The Quest of Julian Day (53 page)

‘How nice that would be for you if it were true. But you seem to have forgotten that I arrived here in a 'plane. If your friends had been anywhere in the neighbourhood we couldn't have failed to see them. What's more, you haven't shaved today, my young friend; and Miss Shane hardly presents her usual impeccable appearance. That car was overturned yesterday and you spent the night out in the desert. You're lost and you would have died of thirst here if I hadn't happened to find you.'

‘Then you'll take us back?' said Sylvia suddenly.

He shrugged his bony shoulders. ‘I'm afraid that may be a little difficult. As you have perhaps noticed we only have a four-seater 'plane and with our pilot all four seats are already occupied.'

I felt certain that the brute was only playing with her but I didn't dare to say anything just in case there was a chance that he might take her with them; although I was dead certain that he would never lift a finger to save me.

‘But a four-seater 'plane can easily take six in an emergency, Sylvia protested quickly. ‘You can't leave us here to die.'

‘I could,' he said quietly. ‘But I don't propose to do so. Now, I think, we will inspect the treasure. But first I would like to make quite certain that you are not carrying any arms.'

He signed to the man with the rifle. ‘Just run over them, Daoud. I've a feeling that neither of them really likes me and we don't want any accidents.'

Daoud leant his rifle against the plane and, drawing an
automatic, came round behind us; after patting us over he nodded to O'Kieff and we all moved off in the direction of the place where I had been digging.

O'Kieff was keenly interested in antiques and had some very beautiful old pieces in his house in Brussels. He began to examine our finds with quiet enthusiasm and there were so many facets to his strange personality that within a few moments he seemed to be a different man entirely. Exerting that erudite charm which had deceived so many people, he soon had Sylvia talking so freely on Egyptology and similar topics that it was quite clear she had forgotten for the moment that he was responsible for her father's death and her own abduction, and not just a very nice, well-educated, middle-aged gentleman.

After a little he turned to me, his grey eyes twinkling behind his pince-nez.

‘And now, perhaps, you would care to show me the rings and other trinkets which must have been on this poor fellow's mummy when you unearthed it?'

We had the valuable items down by the car and I knew that it was no use arguing. Unfortunately they were all together in one heap so we could not show him one thing and conceal the others while he would never have believed me if I had told him that the man in the sedan-chair had not had a single thing of value on him.

At the car O'Kieff examined the jewels and the golden Osiris we had found, with the greatest interest. He then handed them all to Daoud with the remark:

‘I think we had better put these in our 'plane for safe keeping.

Sylvia's sextant had been lying near the jewels and Zakri had picked it up.

‘We shall need this to register the exact latitude of this place before we leave,' he lisped passing it to Daoud. ‘I think you had better take it to the 'plane as well.'

As the gunman moved off carrying the spoils and Sylvia's sextant, I said hoarsely:

‘That's all right by me, if you're taking Miss Shane with you.'

O'Kieff shook his head. ‘I'm afraid that wasn't quite my idea. You see, you two young people have been very foolish.
If you had let well alone after I had secured the first half of the tablet and given me time to get the second half in some unobtrusive manner, I should have formed my own expedition and you would not find yourselves in your present awkward situation.

‘As it was, you forced my hand by taking Essex Pasha into your confidence so I had to act quickly and send Miss Shane on that little trip to Ismailia. Essex Pasha prevented my getting the second half of the tablet from the bank on the letter that Miss Shane so kindly wrote for me; but, even so, given another day or two and a few, perhaps rather unpleasant experiences at the hands of my Arabs, Miss Shane would probably have told us all we wanted to know herself; or if she could not have remembered the details of the tablet sufficiently well, we might have held her to ransom against it.

‘You elected to interfere again which placed the second half of the tablet once more out of my reach. There was only one thing that I could do—let you set off on the expedition yourselves since you were so determined to do so. Given a week or so out here, I thought it was probable you would even save me considerable trouble by locating the treasure and digging some of it up for me. All I had to do then was to come out here in an aeroplane and collect it.

