The Lighthearted Quest (33 page)

“I travelled down from Petit-Jean to Casa with a friend of yours,” Reeder said to Julia—“an American called Keller.”

“Steve? Goodness, what's he doing there?”

“Looking for you, I fancy. He said he'd gone to call on you in Tangier and heard you were at Casablanca, so he was going there. I told him you were coming here, and he must have followed on; I saw him in the bar this morning.” The smile in Mr. Reeder's beard was rather marked.

“I wonder where he's staying,” said Julia.

“Here, same as me,” Reeder replied.

In the afternoon Julia demanded to be taken to the Bahia Palace to see the Apartment of the Favourite—Reeder came with them. That curious suite of rooms opening out of one another through archways without doors leads off the vast painted and balconied court which once housed three hundred concubines. No one, as Reeder said, can really take any interest in
three hundred
concubines, but both he and Mr. Lynch were highly entertained by this strange setting for an American novelist. In the centre was a tiny courtyard open to the sky, with a tinkling fountain; rooms brilliant with colour from walls and tiled floors opened off it, in one of which stood a huge four-poster bed upholstered in crimson cut velvet—“She could see the fountain as she lay in bed!” Julia breathed, “What a place. I must say I wish I'd known Marshal Lyautey. and been allowed to stay here.”

They idled about in the souks after that, watching various craftsmen at work; Julia bought for Edina one of the crocheted cotton caps which every other man on the
place
wore, and an inlaid cedar-wood travelling-mug for Mrs. Hathaway—then they dropped Reeder on the
place
and went on to the Bureau, where the good-looking French officer had accumulated quite a budget of information about M. Nussbaumer and his assistant.

They had been lately at Tinerhir, near the rocky gorges of the Dadès and the Todra—
un drôle d'endroit
for them, since it was rather wild country, though there were cantines there. But he was expected at Ouarzazate tonight, and if he came straight on he should be in this town sometime tomorrow. In
which case, “since Mademoiselle dislikes the telephone so much,” he, the Commandant, would send a note to her hotel.

“Paddy, this is wonderful!” Julia exclaimed as they drove away. “What sucks for old St John, telling me to give it all up.
Dear
Colin! It will be lovely to see him.”

“Don't talk too loud,” said Mr. Lynch, using his native idiom for not provoking Providence.

In the hall of the Mamounia they came on the Duke of Ross-shire, seated alone over a beer; he rose and embraced Julia.

“Well, here some of us are, anyhow! My ancient friend, who would have chaperoned you, has gone sick in Casablanca; the others
said
they were staying to succour him, but I think they really wanted a little night-life. So I came on by myself, by the bus.”

“What spirit, Angus. Look, this is Mr. Lynch, who's brought me”—the men shook hands, and Paddy ordered drinks—“Beer is very unwholesome in Morocco at sunset; abandon it and have whisky.”

“Mr. Reeder's here too,” Julia said, as Angus Ross-shire laughed and agreed to whisky.

“What, your nice eavesdropper?”

“Yes, we're all going to dine together on the Djema—you'd better come too.”

“Indeed I will, whatever the Djema may be. I need both company and a guide. But what an exquisite place this is.”

As they sat talking Steve Keller entered that brightly-coloured hall, and stood staring round at the various groups scattered about it.

“Here!” said Julia, holding up a languid hand; the young man hastened over, and greeted her with a warmth that was innocently obvious.

“How you do get around!” he said, grinning.

“Well, yes—I'm seeing Morocco. But you must meet my
friends. The Duke of Ross-shire—Mr. Keller, of the American Naval Air Force; and Mr. Lynch—Mr. Keller.”

At the first of these introductions a curious expression, compounded of astonishment, embarrassment, and a faint hostility, appeared on the ingenuous countenance of the American—Julia saw it.

“Sit down and have a drink, Steve, and talk to the Duke. He was a Pathfinder in the war, though I don't think there were any jets then. Mr. Keller is a jet-fiend, Angus,” she said. And in no time at all, Mr. Keller, to his amazement, found himself talking with real pleasure to a man who might be that legendary thing, a Duke, but to whom the air was a familiar place, and who possessed a surprising knowledge of technicalities—Julia, with satisfaction, overheard Angus Ross-shire receiving a warm invitation to come and take a look at the base at Meknes.

