The Lighthearted Quest (22 page)

“Oh yes, do let us see that,'' said Julia. “It might be interesting.”

To Julia, at least, it was. The Moor led them through a dark descending passage to an underground chamber where by the light of an oil lamp a blindfold mule walked round and round in a circle, rotating a large stone wheel set on edge in a hollow mortared channel full of black olives which were in process of being crushed to pulp; two or three men with long-handled shovels kept nipping skilfully in behind the mule and throwing the black strong-smelling oily mush back into the path of the wheel—Steve opined that this was ‘a kinda one-horse way' of doing things.

“One-mule way, surely,” said Mr. St John. Julia however had espied a second chamber opening out of the first and went into it. Here the pulp, enclosed in flat round bags or nets of coarse rope, was being pressed under a complicated arrange-ment of a stone slab and a long wooden beam, wound down by a handle on a vast screw of polished wood; the clear oil oozed and dripped in bright beads from between the rough fibres into another mortared channel surrounding a circular stone block, on which the bags of pulp were set. This block and the channel surrounding it were in fact exact replicas of the block and channel at Mme La Besse's excavation. Julia exclaimed “Goody!” at the sight.

“What have you found?” Mr. St John asked, tapping his way after her with his stick over the uneven earthen floor.

“Only something that will thrill my employer,” the girl answered casually.

When they got back to Fez, late and rather hungry, Mr. St John tactfully insisted on leaving the young people to lunch alone; but before they parted Julia made a point of asking him if they could have “another go at Fez” the next day, as she might be leaving the day after—he at once promised to call for her in the morning. Steve was rather plaintive over lunch—“I saw we had to take your dwarf Methuselah along, and he knows a lot; but he's not quite the girl to go to Venice with, is he?” Julia laughed, and after lunch allowed the American to drive her round the wonderful road along the slopes surrounding the city which the French call the
Route du Tour de Fez;
from it one sees from a score of different angles all that Fez permits to be seen: its walls and its heaped flat roof-tops, with a few rather bulky minarets looming over them. The day had turned gloomy and threatening, the mountains were the colour of ink, and below these dark shapes the city seemed to crouch, pallid and hostile—Julia thought it more sinister than ever. Steve extorted from her her address in Tangier, and a promise to let him know if she should come to Port Lyautey.

She did another brisk tour of
medersas
and
souks
with Mr. St John next morning, including the Moorish house once lived in by Marshal Lyautey; but the tiny old gentleman seemed a little abstracted, the flow of his carved pronouncements less ready than usual, while his whistling sighs occurred constantly. Another thing struck Julia that morning: in the crowded alleys they constantly came on knots of people which were really congealed, standing so close that it was impossible to filter through them as one can usually filter through a Moorish crowd; edging round was the only way. And in the centre of each knot was an Arab with a newspaper, reading aloud to the grave concentrated faces round him.

“Why are they all so keen on the press today?” Julia asked
at
last.

“The murder,” said Mr. St John soberly.

“Not
more
murders! Who is it this time? Another Moulay?”

“No—a French doctor in Casablanca, a man greatly beloved; his practice was largely among the Moors, to whom he devoted himself. He was shot from behind as he was leaving his clinic in the New Medina.”

“How horrible! But why, if he did so much good?”

“Aah!—that is the insane part of it. If a prominent Moor is assassinated, a prominent Frenchman will be assassinated too, to redress the balance; and then another Moor, and another Frenchman—it is as endless as an Albanian feud or a Corsican vendetta.” He sighed again. “In this case there is particular concern and bitterness among the Moors, because just as Moroccan elements killed the Moulay for being on too good terms with the French, it is suspected that French elements murdered the doctor for being on too good terms with the Arabs.”

“You don't mean it!”

“I do, unhappily.”

“But that is simply
hopeless,”
said Julia. “That understanding, I mean, that de Foucauld wrote of becomes impossible if it's just the people, on both sides, who
do
understand who get murdered. They can never get together if they go on like that.”

