Raga Six (A Doctor Orient Occult Novel) (25 page)

Orient nodded.
 

"Again let me apologize for my discourtesy," Six bowed. "But I’m sure my wife will entertain you for a short while."
 

Orient didn’t know if Six was smiling or sneering.
 

"He wasn’t always like that," Raga murmured as she watched him enter Pia’s room. "He’s changed. This experiment has done something to him."
 

"How do you mean?" Orient asked, reaching for his cigarette case.
 

"He was always ambitious, but human and kind. Now he’s like a man possessed."
 

"Is that why you’re afraid?" Orient took a hand-wrapped cigarette from his case.
 

Raga paused. She reached over and touched his hand. "I’ve been wanting to do that all evening," she whispered.
 

Orient lit his cigarette. "You haven’t answered my question."
 

"Yes. I have become afraid of him. That’s why we have to wait. If he becomes excited, he may hurt Pia."
 

Orient looked at her. She was leaning toward him, her hand still on his and her skin pale and smooth against the purple silk of her dress. Her face was composed but her eyes searched his intensely. "I love you, Owen," she said. "Nothing’s changed."
 

Orient held her fingers tight. "I’m worried about you."
 

Raga closed her eyes. "Let’s wait a few weeks, a month. Wait for me here in Tangier. Then come to Ischia. I promise you I’ll go away with you then."
 

"And if something happens?"

 
Raga opened her eyes and smiled. She touched his cheek. "Nothing will happen. Not if we’re patient."
 

Orient shrugged. "All right. We’ll play it your way for a month. But then the game’s finished." He ground out his cigarette.

Raga’s mouth brushed his ear. "Finished, my darling. And we’ll be together."
 

Orient didn’t answer.
 

Raga walked with him to the door and, as he turned to leave, held his arm. "Owen," she said softly, "please come to Ischia." Her arms slipped around his neck and, as she kissed him, Orient knew that nothing could stop him from meeting her.
 

"I’ll be there," he said. "Send me word if anything unusual happens."
 

As he spoke, Orient noticed the suitcases piled near the door. One of the bags was a black leather doctor’s case. Something about the bag reminded Orient of something. Then he remembered. There was a small, crescent-shaped patch of torn skin on one side of the bag.
 

Exactly like the mark on the black bag he had delivered to Pola Gleason for Joker.
 

"Wait for me, darling," Raga was saying. She kissed him again and held him tight, unwilling to part her arms and let him leave. Finally he pushed her away gently and closed the door.
 

For a few minutes his mind whirred with confusion, but before the elevator had reached the lobby he had decided what he would do.
 

When he reached his hotel, he made arrangements to have his mail held there and checked the train schedule. He would go to Raga in a month but in the meantime there was something he had to find out. He had to go to Marrakesh to see what was really wrong with Presto. And find out if Doctor Six was telling the truth.
 

Presto had impressed Orient as a serious young man underneath his long hair and casual clothing. He’d never given any indication of being a heavy drug user. His main absorptions had always been his cameras and his motorcycle. Until Pia.
 

Orient had delivered a bag just like the one in Doctor Six’s suite to Pola. And then Pola had died. The connection was vague, but Orient felt it was significant. And somehow ominous. Pola, Janice, and now Presto.
 

As Orient began to pack his bag, he felt more and more certain that Presto knew what had happened to make Pia run away from Doctor Six. He also might be able to tell Orient what it was that Raga was afraid of.
 

But even as he sensed the certainty of what he was doing, Orient also sensed the alien, bitter odor of some unnamed presence hovering at the edge of his mind.

CHAPTER 14

Marrakesh, 1970
 

To Orient’s discomfort, the Marrakesh Express turned out to be a fast train south to Casablanca followed by a three-hour layover and a change of trains, winding up as a slow milk run through the foothills of the Atlas Mountains, not reaching Marrakesh until six the next morning.
 

