Richard Baker1 sat in the outer office of the British Consulate3 waiting untilthe Consul2 was disengaged.
He had come ashore4 from the Indian Queen that morning and seen hisbaggage through the Customs. It consisted almost entirely5 of books. Pyja-mas and shirts were strewed6 amongst them rather as an afterthought.
The Indian Queen had arrived on time and Richard, who had allowed amargin of two days since small cargo7 boats such as the Indian Queen werefrequently delayed, had now two days in hand before he need proceed,via Baghdad, to his ultimate destination, Tell Aswad, the site of the ancientcity of Murik.
His plans were already made as to what to do with these two days. Amound reputed to contain ancient remains8 at a spot near the seashore inKuwait had long excited his curiosity. This was a heaven-sent opportunityto investigate it.
He drove to the Airport Hotel and inquired as to the methods of gettingto Kuwait. A plane left at ten o’clock the following morning, he was told,and he could return the following day. Everything therefore was plainsailing. There were, of course, the inevitable9 formalities, exit visa andentry visa for Kuwait. For these he would have to repair to the British Con-sulate. The Consul-General at Basrah, Mr. Clayton, Richard had met someyears previously10 in Persia. It would be pleasant, Richard thought, to meethim again.
The Consulate had several entrances. A main gate for cars. Anothersmall gate leading out from the garden to the road that lay alongside theShatt el Arab. The business entrance to the Consulate was in the mainstreet. Richard went in, gave his card to the man on duty, was told theConsul-General was engaged at the moment but would soon be free, andwas shown into a small waiting room to the left of the passage which ranstraight through from the entrance to the garden beyond.
There were several people already in the waiting room. Richard hardlyglanced at them. He was, in any case, seldom interested by members ofthe human race. A fragment of antique pottery11 was always more excitingto him than a mere12 human being born somewhere in the twentieth cen-tury AD.
He allowed his thoughts to dwell pleasantly on some aspects of the Mariletters and the movements of the Benjaminite tribes in 1750 BC.
It would be hard to say exactly what awoke him to a vivid sense of thepresent and of his fellow human beings. It was, first, an uneasiness, asense of tension. It came to him, he thought, though he could not be sure,through his nose. Nothing he could diagnose in concrete terms—but it wasthere, unmistakable, taking him back to days in the late war. One occasionin particular when he, and two others, had been parachuted from a plane,and had waited in the small cold hours of dawn for the moment to dotheir stuff. A moment when morale13 was low, when the full hazards of theundertaking were clearly perceived, a moment of dread14 lest one might notbe adequate, a shrinking of the flesh. The same acrid15, almost impercept-ible tang in the air.
The smell of fear.…
For some moments, this registered only subconsciously16. Half of his mindstill obstinately17 strove to focus itself BC. But the pull of the present was toostrong.
Someone in this small room was in deadly fear….
He looked around. An Arab in a ragged18 khaki tunic19, his fingers idly slip-ping over the amber20 beads21 he held. A stoutish22 Englishman with a greymoustache—the commercial traveller type—who was jotting24 down figuresin a small notebook and looking absorbed and important. A lean tired-looking man, very dark-skinned, who was leaning back in a reposeful25 atti-tude, his face placid26 and uninterested. A man who looked like an Iraqiclerk. An elderly Persian in flowing snowy robes. They all seemed quiteunconcerned.
The clicking of the amber beads fell into a definite rhythm. It seemed, inan odd way, familiar. Richard jerked himself to attention. He had beennearly asleep. Short—long—long—short—that was Morse—definite Morsesignalling. He was familiar with Morse, part of his job during the war haddealt with signalling. He could read it easily enough. OWL27. F-L-O-R-E-A-T-E-T-O-N-A. What the devil! Yes, that was it. It was being repeated FloreatEtona. Tapped out (or rather clicked out) by a ragged Arab. Hallo, whatwas this? “Owl. Eton. Owl.”
His own nickname at Eton—where he had been sent with an unusuallylarge and solid pair of spectacles.
He looked across the room at the Arab, noting every detail of his appear-ance—the striped robe—the old khaki tunic—the ragged hand-knitted redscarf full of dropped stitches. A figure such as you saw hundreds of on thewaterfront. The eyes met his vacantly with no sign of recognition. But thebeads continued to click.
Fakir here. Stand by. Trouble.
Fakir? Fakir? Of course! Fakir Carmichael! A boy who had been born orwho had lived in some outlandish part of the world—Turkestan, Afgh-anistan?
Richard took out his pipe. He took an exploratory pull at it—peered intothe bowl and then tapped it on an adjacent ashtray28: Message received.
After that, things happened very fast. Later, Richard was at pains to sortthem out.
