'Yes,' said Hilary.
'Now,' said Laurier in a businesslike manner, 'I will give you your instructions, Madame.'
'Please do.'
'From here you will proceed to Marrakesh the day after tomorrow. That is as you planned and in accordance with your reservations.'
'Yes.'
'The day after you arrive there you will receive a telegram from England. What it will say I do not know, but it will be sufficient for you to make plans immediately to return to England.'
'I am to return to England?'
'Please listen. I have not finished. You will book a seat on a plane leaving Casablanca the following day.'
'Supposing I cannot get reservations – supposing the seats are all booked?'
'They will not be all booked. Everything is arranged for. Now, you understand your instructions?'
'I understand.'
'Then please return to where your guide is waiting. You have been long enough in this ladies,' toilet. By the way, you have become friendly with an American woman and an English woman who are now staying at the Palais Jamail?'
'Yes. Has that been a mistake? It has been difficult to avoid.'
'Not at all. It suits our plans admirably. If you can persuade one or other of them to accompany you to Marrakesh, so much the better. Goodbye, Madame.'
'Au revoir, Monsieur.'
'It is unlikely,' Monsieur Laurier told her with a complete lack of interest, 'that I shall meet you again.'
Hilary retraced her steps to the ladies' toilet. This time she found the other door unfastened. A few minutes later she had rejoined the guide in the tea room.
'I got very nice car waiting,' said the guide. 'I take you now for very pleasant instructive drive.'
The expedition proceeded according to plan.
III
'So you're leaving for Marrakesh tomorrow,' said Miss Hetherington. 'You haven't made a very long stay in Fez, have you? Wouldn't it have been much easier to go to Marrakesh first and then to Fez, returning to Casablanca afterwards?'
'I suppose it would really,' said Hilary, 'but reservations are rather difficult to obtain. It's pretty crowded here.'
'Not with English people,' said Miss Hetherington, rather disconsolately. 'It really seems dreadful nowadays the way one meets hardly any of one's fellow countrymen.' She looked round her disparagingly and said, 'It's all the French.'
Hilary smiled faintly. The fact that Morocco was a French colonial possession did not seem to count much with Miss Hetherington. Hotels anywhere abroad she regarded as the prerogative of the English travelling public.
'The French and the Germans and the Greeks,' said Mrs. Calvin Baker, with a little cackle of laughter. 'That scruffy little old man is a Greek, I believe.'
'I was told he was Greek,' said Hilary.
'Looks like a person of importance,' said Mrs. Baker. 'You see how the waiters fly about for him.'
'They give the English hardly any attention nowadays,' said Miss Hetherington, gloomily. 'They always give them the most terrible back bedrooms – the ones maids and valets used to have in the old days.'
'Well, I can't say I've found any fault with the accommodation I've had since I came to Morocco,' said Mrs. Calvin Baker. 'I've managed to get a most comfortable room and bath every time.'
'You're an American,' said Miss Hetherington, sharply, and with some venom in her voice. She clicked her knitting needles furiously.
'I wish I could persuade you two to come to Marrakesh with me,' said Hilary. 'It's been so pleasant meeting you and talking to you here. Really, it's very lonely travelling all by oneself.'
'I've been to Marrakesh,' said Miss Hetherington in a shocked voice.
Mrs. Calvin Baker, however, appeared to be somewhat sold on the idea.
'Well, it certainly is an idea,' she said. 'It's over a month since I was in Marrakesh. I'd be glad to go there again for a spell, and I could show you around, too, Mrs. Betterton and prevent you being imposed upon. It's not until you've been to a place and looked around it that you learn the ropes. I wonder now. I'll go to the office and see what I can fix up.'
Miss Hetherington said acidly, when she had departed,
'That's exactly like these American women. Rushing from place to place, never settling down anywhere. Egypt one day, Palestine the next. Sometimes I really don't think they know what country they're in.'
She shut her lips with a snap and rising and gathering up her knitting carefully, she left the Turkish room with a little nod to Hilary as she went. Hilary glanced down at her watch. She felt inclined not to change this evening for dinner, as she usually did. She sat on there alone in the low, rather dark room with its Oriental hangings. A waiter looked in, then went away after turning on two lamps. They did not give out very much light and the room seemed pleasantly dim. It had an Eastern sort of serenity. Hilary sat back on the low divan, thinking of the future.
Only yesterday she had been wondering if the whole business upon which she had been engaged was a mare's nest. And now – now she was on the point of starting on her real journey. She must be careful, very careful. She must make no slip. She must be Olive Betterton, moderately well educated, inartistic, conventional but with definite Left Wing sympathies, and a woman who was devoted to her husband.
'I must make no mistake,' said Hilary to herself, under her breath.
How strange it felt to be sitting here alone in Morocco. She felt as though she had got into a land of mystery and enchantment. That dim lamp beside her! If she were to take the carved brass between her hands and rub, would a Djin of the Lamp appear? As the thought came to her, she started. Materialising quite suddenly from beyond the lamp, she saw the small wrinkled face and pointed beard of M. Aristides. He bowed politely before sitting down beside her, saying;
'You permit, Madame?'
Hilary responded politely.
Taking out his cigarette case he offered her a cigarette. She accepted and he lit one himself also.
'It pleases you, this country, Madame?' he asked after a moment or two.
'I have been here only a very short time,' said Hilary. 'I find it so far quite enchanting.'
'Ah. And you have been into the old city? You liked it?'
'I think it is wonderful.'
'Yes, it is wonderful. It is the past there – the past of commerce, of intrigue, of whispering voices, shuttered activities, all the mystery and passion of a city enclosed in its narrow streets and walls. Do you know what I think of, Madame, when I walk through the streets of Fez?'
'No?'
'I think of your Great West Road in London. I think of your great factory buildings on each side of the road. I think of those buildings lit throughout with their neon lighting and the people inside, that you see so clearly from the road as you drive along in your car. There is nothing hidden, there is nothing mysterious. There are not even curtains to the windows. No, they do their work there with the whole world observing them if it wants to do so. It is like slicing off the top of an anthill.'
'You mean,' said Hilary, interested, 'that it is the contrast that interests you?'
M. Aristides nodded his elderly, tortoise like head.
'Yes,' he said. 'There everything is in the open and in the old streets of Fez nothing is a jour. Everything is hidden, dark… But -' he leant forward and tapped a finger on the little brass coffee table '- but the same things go
