The Lighthearted Quest (10 page)

“Mr. Panoukian, I believe you could help me. Would you?”

“My dear lady, if I can, the thing is done,” he said, with an exceedingly sweet smile.

“Oh, thank you. Indeed I
do
hope you can, for we are in such trouble,” said Julia, turning the eyes of a distressed dove onto the Armenian. “Look—I feel as if I can trust you; may I be perfectly frank?”

“It is almost always wiser to be perfectly frank, especially if one wants help,” said Mr. Panoukian. “In theory the English understand this, and
nous autres
do not—in fact I often find the reverse to be the case.”

Julia laughed a little, but promptly returned to her role of distressed damsel.

“I'm looking for someone—a distant cousin, whom I haven't seen for years. He hasn't written home now for months and months, and his poor mother is distracted; she needs him, too, because the man who used to look after their very large property has just died, and there is no one to see to things. So I have come out to try to find him.”

“The journalism is a blind, then?”

“Oh, no—it finances me.
you
must know all about our currency restrictions in England.”

“Yes. How fortunate for the unhappy mother that you are a journalist!” Mr. Panoukian said—was it with a hint of mockery? On that assumption—

“Oh, please don't be unkind!” said Julia.

“I am not. Who could be unkind to you? But please tell me one thing—with this perfect frankness which we agree is so useful: why do you imagine that
I
can help you to trace your missing cousin?”

“Because he has an account with you; here, in Casablanca.”

Was it her imagination or did a sort of veil, an almost imperceptible blankness come over those yellow eyes when she said that?

“Indeed! And may I know his name?”

“Of course—how could you help me, otherwise? His name is Colin Monro,” said Julia.

This time there was no doubt about it. Mr. Panoukian's topaz eyes seemed visibly to lose all expression before her own; it was as if a blind shutter of refusal were drawn down over that whole curious visage. She did not have to wait for his words to know that she had failed, that this was a dead end; she hardly listened when he said slowly—

“Monro? I must look that up. Where are you staying?”

Mr. Panoukian was not a mule, he was one of the greater cats—and she could not make him talk. But
why
not? she asked
herself, as they drove back to a late supper. To her surprise Mr. Lynch drove her himself; the chauffeur had disappeared.

“Where's Ali?” she asked.

“I sent him home—I always do if I'm going to be at all late!”

“But why?”

“So he won't get stoned,” said Paddy casually. “He lives in the new Medina, the modern Moorish quarter, and everyone knows he works for a foreigner; if he comes back late the thugs stone him.”

“Paddy, it's not
true!
In a modern town, today?”

“Oh, yes, it's happened three or four times. If I
have
to keep him late for some official do I send him home in a taxi.”

Over coffee after supper, in the rather chilly drawing-room—the electric power had failed for some reason, as it constantly did, Julia learned—she confided to her good friend Paddy the real reason for her coming to Morocco, and asked if he would do anything he could to trace Colin. (Whatever Geoffrey might say, she had got to find him.)

“His account's with the Banque Regié Turque, is it? Is that what you were making eyes at Panoukian about?”

“Yes,” said Julia, unruffled. “I made all the eyes I've got, but it was no use.”

“No, I shouldn't expect it to be. You'd have done better with old Bingham—you really have enslaved him! What did Tony say?”

“Tony?”

“Tony Panoukian.”

“Said he'd look up the account. But I saw—I mean I'm practically certain—that he
did
know about Colin, and wasn't going to tell—his whole face sort of shut up, went dead-pan, at the name.”

“Have you any idea what young Monro really is up to?”

“No, not a clue.
You
said smuggling, and so did the mate on my boat—but I can't believe it's really that, because . . .” here Julia paused, wondering how much to say. Recalling
Mr. Panoukian's dictum about perfect frankness, she decided to plunge. . . .

“Because what?” Mr. Lynch asked, while she hesitated.

“Well, I told a chum in the Treasury about Colin's account having been transferred here, and he volunteered to find out the reason for permission being given from the Bank of England.”

“A rather
young
man, I deduce,” said Paddy Lynch.

“Yes. Well, I got a most totally clottish officialese letter from him this morning, the one he sent via you—
typed,
would you believe it?—telling me to leave it all alone from the banking angle. From which I deduce,” said Julia, fitting another of Mr. Lynch's cigarettes into a small delicate silver-and-ebony holder, “that not only does the B. of E. know all about his job, and bless it, but that it is something peculiarly hush. Otherwise why the panic? Geoffrey's letter was panic-stricken.”

“In the typed officialese?”

“Oh, no—the panic was in an MS. P.S.,” said Julia, grinning a little, while a faint and becoming blush stole over her apricot-tinted cheeks.

“H'm. I think I see.”

“And your horrible Panoukian person shutting up like a
clam
at the very sound of Colin's name confirms that, wouldn't you say? If it was all open and in the clear he'd have said, ‘Oh, yes, of course—I'll send you his address tomorrow,' don't you think?”

“Um. Yes. I daresay you're onto something. Have you got the letter from your Treasury pal on you?”

“No, I left it on board, locked up. He said I was on no account to start you snooping,” added Julia, with a giggle.

“That won't worry me,” said Mr. Lynch. “I'm an Irish citizen; I've no commitments to the Old Lady of Thread-needle Street, certainly none to override those to the
young
lady, Julia my dear! I'll snoop for all I'm worth. Give me your Tangier address, by the way—and the telephone number.”

“I'll have to post you that; I don't know it.”

“Then remember to airmail it. Surface mail from Tangier takes an eternity.”

“All surface mail takes an eternity since airmail began—I think they put the letters on ox-wagons,” said Julia—and Mr. Lynch laughed.

He drove her down to the docks himself. Having been fetched and carried by Ali, Julia had not troubled to register exactly where her ship lay, and they had to cruise about under the arc-lights for some time till she spotted the small neat shape of the
Vidago.

“Golly, what a comic little tub!” said Mr. Lynch. “I must say I think you're pretty devoted, Julia, to have crossed the Bay in winter on that! Who is the devotion to, the missing man? Is he worth it?”

“I've no idea. We were both pretty immature when I saw him last. No,” said Julia reflectively—“I think the devotion is to a place rather than to any person. I've been happier at Glentoran than anywhere else on earth, I simply adore it—and it can't carry on without Colin to run it. So I'm going to find him.”

Tangier from the sea presents a far more agreeable aspect than Casablanca. A line of ochre-coloured cliffs stretches away towards Cape Spartel on the right, in the centre the mass of white, indubitably Moorish houses of the Kasbah climbs steeply up a hill; to the left the modern town slopes, also agreeably white and clean, down to the bay and harbour, and beyond to the east rises the Djebel el Mousa, Hercules' African pillar—so much more pillar-like than its European opposite number, Gibraltar, which from Tangier is barely discernible in the distance, vaguely resembling a lion crouching very low indeed.

Julia stood on deck with Mr. Reeder, admiring this pleasant scene spread out in the sparkling sunshine, while he pointed out the various features of it to her. “I envy you a bit, staying here,” he said. “Charming place. How long
shall
you be here?”

“I've no notion. It depends on how soon I find my cousin.”

“Ah. Yes. Well, I wish you luck in your quest. Don't forget Purcell, he may be able to help you—but go slowly.”

“I will.”

“I do hope you succeed, if only for your other cousin's sake—Edina, did you say? Pretty name; curious, too.”

“It's a family name.”

“She must be a tremendous girl, to be able to run a place like that, and yet earn such a huge screw on her own as well,” said Mr. Reeder thoughtfully. “Worth knowing. What is she like?”

“Her hair is jet black,” said Julia with malice.

“Oh God! She's not tall, by any chance?”

“Very tall—and as slim as a willow.”

“Help!” said Mr. Reeder. “I should be sunk if I met her.”

“I expect so—she sinks a lot of people,” said Julia.

After fond farewells to Captain Blyth and the rest of the ship's officers Julia went ashore. Andrews, typically, loaded up “the boy” with so many of her possessions at once that her typewriter nearly fell off the gangway into the water; she shouted a cold, slow reproof at him from the quay, which caused him to bring the rest of her luggage down himself. (She saw Captain Blyth's tranquil grin at this episode as he stood at the rail below the bridge.) More tractors and more saloon cars were being slung ashore, also a piece of deck-cargo which had amused Julia throughout the voyage: several wooden cases of lighter-fuel, which might not be stowed below, and had remained lashed on the main deck. Evidently the cigarette-lighters of Tangier could now be filled.

The Villa Espagnola to which a taxi bore her was really a small hotel, situated at the top of the town at the far end of the big Boulevard, the main shopping street, where this peters out into a residential quarter of large houses in gardens, where most of the Legations are situated; as she unpacked, the great fronds of palm-trees on a level with her window tossed their heads like restless horses in the sea-breeze close outside, and the scent of roses came up from the garden below—by craning her neck a little she could just see the white mass of the Kasbah, a pile of gleaming rectangular blocks, each block a house, poised precariously on the steep slope of its hill. All pretty good as a change from London in January, Julia thought—in her calm fashion she exulted a little.

But she was never one to waste time, and as Purcell's Bar was obviously going to be a slow process, she made a call there her first job. The Spanish proprietor looked a little startled when she asked the way to it, but gave her directions—down through the Medina and the Socco Chico, the Small Market, and then a street on the right, close above the harbour.

Julia had the sensible habit of always buying a plan of any new town the moment she arrived in it; her hotel however had none, so she set off without. Everyone in Tangier speaks
Spanish, so she had no difficulty in asking her way to the Socco Chico, revelling as she went at the sight of teams of donkeys laden with unrecognisable merchandise blocking the road for Chrysler cars, or more of those women smothered in white draperies, and men in dark-brown woollen djellabas, straight from neck to ankle, and topped with wide straw hats looped up and trimmed with cords and tassels of wool. Heavenly fun, she thought; delicious entertainment of the eye—no wonder Colin and Reeder liked this part of the world.

But when she tried to go through the Medina to the Socco Chico the heavenly fun became a little too much of a good thing. The old Moorish city of Tangier is a network of steep cobbled alleys, so narrow that the passage of a single donkey sends the thronging pedestrians scrambling into the open-fronted shops for safety; even without a donkey's passing it was hard to push one's way through the swarms of people—Moors and Jews, men and women—and the smells were unwonted and strong; moreover there were so many twists and turnings that she soon felt in danger of being hopelessly lost. She beat a retreat uphill, and managed to find her way back into the big open market lying immediately above, the Gran Socco; here she took a taxi, which circumnavigated the impossibly steep angle and narrowness of the Moorish shopping quarter, and drew up in a quiet, narrow, modern street, where a small and discreet notice said “Purcell's Bar”.

She found this to be quite a small place, a narrow room with a bar along one side leading through into a larger one, both with small glass-topped tables and modern leather-covered chairs—it was all as quiet as the street and as discreet as the notice, rather to her surprise; she had expected something more exotic or more rough-and-tumble. It was early in the evening; she took a seat in the narrow room opposite the bar, ordered a drink, and then sat demurely sipping it while she took stock of her surroundings. The man who served her wore an ordinary dark suit, but his face was far from ordinary:
negro blood was obvious in the wide mouth and broad mask, but his hair was brown and straight, his skin merely of a European sallowness, his eyes grey. When he brought Julia her drink he spoke perfect English, but having done so he busied himself quietly among his bottles, not making conversation after the manner of his kind. This struck her; and indeed there was about the whole man a quiet dignity, combined with a look of strong intelligence, which was impressive. Could this, she wondered, be Purcell himself? If merely a barman he was an unusual one.

Her question was answered by the entrance of a little Moor in fez, baggy blue trousers, and scarlet jacket, who carried a basket full of bottles and spoke in Arabic to the grey-eyed man; he was promptly set to washing and polishing glasses, and from the demeanour of them both it was obvious that the half-negro was the boss. Julia studied him with fresh interest. He certainly had the look of a person who might know everything, and would keep his mouth shut on what he knew, she thought, recalling Reeder's words. A few minutes later she received fresh confirmation of his identity. The muslin-veiled door onto the street opened again to admit a small rather seedy man, who somehow had the word ‘spiv' written large all over him; he leaned over the bar and greeted the man behind it with the words, “Look here, Purthell, old man”—then he caught sight of Julia and lowered his voice, so that the rest of his communication was lost to her. Julia was pleased—this was the sort of type she had expected to find in Purcell's Bar. But he was not made very welcome—Purcell listened coldly and shook his head more than once. The newcomer had a very slight cast in one eye; presently he cocked the other at Julia, clearly asking who she was?—Purcell shook his head again, repres-sively, and said something which drove the small cross-eyed representative of the underworld out of the bar. (Julia felt an instantaneous conviction that this miserable little creature belonged to Tangier's underworld, whatever that might
amount to, and that Purcell, like King David's wife, despised him in his heart.)