“No, they can never get together,” the old man said in a tone of unutterable sadness.

Julia mused. “It ought to be prevented,” she said presently. “It's ridiculous. If it's the prominent people who get killed, they must be known—couldn't they have guards or police or something, to go about with?”

“That is what the French doctors in Casablanca whose work takes them into the Medina thought,” Mr. St John replied with acerbity; “they asked the Municipality to provide them with guards, since their hours at the clinics are known, and they were therefore sitting targets for the thugs.”

“And didn't they get them?”

“They were offered them, at a price—which they were to pay themselves.”

“Good God! The French and their
ça coute,”
said Julia, with real anger in her voice. “How much, for heaven's sake?”

“In English money it would have come to about twenty pounds a month. That is a good deal for a man who does more than half his work for love. Some of the wealthier ones agreed to pay it; this doctor refused, as a matter of principle.”

“ ‘And he's just as dead as though he'd been wrong,' “ Julia quoted bitterly. “Do you know, Mr. St John, to me that sort of meanness really
smells”

“The people in Casablanca agree with you. It is not in the papers yet, but I hear that the Préfet was hissed by the crowd yesterday when he attended the funeral—by Moors as well as Europeans.”

“Serve him right.”

“Not altogether. He is a good man, sympathetic to the indigenous population, broad-minded; but he is tied by regulations, and above all by matters like the vote for colonial expenses at home. The people who really
'puent',
to use your so expressive word, are the French politicians—ignorant, self-seeking, eternally manoeuvring for position for their miserable parties, regardless of France's real interests, let alone those of her dependent peoples. Blame them.”

“Oh, I do! I've been blaming them for years—ever since I was at school, in fact. France has been the sick woman of Europe for over a century, hasn't she?—and a spoilt invalid at that.”

Mr. St John laughed.

“My dear young lady, you have a formidable gift of expression! One which, if I may say so, your appearance would seem to belie,” he said.

“No one can help their appearance,” said Julia, who knew quite well that she looked the dumbest of blondes, but didn't particularly mind. At the moment she was glad that her so
unmatching views on the French had cheered the little old gentleman up, and was delighted by his obvious pleasure when she asked if they couldn't go and sit in the museum garden again.

“Ah, you liked it? So do I—a charming spot. Yes, let us go there.”

But Mr. St John was very far from showing pleasure when, once more seated on the kerb of the fountain, Julia asked him how she could get hold of Colin Monro at once. He started, dropped his stick, upon which he had been resting his gnarled old hands, picked it up again, and asked quite petulantly—

“Good gracious, what in the world do
you
know about young Monro? And what on earth do you want him for?”

“I want him to come home. But unless I find him, I can't tell him that he's got to.”

Mr. St John looked like a very cross tortoise indeed.

“And why should you imagine that he is here?”

Julia, however half-baked she might in Edina's opinion be as a journalist, had at least learned in that profession that to display such facts as she was already in possession of frequently led to the disclosure of yet other facts—and she employed this technique now.

“Oh, I know he isn't here at this moment,” she drawled, casually—“he went down to the South just a few days ago, with that red-headed type he goes round with, and a fresh consignment of those pretty velvet trunks, but I want to contact him
quickly.”

This pronouncement created a considerable effect. Mr. St John dropped his stick again, and assumed the appearance of a quite furious tortoise; when he was able to speak—Julia picked up the stick this time—he was almost stuttering with vexation and bewilderment.

“Who—who are you? And how do you come to know all this?”

“I'm Colin's cousin—his mother sent me out here to find
him. And as for knowing things, of course one has one's contacts,” said Julia, rather grandly, but again with careful casualness.

Mr. St John looked so worried and upset that her heart rather smote her for a moment; but after all she had come all this way for one single purpose, and being thwarted so often had aroused her obstinacy; she must not allow pity, even for this rather darling old man, to deflect her. His next question surprised her, though.

