The Game

We submerged ourselves again in the souk, making small purchases such as any English visitors might, as well as two or three items that Holmes appeared to have ordered beforehand, no doubt through his diminutive friend with the conjoined Moslem-Hindu names.

One of these purchases was at a jeweller’s shop, and we were standing at the man’s small counter examining a cunningly linked trio of bangles and conversing with the shopkeeper in Arabic when Holmes abruptly shifted his position so that the bangles disappeared into his sleeve. He continued the motion by reaching out to pluck a ring from a nearby display, saying in a loud English voice, “My dear, isn’t this very like the ring your sister lost last year?”

As I had no sister and Holmes would no more address me as “my dear” than he would embrace me in public, it took no great subtlety of thought to know that he had spotted an intruder in the doorway. And sure enough, when I had taken the spectacularly ugly piece and turned with it to the lighter portion of the shop, there stood a familiar figure, ill concealed by his topee and dark sun-glasses. I looked up, surprised, and let an expression of recognition cross my face.

“Mr Goodheart, so you decided to come ashore after all! What do you think of this ring?”

He pulled the dark glasses from his bloodshot eyes and came fully into the shop, giving the ring I held out the merest glance. He seemed more interested in what we had been looking at earlier, but the bangles had vanished, and the shopkeeper was as phlegmatic as Holmes.

“I should think it would turn one’s finger green in a day,” Tommy Goodheart told me, looking more than a little green himself. “Say, you haven’t come across my mother anywhere in this madhouse, have you? I was looking at some carpets and turned around and she was gone.”

“I haven’t seen her, no.”

“Maybe you could ask this fellow for me,” he said to Holmes. “Since you seem to speak the lingo.”

So, he’d been listening outside long enough to hear the exchange. I didn’t look at Holmes while he asked the man behind the counter if he’d seen a large American woman in a flowered dress (all Mrs Goodheart’s dresses were flowered) looking lost. The man regretted that he had not seen such a person that day.

Holmes translated the man’s reply, then told him that we would take the ring, please. I was glad to see the jeweller pick up the unspoken message, that the bangles Holmes had made away with were not to be mentioned, but would now be paid for; he made no protest, and reacted not in the least to a payment vastly greater than the price of the trinket for my “sister.” He merely wrapped the ring, thanked us profusely, and turned to the young man and asked him in English if he wouldn’t like to look at some pretty necklaces for his girlfriend.

“I don’t have a girlfriend,” Thomas snapped. “And if I did I wouldn’t buy her rubbish at those prices. You really should’ve got him to come down,” he said to Holmes, following us out into the street. He winced at the brightness and put his sun-glasses back on.

“Oh, that’s my fault,” I told Goodheart. “I hate haggling over a pittance, it always seems so rude. And these people have so little, compared to us.”

I was interested to hear the committed Communist sniff in disgust at my willingness to share the wealth.

“Where’d you learn to speak the language?” he demanded, as if Holmes had revealed some distasteful habit.

“Oh, it’s one of those things a person picks up,” Holmes answered blandly. “I lived in Cairo for a time.”

“That’s right—the reason you didn’t care to take the train down to see the pyramids. You two heading for the sights here? The tanks are supposed to be quite something.”

“Not just now,” Holmes said. “We’ve a bit more exploring down here to do. In fact,” he added as if at a sudden thought, “we might just have a meal, something good and spicy. Have you ever eaten mutton pilau, Goodheart? The Arab style of mutton is memorable. A trifle greasy, perhaps, and the eyeballs take some getting used to, lying half buried amidst the rice—”

Goodheart flushed a most peculiar shade of puce, swallowed convulsively, and turned away, waving his hand in wordless farewell that attempted nonchalance.

“Enjoy yourself,” I called. We turned into the nearest arm of the bazaar, and in a dozen steps had lost young Goodheart in the crowd.

I laughed aloud. “Holmes, that was pure cruelty, the detail of the eyeballs.”

