The Quest of Julian Day (6 page)

For what seemed an age I stood there, holding my breath as I waited for the steward to rattle on the bathroom door; but to my immense relief he set about tidying the cabin first. That left me one chance of getting out before O'Kieff made his appearance.

The bathroom window was oblong and as large as any of the others which lined the inner side of the promenade deck, but was of frosted, instead of plain glass. With quick fingers I twiddled its wheel until it slid down a little and I could cautiously peer out. The two promenaders were just passing again and another couple were lounging in deck-chairs about twenty feet further aft.

I waited for a moment until the backs of all four were turned, and got the window open to its fullest extent, slid back the bolt of the door and jumped up on to the bath. It was a
tricky business wriggling out of that window feet first, but by clinging to a girder inside the bathroom, I managed it. Fortunately, I am fairly tall, five feet eleven and a half, so I was able to get my feet on the deck outside without dropping far and making a heavy thump. A girl in one of the deck-chairs turned her head to look at me but I had righted myself by that time and, although she may have wondered where I had appeared from so suddenly, she took no further notice. I breathed again.

Getting my own chair I planted it in its usual spot, outside my cabin, where I could keep observation on the entrance to O'Kieff's. My heart was still hammering as I congratulated myself on having got out of such an awkward scrape and on my luck, as I believed, in having located the tablet. Yet I could not swear that the package I had felt was actually it, and my elation was a little damped as I thought what a fool I should look if I went to the Captain with my story and charged O'Kieff with being concerned in the murder, if the thing in his trunk turned out not to be the tablet at all.

The situation was a decidedly tricky one. I had to keep on reminding myself that poor Sir Walter's death was really a side-issue as far as I was concerned. My objective was to get O'Kieff either gaoled or put out of the way altogether. Nothing could have suited my purpose better than proving him guilty of murder, but if he were innocent precipitate action might ruin my whole campaign. At the moment I had the inestimable advantage of his not having recognised me, but once I allowed myself to be drawn into personal contact with him, which would be inevitable if I charged him with the crime, it was almost certain that he would do so; and that would mean goodbye to any hope of catching him out in one of his nefarious operations during the coming weeks in Egypt. In consequence I decided that I dared not risk carrying my suspicions to the Captain.

I would have cheerfully given a year of my life for another five minutes alone in O'Kieff's cabin but, unfortunately, people were now starting to make themselves comfortable on the deck in considerable numbers, and there was little chance of its being deserted again before we reached Alexandria, where we were due that afternoon.

O'Kieff came on deck, fetched a book from his cabin and sat down to read. His lean, clever face with that unscrupulous, rat-trap mouth made an interesting study, but I knew it well enough already and had little chance to examine it further, even had I wished, as I was kept busy for the next hour or more on the unpleasant job of fobbing off all sort of curious people who wanted particulars about the murder.

I don't doubt the Captain had done his best to keep the matter dark, but it is impossible to conceal such things in the close intimacy of life on board ship, and it had leaked out together with the fact that I was concerned in it. The whole ship was agog with excited speculation and every sort of tittle-tattle.

To my great relief Harry and Clarissa put in an appearance a little after eleven. Her red curls startled the eye with more than usual violence in the brightness of the morning sunshine but her piquant features showed no trace of the trying night she had been through, except in unusual gravity. On the other hand, Harry's good-natured, rather stolid countenance gave ample indication of worry and curtailed sleep. Their arrival gave me a chance to break away from the morbid seekers after gory details, and the three of us moved to the ship's side, where we could talk without being overheard.

‘Anything fresh?' Harry asked. ‘We tried to sleep late, but the row out on the deck got us up much as usual.'

‘Nothing official as far as I know,' I said. ‘But I believe I'm on to the murderer.'

‘Good God! Not really?' His blue eyes popped, while Clarissa gave a little squeal of excitement.