“Dear Julia, you
said
no boy-friends,” Angus murmured in her ear as they stood waiting on the steps while Paddy brought round the car, “but were you being quite candid? What do you call your so delightful mechanical chum?” Julia giggled—

“They occur, you know, Angus,” she said.

They all dined together at the Café de France, where Reeder awaited them; Steve had borrowed a car from an acquaintance at the Casablanca base, and came on by himself. Afterwards they all strolled again on the Djema el F'na. There was a full moon, and the great Koutoubia minaret—to eyes familiar with the minarets of Turkey, slender as knitting-needles, so much more like a tower—stood up almost transparent in the moonlight, in all its immense dignity and beauty. At night, under the naphtha flares, the tempo of pleasure and entertainment on the great square—the
“place folle”,
as the French call it—is heightened: the circles round the dancers are more dense, the grey-bearded performers leap more wildly, while the metal clappers, the original castanets, rattle like machine-gun fire; the gestures of the story-tellers are more
dramatic, the serpents of the snake-charmers writhe like souls in torment. Public enjoyment for its own sake here achieves an expression unparalleled elsewhere on earth—it is indescribably stimulating. But it is also exhausting, and presently Julia declared for bed.

Going upstairs Julia said—

“Paddy, it seems
too
silly to waste time going to see that Hortense person again.”

“Oh, nonsense! Snap out of it, Julia. We've no idea where they'll be staying, or even if they will stay in Marrakesh at all. You can at least ask her if Colin will be going to see her.”

“As Colin, or as M. Nussbaumer's assistant?”

“Both, I'd say.”

“Honestly, I'd rather go to the Saadian Tombs,” said Julia.

In fact on the following morning they did go to these before visiting Hortense, taking Angus Ross-shire with them. The Duke especially was quite ravished by this exquisite flowering of Hispano-Mauresque architecture: the slender marble columns supporting the high shadowy vaulting of the roof of carved cedar-wood, whose gilding and delicate colours glowed richly and dimly in the airy gloom; the lace-like fragility of the incised plaster-work of the walls, combined with dazzling glazed tiles; and on the ground the reason for it all—the tombs themselves, of grooved marble, peaked like a roof and the colour of old ivory, where Ahmed the Golden, his son, his grandson, and various male and female kinsfolk lie at rest. Julia was rather disappointed that one no longer, like Edith Wharton, had to wade through nettles to reach this exquisite place; instead, the Administration has created a neat garden, set with brilliant flowers.

They dropped the Duke off at the Post Office, and then once again took that complicated set of turnings to the tall house with the medlar-tree; but Julia absolutely refused to go in alone.

“You
must
come too—I'll say you're my brother.”

Hortense—when Julia, fingering the prune-coloured robe again, began to put her questions—was extremely cagey and suspicious.

“Who sent you to me?”

“That I cannot say.”

“But I must know
why
you come—
enfin,
I must have some credentials.”

Julia, to Paddy's horror, opened her handbag and took out the orange-coloured lump of Astridite.

“There are my credentials,” she said.

The woman positively recoiled.

“Put it away! It is dangerous. You are crazy!” She became angry all of a sudden. “And since you come, yesterday,
des mauvais sujets
hang about the place. I do not like it.”

Paddy said firmly—“Do not tell me, Mademoiselle, that this is the
first
time your house has been watched.” Hortense shifted her ground.

“They took the number of your car—I saw them.”

“Yes, so did we,” said Julia coolly. “Abdul is always taking car-numbers.”

“Ah, you know this man?”

“Yes, damn him!—and I'd like to know why he's taking them here instead of in Fez.”

For some reason this remark caused Mademoiselle Hortense to relent slightly—she even smiled a little.

“I also should like to know this, though I fear I can guess; if he had your car-number in Fez he will have traced you here.”

“Oh, no, he won't—not by the number;
that
car has never come nearer to Marrakesh than Port Lyautey.”