“The young puppy deserved it, forcing me to guzzle all that bad champagne and giving so little in return. I’ve a head-ache myself, you know.”

“Holmes, if we weren’t in an Arab country, I’d take your arm.”

“If we weren’t in an Arab country, Russell, I should allow it.”

We wandered, amicable if apart, through the ethnic potpourri for an hour or so, buying the odd item of foodstuff or decoration, dried figs and a double handful of almonds, kohl for the eyes and an ornate pair of embroidered slippers for Mrs Hudson, shopping more for the delight of the purchase than the thing itself, for the pleasure of fingering and sniffing and haggling in a variety of tongues. The sun continued to beat through the awnings, but slowly it shifted angle, until with reluctance Holmes drew out his pocket-watch to confirm the time. He snapped it shut, and I had just stepped around a small child to reverse direction when a rattling noise from over our heads was joined by a single cry of alarm from the far end of the narrow street. Without an instant’s pause, Holmes lunged, scooping up the child with one hand and tackling me with his other shoulder, shooting us through the adjacent doorway at top speed. We three tumbled headfirst into the shop, sweeping before us a group of robed matrons and landing with a stunning crash and clatter that shook the walls. I felt for a brief instant that we must have dived into a shop of pots and pans, such was the racket, but I quickly perceived that not all the softness underneath me was human, and that the boom and clatter had come from outside of the door, not all about us.

I sat up, only half aware of Holmes, who was full of ornate apologies to the ladies and desperate attempts to soothe the terrified child before it could loose its reaction. The horrendous din outside slid away into diminuendo, then trailed off with a couple of clangs. For a moment, the world seemed a place of remarkable stillness. But only for a moment, until the child’s breath caught in its throat and it filled the air with a roar as terrifying as the crash itself. As if at a signal, a tumult of voices joined the chorus, soprano fury within the door and excited horror without. I dusted myself off and went to see what had so nearly come down upon our heads.

It was difficult to tell at first just what had happened, since the awning of the shop—it sold carpets, which explained the softness of our landing—had been crushed and ripped, and was being further demolished by a crew of eager rescuers. The men seemed somewhat disappointed at the absence of corpses, or even bloodshed (other than one of the outraged matrons, who had broken one of her glass bangles and nicked her arm on it), but the shopkeeper’s assistant, miraculously preserved by the chance of having been leaning against the wall, was first terrified, then ecstatic at the wails of the infant. He snatched up the child, startling up a new round of screeches, and patted him all over, unable to believe him whole. In familiar arms, the child’s sounds gave way to hiccoughing cries, and his tears and those of his father mingled down the man’s shirt-front.

When eventually the awning had been ripped from the front of the shop and we could step tentatively out onto the paving stones, it became immediately apparent how lucky we had been. Holmes’ quick reflexes had saved us from certain maiming, if not death outright, for the object that fell where we had been standing was probably three hundredweight of metal and wood.

“What is it?” I asked Holmes.

“I fear to ask,” he said, sounding more disgusted than troubled. I glanced over and saw that he was looking, not at the tangle of pipes and boards, but at his hands, smeared with some dark and noxious substance. He bent to appropriate a corner of the dusty awning cloth, scrubbing at his fingers.

“I meant the thing that fell.”

He ran his eyes over the object that had so nearly ended the eminent career of Sherlock Holmes, then lifted his gaze upwards, as half the people around us were doing. One dusty beam still clung to the rough mud-brick wall some twenty-five feet above, with a clear line of holes and dirt showing where the rest of the thing had been. A glance down the street showed a number of similar makeshift balconies, bits of wood and metal tacked onto the walls high above street level, all of them strung with drying laundry, decorated with petrol tins overflowing with flowers and herbs, furnished with cushions and rugs, and stacked high with various household goods not wanted inside. This one had linked to its apartment by way of a flimsy door, now opening onto thin air. And as we gazed upwards the door did open; the face of a horrified woman looked straight out, then down at us. She gaped down at