The Arab in the torn army jacket got up and crossed towards the door.
He stumbled as he was passing Richard, his hand went out and clutchedRichard to steady himself. Then he righted himself, apologized and movedtowards the door.
It was so surprising and happened so quickly that it seemed to Richardlike a cinema scene rather than a scene in real life. The stout23 commercialtraveller dropped his notebook and tugged29 at something in his coatpocket. Because of his plumpness and the tight fit of the coat, he was asecond or two in getting it out and in that second or two Richard acted. Asthe man brought the revolver up, Richard struck it out of his hand. It wentoff and a bullet buried itself in the floor.
The Arab had passed through the doorway30 and had turned towards theConsul’s office, but he paused suddenly, and turning he ran swiftly theother way to the door by which he had entered and into the busy street.
The kavass ran to Richard’s side where he stood holding the stout man’sarm. Of the other occupants of the room, the Iraqi clerk was dancing ex-citedly on his feet, the dark thin man was staring and the elderly Persiangazed into space unmoved.
Richard said:
“What the devil are you doing, brandishing31 a revolver like that?”
There was just a moment’s pause, and then the stout man said in aplaintive Cockney voice:
“Sorry, old man. Absolute accident. Just clumsy.”
“Nonsense. You were going to shoot at that Arab fellow who’s just runout.”
“No, no, old man, not shoot him. Just give him a fright. Recognized himsuddenly as a fellow who swindled me over some antikas. Just a bit offun.”
Richard Baker was a fastidious soul who disliked publicity32 of any kind.
His instincts were to accept the explanation at its face value. After all,what could he prove? And would old Fakir Carmichael thank him for mak-ing a song and dance about the matter. Presumably if he were on somehush-hush, cloak-and-dagger business he would not.
Richard relaxed his grasp on the man’s arm. The fellow was sweating,he noticed.
The kavass was talking excitedly. It was very wrong, he was saying, tobring firearms into the British Consulate. It was not allowed. The Consulwould be very angry.
“I apologize,” said the fat man. “Little accident—that’s all.” He thrustsome money into the kavass’s hand who pushed it back again indignantly.
“I’d better get out of this,” said the stout man. “I won’t wait to see theConsul.” He thrust a card suddenly on Richard. “That’s me and I’m at theAirport Hotel if there’s any fuss, but actually it was a pure accident. Just ajoke if you know what I mean.”
Reluctantly, Richard watched him walk with an uneasy swagger out ofthe room and turn towards the street.
He hoped he had done right, but it was a difficult thing to know what todo when one was as much in the dark as he was.
“Mr. Clayton, he is disengaged now,” said the kavass.
Richard followed the man along the corridor. The open circle of sunlightat the end grew larger. The Consul’s room was on the right at the extremeend of the passage.
Mr. Clayton was sitting behind his desk. He was a quiet grey-haired manwith a thoughtful face.
“I don’t know whether you remember me?” said Richard. “I met you inTehran two years ago.”
“Of course. You were with Dr. Pauncefoot Jones, weren’t you? Are youjoining him again this year?”
“Yes. I’m on my way there now, but I’ve got a few days to spare, and Irather wanted to run down to Kuwait. There’s no difficulty I suppose?”
“Oh, no. There’s a plane tomorrow morning. It’s only about an hour anda half. I’ll wire to Archie Gaunt—he’s the Resident there. He’ll put you up.
And we can put you up here for the night.”
Richard protested slightly.
“Really—I don’t want to bother you and Mrs. Clayton. I can go to thehotel.”
“The Airport Hotel’s very full. We’d be delighted to have you here. Iknow my wife would like to meet you again. At the moment—let me see—we’ve got Crosbie of the Oil Company and some young sprig of Dr. Rath-bone’s who’s down here clearing some cases of books through the cus-toms. Come upstairs and see Rosa.”
He got up and escorted Richard out through the door and into the sunlitgarden. A flight of steps led up to the living quarters of the Consulate.
Gerald Clayton pushed open the wire door at the top of the steps andushered his guest into a long dim hallway with attractive rugs on the floorand choice examples of furniture on either side. It was pleasant cominginto the cold dimness after the glare outside.
Clayton called, “Rosa, Rosa,” and Mrs. Clayton, whom Richard re-membered as a buoyant personality with abounding33 vitality34, came out ofan end room.
“You remember Richard Baker, dear? He came to see us with Dr.
Pauncefoot Jones in Tehran.”
“Of course,” said Mrs. Clayton shaking hands. “We went to the bazaarstogether and you bought some lovely rugs.”
It was Mrs. Clayton’s delight when not buying things herself to urge onher friends and acquaintances to seek for bargains in the local souks. Shehad a wonderful knowledge of values and was an excellent bargainer.
