The screw I tackled first was rusty and had bitten deeply into the wood, so after a few minutes’ struggle I abandoned it and attacked the other one. This, though stiff at first, came out eventually. I went to the other end. The bar was lying on a slant, and I had to stand on tiptoe to deal with the other two screws, but after some difficulty got one of them out, and the other moving fairly easily. I left it there. There was no point in opening the shutters yet, before John Lethman had been and gone. I didn’t bother with the rusted screw; if I freed one end of the bar I could pull it down using the rusted screw as a hinge, and leave it hanging there.
No one was likely to miss the dagger. I hid it under the cushions of the window-seat in my room, went along to the hammam to wash, and regained my room just in time to meet Jassim carrying a lighted lamp, a bottle of arak, and a note from John Lethman to say that he himself had to dine with Great-Aunt Harriet, but food would be brought to me at nine and he would come along at ten to make sure I had everything I wanted for the night.
The note concluded: ‘I didn’t tell her you’d come back. It didn’t seem quite the time. I’m sure you’ll understand.’
I thought I understood very well. I put the note into my handbag, and regarded the bottle of arak with loathing, I’d have given an awful lot for a nice cup of tea.
He came as he had promised, staying chatting for half an hour, and went shortly after ten-thirty taking my supper tray with him. At something just after eleven I heard again the furious peal of Great-Aunt Harriet’s bell, and somewhere in the palace the sound of a slamming door. Thereafter, silence. I turned out my lamp, sat for a little while to let my eyes get used to the darkness, then opened the door of my room and went out into the garden.
The night was warm and scented, the sky black, with that clear blackness that one imagines in outer space. Hanging in it, the clustered stars seemed as large as dog-daisies, and there was a crescent moon. Here and there its light struck a gleam from the surface of the lake. A couple of nightingales sang one against the other in a sort of wild angelic counterpoint, punctuated from the water with rude noises from the frogs. In the shadow of a pillar I nearly fell over a sleeping peahen, which went blundering off with loud expostulations between the pillars, disturbing a covey of rock partridges which exploded in their turn, grumbling, through the bushes. A few frogs dived with a noise like the popping of champagne corks.
Altogether it was a fairly public progress, and by the time I reached the shuttered window I was waiting, with every nerve jumping, for the hounds to add their warning to the rest. But they made no sign. I gave it a minute or two, then tackled the window.
The screw answered easily to the dagger, and I lowered the bar.
I had been afraid that the shutters might prove to be fixed in some way, but the right-hand one shifted when I pulled at it, and finally came open with a shriek of rusty hinges that seemed to fill the night. Recklessly I shoved it back to the wall and waited, straining my ears. Nothing, not even from the nightingales, which had apparently been shocked into silence.
So much the better. I pulled the other side open and leaned out.
And I could lean out. I had been right about the reason for the shutters. Except for a few inches of crumbling iron sticking out of the stone here and there, the grille had gone completely. I hung over the sill and strained my eyes to see.
The window was about thirty feet from the ground, and directly below it ran the path which skirted the north wall of the palace. Beyond the path the rocky ground fell away in a gentle bank covered with bushes, scrubby trees, and a few thin poplars which clung to the edge of the drop to the Nahr el-Sal’q. Off to the left I could see the sizeable grove of sycamores which shaded the top of the cliff path down to the ford.
Nothing of any height grew near, except the thin unclimbable poplars, and there were no creepers on the walls; but Charles, I thought, might be right, and the decaying state of the palace be in his favour. I couldn’t see much in the moonlight, but here and there below me something furred or broke the line of the masonry, indicating that ferns and plants had thrust the mortar from between the stones, and the rock below that, though sheer, looked rough enough to provide holds for a clever climber.
