The Quest of Julian Day (37 page)

The fact was, that although to all outward seeming she appeared a sophisticated and cultured girl who would be received anywhere in the Western world, underneath she was in some respects as simple as a child, and her emotions consisted entirely of the barbaric loves and hates suited to a woman of the dark ages.

If I was right, she would prove an invaluable ally and could give me information of the first importance which really might enable me to get O'Kieff and the rest just where I wanted them. In any case it seemed that if I took her at her word she could hardly refuse me a certain amount of data upon which I could check up afterwards; so her apparent passion for me opened up a prospect of carrying on my vendetta which I would have been positively mad to have thrown away.

I took her little, heart-shaped face between my hands and looked straight into those marvellous eyes. ‘Oonas,' I said, ‘are you prepared to prove your loyalty to me by telling me all you know about O'Kieff's and Zakri's organisation?'

‘Yes,' she said. ‘Tomorrow morning I will answer truthfully any questions you like to put to me.
Now
, can we put out that horrid light?'

The following morning things did not pan out quite like that because, having left me when the first, faint light began to creep through the curtains, she did not emerge from her own room until lunch-time.

I had spent a lazy morning myself, getting up late and exerting myself no more than to go out and buy a few things I needed temporarily until I could retrieve the rest of my kit from Oonas, who had brought it on to Luxor with her.

Having learned of my arrival the night before Amin was
waiting patiently to see me on the steps of the hotel. To tell the truth Oonas had occupied my mind so fully that I had forgotten all about him and, having no explanation of my unexpectedly early appearance in Luxor ready to my tongue, I simply told him that I had changed my plans. As Mustapha was still detained in hospital at Ismailia by his shattered arm I assured Amin that I should not need his services for the next four days and that he had better continue with his work in preparation for the expedition; but I took him with me to assist me in my shopping.

We did not have to go far as two rows of shops flank the entrance of the great hotel and really form part of it as they are situated under the wings of its front terrace. They are mainly antique-dealers, bookshops which deal in a great variety of photographs and postcards, and travel-agencies; and except for this single terrace there is no other European shopping centre in the town. There was no sweet-shop among them and all I could procure were some bottled sweets from the English chemist. As the sight of Oonas, on her way to the Nile steamer five days before, had prevented my ordering a big supply from Groppi's, I was considerably irritated by this but if I could have seen ahead a little I would have realised that this was a trifle compared with the irritations I should have to face in the next few days.

The first hint of them came when, having just started my lunch, I saw Oonas sweep into the dining-room like the Princess she was, and the head waiter bowing deferentially before leading her to a table. She smilingly ignored his gesture towards one in the window and walked straight over to mine instead.

The fact that we had shared a table on the Nile steamer, not to mention our activities of the preceding night, perfectly justified her in doing so without any invitation, but, as I waved the waiter aside and placed a chair for her myself with a smiling greeting, a little devil somewhere at the back of my mind suggested to me that perhaps I hadn't been quite such a clever boy as I thought.

It was clear that I had definitely saddled myself with this beautiful little wanton for as long as the two of us remained in Luxor. How would the Belvilles view that when they turned up? I could hardly hope to persuade them that Oonas had
become a reformed character overnight and was now completely trustworthy when, in the cold light of morning, I did not really believe it myself. Again, it now occurred to me that, although I might succeed in getting a certain amount out of her about Zakri and Co., it would be only what she chose to tell me whereas, having constituted me her cavalier, she would have much more opportunity of finding out things about our own activities, whether I wanted her to or not. I wondered, too, what Sylvia would make of her and had an uncomfortable feeling that neither of them would like each other one little bit. Doubtless I should have thought of all this before but I fear that Oonas' blandishments on the previous night had played a big part in obscuring my judgment and this was my first awakening to the very tricky situation in which I had landed myself.

All unaware of my miserable forebodings of trouble to come, Oonas chatted away with the utmost gaiety all through lunch while I managed to mask my inward thoughts and play up to her very prettily.