“One of the best purchases I’ve ever made,” said Richard. “And entirelyowing to your good offices.”
“Baker wants to fly to Kuwait tomorrow,” said Gerald Clayton. “I’ve saidthat we can put him up here for tonight.”
“But if it’s any trouble,” began Richard.
“Of course it’s no trouble,” said Mrs. Clayton. “You can’t have the bestspare room, because Captain Crosbie has got it, but we can make you quitecomfortable. You don’t want to buy a nice Kuwait chest, do you? Becausethey’ve got some lovely ones in the souk just now. Gerald wouldn’t let mebuy another one for here though it would be quite useful to keep extrablankets in.”
“You’ve got three already, dear,” said Clayton mildly. “Now, if you’ll ex-cuse me, Baker. I must get back to the office. There seems to have been aspot of trouble in the outer office. Somebody let off a revolver, I under-stand.”
“One of the local sheikhs, I suppose,” said Mrs. Clayton. “They are so ex-citable and they do so love firearms.”
“On the contrary,” said Richard. “It was an Englishman. His intentionseemed to be to take a potshot at an Arab.” He added gently, “I knockedhis arm up.”
“So you were in it all,” said Clayton. “I didn’t realize that.” He fished acard out of his pocket. “Robert Hall, Achilles Works, Enfield, seems to behis name. I don’t know what he wanted to see me about. He wasn’t drunk,was he?”
“He said it was a joke,” said Richard drily, “and that the gun went off byaccident.”
Clayton raised his eyebrows35.
“Commercial travellers don’t usually carry loaded guns in their pock-ets,” he said.
Clayton, Richard thought, was no fool.
“Perhaps I ought to have stopped him going away.”
“It’s difficult to know what one should do when these things happen.
The man he fired at wasn’t hurt?”
“No.”
“Probably was better to let the thing slide, then.”
“I wonder what was behind it?”
“Yes, yes…I wonder too.”
Clayton looked a little distrait36.
“Well, I must be getting back,” he said and hurried away.
Mrs. Clayton took Richard into the drawing room, a large inside room,with green cushions and curtains and offered him a choice of coffee orbeer. He chose beer and it came deliciously iced.
She asked him why he was going to Kuwait and he told her.
She asked him why he hadn’t got married yet and Richard said he didn’tthink he was the marrying kind, to which Mrs. Clayton said briskly, “Non-sense.” Archaeologists, she said, made splendid husbands — and werethere any young women coming out to the Dig this season? One or two,Richard said, and Mrs. Pauncefoot Jones of course.
Mrs. Clayton asked hopefully if they were nice girls who were comingout, and Richard said he didn’t know because he hadn’t met them yet.
They were very inexperienced, he said.
For some reason this made Mrs. Clayton laugh.
Then a short stocky man with an abrupt37 manner came in and was intro-duced as Captain Crosbie. Mr. Baker, said Mrs. Clayton, was an archaeolo-gist and dug up the most wildly interesting things thousands of years old.
Captain Crosbie said he never could understand how archaeologists wereable to say so definitely how old these things were. Always used to thinkthey must be the most awful liars38, ha ha, said Captain Crosbie. Richardlooked at him in a rather tired kind of way. No, said Captain Crosbie, buthow did an archaeologist know how old a thing was? Richard said thatthat would take a long time to explain, and Mrs. Clayton quickly took himaway to see his room.
“He’s very nice,” said Mrs. Clayton, “but not quite quite, you know.
Hasn’t got any idea of culture.”
Richard found his room exceedingly comfortable, and his appreciationof Mrs. Clayton as a hostess rose still higher.
Feeling in the pocket of his coat, he drew out a folded-up piece of dirtypaper. He looked at it with surprise, for he knew quite well that it had notbeen there earlier in the morning.
He remembered how the Arab had clutched him when he stumbled. Aman with deft40 fingers might have slipped this into his pocket without hisbeing aware of it.
He unfolded the paper. It was dirty and seemed to have been folded andrefolded many times.
In six lines of rather crabbed41 handwriting, Major John Wilber-force re-commended one Ahmed Mohammed as an industrious42 and willingworker, able to drive a lorry and do minor43 repairs and strictly44 honest—itwas, in fact, the usual type of “chit” or recommendation given in the East.
It was dated eighteen months back, which again is not unusual as thesechits are hoarded45 carefully by their possessors.
Frowning to himself, Richard went over the events of the morning in hisprecise orderly fashion.
Fakir Carmichael, he was now well assured, had been in fear of his life.