Well, that was up to my cousin. I strained my eyes to see if I could see any movement, or even possibly the brief flash of a torch, but saw nothing. Beyond the near shapes of the trees all was darkness, a wide still darkness where blacker shapes loomed, but nothing was clear to the eye except the strung lights of the village and the distant glint of snows under the young moon. He would have had to make the climb across the top of the Nahr el-Sal’q by moon or torchlight, and even that climb was probably simple compared with this sheer wall below me, where he wouldn’t dare use his torch at all. It occurred to me suddenly to wonder if there were a rope in the junk-room, or anywhere else in the court. If so, one of the projecting pieces of iron might be strong enough to hold it. I hung my white towel over the window-sill as a signal that the way was clear, and turned to hurry back along the arcade.
Something moved in the bushes near the end of the broken bridge. Not one of the peacocks; this was too big; and moved too purposefully. I stood still, my heart suddenly thumping. It forged through the crackling thicket, and a thousand scents came with it, as sharp as spice from the crushed leaves. Then it came slowly out on to the flagway in the moonlight, and stood staring at me. It was one of the hounds. Almost immediately I heard a splashing sound, followed by the swift scrabble of paws on stone, and the other came racing round the edge of the lake towards me.
I stayed where I was, frozen. I don’t think it occurred to me straight away to be afraid of the dogs themselves; I assumed John Lethman to be with them, approaching through the garden. What was frightening me was the thought of the tell-tale window behind me, with my All Clear hanging in it inviting Charles to begin his climb …
The second dog had stopped beside the first, and the pair stood shoulder to shoulder, rigid, heads high and ears pricked. They looked very big, and very alert. They were between me and my bedroom. Charles or no Charles, I’d have given a lot at that moment to have heard John Lethman’s tread and his voice calling them in.
But nothing moved – they must be patrolling on their own. I wondered fleetingly how they had got into the Seraglio; Lethman must have left the main door open when he went with my supper tray, and like a fool I hadn’t checked. Of course, if they did give tongue, Charles would hear them and be warned. Or if they attacked me, and I screamed for John Lethman …
The only thing to do was to stand perfectly still and stare back at them. The moonlight caught their eyes, reflecting back brilliantly. Their ears were cocked high, their long narrow heads making them look predatory, like foxes.
‘Good dogs,’ I said falsely, putting out a reluctant hand.
There was a horrible pause. Then one of them, the bigger of the two, gave a sudden little whine, and I saw the ears flatten. In a sort of dazed relief I realised that the plumed tail was stirring. The smaller hound seemed to take a cue from this. Her ears went back, her head down, and she crept forward towards me, wagging her tail.
Relief made me feel weak at the knees. I sat down on the edge of a stone tub containing tobacco flowers, and said, on a breathless gasp: ‘Good dog, oh good dog! Here, chaps, here – and keep quiet for Pete’s sake …’ What the blazes were their names? Soupy? Soapy? Softy? Surely not …! Sofi, that was it, and Star. ‘Star!’ I said, ‘Sofi! Come on now – here – that’s right … Keep quiet, you great dollops, you great soft idiots … Watchdogs my foot …! Oh, you horrible dog, you’re wet. …’
And the hounds were delighted. We made a rather confused, damp, and reasonably quiet fuss of one another, till I felt absolutely certain they were safe to handle, then I got to my feet, feeling for their collars, ready to put them out and clear the field for Charles.
‘Come along now, chaps. You’d better get back on the job, you dangerous brutes, you. We’ve got a burglar coming any minu
te now, and I want you out of here.’
At that precise moment, from directly below the north wall, I heard Charles’s signal, the sharp double bark of a hill fox.
The salukis, naturally, heard it too. Their heads went up, and I felt the bigger one – the dog – stiffen. But it must have sounded to them a fairly unconvincing fox – and a foreign one at that – for when I grabbed for their collars again, murmuring soothingly, they allowed me to pull them away towards the gate.
They were so tall that I didn’t have to stoop, but hurried along the flagged path with a hand hooked in each collar. That is, I tried to hurry, but whatever sounds they were hearing from the far end of the garden so intrigued them that they hung heavily against their collars, looking back now and again with little whining noises deep in their throats, so that I expected at any moment the outcry to begin. But there was no outcry, and at length I got them to the gate – to find it, against all expectations, firmly shut.