‘I had a little more difficulty in finding you than I expected and this is our third day's flying, but now the whole affair has resolve itself most satisfactorily. You have led me to the spot where Cambyses' army foundered and provided me with a few interesting souvenirs to take back with me. I can now return at my leisure and dig over the whole of the valley for the great fortune which must lie in it. You will agree, I think, that your present position is entirely due to your own pig-headedness in having persistently thwarted me from the beginning. The only thing which remains to be done at the moment is to show you my gratitude for your various activities in saving you both from the peculiarly horrible death brought about through excessive thirst, by er—shooting you.'

‘Damn you!' I roared, trembling with fury. ‘You can keep your gratitude
and
your bullets. We're stuck here and we'll be dead inside a week but we'd rather stick it out and you can save your fireworks.'

Zakri chuckled, and piped up in his thin falsetto, ‘Your friends must be somewhere. Surely you don't think we would risk their finding you still alive here? Oh no, no! You know too much to live. You know many things that the Princess Oonas told you. She has informed us of that.'

O'Kieff nodded. ‘I see you've quite recovered from your experience in the tomb where she trapped you. When she told us about it I guessed the trick you had played on her and went down there afterwards to have a look at the figure you made to represent your ghost. That was a most ingenious idea and it gave me great amusement. The poor Princess and her man were scared out of their wits; and it may interest you to hear that in the belief that you were a Catholic she is now spending a considerable amount of money in having Masses said for the repose of your soul. Still, as it turns out, she had only been anticipating your demise by a little under three weeks, and the Masses may serve to save you a few thousand years in Purgatory.'

‘As I'm not a Catholic she's wasting her money,' I said grimly. ‘Why didn't you tell her I'd escaped?'

His wintry smile again flickered over his thin lips. ‘You seem to have forgotten that I have some reputation as a necromancer. I allowed her to suppose that I had temporarily laid your ghost and had removed your body from the tomb. You see, the Princess Oonas is in a position to be very useful to us but she is regrettably unreliable; witness the manner in which she endangered our plans owing to her sudden passion for yourself. Knowing my occult powers she will in future prove more amenable to discipline because she believes your spirit to be under my control and that I can raise it when I wish to terrify her into insanity.'

‘You ingenious swine!' I muttered. ‘But let's get back to the present. I haven't used anything that Oonas gave me against you.'

‘You might if you ever had the opportunity and, frankly you bore me. I no longer find that attraction in you which you possessed as a young diplomat.'

My hands clenched and unclenched spasmodically. I itched to fling myself at the sneering brute's throat but I knew that
the others would riddle me with bullets before I could kill him with my bare hands; and restraining myself I said thickly:

‘All right. Have it your own way about me, then. But you've got nothing against Miss Shane. For God's sake do one decent act in your life and take her out of this with you.'

‘And give her the chance later on to make a statement to the police that she was an eye-witness to our shooting you out here in the desert? No, thank you, my young friend. Both of you have reached the end of your tethers. Daoud! Get on with it. Shoot the woman first.'

With a quiet smile Zakri intervened. ‘You can settle him, Daoud. I'll attend to her.'

Anyone could guess that Zakri was pathologically abnormal and Oonas had told me that, in addition, he was an inveterate woman-hater. The note of sadistic joy in the little swine's voice conveyed the horrible, perverted pleasure he expected to derive from the murder of a clean, good-looking girl like Sylvia.

I had been within a fraction of hurling myself upon O'Kieff since, if they were going to shoot us anyhow, there was no point in standing there waiting to be butchered like sheep; but the oily little Egyptian's revolting murder-lust filled me with such loathing that at the last second I changed my mind and, swerving, went for him.

As his hand went to his pistol I shouted:

‘Run, Sylvia!' and leapt at him across the few intervening yards of sand.

My own last-moment change of plan saved me from Daoud's bullet but nearly brought about my death from another quarter. At the second I sprang a solitary rifle cracked somewhere nearby and the bullet from it tore through my jacket, while I was in mid-air, landing up with a smack in the over-turned car.

Zakri had drawn his gun but the report on the rifle upset his aim and he fired over my shoulder. With sudden, unholy glee I saw the stark fear in his black eyes just a second before my fist crashed into his face, pulping his nose and sending him flying backwards.

Anticipating a bullet in the back from Daoud or O'Kieff, the instant I regained my balance I swung about, but O'Kieff was no longer there. Razor-sharp wits must have saved his life on
many a previous occasion and on the instant the rifle cracked he must have realised that it would be death for him to linger in that exposed position, an easy mark for an unseen enemy. He was already racing across the sand towards the 'plane with the tails of his grey overcoat flapping out behind him.

Daoud could have killed me; he had the chance and as I swung about his pistol was actually pointed at me; but he was no longer looking in my direction. Having caught sight of O'Kieff's swift movement in his rear he had turned to look after him, and was hesitating whether he should stay to settle me or make a swift get-away too.

His hesitation was his undoing. Two, three, four rifles cracked. With a sharp cry Daoud spun about, lifted his arms and fell, the red blood gushing from his mouth on to the sand.

Half-a-score of rifles were in action now but I could not wait to see if O'Kieff was hit. Zakri was on his feet again, half-blinded by tears and with blood streaming from his broken nose, but he still held his pistol.

Before he had time to raise it I charged him again. Catching his slender wrist I twisted it with such violence that he screamed with pain; I felt the bones snap and the pistol dropped from his nerveless fingers. With my free hand I jabbed him violently under the heart and next moment we fell together.

The thought of mercy did not enter my head; he would have killed me without compunction that night I had slept with Ooonas in the marquee at Tel-el-Amarna; he would have killed Sylvia a bare fifteen seconds before if those blessed riflemen had not intervened. He was as evil as something that had escaped alive out of hell and he was one of the Seven who had caused Carruthers' suicide.

I got my thumbs into his little fat neck just below his double-chin and I rammed them home with all the strength of my muscular hands: I took no pleasure in the deed and I averted my face as his eyes started right out of their sockets; but I killed him just as I would have killed a venomous snake that had attacked me. Two minutes later one out of my seven enemies lay a huddled heap, dead at my feet upon the ground.

Our rescuers were still firing but as I looked towards the 'plane I saw that O'Kieff had reached it and his pilot had the
engine running. A bullet thudded into its tail just as it ran forward but a moment later it was in the air.

With shouts and cries the Arabs from our convoy now appeared in a straggling line on the top of the ridge of sand-dunes. They were blazing away at the 'plane as it rose but they must have been a pretty poor lot of marksmen to have let O'Kieff escape them when they had him as a clear target over a straight, hundred-yard run; and if any of them succeeded in hitting the 'plane the bullets did no serious damage as it was soon high in the sky and, wheeling westward, passed out of range.

Sylvia had had the good sense to fling herself flat when the firing started but when she saw her rescuers she had jumped to her feet and rushed in a limping run up the slope to meet Harry the moment he appeared over the crest.

My meeting with him was almost like that of Wellington and Blücher after Waterloo as, without a shade of self-consciousness we wrung each other's hands; except that we were breathless and laughing from our exertions and excitement. Clarissa came running down towards us a moment afterwards waving her pistol in such a dangerous fashion that it went off as she flung her arms round my neck; but apart from half-shattering my ear-drums, it fortunately did no damage, the bullet ploughing up the sand a dozen yards away. Meanwhile, Sylvia was kissing Harry as though he were her long-lost sweetheart.

When our excitement had eased a bit we learnt that it was really O'Kieff who had unwittingly been the means of saving us. Upon our failing to arrive at the rendezvous on the previous afternoon, Harry and Clarissa had come out to try to find us, got lost themselves on being overtaken by darkness and only succeeded in finding the camp again by a miracle of luck at one o'clock in the morning. Nevertheless, long before dawn Harry had mobilised all five remaining vehicles in the convoy, unloaded their stores so that they could travel lighter, and set off the second there was enough light to see by, taking the centre of a line himself and placing two lorries on each of his wings at half-mile intervals so that by advancing in the same direction simultaneously the five vehicles could sweep a belt of territory about three miles wide.