Orient tried a dozen different positions to ease the stiffness in his long frame, but finally ended up huddled in a corner of the cramped compartment, counting the hours until dawn, and alternating between an anxious yearning for Raga and worry for Presto. At first the separation ftom Raga had left him with a numbing sense of loss, but after a few hours he was forced to admit that his need for her was making him inefficient. The way to help Raga was to help Presto. His main concentration had to be on his task in Marrakesh.
 

There were two possibilities: either Presto was the victim of some thoughtless excess, or Doctor Six was lying. If Presto had taken an overdose of drugs, Orient could be of some help to him. And he would be reassured of Raga’s safety. But if Presto had been the victim of some violence, then he would know that Doctor Six was trying to conceal the fact. And he would follow Raga immediately. He wondered if he should call his hotel in Tangier in case she had sent him a message. Sometime during the night, despite the excessive cold in the compartment and his anxious brooding, Orient fell asleep.

 
He dozed fitfully, at times still half-aware of the train’s frequent stops and starts, and just before the light broke over the gray shapes of the mountains outside, he had a curious dream.

 
It was a simple dream. Orient was a young boy. He was dressed in a blue robe and he was conscious of a turban wrapped around his head. He was crouched in a marketplace amid a circle of spectators. He was at the inner edge of the circle watching the performance of a juggler in the center. The juggler was a short, wiry man wearing an old-fashioned military uniform which was covered, trousers and jacket both, with a gleaming profusion of coins and metal buttons. The man was juggling four silver balls. Their spinning motion caught the rays of the sun and it seemed that the reflections created a sparkling system of light, independent of any other illumination.
 

 
The train scraped to a stop, jerking Orient awake. He looked out the window. A short distance away a brilliant ridge of snow-capped peaks shone in the morning sun. He stretched his arms and moved his neck from side to side. When the conductor passed the compartment, he informed Orient that they were still twenty minutes from Marrakesh.
 

Orient remained awake for the rest of the trip, slouched back in the corner of his seat. The dream, or perhaps the nap, had left him with a sense of calm that relaxed his weary body. In a few hours he would know what had happened to Presto.
 

He took a cab to a hotel located on a wide, drab boulevard that cut through a series of flat buildings on either side. After the hills, curves, sea views, and crooked crowded streets of Tangier, Marrakesh seemed uninteresting and lifeless.
 

The only special feature of Orient’s small room was the large bed. He took off his pigskin jacket and stretched out full length. In a few minutes, when his back muscles and spine had recovered some of their flexibility, he picked up his jacket and reached into the inside pocket for his cigarette case.
 

He rested for half an hour, smoking and going over what he would do. Then he got up, took a shower, and shaved. When he was finished, he took a clean shirt from his suitcase and found a tie. He would find out more by approaching the hospital as Presto’s doctor rather than as a mere acquaintance.
 

The desk clerk informed Orient that the French Hospital was just a short walk from the hotel, on the other side of the main square, Djemaa el Fna. The activity in the streets had increased somewhat by now, but the movement was still sluggish and colorless.
 

As Orient neared the square, however, the streets became more crowded and the stolid concrete buildings gave way to a long stretch of trees. The boulevard bisected a crossroads, and streams of people, all going in the same direction, poured into the wide street from every side. They were riding bicycles, walking next to burros, perched on motor scooters, or sitting in horse-driven cabs.
 

Orient could see immediately that these people were as different from the citizens of Tangier as the Ozark farmer from the New Yorker. They were tribesmen still living in ancient villages in the mountains and coming to Marrakesh to trade their wares. Most of the women had tattooed faces and orange hands, their palms tinted from constant use of henna dye on their hair and bodies. The men, too, had crude tribal tattoos on their foreheads and hands. The long wool robes of the men and embroidered gowns worn by the women had a rough, homespun quality. Fezzes, hoods, wide-brimmed straw hats, woolen skullcaps, turbans, and veils were all equally favored by the dark-skinned Berbers. Many of them wore long, curved knives on chains slung around their necks, and their faces seemed to be etched of brown, flinty stone, hacked from the mountain rocks with the very blades at their sides.
 

