5
Some men can make a good guess at a woman’s age just by looking at her face and figure. I never can. I think that this may be because, in spite of Mum, I fundamentally respect women. Yes, it must be that. If she is very attractive, but obviously not a young girl, I always think of twenty-eight. If she has let herself go a bit, but is obviously not elderly, I think of forty-five. For some reason I never think of any ages in between those-or outside them, for that matter-except my own, that is.
Miss Lipp made me think of twenty-eight. In fact she was thirty-six; but I only found that out later. She looked twenty-eight to me. She was tall with short brownish-blond hair, and the kind of figure that you have to notice, no matter what dress covers it. She also had the sort of eyes, insolent, sleepy, and amused, and the full good-humored mouth which tell you that she knows you can’t help watching the way her body moves, and that she doesn’t give a damn whether you do so or not; watching is not going to get you anywhere anyway. She wasn’t wearing a dress that first time; just white slacks and sandals, and a loose white shirt. Her complexion was golden brown and the only make-up she was wearing was lipstick. Obviously, she had just bathed and changed.
She nodded to me. “Hullo. No trouble with the car?” She had the same combination of accents as Harper.
“No, madam.”
“That’s good.” She did not seem surprised.
Fischer was coming down the steps behind her. Harper glanced at him.
“Okay, Hans, you’d better run Arthur into Sariyer.” To me he said: “You can take the ferryboat back to town. Are the carnet and Green Card in the glove compartment?”
“Of course not. They are in the hotel safe.”
“I told you to put them in the glove compartment,” said Fischer angrily.
I kept my eyes on Harper. “ You didn’t tell me,” I said; “and you didn’t tell me to take orders from your servant.”
Fischer swore angrily in German, and Miss Lipp burst out laughing.
“But isn’t he a servant?” I asked blandly; “he behaved like one, though not a very good one, perhaps.”
Harper raised a repressive hand. “Okay, Arthur, you can cut that out. Mr. Fischer is a guest here and he only meant to be helpful. I’ll arrange to have the documents picked up from you tomorrow before you leave. You’ll get paid off when you hand them over.”
My stomach heaved. “But I understood, sir, that I was to act as Miss Lipp’s driver while she is in Turkey.”
“That’s okay, Arthur. I’ll hire someone locally.”
“I can drive the car,” said Fischer impatiently.
Harper and Miss Lipp both turned on him. Harper said something sharply in German and she added in English: “Besides, you don’t know the roads.”
“And I do know the roads, madam.” I was trying hard to make my inner panic come out sounding like respectful indignation. “Only today I went to the trouble and expense of obtaining an official guide’s license so that I could do the job without inconvenience to you. I was a guide in Istanbul before.” I turned to Harper and thrust the license under his nose. “Look, sir!”
He frowned at it and me incredulously. “You mean you really want the job?” he demanded. “I thought all you wanted was this.” He took my letter out of his pocket.
“Certainly, I want that, sir.” It was all I could do to stop myself from reaching out for it. “But you are also paying me a hundred dollars for three or four days’ work.” I did my best to produce a grin. “As I told you in Athens, sir, for that money I do not have to be persuaded to work.”
He glanced at her and she answered, with a shrug, in German. I understood the last three words: “… man English speaks.”
His eyes came to me again. “You know, Arthur,” he said thoughtfully, “you’ve changed. You could be off the hook if you wanted, but now you don’t want to be off. Why?”
This was just answerable. I looked at the letter in his hand. “You didn’t send that. I was afraid all the time that you’d sent it anyway, out of spite.”
“Even though it would have cost me three hundred dollars?”
“It wouldn’t have cost you anything. The checks would have been returned to you eventually.”
“That’s true.” He nodded. “Not bad, Arthur. Now tell me what you meant when you told Mr. Fischer that he’d been careless. What did you think he’d been careless about?”
They were all three waiting for my answer to that. The men’s suspicion of me was in the air and Miss Lipp had smelled it as well. What was more, she didn’t look in the least puzzled by what Harper was saying. Whatever the game was, they were all in it.
I did the best I could. “Why? Because of the way he’d behaved, of course. Because he had been careless. Oh, he knew your name all right and he knew enough to get in touch with me, but I knew he couldn’t be acting on your orders.”
“How did you know?”
I pointed to the letter. “Because of that. You’d told me it was your insurance. You’d know I wouldn’t turn the car over to a complete stranger without getting my letter back. He didn’t even mention it.”
Harper looked at Fischer. “You see?”
“I was only trying to save time,” said Fischer angrily. “I have said so. This does not explain why he used that word.”
“No, it doesn’t,” I said. The only way was to bull it through. “But this does. When he started threatening me I offered to go with him to the police and settle the matter. I’ve never seen anyone back down so fast in my life.”
“That is a lie!” Fischer shouted; but he wasn’t so sure of himself now.
I looked at Harper. “Anyone who pulls that sort of bluff without knowing what to do when it’s called, is careless to my way of thinking. If Mr. Fischer had been a dishonest servant instead of your helpful guest, you’d have said I’d been pretty careless to let him get away with a fourteen-thousand-dollar car. I’d be lucky if that was all you said.”
There was a brief silence, then Harper nodded. “Well, Arthur, I guess Mr. Fischer won’t mind accepting your apology. Let’s say it was a misunderstanding.”
Fischer shrugged.
Just what Harper thought I was making of the situation I cannot imagine. Even if I hadn’t known what was hidden in the car, I would have realized by now that there was something really fishy going on. Miss Lipp, in Turkey for a little ten-day tourist trip with a Lincoln and a villa the size of the Taj Mahal, was sufficiently improbable. The shenanigans over the delivery of the car had been positively grotesque.
However, it was soon apparent that nothing I might think or suspect was going to give Harper any sleepless nights.
“All right, Arthur,” he said, “you’ve gotten yourself a deal. A hundred a week. You still have that fifty dollars I gave you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Will that take care of the bill at the Park?”
“I think so.”
“Right. Here’s the hundred you have coming for the trip down. Go back to town now. In the morning check out of the hotel. Then take a ferryboat back to Sariyer pier so that you get there around eleven. Someone will meet you. We’ll find a room for you here.”
“Thank you, sir, but I can find a room in a hotel.”
“There isn’t a hotel nearer than Sariyer, and that’s too far away. You’d have to use the car to get to and fro, and it’d always be there when we wanted it here. Besides, we’ve got plenty of rooms.”
“Very well, sir. May I have my letter?”
He put it back in his pocket. “Sure. When you’re paid off at the end of the job. That was the deal,