He was a hunted man and he bolted into the Consulate. Why? To find se-curity? But instead of that he had found a more instant menace. The en-emy or a representative of the enemy had been waiting for him. This com-mercial traveller chap must have had very definite orders—to be willingto risk shooting Carmichael in the Consulate in the presence of witnesses.
It must, therefore, have been very urgent. And Carmichael had appealedto his old school friend for help, and had managed to pass this seeminglyinnocent document into his possession. It must, therefore, be very import-ant, and if Carmichael’s enemies caught up with him, and found that he nolonger possessed46 this document, they would doubtless put two and two to-gether and look for any person or persons to whom Carmichael might con-ceivably have passed it on.
What then was Richard Baker to do with it?
He could pass it on to Clayton, as His Britannic Majesty’s representative.
Or he could keep it in his own possession until such time as Carmichaelclaimed it?
After a few minutes’ reflection he decided47 to do the latter.
But first he took certain precautions.
Tearing a blank half sheet of paper off an old letter, he sat down to com-pose a reference for a lorry driver in much the same terms, but using dif-ferent wording—if this message was a code that took care of that—thoughit was possible, of course, that there was a message written in some kindof invisible ink.
Then he smeared48 his own composition with dust from his shoes —rubbed it in his hands, folded and refolded it—until it gave a reasonableappearance of age and dirt.
Then he crumpled49 it up and put it into his pocket. The original he staredat for some time whilst he considered and rejected various possibilities.
Finally, with a slight smile, he folded and refolded it until he had a smalloblong. Taking a stick of plasticine (without which he never travelled) outof his bag, he first wrapped his packet in oilskin cut from his sponge-bag,then encased it in plasticine. This done he rolled and patted out the plasti-cine till he had a smooth surface. On this he rolled out an impression froma cylinder50 seal that he had with him.
He studied the result with grim appreciation39.
It showed a beautifully carved design of the Sun God Shamash armedwith the Sword of Justice.
“Let’s hope that’s a good omen,” he said to himself.
That evening, when he looked in the pocket of the coat he had worn inthe morning, the screwed-up paper had gone.
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1
baker
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| n.面包师 | |
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consul
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| n.领事；执政官 | |
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consulate
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| n.领事馆 | |
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ashore
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| adv.在(向)岸上，上岸 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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strewed
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| v.撒在…上( strew的过去式和过去分词 )；散落于；点缀；撒满 | |
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cargo
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| n.(一只船或一架飞机运载的)货物 | |
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remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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previously
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| adv.以前，先前（地） | |
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pottery
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| n.陶器，陶器场 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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morale
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| n.道德准则，士气，斗志 | |
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dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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acrid
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| adj.辛辣的，尖刻的，刻薄的 | |
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subconsciously
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| ad.下意识地，潜意识地 | |
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obstinately
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| ad.固执地，顽固地 | |
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ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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tunic
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| n.束腰外衣 | |
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amber
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| n.琥珀；琥珀色；adj.琥珀制的 | |
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beads
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| n.（空心）小珠子( bead的名词复数 )；水珠；珠子项链 | |
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stoutish
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| 略胖的 | |
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jotting
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| n.简短的笔记，略记v.匆忙记下( jot的现在分词 )；草草记下，匆匆记下 | |
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reposeful
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| adj.平稳的，沉着的 | |
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placid
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| adj.安静的，平和的 | |
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owl
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| n.猫头鹰，枭 | |
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ashtray
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| n.烟灰缸 | |
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tugged
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| v.用力拉，使劲拉，猛扯( tug的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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brandishing
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| v.挥舞( brandish的现在分词 )；炫耀 | |
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publicity
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| n.众所周知，闻名；宣传，广告 | |
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abounding
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| adj.丰富的，大量的v.大量存在，充满，富于( abound的现在分词 ) | |
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vitality
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| n.活力，生命力，效力 | |
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eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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distrait
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| adj.心不在焉的 | |
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abrupt
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| adj.突然的，意外的；唐突的，鲁莽的 | |
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liars
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| 说谎者( liar的名词复数 ) | |
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appreciation
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| n.评价；欣赏；感谢；领会，理解；价格上涨 | |
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deft
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| adj.灵巧的，熟练的（a deft hand 能手） | |
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crabbed
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| adj.脾气坏的；易怒的；（指字迹）难辨认的；（字迹等）难辨认的v.捕蟹( crab的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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industrious
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| adj.勤劳的，刻苦的，奋发的 | |
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minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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strictly
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| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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hoarded
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| v.积蓄并储藏（某物）( hoard的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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smeared
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| 弄脏； 玷污； 涂抹； 擦上 | |
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crumpled
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| adj. 弯扭的, 变皱的 动词crumple的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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cylinder
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| n.圆筒，柱(面)，汽缸 | |
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