Julie sat on the small white chintz sofa in the sitting room of her cluttered hotel suite. She was glad that Alex was holding her hand. Samir stood quietly beside the only empty chair. Two British officials sat opposite. Miles Winthrop, standing near the door, hands clasped behind his back, looked miserable. The elder of the two officials, a man named Peterson, held a telegram in his hand.
"But you see, Miss Stratford," he said with a condescending smile, "with a death in London and now a death here in Cairo ..."
"How do you know they are connected?" Samir asked. "This man in London. You say he was a maker of illegal loans!"
"Ah, Tommy Sharples, yes, that was his profession."
"Well, what would Mr. Ramsey have to do with him?" Julie asked. How remarkable that I sound so calm, she thought, when I am going mad inside.
"Miss Stratford, the Cleopatra coin found in the dead man's pocket connects these murders. Surely it came from your collection. It is identical with the five coins cataloged."
"But it is not one of the five coins. You've told me that."
"Yes, but you see, we found several others, here at Shepheard's."
"I don't follow you."
"In Mr. Ramsey's room."
Silence. Samir cleared his throat. "You searched his room?"
It was Miles who answered:
"Julie, I know this is a very dear friend of yours, and the whole situation is painful. But you see, these killings--they're extraordinarily vicious. And you must tell us anything that can help us to apprehend this man."
"He did not kill anyone in London!"
Miles went on as if he hadn't heard this outburst, with maddening civility.
"Now, the Earl, we must talk to the Earl also, and at the moment we can't find him." He looked to Alex.
"I don't know where my father is," Alex said helplessly.
"And Henry Stratford, where can we find him?"
The two Egyptians hurried through the narrow streets of old Cairo, with the blanket over their shoulders, the bulging body quite a weight in the noon heat.
But it was well worth the sweat and time taken, for the body would bring them plenty. As the winter months approached, tourists would descend in droves upon Egypt. They had found a good and handsome corpse just in time.
Finally they reached Zaki's house, or "the factory," as it was known to them in their own tongue. Through the courtyard gate they entered, hurrying with their trophy into the first of a series of dimly lighted rooms. They had taken no notice of the mummies propped against the stone wall as they passed, or of the numerous dark, leathery bodies on tables in the room.
Only the stench of the chemicals bothered them. And they waited impatiently for Zaki to come.
"Good body," said one of the men to the workman who stirred a giant pot of bitumen in the centre of the room. A great bed of coals beneath it kept it bubbling, and it was from this pot that the foul smell came.
"Good bones?" asked the man.
"Ah, yes, beautiful English bones."
The disguise was a good one. Thousands of such Bedouins roamed Cairo. He might as well have been invisible, that is, when he took off the sunglasses which did occasionally bring stares.
He pocketed them now beneath the striped robe as he entered the rear yard of Shepheard's Hotel. The brown-skinned Egyptian boys, lathering a motor car, did not even look up from their labor as he passed.
Moving along the wall, behind the fruit trees, he approached a small nondescript door. An uncarpeted rear stairs lay within. Mops, brooms, a wash pail in the alcove.
He took the broom and made his way slowly up the stairs. He dreaded the inevitable moment when Julie would ask what he had done.
She sat on the side of the bed, eating from the tray he'd put before her on the small wicker table from the yard. She wore a thin chemise now, the only undergarment he'd found in Malenka's closet. He had helped her put it on.