The blonde woman shrugged her shoulders. “Anyhow you are under suspicion from that quarter—and if I may permit myself the expression, with good reason,” she said, with a meaning glance at Julia's handbag.

Julia smiled, slowly.

“Mademoiselle Hortense, I don't want to worry you—I see that it is a bore for you to have us here. Tell me one thing and then we will go, and leave you in peace. Where does M. Nussbaumer eat when he is in Marrakesh?”

“But on the
place,
naturally.”

“In the booths, or at the France?”

“It is uncertain. I think the France, as a rule.”

“Thank you very much.”

“I told you that would be a waste of time,” said Julia as they left.

“Why didn't you ask her where they stay?”

“A, she wouldn't have told me, and B, I wonder very much if they do stay here at all. In their place I should be inclined to blind on to Casa, get in after dark, park the camionnette with the avaricious but venal M. Martin, and go and curl up for the night in an outsized coffer chez Bathyadis.”

Paddy laughed.

“Perhaps you have something there. Anyhow it's time
we
ate now—the others will be waiting.” It had been settled the night before that they should lunch at the Café de France with Reeder, Steve, and the Duke.

“Paddy dear, let's
just
flip round by the Hotel, in case there's a message from your high-powered acquaintance,” said Julia urgently; Mr. Lynch obediently drove to the Mamounia.

There was in fact a note at the desk for Mademoiselle Probyn; she went into the hall and sat down to open it. “The Messieurs you seek entered the city half-an-hour ago,” it said, and nothing else, except “12.46
heures”
written under the date. Julia folded it up slowly, put it in her handbag, and went and washed.

“They're here,” she said to Paddy as she walked out to the car. “Got in at 12.15.”

Paddy glanced at his watch.

“Ten past one. That's early to eat, by Moroccan hours; still, we'd better keep an eye open for them at the France.”

“Always allowing for those false beards. Damn, if the redhead wears a wig I'm sunk!”

“We'll take a scout through the bar before we settle down, anyhow,” said Paddy.

Reeder, the Duke and Steve were all in the bar when they arrived. Julia accepted a drink, and then stood peering round her in that dark smoky place. It had occurred to her that even with false beards their exceptional height might give the pair she was looking for away, but she realised immediately that it is not easy to judge the height of a man seated on a bar-stool. There were eleven people in the bar besides themselves: three young Moors drinking orange squash, five stumpy elderly Frenchmen, whose little round pots entirely precluded their being the two she sought, two French officers in uniform, and the Commandant.

“No beards,” Julia muttered to Paddy. “Let's get out of this smog.”

Out on the verandah, though the sun poured in there was a little teasing breeze; they had two tables pushed together right on the inside and close up against the glass screen, where it was relatively warm and sheltered, and sat over another round of drinks while awaiting their lunch. Julia had carefully seated herself with her back to the screen, facing the door leading through to the bar, beside which a small French police officer sat sipping a Pernod—she could thus watch the whole length of the verandah except the smaller portion behind the glass screen. Just as the
hors d'œuvres
were being served two tallish men stepped up from the street and began to cross towards the door—one had a scanty and immature black beard, the other a heavy and rather improbable-looking reddish moustache; both wore bérets which practically concealed their hair, and dark glasses, but this time they were so close that even Julia could not be mistaken.

“There they are!—the two in bérets,” she murmured to Paddy. “The one with the beard is Colin.” She rose as she
spoke, and also began to thread her way between the tables towards them. Just as they reached the door she called “Colin!” softly—which caused the Duke, amused and inquisitive, to get up and follow her. The younger man looked round, paused for a second, and then followed his companion into the bar—Julia continued to make her way slowly in that direction between the large forms of the coffee-drinking Moors.

Suddenly there was a bright flash and a loud explosion—Paddy Lynch could never be sure afterwards whether it took place inside the door or out. What he did see, in that first instant, with horror, was that Julia and the Duke both fell. After that all was confusion—French voices within the bar crying “Les Nationalistes! Les Terroristes!”, while excited crowds surged across the street from the
place
to see what was going on; there was broken glass everywhere, from the windows and the shattered screen.