Everyone, including Orient, was moving toward the sound of the drums.
 

Then the street widened and Orient saw the square. A large open space bordered by a low wall of stalls and tents. He was in the midst of a throng of people all moving toward the crowds already in the square. The insistent sound of drums and bells that Orient had heard farther back became louder and he glimpsed a jogging circle of dancers at the edge of the clearing.
 

Another rhythm came from somewhere across the square. Chimes and tambourines came ringing quick punctuation to the deep, constant pounding in front of him.
 

The square was a chaos of noise and moving colors. As Orient came closer, he saw that the Berber spectators were all jammed into tight groups watching the story tellers, dancers, snake charmers, trained monkeys, acrobats, magicians, sidewalk doctors, fortune-tellers, herb and spice vendors, and dentists hawking various sets of false teeth, who were all simultaneously plying their trades in the sun. Beyond the clearing, people were shopping for food, exchanging goods, and shuffling through a vast maze of wooden stalls and tents that extended back to the pink clay rampart walls in the distance.
 

As Orient pushed through the multitude, he saw a flash of silver balls high in the air and paused. He edged closer, recalling his dream on the train a few hours earlier. But the juggler was a tall ebony-skinned man wearing Berber pantaloons and a yellow vest over his sweating chest. Orient moved away from the circle and made his way to the other side of the square to a group of horse-drawn cabs waiting for passengers. When Orient asked for the French Hospital, one of the drivers pointed to a three-story concrete building a short distance away. Orient moved toward the hospital. He didn’t notice the short boy who had detached himself from the group of spectators around the juggler and was now following him across the street.
 

It was quiet inside the hospital. When Orient asked for Presto, the nurse at the desk checked his credentials, asked him to wait, and disappeared down a corridor. She returned a few moments later with a short, fat man wearing a stethoscope around his thick neck, a white smock, and a fez on his round head.
 

The man shook hands with Orient. "I’m Doctor Hamid," he said in clipped English. He peered at Orient and fingered his thin mustache. "You wish to see Mr. Wallace."
 

"Yes. I’m a friend of his. Doctor Orient."
 

The man nodded and clasped his hands behind his back. He started walking slowly across the reception hall to a stairway. "Perhaps you can give us some light on Mr. Wallace’s medical history, Doctor Orient. Frankly, we’re puzzled."
 

"What are his symptoms?"
 

"He was found in a coma in his hotel. At first it was diagnosed as a partial asphyxiation as a result of opiate poisoning." Hamid paused at the stairs and looked at Orient apologetically. "So many of the young tourists from Europe and the United States are brought here suffering from similar drug reactions." He began climbing the stairs. "But the coma has lasted long past the critical stage. Mr. Wallace should have recovered by now. All our tests are negative. He seems to be in perfect health." Hamid paused again at the top of the stairs. "Perhaps there is something in the boy’s case we don’t know." Hc looked at Orient.
 

Orient shook his head. "Mr. Wallace was perfectly healthy a few weeks ago."
 

Doctor Hamid rubbed his mustache.
 

"Who brought him here?" Orient asked.
 

"A young girl. A companion of his. But I think she has left Marrakesh." Hamid started walking down a short, wide corridor. "You’ll see what I mean when you examine him." He stopped at a door on one side of the corridor and opened it. He took off his stethoscope and handed it to Orient. "I’ll be back in a moment with his file."
 

Orient went inside. The room was small and sunny. There was a white bed near the window, a night table, and a white cupboard against the wall near the door. Presto was lying in the bed. His eyes were closed and, as Orient bent over him, he saw that his face was very white and still.
 

Orient went through a brief preliminary examination. Presto’s heartbeat was weak but regular. His pulse was faint and his breathing shallow, almost imperceptible. He checked Presto’s skull very carefully for any sign of a bruise or cut and checked his limbs for rigidity. Presto’s head was unmarked and his arms and legs were completely limp.