It soon emerged that whatever else about her might be phony her interest in Egyptology certainly was not. She was genuinely disappointed that our having left the ship prematurely had deprived us of visits to Abydos, one of the most ancient shrines in Egypt and the centre of the Osiris cult; and Dendra where the great temple, although dating only from the decadent Ptolemaic period, is the best-preserved in Egypt; and she was determined to make up for lost time now she was in Luxor. Without consulting me in the matter she had already ordered a car to take us out to Karnak that afternoon.

‘That's grand,' I said. ‘But, you know, I want to have a serious talk to you and the earlier the better.'

‘Of course, darling,' she agreed as though butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. ‘But we can talk just as well while we're walking round the temple.' So, for the moment, I left it at that.

It is from Luxor that one views the remains of hundred-gated Thebes which was, perhaps, the greatest city in the whole of the ancient world. It is not as old as Memphis but first became of importance when the Pharaohs of the Middle Kingdom selected it as their capital about 2100 B.C. After the fall of the
XIIth Dynasty it suffered a temporary eclipse of a few hundred years, during the rule of the Shepherd Kings, but it rose again to an almost unbelievable magnificence under the New Empire when the Pharaohs of the XVIIIth Dynasty held sway there as the sovereign lords of all the lands and cities from the frontiers of Abyssinia to the Persian Gulf. Unlike Memphis, which has been entirely obliterated, Thebes still has innumerable temples standing which testify to the greatness of its builders.

On the east bank of the river, where the temples of Karnak and Luxor still stand, flourished the city of the living which was larger than the Paris, Berlin or Rome of our day; while on the west bank there was another city—that of the dead—which provides even greater interest. It is here, in this vast necropolis, many square miles in extent, that besides many other temples, there lie the famous Valley of the Tombs of the Kings, the Valley of the Queens and the Valley of the Nobles.

Karnak is about twenty minutes' drive from Luxor and it is there that the greatest temple of all times was erected to the gods. Its area is so great that St. Peter's in Rome and the whole of the Vatican could be set down inside it without anywhere touching the boundary walls. The remains consist of innumerable pillars, colossi, pylons, obelisks, courtyards and shrines, since it is not one but many temples built or reconstructed by many Pharaohs from the XIth Dynasty right up to the era of the Ptolemies; so that building was going on there over a longer period than from the time Christ lived on earth to the present day.

The great temple which rises in its centre is that of Amen-Ra; one-hundred-and-fifty-six huge columns tower above one in its main hall like a forest of stone and on the ground occupied by the base of each twelve men could form a group without being unduly overcrowded. In the old days every inch of surface was brightly painted so that the whole place was a blaze of colour; great flags fluttered a hundred feet high above its pylons; its mighty gateways were of bronze and copper, the sacred images of solid gold encrusted with precious gems. Now all that splendour has departed but the temple still remains immensely impressive and awe-inspiring.

It takes several days to view Karnak thoroughly but both of us had been there before so after spending an hour in revisiting
a few of our favourite spots we sat down to talk on a great stone scarab beside the sacred lake.

Oonas proved much more forthcoming than I had anticipated. She knew little about O'Kieff and nothing at all of his six great confederates, with the exception of Zakri. But of him she was able to tell me a great deal. She gave me chapter and verse about his dope-trafficking activities, the addresses of various depots where the stuff was stored, and the channels by which it was smuggled into Egypt from Japan, which is now the centre of its manufacture; more than enough, in fact, for me to realise with a glow of satisfaction that I as good as had him in the bag. But my self-congratulation was a little premature, as she suddenly said:

‘What hard luck it is for you, darling, that you're no longer in a position to make use of all this.'

‘What!' I exclaimed. ‘Why on earth not?'

She stared at me in surprise. ‘But, Julian, they know by now that I have thrown them over and become your mistress. If you were to pass anything that I've told you on to the police and they acted on it Zakri would guess at once that it was I who had betrayed him and they would kill me.'