“But Lady Tracy—
she
wrote to me about you.” He looked immensely puzzled. “Does she know of this—this quest of yours?”

“But of course. She promised to help me, only then her nephew—the botanist one, I expect you know him—went hooshing away, so she couldn't do much. He seems to be her special link with the outside world.”

“Ah!” Mr. St John became a reflective tortoise—Julia got a curious impression of a hitch, that she had lost a point somehow, or given something away; but the old gentleman was still upset, sufficiently so to make a remark which he failed to finish: “Ah, then she cannot know—“ He checked himself abruptly.

Julia was dying to ask what Lady Tracy could not know, but checked herself too; she must not let her tongue run away with her, or give anything more away—if indeed she had done so; it was only an impression, and a vague one at that. She remained silent, waiting for Mr. St John to speak again, and meanwhile gazed up at the strange shapes of the trees in the museum garden, silhouetted against the brilliant Moroccan sky.

It was some time before her companion did speak again, When he did, he went off on a fresh tack.
“Why
do you want young Monro to come home?”

Gloomily, like an actor speaking a boring part for the hundredth time, Julia went through the reasons: the estate,
Uncle John's death, Edina's rich money-making career. Colin had
got
to come home.

“Well, he can't,” said Mr. St John very curtly. “For the present he is obliged to stay here. I am sorry to disappoint you, but really you had better give up this search of yours. Moreover, I think I should warn you that it is not very prudent to go round asking for this young man by name.”

“Oh, because of those infernal Germans?” Julia felt that it would be as well to learn a little more about “our enemies” if she could, while the poor old gentleman was available, and in this slightly dislocated state. The result was pretty good—Mr. St John gazed at her in absolute stupefaction.

“H—h—
how
do you know that?” he stuttered angrily. “Of course!”—again he checked himself. “I believe you are being un-candid with me—you are not what you pretend to be, a friend of my old friend, just an English girl!” he said bitterly.

“Oh, yes, Mr. St John, I am precisely that. Only I happen to know a little more than you expected,” said Julia hardily. “Do tell me more about these Germans, won't you?”

“No, I will
not,”
said Mr. St John, quite furiously banging the butt of his stick on the stone pavement which surrounded the fountain. “I will tell you
nothing!
How, I cannot conceive, but you know far too much already.”

Julia deployed her eyes at their most dove-like on the angry old man, and laid her long pink-tipped hand caressingly on his sleeve.

“Oh Mr. St John, dear, don't be so upset, and horrid to me,” she said. “You've been so kind, but now you're really being a pest.”

“So are you!” he exploded, actually throwing her hand off his arm.

“I daresay. I expect I often am. But you've been so sweet, and I'm so grateful. Look, won't you at least tell me this—which is it imprudent for, me or Colin, if I go about asking for him?”

“Both!” said Mr. St John. “Imprudent for you, possibly mortally dangerous for him.”

A little silence fell after that. Dislocated or not, Mr. St John had remained totally uninformative about the Germans, the enemies, except to confirm their inimical existence. Germans, Germans—
who
had talked to her, in Morocco, about Germans, Julia wondered, trailing the fingers of the hand Mr. St John had so summarily rejected in the cool water of the pool behind her. Twice she had tried to remember, and couldn't; now, with the unaccountability of memory, suddenly it flashed back into her mind—Mr. Bingham, rather lit up at his own cocktail-party in Casablanca, had mentioned as one of two side-lines in Morocco the exploitation of rare minerals, started since the War, by the East Germans! And he had said that everyone kept their mouths pretty tightly shut about it, too. LAWKS!—Could it be some rare mineral that Colin and the red-haired chum were expediting, or exporting, in the velvet trunks? Out of pure curiosity, combined with this new obstinacy born of frustration, Julia once more employed shock tactics on the unhappy Mr. St John.

“I'd hate to do anything to jeopardise Colin, naturally,” she said gently—“But they are shipping out some odd mineral, aren't they?”