‘Yes. It was pure chance but I happened to know that there's a crook on board. I came up against him once before, although how doesn't matter for the moment and I don't want you to give it away to anyone that I even know him. While he was at breakfast I had a look round his cabin and there's a package there which may, or may not, be the tablet. That's the trouble. I was disturbed and had to make a bolt for it before I could find out for certain.'

‘We must tell the Captain, at once,' said Harry quickly.

Without disclosing anything of my own past I told them the bare facts about my vendetta against O'Kieff and my reasons
for preferring not to broadcast my suspicions at the moment.

Clarissa nodded. ‘All right, we'll say nothing to the Captain for the time being, since you wish it. But surely he must know that the key to the riddle lies in the tablet; I wonder he hasn't ordered a general search already.'

‘That's because he doesn't want to upset his passengers. Directly he hands over to the authorities in Alexandria, you may bet they'll ransack everything.'

‘Then if the man you suspect
has
got it, the police or customs are certain to find it in his baggage when we dock this afternoon.'

‘I doubt that. He hasn't the least reason to suppose anyone on board suspects him but, all the same, he's bound to guess they'll go through everybody's stuff before we land, and he's much too clever to risk getting caught that way.'

‘What will he do, then?'

‘Pass it on to a confederate,' I replied. ‘Probably one of the crew who could conceal it safely until the search is over and smuggle it ashore later, or lower it over the side into a boat at night. That's what we've got to prevent and where I want your help. It's much too big for him to bring out of his cabin without our spotting it. We must take turns in watching, and if he does bring it out, mark down the man to whom he hands it.'

‘Of course we'll help,' Harry agreed eagerly. ‘I'm jolly grateful to you, Julian, for what you've done already, and for keeping mum last night when the Captain questioned you about our expedition.'

‘You're going on with it then, in spite of Sir Walter's death?'

‘You bet we are. Naturally we're terribly cut up. It's simply horrible to think of the poor old chap being struck down like that; but we
must
carry on if we possibly can.'

‘Why
must
?' I asked.

‘Oh, for a number of reasons. For one, I'm sure he'd wish it. For another, Clarissa's got a whole packet sunk in this show. The devil of it is, though, we're scuppered before we start unless we can get that tablet back.'

‘But surely you've got a translation of it?'

‘No. The old man was so frightened of the secret getting out that he wouldn't have one done. It was for that reason,
too, that he took only the top half of it with him to England and left the bottom half with Sylvia in Cairo.'

I nodded. ‘Then we've darned well got to get it back somehow. If I'm right about it being the thing I felt in O'Kieff's trunk we will, too, providing we keep a careful watch on him.'

‘Which is his cabin?' Harry inquired.

‘No. 14. Just behind you to the left there. But for goodness sake don't look now.'

‘Then he's the old boy with the wavy white hair like a wig?' Clarissa whispered.

‘That's him; and, believe me, he's no small-time crook. He's so big that the police have never been able to get anything on him yet.'

Clarissa's blue eyes widened. ‘This really is rather thrilling, isn't it?'

‘I'll get a thrill all right if only I can land that devil for murder,' I muttered. ‘But in the meantime I've had no breakfast except some Harrogate toffee and a few chocolates. Will you hold the fort while I find myself some soup and biscuits to fortify the inner man? I think I'll pack too, while I'm about it, so as to leave you quite free after lunch.'

As soon as I had done my packing, I rejoined them and we spent the half-hour before lunch together. They went down directly the gong sounded and came up again as quickly as they could to let me slip away. Directly I'd fed they went off to do their packing and by three o'clock, when they joined me again. Alexandria was in sight.

For the next hour we watched the city as it rose out of the flat horizon with steadily-increasing clearness. It was far larger than the Belvilles had imagined and, stretching as it does for thirteen miles in a series of bays right along the coast, it certainly is an impressive sight; but, as I explained to them, the whole city consists almost entirely of this maginficent long front. There is hardly any depth to the place at all; it tails off into masses of squalid hutments and ragged streets, in most places not more than a quarter of a mile inland.