This was a snag that I had not foreseen and her reasoning was certainly plausible enough.

‘We could get you police protection,' I murmured after a moment.

She shrugged contemptuously. ‘The only protection I should get from the police would be about ten years in jail. Surely you see that I am so deeply involved in all this that if you went to the police the first thing they would do would be to arrest me. No, Julian. You can do nothing on what I've told you unless you want to see me dead or imprisoned.'

With bitter disappointment I admitted to myself that she was right. Even by turning King's Evidence she could only hope for a mitigation of her sentence and anxious as I was to prevent her continuing her career of crime, it was unthinkable that any act of mine should place her life or freedom in jeopardy. Yet I had a worrying idea at the back of my mind that she had deliberately tricked me and would never have told me a single thing if she had not realised from the beginning that she could afterwards head me off from using any information she gave
me. I may have been doing her an injustice but I had a shrewd suspicion that while she had developed a genuine passion for me she still wanted to remain in with her unscrupulous friends, so she had thought up this clever little plot by which she could eat her cake and keep it too.

‘What d'you suggest I should do, then?' I asked rather gloomily.

‘Why, it is simple, isn't it?' she smiled. ‘Since Zakri is your enemy, we must arrange to have him murdered.'

I swallowed hard and looked down at the ground. There was something really terrifying in the way in which this beautiful little creature with the smiling face under the big, floppy hat spoke so calmly of having people done to death. I knew it was illogical to jib at the proposal as I had made up my mind long ago that if any one of the Big Seven gave me an opportunity to kill him and get away with it, I would shoot him out of hand; yet that was somehow different from plotting the assassination of one of them with the assistance of a young woman barely out of her teens while we sat there smoking in the sunshine.

‘I'll have to think about it,' I said, standing up rather hurriedly. ‘Let's go and have a look at that little temple on the other side of the main building; the one where there's that marvellous statue of the Cat-Goddess Sekhmet.'

I thought there was just a touch of cynicism in Oonas' smile as she agreed and she made no further reference to her proposal for Zakri's murder either then or that evening when we were back at the hotel.

That night at dinner she positively surpassed herself as a delightful and entertaining companion. The fascination she exerted had certainly got me again and my worries of the afternoon receded right into the background. I do not seek to excuse my weakness where she was concerned but in some justification of my curious mental state it can at least be urged that those blue eyes of hers certainly possessed a hypnotic quality. I drank in her beauty like a drug and I simply could not keep my own eyes from her face even when she was not looking at me because, even in profile, her features and the very set of her head were utterly ravishing. Perhaps, too, a great part of her power lay in the extraordinary rare combination of qualities which she possesses; she had the subtlety, the humour and the
knowledge of a woman of the world clothed in a physical body which, having only just reached maturity, had all the freshness, the satin skin and the very essence of glorious youth.

I knew Harry, Clarissa and Sylvia would be leaving Cairo that night and their arrival in Luxor would mean endless complications but I refused to think of that for the time being. I was in such a state that I hardly cared what they thought or said, and I abandoned myself without reservation to another night with Oonas which was even more hectic than the last.

It was that temporary, mad absorption in her to the exclusion of all else which made me forget that the Cairo express got into Luxor at 7 o'clock in the morning. Fond as I was of Harry and Clarissa I would not have got up to meet them at such an early hour in any case, but a little forethought might have told me that as we had all booked our rooms together the hall porter was almost certain to inform them that I had already arrived.

As the Nile boat was not due in until that evening they would naturally be most anxious to hear what fresh turn in the situation had caused me to change my plans and come hurrying on to Luxor before them.

With a casualness that was typical of her, Oonas had neglected to lock the bedroom door when she had joined me shortly after I had turned in, and we were lying side by side in blissful early-morning drowsiness when there was a sudden, sharp knock on the door, a rattle of the handle, and it flew open. Harry stood there framed in it, his good-natured, fishlike face wreathed in smiles, as he exclaimed: