The Wrath of Fu Manchu and Other Stories (23 page)

But, on the stroke of ten-thirty, he rapped on Mrs Parradine’s door.

There was no reply.

He rapped again, louder, then rapped a third time.

Silence…

Man is a complex animal. Cartaret’s hesitancy, doubts, fears, all were swept away now on a wave of angry disappointment. He had built up a mystery, the solution of which lay behind the door of No. 36 B. And the door of 36 B remained closed.

He looked at his watch again. Perhaps it was fast. There was no one about, and so he walked up and down the corridor, half expecting Mrs Parradine to appear from somewhere.

But she didn’t.

Cartaret opened the door of his own room and went in, snapping the light up.

Shutters before the french-windows were closed, but Cartaret went across and irritably threw them open. He stood there, one foot on the balcony, looking down at the moon-bathed gardens. The trunk of a tall palm near the window split the picture like an ink stain on a water-colour. A frog was croaking in a pond below. From some place not far away came faint strains of reed pipe.

What should he do? Mrs Parradine’s sense of humour must be peculiar if this was her idea of a practical joke. But there was that curious incident of the fat Egyptian.

He remembered something, for he knew Shepheard’s well. These rooms formed part of a large suite. His balcony continued right past the window of No. 36.

Stubbing out a cigarette which he had lighted, Cartaret stepped onto the balcony and glanced to the left.

Light streamed from the window of No. 36. Mrs Parradine’s shutters were open. He walked quietly along and looked into the room. It was in wild disorder—and a woman lay gagged and tied to the bed!

* * *

The shock was so great that Cartaret stood stock still for perhaps ten seconds, one hand on the partly opened windows. His ideas were thrown into chaotic confusion, not only by this scene of brutal violence but also by something else.

The woman on the bed was not Mrs Parradine!

This woman had raven black hair. The eyes glaring across at him were amber eyes flecked with green. As Cartaret ran to release her, he nearly stepped on tinted sun-glasses which lay on the floor.

Like a sudden revelation, the truth burst upon his mind.

Mrs Parradine had been a disguised Sirena, for this was Sirena!

He unfastened a silk scarf tied tightly over her mouth.

“I had one hand nearly free,” she whispered, hoarsely. “Scissors—on the dresser.”

Cartaret ran across, found the scissors and ran back. As he began to cut the cord with which she was trussed up, Sirena wrenched her right hand clear of the fastenings.

“Look! In another minute I should have been loose! Cut the cord from my ankles. It is hurting me.”

When at last she sat up, stiffly, Sirena pointed.

“Fasten the shutters. The door is locked.”

She dropped back weakly on the pillows, watching Cartaret as he bolted the shutters.

He turned to her.

“As the door is locked, how—”

“They climbed to the balcony.” Sirena spoke wearily. “They went that way, too. Where are you going?”

She sat up.

“To call the manager.”

Sirena smiled.

“Please sit down. I know you don’t understand, and so just listen. Please.”

“Let me get you some brandy.”

“Not yet. I am all right. You can help me. You must help me. But you can only do it in my way. I escaped this evening from Aswami’s villa.”

“Escaped?”

“Yes, escaped!” Her eyes flashed. “It had been planned a long time. I had the grey wig made and hid it. I came to Shepheard’s because I thought they would never look here. I hoped my friends would come for me. But I had word tonight that I must find some way of joining them.”

“Was that the message you received in the lounge?”

Sirena nodded.

“I had seen your name in the book, I remembered you, and I thought I might need someone to help me. I managed to get a room near yours. You see, I dare not give myself away down there. That’s why I asked you to come here.”

Cartaret watched her. Six years had dealt lightly with Sirena. She was still beautiful, but had suffered. She told her strange story with the simplicity of a child.

“You really mean you have been a prisoner?”

“Yes. Ever since a terrible thing happened. But I knew I could trust you, for you were Rod’s friend—”

“Rod? Do you mean Rod Fennick?”

“Yes.”

“Then he was the man—”

“Yes. Rod was the man. Who told you?”

Rod Fennick had been a squadron-leader in the Royal Air Force. He wasn’t a regular officer. He had joined up early and made great headway. Cartaret rather thought that in civil life he had been a sort of charming parasite; one of those ornamental but useless young men who used to haunt the Ritz bars in London and in Paris and who sometimes turned up at Cannes. But he was good company, and a brilliant and fearless fighter pilot. If Rod was a black sheep, it was plain that he had been thrown out of a sound flock…

“Abdûl told me,” Cartaret said. “He mentioned no name, but I thought it might be Rod. Is it all true—all he told me?”

Sirena gave Cartaret an almost scornful glance. Unfastening the top of her dinner frock, she turned her back to him and let it drop to her waist.

“Look.”

Cartaret looked. Sirena’s shoulders and the creamy skin as far down as it was visible were wealed with lash marks, old and new!

“Good God! The dirty blackguard!”

Composedly, Sirena re-fastened her dress and turned to him.

“Didn’t Abdûl tell you?”

Cartaret nodded grimly.

“Yes, Abdûl told me.”

“And about Rod?”

“Yes. Is that—true?”

Again, the tigress eyes flashed, dangerously.

“It is true. You remember—” she swallowed—“how handsome he was? Now—” She paused for control. “He has been to a famous French specialist—and there is hope. But it will take a long time, and cost a lot of money.”

“It’s almost incredible! Surely, the authorities—”

Sirena’s smile was openly scornful now.

“I told you you didn’t understand. Everything here is different.”

Almost an echo of old Abdûl’s words!

“What happened tonight?”

“You saw Selim come in?”

“Selim? The fat Egyptian? Yes. Who is he?”

Sirena’s full lips curled contemptuously.

“He is in charge of some of Aswami’s treasures! I was afraid, although I didn’t think he had recognised me. I was wrong. As I came out of the bathroom, a man who had climbed from the garden to the balcony and hidden in here, sprang on me from behind. They think I am safe until all the lights are out. Then, they are coming back for me!”

Cartaret was thinking that this fantastic affair belonged to the days of the Caliphs, not to the prosaic twentieth century. But all he said was:

“They’ll have a surprise.”

Sirena impulsively, threw her arms about him.

“You must get me away! You have a car. It was this I wanted you to do. But now—it is even more urgent I
must
be out of here before midnight…”

* * *

As Cartaret drove his Buick from the garage he was wondering to which particular variety of fool he belonged. The role of knight errant he had never fancied. In this particular case, the captive princess was far from a paragon of injured innocence, and her Prince Charming ranked pretty low.

But the atrocious behaviour of Aswami Pasha had fired his blood. Rod Fennick might be no model of an English gentleman, but he was, or had been, a gallant officer, and there are more civilised methods of dealing with fickle girl friends and their admirers than those once practised by the sultans of Turkey…

“Mrs Parradine”, grey haired, bespectacled, and trapped in a mink coat, joined Cartaret as arranged at the corner of Sharia El-Maghrabi, below the Continental. With one swift backward glance, she jumped in beside him. The night air was chilly.

She carried no baggage other than her large satchel purse. She nestled up to Cartaret.

“I don’t think I was followed. But drive quickly. I will tell you the way to go.”

Cairo’s streets were curiously deserted, except in one district through which their route lay, where discordant music and harsh female voices disturbed the night. They left the city by an unfamiliar gate and drove right out on to the fringe of the desert. Cartaret tried to imagine where they could be going.

He slowed down and glanced aside at his passenger.

She had discarded the grey wig and was combing her hair. Its blue-black waves gleamed in the moonlight.

“Which way?”

“Follow this road.”

“Road? It’s hardly even a track!”

“It is an old caravan road. But you will have to drive slowly.”

In this, at least, Cartaret agreed with her. The path was more like a dry ditch than anything else, beaten out by generations of camels stepping in one another’s foot-prints.

Cartaret had groped his way along several miles of this when Sirena directed him to turn east. He could see nothing vaguely resembling a surface, but all the same, as he obeyed, he found himself driving on a sandy but practicable road again.

He recalled, at this moment, that such a road had been made in those dark days when Rommel’s Afrika Korps lay like hungry jackals watching the flesh-pots of Egypt. It led to an emergency landing strip long since abandoned.

Evidently, this was it.

* * *

Cartaret saw a few tumble-down buildings, desolate under the moon. Sirena had the key of one, at some time used as an office. She opened the door and they went in. Some papers were littered on a desk before which was placed an old cane-bottomed chair. An almanac and a map were pinned to the wall.

The night was diamond clear. Sirena had left the door open, and silver light poured right in, touching a dilapidated divan upon which she had thrown her mink coat and the leather satchel purse.

She sat there with the moon mirrored in her amber eyes and smiled at Cartaret.

“Safe at last,” she said, “free! We have some time to wait.”

Sirena opened a little cigarette case and offered him a cigarette.

He crossed, lighted one for her. She looked into his eyes all the time. Then he lighted his own. He went back and sat down in the broken cane chair.

There was a silent interval until:

“I’m sorry you won’t make love to me,” Sirena said softly. “It would make it so much easier.”

“Make what easier?”

“To tell you the truth.”

“Then all you told me was a lie?”

Sirena shook her head.

“Not all of it. You know I didn’t lie about how I was treated. You have seen. And it’s true what Abdul told you about Rod, and what I told you, too. I slipped away from Aswami’s house while he was taking a siesta, and when Selim came into Shepheard’s tonight I knew he was looking for me.”

“Then I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean that Selim didn’t recognise me. But I knew, when I saw him, that I must get away at once.”

“If he didn’t recognize you—” Cartaret began.

“Then who tied me up, you mean? Well, that’s what I think it only right to tell you. I tied myself—with some cord I got from the porters’ office! You were so quick that you didn’t notice my right hand was really free already.”

Cartaret watched her in a new way. Either he had formed an entirely wrong impression of Sirena’s character before, or she had changed. There was something ingenuous about this confession. She wanted to play fair. And there was an undercurrent of sadness.

“Whatever did you do it for?”

“I wanted to make you excited! I thought (because, you see, I know the Service mind) that if I didn’t, you would try to call up consuls, and police—and that would have spoiled everything. I had seen Selim looking for me. I knew he would have been to the police already—”

“Aswami has no legal claim. He can’t detain you.”

Sirena sighed like a tired child.

“Truly, you don’t understand. Please, believe it was the best way-—and forgive me.”

“I don’t believe it was the best way, but say no more about it. What would have happened, if I hadn’t walked along to your window?”

“I should have half untied myself and called out to you. You see—” a new expression came into the amber eyes—“you are still thinking about me as I used to be, before I knew Rod. I love him. I have never loved anyone else, and I never shall—even if…he stays as he is.”

Sirena dropped her cigarette on the floor and crushed it out under her foot.

“Suppose I hadn’t been staying at Shepheard’s? What should you have done?”

Sirena shook her head.

“I don’t know. Thank God you were. I wouldn’t have dared to hire a car. Selim will have called up every garage.”

“I always thought Rod had gone back home long ago.”

“No.” Sirena shook her head sadly. “Rod and a partner bought an old transport plane. They carry goods, and sometimes passengers, between Egypt and Persia.”

Cartaret checked a question just before it could be spoken. He was listening intently, listening to the drone of an approaching engine.

Sirena stood up and threw the mink coat over her shoulders; she picked up her satchel purse.

“I must go,” she said. “Do one more thing for me. Stay here until we have left. Just close the door. No one ever comes to this place.”

Cartaret nodded.

“As you say.”

Sirena moved close to him. She slipped her arm around his neck. “I am glad, now, you didn’t try to make love to me. For what you have done I thank you with all my heart.”

She kissed him. It was a kiss of pure affection…

When she went out and closed the door, Cartaret found that through a cracked window he had a partial view of the landing ground. He saw a plane touch down and a mechanic scramble out. Sirena was helped on board and the plane was away again in record time.

Cartaret stood there for several minutes, thinking it all over. The shouted instructions of the pilot had been clearly audible—and the voice was the voice of Rod Fennick.

* * *

He was awakened, early the following morning, by a disturbance in the next room. Then, followed a banging on his door.