The Lighthearted Quest (12 page)

“That? Oh Jane Digby; Lady Ellenborough, you know. Positively
heading,
you see my dear child, for the wilder shores of love. Don't they look wild?”

Julia, entranced by this, rapidly decided that no time need be wasted in “salting” Lady Tracy; she would cultivate her for all she was worth, for her own pleasure in such a rare being, but in the meantime she sought her advice immediately.

“Lady Tracy, Geoffrey sent me to you not only
pour me procurer un plaisir
—which he has done,” she added smiling—“but because he thought you might conceivably be able to help me. May I pour out to you?”

“Oh, yes, dear child, pour away—I am an absolute reservoir of outpourings, though I can't imagine why.”

“I can,” said Julia; “I can already. Well, this is it”—and she
unfolded her mission. At the end—“How
does
one set about finding a person on a yacht in Tangier?” she asked.

“Oh, in various ways. What are they doing? Smuggling? So many try to do that. Are you sure they are really smuggling?”

“No,” said Julia, “I‘m not sure of anything—it's all utterly vague. Smuggling is just a general suspicion which several people, like you, have thrown out. But I went up to the Consulate-General yesterday, and they certainly haven't been imprisoned; at least they didn't seem to know my cousin's name there.”

“Well, that's something. You don't think your cousin and his friends are just young
rentiers
living out here on yachts to avoid paying English income-tax? There is so much of that in
le grand bidet,”
said Lady Tracy, calmly.

“Le grand bidet!
What on earth is that?” Julia asked, still more entranced by this phrase.

“Oh, yes, that's what they call this end of the Mediterranean; its shape on the map, if you come to think of it, is rather like a biddy.”

Julia laughed.

“What a pleasing name! Well anyhow, I don't think Colin can be tax-dodging; he's anything but a
rentier,
in fact I shouldn't think his income has ever been large enough to pay tax on at all. Don't people get up to two hundred and fifty pounds free?”

“I daresay, my dear—we don't have to bother much about that out here, thank goodness. Colin!” said Lady Tracy abruptly. “Colin what?”

“Colin Monro. His father was a cousin of my mother's, and I call
his
mother Aunt Ellen, and think of her as an aunt. They have a most heavenly place in Argyll—I really do love it,” said Julia, in an unwonted burst of confidence. “And he's needed there now because the old uncle who used to cope—another cousin of my mother's—has gone and died.”

“Ah yes—we all die in time,” said Lady Tracy tranquilly.
“My turn is really overdue.” She turned to the table beside her chair and rang a small brass handbell which stood on it, saying—“I think we might have a glass of sherry to assist us in studying this problem.”

A young and very beautiful Moorish girl, swathed in veils, answered the bell; she slid in through one of the archways, stepped noiselessly across the floor and stood behind Lady Tracy's chair; there she bent over her mistress, stroking her shoulder with the gesture of a loving child, and bending down asked her in Arabic what she wanted? Julia could not understand the words, but the sense of them was clear—even more clear was the complete devotion of the handmaiden to her mistress; there was a sort of Biblical beauty about the whole thing, small and unimportant as it was, such as Julia had never seen in the modern world. She was still under the spell of this when the sherry was brought, poured out, and handed to her by that beautiful creature, who looked as she imagined Ruth or Jephthah's daughter to look, or some other gentle Old Testament heroine.

“Colin Monro,” Lady Tracy mused, sipping her sherry. “No, I don't remember the name. I will think, and perhaps ask. I don't always ask, one sometimes hears more without.”

“You don't know the owners of the
Frivolity?”
Julia asked. “I got a faint idea that he might be on her, but it's only a guess. She's in and out of here, I know.”

“Oh, I believe they are all much older, and mostly very rich; hardly your cousin's galère, I should have thought. But I have never met them, and I can't recall their names. One is a peer, I think. My dear child, what a task this is for you!”

“Yes it is—and I really have got to succeed. But any sort of detection is rather fun, don't you think?”

“Oh, yes—the greatest possible fun. It will be so kind if you will let me detect with you, as far as I can from this chair.”

