee on the steps.

“What’s it all about?”

“You got my message?”

“You’d better tell me.”

McPhee had sent a bearer. The man had run all the way and arrived in such a state of incoherence that all Owen had been able to get out of him was that the Bimbashi was at Shepheard’s and needed Owen urgently.

“A kidnapping,” said McPhee.

“Here?” Owen was surprised. Kidnapping was not uncommon in Cairo, but it did not usually involve foreigners. “Someone from the hotel?”

“A Frenchman.”

“Are you sure it was a kidnapping?” said Owen doubtfully. “They don’t usually take tourists. Has there been a note?”

“Not yet,” McPhee admitted.

“It could be something else, then.”

“That’s what I thought,” said McPhee, “at first.”

“If it’s just that he’s gone missing,” said Owen, “there could be a variety of explanations.”

“It’s not just that he’s gone missing,” said McPhee, “it’s where he’s gone missing from.”

He took Owen up to the top of the steps and pointed to a table a couple of yards into the terrace. The table was empty apart from a few tea things. A proud constable guarded it jealously

“That’s where he was sitting when he disappeared.”

“Disappeared?” said Owen sceptically.

“Into thin air!”

“Surely,” said Owen, trying not to sound too obviously patient, “people don’t just disappear.”

“One moment he was sitting there and the next he wasn’t.”

“Well,” said Owen, and felt he really was overdoing the patience, “perhaps he just walked down the steps.”

“He couldn’t do that.”

“Oh? Why not?”

“Because he can hardly walk. He is an infirm old man, who gets around only with the aid of sticks. It’s about all he can do to make it on to the terrace.”

“If he can make it on to the terrace,” said Owen, “he can surely make it on to the steps. Perhaps he just came down the steps and took an arabeah.”

There was a row of the horse-drawn Cairo cabs to the left of the steps.

“Naturally,” said McPhee, with a certain edge to his voice, “one of the first things I did was to check with the arabeah-drivers.”

“I see.”

“I also checked with the donkey-boys.”

“He surely wouldn’t have-”

“No, but they would have seen him if he had come down the steps.”

“And they didn’t?”

“No,” said McPhee, “they didn’t.”

“Well, if he’s not come down the steps he must have gone back into the hotel. Perhaps he went for a pee…?”

“Look,” said McPhee, finally losing his temper, “what do you think I’ve been doing for the last two hours? They’ve turned the place upside down. They did that twice before they sent for me. And they’ve done it twice since with my men helping them. They’re going through it again now. For the fifth time!”

“Sorry, sorry, sorry!” said Owen hastily. “It’s just that…” He looked along the terrace. It was packed with people. Every table was taken. “Was it like this?”

“Yes. Everyone out for their tea.”

“And no one saw what happened?”

“Not so far as I have been able to discover.”

“You’re sure he was there in the first place? I mean-”

“He was certainly there. We know, because a waiter took his order. It was his usual waiter, so there’s no question of wrong identification. When he came back the old man was gone. Disappeared,” said McPhee firmly, “into thin air.”

“Naturally you’ve been along the terrace?”

“Naturally I’ve been along the terrace,” McPhee agreed. “Friends? Relations? Is he with anyone?”

“His nephew. Who is as bewildered as we are.”

“He wasn’t with him at the time?”

“No, no. He was in his room. Still having his siesta.”

“There’s probably some quite simple explanation.”

“Yes,” said McPhee. “You’ve been giving me some.”

“Sorry!” Owen looked along the terrace again. “It’s just that…”

“I know,” said McPhee.

“This is the last place you would choose if you wanted to kidnap someone.”

“I know. The terrace at Shepheard’s!”

“About the most conspicuous place in Cairo!”

The manager of the hotel came through the palms with two men in tow. One Owen recognized as the Charge d’Affaires at the French Consulate. The other he guessed, correctly, to be the nephew of the missing Frenchman. The nephew saw McPhee and rushed forward.

“Monsieur le Bimbashi-”

He stopped when he saw that McPhee was in conversation. McPhee introduced them.

“Monsieur Berthelot-”

The young man bowed.

“Captain Cadwallader Owen.”

Owen winced. The middle name was genuine enough but something he preferred to keep a decent secret. McPhee, however, had a romantic fondness for things of the Celtic twilight and could not be restrained from savoring it in public.

“Carwallah-?” The young man struggled and then fell back on the part he recognized. “ Capitaine? Ah, you are of the military?”

“C’est le directeur de l’intelligence britannique,” said the man from the Consulate.

“Not at all,” said Owen quickly. “I am the Mamur Zapt.”

“Mamur Zapt?”

“The Mamur Zapt is a post peculiar to Cairo, Monsieur Berthelot,” McPhee explained. “Captain Cadwallader Owen is, roughly, Head of the Political Branch. Of the police, that is,” he added, looking at the Charge d’Affaires reprovingly. He wasn’t going to stand any nonsense from the French.

“ Politicale,” murmured Monsieur Berthelot doubtfully, only half comprehending.

“We hold you responsible for Monsieur Moulins safety,” the Charge said to Owen.

“I will do everything I can,” said Owen, choosing to take the remark as referring to him personally and not the British Administration in general. The French had previously shared, under the system of Dual Control, in the administration of Egypt and had been edged out when the British army had come in to suppress the Arabi rebellion, something they unsurprisingly resented. “However, I doubt whether this is a political matter.”

“ Politicale?” The young man was still having difficulties.

“I only deal with political matters,” Owen explained. “Assassinations, riots, that sort of thing. I suspect this will turn out to be a routine criminal investigation. The police,” he simplified, seeing that Monsieur Berthelot was not entirely following.