William Bayer - Tangier

"Well," said Doyle, embarrassed by all this, "I think I'll take a walk."

He gathered up his manuscript sack and started down the beach. Robin and Kranker moved to join the others, now polarized into separate groups around Barclay and Wax.

"I'm devoted to the Sultan," Wax was saying to the poodle clipper. "And he, of course, is devoted to me-"

Barclay had brought out a pair of opera glasses, encased in mother of pearl, and was training them on the Moroccan boys. "You know," he said, "I think Pumpkin Pie just goosed my Mustapha. What the hell is the dentist doing down there?"

"I like Moroccan bodies," said Bainbridge, "but they have such gorillas' heads."

"I love their faces," said Inigo. "Their bodies strike me as Japanese." He got up then, asked Robin for more wine, and followed him into the tent. "Your friends are all so witty," he said. "I'm at a disadvantage. I'm a visual man."

"Nonsense, Inigo. Your English is very good."

"It's difficult. I'm always getting mixed up. In English, it seems, an asp in the grass is a snake. But a grasp in the ass is something called a goose."

Helve was pumping a bellows at the fire he'd built to grill the kebabs. Robin helped him, showed himself clumsy again, and retired when Herve gave him a mocking look. Returning to the group before the tent, he nearly collided with Sven Lundgren, who'd left the Moroccan boys and had flopped down on the sand to everyone's barely concealed distaste.

"They're building such a castle down there," he said. "Tunnels, alleyways-you ought to see."

"Sounds like the Casbah."

"Yes," said Kranker. "Unconscious replication. It's in their blood. The little beasts are prisoners of the collective unconscious of their nasty, backward race."

"I wonder if it isn't time," said Barclay, "for our little chickens to come home to roost."

"Oh, let's leave them where they are," Robin said. "They're getting acquainted. We'll be eating soon. Anyone seen Doyle?"

"He took a long walk down the beach. I think I see him far away."

"In a minute he'll lie down and let the flies descend upon him. Then he'll count them. He does things like that."

"Strange man," said Robin. "And that sack of his is heavy. I tried to help him with it, but he wouldn't let me. It weighs a ton."

"I'll tell you something about that sack," said Kranker. "But you must all promise you won't tell anybody else."

They all nodded except for Robin, who made a practice of never agreeing when people asked him not to repeat confidential things.

"You too, Robin. I don't want to see this in your column."

"All right, damn it. Go ahead."

Kranker smiled, looked around. "He has a manuscript in there, you can be sure, but it's light and it's very thin. The weight you felt was his silverware. He hauls it around with him because he's afraid to leave it in his flat."

"My God," said Barclay. "The man must be cuckoo mad. How did you find that out?"

"Achmed told me. It's a game they play. Achmed tries to steal the silverware, and Doyle tries to keep it safe. A year or so ago Achmed got hold of some spoons which he immediately sold in the flea market. Doyle never said a word, pretended it didn't happen. That's their relationship. They play psychological chess."

"Is it true that Achmed beats him up?"

Kranker shook his head. "No. They torture each other mentally. That's the trouble with Vincent Doyle-he'd like to be a physical masochist but he has too low a threshold for pain."

Robin looked hard at Kranker, so gleefully attacking his friend. Never trust a writer , he thought. Sooner or later he'll sell you out .

When the kebabs were ready Robin called everyone to lunch. Doyle came back from his walk, and all the Moroccan boys returned from the sand. They sat in their bikinis in an inner circle chatting in Arabic about sports, while their benefactors lounged behind them on beach chairs speaking of the Tangier demimonde. Robin served the skewers and passed the salads. Fortunately Inigo and Wax had brought lavish ones, since Barclay had brought nothing except Mustapha, his towels, and himself.

"How's everything at the church these days, Peter? Your investigations getting anyplace?"

"We have our suspects." Barclay laughed. "We're narrowing down the field."

"None of us, I hope."

"Oh-maybe. You'll have to ask the Colonel about that."

"But surely you don't expect him to solve the thing?"

"Why not?" said Robin. "He's got nothing else to do."

"But really ," said Wax. "Horticulturalist, genealogist, and now amateur sleuth. Old Lester is good at things like checking up on a story. If someone claims his uncle was an earl, old Lester will find him out. But he's no detective. He's too lazy and stupid for that."

"Don't underrate him," said Bainbridge. "He's got a passion to get to the bottom of this thing and I wager his stick-to-itiveness will out."

"You certainly have plenty of that yourself, Mother Bainbridge. By God, you've stuck to that grapefruit juicer of yours."

Everyone laughed a little, and Bainbridge wilted. Robin felt sorry for him. For years his inventions had been a joke, but recently people had begun to make fun of him to his face. Barclay, who pretended to be his friend, never came to his defense and scornfully called him "my lady-in-waiting" when talking about him behind his back.

Wax must have felt sorry for him too, for he immediately launched into an irrelevant story. Robin had heard it before, but Wax's gestures were so theatrical, and his voice so compelling, that he found himself falling under the old man's spell.

"Oh, about 1938 I met Bosie Douglas in Florence. He was old then, a ruin, but still a magnificent-looking man. I told him how awed I was to actually meet such a legend-how I'd read all about him as a boy. We became rather close, and of course I asked him about Oscar Wilde. He told me the most incredible thing-that he and Wilde had never screwed. I couldn't believe it, but he insisted. Wilde, he said, was after him for years, but Bosie always resisted him, and the most that ever happened was that occasionally he'd let old Oscar suck him off. This suggests a theory about the idea behind Dorian Gray -imbibing the life juices of a younger man in order to stay young oneself. Anyway, I said to him: 'If you weren't that way, Lord Douglas, why did you go around with Wilde all the time?' 'Simple,' he answered. 'Wilde was the most brilliant companion a man could have. And it annoyed my father, whom I loathed.' Fascinating! The funny thing about Bosie was that he was interested in girls-young ones too, twelve and thirteen years old. He'd follow them around Florence like a rake. I told him he'd better be careful about that, but he laughed me off. 'There's not a court in the world,' he said, 'that will ever believe that Bosie Douglas is a dyke!' "

In a way, Robin thought, it was a precious story, and he was annoyed when Barclay tried to eclipse it with one of his own. He told a boring anecdote about an English actor he'd once slept with who'd used his appendix scar as the centerpiece for a butterfly tattooed above his loins.

When he was finished Wax baited him by suggesting that Kalem and Mustapha fight.

"Won't allow it," Barclay said. "I know you sent your boy to karate school. I've been coaching Mustapha in something else."

"Oh? What's that?"

"To speak like an Eton boy. A hopeless cause, of course."

Inigo excused himself, gesturing for Pumpkin Pie to follow him into the sea. Doyle went off in another direction, Bainbridge and the poodle clipper went to sun themselves on the docks, and Lundgren and the Moroccan boys began to play soccer on the beach. This left Robin with Barclay, Kranker, and Wax, and a discussion of the "Mohammed problem" upon which they were all quite eloquent, he thought.