“Oh,
please
do,” said Julia, with fervour. “Dredge up the
sediment from your reservoir—I‘m sure you will come on some dead cat that will furnish a clue.”

Lady Tracy laughed; really a high, old, but infectious chuckle. Then she became practical all of a sudden.

“How are you going to live? This may take some time, and a hundred pounds goes nowhere in this place.”

Julia mentioned her invaluable papers.

“Oh, that is splendid. How clever you must be! I take
Ebb and Flow
—it's somewhere on that chair, I think.” Julia found it for her, on the seat of a splendid Chippendale armchair, of which one broken leg was propped up by a beautiful little Moroccan coffer of crimson velvet, studded with silver nails. “Ah yes—thank you. A good paper. But can they
remit
to you here?” the old lady asked astutely.

No, it was only the extra allowance, Julia admitted.

“Well, that is better than nothing, of course; much better. But I was thinking—let us get Feridah to give us some more sherry,” Lady Tracy said, tinkling the brass handbell; once again the beautiful girl glided in, stroked her aged mistress, and re-filled their glasses. Julia felt as if she were in some quite fresh version of the Arabian Nights, sitting in this Anglo-Moorish house—was it old or a modern imitation, she wondered?—perched above the ocean's rim somewhere between the Pillars of Hercules and the Garden of the Hesperides, with this marvellous old lady.

“Do you have only Moroccan servants?” she was moved to ask.

“Yes. They suit me better. ‘Abdeslem who let you in is my steward, and butler, and general factotum, a wonderful person; and then little Feridah is what in the old days in England used to be called one's body-servant—which she is: she dresses me and all that. And I have a notable cook called Fatima—you must come and taste her food sometime. And there are all sorts of hangers-on who pretend to weed the garden and feed the chickens, and of course chiefly take a percentage of my
peas and eggs.” She gave her chuckle. “It is all much more peaceful and happy though than what most of one's friends go through. But let us get back to you, my dear child.”

“Oh, well, if we must,” said Julia. “I think your household is much more amusing than me.”

Lady Tracy patted Julia's hand.

“We must be practical,” she said. “I was thinking that if you took some job here, you would be making money to live on, in the first place. Would you take a job?”

“Oh Lord, yes, if I could get one. What had you in mind?”,

“Can you type?” Lady Tracy asked.

“Yes rather—I have my typewriter with me.”

“Shorthand?”

“No,” said Julia without distaste—“not shorthand.”

“Ah well—I daresay that wouldn't matter. You could memorise the gist of letters, and take notes and so on—and if you are a writer, I feel sure you could make up very good letters yourself.”

“Do
you
want a secretary?” Julia asked, hopefully.

“Oh, no, dear child; I have only a very small correspondence—nearly all my friends are dead. But tell me—what languages do you speak and write?”

“Really well, French and Spanish—Italian only moderate.”

“Excellent. Let me hear you speak a little French and Spanish.”

Julia, rather embarrassed, nevertheless pulled herself together and first asked her hostess in Spanish about the age of her house, and then in French what brought her originally to Tangier? Lady Tracy laughed, clapped her hands, and without answering either question said in English—

“That will do, perfectly. How unusual in an English girl to speak such good Spanish—and it is so essential here. Now listen, my dear Miss Probyn. I can see that you are tolerant of old people, and for the post I have in mind that is important. I have an old friend, very able but very crochety and very
vague; she works extremely hard and has a large correspondence, mostly in French, and she is badly in need of a secretary. I may as well tell you at once that none of them stay with her very long,” said Lady Tracy, with a fine little smile; “but you have no thought of staying for ever, and a person of your upbringing is more likely to be patient and gentle than those little girls who do do shorthand, but seem to have so few other interests.”

“Perhaps—yes, probably,” said Julia. “What does your difficult friend work
at,
Lady Tracy?”

“Well, my dear, I believe it is archaeology,” said Lady Tracy, looking rather amused.

“Goodness, can it be Madame La Besse?”

“Yes. Do you know her, then?”

“No, but Geoffrey told me about her; in fact he gave me a letter to her, too.”