No time to stop and wonder how on earth they had found their way in; there were probably a dozen decaying holes in the walls that they knew perfectly well. I concentrated on getting them shut out. It was a bit of a struggle to hold both dogs and get the door undone at the same time, but eventually I managed, and with a final pat pushed both hounds outside, shut the gate firmly on them, and dropped the latch into place.
For a moment all was stillness again. The sounds from the end of the garden had stopped, though, straining my eyes, I though I saw movement in the far shadows. A moment later I heard the soft footstep. He was in.
I had started to meet him, when to my horror I heard the dogs begin to whine and bark just outside the gate; the eager scrabbling of paws on wood as loud as a charge of galloping horses. They still sounded absurdly friendly – too damned friendly; it seemed that even the burglar from outside rated a noisy welcome on the mat. I could see him fairly clearly now, coming rapidly along in front of the pillars of the eastern arcade.
I ran to meet him. ‘I’m sorry, but it’s the dogs, the blasted dogs! They got in somehow and they’re making a ghastly noise, and I don’t know what to do with them!’
I stopped abruptly. The shadowy figure had come up to me.
‘I’m fearfully sorry,’ he said, ‘did they frighten you? That idiot Jassim left a door open and they got through.’
The newcomer wasn’t Charles at all. It was John Lethman.
9
Of my Base Metal may be filed a key,
That shall unlock the Door …
E. Fitzgerald: The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám
IT was probably a very good thing that the dark was hiding my expression. There was a long, ghastly pause, while I could think of nothing whatever to say. I did a desperate mental recap of the way I had greeted him, decided it couldn’t have given much away or he wouldn’t have sounded so unsurprised, thanked Allah I hadn’t actually called him ‘Charles’ and settled on attack as the best form of defence.
‘How in the world did you get in?’
I thought he hesitated for a moment. Then I saw the movement of his head. ‘There’s a door over in the far corner. Hadn’t you found it in your wanderings?’
‘No. Was it open?’
‘I’m afraid so. It’s not a door we usually use at all, it only gives on a warren of empty rooms between here and the Prince’s Court. Probably his suite and personal slaves were kept there once.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘It isn’t even fit for the slaves now, nothing there but the rats. That’s probably why the dogs went ramping through – they’re not allowed near the Prince’s rooms normally, but Jassim must have left a door open somewhere. Did they frighten you?’
He was speaking softly, as I suppose one does instinctively in a quiet night. I was only half attending to what he said. I was wondering if the sounds I had heard before had in fact been sounds of Charles’s climb, or only of John Lethman’s approach. If the latter, had Charles heard him too, and waited at the foot of the wall, or was he likely to erupt at any minute from the window?
I raised my own voice to normal pitch. ‘They did rather. Why in the world did you tell me they were savage? They’re actually terribly friendly.’
He laughed again, a bit too easily. ‘They can be sometimes. I see you managed to put them out, anyway.’
‘They probably recognised me as one of the family – or else they saw me with you yesterday, so they know I’m allowed in. Are there only the two? Didn’t she have some small dogs – pets?’
‘She used to have a pack of spaniels, then some terriers. The last of them died just last month. You mightn’t have got away with it if he’d still been around.’ Again the abrupt laugh. ‘“Pet” was hardly the word, really … Look, I really am terribly sorry about this. You weren’t in bed, I take it?’
‘No. I was just thinking of going. I’d just put the lamp out, and I came out to look at the garden. Can you smell the jasmine and tobacco flowers? And don’t the roses ever go to sleep?’ I moved determinedly towards the gate as I spoke, and he came with me. ‘If it comes to that, don’t you? Were you doing the rounds, or just trying to find the dogs?’
‘Both. I was wondering whether you’d been counting on seeing your great-aunt again.’
‘No. I wasn’t staying up for that, honestly. I was just on my way to bed. Don’t give it a thought, Mr Lethman, I quite understand. Good night.’
‘Good night. And don’t worry you’ll be disturbed again, I’ve locked the other door, and I’ll see this one’s safe.’