Alexandria is not, and never has been, a really Egyptian city; it was founded by Alexander the Great after his conquest of Egypt. When the Macedonian Empire disintegrated at his death, one of his great captains, Ptolemy, took Egypt as his
portion, and he and his successors ruled it from Alexandria for three hundred years. As the Ptolemys were Greeks, their capital became to Greece what New York has to the Anglo-Saxons in modern times; but long after the glory had departed from Greece herself, Alexandria radiated the light of Greek culture over all the ancient world. Romans, Arabs, Turks, French and English conquered it in turn through the centuries, so that to-day it is one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world, but its polyglot population still contains a large Greek element and has little in common with that of the rest of Egypt.

The seven bays which make up its waterfront are not easy to identify from the sea, but I was able to point out to the Belvilles the peninsular upon which had stood the original city where Ptolemys had reigned in such splendour, as the last independent dynasty of Egyptian Kings, until their line ended with the beautiful Cleopatra.

At the extremity of the mole jutting out from its northeastern end we could see the ruined Arab fort of Kait Bey which marks the site where the mighty Pharos, the great lighthouse counted as one of the Seven Wonders of the World, once towered to the skies; and as we drew nearer I could distinguish, among the big blocks that overlook the promenade running right round the sweep of the wide East bay, the Hotel Cecil, where we had all arranged to stay the night before going on to Cairo.

The Belvilles would have been more interested in their first glimpse of Egypt and I in telling them what I knew of Alexandria, if we hadn't all been so anxious that O'Kieff or Grünther, both of whom had been in the cabin behind us for the last half-hour, should not pop out of it with the tablet unnoticed by us.

The ‘Hampshire' hung about outside the harbour for some time but O'Kieff and his valet both remained secluded in the cabin. All three of us felt a growing sense of excitement as the ship at last drew in towards the dock. It seemed that O'Kieff must make some move soon unless he meant to try and run the tablet through himself, but in any case the dénouement of our day-long vigil could not now be long delayed. We were prepared to swear that nothing the size of the tablet had been brought out of the cabin since I had left it, and we intended to
stick to O'Kieff like leeches once the move ashore began. I could hardly supress my impatience as I thought of the kick I'd get in watching the customs people undo that sacking-covered package in his trunk.

When one goes south to the sunshine, but does not actually cross the equator, one is apt to forget that everywhere in the northern hemisphere sundown comes early in the winter months although, of course, the sun does not set quite as early in the Mediterranean as in England. It was barely six o'clock when the ship was made fast against the wharf, but all the same I wondered vaguely if the ship's time and land time differed, as I noticed that dusk was already falling, and falling much faster than it does at home.

There was a rush of passengers with their hand-luggage to the gangway immediately it was thrust aboard, although they might have known that there would be the usual tiresome delays, quite apart from the matter of the murder, and that even normally it would be the best part of an hour before they would be allowed off.

Numerous officials came on board and, among them, a number of Egyptian police, varying in colour, with the exception of their Chief Officer who was a tall, thin, beaky-nosed Englishman, looking very smart and businesslike in his well-cut uniform and red tarboosh. Evidently the Captain had wirelessed for them to meet the ship as we saw the Chief Purser lead them straight from the gangway to his cabin.

A glorious, salmon-coloured sunset now suggested a huge bonfire somewhere behind the town, throwing the long façades of big buildings into sharp relief, while out to sea visibility was fading rapidly. While we stood there, for about a quarter of an hour perhaps, daylight disappeared and the lights about the harbour began to prick the growing gloom here and there, turning Alexandria into a fairy city.

We were watching the metamorphosis when the Chief Purser suddenly appeared with the request that Harry and Clarissa would join the Captain in his cabin.

Harry shot me a dubious glance.

‘Go ahead,' I nodded, and added significantly, ‘I'll keep an eye on
your
luggage.'

‘Thanks, Mr. Day,' the Purser said as he turned away. ‘I'd be glad if you'd remain here, as we shall be wanting you in a few minutes.'