“Ah yes—I remember that he was very much interested in all that; he spent a lot of time with poor Clémentine out at her excavations. Well, so much the better; she was very fond of him, so you will have a golden entrée—though no entrée, golden or not, generally lasts very long with her, poor thing,” said Lady Tracy philosophically. “Well, I will write to her too, and recommend you. Are you interested in archaeology?”

“No, not a bit,” said Julia frankly—“but that won't prevent me from typing her letters to learned societies in perfectly good French, unless it's
too
technical; and even then I can make her spell out words like mesolithic.”

Lady Tracy laughed again.

“My dear child, I see that you will be
perfect
for this. Now I will write her a note, and you shall take it to her with her beloved M. Consett's letter tomorrow. I am sure she will engage you, and I shall tell her that she must pay you a
large
fee. Then you can live more or less free; and what is more important, you will have a cover, as I think they call it, for your presence here.”

“Do I need cover?” Julia asked, rather startled both by the idea and the word itself, in the mouth of Lady Tracy of all people. “Can't I just be here, like any other tourist?”

“I think cover is
always
a good thing,” said the surprising old lady. “But it is especially useful when one is making enquiries. You have been making them already—at the Legation, from the harbour-master—for a missing young man in a mystery yacht, whose name you don't even know. Don't you suppose that all the relevant circles in this tiny place will already be discussing this fascinating fact?”

“No, it would never have occurred to me,” said Julia.

“Oh, well, you may be sure they are. And a beautiful young lady is conducting the search!—
immensely
sensational,” said Lady Tracy, what practically amounted to a grin appearing on her wise old face; this made Julia laugh.

“What are the ‘relevant circles' as you call them?” the girl asked.

“Oh, Interpol, if they are smuggling—and the Zone Police and all sorts of other interests,” said Lady Tracy airily. Then ‘Abdeslem came in, bowing, with some enquiry; Lady Tracy told him to wait while she wrote a note to Mme La Besse, and Julia took it and went away, considerably cheered.

It will be noticed that she had not been
quite
frank with her new acquaintance; she had said nothing about the curious business of the Bank of England. It seemed to the girl more prudent not to do this, to begin with at any rate, especially as Lady Tracy was a friend of Geoffrey's; she remembered Paddy Lynch's comment on Geoffrey's youth in that connection. So she left that part out. She rejoined her taxi, poised at the crumbling edge of the cliff, and went skimming back to her hotel, wondering what Interpol was, and what “interests” could possibly feel concern in her affairs. She could have no idea what that particular piece of loyalty to Mr. Consett was going to cost.

Julia did not take Lady Tracy's and Geoffrey Consett's letters to Mme La Besse next day, as she had intended. In the morning, writing an account of her trip to Mrs. Hathaway, a glance at the date showed her that it was Friday, and she decided to take Geoffrey's advice and go up to see the Mendoub pay his weekly visit to the mosque. On the advice of the
patron
of the villa she did not attempt to find her way up through the Kasbah; the mosque stands at the very top of the old citadel, and it is a toilsome ascent to it on foot up steep cobbled alleys and flights of steps—moreover, said the Señor Huerta, she would certainly lose her way. So she took a taxi, which after climbing through the high-lying modern quarter to the south passed through the citadel wall and twiddled its way by narrow streets to decant her at the upper end of an irregularly-shaped
place,
sloping slightly downhill; near the lower end of this was the mosque. But, said the taxi-man, who had conducted a brisk conversation with Julia in Spanish the whole way, let the Señorita first go to the
miradoro
close by, and look out over the ocean—the Mendoub was always late, and she was early.

Julia took his advice and went out onto a small terrace, whose parapet wall overhung the cliff itself; below her the sea, blue as heaven under the hot sun, murmured gently about the yellow cliff-foot. The coast of Spain was a deeper blue, as willow-gentian is deeper than forget-me-nots—but what interested Julia more than the soft shapes of Gibraltar and Trafalgar was that she succeeded in descrying, away to her left and also perched on the cliff's edge, a pink-washed house which was certainly Lady Tracy's—her house was a
miradoro
in itself.