‘I’ll lock it myself,’ I promised.
The gate closed behind him. There were strangled yelps of welcome from the dogs, and then the sounds receded into the labyrinth of the palace. At least the disconcerting little interlude had given me a watertight excuse for locking the Seraglio gate on the inside. The key turned with a satisfying clunk, and I fled back towards the open window.
It was my night for shocks. I’d got two-thirds of the way back along the water-side when a soft ‘Christy’ brought me up short, and a shadow detached itself from a dark doorway, and materialised as my cousin.
I gasped, and turned on him furiously, and quite unjustly. ‘You high-powered nit, you scared me silly! I thought – when did you get in?’
‘Just before he did.’
‘Oh, you saw him then?’
‘I’ll say. Lethman?’
‘Yes. He got in by a door in the far corner. The dogs must have—’
‘Like hell he did. He came from the island,’ said Charles curtly.
‘From the island? He couldn’t have!’
‘I tell you I saw him. I heard some queer noises when I was half way up the wall, so I went pretty cautiously, and took a quiet little gander over the still before I climbed in. I saw you and the dogs making off down the path. I left you get down to the far end, then I couldn’t hang on much longer, so I heaved myself in through the window. Next thing was, I saw him coming across the bridge.’
‘But – you’re sure?’
‘Are you joking? He went past within feet of me. I’m permanently crippled through jack-knifing down too near a prickly pear. After he’d gone by I went back into one of the rooms and hid.’
‘But if he’s been on the island all the time, he must have seen me open the window. Those shutters made the most awful noise. He must have guessed why I was opening them up, so why didn’t he tackle me, or wait a bit longer to see what I was up to? Charles, I don’t like it! It’s all very well saying that even if you were caught there wouldn’t be much trouble, but this is just the kind of place where they’d loose off a shotgun at you or something, on spec. And why didn’t he wait? What’s he gone to do?’
‘Dear girl, don’t get so steamed up. If he had seen you at the window he’d obviously have asked what the blazes you thought you were doing, and whatever guess he made, he’d have stopped you. So obviously he didn’t see you. Quod erat.’
‘I suppose so …’ I added quickly: ‘Now I come to think about it – yes, the dogs could have been on the
island. I saw Star – that’s the big one – by the bridge, and when Sofi came there was a lot of splashing, and she was wet. Perhaps John Lethman heard them over there and went across to get them …? No, that won’t do, because then he’d have seen me. But he’d have seen me too if he’d come by a door in the far corner. He’d have passed me when I was at the window. Oh, I give up! Charles, what on earth’s it all about? Why should he lie?’
‘I don’t know. But when we know how, we know why. Is there really a door in the corner?’
‘I don’t know, I didn’t see one. But it’s terribly overgrown and I didn’t really search, because it wasn’t the right place for the postern.’
‘Supposing we look, then? He got in somehow, didn’t he, and not by the main door. And if he was on the island all the time, and didn’t ask you what the blazes you were up to, I could bear to know why. Does the main door lock, by any chance?’
‘I locked it.’
‘And bonny sweet Christy was all my joy. What the sweet hell’s that?’
‘A peacock. Do be careful, Charles, they’re all asleep.’
‘With cat-like thump upon our way we steal. Can you see in the dark, love?’
‘Just about, by this time,’ I said. ‘And incidentally, so can John Lethman. You’d think if he was doing his rounds in this boneyard of a place he’d show a torch, wouldn’t you? I suppose it didn’t enter your head to bring one?’
‘You wrong me every way; you wrong me, Brutus. But we’ll do without as long as we can.’
‘You’re very high tonight, aren’t you?’
‘The intoxication of your presence. Besides, I’m enjoying myself.’
‘As a matter of fact, so am I, now you’re here.’
‘Watch it,’ said my cousin, ‘there’s a prickly pear on your near bumper.’ He pulled back a bough for me, and dropped a casual arm round my shoulders to steer me through. He must have seen me smiling, for he asked: